The Rainbow Troops

by Andrea Hirata

  Lintang observed my behavior. I knew he was reading my mind again. This skill of his never ceased to amaze me.

  "Paradox," I said.

  Lintang smiled.

  "Relative," he replied.

  I had said paradox because the size of the tugboat as I—the nonmoving subject—predicted it would be different than that predicted by those actually in the tugboat.

  "No, not paradox, relative," he explained again. "The size of a moving object as seen by still and moving subjects is not the same. This is a proven hypothesis, that time and distance are not absolute, but relative. Einstein defied Newton with this notion, and that's the first axiom of the theory of relativity that launched Einstein's fame."

  Ugh, Lintang! Ever since we were little, I never had the slightest chance to stop admiring this figure before me. My ex-deskmate, who was now an occupant of a coolie shack, was still very sharp. Even though his humorous eyes had become like dulled sanded marbles, his intuition was still as sharp as a hawk's eyes spying on chicks.

  As I became lost in thought over this, I stared at him deeply and felt overwhelmingly sad. My thoughts flew away as I imagined him wearing long white pants and a snug polyester knit vest over a longsleeved sea blue shirt, as he took the stage to present a paper at an honorable scientific forum. The paper was probably about breakthroughs in the field of marine biology or nuclear physics.

  Perhaps he was more deserving of coming from and going to foreign countries, being awarded a prestigious scholarship, than those who claim they are intellectuals but are no more than phony scientists who haven't made any contributions to society other than their final projects and their marks. And those were just for themselves—they were just busy making their own fortunes. I wanted to read Lintang's name under an article in a scientific journal. I wanted to tell everyone that Lintang, the one and only genetics specialist in Indonesia, someone who had mastered Pascal's triangle back in elementary school, and someone who understood differentials and integrals at a very young age, had been a student at the Muhammadiyah School in Belitong, my deskmate.

  But today, Lintang was only a thin man sitting on his heels waiting for his shift of hard labor to begin. Working day and night, bitterly surrendering his noble aspiration to become a mathematician to the sand glass bosses for a petty weekly wage. I remembered all those years ago when he closed his eyes for no more than seven seconds to answer that difficult math problem. When he yelled "Joan of Arc!" When he reigned as king of the Academic Challenge, making our selfconfidence soar. Now he was sitting in the corner of the barracks, looking unsure of his own future.

  I looked sadly around the barracks. Lintang's parents' wedding picture was hanging on the wall. I still remembered that photograph. Lintang had brought it with him to the Academic Challenge. The photograph with a paper wall background, featuring a meadow, a sedan surrounded by a happylooking family, and odd trees with red leaves that were supposed to look like it was taken somewhere in Europe. until this day, I often fantasized about Lintang becoming the first Malay mathematician. But that fantasy evaporated because here, in these doorless barracks, was where my Isaac Newton had ended up.

  "Don't be sad, Ikal. At least I fulfilled my promise to my father, that I wouldn't become a fisherman."

  Those words further shattered my broken heart, and now I was angry. I was disappointed that so many intelligent children were forced to leave school for economic reasons. I cursed all of the stupid people who arrogantly acted smart. I hated those children of the rich who threw away their educations.

  Chapter 47

  Island of Belitong, Island of Irony

  AND THIS is the saddest part of the story. Because not a single leaf falls without God's knowledge, it isn't absurd to compare PN to the Tower of Babel. It's a fitting analogy because when our province, Bangka-Belitong, was created, its official abbreviation became Babel.

  In the early '90s, the world tin price plummeted from $16,000 u.S. dollars per metric ton to $5,000 U.S. dollars per metric ton. PN was instantly brought to its knees. All of its production facilities were shut down; tens of thousands of employees were laid off. It was the biggest layoff Indonesia, and maybe even the world, had ever seen.

  Back when PN was at the top of the Ferris wheel, perhaps because it was grounded on nothing more than hypocrisy like Babylon and Lemuria, God punished the three of them by shattering them to humiliating pieces. Apparently, destruction doesn't have to be written in the Talmud to happen in real life.

  Without warning, the Gulliver company that had reigned for hundreds of years suddenly collapsed in a matter of days. So Babel was an omen to take heed of. God had destroyed arrogance in Belitong, just as he had destroyed decadence in Babylon.

  The plummet in world tin prices was not only because of a global economic crisis, but also because substitute materials for tin had been discovered. That was made even worse by the finding of large tin supplies in other countries like China. So PN was left gasping for breath like a fish flung from its bowl onto the living room floor.

  The central government, which for years had routinely received royalties and dividends worth billions of rupiah, suddenly acted like it didn't know the small island. It looked the other way when the people of Belitong screamed over the unjust compensation for their mass dismissal from work; after all, sugarcane is thrown to the wayside when it is no longer sweet. The union and unity jargon evaporated after the hen suddenly stopped laying golden eggs. Belitong Island, once sparkling blue like millions of comb jellies, was suddenly as dull as a drifting ghost ship—dark, abandoned, and alone.

  The ones hit with the biggest knockout punch were, of course, the Staff living in the Estate. It wasn't just because they lost their positions and image, but also because they had long been settled in an organized feudalistic mentality and suddenly they were poor without the protection of the system. It was a massive character assassination.

  Verloop to luxurious PN guesthouses in Java twice a year now had to be traded for cultivating, climbing, fishing, digging, trapping, prospecting, and diving to support their families. Mahar's story about the whispering Paleolithic Lemurian paintings in the cave that warned a large power would fall in Belitong had finally come true. That large power was PN Timah. Lemures: the banished spirits that rise again. An anachronism befell the residents of the Estate. They searched for food in the forests and down in the river, living primitively like the ancient Malay people of the past.

  Because they were unused to hardships, not to mention the burden of their uncompromising children unwilling to lower their standard of living while they lived at expensive private universities in Jakarta, the stress of the Staff grew even heavier. It wasn't uncommon for them to end up with a stroke, heart surgery, sudden death, dropout children, and mountains of debt. They were choking on their silver spoons.

  Those incapable of accepting reality lived a life marred by self-deceit. Those who couldn't accept being suddenly poor walked tall with a false pride to show off power and wealth that had already been taken away from them. They would eventually become the butt of coffee stall jokes. The self-deceivers and sufferers of lost-power syndrome didn't last long. They soon checked into Zaal Batu, the mental hospital on Bangka Island. The Ferris wheel had switched direction at a high speed and sent its passengers tumbling backwards.

  The greatness of the PN School vanished into the Earth's stomach. A large number of students left the school or left Belitong Island altogether with their families, returning to their places of origin. Besides, what did they care? Belitong was not their homeland. Let it become a ghost island. Let the natives bear the consequences. What remained of the PN School students was handed over to the state schools in Tanjong Pandan.

  Battle The Estate was abandoned.

  The Victorian style homes in the Estate, the Cinderella fairytale wonderland, transformed instantly into the Carpathian Mountains where Dracula and his family resided. At night, the area was pitch black. The banyan trees were no longer beautiful but inst
ead revealed their true character as breeding grounds for evil spirits. Their dense foliage umbrellaed the main road as if they were poised to prey on all that passed beneath. Artificial lakes became homes to monitor lizards.

  In 1998, the people of Indonesia demanded reformation. Brave students brought down President Soeharto, who had been in power for 32 years. His New Order Regime had come to an end.

  The people of Belitong felt the Estate had been protected by the New Order Regime and immediately assumed it to be ownerless. Inspired by the chaos in Jakarta, one night, thousands of people attacked the Estate. The Estate became a battlefield.

  The natives who, because of the gap created by PN, had withheld their resentment for the Estate for dozens of years, who felt they had been treated unjustly, whose property had been destroyed and whose land had been seized, looted the luxurious Victorian homes in the ownerless prestigious residential area. The PN Special Police ran for their lives. Like the proletariat retaliating against the bourgeois for their terrible treatment, they tore down walls, pulled off roof tiles, caught the geese, knocked down fences, stole doors, ripped off window frames, broke anything made of glass they came across, pried tiles off the ground, took curtains and ran with them.

  The No Entry for those without the Right warning signs were taken down and brought home like souvenir chunks of the Berlin Wall. Some angry plunderers took a break to sit on a large chesterfield sofa and eat at the expensive terracotta table, pretending to be the Staff before they went back to plundering.

  The home of the highest PN official, which stood gloriously like a castle at the peak of Samak Mountain with a spectacular view of the South China Sea, was ransacked and ravaged until it was even with the ground. The biggest generator in Asia—called the IC—was burned until there was nothing left.

  The great PN Hospital also was smashed to smithereens. Medicine lay scattered on the street. Wheelchairs and examination tables were taken home. At the time, I could still smell something putrid; it was trays of Revenol. It was the stench of riches and neglect of the poor.

  The looting lasted for days. Telephone wires were rolled up. Live high voltage electric cables were cut with axes, resulting in mini fireworks like a meteor shower. The dredges were sawed to pieces and sold by the kilogram. A strong and arrogant dynasty had been shattered to bits. Along with it faded the light of all that represented the power of the corporation that made Belitong famous all over the world as the Island of Tin.

  The strange thing was that the native inhabitants were now free to mine tin wherever they pleased to raise the economy of Belitong Island. They dug up tin in their own backyards and sold it like sweet potatoes at the tin market they themselves set up. In the past, that action would have been considered subversive by PN.

  The natives sifted tin with their bare hands. They even opened new schools and more children like Lintang were saved. In Belitong Island, not a giant corporation, not the government, but the poor people themselves succeeded in restoring education as a basic human right for every citizen.

  Chapter 48

  Don't Give Up

  OUR SCHOOL stood firm for a few years after we left it. That old cliché, What doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, had been proven many times by our school.

  Look at us again: We survived the fierce Mister Samadikun's threats, we withstood the dredges that wanted to wipe away our school, and we survived the economic difficulties that strangled us on a daily basis. But most of all, we survived the most immediate of threats: the threat of ourselves, the disbelief in the power of education coupled with low selfconfidence.

  Our low self-esteem was acute, a consequence of being systematically discriminated against and marginalized for years by a corporation that had penetrated every aspect our lives. That pressure made us terrified of competing and afraid to dream. But our two very special friends—Mahar and Lintang—gave us courage, and our two teachers—Bu Mus and Pak Harfan—were the guardians who helped us prevail in whatever difficulties came our way.

  But, in the end, our school finally lost. We were brought to our knees by education's strongest, cruelest, most merciless and hardest-to-fight invisible enemy. It slowly gnawed away at the students, teachers, and even the education system itself like a malignant tumor. That enemy was materialism.

  The current world of education no longer saw school like Pak Harfan saw it—that knowledge is about self-value, and that education is a celebration of the Creator. That school doesn't have to be merely a means toward getting to the next level, making money and getting rich. Rather, he saw school as a celebration of humanity, one that stood for dignity, the joy of learning, and the light of civilization. School nowadays was no longer a place to build character, but a part of a capitalistic plan to be rich and famous, to show off academic titles and gain power.

  Because of that, there were no longer any parents who wanted to send their children to a Muhammadiyah village school. The building leaned further. The sacred beam that Pak Harfan himself had carried back when they first built the school—the beam we had carved our heights on—was leaning to the point where it was beyond help.

  One sad evening, after the rain fell, a seven-layer rainbow formed a half circle in the sky, beginning at the headwaters of the Mirang River, then dropping itself into the mangrove forest near the Linggang bridge. The moment that rainbow appeared, the sacred beam leaned a bit farther, then fell. unbeknownst to anyone, a legendary school, almost 120 years old, collapsed. Along with it collapsed the stage where our childhood drama, Laskar Pelangi, had been performed. The next day, people saw the school crumpled on the ground like a badly injured animal.

  After our school collapsed—tragically blown down by the wind—Bu Mus temporarily stopped teaching to be a fulltime seamstress. But teaching was her true calling. I have never seen anyone who loves the profession as much as Bu Mus, and consequently, I have never seen anyone as happy with her job as she was. She later decided to go back to teaching and was hired as a state employee teaching at a state elementary school. However, Bu Mus admits that she has still never met students as phenomenal as Lintang and Mahar.

  My stomach hurt from holding back laughter when I saw the coolie forcing himself to carry so many goods outside of Sinar Perkasa. He walked like a gorilla, just like when I kicked him in the groin during the mental illness number five incident: enlarging chest muscles with a halved tennis ball.

  Many years had passed, but I immediately recognized him. Samson indeed never wanted his macho image to deteriorate. He tried very hard to make it all the way to the pickup truck and put all of the goods in the back.

  Samson received some money from the chubby woman who owned the pickup truck. He said thank you, nodded politely, then returned to the store. He handed the money over to the shop owner who then fanned the money over the merchandise for luck. The wife of the shop owner shook her head. I immediately recognized the shop owner from the shape of his head: A Kiong's head still looked like a tin can.

  However, his fate was much better than mine. At least he had a wife. In fact, A Kiong's wife was his former archrival: Sahara.

  Whenever they had free time, Samson, A Kiong, and Sahara would visit Harun.

  Harun still told the same story about his three-striped cat giving birth to three kittens—also with three stripes—on the third day of the month. Just as before, Sahara listened faithfully and wholeheartedly. If before Harun was a child trapped in an adult's body, he was now an adult trapped in a child's mind.

  Harun himself routinely visited Trapani, who had returned from Zaal Batu. He'd leave for Trapani's house, which was 40 kilometers away, every Friday afternoon on his bicycle. He always departed at three o'clock.

  Harun's aspirations hadn't changed a bit, and he still wanted to be Trapani when he grew up. A lot of times, Harun got sad about his unfulfilled dream, I think because Trapani was an adult and Harun was already old. It took me a very long time to formulate this theory, and I'm still not quite sure about it. It's such a compli
cated matter.

  If you were to judge our situations now, the shattered aspirations were mine, Harun's, Trapani's to be a teacher, and Lintang's to be a mathematician. And clearly A Kiong had forgotten about his hope to hide his tin-can head under a captain's hat, and his wife Sahara had also failed to become a women's rights activist.

  The saddest, in my opinion, was Samson. He hadn't even been able to achieve his simple goal of becoming a ticket ripper at the cinema. He had always been the most pessimistic among us. I have seen it everywhere, the most unfortunate in this world are the pessimistic.

  Meanwhile, Syahdan was still chasing his dream to be an actor but was barely scraping by in Jakarta. He had joined a theater group, but the problem was, in Indonesia, people rarely watch theater. Syahdan was like a lost boy in Jakarta. We never heard anything about him anymore.

  As for Mahar, he too never let go of his unrealized dream to be a white magic shaman. But just as before, he didn't take a problem like this to heart. He remained convinced that the future belongs to God and he would faithfully await his circular fate. Moreover, he was very busy arranging a patent for a traditional children's toy: the pinang hantu leaf that we used to play with during the rainy season.

  Flo, Laskar Pelangi's last addition, had never disclosed her aspiration. We later found out she married the BRI bank teller, her fellow member of the now-defunct Societeit de Limpai. (After the Pirate Island expedition yielded a ridiculous message from Tuk Bayan Tula, Mahar, as the leader of the Societeit, had suspended all Societeit activities.)

  During our Laskar Pelangi school days, Kucai always was the underdog when it came to report card grades. He was always the victim of our insults for his low marks. He subscribed to the swan-shaped number two for math. The bat-shaped number three permanently occupied his report card for natural sciences. He and Harun were the lowest ranked in the class. But look at him now—he, who we had assumed was the stupidest—was the only follower of the Prophet Muhammad from our class who had reached his aspirations.