Twilight in Kuta

by David Nesbit

  I am twenty-four years old and I am from a small village called Ciang in the centre of Java. Java is the largest island of over one thousand islands in the archipelago of Indonesia. Ciang is about four hundred kilometres from where I live now, which is in the heart of Jakarta.

  I was born in a field twenty-four years ago. This was because my mother was a farm worker, and when she was pregnant with me she kept working right up to the day I came into the world. She couldn’t afford to take many days off work and so when she went into labour there was no time to get to a hospital or even back to the farmhouse. Everyone she was working with at the time helped with the delivery, and after I was born then my mother and I were carried across the fields to the farmhouse where my mother rested for the remainder of that day and went back to work the next.

  I was the sixth child to be born alive and survive in our family (there were two siblings before me who died just after they were born) and another two babies were born to my mom in later years. This meant that our family was of average size for the time and place, and was full of laughter and love, if not money and food.

  My parents are good hard-working people and have always looked after their children well and with love, but have never been able to provide as much for us as they would have liked. However, they did insist that all eight of us got at least some education, and both I and my two younger brothers were educated all the way up to junior high school.

  My parents are old now and don’t work very much. My mother just washes people’s clothes or runs errands for them back in Ciang, while my father has a motorcycle and sometimes ferries people around for small sums of money. They live alone now with just a young maid as all us children have left home.

  The four boys in our family have all left the village, as have two of my sisters, while the other two girls are still in the village but are long-married with their own families now.

  This is a very brief introduction to me and my family, and so now I will give you more details before I get to the main part of my story.

  When I was a small boy, I sometimes helped my mother in the fields or I played with my older brother, Heri, but usually I preferred to be alone. I was known as a ‘muser’ within my gang of friends and family, as I often gave the appearance of musing, or daydreaming, when I should have been doing something else.

  I guess I was a bit of a daydreamer in those days, but my musing wasn’t aimless or useless even then. I was not idly wasting time, but in reality I was always thinking ahead, planning my strategy, getting my ships lined up, call it what you will. That’s me to this day: an organiser and a thinker. That’s why I am going to make a success of myself, you see.

  As a kid I wanted to learn, to improve, and to get on. I loved reading and writing as a child, and even before I went to school I would look at my older brother and sisters’ books and try so hard to work out (or imagine) the meanings of the words in them and copy them over and over again.

  In my early pre-school days I was forever plaguing my parents to teach me to read and write properly, and it was not until many years later that I finally realised why they would always smile and encourage me but never actually teach me anything academic. When the penny finally dropped it just increased my love and pride for them. What lovely people they really are.

  I was closest to Heri, my older brother, during my childhood. He is two years older than me and he seemed to be everything I wanted to be. He could run faster than any of us other boys in the village, climb trees better, swim further and quicker, had more friends and was the one that the whole gang of us wanted to emulate.

  For me he also had one other quality: kindness. He was such a nice guy to be around because he was always kind and friendly to everyone, and I don’t just say that because he was my brother. He never picked on anyone for being smaller or weaker or anything, the way that most boys do, and he never excluded anyone from playing with us but instead he made sure that everyone played properly together. He wouldn’t tolerate any bullying or being mean, and he wasn’t averse to using his fists if he thought that was the best solution.

  I guess I regarded him as my hero even then.

  I was close to my other two brothers, Yudi and Steffan, but as they were younger than me, I was more interested in being with Heri as much as I could. Steffan and Yudi didn’t seem to mind as they were very close to each other, and my four sisters all seemed happy enough to hang out together and not bother us boys too much. Yes, we were a happy enough sort of family but not really much different to most others in our village.

  In those days, and perhaps even now to some extent, villagers didn’t have much expectation in life. It was just sort of assumed that everyone would have a basic sort of education and then go forth into adulthood in much the same way; males would become farmers or very small business owners within the village, while girls would get married, usually by the age of sixteen at the latest, and perhaps work in the fields or, if the family could afford it, be housewives.

  Every year a few of the men, and very occasionally some of the women, would leave the village and go to live in the cities. These would normally be either the few individuals who had a little more ambition for themselves, or those unfortunate few who were forced to leave through circumstance or even scandal.

  For example, if someone were found to have committed a crime such as theft or assault then they would normally be ‘asked’ to leave the village as a punishment. Depending on the severity of their crime, they would then be banished for a certain number of years and not allowed to return within that time frame. This, naturally enough, applied more to the male population than the female one, as more boys than girls tended to commit these crimes.

  However, girls could also find themselves under pressure to leave the village in certain circumstances, such as pregnancy outside of wedlock or even, rather unfairly I always thought, in the event of abandonment by their husbands.

  A guy may want a girl and so be more than happy to marry her while she was still young and nubile in her mid-teens, but a few years of almost continual pregnancy, childbirth and manual labour soon take their toll, and a village girl in her mid-twenties can often take on the appearance of someone ten or fifteen years older. It is at this point that many men start to look elsewhere. The poor girls involved then usually head off to the cities to seek work, usually as domestic servants.

  Growing up in the village I was always happy, but I did wonder just what could be achieved outside its confines. Heri was the same; he was always talking about moving to the city and trying to become rich. He had many dreams and would keep me entertained for hours on end with stories of how he was going to one day move to a big city such as Surabaya or Jakarta and open a motorcycle repair shop. It would, according to him, become the biggest and most famous and popular motorcycle repair shop in the city, and when the time was right he was going to send for me and I would be his partner.

  I loved listening to him, and we would stay up all night sometimes going over our plans and hopes. I look back now on those days and sometimes think that they were the happiest, most innocent days of my life, but I also realise that they were much more than that. Those were the days in which my character and personality were, if not formed, then certainly refined and strengthened and my ambitions and goals reinforced. I truly think those all-night chats with my older brother were the making of me.

  Anyway, as soon as he was old enough he left for the bright lights of the city and I was heartbroken. I missed him so much and it felt like my life was empty and useless without him by my side. Who was going to take care of me now, to look after me, to organise and arrange our games, to be my hero? I spent much of the next few months not knowing what to do with myself and my only respite was waiting for one of his letters home.

  When one arrived, addressed as always to my parents, my mum or dad would always call me and hand over the letter to me. They always asked me to read it out and I was delighted to do so. They would smile as I excitedly told them all He
ri’s news and they would then tell me they were going to write back to him as soon as possible. However, a day or so later my mum would usually tell me she and my dad were ‘far too busy at present’ to compose the letter and they wouldn’t mind if I wrote to Heri instead. This, of course, was something I loved to do. Again, it was not until years later I realised the significance of this ritual.

  My brother seemed to be doing well in his new life in Jakarta. He told us in his letters that he had got a job working in a motorbike repair shop and he was learning about the business and saving as much money as he could in readiness for opening up himself, and in his letters he always had some advice for me, too.

  ‘Work hard at school, bung,’ he would say. ‘I need you to come here and help me when I set up my business.’

  I worked hard. I wanted nothing more than to join him and make him as proud of me as I was of him, but when I was fourteen I had no choice but to leave school. My mum and dad couldn’t afford to send me to senior high school and they needed me to go to work and help them to help our family.

  I was a bit disappointed to leave school, but I had always known this was going to happen and I considered myself lucky to have had nine years education. People often say your schooldays are the happiest of your life; well, I don’t know about that but I know I did enjoy mine. Now, however, I was ready for the next stage in my life.

  No matter how much I pleaded with my mum and dad, I couldn’t convince them I was old enough or ready enough to be permitted to join Heri in the city, and so I took up as a trainee mechanic in a little shop in the village. I should use inverted commas here while describing my job title, because I received very little in either training or mechanics in general. In reality I was employed as a pembantu or ‘helper’. It was my job to keep the shop clean, wash the vehicles and generally run errands.

  It wasn’t the greatest job in the world, but I reasonably enjoyed it. I saw it for what it was; the first step on a very tall ladder. I worked hard again, or as hard as I was able to in such a limited position and environment, and did as well for myself as I could for a couple of years, but then something happened and I ended up leaving the village.

  It wasn’t my fault and it was most unfair and upsetting at the time, but all has been put right since then and there has been no lasting damage. I can go back to my village now as everybody now knows the truth of what happened but at the time things looked pretty bad for me.

  I suppose I should tell you what happened. Well, one day I was working in the garage and the boss, Mr. Simon, decided to go home early. He told me to lock up the garage when I had finished and take the keys home then come in early in the morning so I could open the shop up. I didn’t mind this, and so carried on working for a while before tidying everything up and heading off home as instructed.

  Well … the next day when I got to work there was already a large crowd gathered around the place, and as I got closer I could see Mr. Simon. He was very red in the face and was shouting a lot and seemed on the verge of some sort of breakdown. He saw me approaching and flew at me with his fists, screaming, ‘Kau babi! You pig,’ over and over. I was amazed and speechless. Why was Mr. Simon, who had always been decent to me, acting like this all of a sudden? What ever had I done wrong?

  I tried to fathom out what was going on and why he was so angry, but he was beside himself with rage and I could get no sense from him for what seemed like ages. People were holding him back to stop him attacking me, while others were trying to usher me from the scene. I just couldn’t make any sense of it and had no idea of how to deal with the situation.

  It was then my father and our village chief appeared and some sort of order started to be restored. Mr. Simon was persuaded by the village chief to calm down and to explain what had happened. He told my father and the chief that his business had been broken into in the night and all the money in the safe had been stolen, along with quite a lot of valuable machine parts and, as I had been given the keys and the responsibility of locking the premises up, I was clearly the culprit.

  I was speechless, but luckily my dad wasn’t. He is a quiet man and well respected in the village and community and so when he talks people, no matter who they are or what their position or standing is, listen. He quite coolly and calmly told the village chief and Mr. Simon that there was no way I was a thief or in any way responsible for the break-in. He pointed out that if I had been inclined to steal anything I would have had many chances to do on many earlier occasions and as I had been given the keys to lock up there would have been no need for me to come back and break in.

  I don’t know what was going through my mind at this point, as I seemed to have lost not only the ability to speak but that to think as well. I just stood by mutely as the three of them discussed the matter and tried to reach some sort of consensus. Finally it seemed that Mr. Simon reluctantly accepted what my dad was saying after he had given him and the village chief permission to come and search our house and grounds for any sign of the missing money or equipment.

  My dad wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me back to our house. On the way we didn’t exchange a word, and when we arrived home he saw that I was about to speak but he raised his hand to stop me and said, ‘I know, son, I know.’ He told me he knew I was blameless and that he was proud of me and loved me very much, but that now it was time for me to go and join my brother in the big city. He told me he would find out exactly what happened to Mr. Simon’s business and then would get word to me when it was the right time to come back, but that I shouldn’t worry about it and he would ensure that there was no stain on my character or lingering suspicion.

  I don’t think I had ever heard my father speak for so long or so passionately. I looked into this kind, gentle, lovely old man’s face and I knew I was blessed to have such a person for a father, and I resolved there and then I was really going to make him proud of me.

  The next day I started my three-day journey to Jakarta.

  As soon as I arrived in the city, I went and stayed with Heri. He was staying in a small boarding house, or kost as we call them, in the middle of the city in a place called Tebet. It was a very small room in a house and there was barely room for one person inside, but he was still delighted to see me and he made it clear he expected me to stay with him.

  To be honest, I’d thought he was living in better accommodation than this, and if I had known the conditions of his place I wouldn’t have dreamt of imposing on him. However, I didn’t know beforehand and besides, I really didn’t have any other choice, and so I reluctantly agreed.

  I told Heri what had happened to me back on our village and how our father had spoken to me and told me to make something of myself in the city ‘the way that brother Heri is already doing’. At this Heri offered a wry grin and muttered something about not knowing if that last part was exactly true.

  He did, however, share my frustration and feeling of unfairness at what had transpired, but he told me that for now I just had to put it behind me the best I could and try to get on with things. He said he would help me to find a job and then, when I was ready, a place of my own to stay, and that one day he and I would both return to our village and make sure things got ‘straightened out’ with Mr. Simon.

  I had so many questions I wanted to ask Heri. I wanted to know, for instance, how his plans for owning his motorcycle repair business were progressing, if he was rich yet, when he was coming back to build the big family house in the village he had promised our parents, and about a million other things. Heri merely smiled at my excitement and told me things were proving a bit more difficult to get started than he had anticipated but that he was ‘working on it all’ and that everything would be fine. He told me he still planned to open a motorcycle business when he had the opportunity, but for now he was working as a labourer. I was a little confused when he said this, because in his letters home he had told the family he was at least working in a motorcycle shop, even if it wasn’t his own business. Nevertheless, I decided
not to press Heri on the matter, and took myself off for my first night’s sleep in Jakarta.

  The next day he took me with him to a building site he was currently working on and helped get me a job there. Jakarta is always developing and new buildings are always going up while others are being pulled down. Sometimes a brand new hotel or office building can be constructed in just a matter of weeks, only to be bought and sold and demolished again eighteen months or so later. It really can be perplexing at times, the thinking of people here.

  Anyway, as I said, Heri managed to get me employed at this site on a casual daily basis. It was my job to do little more than fetch and carry things for the other workers there, Heri included, and I also got to learn how to do simple things such as chop bricks into the right size and mix cement. It wasn’t exactly an intellectual challenge for me, but I enjoyed the work while it lasted. Most of the men there were Heri’s age or older but they were very friendly and funny to me.

  In the evenings some of them liked to go to the night markets in Godok and pass the time there playing cards or just drinking beer and chatting. I didn’t really want to join them in the beginning because I had read lots about the bad influences of gambling and drinking, but then Heri assured me it wasn’t like that.

  He told me that I wouldn’t be expected to drink beer if I didn’t want to, many of the guys didn’t, and also that they played cards just for something to do, with matchsticks and not money the stakes.

  So finally I decided I would come along one evening and when I finally did, it ultimately led to my first real break in the city.

  I went with Heri and a few of his friends. There was a man called Toni, one named Didi, Eko, and an older fellow by the name of Untoro and they all made me welcome enough.

  Eko and I were the only ones not drinking and this surprised me a bit because I didn’t expect to see Heri drinking, but there he was supping away from a big bottle of Bintang beer he was sharing with the other guys. He saw me looking at him in puzzlement and sort of gave me a sheepish type of grin and a wink that seemed to say, ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’ I remember thinking at the time with fondness and amusement, ‘Ah Heri, Heri … what are you doing?’