Monkeys in the Dark

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  Hadi was a middle-aged man with thick spectacles and a greying crew-cut. He had embraced Maruli lovingly, rubbing his cheeks with his nose. During dinner he and his wife had pressed on Alex the choicest portions of chicken and fish and afterwards had sent for a masseuse for her. ‘You must be stiff. You should have a massage,’ they insisted. As the crone had rubbed her body with oil Alex had heard Maruli and Hadi talking quietly in the courtyard below, their words hushed by the notes of a flute one of the children was playing.

  When she awoke next morning it was again to the notes of a flute. Maruli was sitting up in bed playing it, and wearing her white cotton nightdress. He squealed and giggled when Alex tickled him and almost knocked over the rickety wardrobe while demonstrating that he could stand on his head.

  After breakfast they visited the Art School studios. ‘All dishonest, all rubbish,’ Maruli said gaily, waving towards the paintings of fishing boats, village markets and worthy peasants tilling the fields. ‘New Order junk—nobody’s done an honest painting since October ’65.’

  ‘What about Hadi?’ Alex asked.

  ‘Of course he has. But he keeps them locked up. He would be arrested if anyone saw his real paintings.’

  Maruli was no longer playful; his expression had become hard. ‘You know what he paints? The future—people starving while the generals lie rotting in gold.’ He tapped Alex on the wrist. ‘That is pornography.’

  She drew back from him. He was crazy again, as he had been in the nasi Padang restaurant. The thought slid through her mind that he was violent, a fanatic. Sukarno had bankrupted the country; the New Order, whatever its faults, was committed to national economic recovery, but Maruli would not believe this. Once only he had made a small concession: ‘They may make us seem rich, but it will be the wealth of the whore—baubles and display. Big hotels and colour television. When the Japanese have cut down all our forests and the Americans have drilled all our oil, we will go back to being poor again. Like a whore whose body has become old and soft.’ When she had tried to argue he had replied, ‘You have been brainwashed by capitalism. Never mind.’ Abruptly now, his mood passed.

  ‘I want to take you to the hot springs,’ he said. ‘You must know every delight. You must fall in love with my country.’

  They went by the embassy car. The trip was more than an hour, through terraced mountains and valleys of ripening crops and ponds of carp. They arrived just before lunch at the place, a tiny village that seemed to float on a giant pond. It was surrounded by fish farms and coconut trees, with a single cobbled street that led to a house which looked large enough for a medium-sized dog, and had a sign saying INTER ATIONAL HO EL. There were also four bath houses.

  Children sprang out of the ground and ran after them, shouting ‘Albino! Albino!’ and ‘I love you, Mister,’ at Alex. The proprietor of the bath houses shooed at the children ineffectually, then shouted at them in the local dialect. He apparently said something very shocking, for some of the more excitable ones became near-hysterical and rolled on the ground. The proprietor then resumed an air of great dignity and said in English, ‘Would Madame and Mister care to enter?’

  He led them down a corridor flanked by bathrooms. ‘Our de luxe suite, for VIPS’ he announced. ‘The Dragon Room.’ He flung open the door. A peeling gold dragon decorated one of the room’s red walls, above a large sunken bath with some cracked tiles. The hot springs water was pouring through a lead pipe sticking out from the wall, its flow regulated by a bamboo wad. Alex was grinning uncontrollably—not at the proprietor, but at herself. The Dragon Room inexplicably seemed to her the height of sensual luxury.

  ‘More than half an hour in the bath is dangerous,’ the proprietor was saying. ‘Madame may faint.’ Maruli gave him a nod of dismissal. The man was saying something about ‘refreshments will be served on the verandah, so that Madame’s eyes may feast on the glorious natureside,’ as Maruli shut the door.

  ‘Now you will undress first and I will sit and watch you,’ Maruli said, shutting his eyes and waiting. Alex lolled and swayed in the hot water, finally coaxing him in with urgent whispers.

  She was still dazed by the time they had dried themselves and reached the end of the corridor. Mats and cushions were laid out there on the verandah, which overlooked a lily pond starred with pink and white blooms. In the distance, sunlight glinted on other ponds and fish farms. There was no breeze and no sound, the nenuphar and palms stood as still as if painted.

  Alex stared out, her mind empty. She barely noticed when the proprietor placed a glass of fragrant tea beside her. When thoughts slowly began to return to her she looked at Maruli, but he was absorbed in staring at the volcanoes which rose on the horizon. He sat for a long time, sipping tea abstractedly, a golden coin of sunlight caught in the hollow of his chest.

  He turned only when Alex lent over to touch his hand; his eyes, she saw, were filled with tears.

  ‘My poor country,’ he said.

  She felt jealousy as sharp as if he were yearning for another mistress.

  ‘Let’s stay here,’ she said. ‘We can rent a room for the night. The driver can come back tomorrow.’

  Maruli shook his head. ‘I must get back to Bandung,’ he said. Again, he was far away from her; she did not bother to ask why he must return to Bandung.

  Usman was seated on Hadi’s small front porch when they arrived back. Alex had not liked him on first meeting, although it was he who had first told her about Maruli. Usman had a jittery, pandering manner. It irritated her to see him again, and in compromising circumstances; he might be familiar and make snide references to her relationship with Maruli if she should happen to meet him again in Djakarta. Also, she feared he would know Anthony: Anthony taught English to numerous students.

  Usman leapt up, grinning. His palm was so wet and soft when he shook hands that Alex had to wipe hers surreptitiously on her dress. Maruli had become still and formal.

  ‘Wait here, son,’ he said as he took Alex inside.

  ‘He’s the one who wanted to come with us. You told me you put him off!’

  Maruli looked at her calmly. ‘I didn’t say that. I telephoned him. I told him to come today. Please go upstairs and rest.’

  She lay down in the cool whitewashed room. The house had the heavy feeling of afternoon sleep; even the doves outside were dozing, murmuring only occasionally. She stared at the ceiling, feeling tears stinging at the back of her eyes. Maruli had wilfully misled her about Usman, as he had misled her about his own reasons for wanting to make the trip, and had lied about whatever was in his suitcase. After dinner the night before he had talked privately for more than an hour to Hadi. Alex was certain now that politics was his real reason for the trip. Hadi, too, was a Sukarnoist.

  The wooden window shutters were closed and the room seemed airless. Alex went over to open them, and as she did so she saw Maruli and Usman in the courtyard below. Usman was seated on a stone bench beside the carp pool; Maruli was pacing up and down in front of him. As Maruli drew level with Usman he turned suddenly and struck him across the face. The boy cringed down and Maruli hit him again. Neither spoke, it was done in silence, there was only a dull whack as Maruli struck.

  Blood began running from Usman’s nose in two vivid parallel streams.

  Alex tiptoed back from the window and lay down again. Half an hour later, when Maruli joined her, she pretended to be asleep.

  He lay rigid on the bed, the muscles around his jaw jumping under the skin as he thought and smoked. ‘Shoot me, Bapak,’ Usman had said, and Maruli had replied, ‘You are an outcast now. You must find your own way to live, or not to live.’

  Maruli realised that for himself it all depended on Sukarno now. If Sukarno gave permission for the counter-attack there was a chance that he would survive the fighting. Otherwise …

  Babe was a true leader and a true patriot. Perhaps he would judge it better that the country should submit to the neo-colonial yoke, rather than have fratricide once more, make more wounds too deep
for healing. If Babe decided this way, it was all over, now that Usman had betrayed them. The foreigners might sit on their information for weeks before going to KOPKAMTIB, but in the end, they would: their mutual interests were too strong to prevent it. He thought, I can break down the press and hide it in a few hours, but if Usman is arrested soon and interrogated, hiding will be useless. He will confess even before they begin to hurt him. Either we must disband quickly and go underground, become fishermen or traders, or we must take a chance, continue to work, waiting for Babe to speak … Then, if he forbids the countermove, we must wait to be arrested and interrogated.

  Maruli thought of his brave boys at the Pusat … The Dutch had cut off Bung Sudewo’s fingers one by one while they were interrogating him. He had screamed so much they didn’t hear Trisno and me escape.

  On the bed beside him Maruli saw a flicker of blue: Alex, he realised, was only feigning sleep and was watching him. He turned to look at her and saw her eyelids tremble. He felt revulsion for her and her kind. Her eyelids trembled in the way the Dutch priests’ had done as they had knelt beside Maruli in the chapel, pretending to pray but spying on the chief’s son, watching to see if he had truly accepted the Lord. They had whipped Maruli often; they had expected the chief to send them a pig each Christmastime. At Christmas 1941 the Brothers had waited for their gift, standing on the edge of the jungle and watching for the jeep that would bring their pig. The chief had sent his two eldest sons in the jeep; the Brothers were never seen again. But the Japanese were coming, so the police did not have time to ask questions …

  Alex was lying in her sarong, watching him and waiting, as the Brothers had waited for their open-mouthed pig. Maruli pushed his hand under her sarong and into her vulva. It was as slippery as a slice of papaja. He rolled away from her and lay on his face on the bed.

  After a few minutes he fell asleep.

  Alex gingerly got up and went downstairs to bathe from the cold water tank. He was still asleep when she returned to dress, which she did without looking at him.

  Ibu Hadi, the painter’s wife, was in the kitchen. She rose from the bench where she had been picking over the rice to check for little stones, and embraced Alex. The top of her head reached only to Alex’s chin, but there was maternal comfort in her arms. Alex felt tears rush into her eyes and tried to wipe them off her cheeks. A child of about three was staring up at her from under the bench.

  ‘Why is she crying, Mummy?’

  Ibu Hadi stepped back and clicked her tongue. ‘Because she is sad.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there is bitterness in life. Eat your vegetables.’ The child had a pink plastic dish beside her; she poked her fingers into the vegetable porridge and drew some slime patterns on the floor tiles. Then she climbed into Alex’s lap and after some sticky examination of her clothes and hair fell asleep like a kitten.

  Alex’s tears passed in the comfort of her own sex. She and Ibu Hadi spoke little: the woman gave her a glass of coffee, and sat stroking her hand.

  ‘All women are sisters,’ she said after a while. ‘But all men are not brothers. They fight to rule the world. We are just the poor slaves, picking stones out of rice.’ They began to laugh.

  At dusk Alex took a glass of coffee up to Maruli. He was already awake, sitting up on the bed and smoking a kretek. He drew her over to sit beside him, rubbing his nose against hers and sniffing gently over her skin.

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Well go away together.’

  ‘Where? When?’ He had never before told her that he loved her.

  ‘Soon. After Independence Day. We’ll go to Europe. I can easily get a lectureship in Holland or in France. I have plenty of friends there.’

  ‘But what about an exit visa? You won’t be allowed to leave Indonesia.’

  Maruli shrugged. ‘Bisa diatur. It can be arranged. We Sukarnoists are numerous, you know. We help each other.’

  The idea of choosing exile had occurred to him often in the past days, since he had begun to feel how hopeless the cause was. Even if the order for a counter-attack did come, it would be a useless gesture of defiance: bamboo sticks could not argue with tanks. They had once, during the Revolution, but then the people’s spirit had flamed, they had understood for what they were fighting, and they could see their enemies. Now their spirit had dulled, and their eyes also. They saw opposing them only their brothers; the foreigners who stood waiting to accept victory were hidden.

  Maruli had perceived this difficulty for a long time, but had wanted to ignore it. And, if even foreign spies knew how to search out intelligence about the underground, how much more did their own spies know? So they had failed. They would be crushed. It was all a question of timing, now.

  He judged he had a week left, until Independence Day. His first duty was to save the children from the Pusat. They would have to disband and be sent home to their villages. He would have to contact the South Djakarta cell controller as soon as possible, informing S that the Pusat cell had been betrayed. S would want to have Usman executed.

  ‘He is on the verge of becoming an amok.’ Maruli had already rehearsed his conversation with S. ‘Allow him the dignity of choosing his own time of death. It will also be our excuse for closing the Pusat—that one of our students has mengamok.’

  He stroked Alex’s hair—it was a beautiful colour, if one were not superstitious. In Bah, with hair that colour, like a rooster’s wing, she would be considered unlucky.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  A lot of guests came to the house that evening. The women giggled and patted Alex and some of the men held hands with each other as they talked. But although everyone was being so relaxed and so kind to her and pressed her with special delicacies, like dried, salted goat’s intestines, and buffalo skin crisps, she felt an outsider. They glanced shyly at her hair and at her long, bare legs. The women were in national dress; their legs were hidden under tight sarongs and they all wore their hair in large buns. Even Hadi’s wife was strapped up in a sarong and a lace blouse and had put white powder on her face and gold bangles on her wrists. ‘You should try wearing kain and kebaja,’ the women said. ‘We’ll show you how to wind the kain.’ Alex agreed to try on national dress, then had a vision of Anthony doubled up in laughter at her. He would probably insist on taking a photograph.

  Alex and Maruli left next day at mid-morning. Hadi gave her one of his paintings, a water colour of the carp pond; Ibu Hadi had made up a basket of things for them to eat on the way. There was a lot of kissing and hugging and the smaller children clung to Maruli’s legs. From the back seat of the car they waved and blew kisses, then had to order the driver to stop when Hadi’s ten-year-old son came running after them holding out his flute.

  At Bogor red and white flags, for the coming Independence Day, were already on display in front gardens. The town was cool and festive. They walked around the botanic gardens with the driver, eating Bogor icecreams, which Julie Ashby said would give you amoebic dysentery.

  A mile below Bogor the heat of the northern plain struck.

  ‘This is proper weather,’ Alex said. ‘This is home.’ There were flags everywhere along the road—on the fruit stalls, on the village houses, on the buses.

  Traffic was banked up at the Djakarta roadblock. As the car edged forward over the pot-holes they saw that two boys had been arrested. The boys’ eyes were bulging out, they were trying to argue with the police who stood around them, their hands resting on their hips above the white holsters. As the car drew level another policeman strolled over to the boys and handcuffed them. The boom was raised and the car, after a moment’s inspection, was waved through.

  ‘I am glad you feel this is home,’ Maruli said. His expression was mocking.

  At the main southern market he asked the driver to stop. In a minute he had disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘Tuan has forgotten his suitcase,’ the driver said.

  ‘He told me he intends to pick it up later,’ Alex replied, and thoug
ht, I’m lying again.

  8

  At eight o’clock on Monday morning Alex was editing the press release and keeping one eye on a group of students who were trying to decide which books to steal from the Press and Information Office library. They had passed over The Story of the Merino Sheep and had just about settled on Marsupials of Southern Tasmania, which had more attractive illustrations, when Poppy crept up to Alex’s desk.

  ‘There is a call for you on my telephone,’ she said.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Poppy rubbed her little ear and made a sucking noise. ‘He would not say. I think it is Colonel James.’ Colonel James had an out-of-date telephone list and regularly rang Alex on the wrong number. For security reasons he often refused to say who was calling and barked commands in ungrammatical Indonesian at the local staff. They all recognised him by the way he grunted between phrases. Among them he was called ‘Colonel Grunt’, which in Djakarta slang had two other meanings—one excretory, one copulatory, depending on the pitch of voice.

  ‘Come round to my office, Alex.’ he said.

  She caught the students just as they were making for the front steps and, amid much laughter, took back the books—they had actually got hold of three, one wrapped in a banana leaf. She then walked slowly down the corridor. More lies about Maruli. She wondered if James had made his own investigations, following Thornton’s ‘discussion’, if he had questioned the car driver who had taken them around Bandung. She and Maruli had been formally polite to each other in the car, but the trip to the bath-house had given them away.

  James was beaming as he ushered Alex into his office. It had once had two large windows, and had probably been the library in the plantation house, but by now one window had been bricked up and the other was so heavily barred that almost no natural light entered the room. Illumination came from two neon tubes suspended above James’s desk. The walls were decorated with a large map of Djakarta, a Namatjira original water colour (on loan from the national collection in Canberra) and a framed photograph of the Colonel receiving a decoration on some day of military celebration.