The Birdwoman's Palate

by Laksmi Pamuntjak

  What’s been going on in Jakarta while we’ve been away? Isn’t DOCIR counting on the results of our team’s investigation? What caused Irma to hastily switch off her phone when I tried to call after she didn’t reply to my response to her last text? Why didn’t she want to be honest with me about us being pulled off the investigation? Was there a direct connection between this decision and the report I sent about Zachri Musa?

  When I raise these questions, as if to myself, it’s Farish who responds. “Maybe there really is a connection.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Stay calm,” he says. “Try to remember the gist of your report.”

  My mind is in chaos, but I know exactly what it was: the patient died because none of the medical personnel he encountered over the course of his life had enough knowledge about different illnesses, much less how to treat them. Not only that—they didn’t have enough sense or responsibility to arrange any further investigations into the patient’s condition. They didn’t consult fellow doctors or specialists. And they definitely didn’t read up on research or recent findings in the world of medicine. So when the patient exhibited symptoms similar to those of a virus receiving so much attention, they simplified the situation and brought their diagnosis in line.

  My crime was that I didn’t say what the people who sent me into the field needed me to say. I didn’t say, “Yes, it may be possible that the case in Palembang indicates an outbreak, and we should be on our guard.” And I didn’t say it for any of the previous cases either.

  There’s a tightness in my chest. I recall a friend who married young—whose first child was born with a cleft palate. The baby cried continuously, loudly, as if she had colic. But her pediatrician wasn’t in the least concerned. “Just keep breastfeeding as normal. This really isn’t that unusual.” That’s what the pediatrician told my friend.

  A week passed, and though my friend had been diligent in breastfeeding, her child suddenly began losing weight, to the point that they had to return to the hospital and put her in an incubator.

  Everyone in my friend’s life was powerless to help. Her husband was working out of town at the time, and her mother and mother-in-law had both come down with a bad flu and were worried about infecting their already frail granddaughter. Everyone blamed my friend. Her family believed she wasn’t nursing the child properly. So did the pediatrician. They thought she was too young to be a mother, that she didn’t know the meaning of responsibility.

  One day, she called me to ask which doctor she should see. Because she’d had a cesarean, she still needed a few more days to completely recover. She was so weak, she couldn’t do research and was made helpless by all the stress. “My child weighs only four pounds,” she said, sobbing. “The doctors say she probably won’t make it. Please, Run. Help me. Maybe you can ask around at other hospitals. Ask if they have a unit dedicated to treating cleft lips and palates.”

  Back then the Internet didn’t dominate life. People weren’t used to the luxury, or necessity, of looking up information on Google before even making an appointment to see a doctor. It was an era when the various specialty units in a hospital weren’t interconnected, and a pediatrician had no way to communicate directly with an orthodontist or ENT if a patient had a cleft palate—an era when even a pediatrician didn’t understand that the field of oral surgery had already developed new tools and technology easily able to overcome the difficulty of feeding an infant with a hole in the roof of her mouth. There was no need to unwittingly kill a child.

  As it turned out, the right tool did exist—a German-made bottle with a nipple designed especially for such babies. The bottle was available at a clinic in Jakarta specializing in cleft lips and palates, at a private hospital, in a unit founded in conjunction with a Japanese university.

  I’d heard about the clinic when I ran into my gynecologist at a seminar on public health services. When I told her about my friend’s troubling situation, my gynecologist immediately got in touch with her colleague, an orthodontist, who had just been involved in the clinic’s establishment.

  “Why hasn’t news of this clinic been disseminated among pediatricians?” I asked.

  “I wish,” said my gynecologist. “But that’s the way it is in this country. There’s so much to be depressed about.”

  The moment my friend arrived at the clinic with her baby, they immediately began feeding the infant from the special yellow-colored bottle. The tiny creature kept sucking nonstop, as if she had never drunk anything in her entire life. And, as it happened, for the first ten days of her existence, the baby hadn’t drunk a single drop from her mother’s breasts, which had deflated quickly. Like busted tires. For ten days she had been suckling on air.

  Every time I think of my brave friend and her baby, I’m plunged into a deep sorrow. I think of how fragile human life is when people still have to rely so much on good fortune and not on a system that they can trust. Where all that brings goodness and improvement—science, doctors, hospitals, teachers, schools—isn’t always accessible. Imagine my joy then, that I, a mere layperson, was able to save someone in that tangled mass of widespread ignorance and obliviousness.

  But this time there is nothing laypersonish, much less coincidental, about either my position or my situation.

  I’m someone who possesses competency in my field, someone who should have an interest in bringing about improvement. I’m a part of the system, not one of the many people whose brains aren’t used to thinking in clinical terms. I don’t cite stress and that folk nonsense about “wind in the body” as the root of all maladies. I’m a part of a system far worse than the one that nearly killed an innocent baby thirteen years ago. It’s far worse—not because it can’t be accessed, but because it’s so grand and impressive in appearance, and in reality, so false.

  19

  SHRINES, KITSCH, AND TREACHERY

  The shrine was truly miraculous. I’ve experienced things that look both authentic and fake before, kitsch in all its forms: houses in Pondok Indah with statues of Roman soldiers and Apache chiefs flanking each other on their front lawns; apartment buildings near the Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel with absurd ancient Greek columns; Venetian canals, replete with a gondola fleet, in the middle of a shopping mall in Kelapa Gading; gaudy building facades trying to outshine each other, shouting, “Look at me! I’m even more gorgeous than the real thing!” But never in my life have I encountered anything like the Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni.

  How was it again that Farish and I ended up there? I have a dim recollection of the driver insisting we make a pilgrimage to the place he called the eighth wonder of the world. And suddenly, here I am, in the backyard of a Hindu-Tamil-style Catholic shrine visibly eager to impress, alone with Farish, a mere stone’s throw away from a statue of Jesus.

  This Jesus looks very much like the Jesus in the Catholic comic book series that made the rounds back when I was in elementary school. Caucasian, with wavy golden hair, Jesus sits peacefully in a park surrounded by five children who represent different ethnicities and races. There’s a black child, an Asian child, a Caucasian child, an Indian child, and, I think, a Hispanic child. I can’t be sure because the child who I’m guessing is Hispanic has its arms around Jesus’s neck and its back facing us. And I say “it” because for the life of me, I can’t tell whether the child is a boy or a girl.

  Not too far away there’s a water faucet and a blue-painted wooden cross. Above the faucet is a handwritten notice:

  ATTENTION

  TO PREVENT WASTAGE OF HOLY WATER,

  DO NOT WASH YOUR FACE/HANDS/FEET

  DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH THE FAUCET.

  FILL YOUR BOTTLE AND USE THE WATER FROM THERE.

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION AND COOPERATION.

  Nobody is paying the slightest notice. Visitors are still washing their faces, hands, and feet directly underneath the tap rather than using the empty juice bottles they’ve brought—unique juices Medan is famous for, squeezed from the kietna and martabe, t
he terong Belanda and kesturi. They fill these bottles—and not just one or two of them, but several—only after they’re done washing . . . you guessed it. Directly underneath the tap.

  The story goes that this enormous shrine, reminiscent in shape of a cheerful-looking Indian temple, was built in 2001 under the initiative of an Indonesian pastor. He is said to have been inspired by a vision of the Virgin Mary that occurred during the sixteenth century in a faraway coastal village in Southern India. The signs throughout the religious complex, in turn situated within a housing complex, attempt to convince us that this is a perfect replica of the original grotto.

  I’m skeptical. How could a grotto in a poor village on the Bay of Bengal be transformed into a three-billion-and-seven-tiered structure with two stupas on the fourth floor, one stupa atop a tower, and two winding paths on either side of it like the ones surrounding the rollercoaster at Fantasy World?

  What have I actually been reporting to DOCIR? I think about the cases so far. Only two of the five reported incidents have been genuine avian flu. Not much to suggest an epidemic at all.

  “Can’t they wait until we finish surveying all the sites?”

  To my surprise, Farish smiles. He doesn’t seem upset at all. In his gaze there’s even something bordering on relief.

  “Maybe it’s better this way,” he says. “What’s the point of us working so hard if they have such a clear political agenda?”

  They. He doesn’t think this is my fault at all.

  “What political agenda?” I ask.

  “Come on,” he says. “We both know what’s really going on, don’t we? SoWeFit needs empirical evidence that there’s an avian flu outbreak going on. Think about it. B. S. Incorporated and the higher-ups at Proto Medis could blow the whistle anytime on which Ministry officials they bribed, especially given the fact that the media is calling attention to the most serious offense in the whole affair—the Ministry’s conspicuous absence when it came to submitting a budget to the House of Representatives.

  “The consequences are no laughing matter. It’s a violation of the law. Furthermore, Government Regulation 21/2004, regarding the Preparation of Work Plans and Budgets by Government Ministries and Agencies, states that all work plans must be drawn up even before the budget is okayed. And that’s why they have to keep going with the human vaccine factory. SoWeFit will have, must have, empirical evidence that the fate of mankind rests in the hands of birdkind in order to justify their position to the House of Representatives later. As long as we’re not providing that kind of evidence, DOCIR has no use for us.”

  “But who knows what we’ll find in Aceh? Or Pontianak?”

  “No way, my dear,” says Farish. “No matter what we find, our analysis of the situation is definitely tending toward the negative already—that is, the danger of an outbreak is nowhere near any cause for alarm.”

  In front of us a pair of teenagers are making out behind the statue of Jesus. Then they take turns washing their faces below the faucet dispensing holy water. The holy water is looking increasingly murky.

  “Anyway,” Farish continues, “who says the cases we’ve been sent to investigate haven’t been made up? This case in Medan, for example. It’s obviously a bogus case. I bet DOCIR is asking us to stop now because they don’t want to take any more risks. They’ve probably just realized that you’re a true idealist, that you can’t be paid off. Or, if you’re not idealistic, that you’re naïve.”

  When Farish says “DOCIR,” he clearly means “Irma.” But, as I keep saying, I like Irma. I feel like I know her outside the constraints imposed on her by her job. My relationship with her is more than just professional. And for this reason, Irma’s treachery, so subtle, so spectacular, leaves me speechless.

  Could she really have misread me so? Could she really have sent me here, hoping I would understand the results she wanted, even if she was too elegant to spell them out for me? Who are my friends? Who are my allies? I don’t know anymore. Nor do I know why, all of a sudden, without any warning, I’ve been lumped into the same category as a guy I used to find so annoying.

  “How about you?” I ask in a slightly defensive tone. “We’re the same, aren’t we? Equally idealistic? Naïve, even? After all, we’ve been given the same assignment.”

  “The difference between you and me,” says Farish, “is that I know about all the shady things that have been going on. I’ve known for a long time. But I don’t care.” He follows this up with a laugh. “I’m kidding,” he says. “I do care.”

  It is a strange, lucid moment. Maybe now we can be friends.

  He’s being sweet, but I feel genuinely bitter about all this. And scared. The thought of us having to return to Jakarta like soldiers defeated in battle is giving me stomach cramps. No, wait. This is worse. There is something heroic and poetic about war—and a lot of it has to do with how victory and defeat are determined by fate. But this—this is about something else entirely. This is about letting those in the wrong freely determine who will suffer defeat.

  “Hey,” says Farish, his tone more serious. “Sorry. I shouldn’t make light of this. To be honest, I’ve been wanting to remove myself from DOCIR for a long while now. I’ve talked to Darius about it several times—asked him to cut me loose from all DOCIR-related projects and put me back in wildlife conservation. But it’s like he just doesn’t get it. Apart from leaving OneWorld, what choice do I have?”

  “What are Darius’s reasons?” I ask. Darius Sinaga is the director at OneWorld who handles wildlife conservation and forestry. My interactions with him are few and far between.

  Farish grins. He has nice teeth. A bit big, but nice. It’s the first time I’ve really noticed.

  “He keeps saying he needs people he can trust—there are too many politics involved when it comes to avian flu matters.”

  This trust, I’m convinced, is more out of friendship than anything else. Farish and Darius have been pals for ages; they’ve been in the NGO world together since they graduated from college. Where there’s Darius, there’s Farish. So whatever Farish decides to do after this, his position at OneWorld is safe. If he insists on having nothing to do with DOCIR, it’s fine; he’ll still have his job at OneWorld.

  Me, on the other hand? Me, the “outbreak expert” who relies on outbreaks to stay employed?

  Is this what Irma meant when she spoke about the Farishes of the world? The people in the business world—in the “professional” world—who’ll always stick around because they’re part of a firmly established network of friends? In the meantime, the Arunas of the world drift around like loose, directionless kites, having never known the meaning of home—unless the term applies to a house of free spirits.

  “Remember, kid,” my father said a few weeks before he died. “You get as much as you give.”

  “But?” I ask. Farish’s comment still hangs in the air.

  “But?” he repeats. “There is no ‘but.’ I really don’t like being involved in this project. DOCIR clearly has an interest in ensuring the continuation of the vaccine project, and that goes against my conscience. Them stopping this investigation is more a blessing than anything else. Like God’s giving me a way out.”

  Now he’s bringing God into it—probably because we’re in front of a shrine dedicated to the miraculous.

  In the background, I hear Nadezhda yakking. It’s getting closer. Is she chattering away or pontificating? (With her it’s difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends.) Bono doesn’t seem to mind—as usual he’s indulging her with a similar degree of enthusiasm.

  “But this is different from kitsch. Kitsch is about showing the reproduction is more authentic, more awe-inspiring, more worthy of admiration than the original. In so assuming, it exaggerates the original until we find ourselves convinced of the greatness of the past. But this shrine is different. This is pure tastelessness, pure common ignorance.”

  “I see things a little differently,” I say suddenly. For the first time since that liquid
night, I gaze deep into Farish’s eyes. “I don’t object to a factory that will produce human vaccines.”

  Farish seems startled.

  I keep talking. “What I object to is the process. What I object to is collusion between private parties, whoever they are—Proto Medis, parliamentarians, or ministerial bureaucrats. But I don’t disagree with the science behind it. Or its urgency.”

  “You’ve said it yourself. There’s no urgency yet.”

  “Yes, but I am a scientist,” I say. “If you ask me, it’s always better to take preventive measures rather than reactive ones. If we really do have the infrastructure and technology, and the funds as well, then why shouldn’t we prepare well in advance? Think of it as an investment for the future.”

  Seems like it’s his turn to be dumbfounded. I move in for the kill.

  “You can’t tame a virus, Farish,” I say. “They’re small, they’re patient, and quietly, they multiply. Nobody keeps track of how old they are—but they never forget. One day they’ll come for us. They’ll attack. And we’re powerless. We won’t be able to offer any defense.”

  “We’re going back to Jakarta tomorrow?”

  “Oh man! So what are we supposed to do with this list?”

  The car drives around aimlessly. The city is like a montage: fish markets, the Sinar Aquarium, a row of Indian restaurants next to Sun Plaza, the famous restaurant Simpang Tiga (also known as “happiness”). There’s the textile district, where you can find fashionable Muslim-wear, traditional Sumatran garb, holy water, and dates from Mecca; stores selling machines and appliances; the automobile and electronics repair stores all along Jalan Pandu, followed by the Indian quarter, known as the Kampung Madras district. Soon we are cruising along streets lined with florists who specialize in funeral wreaths, the kind where the flowers are toothpicked into elaborate patterns on enormous boards. We turn into an area where the street signs for the narrow roads in downtown Medan all start with lorong or “alley” and remind me of the roads in Singapore’s Geylang district. We see pleasant tree-lined boulevards bearing the names of Javanese cities or national heroes, and colonial Dutch buildings softened but by no means enfeebled by cobwebs and dust.