Twilight in Djakarta

by Mochtar Lubis

  Idris kept kneading his cheek, gazing into the mirror and saying to himself, I’m older than my real age. I’m only forty-two, but my face is that of an old man of fifty. While Dahlia is only thirty-two, but looks like a young woman of twenty-five. He drew in a deep, long breath and sighed as though accepting a situation that can neither be rejected nor changed. He kept asking himself, what more could he offer Dahlia? And at the same time the answer persistently recurred – he had nothing to offer which could give delight to a young woman like Dahlia.

  Ah, let it be, if only she stays with me and we’re together always – that’s enough. And then he was utterly overcome with a longing for Dahlia to be home. He longed to see her body, her face, hear her voice.

  Tired of looking at himself in the mirror Idris rose, taking with him Dahlia’s photograph, and lay down on the bed. From the pillow emanated a perfume, a perfume unknown to him, intensifying his desire for Dahlia to return. Without knowing, Idris then dozed off, his right hand still clutching Dahlia’s photograph.

  When Dahlia returned after a while she found Idris in this position, asleep. She smiled to herself, tiptoed to the bed and kissed him on the temple.

  Idris woke up, opened his eyes, smiled to see Dahlia, embraced his wife and she kissed him, whispering,

  ‘Aduh, forgive me. I had a prior appointment with a friend, and that’s why I could not wait for you at home. Don’t be angry, yes?’

  Idris could say nothing since his mouth was covered by Dahlia’s mouth; the great happiness that now filled his heart spread through his whole body, and he embraced her fervently. Dahlia’s handbag slipped from her hand, fell open as it hit the floor, with a five-hundred-rupiah note half protruding from it. Dahlia, abandoning Idris’ mouth, glanced at her handbag on the floor, sat up quickly and said to Idris,

  ‘Hush, wait a minute, I’ll change my clothes!’

  As she got up she stooped, picked up her handbag, pushed the note back into the bag and hurriedly started to take off her kain and kebaya,1 Idris watching her with growing desire.

  ‘Nah, you’re beginning to get it,’ said Driver Miun to Saimun. ‘But now there’ll be trouble getting the permit. Y’have to know how to read. Better Saimun now learn to read. There’re “courses for combatting illiteracy” in the kampung.’2

  Saimun had been learning to drive the truck for several months now. He was overjoyed at Driver Miun’s words. He turned to Itam who was busy washing a wheel of the truck.

  ‘Hear this, ’Tam,’ he said, ‘and when I get my permit, I teach you to steer.’

  ‘We go together to learn read and write. I also want to learn,’ answered Itam.

  ‘But number one, truck must be washed!’ said Driver Miun.

  Saimun and Itam laughed, and readily followed Driver Miun’s order. They felt very happy, the future was full of promise.

  While wiping a tyre Saimun told Itam,

  ‘When I get permit ’lready, I sure become oplet driver. They say one can get thirty, up to fifty, rupiah one day. Just think!’

  And Saimun scratched his head, unable to imagine just how much money he would get every day as an autolette driver.

  They gazed into the distance, full of wonderment at the possibilities the days to come held for them, when they could get their licence and work as autolette drivers.

  City Report

  A whirling wind chased and scattered the flying bits of dry rubbish along the tracks of the electric train between the stop at Nusantara Street and Pintu Air II. The day was blazing hot. This whirling wind lifted the flies, too lazy to move from the tops of rubbish heaps along the road. Car horns blared, punctuated from time to time by the screeching of suddenly clamped brakes, followed by ejaculations from a swearing and scolding driver.

  Suddenly the air was rent by the piercing scream of a woman, the sound of someone being beaten, the repeated scream of the woman and then a stream of abuse.

  Along the wall near the railway in the ruins of a former half-torn-down train-stop shelter, the city vagrants had their shanties. Old charcoal baskets had been piled up to serve as walls; worn-out, shredded pandanus mats were laid on the earth for floors. The roofs of these shanties were made of blackened and rusty pieces of old cans, patched together with bits of old cardboard. Larger cans which once held butter were set on cooking-stoves made of a few piled-up stones, and these served as kitchens.

  A tiny, slender woman was trying to extricate her hair from the grip of a man’s fists. The woman screamed. The man was small and thin too, no older perhaps than sixteen or seventeen; he should have been on a school bench at this time of day, not pulling the little woman’s hair by the railway line.

  The woman was beating the chest and the face of the man who was pulling her hair with both hands. His hands were clenched into small tight fists, and he too screamed. Suddenly he released his grip, and she fell hard to the ground. He stepped towards her, kicked her in the head with his emaciated, dirty, bare foot. Infuriated by the kick, the young woman leaped to her feet, picked up a stick and, like someone who had gone berserk, she swung it against the head of the man. The man, not having anticipated this sudden attack, could not escape the blow and one could hear the sound of the wood hitting his skull.

  The man yelled with pain and rage.

  ‘The devil, you stubborn woman!’ he cursed in fury and with all his might he pushed with both hands against her chest and she was hurled to the ground once more. He advanced, to kick her again, but the woman jumped up and retreated until her back was against the wall. She was not afraid. Abuse spouted uninterruptedly from her mouth. Three or four vagrants sat and lay inside and outside their shanties, but paid no attention to the raging fight.

  ‘Brave with a woman, lu!’ the little woman’s ringing voice reproached. ‘If lu dare, just kill me right now! Kill me!’ And she bared her chest half covered by her torn kebaya. Her breasts, still round and firm, were bathed by the light of the hot sun-rays.

  The man stepped closer, as if wanting to hit her again.

  ‘What good is a man like this!’ screamed the young woman again. ‘Talks a lot. Brags! Lu promised to marry me. I’m in the third month already. Why lu didn’t marry me yet? Lu say, no money! But for gambling there’s money! Where’s the house? Lu said you had money! Said you had a house! Said you have work! Me – I’ve become a whore, lu not ashamed! You’re eating whoring money, lu!’

  She wept and threw herself on the ground, sobbing and hiding her head. The man stood, perplexed. And he scratched his big toe against the dirt on the ground.

  ‘I’ve looked for work, there is none,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘If only I’d stayed in my kampung, I wouldn’t have been ruined like this. Why did I follow you?’ the little woman wailed again. ‘Now I’m a whore, without shame, selling myself every night. Because of lu I did it, aduh Gusti,1 forgiiive!’ And she wept violently.

  ‘Forgiiiiiive, Gusti, aduh Gustiiiii!’ the woman repeated in long-drawn wails, screaming up to the scorching hot heaven, hurling upward her despair, begging for human help, begging for human consolation, begging for human protection, begging for human mercy, begging for human love and solace.

  ‘Why did I get like this, aduh, Gustiii! Who turned me into this …?’ she wailed, flinging her laments to humanity.

  The little woman tore her own hair with both hands, beat her breast, threw herself on the ground, wailing in a high voice, ‘Help me, God, why did I get like this, who turned me into this?’

  The young fellow looked at her, made a step towards her, shoved her with his foot half-heartedly and said, ‘You whore!’

  And then he walked away.

  1 A long-tailed monkey.

  2 Said to be derived from tsai lan kung, a contraption made of crossing boards dressed in a shirt, topped by Chinese inscribed tablets, set in a basket and manipulated by children for oracular purposes.

  3 Dukun = magician-healer, male or female.

  1 Republik Indonesia Serikat = United States of Indones
ia.

  2 Netherlands Indies Civil Administration.

  1 A long jacket of light material for women.

  2 City quarters, peripheral or enclaved, where the poor working population lives in bamboo dwellings or huts.

  1 Gusti = Lord, in Javanese.

  October

  ‘JUST LISTEN to their talk for a while,’ Suryono was saying to Sugeng. ‘Sometimes their discussions are quite good, though frequently they get off the track, and then they’re way up in the clouds. It’s really amusing when what’s-his-name begins to discuss the Oedipus complex by – who was that writer, he’s dead, I forget his name …? But nevertheless they’re friends of mine. They’re good people – only a bit mixed up. They think they’re helping their country by discussing intensively all sorts of questions. At first they said that these discussions were needed to find out what sort of problems face us. When we know what the problems are it will be easier to solve them, they said. The pity of it, as I see it, is that these intensive discussions with high-flown theorising have now become an end in themselves, and are no longer a means as originally intended. But they mean well!’

  Sugeng said nothing. He didn’t care too much what Suryono was telling him. When Suryono had invited him to attend a meeting of the discussion club run by Suryono’s friends, he was actually not too eager to go. Why should I go along? he had asked. But Suryono insisted that he join him, and, after all, Suryono’s father was someone to reckon with because of his great influence in the party that had done such wonders for him since he’d joined – and so he went along.

  Suddenly Suryono, blowing his horn hard and clamping down the brakes, swore.

  ‘You pig!’ he shouted.

  An old woman carrying a baby ran in fright to one side of the street.

  ‘Lucky the brakes are good, if not she’d be dead. Crossing the street without using her head,’ Suryono raged and cursed. ‘How will Indonesia ever get ahead? If they can’t even cross a street?’

  ‘Ah, don’t be like that,’ said Sugeng. He remembered the time before he had joined the party, and how difficult it was then to live as a civil servant. ‘Such people have very hard lives. Maybe she didn’t hear the horn because she was hungry, and was full of worries about how to get food for tonight.’

  ‘Ah, that’s not true. When people are hungry their senses are sharpened, that’s what I read in an article by a doctor,’ answered Suryono.

  Inwardly though, he recognised the justice of Sugeng’s remark, and this annoyed and angered him even more. I don’t like this man, he thought, of Sugeng sitting beside him.

  As Suryono stepped on the accelerator again he was suddenly seized by a feeling of depression. A feeling which for a number of times had been creeping up on him at the most unexpected moments. While he was enjoying himself with Dahlia, in the middle of a good meal at a restaurant, when he was on the point of signing a cheque or when he climbed into his fine car. What it was that disturbed him so he found it impossible to say precisely, but it made him feel uneasy, as though something were wrong, and behind it all loomed a kind of fear. Just what kind of fear he couldn’t make out exactly either. So he ended up just feeling put out, and often was annoyed with the people who happened to be around him.

  It was thus that he had had his first quarrel with Dahlia. Dahlia had sensed a change in him, and had asked him whether he was tired of her. Her question made him angry and he had inquired rudely, did she want money or didn’t she. But on that occasion he’d soon asked her to forgive him, and amity between them had been restored. He had taken Iesye out to a restaurant once, and while they were happily sitting down to their meal this odd feeling had emerged again as he saw a little beggar-girl approaching their table. Because this strange fear was mingled with his annoyance and uneasiness at the sight of her, he’d flown into a rage and had snapped at the little beggar so harshly that the child fled in fright. Iesye had then got very angry, refused to go on with the meal and asked him to take her home right away. In the car, up to her home, he had begged her to forgive him, but Iesye had remained silent and would not speak to him. He tried hard during the following two weeks to rehabilitate himself in Iesye’s eyes, but she remained unmoved. The harder he tried, the more distant Iesye became. All this convinced Suryono, however, that he really loved Iesye, and must marry her were he to attain happiness in life. He became very jealous if he saw or heard that Iesye was going out with another man, especially if he heard that she was out with Pranoto.

  He kept going to the evening discussions mainly to catch a glimpse of Iesye and to watch how Pranoto behaved towards her. He also felt that it was easier to get to talk with Iesye at these meetings. All this unpleasantness came to his mind because of Sugeng’s earlier remark, and he felt deeply upset and rather angry. But he restrained himself. He reminded himself how much they needed Sugeng. But even so he couldn’t calm down. It’s easy for him to talk, but isn’t he out for what he can get like the rest? he said to himself. No sooner had this thought crossed his mind than it seemed as if a sudden shaft of light pierced him to the heart. It became clear to him at that moment what it was that he was doing, what his father was doing, what Husin Limbara was doing for his party and what they were asking Sugeng to do. He was appalled, and a terrible feeling of shame and guilt mixed with fear gripped his heart. But a moment later this feeling was gone again. Deliberately suppressed. He recalled Husin Limbara’s words, ‘We are doing all this to further our people’s struggle for social justices to defend the Pantjasila as the foundation of our state. Ours is the only political party that firmly upholds the Pantjasila as the basis of the state. The Islamic parties want to create a Darul Islam1 state, the communist party wants to create a communist state and so on. That’s why our party has to win the general elections. In order to win, the party needs money, and plenty of it. Therefore, we are simply doing our bit in the struggle to save the Pantjasila. That’s the reason we are doing all this, and we’ve got the full approval of the party’s council.’

  Suryono thus reassured himself with Husin Limbara’s words, and was able to enjoy driving his Dodge sedan again. Also his annoyance with Sugeng disappeared and he turned to him.

  ‘Have you bought a car already?’

  ‘Ah, not yet. I’m still hesitant. If I buy a car, the people at the office will suspect there’s something fishy.’

  ‘What are you afraid of? The minister will protect you. If people start asking questions, couldn’t you say that you got a present from your family? Put it down on your wife’s name. How much did you get this month, a hundred thousand?’

  ‘A little less,’ Sugeng replied.

  ‘If you apply for priority to get a car, as head of a division, you’re sure to get it. On this priority you can get something like a Zephyr – costs only sixty-two thousand. You could resell this car for one hundred and twenty-five. Then you can buy yourself a second-hand car for about fifty thousand, they’re decent enough, and you are left with a clear seventy-five thousand profit,’ said Suryono.

  ‘Maybe, I am not sure yet what to do with so much money got so easily,’ Sugeng told Suryono. ‘I never dreamed that I’d ever get so much money with so little effort. I used to feel very envious seeing other people with fine houses, cars, lots of money, going in and out of restaurants as they pleased. But now, with that much money, I’m a bit scared.

  ‘Scared? Why?’ asked Suryono. His resentment of Sugeng returned at once. Sugeng had reawakened his anxiety. Yet he wanted to hear Sugeng describe his apprehensions.

  ‘Perhaps because I think like an official,’ Sugeng responded. ‘But I do feel somehow that even though all the licences we issue are legal and are approved by the minister himself, what we’re doing is wrong. Why, for example, do we give preference to the Hati Sutji1 corporation, a corporation chartered only a month ago, with a staff of only one director, who has no office, no staff, no experience and no business connections abroad? While other import firms, also run by our nationals, who have been in business for years
, operating on a completely bona-fide basis, aren’t supposed to get anything? Ah, and there’s lots more. For instance, there’s that business run by a group of veterans claiming to represent tens of thousands of other veterans; I happen to know, they aren’t veterans at all, and they haven’t done a thing for a single veteran. When I think of all this I get scared. I’m afraid that what we’re doing is improper and that we’ve overstepped the limits somewhere.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Suryono. Doubts assailed him once more. But for his own peace of mind, he had to dispel Sugeng’s fears. He had to convince Sugeng that they were right.

  ‘You’re too much of a bureaucrat! That’s all. Don’t you remember what Husin Limbara said? It’s all for the sake of our people’s welfare. We must look at these things in wider perspective.’

  ‘I could feel at peace if it were really just for that one purpose,’ Sugeng replied. ‘But why should I be getting hundreds of thousands of rupiah? Why are so many people making fortunes out of it? They certainly don’t pass on everything to the party?’

  Suryono was silent, he recognised the truth of Sugeng’s words. Doubt and anxiety rose in him again.

  ‘Well, just tell me – why?’ Sugeng was pressing.

  Suryono did not answer. He tried to cover up his own anxiety by laughing.

  ‘Ah, because we’re just not used to having tens of thousands of rupiah in our pockets. But what does it amount to, anyway? Just think how much the Dutch and the Chinese have scraped up here over the centuries!’