Twilight in Djakarta

by Mochtar Lubis

Instead of the unsent letter, he answered Connie with a love-letter which spoke mainly of his longing for her.

  How incredibly happy I was, my darling, he wrote, to get your wonderfully noble letter. I want to assure you of one thing, so you never doubt it – my everlasting love for you. I have almost succumbed to your reasoning. But I am not yet convinced for myself that marrying you and bringing you among my people will bring you happiness, the happiness I want you to have. So please be patient, my beloved, and wait a little longer.

  Pranoto woke up with a start from his musings as he heard the humming sound of the phonograph as the record came to the end. He sat up on his bed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, pinched his eyebrows. He felt even more desolate and lonely than usual. He stood up, went back to his desk, examined the piece of paper in the typewriter, his unfinished article. He forced himself to re-read what he had written. It was a great effort to continue the work, he felt.

  ‘That’s his story – do you think it can be done?’ said Sugeng to Suryono. They were both in Sugeng’s workroom. A workroom as yet empty. Suryono was thinking it over.

  ‘Should it come off, it would mean a clear half a million for us,’ he said.

  Sugeng had just finished telling him how three days ago a certain Said Abdul Gafur had come to him with a proposal. According to Said Abdul Gafur, a friend of his, who was an Arab real estate owner, was eager to sell some of his property located rather strategically in the centre of the city. But unfortunately, several of the buildings on the property were occupied by government offices, so no one was willing to buy it. But if one could arrange for these government offices to be moved somewhere else, the property would become available for new housing construction and could be sold for as much as five million. And, Said Abdul Gafur had said, if Sugeng could arrange this, there was a cut of half a million waiting for those who got it done.

  ‘But you should realise,’ said Suryono, ‘that the property is worth far more than five million. I’m sure Said Abdul Gafur will want a big cut for himself. I’ll talk it over with my father, we’ll see what the party can do. But we’ll have to make sure to get a bigger share. Half a million for the party, and half a million for the two of us. Just tell your Arab that if he’s prepared to pay one million we’ll see it gets done.’

  ‘If this comes off I’ll resign from my post as an official,’ said Sugeng, ‘and go into business on my own. I want to start my own enterprise.’

  ‘Of course, it’s much better, what’s the use of being a civil servant!’ Suryono responded contemptuously.

  Idris sat very still by the window of his bedroom. He had been sitting like this for the last quarter-hour. He’d just had a quarrel with Dahlia. He had been suppressing his feelings about his wife too long. All sorts of vile thoughts and suspicions had kept haunting him. He had seen her constantly acquiring more and more things she couldn’t possibly afford on his earnings as an inspector of education. Expensive batik cloths, beautiful jackets, not to mention gold jewellery with precious stones, perfumes and so on.

  That afternoon when he got back from the office he could contain himself no longer. It was not finding her home that triggered everything off. It was only after he had finished eating that Dahlia had appeared, carrying a bundle of several batik kains.

  ‘I’ve kept quiet all this time, but, by Allah, you’d better tell the truth now and tell me just where you get the money to buy all this. It’s impossible on my salary,’ he had started, in an agitated voice.

  Dahlia looked at him with great surprise, she had never expected such an outburst from her husband. For months now she had been going and coming as she pleased, bringing things home without Idris raising any questions.

  But her shock didn’t last long. She knew her power over Idris. Dahlia counter-attacked at once.

  ‘Aduh, so you’ve gone so far as to suspect your own wife. Perhaps you think that I’ve stolen them all?’

  Idris was groping for an answer, hesitating whether or not to utter the crucial accusation. But Dahlia, sensing his hesitation, quickly pursued her advantage. Coming a step closer she said,

  ‘Or do you think I’m selling myself to buy all these things?’

  Her voice rose to the angry pitch of an injured wife, quite unjustly suspected. It conveyed the indignation of a woman who had to bear the hardships of being a civil servant’s wife and suddenly being accused of the worst by her own husband.

  Idris felt that he had lost the initiative, but did not see his way to regaining it.

  Dahlia pushed on with her attack.

  ‘You should be grateful and appreciate my efforts to supplement your salary and bolster our income a bit. But you’re doing just the opposite. If you really want to know how I manage to buy all these things, all right, I’ll tell you – by trading in a small way, buying and selling kains and jewels among my friends. These kains I’ve just bought will be resold later.’ And Dahlia picked up the bundle of batiks which she had brought from the shop – on credit. She still didn’t know how she was going to pay for them, whether to ask Suryono to settle the debt, or the young Indian manager of a shop she patronised on Pasar Baru, who kept trying to approach her whenever she came in to do some shopping.

  ‘Apart from trading, I run some raffles among friends. That radio over there in the dining-room, do you think I bought it out of your salary? And our new bed – from your salary, too?’

  By this time Idris was completely crushed. And when, on top of this, Dahlia began to cry, sobbing bitterly and saying, ‘Ah, if you don’t like me any more, why don’t you just divorce me?’ he felt faint all over. As though he were laying his heart on the floor for Dahlia to trample on, he reproached himself in a hundred ways for having entertained such evil thoughts about the wife he loved. He sat very still by the window, not knowing how to win her back.

  ‘I ’lready got work driving betja, ’Mun,’ said Itam to Saimun in their hut. ‘No joking how hard foreman can be. If you’re sick one week he won’t take you back. He said we get paid by the day. When I was sick he got ’nother man do my work. Lucky I got work driving betja!’

  ‘How ’bout betja driving-licence?’ asked Saimun.

  ‘Tauké1 don’t care, have or not have driving-licence. If not have driving-licence, must make bigger deposit. Deposit for one day and one night, usual twenty rupiah, but me, I must make deposit twenty-five rupiah.’

  ‘Aduh, ’Tam, far too much, nuh?’

  ‘Yah, but we, what can we expect, ’Mun? If there’s no other work at all, see? Me, I’ve no schooling. Know nothing. Read – cannot. Write – cannot. Become skilled – cannot. Most I have – two hands and two feet. Lu, better off, see. Only thing left to do for lu, apply for licence. Then lu can be sopir.2 Lu ’lready can write ’n read some.’

  ‘That’s it, ’Tam,’ said Saimun. ‘Me, from the beginning I ask you to come take P.B.H.3 lessons, but lu just lazy.’

  ‘’T’s just fate, ’Mun. Has not every man his fate? We here just submit to the Lord. If lucky enough to earn living, well, thank God. If not, just croak.’

  ‘Don’t talk this way, ’Tam, Easy!’

  ‘Really, sometimes me, I feel like I’m going crazy, ’Mun, living like this. Feels like we just trampled on. If to stay in the village, want to work sawah4 – cannot, ’ll be killed by grombolan. If run away to city, life just suffering. How lu think, how can it be if you’re sick then you lose the work? So how to be if it’s this way? Then you see our high people, who always doing fine. Lu ever see them stand in line for salt, for kerosene, for rice, like us in the kampung? No, never. Most we see them line up in cars.’

  ‘That’s true, ’Tam,’ Saimun replied. ‘Me, I also often think and think. In our life, see, no change – under the Dutch or under our own people, no different. Me, I don’t ’nderstand a thing ’bout these politics, see. But I can feel for myself, and hear friends talk. Sure, our life now has no joy at all. Nothing’s fixed. Nobody cares about our lot. If hungry – ’llright, be hungry by yourself. If sic
k – ’llright, be sick by yourself. If dead – ’llright, be dead by yourself.’

  ‘Nah, if I ’lready feel like I’m near crazy, sometimes I get to think, ’llright, just steal, that’s all. If not steal, ’llright, rob. Don’t care ’nymore what’ll happen!’

  ‘’T’s true,’ said Saimun. ‘Me, I also feel that way once ’n while. One time, when still learning drive the truck, motor goes dead, truck ’n middle of street; aduh, how people in big shiny cars swearing at me – telling me, lu, if you don’t know how to drive, don’t drive, yak! Our own people so terrible stuck-up. I’d not be bitter if he, who wants to pass, were the number of Pak President. And his name were also Pak President’s. ’T’s only proper to give way – lives he not in the palace and ’vrything’s set. But if our own people, who’re not the president, carry on like this, aduh, I can’t take it, ’Tam. Are we not all human? Only they have money, and we’re the people who don’t.’

  ‘’Mun,’ said Itam, ‘friends say when driving betja luck can be fairly good. More so if we get know addresses of women. Tips then good, too. Speaking ’f women, yesterday I see Neneng on Sawah Besar market. Aduh, she wants not know me any more.’

  Saimun held his breath hearing Itam mention Neneng’s name. Since Neneng had left their hut last August, Saimun had tried four times to approach her and persuade her to return.

  ‘She’s ’lready fine show,’ added Itam. ‘All dressed up, clothes neat, lips painted red. I greet her, doesn’t even answer.’

  Itam stretched himself out on the balai-balai and lit a kretek cigarette.

  Saimun recalled the moment when he had tried for the first time to approach Neneng. It was almost a month after she had left them to go to Kaligot. At first he had been reluctant to enter the house where she worked, because there were so many other women in it, and Saimun did not know how to behave toward all these other women who kept looking at him. But later he got up enough courage to enter because he noticed that Neneng was sitting on the front verandah with a few other women. When he entered, Neneng, seeing him, got up and ran inside. Saimun didn’t dare to follow and look for her, and he quickly went out again, not daring to stand and wait for her outside either.

  The second time, when he came there, he just managed to catch a glimpse of a man who was drawing Neneng with him into the inner room. He was so upset at that moment that he ran away as fast as he could.

  The third time, two weeks later, he came across Neneng at the Sawah Besar market. He greeted her, but the woman kept walking on as if she’d never known him.

  Neneng’s behaviour had greatly depressed Saimun. But he didn’t give up hope, and when a week later he accidentally met Neneng on the street he greeted her again. And again Neneng did not return the greeting. But Saimun, gathering courage, followed Neneng while saying to her,

  ‘Neneng, why you like this? I mean no harm. Just want to see you. Want to see that you’re well.’

  And only then the woman answered, in a dull, sad voice,

  ‘Bang,1 what’s the use looking for me? I’m now a dirty woman.’

  At these words Saimun felt as though his heart was being cut to pieces, and without a moment’s thought he said,

  ‘Leave that house, ’Neng ayoh; let’s go back to our hut.’

  ‘And like before, with you and Itam, bang,’ Neneng replied. ‘It’s the same as my life now. Let it be, bang, I’m ’lready a woman like this. Let it be!’

  ‘Aduh, ’Neng, we’ll get married if lu want,’ suddenly sprang from Saimun’s mouth without him being aware of the meaning of his own words, of the fact that he couldn’t support a wife while his earnings were not even enough for himself alone and while he still suffered many ups and downs and hunger.

  ‘You’re really good, abang, but me, I’m ashamed,’ said Neneng, quickening her steps.

  And she did not listen any more to what Saimun tried to tell her, coaxing her as he was, until he began to feel embarrassed as people started to stare at him – chasing after a woman in the middle of the street in broad daylight. He stopped and let Neneng walk on by herself in front.

  ‘Ah, ’Tam,’ said Saimun to Itam who was puffing out dense clouds of cigarette smoke, ‘me, I don’t know any more why we’re born to be human beings! Only the Lord knows what he wants with us!’

  And Saimun sat there, musing.

  Yasrin was walking in the scorching heat of Djakarta towards Achmad’s office. He had received a letter from Achmad, the contents of which he rather liked. Achmad had written that cultural activities in Indonesia had been left in the hands of bourgeois intellectuals like Pranoto and his friends far too long. The result had been a total lack of progress in developing a genuine cultural movement ‘among the people, by the people and for the people’. In Achmad’s words, these bourgeois intellectuals who profess to be supporters of Indonesian culture and claim to be heirs to universal human values are stuck in theorising, analysing, writing pseudo-intellectual essays full of pretentious words and terms borrowed from Western books. They’re so absorbed in this kind of masturbation that they’re quite satisfied with just publishing manifestos, producing analyses, dreaming about a fine arts academy, a popular theatre, a museum of modern art, etc., etc …. It all starts with a barrage of propaganda but soon disappears without a trace, just like in the old Malay saying – ‘Very, very hot are a chicken’s droppings.’

  And so, Achmad had written, my friends and I, who have long appreciated you as a poet, are convinced that you, too, are fed up by now with the sterile activities of these bourgeois and compradores; we feel sure that you’re eager to plunge into the arena by contributing your great creative power to struggle for our nation’s cultural development. We therefore very much hope, brother, that you’ll be willing to come to a meeting at my office to discuss the subject.

  Yasrin was rather flattered by Achmad’s letter.

  Actually, he had been feeling dissatisfied with himself for quite some time. This dissatisfaction had been quite vague and general, but after receiving the letter three days ago, the reasons for his discontent had become clear to him. It was quite evident now that Pranoto and his group had been just exploiting his name as a front to show their concern for the people, because his poems always dealt with the life and sufferings of the masses. He remembered one of his poems being praised by Pranoto in the journal Culture. Pranoto had written that Yasrin was Indonesia’s most important poet since Chairil Anwar. Yasrin ranked perhaps even higher than Chairil Anwar, Pranoto had written, since evidence that some of Anwar’s poems had been plagiarised had detracted from his reputation as an original poet.

  So far, all he’d got from his friends was praise. Meanwhile, several members of their club had received invitations to visit the United States or some other Western country, like England or France, but his own turn had never come. He had once asked to be given a chance, but his request had not been given the proper attention. It was even conveyed to him indirectly that it was difficult for his colleagues to get him an invitation to the United States or England since he couldn’t speak the language. He had been very hurt to hear this. He had retorted by asking why the Chinese or the Russians, for instance, invited Indonesian artists, even though these artists didn’t know a word of Russian or Chinese. But to this question no satisfactory reply had been given. All he’d received was just an intimation – did he want to be a propaganda tool for the communists?

  Since receiving Achmad’s letter, Yasrin had become convinced that his proper place was not with Pranoto’s group. I’ve been lost all this time, Yasrin thought to himself. Why didn’t I see how completely bourgeois someone like Suryono is? He goes on talking about the misery of the masses and the disintegration of the state, but money’s really all he’s interested in. Look how fast he’s made his fortune! And for such a young man to have a car of his own and live it up the way he does! When you remember the stories of friends that Suryono’s wealth comes from his father’s connections with the party, it’s perfectly obvious that Pranoto’s gro
up is just indulging in words, without any honest and sincere desire to serve the masses, or the proletariat – the workers and the peasants.

  And now that he remembered how many times in the past he had written in defence of democracy, criticising the communists and their totalitarian system, he felt ashamed of himself. I’ve certainly been blind all this time, he thought.

  He also reminded himself that though Pranoto, the unofficial leader of their study club, was good enough at ‘analysis’, he’d never had any contact with the people, had never really known the people. Wah, he just uses the autolette or the tram – never, as far as I know, goes on foot! He remembered how he had once invited Pranoto to eat with him, squatting at the roadside, and how Pranoto had refused saying,

  ‘Aduh, Yasrin, how can you eat there? Isn’t it awfully dirty? Just look how they rinse the spoons and plates in a jar where the water’s never changed.’

  Yasrin felt resentful as he remembered these words of Pranoto, although at the time he had answered merely by laughing. But now, since receiving Achmad’s letter, he suddenly felt that he had been badly humiliated by Pranoto. I eat every day squatting by the roadside like this, Yasrin said to himself, and Pranoto says it’s dirty. By Allah!

  And by the time Yasrin had reached Achmad’s office he was almost ninety-nine per cent determined to join Achmad and stop working for the journal he and Pranoto were publishing together. He had even formulated his reasons for leaving Pranoto – it was all so clear in his mind: he had decided to abandon their kind of cultural activity in order to devote himself to the people’s culture, among the people.

  In Achmad’s office three other persons were already waiting. Achmad stood up quickly, overjoyed to see Yasrin arrive.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you. We were afraid you’d not be able to come at all. Let me introduce you first – this is Sjafei, people’s poet; Murtoho, people’s painter; and Hambali, people’s short-story writer.’