Twilight in Kuta

by David Nesbit

  By then the club had filled up, especially on the lower level which was now really rather crowded. Music was blazing out again and it was hard to talk so Endy just led me around and pointed out a few things to me. First he pointed at a couple in the corner; a rather large gentleman, perhaps in his early fifties, was pawing at rather an attractive young girl who was trying to escape his clutches and who didn’t look that unlike my friend Devi (although it definitely wasn’t her). Endy just grinned and started counting on his fingers – ONE, TWO, THREE … before he got to FOUR the largest man, certainly the largest Indonesian man, I have ever seen had flown across the room and picked Mr-Gropey-Sweaty-Pants up by his collar and was ushering him out of the club.

  Next Endy nodded in the direction of another couple. This time it was two men trying to talk over the noise of the club with little success and then suddenly one of them made a jerking movement with his head indicating that the other should follow him out to the gents’ toilet. I looked questionably at Endy who once again grinned, and then pinched his right thumb and index finger together and then put them up to his nose as if he was sniffing them. It took me a moment or two to work out exactly what he was saying, but then the penny dropped; the two men were off to the lavatory to take or sell drugs.

  Then Endy took me through to have a look at the karaoke rooms leading off the lower barroom area. There was another small corridor to go, not unlike the one the other side of reception in which Pak Neil and Yusuf’s offices were located, but this corridor had about eight small rooms adjoining it, four on each side.

  I looked in the first of these rooms and I was astonished. It was full with the most beautiful girls I think I have ever seen and they were all sitting on or around one single sofa watching television. There must have been around fifteen or twenty of these stunning looking girls and at first I couldn’t understand what they were all doing. Were they all customers, perhaps girls from a factory or shop or something all here for a night out? In that case why were they all here watching TV and not in the bar enjoying themselves?

  Endy looked at me and gave me one of what I now realised was his trademark grins and then, once again, the old penny slowly began to drop.

  Endy explained that these girls were not prostitutes as such; rather they were ‘companions’ for any man (or the occasional woman) who wanted some company while they sang in the karaoke rooms. What would happen, Endy explained, was a man (or a woman) would ask for a girl to accompany them while they sang and they would pay the club RP 65,000 an hour for the privilege, of which the girl would get RP 25,000. The customer would then invariably buy the girl some drinks and probably food too, and if both parties agreed, then they might hook up for more intimate relations later. If this happened, Endy explained, then the customer would pay the bar another RP 65,000 to take the girl away and once again she would get RP 25,000 and would be free to negotiate any ‘extra’ from the customer which she would keep.

  I must have looked a bit shocked because Endy then explained a bit further that all the girls were well looked after and that none of them were ever forced or pressurised to go with any of the customers, or even to stay in the room for more than the initial hour. He told me that no physical contact at all was allowed in the rooms and that ‘the lads’ came to check discreetly through the outer windows every few minutes just to make sure nothing untoward was happening.

  After one hour’s karaoke the girl had to make an excuse to leave the room and report back to the waiting room. Here she would give a quick report on what the customer was like, whether he was drunk, mistreating her or generally being obnoxious and if she was happy to continue for a second hour with him. If she didn’t want to, for whatever reason, then she would be replaced in the room by another girl and that particular customer would not be permitted to take any girl home that night nor welcomed back into the club for a while. ‘The lads’ would politely point out the error of his ways at the end of the evening as they called him a cab or saw him to his car.

  Endy also said no girl would have to ever go home with a customer if she didn’t want to. He said that a customer who wanted to take a girl home would be expected to ask her himself and then respect her decision, and he even told me that once or twice a girl had supposedly ‘agreed’ to go home with someone but had looked very unhappy or distraught about the idea and so the club had not permitted it.

  I found Endy to be a wealth of information in those early days, and I would often pick his brains about the workings of the club and how to get on and make sure I progressed up the ladder as quickly and effectively as possible. Endy was always ready with a snippet of advice or information and we got along famously. I asked him what he knew about Pak Neil and how come a bule, a white foreigner, had ended up owning the bar. Here, though, Endy was a little less forthcoming and a bit more guarded.

  ‘I don’t really know that much about him, to tell you the truth,’ Endy explained one day when I asked him again. ‘All I can say is one day we all came to work a year or so ago and everything had changed.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked him.

  He thought for a moment before replying. ‘Well, the club used to be run by an Indonesian guy when I started working here two years ago, and it was a bit of a state, to be honest. It was a rough club, there was always trouble with gangs and fighting, and police raids were not uncommon. I stuck it out because I needed a job, but it was clear that the club was failing and it was only a matter of time before it closed down.’

  ‘So, what happened?’ I pushed a bit more.

  ‘Well, like I say, one day we got to work and saw there had been changes,’ Endy explained. ‘The old owner was nowhere to be seen, and in his place was Pak Neil. He told us that he was running things now and that there were more changes on the way. Then, true to his word, things did change. The club went slightly more upmarket, the trouble stopped, the police stopped visiting so much, and normal regular punters came back in droves.’

  I decided to give one last push: ‘But Pak Neil? Where did he suddenly come from?’

  Endy just looked at me. ‘Nobody is quite sure, and nobody is really brave enough to ask too many questions.’

  I wasn’t sure if this was meant as a warning to me to desist, but before I could say anything Endy continued anyway.

  ‘It is rumoured that he lives outside the city somewhere and that he has been here in Indonesia for a long time. Some say he has even married a local woman and has a kid or two, but nobody has seen them and he has never spoken to anyone about that side of his life at all. All I know for sure is he’s often gone for long periods of time and he’s a pretty nice guy. Nothing more I can say than that, really.’

  I knew that was all I was going to get out of Endy and so I decided to drop the subject altogether and get back to work. I would, I decided, not ask any more questions or try and dig into Pak Neil’s story or background. After all, I reasoned, what was it to me? All I knew was I had a good job and I was being well paid to do something I reasonably enjoyed, and I wasn’t doing anything illegal or potentially shameful to my family. That was what was important.

  I did see Pak Neil around once or twice, however, and one time I even ended up being given a lift home by him. It was late in what had been a run-of-the-mill kind of evening when Pak Neil showed up at the club with two other people in tow. I had never seen these two other guys before – both Indonesian – but the three of them disappeared into Pak’s office and I thought nothing more of it. After a few minutes, Pak Neil emerged and walked his guests through the club and back to the entrance. As far as I could see, they didn’t stop to talk to anyone on the way and nothing was out of the ordinary, or so it seemed.

  Pak Neil, upon coming back into the club after seeing his guests off, appeared slightly out of sorts, however. Instead of either going to his office or taking a walk around the club as he usually did when he made an appearance, he now made straight for the bar where I was on duty. I had never seen him take a drink before, but now he ordered
a large whisky and he even appeared to be trembling slightly.

  ‘Are you OK, Pak?’ I ventured as respectfully as I could.

  ‘Umm?’ was all I got in reply. I decided it wasn’t worth pushing it and so I carried on cleaning up. After Pak Neil had finished his drink he seemed to regain a bit of colour in his cheeks and a bit of a spring in his step once again, as it were.

  ‘Jack. Get your coat. I’ll give you a lift home.’ This was somewhat unexpected as Pak Neil had never been known to give anyone a lift before.

  ‘I haven’t finished here yet,’ I said, aware of how weak it sounded even as the words left my mouth.

  ‘Ah, leave it. Endy will close up here. Won’t you, Endy?’ This last utterance was accompanied by a raised eyebrow aimed in my colleague’s direction.

  Endy looked less than enthusiastic about the prospect, but nodded his acquiesce anyway, and I went and got my stuff ready to meet Pak Neil out the front.

  Pak Neil brought his car round, and I was a bit taken aback. I don’t know what kind of car I was expecting Pak to own, but this wasn’t it. He was driving a Kijang hatchback, which is a kind of jeep-type vehicle with five doors, and it is a perfectly respectable kind of car but not one you would expect a captain of industry to be seen in, let alone driving. I was also surprised to see Pak Neil driving himself, as I had assumed he would have a driver. I thought it best, however, to keep my thoughts to myself at this point and just climbed in.

  We drove in silence for a while with Pak Neil concentrating on manoeuvring the car out of the small car park and onto the main road. Other than checking my address, our silence continued for the next few minutes before Pak Neil finally spoke.

  ‘Jack. Sorry for being a bit, ah, unbecoming before.’

  ‘That’s OK, sir.’ I managed in reply.

  Pak looked sideways at me as he drove. ‘Please, call me Neil, and anyway, as I said, sorry about that. I’m just a bit tired and nervous, maybe.’

  This was a surprising admission to say the least. ‘Nervous Pak? How come?’

  Pak Neil didn’t immediately answer. ‘Umm?’ he finally offered.

  ‘You said you are a bit nervous. About what?’ I asked.

  ‘Did I? Ah, sorry Jack. I’m not with it properly tonight. Just ignore me.’ This was said in a somewhat resigned tone of voice if anything, and did nothing to allay my suspicions that something was not quite right with Pak tonight.

  ‘OK.’

  At that response from me, at least, Pak Neil gave a little grin and we carried on in silence once more. He dropped me at the top of my road, and other than a cheery, ‘See you, buddy.’ Not another word was exchanged between us.

  After this strange little encounter with Pak Neil, I carried on working and within a very short time working with Endy, I started to find my feet and then I moved around the club spending a little time in each of the areas as directed by Yusuf.

  During that time, I worked behind the bar, in the reception, as one of ‘the lads’ (although thankfully for only a couple of days) in the kitchen, and in the offices as ‘management’.

  I found all aspects interesting, and in the main most of the employees were very friendly and helpful. I guess I found ‘the lads’ work the most interesting and varied but the least suitable for me. What they had to do, basically, was the security work and the running around that fell into no-one else’s direct remit.

  They would have to watch out for unruly customers both inside the club and out, help with the manual work such as fixing the barrels onto the bar and carrying out small repairs around the place, look after the girls in the karaoke lounges, and then generally be at the beck and call of all the other departments.

  The management area of the club was also interesting. It involved making sure the security laws and regulations with respect to things such as overcrowding, fire escapes, kitchen and bathroom cleanliness, etc., were being complied with, as well as controlling employee matters such as complaints from and about them, absenteeism, tardiness and general staff well-being and unhappiness.

  After about six weeks, Yusuf called me into his office and I had the longest conversation with him yet: it lasted 15 seconds.

  ‘You have done ok. We are keeping you. You will work in management. Your salary is now three million a month. See you tomorrow.’

  Not much I could say to that, except, ‘See you tomorrow.’

  During this time, I was still seeing a lot of Heri whenever I could although I had moved into my own room at a slightly more upmarket boarding house a mile or two closer to the club. He seemed to be pleased for me and kept imploring me to make sure I continued to work hard and keep ‘my nose clean’.

  ‘You can do it, bro. Make us all proud of you,’ he would say.

  That was all I ever wanted to do: to make him and my parents and other siblings proud of me. I was determined to do so one day and repay their faith in me.

  Time went by as ‘management’ and I grew into the job. There weren’t really that many problems on a day-to-day basis and I found the work interesting and varied rather than truly challenging.

  I got to know all the club employees naturally, and most of the regular customers too. They were, in the main, gentlemen who worked in the business and industry sectors in downtown Jakarta. They were not a young crowd and tended to edge towards early middle age in years rather than anything else. This meant that there was rarely ever any trouble in the club, because the clientele came looking to relax and unwind at the end of a days’ work rather than in search of a punch-up.

  I also got to know the girls in the karaoke sector fairly well and began to understand them better. They told me similar stories to the one Devi had told me; namely that they were poor girls from the villages who came to the city looking for work and for one reason or another ended up working here. Some of them were quite open in admitting they slept with the customers if they liked them and if they felt there was a good chance of getting a decent pay-off from them, while others adamantly refused to ever go with a man no matter how much money he had or offered them.

  They were almost all without exception nice girls, though, and I came to like them all and feel rather protective of them.

  As my first year at the club came to an end, I found myself in the position of having saved enough money to put a deposit down on a small house in a kampong, or inner-city village / compound, on the edge of Depok, a place to the south of the city. This was the first real sign that I was becoming established and it was a proud day for me when I signed the lease.

  I asked Heri, by now finally working as a mechanic for a Toyota workshop and doing quite well himself, if he wanted to come and move in with me, but he just smiled and said he would prefer to stay in the middle of the city near his job and his friends. He did tell me, however, over and over again how proud he was of me.

  During this time I managed to go home to our village just one time. That was at Idul Fitri, the culmination of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan when everybody who can is expected to travel to their place of origin or home town or village. I was able to go home for quite a lengthy three weeks because the club was closed for the entire Ramadan month.

  It was another awful multi-hour journey by bus and public transport to get home, and when I arrived I was hot, sweaty, and exhausted. Not really the best frame of mind to meet my family after almost a year away, but that all changed when I saw my parents and the rest of my family.

  They were as delighted to see me as I was them, and we spent the next few days catching up with each others’ news and gossip and having a great time. I told them all about my new house and how well I was doing in my job, although I didn’t tell them I was working in a nightclub. Instead I just told them I was working for a rich businessman. I felt a bit guilty not being totally honest with them, but I didn’t think they would really understand or approve if I told them everything and anyway, I didn’t actually tell any lies.

  My father told me the problem with Mr. Simon had long been sorte
d out and he, Mr. Simon, now knew that I wasn’t the culprit responsible for breaking into his shop. My father told me it had been discovered that the true villain was none other than Mr. Simon’s nephew who had gotten drunk with a few of his friends and then broken into his uncle’s shop.

  My dad told me that Mr. Simon had been so heartbroken when he discovered what had really happened that he promptly closed his shop down and left the village. I felt sorry for him to a degree, but I remembered how I had felt a year or so earlier when I had been almost forced to leave the village in shame, and to tell you the truth, now had difficulty in feeling too much pity for Mr. Simon. What goes around comes around.

  After too short a time, I had to head back to the city and resume my duties. On the bus on the way back to the city I reflected on the changes in my life and in those of some of the people around me. My parents, of course, were still just the same as they had ever been, as were the majority of my siblings and their families, but without doubt I had changed and so had Heri.

  He had not wanted to return to the village this year, stating that he was too busy in his job and also that he wanted me to go on my own. At first I wondered why this was, but then I realised it was because he wanted me to have the opportunity to bask in a little bit of glory upon my return home without running the risk, however slight, of him overshadowing me. What a nice guy he is.

  I did, of course, tell our parents how well he was doing and how happy he seemed in his life and watching my parents beam at this news made me feel almost as happy as I did when they told me they were proud of my achievements. What a lovely family I have.

  Accompanying me on the bus back to the city were a number of people from my village. Some of them I knew and some of them I didn’t, but what they all had in common was that they were on their way to try and seek a better life for themselves. I couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen to them all over the next year. Some would make it big, no doubt, and some would be abject failures, while the majority would probably lie somewhere in between, but all had their dreams.