Magic Garage

MAGIC GARAGE

MAGIC GARAGE JOHN DONNELLY

1

MAGIC GARAGE

MAGIC GARAGE

JOHN DONNELLY

PANDANUS BOOKS Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Cover: Pink Boat Amelia Mollett Gouache and ink

© John Donnelly 2002

This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Typeset in Dax Condensed 10.25pt on 13.5pt by Pandanus Books and printed on Glopague 110gsm by Pirie Printers, Canberra, phone 02 6280 5410.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Donnelly, John, 1963– . Magic garage. ISBN 1 74076 016 6. 1. Jakarta (Indonesia) — Social conditions — Fiction. 2. Indonesia — Politics and government — Fiction. I. Title. A823.3

Editorial enquiries please contact Pandanus Books on 02 6125 3269 Published by Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Phone 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420 Production: Ian Templeman, Duncan Beard and Emily Brissenden

For Rebecca

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility, But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger. Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage. Shakespeare, Henry V

With Indonesia in particular, we in Australia have a future to invent together. There will always be profound differences, cultural and religious — but these may lessen, as we absorb one another’s systems of thought and belief. CJ Koch, ‘Crossing the gap – Asia and the Australian imagination’ in his Crossing the Gap: A Novelist’s Essays (1988)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

MANY people assisted me through this book’s long gestation. I want to record my thanks: To Bob Lang, Bama Athreya, David Kerwick, Sue Schibeci, Brett Levine, Virginia Were, Joan Donnelly and Tom Kidman, for their suggestions and comments; To Agus Salim, Ami, BJ Gayatri, Anders Elgerd, Alex Murphy, Suzan Piper and Sawung Jabo, for sharing their Indonesias with me; To Helen Batty, an outstanding teacher whose passion for Indonesia proved infectious; To Sue Donnelly and Tom Donnelly for their support and interest; To Jack Donnelly, in memoriam; To Frank Rusconi, for teaching me about patience; and To publisher Ian Templeman, reader Bob Hefner, editor Julie Stokes and the staff at Pandanus Books, for seeing this work into print. In the course of researching and writing I drew on a number of sources, of which four warrant special mention: Harold Crouch’s The Army and Politics in Indonesia; Clifford Geertz’s The Religion of Java; Lea Jellinek’s The Wheel of Fortune; and Jeffrey McNeely and Paul Wachtel’s Soul of the Tiger. Finally, for her encouragement, criticism, patient support and for continuing to believe in me, I dedicate this work to Rebecca Harrison.

John Donnelly Canberra

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CONTENTS

The Blitar Magic Garage

1

Thursday

5

Friday

35

Saturday

65

Sunday

87

Monday

105

Tuesday

129

Wednesday

151

Glossary of Indonesian terms

161

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THE BLITAR MAGIC GARAGE

THE TOWN NO LONGER WELCOMED STRANGERS; East Java had been host to some of the worst blood-letting following the coup. On the broad dusty footpaths of Blitar, men talked and sipped sweet coffee long into the night, the humid air crackling with their clove cigarettes and recriminations. Even older residents like Turut were not above suspicion. Some thought his garage a cover for the underground communist cadres recently uncovered in Blitar; others argued he paid off the military. But his contacts went deeper — to the spirits whom neither military nor communists commanded, and which both denounced to their peril as superstitious nonsense. When stories began circulating about the strange newcomer lodging at the guesthouse, Turut — aware of what these savage mutterings had led to in recent times — hurried there to see him. In a corner of the yard under the shade of a laurel tree, he found the stranger hunched over the leaky gearbox of an old Morris truck. ‘Messy job,’ Turut said, looking at the oily puddle forming in the bare earth beneath the truck. No response. Turut scratched his head through the rubbed velvet of his peci skullcap: ‘I repaired that gearbox about a month ago myself. Pretty unreliable.’ ‘Machines are more reliable than people,’ the stranger grunted. ‘They break — you fix them, or use their parts to fix others.’ He packed his tools into a stained canvas roll and slammed the bonnet shut.

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Turut saw on the stranger’s bared upper arm a crude tattooed tiger, its fangs and claws bared: he seemed in need of repair himself. ‘How long were you in for?’ The stranger looked at Turut carefully, his eyes clouded with damaged trust. ‘Three years,’ he said softly. ‘You know, we believed the old myths that people could turn into tigers at night. I had this done in prison so I could escape the cage, if only in my thoughts.’ Turut rolled up his sleeve to reveal a faded amateur garuda, its wings raised: ‘Same idea, but an earlier set of jailers — Dutch,’ he explained. ‘So I could fly away with the revolution. My name’s Turut.’ ‘Munin,’ the stranger said. When Turut offered him work in his garage, Munin did not refuse. Munin was apprenticed to Pak Turut for five years, one of a dozen or so taught by the great master himself. The apprenticeship was no ordinary apprenticeship, for Turut was no ordinary panelbeater: he offered a spiritual dimension to the work in contrast to the material focus spread by the new government in Jakarta. ‘The spirits are everywhere, Munin, in the stones and trees and temples surrounding us,’ Turut repeated the centuries-old wisdom of Java. ‘You must learn to live and work with them, or ignore them to your peril. Fast, purify yourself, sensitise yourself to the spirit life of Java. Only then will you be ready to begin your work with me.’ Turut taught magic panelbeating in a number of stages. First, Munin learnt how to panelbeat with his eyes closed, working by sensing the heat and tension in the malleable metal. Then Turut demonstrated the powers of invocation to further focus energy, by bending a used bumper bar into a pretzel and handing it to Munin to straighten by whatever mechanical means he could. He could not. ‘Let the spirits do the work for you!’ Turut urged, agitatedly rubbing his peci like a magic lamp. ‘Feel the metal’s trauma, live it, harness the spirits’ energies to cure it!’ Through meditation, Munin learnt to cast aside his tools, working metal with his bare hands, variously palm-stroking and fist-pounding dented panels back into shape. There was no shortage of battered vehicles to practise his skills upon in the aftermath of the coup, as the people of Blitar and further afield heard of the cheap panelbeating on offer. One day, Munin’s meditation over a rear fender buckled with news of the death of former President Soekarno, still under house arrest. Blitar united in mourning its most illustrious son, the first President of the Republic and champion of the little people; Munin, his hopes for justice gone with his champion, thought of accepting the offer of a rival garageman and disappearing once again. 2

THE BLITAR MAGIC GARAGE

When he found out, Turut turned on him like a jealous lover: ‘Fate brought you to me. I have so much to offer you and we’ve barely started. Go then, see if I care!’ Munin stayed, as Turut knew he would. The next stage of magic panelbeating involved invoking one of the demit place spirits of Java to do the repairwork for you. Munin’s familiar was known as Roro Pantar, the spirit of a Panataran priest, who lived in a banyan tree on the road to the ruins of the ancient temple a few kilometres north of town. Hitching rides in vehicles he had repaired, Munin made offerings to Roro Pantar of frangipani flowers plucked from the local cemetery, duck eggs and the occasional sate stick when he could afford it. Time passed; the Jakarta government chose to be generous to the memory of the founding president and built a mausoleum to Soekarno. Its grounds enclosed the banyan tree inhabited by Roro Pantar. Turut took it as a sign: the lessons became more demanding and dangerous, moving steadily deeper into magic as he taught Munin how to channel spirits, to voluntarily become possessed and focus the energies of the invading lelembut spirit outwards into repairs. After a particularly heavy session with a recalcitrant river spirit which left both of them drenched and exhausted, Turut doffed his peci to his student: ‘Go, the capital beckons, I’ve taught you everything I know.’ No longer the acolyte, Munin set off for Jakarta with a canvas roll of tools and his master’s blessing. Two weeks and a variety of buses later, he found himself in Setiabudi, a small kampung community at the junction of two rivers forming a duck pond. In an age of irony, the name Setiabudi — faithful spirit — appealed to Munin: it showed a faith in humanity which he was sorely lacking. He thought of naming his garage after Turut, or Soekarno, but instead painted on his sign the words ‘Blitar Magic Garage’ after the town where they had all crossed paths.

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THURSDAY

1.1 THE SOUNDS OF ROOSTERS CROWING suggested villages across the archipelago, but the televisions blaring tinny sitcoms and community service announcements signalled Setiabudi’s inhabitants were waking to a new day in their adopted city. Clove cigarettes burned and crackled as bicycle traders steered their two-wheeled shops piled high with plastic homewares and toys through the narrow laneways. The drains beneath the cracked concrete paths of the Kampung Improvement Program gurgled as families emptied their pots, and behind bamboo, wooden and brick facades alike, mothers fed and dressed and combed children for the morning shift at elementary school. Walking home from the Blok-M shopping centre, Joni sniffed the homely smell of peanut oil frying eggs blended with the camphor and menthol vapours of village headcold remedies, and wished he had enough money to fill his hunger. He had too many hungers to feed, that was his problem. Lost in his thoughts, Joni kicked a metal sheet covering a pothole. ‘Brengsek!’ he cursed, ducking behind the blue circle billboard advertising Setiabudi’s family planning record. The light outside the guardbox on Jl Setiabudi flipped on, and Murdani came to the doorway blinking beneath his peak cap from the army village support campaign of 1983: ‘Who’s there?’

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MAGIC GARAGE

Joni rubbed his foot through his worn sneaker; it felt all right but he didn’t know how long he could stand the alcohol-sweet stench of rotting fruit from the street rubbish pile: the garbagemen had failed to come again. A black and yellow cat poked its nose around the corner of the guardbox in support. Joni giggled: his father was well known for his cats, whose kittenpiss stunk out the guardbox to the point where nobody would volunteer for guard duty anymore for fear of the ammonia headaches. ‘Come out now,’ Murdani’s voice wavered. Joni emerged from behind the rubbish pile. ‘Where have you been?’ ‘Down at Blok-M, Dad.’ He offered his father a smoke. ‘Bad crowd at night, Joni. You should help out around here if you’re not going to school anymore,’ Murdani nodded at the rubbish. ‘I’ll pay you.’ Joni held his breath and looked into the guardbox where a hessian sack held three blind kittens with kinked tails. ‘Dad, is it true their tails are chopped off as kittens to make sate?’ His stomach rumbled at the thought of barbecued kebabs; he had not eaten since yesterday. Murdani sucked in the crackling smoke. ‘They say in Thailand cats have kinky tails to hold the queen’s rings when she has a bath.’ ‘Surely some would fall off toh?’ ‘I suppose you keep breeding the ones with the best kinks.’ The toktok of a spoon on a half coconut shell echoed up the street: ‘That’s the soupman. Want some food before sun-up?’ Murdani pulled a couple of chipped floral bowls from a cabinet in his guardbox. The soupman steered his pushcart towards them. ‘Bakso spesial’ was painted in red and yellow on its windowed sides. He came to a halt before them, raising the handles so that the pushcart rested like a tripod on its bicycle wheels and toe-stand. Setting to work in his mobile kitchen, he drew a few strands of noodles from a shelf above the workbench, teasing them out into the bowls; from other shelves he scissored green kangkung, stalks and leaves, and tossed in a few bakso meatballs. Lemongrass steam wafted from his benchtop cooking pot as he spooned hot broth into the bowls. ‘Chilli?’ Joni nodded. From another compartment he grabbed one and chopped it into slivers. Scooping it up onto the blade of his cleaver, he scattered it over the broth.

6

THURSDAY

Joni gulped down the steaming soup. ‘You work your soup trolley every day?’ he asked after he had finished. ‘Most days,’ the soupman rinsed the bowl in a waterbucket hooked to the front of his cart. ‘Some days I leave it for hire at the markets.’ ‘You should try it, Joni,’ Murdani suggested, putting his unfinished bowl down for the kittens and their mother. ‘Haven’t you got anything tougher for me, like debt collecting?’ Joni scissorkicked the air. Shaking his head, the soupman lifted the pushcart off its wooden rest and pushed it along the road. ‘See you at Senen sometime, kid,’ he called to Joni. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Joni, eager for an excuse to get away from another of his father’s lectures, ran after the soupman. He wished he could be like one of the action movie heroes he had seen on the big screen at the Kartika Chandra cinema, karatechopping or shooting into oblivion all the people who hassle him. His father would be near the top of his list. He walked in silence beside the pushcart as it trundled along past the larger houses where people with office jobs lived behind security walls. He’d shoot them too. A headlight caught Joni in its beam and he flattened himself against the wall. He watched as a motorbike circled around and pulled up beside the pushcart. A moustached man in a leather jacket with a girl in a pink miniskirt on the back, just like some American film. Blinking, Joni watched as fingernails uncurled themselves from the rider’s crotch, and shapely brown legs ending in black stilettos unwrapped themselves from around his thighs. The girl took her helmet off and shook her glossy bobbed hair, checking her pursed red lips in the rearview mirror. ‘Thank you, honeyman,’ she said in a husky voice. ‘Hell, she’s a he!’ Joni whispered to the soupman. ‘No, he’s a she!’ the transvestite glared at Joni. ‘Oey — want some breakfast soup, miss?’ Smiling glossy red lips at Joni, she held out the cracked helmet for filling; when the young rider protested, she slowly smoothed her hand over his cheek: ‘Don’t be jealous, baby — mama’s got plenty for everyone.’ He grabbed his helmet and rode away without waiting for the fare. ‘Thanks, I’ve eaten already,’ she nodded in the direction of the departing rider. ‘Is your father still around?’ Joni nodded: ‘I was talking to him a few minutes ago.’

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MAGIC GARAGE

‘Did you tell him to get rid of the neighbourhood stray cats?’ she growled at him. ‘Careful, the boy’ll report you to his dad,’ the soupman warned. ‘What for? You and your apprentice are the ones disturbing the peace, with your squeaky wheels and night-time percussion. I’ve been selling my arse all night, boys — go sell your own meatballs.’ She took off her high-heels; barefoot, she was still taller than Joni. Joni resented being called an apprentice, almost as much as not being one. ‘Hey, I haven’t finished talking to you,’ he called after the transvestite. She swung around, clutching her stiletto as a weapon: ‘Get lost, kid. You couldn’t afford me.’ ‘You want some protection?’ Joni tried to sound tough like the movies. She laughed and he faltered: ‘No, I mean it. I have friends in Blok-M.’ ‘It’s not my strip.’ ‘Well, around here then?’ ‘You’re just a kid dong,’ she tousled his black hair. ‘Here’s 500 rupiah, young gangster. Now be a good boy and go home.’ Crushed, Joni watched as the transvestite slunk barefoot past his father’s guardbox. She put her shoes back on at the entrance to one of the many narrow laneways feeding off Jl Setiabudi and housing a population of several hundred transients. He’d learn to be a tough and get even someday. Back at the guardbox Murdani lay sprawled on an outside bench snoring. Several scraggly cats with stumpy tails and ripped ears sniffed his hands. Joni crept up to the box. He opened the cupboard inside but there was nothing in it he could sell later. He tried his father’s sleeping form, patting his pockets feeling for money, but the yellow cat hissed at him; Murdani stirred and opened his eyes. He saw Joni holding a Rp500 note. ‘Back again, son?’ he said surprised, sitting up. ‘Thanks,’ he took the money from Joni’s hand.

1.2 ‘Empaaaaat!’ Graham Boule yelled for his host’s benefit before teeing off. The ball jerked up and curled around the dogleg to the right of the fairway, before dipping sharply into the trees beneath which sat a few picturesque men in coolie hats. One of the coolies ran over to where the ball landed and picked it up, following the others who had disappeared over the edge of the embankment.

8

THURSDAY

‘That’s quite a penalty shot,’ Graham said, sweat mixed with blockout running stinging into his eyes. He had been waiting over a week for this invitation and was not going to let a lost golf ball blow his chances with Ricky Supangat and the bigwigs he could introduce him to. All those Mercs in the carpark suggested plenty of business to be done. ‘Please, no penalty,’ his host Ricky apologised. ‘Jagorawi is still a new course and we have some difficulties keeping the spectators away. They are always interested to see Australians playing here, as it was designed by Greg Norman. Play your shot again.’ So old Greggie is making a squillion bucks here as well, Graham thought to himself. Good luck to him. Georgia had left Graham few choices when she cleaned him out last year. The crippling settlement in her favour, combined with the ongoing maintenance costs for private schools and riding lessons for the girls, meant he needed decent money. His boss suggested he take a holiday in Jakarta, test the property market there. He would have preferred Hongkong or Singapore, one of Asia’s better-known ‘tiger’ economies, but once he arrived here he was amazed by the money flowing around the place. This was his third trip from Perth in less than a year — it was closer than Sydney after all. His company was at a crossroads, torn between sticking to hit-and-run hotel seminars or moving upstream with a more permanent presence like the big boys at JLW and Baillieus. ‘Please, you go first, Pak Ricky,’ Graham offered. What did the old boy want from him? He had met him on his last trip at one of his seminars, promoting his Swan River condos. In a brand-new block overlooking King’s Park, five had been sold off the plan on Tuesday night. Graham scanned Ricky’s face for clues as his host conferred with the caddy: his watery eyes seemed animated enough as he fired off words in a staccato stream Graham could not understand; but the bags below his eyes and the deep creases in his brown cheeks running from his nose to below his mouth suggested lassitude. Graham had thought only redheads like himself freckled in the sun, but Ricky’s weathered face bore the tell-tale age blotches of a lifetime spent largely indoors. His club shaft seemed ridiculously long for his small frame, his arthritic swing fairly gentle; but the ball travelled straight up the fairway to the far side of the dogleg, with a clear sight of the green.

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MAGIC GARAGE

Graham followed the safer option on his repeat tee shot. ‘You play here often?’ he asked as the motor cart whined towards their balls. ‘Not as often as I would like,’ Ricky said. ‘My doctor says I need the open spaces and the fresh air, but I have so many other commitments…’ he left the sentence dangling. ‘This is an interesting hole: a village to the left and a river to the right. It shows the fragile balance we have here in Java, between nature and society.’ Graham smiled and waved to the village children in their muddy clothes. Funny they were not at school. Chattering, they ran alongside the cart on the other side of the cyclone wire fencing. Graham thought the children called out his name. ‘No,’ Ricky said puzzled. ‘But I heard them say Boule,’ Graham insisted. ‘Pak Bule!’ the caddy chirruped, handing him his club. Ricky spat a few words at the caddy who stopped smiling: ‘They were saying ‘bule’.’ ‘Boolay?’ Graham pronounced his name the French way. ‘It means ‘white’,’ Ricky explained. ‘A term of respect for Caucasians.’ He clipped the ball onto the edge of the green. The approach shot was not easy: Graham needed to avoid overcompensating for the slope of the fairway, and slicing his ball into the ravine. But he slashed at it; the ball failed to curl away as planned, landing in a bunker on the left side. Graham sand-wedged his ball onto the green, trickling to a halt a metre from the hole. He putted and missed before tapping in for a bogey. Ricky putted, his ball coming to a halt almost two metres from the pin. ‘An easy shot for par between friends,’ he said smiling, picking up the ball without putting again. Graham breathed deeply. Slow down boy, he told himself, you’ve got another eight holes to go — Javanese love the unhurried formality of courtesies and reciprocal compliments as a preamble to business. He remembered the advice of Tony, the Jones Lang Wootton rep, over beers on his first trip: ‘Flatter them and you’ll be pissing in each other’s pockets in no time.’ ‘Jagorawi?’ Graham asked. ‘Who’s the course named after — a king or a god?’ He knew the Indonesians had plenty of both. ‘Actually,’ Ricky smiled, his watery hazel eyes twinkling, ‘it’s an abbreviation for the area. J-A- as in Jakarta, -G-O-R- as in Bogor and -A-W-I as in Ciawi. Jagorawi is the

10

THURSDAY

name of the tollway connecting the three towns. Indonesian is full of words like this. Perhaps he is also the god of freeways.’ They trudged on in the leaden humidity, watched by silent expressionless villagers wherever they went. The golf course felt like a zoo — only, Graham realised, the fence was designed to keep people out. He was the creature on display. ‘The Jagorawi villagers are not yet used to tourism and the benefits it brings,’ Ricky explained. Graham eased into his sales pitch and worked it up over the next few holes. He spoke of family homes for children close to colleges, and how in the vibrant Perth market Ricky could buy one, put his kiddies in it for a few years and sell at the end for a tidy profit, covering their course fees. Or, if Ricky was interested in something more substantial, he had several very nice riverside residences coming up shortly. He omitted the bits about these being built with funny money during the ‘80s and becoming available as a result of bankruptcy proceedings: if anything, Indonesia’s economy was even more fragile and his host could get the wrong impression. ‘Tell me, Pak Graham,’ Ricky began, as they walked towards the next tee, ‘with Indonesia’s growing economy there are an increasing number of bule businessmen such as you in Jakarta. Where do these people stay?’ ‘Well, as you know I am staying at the Hilton.’ ‘People cannot live in hotels. These people need suitable accommodation, close to where they work.’ The few people Graham had met in the expat community lived in compounds miles out of town: ‘Yes, there does appear to be a shortage,’ he agreed, wondering where this was leading. ‘My family has owned for many years a block of land in Setiabudi. Over the years the area has changed from the city fringe to the new diplomatic and business zone.’ ‘The golden triangle of Kuningan,’ Graham said, hitting off: a booming two-wood which hung low and straight, making the green in two bounces. The old man’s land parcel could be worth millions! ‘I see you have done your homework, Pak Graham. To further our nation’s development, and given the shortage of executive accommodation, I feel it would be appropriate to consider building luxury apartments on this land.’ ‘Like my Swan River condominiums?’ Ricky nodded: ‘A man in your position understands developing residential accommodation. Perhaps you also understand my predicament,’ he smiled mildly.

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MAGIC GARAGE

‘Ordinarily I would call for tenders, but this is a somewhat unusual project. Much of the focus of our national development is on low-cost housing befitting our current status as a low-income country. To publicise a luxury development such as this could easily be misinterpreted and risk upsetting the delicate balance in our society.’ ‘Tenders can be difficult in situations like this,’ Graham nodded sympathetically, his heart pounding. I understand you perfectly, you sly old bastard! I’d walk across glowing coals to bypass going to tender on something like this! It could be just the deal his company needed to set up a permanent Jakarta presence: they could go it alone then, without seeding commissions to local agents, and he’d be here as project manager sitting on a big fat package that would see Leonie and Gayle through university. Shit, if it were a hush-hush deal Ricky Supangat would probably organise the paperwork for the joint venture himself. ‘Tell me, what’s the land being used for at present?’ ‘Nothing much — a few small businesses. Quite inappropriate for its prime location.’ ‘Birdies both,’ Graham said, picking up their balls from the ninth green. ‘Well played,’ Ricky said, his watery eyes twinkling. At the clubhouse a waiter offered orange cordials. Graham, parched and sweating, ignored the hotel warnings about ice and gulped the cloying sweetness. He helped himself to several serviettes and mopped his face, feeling the sting of sunburn. Returning to the car the caddy-cum-driver stowed their bags in the boot and opened the back door of the black Volvo for him. Graham noticed long vertical scratches below the handle which he did not recall seeing before. Gratefully he clambered into the airconditioned cool smelling of leather and jasmine deodoriser. From inside he saw Ricky and the driver bending over examining the marks on the door. He heard Ricky’s sharp voice and the wailing driver’s protests; the wailing stopped suddenly with the sound of a slap. Ricky slipped in next to Graham. Graham watched as the driver gingerly slipped into the front seat. Graham leant over and tapped him on the shoulder, meaning to thank him for his caddying; but the driver screamed, spasming in his seat as if electrocuted. ‘Wahidin!’ Ricky screamed at the driver. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Wahidin muttered as he edged the car out of the carpark on to the freeway. ‘What was all that about?’ ‘Oh, some uneducated Javanese are very superstitious.’

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THURSDAY

‘Anything to do with the car door?’ Graham pressed. ‘Oh that,’ Ricky laughed. ‘Some minor body damage. He thinks it’s the work of an evil spirit. For you, Pak Graham?’ he opened the mini-bar and poured Graham a whiskey. ‘We can discuss some of the details on the way back to town,’ Ricky suggested. ‘Why don’t we visit the site right now?’ ‘Sadly, I have other appointments. Some other time? Here’s my card.’ Graham noticed the business card had both work and home addresses: ‘It encourages more informal meetings like today.’ Graham was determined not to let go now he had his toe in the door: ‘Pak Ricky, let’s toast the god of the freeways so that the traffic does not hold us up too long.’ ‘To Jagorawi,’ Ricky laughed. ‘And our deal,’ Graham clanked glasses as the Volvo overtook a battered police car in the breakdown lane.

1.3 The Volvo ground to a halt in the traffic jam as people spilled out of the Metro-Mini buses onto the roadway and boys selling magazines and food swarmed onto the road, weaving between cars under the indifferent gaze of a traffic cop in blowfly wraparound glasses. Wahidin turned from the glossy covers of smiling girls and found a packet of peanuts shoved under his nose. He shook his head: this was the third week of daylight fasting in the Ramadan month, with the Idul Fitri festival and the trip back to his home village only a week away, but as the month wore on fasting seemed to be getting harder for him. Flashing his lights, he edged the Volvo forward into a sidestreet carpark, weaving around the twin glass towers of Wisma Bumiputera and towards the West Setiabudi street exit where the parking collector, recognising the army star on the Volvo’s numberplate, waved him through the boomgate. Foodcarts parked opposite English colleges and the local government office offered ice-creams and fried beancurd patties. Wahidin felt faint with hunger, what with the car airconditioning running for hours this morning for the bule and the stress of more damage to the car: the second in as many weeks. What would the garageman Munin say this time: would he blame this new damage on his fasting like Pak Ricky had done last week? Pak Ricky had warned him to stop fasting if he could not drive the car safely anymore.

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It was not fair. All he ever wanted was to mind his own business and be a farmer, but he had been forced to get a job in the city after much of the family land was taken for a hotel resort and golf course. Each time he went home something had happened — a miscarriage or motorbike accident — which the superstitious villagers blamed on unhappy spirits uprooted from their trees and waterholes. Last time his father told him of crop failures: the river had been diverted to create natural spas for the rich city people and turned the remaining fields dry. ‘And the washing place gone as well?’ Wahidin remembered his mother squatting on river stones pounding shirts clean; another part of his homelife gone. ‘Insyallah — if Allah wills it,’ was his father’s only comment. He admired his father’s stoic faith in Allah and tried to ensure he maintained his faith in the city. Wahidin steered the Volvo into Jl Setiabudi whose brick fences were topped with broken glass. Passing the community billboard documenting the reliance on food, clothing, Pancasila and other fundamentals of life in modern Indonesian society, he stopped before a pair of rusting corrugated iron gates and blew the horn. A face peered through the gap in the gates before allowing Wahidin to enter the courtyard of the Blitar Magic Garage. The cut-down 44-gallon drums and worn tyres strewn in the dirt with grease, spare parts and forgotten tools were a familiar sight from the makeshift garages of his village childhood. Corrugated iron sheets stacked haphazardly against wooden pillars formed a walled-off storage area for kerosene jerrycans stacked on trestle benches with funnels and handpumps; old batteries bleeding white acid; upended dented hubcaps filled with water breeding mosquitoes; broken generators and a motorbike in the corner Munin had been tinkering with for as long as Wahidin had known him. A thin brown face, made longer by its drooping moustache, appeared from behind the gate wearing a long white shirt over trousers and sandals. ‘Munin, how can you run a garage and stay so clean? It must be magic!’ ‘Back again so soon?’ Munin smiled, offering him a kretek clove cigarette. ‘I should be fasting.’ ‘But you’re working, you’ve got to keep your wits about you.’ They smoked, ignoring the ‘Dilarang merokok’ sign nailed above the gate. He nodded towards the front of the car. ‘No problems with the fender work, I hope?’ Wahidin shook his head: ‘This time it’s the door.’

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Munin ran his fingers along the parallel lines gouged in the metal. ‘These marks are still very hot. That means they’re fresh.’ ‘Just this morning. What does it mean?’ ‘I think it’s a tuyul.’ ‘A tuyul!’ Wahidin repeated with growing apprehension the name of the spiritchild. ‘Where did this happen? By the cemetery?’ ‘No, at Jagorawi golf course.’ ‘Didn’t you guard the car?’ ‘Pak Ricky wanted me to caddy for him and the bule.’ ‘What bule?’ Munin asked. ‘Some business partner, I don’t know.’ ‘What did he look like?’ ‘Like a bule,’ Wahidin answered testily; they all looked the same. ‘Why?’ ‘Don’t you think it’s odd of your boss to be playing golf out of town when he lives right next to a golf course? With a bule?’ ‘He was big and had red hair like a demon. I forget his name, but I called him Pak Bule.’ ‘Go on — you left the car.’ ‘I asked some of the other drivers waiting there to keep an eye on it for me. I locked it too,’ Wahidin added. ‘That explains it.’ Wahidin knew better than to ask about these things. Munin continued: ‘See, the tuyul wanted to steal money from the car while you were away, but because you had the doors locked it couldn’t get in. Look at the marks, see how they begin near the handle. Imagine its long clawed fingers, its sharp talons cutting and dragging through the metal like fresh beancurd in frustration as it slid under the car out of the daylight.’ ‘But —’ ‘Probably belongs to one of the farmers there,’ Munin answered his question. ‘Odd that it should be out in daytime though; very bold. The farmers must be angry up at Jagorawi. Maybe they bought the tuyul with the compensation money after their land was taken for the golf course. It seems a pity they’ve turned to thieving, themselves, but I suppose you can hardly blame them after what they’ve been through.’

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Wahidin clicked his tongue. ‘Lucky it was only Pak Ricky’s car and not his house,’ Munin frowned. ‘Still, it’s a bad omen. It may take a while to fix this time, depending on whether the tuyul is still hiding in the car. Not likely — it’d be too far from home for a tuyul. Anyway, give me a few minutes to check this out, alone.’ Wahidin prised open the gate and stumbled along the road, his mind racing. Imagine sharing a car with a tuyul! Even though Munin discounted it, spirits needed to be adaptable these days. Maybe they did make homes in cars. He should ask Pak Ricky for a pay rise for danger money. Lost in thought, he passed unseeing by community development signs exhorting that ‘Two children are enough’ and that ‘Cleanliness is the basis for health’. He banged his head on the overhanging wooden awning of a warung foodstall. He nodded to the stallkeeper, wearing a faded yellow T-shirt from the recent election campaign: ‘Say brother, where’s the prayerhouse around here?’ ‘You don’t want prayers, you want a coffee,’ a fuzzy-haired woman behind the counter said. ‘Tobing, make him a coffee.’ Wahidin sat down on the bench under the painted canvas sides where a man, his head bobbing like a rear dashboard dog’s, sat cradling his coffee glass; he had the smooth hands and careworn face of a fellow fasting driver. Behind him an ad for Gudang Garam filtertips boasted ‘Men have appetites’. Tobing put a tall glass covered by a saucer in front of Wahidin: ‘Allah won’t mind, it’s part of doing your job responsibly. Have to stay awake and alive kan?’ Wahidin removed the saucer, allowing the contents to cool a little first, and stirred the black brew with the cocktail spoon provided, feeling for undissolved sugar crystals at the bottom. He added another three spoonfuls to keep his strength up. The hot sweet brew relaxed him, clearing his thoughts and making him aware of the attention of the others. ‘What’s wrong with you anyway? — you’re as white as a bule,’ Tobing said. ‘Look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he winked at the woman. ‘A tuyul scratched the door,’ Wahidin replied. ‘You kampungan!’ Tobing snorted in derision. ‘How long you been in Jakarta now?’ ‘Six months,’ Wahidin lied. ‘I saw you drive in to the magic garage,’ the other driver said. ‘Your boss must be a big man to have a car like that.’

16

THURSDAY

Wahidin nodded. ‘He’s a friend of the President.’ ‘If your boss is so important,’ the driver continued, ‘how come he doesn’t take his car to a big modern garage on the highway for repairs?’ ‘Must be saving for his hajj,’ Tobing quipped. It sounded plausible to Wahidin — the trip to Mecca was very expensive. ‘Say,’ he asked Tobing, ‘you must hear some funny noises from the magic garage at night.’ ‘No, just the usual banging.’ ‘Have you ever had a look?’ ‘What’s there to see?’ the woman replied with bored indifference. ‘There’s plenty to see,’ the man glared at her. ‘For starters, he’s got devils locked up in cages down there. He only lets them out at night!’ Wahidin paid up and returned to the garage, his feet heavy with uncertainty. He wondered how the repairs were done, wondering if it really was magic. He doubted it. But just in case, he did not want to do anything to hex it. After last week’s accident — the fender dented by a motorcyclist trying to squeeze through a disappearing gap in the traffic, crushing his leg — Wahidin had examined the repairwork close up. There were slight imperfections in the paintwork, but from a normal viewing distance of a metre or two the repair was magically invisible. How did Munin do it? Did he really summon up devils to do the panelbeating for him like the stallkeeper said? He banged on the corrugated iron garage gates before entering, as Munin had insisted he do. He looked around the yard: Munin was nowhere to be seen. Wahidin crept into the darkened shed where strange-looking objects were draped in dusty tarpaulins. His heart raced as he lifted the corner of one. A hand grabbed his forearm in a vice-like grip. ‘Allah preserve me!’ Wahidin chirruped in terror. The hand undraped itself to reveal Munin, resting on a makeshift bed. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to snoop?’ he said, sitting up and releasing Wahidin’s arm. ‘You’ll undo the magic. What will Pak Ricky think of you for that?’ Wahidin, chastised and fearful, rubbed his arm. ‘I’ve consulted my Javanese calendars,’ Munin continued. ‘If this damage really was caused by a tuyul, I need to set an auspicious day for repairs to overcome its own magic. Tomorrow is a Friday Kliwon which is very good. I can work on it tomorrow night, if you bring me the right offerings.’ ‘Is it safe to drive the car around until then?’ Wahidin asked. The last thing his nerves needed was an attack from a tuyul.

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‘This will keep it at bay,’ Munin produced a wedge of ripe durian, attaching it by a string to the rearview mirror. ‘A tuyul is like a child,’ he explained, ‘It can’t bear strong smells. If the tuyul is still in the car this should flush it out. Come back tomorrow at dusk,’ he patted Wahidin on the back as he hopped behind the wheel of the Volvo. ‘And don’t eat it — you’ll ruin the magic,’ he warned. The durian swung and banged the windscreen, smearing it, as Wahidin reversed the car out of the courtyard. A car horn sounded and he braked sharply, narrowly avoiding a third accident. Through the rearview mirror he saw a black Super Kijang speed past, and below it the durian twirling on its string, alternately spiky green and fleshy yellow. Thinking of the tuyul, he tooted his horn so it knew he knew about it.

1.4 Tina rolled about on the back seat as the car swerved sharply to miss the Volvo on the narrow lane, spilling the box of Amway samplers across her lap and on to the floor. Without turning around, the driver raised his hands from the leather racing wheel in apology. No matter how many optional extras had been fitted to the Super Kijang, it was still a basic people mover, not a sports car. She knew it was dangerous racing from their Menteng home through these potholed back streets, but the driver — like her children — wouldn’t listen to her, only to her husband Tommy. She missed them now they had grown up and left home for good. Airhorn blaring, the Super Kijang screeched to a halt, sliding and narrowly missing a man staggering from a foodstall across the road to where a bule woman stood waiting beside a car. Tina’s driver wound down his window and called out to the stallkeeper for directions. Tina looked with mild distaste at the skinny stallkeeper craning his neck to get a view of her in the back, and the cigarette advertisement boasting ‘Men have appetites’ papering over holes in his stall’s scrap plywood walls. She wished her Tommy did. She had given the driver Siska’s directions already: turn at the guardbox, then third to the left off Jl Setiabudi. Sipping coffee at the Grand Hyatt, talking about keeping their men interested, Siska shared her hairdressing secrets: ‘Chenny’s one of your Ricky’s tenants in Setiabudi. She does the most heavenly cream baths. But don’t tell Ricky; he’s sooo jealous,’ Siska giggled and her flanks shook.

18

THURSDAY

They pulled out and waited as a street vendor, carrying wickerware on a pole slung over his shoulder, made his bobbing progress down the laneway. The Grand Hyatt seemed like a million miles from this otherworld of open drains, bamboo birdcages and flapping washing lines; a stark reminder of her own beginnings. Still, Siska had warned her not to be put off by the insalubrious surroundings. The car edged up the road, weaving to avoid potholes and piles of rubbish, and stopped at the entrance to a laneway. ‘Up there, bu,’ the driver said doubtfully. Tina followed his gaze along the cracked path of the narrow laneway to where a painted sign proclaiming ‘Beauty Salon’ swung outside a two-storey wooden building. She wondered whether she should go down there after all. She pulled her phone out of her tote-bag and called her usual upmarket salon in Ratu Plaza, a couple of kilometres away. The receptionist told her the only stylist free this afternoon was Rudi. Anyone but Rudi! At her time of life, she went to the salon to get away from the male world, into a world of cream baths, perfume and chocolates. Tina hated his stubby fingers massaging her neck and felt threatened and confused by his overwhelming manliness: his shirt open to the navel revealing his hairless chest dripping in gold jewellery he boasted had been given him by his clients. Siska said his nipples were pierced too; but Tina had never been able to see evidence of any sleepers. She didn’t ask Siska how she knew this. ‘What are you looking at?’ Tina snapped, catching the driver smirking at her indecision. Packing her tote-bag with a mix of Amway samplers, Tina left him strict instructions to wait for her nearby. Several times recently he had disappeared for a meal just when she wanted to go home. The driver grunted and picked up a discarded copy of Popular magazine from the rear seat. Filled with foreboding, Tina tottered down the narrow laneway in her court shoes, passing narrow houses with their blue-board and fence-wire facades bluffed hard on the footpath. She half-heard a baby crying in one; in another two women arguing: sandals on doorsteps marked visitors. At the beauty salon Tina slipped off her shoes and knocked on the door. A barefoot woman dressed in a white uniform opened the door. ‘Hello, my name is Tina. I have an appointment with Miss Chenny,’ she announced, feeling foolish as if this were an Amway lead. Tommy had suggested Amway as an interest after the children left, but she did not want material distractions — she wanted love. She’d get herself a hot style here and win his interest back.

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Tina followed the maid inside across the cool cement-tiled floors to a low couch. The curtains were drawn for privacy and a bare globe lit the room. Motioning for her to sit, the maid disappeared out the back. Tina looked around the room. A number of heavily thumbed American and European salon magazines were scattered over a low coffee table; a perming stand on castors in the corner looked promising. However, other furniture — a high round table with dining chairs and a heavy double-doored credenza with trophies on its upper shelves — suggested the room had other uses. Intrigued by the trophies, Tina stood up and wandered over for a closer look; she trailed a maternal finger across the shelf sticky with hair filaments, thinking how Dust’n’Wipe would fix it. The maid returned with a tray bearing two glasses of iced jasmine tea. Tina took one and held up her scolding dusty finger. The maid smiled at her, revealing crooked brown teeth, before placing the tray on the coffee table; she sat down and picked up the remaining glass. Tina frowned at this familiar behaviour in the absence of her mistress. ‘Where’s Chenny?’ she said sharply. ‘I’m Chenny,’ she said in a husky voice. ‘Ibu Siska said you would be coming. She was here last Tuesday.’ Tina wanted the ground to swallow her. Siska would be laughing at her now, telling all their friends over lunch how she had set Tina up with a transvestite. And now she had insulted her housekeeping. Clutching her tote-bag desperately, she stared at the trophies while covering one naked foot with the other. ‘I won most of those in hairdressing competitions,’ the transvestite said, smiling. Trying to regain her composure, Tina sucked hard on the straw. ‘It’s an honest living,’ Chenny added provocatively. Tina spluttered tea over her blouse. ‘Oh dear, let me help you,’ Chenny patted with a tissue at some of the spilt drink on Tina’s blouse. Her hands felt soft yet strong: suddenly Siska wasn’t laughing at her. Tina agreed to submit to a cream bath with her shampoo from these healing hands. ‘First you’ll need to remove your necklaces and unbutton your blouse so I can get to your shoulders. If you take your blouse off I can have it washed while you are here.’ Tina didn’t know how to feel: was she undressing before a man or a woman? Would Tommy mind? What bra did she have on today, the sensible Triumph or her new Formfit underwire? Did it matter, given those hands?

20

THURSDAY

Those hands were busily selecting bottles and creams from a range of particoloured vessels on the shelves of the opened credenza. ‘I make these skin and haircare potions myself,’ Chenny said, proudly, her back turned. Tina hastily unbuttoned her blouse: it was the Formfit thankfully. She dusted her powdery cleavage off with the crumpled blouse, restoring its natural coppery colour. She wished her skin was not dark like a fieldworker’s. ‘Drop something?’ Tina looked up to find Chenny watching her examining her cleavage. Defensively, she clutched her tote-bag over her breasts: ‘I — I brought some things for you,’ she said awkwardly, producing samplers. ‘Amway? How divine!’ ‘Your maid — she might like to try Wash’n’Wear. It’s an improved formula. Don’t need to pre-soak anymore.’ ‘That so? These are pretty,’ Chenny caressed the pearl necklace around Tina’s neck. ‘M-M-Mikimoto from Japan,’ Tina faltered as Chenny’s fingers grazed her bare skin. ‘From my husband. He’s a one-star General,’ she immediately regretted bringing Tommy into their conversation. ‘And these?’ Chenny ran the backs of her fingers lightly along Tina’s cheekbone to her earrings. ‘From Australia. We went there on a holiday last year.’ Tina undid the pearls and earrings and slipped them into her tote-bag. ‘Interesting?’ Chenny scooped warm water from the basin over Tina’s hair, smoothing it back before shampooing. ‘Yes, we stayed in a lovely hotel in Sydney near Darling Harbour.’ ‘Darling Harbour — sounds like my kind of place!’ Chenny shrieked. ‘Lean back now, girl.’ Tina felt strong probing fingers massaging deep into her shoulders. ‘You have wonderful hands,’ she purred, eyes closed, as the cream bath squeezed the knots out of her muscles. ‘All of me is wonderful,’ Chenny purred, as the hands swooped longer and lower across Tina’s sternum to where the soft flesh of her breasts began, curling swirling lower to the edge of her bra cups. Her skin tingling wherever those healing hands touched, Tina slumped back in the chair, her hair tumbling loose. ‘Now just rest for a while and let the lotion sink into your skin,’ Chenny said, turning on the radio softly. It played a Hawaiian love melody by Pak Hugeng.

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Vulnerable and moist with anticipation, Tina rubbed her palms along her thighs, rustling her Batik Keris hula-dress. She dreamed of Priscilla and the King on their wedding night, embellishing the little she knew from fanzines and the museum in Hawaii with her imagination: her virginal alabaster skin, the fine body hairs on her nubile breasts… Tommy had been busy at work lately; she hoped this makeover would please him. She’d get the maid to make him a special dinner of hamburgers and milkshakes from the recipe in the fanzine. He was her Elvis and she’d be his Priscilla if it pleased him. Tina felt hands on her shoulders and the soft absorbency of terry-towelling. She opened her eyes slowly to find herself back in the loungeroom salon. ‘What, so soon?’ she complained. ‘Only needs a few minutes,’ Chenny said as she tissued the lotion off. ‘Your skin is so fair already, you don’t need to leave it on too long. Besides, you’ll have plenty of time to dream while your hair is setting. Any thoughts on how you’d like it done?’ ‘Well,’ Tina said, looking at her underwired cleavage, fragrant and glowing golden from the cream bath, ‘I’d like to hide those nasty grey roots. Keep my husband interested, you know?’ ‘Girl, you’re only as old as you feel. I’ll give you hair to match your sassy bra.’ Tina giggled, basking in the warmth of Chenny’s attention. Siska was right after all — this waria was a real find. Chenny combed and parted Tina’s hair in segments and painted on the black colouring agent. ‘Is this one of your natural colours?’ Tina asked. ‘No, mine wash out too quickly. This is a commercial dye — but not Amway.’ When she had finished, Chenny pulled a shower cap over Tina’s hair and lowered the perming hood to steam the colour set. She gave Tina one of the styling magazines to read. ‘Another tea?’ Tina, deaf under the perming hood, looked at her puzzled, until Chenny mimed sipping a drink. She flipped through the pages of the magazine, ignoring the blondes and teenagers with waif-cuts wispy close to their cheekbones: alluring on these models, but too young for her. A redhead combed her fingers through her long tresses of wild bedroom hair: the right idea, but impractical for her Ladies’ Auxiliary luncheons. No, she needed something in-between, tamer but flexible enough to work in the bedroom. And then she found it: a woman with her dark hair retro style, puffed up into a beehive with long curling tickling wisps, inviting rough hands to tumble down in ravishment.

22

THURSDAY

Under the steamy air of the perming hood, Tina imagined her own Paradise Hawaiian-style on the beach at sunset with Tommy: a frangipani lei covering her braless breasts; seeing her, the soldier drops his guitar and runs to her in slow motion. Reaching her his arms catching her swoon, twirling her into a kiss, his lips sipping her sweet nectar, his rough hands crushing the frangipani petals and down down down shredding the palm leaves of her hula-dress, as her back grinds into the sand still warm from the tropical sun. A thunderclap and heavy evening raindrops spattering her face: Tina’s tongue flashed and darted, licking her fiery lips. More raindrops, finer this time and lavender-scented, and the smell of burnt plastic. Tina opened her eyes to see Chenny hovering huge and anxious, spraying scented water on her face from an atomiser. ‘Ibu Tina, are you all right?’ It was Chenny’s voice from afar, then coming nearer. ‘There was a power surge and then the electricity went out. I was worried you’d been electrocuted when I couldn’t wake you up.’ She held the cord: the plug had melted into a sinister lump. Behind her stood Tina’s driver, open-mouthed. Tina wailed, clutching the magazine over her hard-nippled breasts, chafing them and adding to her humiliation. Chenny shooed the driver out of the room. ‘Here, put this back on,’ she handed Tina her freshly washed blouse smelling of jasmine. Chenny waited until Tina was decent again before opening the curtains to let in some light. She removed the shower cap and rinsed Tina’s hair clean over the basin: ‘All black again,’ she said reassuringly. ‘Lucky your hair dried before the power failed. Now I’ll just shape it. Any suggestions?’ Tina made as if to say something, then simply closed her eyes and rested her head back against Chenny’s hands. Chenny made a few adjustments, then picked up the round mirror. ‘That’s better,’ she said, tilting it so Tina could see her black hair pulled up into a smooth chignon, setting off her slim neck to advantage. Tina sighed: it was not quite the tumbling beehive she imagined, but it was a sensible shape for a general’s wife, which made the most of her fading features. The colour was good though, and she had the memory of her tingling dreams and Chenny’s hands — those alone were worth the visit. She took a Rp50,000 note from her wallet and pressed it into those inspiriting hands. ‘That’s too much dong!’

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‘Do you do home visits?’ Tina surprised herself by asking. ‘For this kind of money, I’ll do anything!’ Nervous of what she was getting herself into, Tina ended on a businesslike note: ‘Treat it as a deposit. Say next Monday? I’ll send my driver for you.’ ‘Shame Amway doesn’t do hair care,’ Chenny smiled. Tina walked out and back up the laneway with a spring in her step, ignoring the driver’s knowing smirk as he held the car door open for her. Tommy would love her tender tonight.

1.5 After seeing Tina out, Chenny rushed to clean up the living room and get ready for her nightshift: the appointment had taken longer than she expected. As a rule she did not like these bored military wives with their kittenish manners but their visits — with their expensive cars pulling up outside her salon — afforded her a certain immunity in the neighbourhood. She ignored her neighbours clicking their tongues over their washing lines. Life in Jakarta was becoming tough these days, and you never knew when you would need protection. She swept up Tina’s hair clippings and put them into a bag for safekeeping. Her vulnerability had surprised Chenny, more used to dealing with the brashness of wives like the appalling Siska Supangat who, boasting over the washbasin, sought to match Chenny sexdeed for sexdeed, and went a long way too with her promiscuity. The joke doing the rounds at their beat on Jl Cianjur about the three first ladies praising their country’s natural resources — Queen Sirikit and her Bangkok papayas, Cory Aquino and her Manila seagrass, and Ibu Tien topping the trio with her crocodile hole — seemed too real, less funny knowing women like Siska. If Ibu Tien had six generals enter her crocodile hole in the joke, Siska would have Chenny believe she had provisioned an entire company in her time. Chenny envied Tina for her important husband, nice home and overseas holidays. And her Amway. She hid the samplers in the credenza behind her bottles of homemade creams and shampoos, where others would not find them. American and expensive, teasing at hopes of her new life ahead; she imagined herself with Liquid Organic Cleaner washing the dishes in a large ranch-style kitchen as her besuited husband comes in and pats her on the bottom; suds up to her elbows, she proffers her cheek which he kisses with his white moustacheless lips before pouring her a Coca-Cola

24

THURSDAY

from the refrigerator as she drains the stainless steel sink and smoothes HandCream Plus between her fingers from a dispenser on the windowsill. Yes, Tina seemed a lucrative client, one to cultivate, with her offers of home visits. Perhaps she was the cash cow Chenny needed to bankroll her trip to Singapore and her operation? But something seemed wrong with Tina’s own American dream. The amount of money and the manner in which it had been offered felt to Chenny like she was buying more than just a haircut. Maybe, Chenny thought as she stowed the perming hood behind the door, she’d give the clippings to that Javanese sorcerer who ran the garage at the end of the street to see what Tina’s future held. She had tiptoed in her bare feet past his garage last night on the way home, roosters crowing in the early morning dark, and saw him popping his head around the gateway: smoking, his eyes piercing her as the banging continued unabated from his workshop inside. He unnerved and intrigued her; she wanted to know more about him. The front door slammed and her flatmate Lia tottered into the salon-cum-living room in her cork platform sandals. ‘I missed you at the lights, Chen,’ Lia sniffed. ‘I know, I know dong,’ Chenny replied, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘I can’t cut hair and busk with my tambourine among cars at Kuningan at the same time. How was it?’ ‘I have got such a headache you wouldn’t believe lah! Some fool man there calls me a transvestite and I set him straight. I said to him, mister I am not a banci, I am a waria, a woman–man — mostly WA-nita but the juiciest bit still pe-RIA — that’s me.’ ‘Did he give you a tip for your performance?’ Chenny laughed. ‘Just the tip of his boot. He kicked me and sent me sprawling in front of another car,’ Lia pointed to her knee, which was wrapped in a soiled piece of cloth: ‘One of the busking beggars there had a spare bandage.’ ‘You work too hard,’ Chenny warned, easing her back into the chair. ‘Gotta pay the bills, girl,’ Lia collapsed onto the couch and crossed her sinewy legs. Dieting over the years to maintain her slenderness had given way to a middleaged wiriness in her limbs. Her bright pancake warpaint lured from a distance, but beneath the paint the open pores and splotchy skin of aging made Chenny’s heart sicken. ‘Rest now, Li. I’ll put father Tjing Tjau to work,’ Chenny dipped a coin into a jar of Tjing Tjau Balsem; squeegeed its camphor and menthol vapours onto the back of Lia’s neck in the village remedy for aches and pains.

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‘Li,’ Chenny eased into her questions, ‘you know anything about the magic garage owner?’ ‘Munin?’ ‘That his name?’ ‘Uh-huh. Well, he repairs cars and dabbles in a bit of magic on the side, so they say.’ ‘What sort of magic?’ ‘The usual: potions and spells from blood, fingernails and hair clippings, that sort of thing.’ So he might be able to help Tina, Chenny thought to herself. ‘Why?’ Lia looked up. ‘Just curious.’ ‘He can’t turn you into a girl, Chen. It’s all makeup and clothes.’ Still, Chenny was interested in this man who dabbled in magic: it mirrored their own skin-deep efforts at transformation. ‘What else do you know about him?’ ‘He’s buddies with the stallkeeper next door.’ ‘Jacinta?’ Chenny groaned as she thought of their mounting food bill. ‘No, her man Tobing. Seems they’ve had a few similar hard knocks. He’s ex-tapol, you know.’ ‘What?’ ‘A former political prisoner. Before we started getting hassled at Taman Lawang, the blackshirts picked on anyone suspected of being a communist.’ ‘That so?’ Chenny had met Lia on the transvestite’s riverside beat a few years back, in the days when bullying police gave them the option of a beating or a dunking in the filthy water. Persecution forged family bonds: the older, more experienced Lia had taken Chenny under her wing, thrilling her with stories of the history and promise of their kind, the third sex and prideful saviours of the world. In gaps between clients on long carless nights at Cianjur or Brawijaya, over noodles after tambourine dancing at the evening-rush traffic lights of Kuningan, Lia told Chenny of the great waria figures in the wayang shadow plays: of how great Arjuna of the Pandava brothers, cursed as a eunuch for spurning the goddess Urvasi’s advances, entered the kingdom of Virata in the 13th year of their exile as Brihannala, spending the year of his curse as a bangled pigtailed eunuch in a red dress teaching singing and dancing to Virata’s princesses, until he cast off his dresses and earrings as Uttara’s charioteer at Kurukshetra battlefield. And of how at Kurukshetra the great

26

THURSDAY

Bhishma, general of the Kurava armies, teacher of Arjuna and his brothers, was defeated by Srikandi, Arjuna’s wife, born the woman Amba but reborn male for the battle. Bhishma had vowed not to raise his weapons against a woman, never expecting to face a waria in battle. The Pandava’s armies were swelled with waria, and that is why they were the victors, Lia concluded. Lost in thought, Chenny dug the coin in to Lia’s neck until she cried out: ‘Easy lah, it’s just masuk angin, not double pneumonia!’ ‘Sorry,’ Chenny’s hands smoothed over the broken skin of red welts through which the cold could now escape Lia’s body, until she felt Lia’s breathing deepen and slow. She softly let Lia rest back on the couch snoring, a cushion under her head, her feet cocooned from the night in a thin old sarong: she would not be working tonight. But the wayang shadow plays did not tell what happened to waria after their crucial involvement at Kurukshetra battlefield. Chenny did not want to end up like Lia, untrained for anything else and too old to make a living at the only thing she knew. She kissed Lia’s pancaked forehead, dry-eyed: tears made her eyes puffy and would affect her earnings tonight. Chenny tiptoed out the back to the bathroom. Unbuttoning her dress, she let it slide off her shoulders to a crumpled heap on the floor and stepped out of it in one smooth motion. She noted with pleasure the swelling of her breasts in their trainer bra like newly budding langsat fruit. Unclipping her bra, she cupped her langsat breasts in her hands: the nipples were still small and hard under her fingers, her cinnamon aureoles still hairy, but fine and downy rather than bristly as before, as the oestrogen pills she had been taking for the last year stripped away her man-shell. Running her hands down across her ribcage and down onto her belly she felt how her waist had narrowed and the muscles of her stomach had faded away into a softer rounder flesh form. Her mind too had sloughed off the harshness of male ambition and become more compassionate and understanding. Her nipples hard, her hands smoothed her belly skin down to her underwear elastic where a small bulge remained. Pulling the elastic forward, she peeked in where, nestled in the tangle of black pubic hair, her limp penis curled like a sleeping cat where once it would have stood demanding attention. Medical science, not magic, was required to fix this last vestige of her manhood. Singapore was the big irreversible step into womanhood when she would cast off forever this sorry appendage which had dragged down Lia and others into freakishness. Shedding her knickers, she laughed aloud with anticipation.

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Quickly she threw a few scoopfuls of cool water from the water cistern under her armpits and across her back, lathered up and rinsed off with another couple of scoops. She wrapped a towel around herself and went upstairs to her room. Dropping the towel, she squatted and folded her penis back between her legs, one testicle either side; then pulled her knickers into a G-string, reefing them back up her crack as high as she could while still able to breathe. Her parcel of goodies tucked away tightly for the night, she worked her way through the pile of clothes in the corner, sniffing armpits and groins for the cleanest items. She really had to do some washing. After dressing, Chenny ran her fingers across her face, feeling for the giveaway thick dark hairs which makeup failed to hide. She plucked these out with tweezers: longer-lasting than shaving, it took the root as well. She slapped moisturiser on as a foundation, then her makeup, concentrating on her eyes and lips. Then, her makeover finished, she surveyed herself in her bedroom mirror, long copper legs ending in a snug pink miniskirt and sleeveless blouse: ‘Amazing what a difference a neat tuck makes,’ she said to her reflection. She stepped onto the balcony, feeling the air, and looked out over the kampung. Kites strung on power lines silhouetted against the sky. Beyond, the onion dome of the neighbourhood prayerhouse where a cranked-up speaker called the faithful to sunset prayers, and beside it the Blitar Magic Garage. From this height Chenny could see over the fence into the lit yard where Munin wandered around cleaning up. Why not, she smiled to herself. Downstairs she pulled the hair clippings out from their hiding place and stuffed them into her shoulder bag. She wondered what sort of response she’d get from the old sorcerer when she was fresh en route to her shift.

1.6 ‘So I say, take your compensation and stick it!’ Tobing slapped the table for emphasis and the thin board walls of the Prapat Foodstall shook. ‘But Tobing, if Pak Ricky is going to pay you to move this time, that’s better than nothing. We can put the money towards our shophouse.’ ‘Where? In Dili? No thanks, I’ll take my chances here.’ ‘Well, in Prapat then.’ ‘What about your aunt? What would she think about moving to Sumatra?’

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Jacinta frowned. ‘Hah, I knew it was no good. So we stay here and fight them this time.’ ‘Tobing, it’s better to get the money. Don’t you think so, Munin?’ she turned to one of their customers. Munin sipped his coffee, listening to the background hum as traffic on the nearby major arteries choked in traffic jams. He enjoyed the sunset cool, the wondrous potential of neither night or day, as residents came home from their day jobs and others set out for their night work. ‘Well?’ Jacinta pressed. Munin looked up: ‘Without land title we’re sunk. As our landlord, Pak Ricky can do what he likes.’ ‘What about this stall of ours?’ Tobing protested. ‘Your garage? What about some goodwill over and above the paltry resettlement amount he offered? Pak Ricky stands to make a fortune out of this place. He can pay us much more to make us move on!’ Munin nodded. It had all happened before and he was fatalistic about moving on. But he was 20 years older this time and did not need the hassle either. ‘Bung Karno would say fight our oppressors,’ Tobing appealed to Munin’s sense of history. ‘But Pak Harto is in command now,’ Munin reminded him, adding sugar to his bitter coffee. ‘Besides, I don’t want to live at Bogor,’ Tobing continued. ‘Well, I don’t want to go home,’ Jacinta said pointedly. Munin looked at Jacinta; her crinkly hair framed a pitted acne-scarred face and wary dark eyes which told the story of a troubled adolescence and flight. He thought of the village in East Java where he grew up before his own life had changed forever: the magic of the lamp-lit shadownights of the wayang, the night-magic stories of the great lover and bowman Arjuna who faced overwhelming odds in the name of justice, breathing life into his youthful dreams, and of the harsh reality they all faced now. But Munin had lived in Jakarta too long to have much faith in Arjuna’s inexhaustible quiver against the machine-gun charge of greed: ‘Murdani said that we could take our building materials.’ ‘Hey, miss,’ Tobing piped up to one of the passers-by on Jl Setiabudi, ‘What do you think of the compensation offer?’

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Munin started; it was the waria he had been watching this morning. Tonight she wore a white blouse and pink miniskirt, stirring some of Arjuna’s hungers in him. ‘I don’t know,’ the waria said. ‘I don’t expect to be here much longer.’ ‘Some fancy man taking you away?’ Jacinta scowled at Tobing. ‘I don’t see any offers here,’ she looked around the bench and her eyes lit up when she saw Munin. ‘I was just coming to see you. Can I speak to you in private?’ Tobing chuckled. ‘It’s important,’ she said, her voice husky. ‘Sure,’ Munin said, ‘let’s go down to my garage.’ He left a few coins on the table for his coffee. As they walked together along Jl Setiabudi, Munin heard the snickers of worshippers outside the prayerhouse; she held her head high, ignoring them, and he felt oddly protective of her. He pulled open the creaking iron gates of his garage: ‘Well, this is it,’ he said shyly, looking around at the yard, a jumble of discarded tools, oil drums, spare parts and weeds. ‘You run this by yourself?’ she asked. ‘Tobing helps out sometimes. It’s hard to get apprentices these days.’ ‘Talk to Murdani, his layabout son could do with some work,’ she smiled at him and he saw her crooked brown teeth. Munin laughed, remembering the guard’s son snapping at her heels like a mangy dog: ‘People aren’t so interested in magic anymore.’ ‘I see lots of people interested in my kind of magic,’ she returned his smile. ‘And I’m interested in yours. I understand you do other magic as well. What can you tell me about this?’ She handed a plastic bag to Munin. He examined its contents: ‘This hair yours?’ ‘No, I’m a hairdresser by day. This person — my client — is in trouble. I’d like you to tell me about her.’ She paused, looking at his straggly hair and wispy moustache, ‘You should come along and have a haircut sometime.’ ‘You might put a spell on me with my hair.’ ‘Would that be a problem?’ she smiled invitingly. ‘When can I contact you again?’ ‘Give me till Saturday. Meet me again at Tobing’s.’ ‘Until then,’ the waria held out her hand. Munin made to shake it man-to-man, but checked himself in time, instead sandwiching it between his palms as for a woman.

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Seeing her through the gate, he saw the yellow flowers springing from weeds in the corner of his yard and wished he had the courage to pluck a few for her. No, that was too silly — she would not be interested in an old loner like himself. The romance of his youth under Soekarno had faded into the reality of life under Suharto, and would not readily stir again. He watched her walk along Jl Setiabudi towards the guardbox and wondered what the night held for her. He sniffed the hair, breathed deeply its avocado richness which she had imparted, and realised he had forgotten to ask her name.

1.7 In the west, the darkening sky streaked vivid by pollution signalled it was almost time for nightshifts to begin all over town. Building sites roared into life as heavy trucks denied the roadways by day brought their loads of cement and took away piles of rubble. Night-haulers and other labourers dragged their carts piled high with clippings for animal feed, tweaked from ornamental gardens of main-road glass towers. Maria pulled a kretek cigarette butt — another reminder of Dili — from the gutter where it had begun to smoulder in the dried fig leaves and put it with the others in a fold of her faded shawl draped over her shoulder for a carry bag. At home tomorrow she and Jacinta would prise open the butts she had found and roll three or four into a new paper for reselling at her stall. It was not much, but at least it paid for her meals from the mobile foodstalls selling fried beancurd and sate, braziers and woks carried on bamboo shoulder poles. Fuzzy-haired boys carrying fish on bamboo shoulder poles, mouths threaded and looped with bamboo string, walk into the water and bend to wet their load, sloshing to sheen the silvery skins afresh. One splashes another: ‘Federico, stop it!’ The striped flanks of mackerel bounce and flash in the sun and the boys’ wet sandals squeal in the sand as they run past the rusting half-buried corpses of landing craft in Dili Harbour. She still had not developed a taste for Javanese food with its funny spices. Her children had sold spices for making jamu herbal medicines to their cousins at the Lay family store in town, but she had preferred the Comoro markets north of town where, curled in her tube sarong against the cool morning air, she sold measured handfuls of their surplus produce — ginger-root and chilli, onions and tomatoes for the ubiquitous salada — spread on hessian sacks.

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For Jose’s birthday they ate salada together, served with Portuguese steak and chips and egg while a young Javanese with a wispy moustache watched them from the corner, silently eating fried noodles. Across the road, a young Chinese shopkeeper, her black hair in ribbons, sat outside the ‘Toko Matahari’ in the late afternoon light, picking nits out of her kid’s hair. On the beach the rusted hulks flame up like desert rocks; pigs truffle in the sand beyond a government sign prohibiting something or other. Ignoring the signs, a freelance recycler rested his two-wheeled rubbish cart opposite one of the bins of the wealthy Menteng households and tossed a few plastic bottles onto his cart. Maria watched in silence as he grabbed the twin poles of the cart and hauled it back towards the main road, past the assembled transvestites talking, waiting under tamarind trees. Fishermen sheltered with their morning catch under the tamarind trees, watching as another hauls in his net, dumping lime-green seaweed on the beach. From the glistening pile he picks and holds aloft a dark green seahorse, about 10 centimetres long, and waves it near his small son’s face; the seahorse wriggles, gasping its trumpet lips in a silent waterless scream which the boy echoes. The transvestites shrieked with laughter as they shared a joke in the night air. A taxi slowed; the driver wound down the passenger-side window: ‘Looking for a ride, ladies?’ he laughed. ‘Are you?’ one in a pink miniskirt replied saucily. ‘Not yet. You might need a lift later ya?’ ‘When does your shift finish?’ ‘About the same time as yours.’ ‘Then guess when to come back,’ she snapped, and her friends laughed. The driver swore and screeched off. A car filled with youths turned the corner with a squeal of wheels; Maria looked up and its headlights froze her like a rabbit. A torch flashed through the doorway and fixed its beam on Maria, blinding her. ‘Get up!’ the soldier screamed, his boot in her kidney uncurling her from young Federico. ‘Where’s Jose?’ he screamed. The soldier picked up the whimpering Federico by his feet and made as if to dash his head against a wooden beam. Jacinta cried out and was silenced. ‘When you clean your field, don’t you kill all the snakes, the small and large alike?’ another soldier snarled. ‘Tell us where Jose is.’

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But Maria could not, would not choose between her son and grandson. Jose had left for the mountains a few days before, leaving his wife and son behind with her. Tossed into the back of the dog-pound van of their nightmares, Maria clung to the grille separating them from the soldiers in front as the van bounced along the moonlit road. She felt a hollow resignation after months of worrying. They recognised in passing the bulbous moon-shape of the ruined Portuguese lock-up. ‘We’re driving into Dili,’ Jacinta whispered with relief as they passed the dumping ground at Taci Tolu. The Javanese soldier driving the van sounded the horn as they passed the field where so many of everyone’s relatives were buried, where Johannes Paulus said mass. The car tooted its horn again; Maria spun around in a daze of lights and smells. Someone in a pink miniskirt made to assist Maria, but another grabbed her arm. ‘Leave her, she’s crazy. These kids have got money.’ ‘You look after the spoilt brats — she’s from my neighbourhood,’ the younger one shook off her friend’s grip. Shrugging, the other one sashayed over to the car, caressing the gold-plated chrome details of their parents’ Honda and, unbuttoning her blouse slowly, deliberately, pressed her breasts against the glass. One hit the open button and her breasts flattened and dragged down the glass. ‘Hey, watch it, smart-arse!’ she said, rubbing her breasts. The boy sucked on a kretek and flicked the butt out the window. Maria whined, staggering off drunkenly a few paces before falling on the roadway. ‘Just say anything, keep talking,’ the Tetun interpreter at the Gomere headquarters pleaded with her in the singsong of their native language. ‘I’ll make the answers up.’ Maria looked at the soldier with the wispy moustache: he would have been Jose’s age, no more. ‘Where’s Jose?’ the soldier asked again, quietly this time. He drew on his cigarette and it crackled, exuding the sickly-sweet smell of cloves. Suddenly he shouted and ground the stub into her hand. The soldier waited for her to speak, lit another kretek. ‘What would your mothers think of you now?’ she eventually croaked. ‘Bu, that will just make it worse for you,’ the interpreter said, firing off a few words in the machine-gun staccato of Indonesian. The troops kept them in the compound for a few days by which time her burns had scabbed, and released them blinking into the sunlight. Jacinta, clutching her

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belly, could barely walk. They returned home to their lontar-palm shack to find Federico, his head smashed in, covered in flies in his bed. How she wept for her grandson! After the funeral Sebastiano and a few of his school friends left to join Jose in the mountains, leaving her just Jacinta who, aware of the likelihood of more night visits and their outcome, took her away to their relatives in Jakarta. The younger waria squatted down carefully in her pink miniskirt, pulling a bottle of cheap perfume out of her handbag and waving it under Maria’s nose: her head jerked at its astringency. The waria helped her to her beragged feet where she stood a full head taller in her cork heels. The pain as Maria stood was intense, her side warm and sticky like when baby Federico had wet himself. ‘You’re bleeding, Bu,’ the waria said, pulling her bloody hand out from Maria’s side. She looked closely at the old woman’s face: her dark eyes dull and heavylidded as if in a stupor. ‘Take this,’ she poured some of the perfume onto a handkerchief and gave it to her. Maria’s face wrinkled. It was a purgatory Jacinta had brought her to, where nothing was what it seemed and the need to survive overrode everything. But even in this darkness, kindness shone through: she accepted the gift with gabbled thanks and respect. ‘You’re from Setiabudi, aren’t you?’ the waria asked, concern in her voice. ‘I’ve seen you near my place.’ But Maria had collapsed bleeding in her arms.

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2.1 FEELING LIKE DEATH, Siska shut the front door of the house behind her and waddled across the marble verandah to where her driver Wahidin held the car door open for her. She slipped into the dark leather seat and took her sunglasses off after the door was closed. The sweet smell of rotting flesh stung her eyes. ‘What is that?’ she nearly shrieked, pointing at a wedge of brown bruised durian swinging from the rearview mirror. ‘An amulet from the garage. Keeps the car safe from lurking spirits.’ ‘Get rid of it!’ Of all the smells which set off her morning sickness, the vomitcheesy stench of durian was the worst. ‘Can’t — Pak Ricky knows all about it.’ Grumbling, Siska wound down the window and let the morning air onto her face as they drove slowly past neighbouring antebellum mansions, huge and white with their parabola disks picking up Hongkong television. Between houses she caught glimpses of the golf course which cocooned their housing estate. Ricky and the driver were both mad, dangling filthy fruit from the mirror. ‘Where to this morning?’ Wahidin chirruped. ‘Menteng,’ she said. She didn’t like Menteng with its feel of older money: the people seemed stuffier, more set in their ways, less creative. Too close to their

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tenants in Setiabudi for them to come and complain too. It had been hard to drag Ricky away from Menteng’s central location but the divorce and the lure of the golf course won him over to Pondok Indah. He was a sweet old fool, really; did his best to please her since the test results had shown positive. Her doctor had already contacted the obstetrician in Singapore, even though it was still seven months away. Ricky planned to be with her there for the delivery, provided he had the Setiabudi business wrapped up by then. He had mentioned meeting an Australian for golf yesterday to discuss developing the land in Setiabudi; with his eye for detail he had probably sought out a course designed by an Australian for their meeting. It must be a new course: she’d heard of exciting developments springing up in the hills south of Jakarta as greedy farmers sold their land and retired. But as Ricky said, in a booming economy, there’s wealth enough to go around. He spoke of how in Singapore and the USA even the taxi drivers played golf — wouldn’t Wahidin like that! And it helped employment: after school young boys wading in ponds fishing golf balls out and selling them. And someone had to mow the grass. Yes, golf courses were a good thing for Indonesians. Siska helped herself to a soda water from the bar fridge and wished she had some of her mother’s jamu to help her morning sickness. She remembered her mother in the medicine lady’s pink blouse and dark-brown sarong, wicker basket laden with herbal medicines on her hip, weaving slender and desirable through the streets and alleyways of Solo; radiating good health, her golden langsat skin, testimony to the efficacy of the goodies in her basket. They all drank jamu as children, a daily glass of brown chalky fluid to make them grow big and strong. When Siska was older her mother gave her jamu for period pain; when she got into trouble with a local boy, jamu took care of the unwanted child, and then another jamu mixture to stop the bleeding afterwards. There was a jamu for every problem. In an earlier generation she might have been a jamu lady too rather than taking the path to wifehood via beauty quests, bit parts in television sitcoms and a celebrity appearance at the Mandala Putra Golf Cup where she met Ricky. But the new path had landed her a bigger fish. Even if Ricky had been married previously, he guaranteed her a respectability her mother never possessed. The traffic grew heavier as they approached the city. Signs prohibited cars with less than three passengers entering the city; along the roadside, boys jockeyed with each other for the next ride. ‘The durian smell is making me sick, Wahidin,’ Siska groaned.

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‘Not far to Menteng now,’ Wahidin turned the airconditioning up. Air blasting from the vents filled the car with the city smells of steaming bitumen and rotting leaves. A boy hopped into the front seat of the Volvo and they edged forward into the maelstrom of an almost-roundabout. At its centre the bronze figure of a man — one leg thrust forward, impossible musculature in his abdomen straining under the weight of a flaming platter — pointed the way north along Jl Sudirman towards the city centre. Caught in the flow, the Volvo was swept along between buses chopping lanes and traffic police issuing cash fines and the occasional ticket. A few hundred metres beyond — past a government office where clerks paraded in their blue and white batik shirts, commemorating Independence Day on the 17th of every month — the boy motioned to Wahidin to pull over. Wahidin reached into the ashtray for loose change, but Siska cut in: ‘Give him the durian.’ Wahidin looked at her terrified. ‘He’s hungry, the poor little rascal,’ Siska continued, surprised by her own maternal feelings. ‘Probably hasn’t had any breakfast.’ ‘But he can buy breakfast with the money we give him,’ Wahidin protested. The boy appealed to Siska. ‘More Wahidin,’ she said firmly. ‘He won’t be able to buy durian for that amount.’ The boy pocketed the extra money and leapt out of the car, ducking down a back road to avoid the traffic police. After a few more rides he would take his morning’s takings down to the video parlours of Blok-M for a few hours, then return home in the afternoon around the time school was over with a couple of hundred rupiah left over. With his dad working in a bottle factory for Rp2500 a day less breakages, every little bit helped his mother and four sisters. Being a paid passenger on the 3-in-1 roadways beat carrying umbrellas in the rain for Rp100 a pop. Siska held a scented handkerchief to her face as they drove through the treelined streets of Menteng to Tina’s house opposite Suropati Park. Wahidin tooted; a guard saluted sightless at the tinted windows as they pulled into the driveway. Behind the security fence, Tina’s house was an older, smaller version of the houses of the Bukit Golf estate where Siska lived. Wahidin dropped Siska off at the door under a covered awning where a white-uniformed guard opened the door for her. ‘I want that smell out of the car by the time we leave here,’ she told Wahidin before stepping out. She felt dizzy on standing in the open air.

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‘Siska darr-ling,’ Tina purred, offering first one, then the other cheek for kissing. ‘Congratulations — how many months is it now?’ She looked slim and elegant, her hair pulled up into a flattering bun at the back of her head. ‘Just two,’ Siska took her arm and was led into the reception room where coffee and cream cakes were laid out on a table: ‘Specially for you, Siska. Pregnant women shouldn’t fast.’ Siska helped herself to a plate, looked over the cakes on display. Ignoring the durian creams, she settled for a chocolate and sponge confection. ‘I believe Ricky and Tommy are meeting today,’ Tina continued. Their husbands knew each other from their army days together and had maintained the connection in their later careers. ‘Are they? I can never keep up with Ricky’s meetings, he’s so busy.’ She used to tease him about how a motley bunch of old hawks like himself and Tommy Tekanli could have constituted the coordinating body for the maintenance of national stability, and whether they really cared beyond their own interests. Ricky blustered about keeping the revolutionary flame alight but she only laughed, asking him whether the revolution would be over before their baby was born so they could live a normal family life together, and he laughed too, at himself and the winning ways of his clever little mousedeer. Pregnancy made Siska hungry: she forked cake into her mouth, washing it down with Nescafe instead of the usual kopi tobruk. It did not taste like real coffee, but at least there were no grits to stick between your teeth. It was American and very Tina; and then she remembered: ‘How is your Amway business coming along?’ ‘Slowly so far. I’ll be arranging a party in the next few weeks to show off the latest products. Have some more cake.’ ‘Thanks,’ Siska took another slice. She cast her eyes around the room — smaller and darker than theirs at Pondok Indah — and noticed a framed certificate in a heavily carved meranti-wood display cabinet: ‘Is that new?’ ‘Yes, it’s Tommy’s latest acquisition,’ Tina beamed. ‘With a certificate of authenticity from the Presley Museum.’ ‘May I have a look?’ ‘Of course.’ In the centre of the cabinet, a glass shelf and rear mirror permitting all-round observation, lay a crumpled and stained blue terry-towelling hat. The hat was flanked on one side by a signed photo of Tommy shaking hands with the Vice-President and

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on the other by a signed and numbered certificate issued by the Hawaii branch of the Presley Museum. ‘What does it say?’ Siska could not read English. Tina translated for her: ‘Item number P09057 was worn by the King on his last holiday in Waikiki, as verified in the attached photograph taken in 1976. It’s asli.’ Siska nodded approvingly at the mention of authenticity. ‘It’s even got his sweat stains,’ Tina noted proudly. ‘And that mark,’ she pointed out a brown stain on the brim, ‘is from a chocolate ice-cream he ate on the beach. Look, the ice-cream’s even in the photo.’ The photo attached to the certificate showed a bloated Elvis Presley sitting on a towel wearing shorts, a collared T-shirt and the said hat; an ice-cream in one beefy paw and the other draped around a smiling young woman in a bikini, her hair pulled up in a beehive. With a thrill of disgust Siska noted he had hairy thighs. ‘Is that his wife Priscilla in the photo with him?’ ‘No,’ Tina said, her disapproval evident in her tone. ‘Do you think the VicePresident looks like Elvis? You’re younger, you might see it differently.’ Siska examined the photos for a resemblance, but it was difficult to tell when one was wearing a beach hat and the other a spangled army cap. The VicePresident’s white even teeth and boyish good looks made him look American. On the other hand, Elvis’ eyes, squinting in the sunlight of his last beach photo, appeared puffy, slightly oriental. Oddly, Tommy — caught in profile shaking the Vice-President’s hand, with his double chin and wedge-sideburns — looked more like the aging Elvis on the beach than the Vice-President. But that would hardly be complimentary. Although the Tekanlis were such Elvis Presley nuts you never could tell. ‘No, I don’t think so really. Your hair looks more like the girl’s in the photo though,’ Siska helped herself to another slice of cake. ‘Your hairdresser in Setiabudi is a pearl,’ Tina patted her helmet. ‘But — Siska, really — you should have warned me Chenny was a transvestite.’ ‘Never mind, I’ll line you up with a new hairdresser. Chenny will be moving on shortly.’ ‘Where to?’ ‘I don’t know. Ricky’s got big plans for Setiabudi and she’ll have to move.’ ‘Poor dear. Do you think the Ladies’ Auxiliary perhaps could help her with the move?’

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‘But she’s a man, Tina, and our charter is to help other women,’ Siska put down her plate unfinished. Perhaps it was Tina, perhaps her morning sickness, the cake was not agreeing with her. ‘Darrling, she wants to be a woman, isn’t that enough?’ Tina remonstrated. ‘Siska, are you all right?’ Siska fought back nausea: ‘I’m fine, really.’ ‘Come and lie down for a while then.’ Siska wondered what she would find upstairs, but nothing could have quite prepared her for the room, pink like lollies, where Tina and Tommy shared a bed. The practicalities of lovemaking in that sheeny lolly-space defied even her practised imagination. Smiling, Tina pulled back the pink chintz bedspread and plumped up the pink pillows. She tucked Siska in and pulled the pink taffeta curtains closed before withdrawing: ‘Rest now, I’ll check in on you in a while.’ Siska lay on her side in the pink-gloom, looking around in torpid fascination. No doubt Tina found the room romantic, but to her it was like being buried in a cream puff. Her stomach churned — she really should not have had a third slice of cake. ‘Tina!’ she called, her voice muffled in the soft furnishings. She called a second time, louder, more urgently, before adding her chocolate cake to the cream puffs. ‘Don’t worry — it’s dry-cleanable,’ her hostess said brightly from the doorway. ‘I’ll call the doctor.’

2.2 Ricky stepped up onto the podium in the courtyard of the Ministry for his inspection of the monthly commemorative parade. The 17th this month saw him at the Senayan office. He checked the time on his gold Rolex: almost 11. That gave him about an hour before his meeting with Tommy Tekanli in the basement of the Ratu Plaza shopping centre next door. ‘Assalam-alaikum: the peace of Allah be with you,’ Subianto greeted his boss. In addition to his white cap which marked him as a haji, a veteran of the pilgrimage to Mecca, he looked every bit the senior civil servant in his dark-blue safari suit with two gold pens in his breast pocket and a garuda badge on his lapel. He spoke into a walkie-talkie and it crackled a reply. ‘Wa-alaikum-salam,’ Ricky returned the Muslim greeting. A nominal Muslim himself, he felt uncomfortable and not a little concerned about Haji Subianto’s

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insistence on matters Islamic. Despite his lack of military experience, Subianto was a canny man: his pilgrimage last year mirrored a worrying upsurge in interest in Islam nationwide. ‘Here they are,’ Subianto said, as the truck containing the civil servants rumbled into the courtyard. The truck stopped and the rear flap dropped: men and women spilled out dressed in blue and white garuda-patterned batik shirts: the national symbol in commemoration of the national day. The majordomo, a man in his late 40s, led them in a series of star jumps and marched them around the podium, the patterned sleeves of their shirts flashing in formation. At a blast of his whistle they lined up in rows an arm-length apart to sing the national anthem. Ricky stepped down from the podium behind Subianto flicking unbuttoned sleeves and crooked name badges into order for inspection. As he examined the faces of the singing Ministry staff, his heart swelled with pride at his generation’s achievement in moulding, in the decades since independence, a unity from the enormous diversity of the archipelago: from dog-eating Bataks in north Sumatra to man-eating Irianese in the east. Ricky thought of his own teenage years and the brave boys and girls he fought alongside at Bekasi trying to regain the capital from the Dutch in ‘45. He looked towards the highway commemorating General Sudirman who, one tubercular lung freshly removed in surgery, was led into battle on a stretcher as an inspiration to his troops. These days Sudirman meant more as a strip of glass-tower bank buildings and five-star hotels. Its grand passage through Jakarta ended to the north in the welcome monument opposite the Hotel Indonesia, a bronze of a boy and a girl holding hands atop a fountain where little boys in ragged shorts fished with safety pins. There were plenty of challenges ahead for the new generation, but these men and women — Indonesians first and Bataks or Irianese second — would carry the torch into the future. Suffused with love for his extended family, he smiled up to a statuesque young woman whose height would in earlier years have marked her as Ambonese but now bore witness to the bigger and stronger new generation of Jakartan Indonesian. She reminded him of his own Sumitra of a few years earlier at university filled with youthful ideals, before his divorce and remarriage had soured her to her father. Ricky watched dewy-eyed as the woman sang: ‘Indonesia, I love you!’ and thanked the gods for his children’s good fortune in not being born in a time of revolution, where by today’s standards every gain was qualified, and the end came to justify the means. Could his children really blame him when, in a gesture of

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appreciation, his commanding officer had given Ricky and the other raggedy NCOs Dutch and Chinese land parcels seized by their revolutionary army? It would have been an affront to refuse. In any case, Setiabudi was just one village among Jakarta’s ten thousand villages. So he took the place of village headman, renting out the land in lieu of an army salary in the early years of independence. Later, attached to the army fundraising cooperative in the years before mainstream government revenues, Ricky appointed a village headman to do the job for him in Setiabudi. A solid soldier, Major Ricky lacked the entrepreneurial flair of talented subordinates like Lieutenant Thahir, who stitched together the first joint ventures with Japanese and American investors and local Chinese businessmen which covered salaries and running costs. Thahir was seconded to the state oil company Pertamina, but his star fell as quickly as it had risen: Ricky shuddered to think of Thahir’s multimillion dollar Pertamina legacy in a Singapore bank account, argued over for more than a decade by the two governments and his widow. He would not let Siska get caught in that kind of situation, especially with a new baby on the way. Setiabudi had provided his family with a income when they needed it over the years; and it would do so again now, on the eve of his retirement: its redevelopment would secure their future once and for all. ‘You have a very multicultural staff, Haji Subianto,’ Ricky whispered approvingly to his deputy as they mounted the podium. ‘Yes, most ethnic groups excluding Minangkabau. The Padang people of West Sumatra don’t seem to like to work for government, prefer to be their own bosses.’ ‘We can hardly force them to join in, can we?’ Ricky said, thinking how this very reluctance made the Padang restaurant next door a safe place to meet and discuss business with Tommy. As the Ministry staff finished the national anthem, Ricky applauded their efforts. ‘At ease!’ he addressed them with the military habits of a lifetime. ‘Thank you for your warm welcome. You have shown commendable discipline and coordination, and are a credit to Haji Subianto, the government and Indonesia.’ The guard opened the doors and Subianto ushered Ricky inside. Fielding greetings from smiling Ministry staff, Ricky walked stiff-legged to Subianto’s office where he pulled rank, sitting in the one comfortable chair in the corner, draping his arms along its armrests in an avuncular spirit of openness. Curious Ministry staff followed him to the doorway where they crowded staring in wonder. ‘Now,’ Ricky said, ‘tell me what your office has been working on recently.’

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Subianto rolled down a large map of Indonesia in which the provinces were marked in different colours. ‘Very impressive,’ Ricky said over his bifocals. ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a poverty map,’ Subianto explained. ‘Why?’ Ricky felt uncomfortable at exposing their nation’s soft underbelly to the public. ‘To help in targeting development funds. It’s compiled from the latest provincial returns. From 1990 figures in most cases, based on food consumption. As you recall, it’s a more meaningful indicator for us than western measures of per-capita income.’ Ricky looked at Subianto, mystified by the language of statistics. He was forgetting more things every day and this made him need to appear sharper, more involved than ever. ‘Too many people are outside the cash economy for any figure based on percapita income alone to be meaningful,’ Subianto reminded him. ‘Economic activity in Indonesia is under-reported.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Ricky said suspiciously. ‘Well, everyone eats.’ ‘Except Muslims in Ramadan,’ Ricky reminded him. ‘Terus,’ he instructed Subianto to continue. Subianto nodded and proceeded to talk to the papers. ‘The figures assume a subsistence diet of 2100 calories.’ ‘We eat on average how much per day?’ Ricky asked. ‘About 3100 calories to maintain bodyweight in sedentary employment.’ ‘Sedentary employment?’ Ricky sat forward. ‘And you’re talking about farmers, becak drivers, labourers getting by on 2100 calories a day?’ ‘Pak, you know this was the World Bank’s agreed figure, linked to continuing development assistance.’ ‘I know, I know,’ Ricky placed his bifocals on the table and rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation. ‘I’m just trying to second-guess the Minister. He’ll be asking questions like this when I give him these figures. And the press, Allah help us! What do the figures tell you? If you had never seen these before? If you didn’t know the detailed assumptions built into them?’ his fasting stomach growled at Subianto. ‘What is the current official figure on poverty?’ ‘About 15 per cent — 27 million. But that’s a different measure of poverty, using different statistical assumptions.’

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Ricky resisted the temptation to be drawn into debating methodology with his deputy. ‘So you are saying these new figures say we’re poorer. Is that right?’ ‘I’m not saying anything, I’m only giving you the numbers. What people make of them is not my concern.’ ‘What kind of civil servant are you?’ Ricky put his glasses back on and examined the papers on the table: the figures punched holes in his earlier vision outside of a strong and well-fed Indonesia. ‘It sounds like an awful lot of hungry mouths. Pro-rata that figure means almost two million living in poverty in the Jakarta region alone.’ ‘Jakarta’s different. It’s the national capital and centre for development and so there are proportionally fewer people living in poverty,’ Subianto replied. ‘True, there are still pockets of poverty in some of the older neighbourhoods. People living without electricity and water. I understand the police through their local guards network are identifying them so people can be resettled.’ ‘Easier said than done,’ Ricky said, recalling the views of his Setiabudi tenants on the prospect of resettlement. He would not be involving Tommy Tekanli otherwise: he was a thug, a loose cannon, and had only got worse in the years Ricky had known him; but Ricky could not think of any other way to resolve the impasse with his tenants. He looked at the figures again: ‘Haji Subianto, your figures here show 34 per cent of East Java living in poverty. What about all the schools, health centres, electricity, village improvement programs we’ve provided? These new figures make it look like we’re going backwards. What will the Minister say about that? Or the Governor in Surabaya for that matter?’ Subianto hung his head. Alarmed, Ricky looked at the East Timor statistics to see how the sharp stone in the Indonesian sandal fared: ‘Subianto, Tim-Tim says 83 per cent. Surely you mean 38 per cent?’ ‘Not by the provincial measurements.’ ‘But surely the figures are out of date? Population shifts and the like? That’s barely 15 per cent not in poverty. It’s the opposite to our published figure nationwide. It looks like an error, it must be an error.’ ‘They’re also 1990 figures.’ ‘But don’t you see? These figures undermine everything we’ve done there, at great cost to ourselves! Fix your figures!’ ‘Pak Ricky, I refuse to fiddle the numbers.’

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Just what I need, Ricky thought, a principled civil servant. He wondered what game Subianto was playing; whether this was part of some Islamic strategy to undermine their secular state. Breathing heavily until his trembling anger subsided, Ricky repeated his request: ‘Haji Subianto, these figures in their current form will not leave this office. Do I make myself clear? I’m ordering you to present the data in some other way.’ ‘Well,’ Subianto suggested, ‘we could use aggregates rather than percentages. By highlighting aggregate numbers — rather than percentages — living in poverty, TimTim would disappear. The population is not so great there.’ Ricky looked sharply at Subianto, but the face beneath the white peci was a blank slate. The wall clock chimed midday and Subianto stood up suddenly: ‘I must go now, Pak Ricky. Time for prayers. Will you join me?’ ‘I’d love to, but sadly I have another appointment with an old army colleague,’ Ricky put his arm around Subianto’s shoulders. They shuffled out the door in a show of unity, Ricky all smiles and handshakes for the Ministry staff.

2.3 Jacinta snapped awake at the creak of someone approaching along the boardwalks. Aunt Maria groaned, her breath rattling in her throat; Jacinta put her hand over her mouth to silence her. The feet continued past their plywood shack towards the batik factory further along. Jacinta relaxed and took the sponge from the bucket containing her homemade antiseptic of water and vinegar and wiped her aunt’s hands, the cuts like crucifixion markings oozing clear liquid through her palms. It concerned her the marks had returned; what had set her aunt off last night? She was worse than Jacinta had ever seen her. Aunt Maria had always been a little odd, very religious with her fasting and prayer cycles; the family put it down to the Josephite nuns who taught her. It had not been easy for Jacinta to persuade her to leave Timor. But after Federico’s death she could hardly leave the old woman behind: when all the surviving men had fled to the mountains, the women needed to rally together and support each other. It had meant another set of tickets, another set of papers, more bribes.

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In Jakarta, Jacinta had fallen in with Tobing, a Batak stallkeeper who let them share his home on the fringes of Setiabudi, near a number of other recent arrivals. She had never met a Batak before but that was the thing about life in the city. Tobing was a bit of a jokester but his heart was kind: he had been on the receiving end of army justice himself and was sympathetic to the Lay women’s misfortunes. Tobing even helped her get work in a factory making running shoes for the export market, and in gratitude she came to his bed. Not even factory work six days a week could dull the excitement of city life at first: in shopping malls which beggared the Chinese shophouses in Dili, she rode the escalators in Pasaraya and Glodok Plaza on Sundays marvelling at all the unaffordable chrome and gold and smooth black plastic. It did not cost anything to look. With the money she saved each week they built up the stock in his stall until she could afford to quit and work with him full-time. After recent discussions, it seemed as if the stall and everything else in Setiabudi would be forced to close and move on. Jacinta worried about their uncertain future, but today her aunt needed her more. She wiped a dribble of red betel juice from her aunt’s mouth with the edge of the sarong sheeting her body. Back home in Liquiçá the old women were addicted to betel, the mild narcotic headbuzz and slackjaw feeling brought about by chewing the red plug helping them through their daily routine. Even here women chewed it: Jacinta saw the tell-tale red stains of betel-spit on footpaths and the boardwalk. She had avoided it as it stained teeth; had she remained in Liquiçá she may well have taken up the habit herself, to dull the fear of living in an occupied zone. But they had left there, and would not be going back. Sniffing back memories, Jacinta felt her aunt’s faint pulse in her bony wrist. Above her elbow the flesh hung loose on a faded armband, tattooed at the time of her marriage to Uncle Martinho and her mestizo entry into their totem clan; it told a story from another world, where tattoos identified family lines and responsibilities. Jacinta had her own, a crocodile tattooed at the time of her father’s death which Tobing had warned her to keep covered: without an identity card it did not pay to draw attention to herself in Jakarta. She sponged her aunt’s sweating body, sluicing water along a large welt across her shoulder which the scapular seemed to be rubbing: she tried to remove the brown woollen necklace but Maria cried out as if in pain. It bore faded cloth pictures of St Simon Stocks looking to the Great Eye in the Sky and Our Lady of Mt Carmel atop the flames. The Josephite nuns had told Jacinta about these saints as well, but

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the saints had not helped her son Federico; her only son after the soldiers had finished with her. Leaving the scapular in place, Jacinta sponged Aunt Maria’s sagging breasts, the nipples large from breastfeeding, her belly wrinkled from childbirth and a lifetime of physical work. The wound in her side — seeping clear fluid like the marks on her hands and feet — seemed deeper than ever, as if it really penetrated her abdomen. Her heart racing, Jacinta eased her finger into the wound up to the second joint. A sharp knock at the door made her jump; Jacinta’s finger slipped and Aunt Maria groaned. Jacinta held her breath, hoping the person outside would go away. The door handle rattled once or twice and a husky voice called from outside: ‘I can hear you in there. I have some things for the old woman.’ Jacinta threw the sarong back over her aunt before opening the door squinting in the daylight; she was greeted by a young man approximately her own age wearing an oversize checked shirt loose over trousers and sandals. She had not seen him before. From inside Aunt Maria groaned again, the light from the doorway falling across her face. ‘Doesn’t seem to like the sun?’ the young man said familiarly, pulling his long hair in bangs behind his ears. ‘You had better let me in so you can shut the door for the old lady.’ He did not seem like a spy; Jacinta stepped back to let him enter. ‘Some of these will be good for bandages,’ the young man tipped the contents of his plastic bag out onto the woven floor mat where Jacinta had been sitting. ‘And some will doll up a pretty young thing like you. You look like you could do with a bit of cheering up.’ Fighting back a smile, Jacinta picked through the pile of clothes. Some were torn into strips and were useless for anything other than bandaging; others with only slight tears she could stitch up to wear herself. She held up a pink bloodstained miniskirt: ‘Where did you get this from?’ she asked nervously, suddenly aware she was in a closed room with a strange male. ‘It’s mine,’ the young man said. ‘She bled all over it last night. It’s ruined now.’ ‘What do you mean it’s yours?’ she confronted her would-be assailant. Grinning, the young man revealed brown and crooked teeth. Jacinta gasped. ‘You!’ Sleeping fitfully last night, expecting every creak of the boardwalk to signal Maria’s shuffling return, Jacinta opened the door just before dawn and was faced by the extraordinary sight of her aunt cradled unconscious in the arms of a woman in a

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pink miniskirt, beautiful and strong like an avenging angel. She thought she was still dreaming, that they had all died and gone to heaven to join Federico and the others, until the woman smiled, revealing brown and crooked teeth between her red lips, shattering the illusion and bringing her back into the reality of their Jakarta life. The woman had disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, leaving Jacinta to ponder what had brought her into contact with Aunt Maria. And here she was again now. ‘Call me Chenny,’ the young man said. ‘But my family know me as Chairil. She was so scared of the social worker van I couldn’t leave her at Jl Cianjur by herself. Pity about the skirt though. I was wearing it last night when I brought her home.’ ‘If you soak it the stains might come out,’ Jacinta offered. ‘I have a bucket here.’ ‘Don’t worry, I have others. Say, her hands are looking pretty nasty,’ Chenny tore the miniskirt into strips and dipped it into the bucket containing the bloody sponge. ‘You should get a doctor to have a look at her.’ ‘No,’ Jacinta said. ‘They’ll take her away from me if they find out. Just help me dress them.’ After bandaging Maria’s hands, Chenny lifted the corner of the sarong: ‘Any other cuts need dressing?’ ‘But she’s a woman,’ Jacinta protested, holding down the sarong. ‘Girl, I’ve seen plenty of bodies in my time,’ Chenny smiled knowingly at Jacinta. ‘Please,’ Jacinta looked into her eyes, fearful. She did not want this person seeing the other tell-tale marks of stigmata. You never knew how they would react. ‘You are shy!’ Chenny backed off. ‘Look, I know the nurses at the local health clinic, I go there for my regular checkups. What if I get one of them to drop in?’ Jacinta nodded; by the time a nurse showed up Aunt Maria would probably be beyond needing help.

2.4 Tucked away in a dark corner of Ratu Plaza’s basement, the Bundo Kanduang restaurant served — in Zainul’s opinion — the finest Padang food this side of Sumatra. Chenny rearranged a few bowls of spicy stews in the bain-marie, stirring the curries so the skinning sauces liquefied and freshened. The bain-marie was her Uncle Zainul’s pride and joy since he had bought it a few weeks ago. The concept of Padang food kept and served warm as if freshly cooked was a little risky, but something Zainul felt he had to do to keep up with the competition in the basement:

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‘California fried chicken? Can you believe it, these people eat battery chickens? What sort of progress is that for Indonesia? Give me free-range kalasan chicken, soaked in coconut milk, any day.’ Chenny polished the stainless steel exterior of the bain-marie until it shone and saw herself in its reflection the way Jacinta must have seen her this morning, a freak dressed in men’s clothes, a concession to relatives who would not understand. Zainul put another plate of fried chicken legs in the bain-marie, stopping to pick his teeth in the reflection. ‘Hsst, Chairil!’ Chenny looked up. ‘Get a look at her!’ he muttered, staring at a heavy-breasted western woman in a T-shirt and cotton pants entering the restaurant, followed by a tall male companion similarly dressed in poverty chic. Chenny made the sort of noises Chairil would be expected to make when a young white woman came into range. She glared at the couple as they dumped their grubby backpacks on seats, and wished California chicken on them. ‘What do you do for Idul Fitri, Chairil?’ Zainul asked her. ‘Oh, I usually spend it with friends here in Jakarta,’ she replied vaguely. ‘You’ve not been back home to Padang Panjang since you came to Jakarta?’ ‘No.’ ‘You’re not forgetting your culture?’ he asked sternly. ‘No, mamak,’ she replied smiling, using the Minangkabau term for maternal uncle. ‘It’s just that I’m still in my merantau.’ Zainul nodded: young single men were expected to merantau, to travel outside their community to make their fortune before returning home to marry. In Chenny’s case, the merantau provided a convenient excuse to get away and find herself. She had fled her family over five years ago. There were some, like Zainul, who never returned: they stayed away, ashamed of their lack of success in the rantau outlands, or — resenting the strictures of the Sumatran Queendom, where property inheritance was dictated by the female and not the male lineage — settled down elsewhere, turning their long exile into home. Zainul had married a Javanese girl and quickly fathered two children. The responsibilities of fatherhood and a Javanese extended family had kept him away from his homeland for many years until his divorce a few years ago, when guilt about lost time and a possible desire for a young bride of his own kind drove him back at Idul Fitri.

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Zainul had lived in Jakarta over half his life and yet he still identified as Minangkabau. His restaurant was named after Bundo Kanduang, the earth mother and legendary founder of Minangkabau, heroine of numerous legends she had heard as a child on her uncle’s knee before he was swallowed up by Jakarta. Under Minangkabau family relationships Zainul was a closer relative than her own father, who in turn was responsible for his sisters’ children. Even in his long absence, he sent presents and letters home through other relatives. And when as a confused teenager Chairil escaped to Jakarta, Zainul had helped his nephew settle into the capital. Born into a culture that elevated women, Chenny thought it only natural to want to be a girl. Her Javanese waria friends seemed strangely diffident about their transformation, leaving it only clothes-deep, baulking at the final irreversible Singapore option. They argued politics — that they were creating a third sex — or love — that operations were dangerous and unnecessary if you found a good man to look after you. But Chenny felt there was another reason: that deep down Lia and the others knew that to be male and Javanese — no matter how diluted on one or both counts — was the best combination for life in modern Indonesia. Sometimes she had nightmares of dying under anaesthetic but this risk was better than remaining stuck in her current transitional form of man–woman and ending up a tragic figure, the subject of legends like Siti Jamilah who poisoned herself for love. But unlike Siti Jamilah, Chenny’s legend — born a man, reborn in Singapore a woman — would have a happy ending. The love interest could come later: perhaps a good Minangkabau man like Zainul, bristling with moustached enthusiasm. Or — thinking of moustaches — maybe even that interesting magic garage man. Traffic noise from the street outside broke her reverie, as two men in dark-blue safari suits came into the restaurant. ‘How’s the rendang?’ Zainul called out from the kitchen. ‘Plenty left,’ Chenny called back, spooning coconut beef stew from the bainmarie into a bowl. ‘Big fish, these two. They’ll have the lot.’ Chenny spooned out fish curry, liver and heart stews into bowls. During Ramadan the Bundo Kanduang’s out-of-the-way location made it a favourite spot for private lunches; Chenny wondered what this pair’s guilty secrets were as the fatter one snooped under tables for hidden microphones or chewing gum. She put a few pieces of fried chicken on a plate and stacked the bowls up her left arm. Grabbing a rice

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bucket with her free hand, she wove hipless in sandals between tables to the far corner table they had settled on. The fatter one had upended the cutlery canister and toothpick jar all over the table and had squirted sauce from all the assembled sambal bottles onto a pile of napkins torn from the dispenser. He looked at her accusingly, his large triangular sideburns oddly familiar. ‘You want another napkin dispenser?’ Chenny asked, clearing a space on the table. Sideburns glared at her: ‘Why, what have you got inside it?’ ‘Napkins.’ ‘Thanks,’ his white-haired companion cut across him, ‘we’ll take another one.’ Chenny recognised the white-haired man with the watery eyes: her landlord in Setiabudi, she cut his brassy young wife’s hair. And then she remembered sideburns: ‘I earn steak money and she serves me hamburgers, can you believe it?’ he burped sambal into the close air of the parked car. ‘And then she won’t even do this little thing for me.’ Chenny mumbled sympathetically, her mouth full between the flaps of his unzipped fly, wishing he would stop talking and relax so it would be over. He fiddled with the radio dial until he found a station playing American music. ‘You like this music?’ he asked her, hand pressing her head between his thighs. She nodded. ‘Me, I like Elvis. Probably before your time.’ He seemed to want to talk. Chenny sat up, her hand taking over before the wizened tortoise-head completely withdrew into its shell. ‘What people don’t realise is I’m his twin brother.’ ‘I can see that,’ Chenny said huskily, rubbing his fantasies. ‘You can?’ he said, swelling with pride and more. ‘Wait — too rough!’ he cried. He leant over into the back seat of the car and rummaged in a box. ‘Try this,’ he said, ripping the cap off a sampler tube of lotion with his teeth and squeezing hard, its contents spurting into Chenny’s hands. Chenny massaged the lotion into her hands, warming it before touching naked skin. ‘Ready, General Elvis — or is it President?’ she said, massaging his ego. ‘Any kangkung?’ her landlord asked for the ubiquitous cooked green vegetable. ‘No sir, it’s all finished,’ Chenny lied softly. ‘Who’s eaten it all?’ sideburns snarled at Chenny; the same snarl as when she asked for payment last night.

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He dug into the box on the back seat and pressed a few sampler tubes onto her: ‘Take these instead. They should come in handy,’ he laughed sourly at his own joke. ‘And this, as a memento of the King,’ he handed her a lightning-bolt pendant. ‘Tender loving care,’ he said in English. After she got out, waiting for a taxi to take her back to the main drag, Chenny realised the tubes were the same as those given her by Ibu Tina. It was difficult to link this awful man with the lovelorn woman whose hair she had set yesterday. ‘I’ll go check,’ Chenny said, rushing off to the safety of the cooking area behind the counter before he could say anything. Thankfully her man’s shirt concealed her breasts. ‘Mamak, kangkung!’ she called out to Zainul. ‘But this was for us,’ Zainul looked forlornly at the small pile of raw greens he had put aside for their dusk meal together. ‘I think your big fish are starting to bite.’ ‘Why are they eating now anyway? They’re civil servants, they should be fasting too.’ Grumbling, he tipped the kangkung into a wok containing heated oil and tossed it with a slotted spoon, adding shrimp paste and fish sauce for flavouring and letting it bubble in the strong mix for a few minutes. When it had softened, he scooped the greens out into a bowl and poured the glazed brown sauce on top. Chenny took the bowl over to the table: ‘Kangkung.’ Sideburns was staring at her frowning as if beginning to piece together their connection; she raced over to the backpackers’ table where they had abandoned their meal. The woman pointed dumbly to the ones they had consumed and she totted them up. She pointed to a smear of sauce on the bowl of the mackerel curry, which gave away their sampling. If someone had sampled a dish they paid for it; Zainul was especially strict on this since he had got the bain-marie, as germs would simply bubble and multiply under its warm lights. She added the mackerel curry to their bill, ignoring their protests, and began stacking bowls as, male and female alike, hands dived inside trouser elastic searching for concealed wallets. Empty bowls stacked up her arm, Chenny left them to argue over money and continued to the kitchen. Zainul looked up from the sink: ‘You know, I’ve been back to Padang Panjang every year since my divorce, but the bain-marie is keeping me in Jakarta alone this year.’

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Chenny grabbed a dishcloth: ‘What about your children?’ ‘Already gone back to Panataran with their mother,’ he said sadly. Chenny thought of giving him some of the money she’d saved up for her trip to Singapore, but he was bound to ask how she had earned it. From what Zainul had been told Chairil the barber would not have access to that sort of money; not even with the bonanza of perming and curling before the warias’ Idul Fitri party, the only family who accepted and understood her as she was. She cruised the room for more dirty plates, picking up sauce bottles and paper napkin stands from empty tables. Stooping to pick up a fork from under the backpackers’ table, she overheard sideburns say to her landlord: ‘There’s no money for them without land title. The building materials can be taken elsewhere.’ ‘I still think we should offer goodwill on businesses if it will help shift people from Setiabudi.’ ‘You’ve offered them alternative accommodation on the city fringes kan?’ ‘But they don’t understand.’ ‘Which they have rejected. Leave the rest to my boys.’ Chenny noisily stacked chairs upside-down on the table, her mind racing. Tobing at the Prapat Foodstall yesterday had been worried about this. It was her home too. ‘Be careful what you say. There are spies everywhere.’ Chenny looked up to find sideburns looking at her knowingly. Did he know she was from Setiabudi? Or did he know she knew he knew about last night? ‘Udah?’ Chenny asked if they had finished. Stacking bowls, she added up the bill which she tore off and put on the table before him. Ricky put down the money for both — Tommy’s second freebie in 24 hours — and she retreated to safety behind the bain-marie. Her heart sickened as she thought of Lia facing middle age alone, and Jacinta and her aunt this morning: cold comfort already without being moved on again as well. Was it as bad as it sounded? Perhaps the sorcerer at the magic garage would know — he was working on those clippings tonight. ‘Could do with more like them,’ Zainul said from his soapsuds, watching as the men departed. Even in Jakarta, family ties still demanded respect; her lonely uncle was just as rootless and loveless at Idul Fitri as she and her waria friends. How would Zainul react, she wondered, if she came to him dressed as a woman on the holiday of forgiveness and compassion?

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‘Mamak?’ She was the only one who called him this in Jakarta. ‘Ya, Chairil?’ ‘Oh, nothing,’ Chenny lied.

2.5 Wahidin woke from a dream of eating to the sound of flies buzzing. Stiff-necked and grumbling, he got out of the Volvo and stretched his legs. Across the road in the park, a driver with slicked-back hair wandered behind a tree and undid his belt in the familiar half-squat motion. Others lounged around under the dappled shade of the fig trees or played cards under the guarding statue of the escaped slave Suropati: all waiting for their bosses in the large houses lining Jl Teuku Umar in Menteng. Wahidin took the feather duster out of the boot and flicked it over the duco a few times removing fallen leaves. He waved it defiantly at the dented rear door, challenging the tuyul to come out and make more trouble for him. Nothing happened, and Wahidin grunted with satisfaction: it would not do so as long as the durian was in place to protect him. Then with dismay he remembered Siska’s instruction. The tuyul must have whispered something in her ear in the back seat when he was watching the road. Wahidin hated having to obey a woman: it made him feel less of a man. His job was to drive Ricky around on business and he had objected at first when told Siska would need to be looked after as well. Now look at the dangerous position she wanted to put them in. No, a man should give the orders, not the other way around. She did not understand, not like Pak Ricky, who respected the old ways. Plus of course she was pregnant and it was to be expected that she would behave in a silly manner. Wahidin felt happy for Pak Ricky and offered Allah in prayer his own sufferings at the hands of Siska for the baby’s health. As a good Muslim, Wahidin tried to follow the five pillars of his faith. In addition to bearing witness to Allah and fasting during Ramadan, he made an effort to pray five times daily and to give alms to the poor. The fifth pillar of faith, making the hajj to Mecca, was — and seemed likely to remain — beyond his financial capacity. But, as the stallkeeper in Setiabudi said yesterday, Pak Ricky could afford to go; possibly some of his glory would rub off on his humble driver. Wahidin swatted flies away from the durian, looking and smelling somewhat the worse for wear after 18 hours unhusked. He leant over and tickled a drip off the

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edge of the husk, tearing away a small piece of pappy flesh. It felt warm and sticky in the sunlight, and left yellowy smudges on his finger. Ordinarily he would have licked his finger, sucking the taste away like a baby on a teat, but as he was fasting he wiped it on his trousers where it crusted yellow like semen. In this fasting month, the very sight of the durian was a constant temptation. Jiggling and drawing attention to itself, it drew his eyes from the road and the rearview mirror, and multiplied the blessings which would flow to him the longer he continued to resist its tuyul charm. He wrapped a plastic bag around the durian and left it dangling in place. At least this would reduce the smell while still keeping the car safe. The driver wandered out from behind the tree, pulling his pants up. ‘Hey, Volvo,’ he called to Wahidin, ‘what’s with the durian decoration?’ ‘It’s magic,’ Wahidin said, waving his duster over the Volvo like a wand, ‘to keep the spirits away.’ ‘You should have eaten it before it turned brown. Waste of good food, that.’ ‘But I’m fasting.’ ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’ the driver said. ‘If you haven’t eaten enough, driving around in airconditioning all day long you’ll get a cold. Or worse,’ he hinted darkly. Perhaps he was right: the tuyul might get to him after all, maybe even through the durian. But Wahidin resisted: ‘No, I need to fast.’ ‘Watch out then. You know what they say, when the durian are down the sarongs are up.’ The driver made the jiggling motion of the jaipong dance — ridiculous rather than sexy for his audience — and the others laughed. ‘Halloa, here she is, the answer to MY prayers!’ A woman in pink blouse and brown sarong with a basket on her hip sauntered across the park toward the assembled drivers: the jamu lady. She placed her basket on a park bench and began unpacking bottles and ingredients for her health drinks. Wahidin held back from the others crowding round for their tot of jamu. He recognised in the driver’s crude words the evil influence of the tuyul. He wondered how it had got to him; perhaps, in the absence of durian protection, it had jumped through the vehicle window and whispered in his ear while they waited outside. ‘Something to restore my manliness,’ a driver with pinched features said to the laughter of the other drivers. With a tired smile, the jamu lady took a golden bottle of rice stock and poured a little into her coconut shell into which she cracked a duck egg and added a pinch of powder. She shook it up in the two halves, her pink blouse

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burning under the weight of their stares, and poured the foaming frothy golden mix into a stubby glass. The eyes of the other men on him, the driver tried to drink it down in one gulp, but the thick froth coated his throat and forced him to take sips. ‘You’ll need another one mate,’ one of them quipped amidst more laughter. ‘Say, missy, make one for Pak Durian over there,’ another pointed to Wahidin. But Wahidin shook his head: jamu would warm his blood too much. He held back, watching her through the windscreen: she was barely older than the girls at the prayerhouse, but she mixed the bottles in her coconut half-shells like an old hand, her breasts jiggling like coconuts full of sweet jamu. She packed up her basket and walked sinuously up the road, Wahidin’s eyes like saucers following her progress until she had him sweating like the durian wedge in its plastic bag. Sobbing, he pulled out the ragged buku stensilan he kept under the driver’s seat: the photocopied backyard porno comic-book he bought in a moment of weakness from a kid in the traffic a month ago, and which had been burning sins into his mind ever since. Wahidin shoved it into his back pocket and headed across the park towards the communal toilet block, shimmering stink in the heat. Inside a khakiuniformed man with a mop sat on a wooden stool, oblivious to — or paralysed by — the stench. Wahidin threw him a Rp50 coin for use of the facilities and asked him to keep an eye on his car. The cleaner wandered outside and Wahidin clanged the door shut behind him. He pulled out the magazine and began to dream in his hand. He thought of the sweet jamu hidden under her pink blouse. And the girls leaving the mosque after classes, their modest white smocks and trousers topped with a pink veil like flamingoes. He had seen them wandering together laughing walking down a gusty laneway, breasts and thighs pressing against sheer fabric; tender green shoots of sweetness, swelling and fragrant. And the ripeness of Ibu Siska on the golf course as she swung the club above her head, her slim waist bent, her breasts pressing against her polo shirt and her thighs thrust forward, stretching the fabric of her skirt in the follow-through of her shot. Plump dangling pungent overripe, drooping just out of reach of his piston hand. Pak Ricky was a lucky man having such a young wife. He flipped through the cartoon depictions of sex. Between those legs. A beautiful wife. To be so close to her, so long, such — traffic — JAMS!

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ALHAMDULILLAH! Durian sap, creamy yellow and stinking ripe, clotted on the pages of the buku stensilan as the car-call sounded his name. ‘Hey!’ the cleaner yelled from outside. Wahidin hurriedly closed the buku stensilan and pulled up his trousers. He came out and opened the gate. The cleaner rushed in. ‘What’d you close that for?’ he said suspiciously. He sniffed the air. ‘What’s that smell?’ ‘Probably the shit and muck you’re paid to clean up dong,’ Wahidin snapped. ‘Give me another Rp100,’ the cleaner threatened. Wahidin pulled out the buku stensilan, its pages stuck together. ‘Here, keep the change,’ he flung it at the cleaner. ‘Or mop the floor with it.’ He wandered outside and blinked in the sunlight. Shit! there was Bu Siska waiting by the car. How could he look at her now? He ran over to let her in, feeling his sticky penis shrivel in his pants, watched by the other drivers. ‘Fasting doesn’t agree with him,’ one of the drivers observed. ‘Serves him right for not taking jamu,’ another replied.

2.6 Peering through a hole cut for a handle in the corrugated iron gates of the Blitar Magic Garage, Munin watched Wahidin’s tentative approach along Jl Setiabudi. The Volvo slowed as it passed the Prapat Foodstall and the prayerhouse and halted in front of Munin’s double gates. The wedge of durian still dangled from the rearview mirror, mesmerising the driver inside; it must be pretty ripe by now, Munin thought with a smile. He pulled the gates open a fraction before slashing the rooster’s throat and letting it run out voiceless onto the street, blood streaming through its black-andrusset neck feathers. It leapt onto the bonnet of the Volvo and flomped down dead before Wahidin. After this, Munin strolled out and removed the trembling Wahidin from the driver’s seat. ‘It’s a good sign,’ he said, not elaborating. Leaving the rooster on the bonnet, warm blood running spreading across the duco, he edged the Volvo into the yard and under cover of the open-walled shed. ‘You have the offerings?’ Wahidin nodded.

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‘Let me see them,’ Munin gestured to the bonnet where dark-red streams of rooster blood had already begun to set. Wahidin dug into his pocket and pulled out a package wrapped in banana leaf. ‘But how will I get the blood off?’ Wahidin piped up. ‘You won’t — it’s part of the magic.’ Frowning, Munin spread the grubby parcel out and studied it for what seemed an age. ‘Abon, eggs and a Dutch cigar like you requested,’ Wahidin explained nervously. One of the duck eggs had cracked and the bag of abon shredded meat had split, coating the sticky cigar like a long cylindrical lamington. Munin unhooked the plastic bag from the rearview mirror and held the browning piece of spoiling fruit by its string: ‘Repeat after me, “The durian weeps at the rooster’s blood, and flesh turns to smoke”.’ Wahidin recited the mantra, his voice quavering. ‘Tobing, lend a hand lah.’ The stallkeeper from next door wandered out of the shed. ‘I thought you said you never came here?’ Wahidin asked. ‘Oh, I help out sometimes after hours,’ Tobing replied vaguely. A male voice, whining and crackling, began the evening call to prayer from tinny loudspeakers mounted atop the onion-dome of the prayerhouse next door. A few moments later another started calling and shouting in the east. The first caller raised his voice in response, whining and crackling as the loudspeakers atop the local mosque were pushed beyond their limits. Now a child’s voice reciting the lesson in sing-song fashion came through on a third set of loudspeakers. ‘You can eat now, Wahidin. Here, have this,’ Munin offered him the durian from the car. ‘Allah forbid, I can’t.’ Wahidin looked as if he had seen a ghost. ‘You’re probably right not to eat it,’ Munin said, ‘the tuyul may still be lurking. We should leave it in the car until we’re sure we’re finished.’ ‘I’ll need the car tomorrow morning,’ Wahidin said. ‘I have to drive Pak Ricky to the marina, he’s going to the islands for the weekend with his family.’ ‘Come back just before dawn.’ ‘His wife doesn’t like the durian,’ Wahidin complained. ‘So you suggest I get rid of it because of his WIFE? Am I responsible for what happens then?’

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Wahidin followed Munin’s eyes to the jagged glass on top of the walls, silhouetted like witches’ hats in the western dusk-light. Munin put his arm around Wahidin’s shoulder: ‘You tell Pak Ricky and his wife why it’s necessary. Go now to your evening prayers before it gets any darker. The magic is strong tonight and I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.’ Whimpering, Wahidin ran down the darkening Jl Setiabudi towards the prayerhouse. After chaining the gates shut, Munin returned to the Volvo and their preparations. ‘You shouldn’t tease him about the durian,’ Tobing said, laughing as he chocked the wheels with bricks. ‘He doesn’t know any better.’ ‘I know, I know,’ Munin chuckled. ‘But it helps him feel safe.’ ‘Well, get rid of it for now, it smells awful.’ Munin threw Tobing the plastic bag which he rehung over the Volvo’s rearview mirror. Setting the gears to neutral, he waggled the steering wheel until it locked straight ahead and removed the keys from the ignition. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange, two accidents in as many weeks?’ Munin asked, scattering frangipani flowers picked in a nearby cemetery over the bonnet. Under cover of the tarpaulin, these would rearrange into patterns as telling as any fingerprint showing which spirit or spirits had come in the night. ‘So Wahidin’s a lousy driver when he’s fasting,’ Tobing replied flatly. ‘He’s not the only one.’ ‘No, the spirits must be trying to tell us something. What’s Pak Ricky up to?’ Munin cracked one of the duck eggs over the damaged rear passenger door and let its contents run down the glass. ‘He was playing golf with some bule when this happened.’ He took a few incense sticks and lit them, muttering over them and waving them over the car, and then placed them severally in holders at intervals around the supporting uprights of the open-walled shed. ‘Reminds me of a joke,’ Tobing cut in. ‘There’s this guy and he has a flash new car, so he calls in three religious leaders, a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk and a Muslim imam to bless it. The priest goes first and he splashes water over the car from his ciborium. The owner is impressed and gives him a tip. Then the monk chants, burns incense and claps his hands over the car. The owner gives him a bigger tip. Then it’s the imam’s turn — he pulls out a saw and starts cutting off the exhaust pipe. “What are you doing?” the owner asks. “Circumcising it,” he says.’

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Roaring with laughter, Tobing ran off to get the tarpaulin cover. Munin could not help smiling; he liked this rough diamond with his stupid jokes. A Batak from north Sumatra, Tobing had run a successful restaurant on Jl Asia-Afrika serving dog and pork to modern Muslims and Chinese as well as Bataks, until an international summit had required the roadway be widened into a boulevard: his restaurant and others nearby were flattened. Tobing was still convinced he missed out on compensation because he had served pork instead of dog to a crazy mean Batak soldier who looked like Elvis Presley. He scraped by these days, running his stall with Jacinta — or letting her run it for him — as he held forth on any topic under the sun, to anybody who would listen. Jacinta tolerated this, preferring it to his previous excesses of self-pity. Munin shook his head and took out the plastic bag containing hair clippings, given him yesterday by the pretty waria hairdresser. He sprinkled the clippings over the roof where they adhered to egg and some sprayed durian sap. ‘Just as well Pak Ricky isn’t here now,’ Tobing looked wonderingly at the Volvo, by now festooned fore and aft with dead animals, fruit, flowers, hair clippings, scraps of printed cloth and sundry soggy offerings. Together they draped the tarpaulin over the Volvo, taking care not to disturb the offerings. Munin squatted for a while on his hams, cracking his finger joints one by one, waiting for the banging to begin. He wondered where the pretty waria was now and who she was with. Strange he had not seen her around before. But there were so many new faces in the kampung these days. When Pak Ricky and the village headman allowed outsiders like himself to rent land in Setiabudi over 20 years ago remnants of the Dutch cash-crop rubber plantations were still being converted into ricefields for soldiers and their families. As the city boomed, office buildings sprang up along the major arterial roadways east and west: more work drew villagers to Jakarta, and Setiabudi abandoned ricefields for accommodating and feeding day labourers working on the city’s many construction sites. But those boom days were over for the kampung and its remaining residents scratched out a living much as he did. Tobing returned with two mugs of black treacly coffee and a couple of hardboiled eggs. ‘Eating part of the offerings helps channel the spirits into us so we can direct the repairs,’ Munin explained, cracking his egg by rolling it against a timber upright. ‘Got any salt?’ Tobing asked.

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‘Use the abon instead,’ Munin passed the bag of shredded meat. ‘Anything salty will discourage the spirits from making a permanent home in your body.’ Pak Turut had taught him this as an apprentice over 20 years ago, and he still followed his instructions religiously. BANG — BANG It had begun. Tobing put down his coffee and went outside to investigate. ‘Don’t touch the sheet!’ Munin warned him. BANG Munin meditated. He had drifted into garage work in the aftermath of the coup in 1965: his teaching position at the government primary school in Blora was terminated when a parent, dissatisfied with his son’s progress, identified Munin as a member of the local chapter of the Indonesian communist party. He was not a member but had merely taken an academic interest in the historic third rise of communism in Java in the twentieth century. However, three times was enough: the army were determined to share power no longer and to ensure a fourth time did not occur. Many of the poor farmers and their families, who responded to the communists’ call for a better deal for the little people, did not live to see their land appropriated by local military units. BANG He watched as his friends, other small-town intellectuals, teachers and government officials, got picked off one by one. Two of his fellow teachers identified as organisers were rounded up in the night by Muslim students, taken to the river, stabbed and decapitated, their heads placed on poles at each end of the bridge as a warning to others. After his brother-in-law disappeared, his bloated body found later caught on rocks in a bend of the choked red-flowing river, Munin took over the garage to provide for his sister and her children. And then one night he fell victim to the stories of a rival garage operator, his family link a sufficient excuse in the frenzy of reprisals. BANG In the name of the republic, the military smashed down the front door and dragged him out, bundling him into a truck filled with other citizens. Some he knew were party members; others were Chinese small businessmen he hardly ever spoke to. He felt a certain clear-headedness about his arrest; which wore off as the bruises from his beating swelled and softened on the bumpy ride. The truck stopped once: the Chinese and a few others were ordered out. Soldiers, youths with acne and

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wavering dark eyes which betrayed them as his former students, stayed with them as the truck moved on. The truck dropped the remainder off at the local prison, shut behind bars. BANG Although he didn’t know it at the time, Munin would spend over two years in jail without charge, without trial, without contact with his family. He took heart in the stoic example of his hero, the disgraced former President Soekarno — friend of farmer Marhaen — who was kept under house arrest and of whom little news was heard after the coup. BANG The story of farmer Marhaen was a favourite at President Soekarno’s Independence Day speeches: how one day while an engineering student at ITB, the Dutch technical college, he went for a walk in the hills above Bandung and chanced across a farmer tilling the land. ‘Almost ready for harvesting,’ Soekarno said approvingly. The farmer continued to till the rich volcanic soil. ‘Your crop looks good,’ Soekarno tried again. ‘Not my crop,’ the farmer replied. Dapper in his white suit, Soekarno claimed in his speeches to feel an affinity for his brother farmer mud-caked in shorts and a coolie hat: ‘Tell me bung, who owns the land you’re working?’ ‘It’s mine,’ Marhaen leant on his tiller, stretching his aching back. ‘Your tools?’ ‘Mine too.’ ‘You must be doing well then.’ ‘Most of the crop goes to the Dutch, and what’s left is barely enough to feed my family,’ Marhaen answered bitterly. And from this meeting, Soekarno intoned, he had developed Marhaenism, his model of national socialism, where the little people owned their own means of production: worker capitalists who through their own ingenuity and independence would help the country to develop and prosper. Freedom for all! BANG Like so many others, the military had nothing on Munin and prisons were overflowing: he was released and made his way back to Blora. But his sister and her children had gone: thinking he was dead, they left for Surabaya shortly after the

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garage was taken over by cronies of the local military. Munin followed his family’s by-now cold trail to Surabaya but it was hopeless. BANG He needed work, but his options fresh from prison were limited. He took a job below decks in the sordid engine room of an inter-island steamer, a place his youthful schoolteacher’s imagination had fancied closer to hell than any other on earth, until the killings and his prison experiences dramatically revised his opinions. He drifted for a number of years through the eastern seas, stopping over in the small ports of a country he had increasing difficulty recognising as his own the further east he went. Singaraja and Mataram were vaguely familiar from the swell of Javanese there, but Ende was full of Catholics, nuns and priests in their black habits and their Flores parishioners in their parti-coloured robes; Waingapu in Sumba teemed with animist warriors on horseback, their saddlecloths telling stories of kings who hung their enemies’ skulls on trees, a reminder of the Blora river bridge a few years earlier. BANG In the late afternoon harbour-front sun of Portuguese Dili, Munin sat around on the beachfront with mestizos, teary-drunk on duty-free rose wine, thrilling his companions with stories of Soekarno: the big brother who took on the Dutch and won, who took on the Americans and English and Australians over West Papua and Malaya. Over more wine to wash down a stew of caldadeiros and salada, his companions revealed their own totem gods, tattooed on flesh or carved in wood, singing their own creation myths; and spoke of their desire to control their own destiny as well after the Europeans left. BANG He traded while in exile, as befitted his island’s genius: the wooden totems and textiles, telling of eastern myths and beliefs once too savage for his Javanese mind, he resold in exchange for food and what passed as love in towns. The banging had stopped under the sheet: Munin raised his head. Little had changed in 20 years: he was lonely then, he was lonely now: lonely since he had forgotten how to trust. He stretched, his back stiff from the beam he had been leaning against all night. The sky was beginning to show pink in the east. Tobing lay curled up nearby. If he and Tobing were outsiders, how much more so the pretty waria with her heartshaped face? He rubbed his cheek and felt the spikes of bachelorhood, reminding him to shave before meeting her tonight.

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He crushed the kretek stub into the dirt alongside the butts of others he had smoked in the course of the night, and lifting it slowly, peered under the tarpaulin. The deep scratches on the door had disappeared as expected. But the hair clippings were another story: arranged into one of the arcane warning patterns Turut had taught him. Munin whistled: who was the waria’s client to have produced such an image? He dropped the tarpaulin and shook Tobing by the shoulder: ‘You’d better wash down the car before Wahidin returns, sleepyhead.’

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3.1 RICKY STEPPED OUTSIDE into the courtyard and sniffed steaming bitumen; heard the throb and whine of dangdut music in the driveway as Wahidin in his singlet washed the car. It boosted his spirits for the weekend fishing trip ahead. ‘Selamat pagi pak,’ Wahidin greeted his boss, squeaking a chamois across the Volvo’s duco. Ricky squinted at the rear passenger-side door which had been scratched at the golf course last Thursday. It looked okay, nothing you would notice at a few paces. ‘You picked it up from the magic garage this morning, kan?’ Wahidin nodded. ‘Hear anything while you were in the kampung?’ ‘What sort of thing pak?’ ‘Never mind.’ Ricky was beginning to wonder whether there really was something wrong with the car. The second repair in as many weeks, it seemed to be causing him trouble, like a kris dagger which did not suit its owner. If so, these small scratches were only the beginning: a kris which did not fit with its owner could render them unwell or even kill them if they failed to act on its subtle message to divest themselves of it to someone more appropriate. But to whom? In the aftermath of the summit other senior government officials were also given cars and apart from

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the riots at Lebak Bulus where a judge’s was overturned nobody else seemed to be having any problems with theirs. Perhaps it was not the car itself; but if the spirits were trying to warn him something else in his life was wrong, Ricky was still in the dark. Siska and his son Mulya appeared, talking and laughing together. With his black moustache and dark gleaming eyes he reminded Ricky of a taller, more confident version of himself when young: his white teeth flashing were evidence of better nutrition and opportunities. ‘Siap?’ Ricky asked if they were ready to go. ‘Siap!’ Mulya stood to attention and saluted his father to his stepmother’s laughter. Ricky hopped into the front seat beside Wahidin, leaving the rear to his wife and son. ‘What’s that awful smell?’ Mulya exclaimed as the car pulled out. ‘Wahidin?’ ‘Pak Munin said the spirits are very strong this time,’ Wahidin explained. Ricky looked at the wedge of rotting durian sweating and dripping inside a plastic bag hanging from the rearview mirror. It looked as if its sweetness was turning to alcohol. ‘Wind down your window, son, and get some fresh air.’ ‘You just encourage Wahidin’s superstitions,’ Siska accused her husband. ‘Surely he doesn’t believe that village nonsense,’ Mulya chimed in. ‘He’s too scared and superstitious not to,’ she joked. ‘That’s why he’s a driver and will always be a driver.’ ‘Siska!’ Ricky said sharply. Wahidin remained silent, guilty. It was a just punishment for his weakness yesterday. But he would be redeemed, when the car was finally fixed. ‘If it helps him to drive safely, so be it,’ Ricky terminated the exchange by hitting the window button on the front console. His finger felt sticky and he noticed the dashboard was covered in drip marks. He sniffed his finger and licked it to make sure: the aldehyde smell was unmistakably durian. It would be extremely difficult to remove from the leatherwork. ‘Must have happened overnight, boss,’ Wahidin chirruped. ‘If we’re going to be stuck in this smelly car,’ Siska complained from the back, ‘we should go to Bogor instead for the weekend. It’s much closer.’ ‘Siska, we can’t go fishing at Bogor.’ ‘But we could play golf there,’ Mulya chimed in.

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‘Not so easy — your father’s scared of the spirits at the golf courses around Bogor,’ Siska giggled to Mulya across the back seat. Even Ricky chuckled at this, pleased to hear Siska and his son getting on so well. He felt happy to feel a family around him again, especially with the new one on the way. Since the divorce, he had little contact with Mulya. Hopefully this weekend together marked an acceptance of his father’s new life with Siska: the end of Mulya’s needless insecurity about being disinherited. He turned on the radio, dozing as they sped along the outer ring road towards the marina. The island weekender was one little reward for his lifetime of service. The sound of coins rattling in the ashtray woke him as Wahidin paid for the marina carpark. They wound slowly past the Hai-Lai Club and the golf course; past Fantasy World with its waterslide, ferris wheel and shops; and along the pebbly beach littered with the still-sleeping bodies of homeless Jakartans. An old Chinese junk, its bow stove in as if rammed by the giant marlin of his dreams, listed badly at anchor in the harbour. After stopping at the marina gateway, Ricky stood by and watched as Wahidin unloaded the car. The crew carried luggage as the weekenders strolled along pontoons between craft to their cruiser. Mulya whistled when he caught sight of the walkaround waiting for them, fuel drums lashed to its foredeck. ‘Step aboard and look around, son,’ Ricky offered. He followed his son’s admiring eyes to the four parallel 200-horsepower engines emitting a low throb: ‘As much power as a bus, but fewer passengers.’ Mulya nodded, bored already, and went below decks. ‘We’ll be back here tomorrow afternoon. Wait for us lah,’ Ricky called out to Wahidin as the cruiser edged away from the marina into the brown-water channel. ‘Not if he’s still got that durian inside,’ Siska said, covering her nose. ‘It’ll be safer to catch a taxi.’ Shaking his head, Ricky gingerly climbed the ladder to the helm, his knees stiff with age. Mulya was already up on the bridge examining the controls: ‘You’ve even got a fishing computer,’ he said admiringly. ‘We’ll be stopping en route for a backup as well.’ ‘What sort of backup?’ ‘You’ll see,’ Ricky said teasingly.

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Along the bank to their left were tell-tale signs of the adjoining kampung community waking up: a pretty young woman, squatting over the water with her sarong rucked up around her waist, saw the cruiser and waved smiling, unconcerned at their intrusion into her morning reverie. A couple of kilometres to sea the city water, acrid and brown, reverted to blue. Ricky eased the throttle full down and the cruiser bounced across the windchop of the sea, and Mulya stuck his nose into the salt breeze like a dog. ‘See the bagan?’ Ricky yelled, pointing out small specks on the horizon. As they approached they made out the small bamboo pyramids of the sea-gypsies’ fishing pontoons. First one, then several, then scores of the pontoons appeared on the waters around them. ‘They’ve been fishing these waters for thousands of years,’ Ricky yelled over the roar of the wind. He slowed so they could get a better look at one as they passed it. Ancient and inscrutable as pyramids, the square fishing platform was supported by a lattice of bamboo poles fathoming 30 metres to the sandy bottom; above the waterline tips of bamboo poles were lashed together with bamboo strips or more recently synthetic rope, framing the sun-sheltering hut in the eye of the pyramid, where fishermen and their families slept. A small boy waved from the edge of the platform as they rumbled past. ‘Don’t their children go to school?’ Mulya asked. ‘Of course,’ Ricky said. ‘They go to school on the islands. Their parents take it in turns, a few nights at a time, to stay on the bagan fishing. Think about it, Mulya. If you were one of these kids, would you rather be a fisherman or a factory worker when you grew up?’ Mulya grunted and Ricky smiled. He had saved his son from choices like this. They passed another pontoon where a fishing trawler berthed. ‘Selling their catch to Jakarta,’ Mulya said. ‘Or topping up their own empty iceboxes,’ Ricky quipped. The numbers of pontoons dropped off as they got further away from the coast. Now the first islands of the southern archipelago appeared, small sandy cays covered with palms, some bearing huge television aerials. They slowed at one of the larger islands and pulled in to the wharf. Children in faded T-shirts jumped up from fishing to greet the vessel. ‘Is this where we’re staying?’ asked Mulya. ‘No, this is where we collect our computer backup. Pak!’ Ricky called out to a figure squatting at the back of the jetty like a temple demon. It stood up stiffly: a little 68

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sun-weathered man in too-large shorts, an overlarge hat tied like a sun-bonnet with a piece of string. He flipped the brim of his sun-bonnet up and looked unsmiling at the three weekenders before stepping aboard. Ricky handed over the controls to the captain and sat up front with his son. ‘He’ll direct us to the best places to fish.’ ‘By magic?’ Siska asked her husband, winking at Mulya. ‘By his experience and knowhow. Although it seems like magic sometimes.’ ‘So what’s the fishing computer for?’ Mulya asked, irritated. ‘A backup to the old fisherman. In case he couldn’t make it this weekend.’ A canny old man was better than a computer any day, Ricky thought to himself.

3.2 They had arrived an hour or so ago. After bathing, Siska lay back, enjoying the cool breeze of the ceiling fan on her still-moist skin. ‘Not fishing today?’ she asked Ricky, beside her on the bed. ‘Rest first, darling. I’m getting too old to rush around,’ he murmured. ‘Not too old for me,’ Siska said, grabbing him and wrestling him down across her. They fought laughing for a while until their muscles relaxed into caresses. With her eyelashes Siska butterflied his cheeks as his hands slid down her sides and clenched her buttocks through her twisted sarong. She wrapped her legs around his thigh, grinding her belly into his leg but just as suddenly the tension eased off and he reverted to cuddling. ‘What is it?’ Siska asked, frowning. ‘Nothing — I’m just worried about the baby.’ ‘I’ve told you, darling, it’s lovely and safe inside, we can’t harm it if we’re gentle.’ But the moment had passed: Ricky lay back, his hand resting on her thigh. Still, they had all weekend. Siska stroked the furrows of city-worry from Ricky’s brow until she heard a light snuffling snore. She eased herself out of his embrace and his arm fell across the warm imprint of her body in the cotton mattress. Siska wandered into the bathroom where a tiled watertank stood, a poor substitute for hot showers. A bedroom was much the same anywhere, but bathrooms were the real markers of civilisation. She peered inside: no goldfish. As a child her mother had kept goldfish in the bottom to eat algae and any mosquito larvae which may have bred in the still water, as well as providing a last-minute meal if the market was sold out. These days chemicals kept the water clear and free of bugs. 69

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Scooping with her hand, she remembered her American lover in Bandar Lampung, who thought the watertank was a kind of bathtub and hopped into it, spilling water everywhere and fouling it for her. But that was before Ricky. Siska wriggled into her costume, wondering how much longer she would fit into it. She tied the sarong back around her waist. Walking barefoot through the fly-screened open living area speckled with flakes and dead insects from the thatched roof — someone would come to sweep it later — Siska put her sandals on at the doorstep. She passed the wharf and the cruiser where the crew fished with lines off the end, and continued along a line of coconut palms. Her sandals crunched agreeably on the ground coral path crisscrossing the small island. Choosing a track away from the island fringe, the foliage rapidly thickened and darkened: leafy creepers and trees crowded out palms and the moist humus underfoot muffled her footfall. At one point a log had fallen across the path and she had to clamber over, flicking off ants that clung to her sarong; brambles scratched her bare shoulders. She heard a whooping bird-call from the leaf canopy above and the rustle of creatures in the undergrowth. As she caught her breath to listen, the rustling stopped; at first all she could hear was her own heartbeat but she gradually discerned a low throbbing hum which did not sound animal. She thought of turning back but her path was blocked by the fallen tree, so she continued along the path towards the noise and soon heard the tinkling of water. The foliage thinned as rapidly as it had set in and she stumbled blinking into a clearing containing a number of low concrete tanks not unlike swimming pools. The tanks were arranged in rows in the clearing and were aerated by piped water pumped and sprinkled at regular intervals onto the water surface: this explained the plashing noise she had heard in the darkness. She looked inside and saw nothing in the brine until something moved on the concrete bottom. She looked more closely and made out the spindly legs and feelers of an immature prawn. Its internal organs were visible through its translucent shell. Its pretty feelers waved and she made out another, then another; the tank was full of shimmering young prawns. She went to the next tank where the prawns, beginning to show green tiger stripes of maturity, warily kept their distance from each other. Another tank was empty of water as if it had been recently harvested: and she remembered Ricky had told her about the prawn hatchery on the island. She felt oddly sorry for the prawns: suspecting each other but threatened by a common enemy in the hungry tourists of the nearby island resorts. Siska found a coral path and continued clockwise around the island. Sunlight filtered through the palms on the eastern side of the island and she came to a small

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hut where they would eat this evening. She didn’t want prawns for dinner. If the crew failed to catch anything they could still make a meal out of leftover canned duck and rice, although it would not be up to Mulya’s high standards if the fuss over last night’s dinner was any indication. He was a funny one, Ricky’s son; her stepson although she was only a few years older than Mulya. Her feet crunched on the coral path and a breeze from the islands across the channel rustled the dry fronds of the palms. Fallen coconuts, split open revealing their moist wombs inside, littered the path. Feeling flushed, Siska paused and looked around: she could hear someone talking in the clearing at the southern end of the island. She took her sandals off and crept along the path hidden by the numerous low-lying palms. These palms were smaller than coconut palms, with aerial roots drooping downwards, their nubbly ends like circumcised penises. Under the shade of the spreading palm fronds, Mulya lay back on a banana lounge talking into a mobile phone. Siska wished she had a camera to capture him framed by the penis-roots. Pretending she had not seen him, she stepped on to the sandy beach. She pulled the front flap of her sarong between her legs and tucked it into the waistband behind: makeshift shorts to keep the fabric dry and shroud her hips as she splashed in the clear water. ‘Going swimming?’ he called out. Siska turned and feigned surprise to find Mulya on the beach a few metres from her. ‘Thank you but no, it’s too hot now and I might get burnt,’ she replied, knowing the weakness of this argument as she faced him in the sun. ‘You can have my T-shirt,’ he offered, pulling it over his head as he spoke. She could not help smiling at his crude attempt at gallantry as he offered her his Hard Rock Cafe Jakarta. Her eyes cruised the smooth muscles of his strong arms and bare chest, hairless save the dark grizzled curls ringing his nipples. The younger generation were much better built than their fathers. He stepped into the water closer to her: ‘What have you done to yourself?’ Mulya ran his fingers along her shoulder and upper arm where the bramble scratches had risen in red welts, his fingers hesitating before curling around her arm and cupping her flesh in his smooth office worker’s hand. ‘Does it hurt?’ ‘A little,’ Siska pouted. ‘I have some antiseptic cream back in my cabin,’ Mulya offered. His other hand touched the hollow of her shoulderblade and made her shiver as she remembered

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another sandy beach, another weekend: sweat trickling down their salty bodies as they rested for a while together, sticky in completion. ‘A woman in your condition and all,’ his fingers grazed her tender belly. Siska pulled away from Mulya: ‘I’d better get back to your father.’ ‘Stay, he’ll be asleep for hours yet.’ ‘Mulya, we’ve got to stop.’ ‘It’s mine, isn’t it?’ Mulya looked at her, his eyes the same colour as his father’s but dry and hard with the flinty confidence of youth. Siska flushed, looked to the water between them; saw his reflection from below. She shook her head. ‘But Dad’s too old,’ he protested. ‘He’s not.’ ‘That’s disgusting.’ ‘Not half as disgusting as what we’ve been doing. It’s almost incest.’ Mulya gripped her roughly by the arm, hurting her: ‘I don’t care, stay with me.’ Siska glared at Mulya, refusing to give him the satisfaction of showing her pain: ‘Your father would care if I told him about us.’ ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ ‘Try me. He might divorce me, but he’d disinherit you.’ ‘Bitch,’ Mulya released her arm. ‘You’d better go look after Dad then.’ ‘See you for dinner then,’ Siska gave Mulya a chaste kiss on the cheek before collecting her sandals. He was his father’s son really. As she retraced her footsteps along the path, she thought how lucky it was she had not known Ricky in his callow youth.

3.3 It was getting dark outside: the video of GI Blues had finished and the television had switched to the news station. Tina lay asleep under his arm, snoring softly. With a great effort Tommy raised his dead arm to check the time: a few minutes to the hour. He should play the video to his boys when they arrived. There was always something to learn from an Elvis movie. His films covered the whole range of life experiences, from a cowboy to a rocker to a rebel to a lover to a family man. The good girls always won him over in the end, but the bad girls were more fun, tantalising him, demanding his attention.

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Tommy stretched for the remote control on the bedside table, before the community service announcements began, but his arm was pinned under Tina. Gritting his teeth, he watched as a woman carrying a basket brought her peasant husband his lunch in the fields but before she permitted him to eat gave him a cake of soap and told him to wash his hands. ‘With any luck it’ll foul his rice paddies,’ Tommy snorted, wriggling out from under Tina and zapping the television. Massaging his distended belly, he went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet. The Elvis-burger — triple-decker meat patties, bacon, cheese and mayonnaise — sat in his stomach like a stone; no wonder the King died at 42 after eating these for a year solid. It was as if the King had forgotten his own motto, which hung on their bathroom wall in the form of a display plate from the Gracelands shop for these thoughtful times: ‘When taking care of business, be good to your fellow man, practise mental and physical discipline, avoid constipation’. It had hung in the lounge room until a dictionary check enforced its removal to the privacy of the bathroom. Tommy grunted and strained: If Elvis could guide him in this most mundane of activities, how many other areas of his life benefited from his homespun advice? They visited Gracelands on a free weekend during one of his American defence cooperation training courses. It felt good to be among a crowd of ducktails from all around the world. In the gardens at Gracelands, they read the inscription on his tombstone: Elvis Aaron Presley 8 January 1935 – 16 August 1977 You gave yourself to each of us in some manner You were wrapped in thoughtfulness and tied with love It did not make much sense to them with its funny conjunctions of words but they were sure it was full of high sentiment: moist-eyed, Tina copied it into the Hermes notebook Tommy had bought her at Bloomingdales. In the house proper, Tommy and Tina gasped at the King’s bedroom: ‘It’s like the President’s guest room at the national palace,’ Tina whispered, ‘only the bedspread there is purple not green.’ In the gold-record-lined music room with its three televisions so Elvis could keep an eye on all the stations at once, Tommy wondered what kind of intelligence officer Elvis would have made had he remained in the army instead of being discharged in 1960.

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But even this failed to budge the burger; Tommy gave up after a few attenuated farts. He gulped a cocktail of wheatgerm and vitamin pills from plastic bottles on the vanity shelf to try shifting his load later. Looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he ran a scented comb through his hair and noted with concern some grey was showing at his temples. He would have to touch it up again. Although Elvis had not lived long enough to go grey, he had dyed his hair black from its natural brown. Perhaps, Tommy thought, he should try Tina’s new hairdresser in Setiabudi: she had seemed happy with her. Although she would be moving on soon, now Ricky had as good as given him the green light. Tommy went into the study to wait for the boys to arrive. He sat in the last traces of afternoon light, listening to his breathing, absorbed in being himself. As a Batak, Tommy had to overcome the obstacle of his north Sumatran origins in a Javanese-dominated political culture to get to where he was today. Boyishly goodlooking with his dazzling white teeth and high cheekbones, he had been one of the more popular soldiers in his battalion, keeping the men entertained with his singing and guitar-playing. His similarity to Elvis had long been a joke in camp: his clan name Tekanli, when rendered into English, was ‘press’-li — Presley. At first he thought it was simply because music was in his blood — the Bataks were the great minstrels of Indonesia — but his investigations suggested more. Tommy had long been a fan of Elvis’ music, but it was not until some years after the King’s death on 16 August 1977 the first clue to their real relation revealed itself. Like millions of grief-stricken fans across the globe, Tommy tried to make sense of Elvis’ death. The pain grew more as Tommy sobbed tunes every anniversary the day before appearing at parades on the 17th, Indonesian Independence Day. It won him a lot of admirers in the armed forces, who saw his tears and baggy eyes as a shining example of the proud and strong nation weeping for the souls of the young innocent who had sacrificed their lives for their country. One year, Tommy stayed awake all night drinking and singing Elvis songs: Elvis and Independence Day blurred into one and he realised that while it was still the 16th in America, it was already the 17th in Indonesia. He knew then, with a thrill of cold excitement and dread destiny, that the spirit of Elvis lived on somewhere in Indonesia. The more Tommy found out about Elvis the more parallels he found with his own life which held good across cultures, across languages, across opportunities. While at first he didn’t believe in reincarnation, through his research Tommy grew dimly aware that some preordained higher order seemed to have linked his spirit with Elvis. Born

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on 8 January 1935, Elvis was the younger of twins, his elder brother stillborn. Tommy was born 10 months later in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra; at that time a town at least as disadvantaged as Tupelo, Mississippi. Nothing said the Indonesian Elvis had to be Javanese; in fact it made more sense he was not: the original Elvis himself had been an outsider, a white boy from the deep South singing black songs. The logic of choosing a Batak body for his stillborn twin brother’s spirit became more obvious over time as Tommy’s and Elvis’ lives paralleled each other. Their fathers were jailed while the spirit brothers were still toddlers: Mr Presley for fraud, and Tommy’s dad by the Dutch in the dying days of colonialism. Imprisonment had a huge impact on both families: the Tekanlis fell on the charity of relatives to see them through. The Presleys, dirt-poor and doubly disadvantaged by living far from the tropics, moved from Tupelo to Memphis where they were assigned a cold-water flat by municipal welfare. It was this cold-water flat where Elvis learned to play the guitar, an eighth birthday present from his parents who could not afford the bicycle he wanted. What would have happened if they could have afforded the bicycle? Tommy shook his head in the dark: even now it did not bear thinking about. Elvis loved his guitar, played it for all he was worth, but as a poor boy needed a day job: he trained to be an electrician. So too Tommy, after he joined the national army. Elvis abandoned his electrician’s career forever after he cut a demo record as a gift for his mother and was discovered: he hit the Tennessee backroads with a support band uncannily like the standard Batak combo of two guitars, double bass and ukulele. In 1958, the year of the regional rebellion in Sumatra in which Tommy fought on the side of the Jakarta government, Elvis was drafted to bootcamp in Bad Neuheim in West Germany as part of the American occupation forces. There he met Priscilla, the 14-year-old daughter of his base commander. Tommy’s luck with women came later with Tina, the youngest daughter of the commanding officer of the Trikora special forces restoring West New Guinea to the fold of the republic. She was only a girl herself and he also had to wait for her to come of age before he could marry her. After his role in Soekarno’s botched ‘Crush Malaysia’ campaign which saw his troops attacked and killed by Australians in Borneo — his animus towards Australians remained with him — Tommy was reduced to a series of administrative jobs. But like Elvis, whose 18-month army sojourn put his music and acting career on hold and

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filled him with doubts about ever coming back, Tommy bounced back with his fatherin-law’s support and influence. But first he had to overcome his morbid fear of flying, another reason why he joined the army rather than the glamour airforce. Elvis was scared of flying at first so he travelled by bus on tour and to Hollywood. Tommy liked to think that was why he had never toured Indonesia like Englebert Humperdinck. For Tommy, avoiding the airforce proved to be fortuitous given its dramatic fall in fortunes, personified by its filmstar good-looking commander Omar Dhani who was jailed for his leading part in the communist coup of 1965. Tommy re-entered active service in an intelligence role following the coup, travelling the length and breadth of the country ensuring national stability. In 1968, the year Elvis made Las Vegas his own, Tommy uncovered the communists regrouping in Blitar and sealed his intelligence credentials. By this time Elvis, the most popular entertainer of all time, was well ahead of his Indonesian spirit brother. Living at twice the speed, Elvis charged to the grave in a whirl of prescription drugs, hamburgers and soda-pop after Priscilla and Lisa-Marie left him. His death in 1977 freed the spirit of his elder brother forever. No longer in the shadows of Elvis, Tommy’s career blossomed. Appointed Jakarta Police Chief a few years later, Tommy became the ultra-nationalist, the stalwart defender of his country, that Elvis Presley could only ever hint at in his films. A knock on the door signalled their arrival. Tommy padded in his socks down the hallway and let his blackshirts into the darkened house. Silently, he ushered them into the study where they leaned familiarly on the backs of chairs. He thought of turning on a light but preferred not to see their faces too clearly. ‘You’ve studied the reports?’ he said without greeting. ‘Yes,’ said their leader. ‘It’s a wide brief,’ he smiled, and Tommy saw the glint of his gutter-rat’s gold tooth. ‘I want you to start with Setiabudi tonight. I have a friend who needs some assistance in shifting some squatters. Target the troublemakers and the rest will go quietly.’ Opening a carved wooden box on his desk, Tommy pulled out a few silver pendants made for him by a Rotinese jeweller, modelled on one of the King’s own designs: ‘These will make you invulnerable tonight,’ he said, slipping the lightningbolt pendant over the head of the first of his blackshirts. Its wearer turned the charm in his hand and looked at it in the dark: ‘TCB?’

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‘Taking care of business,’ the head blackshirt explained. ‘Shock therapy for burglars, murderers, drunks, streetfighters and standover merchants for starters. All disorderly conduct is to be stopped and anyone who resists arrest is to be considered a criminal.’ ‘Go now, do your utmost,’ Tommy whispered them into the night-dark streets of Menteng. ‘Be good to your fellow man, practise physical and mental discipline and avoid constipation,’ he murmured the King’s bathroom motto after their departing shadows. The thrill of the night’s hunt seemed to have loosened his own bowels as he padded back upstairs to the bathroom. A bedside light flipped on. ‘I woke up and you were gone,’ Tina said plaintively. ‘Just taking care of business,’ he said kissing her on her forehead. ‘Sleepy?’ ‘No,’ Tina murmured softly, her mouth curling into a smile. ‘We could watch Viva Las Vegas over a pizza.’ ‘If that’s what you’d like to do,’ sighing, Tina lay back on her pillow.

3.4 Under the clear glow of hurricane lamps Jl Setiabudi came alive by night: the fast broken, portable restaurants marked their territory by rugs and tarpaulins set up along the roadside where food-trolley chefs fried beancurd and crispy martabak omelettes to the hypnotic pulse of dangdut music. Rinsing his soup bowls in a bucket of greasy water, Joni watched as the fried-ice man prepared an order in his motorbike kitchen. Taking ice blocks on sticks from an ice-bucket pannier, he rolled these in chocolate syrup simmering in a wok atop a burner set into the other. He gave these to a couple of girls Joni recognised as factory workers from a nearby laneway. Recent arrivals in the city, they had probably never seen anything like this weekly carnival. Wide-eyed, the girls pressed through the crush to a makeshift stage where two dwarves and a two-metre giant parodying government officials in their garuda batik shirts danced jerkily around a blow-up ABC battery. A baby in the arms of a beggar cried as a late-model Honda, pop music blaring from its open windows, turned into Jl Setiabudi. The Honda pulled over between a BMW and a souped-up Toyota recently arrived from the Jl Sudirman drag-races; a young man hopped out, his yellow jacket identifying him as a University of Indonesia student.

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‘Bakso?’ Joni called hopefully, but the student ignored him, opting for gado-gado from the old lady a few carts along where some other rich kids huddled close together. She ground peanuts with water and soy sauce in her mortar and pestle before adding cabbage, sprouts and beancurd, stirred and mashed them all into the peanut sauce, then spooned the mixture onto a banana-leaf plate, covering the lot in paper. Watch the rich kids with their drag-racing carefully, his father Murdani said — they’re the future leaders of our country. But Joni was young too, and his father’s idea of selling bakso on Saturday night from a hired cart did little for him. ‘Hey soupman,’ a voice hailed Joni’s trolley. He turned to see a man facing him. In his black T-shirt and wraparound sunglasses, he looked like an Asian version of the Terminator. Joni looked at the roving sandwich-man’s boards to check if the film was still playing at Kartika Chandra or Ratu Plaza, but he was promoting the latest Stallone bloodfest. Joni did not like Stallone: Rambo killed Asians. ‘Bakso?’ Joni asked. The Terminator nodded. Joni rinsed a soup bowl in the greasy water of his bucket and wiped it on a damp cloth. Lacking experience at preparing food on the fly, he had chopped everything in advance; grabbing handfuls of anything, he tossed the lot into the bowl, slopping broth over the scrappy mess. ‘New on the job, huh?’ the Terminator said, handing over money and taking the bowl in return. He sat down on the bench beside Joni. The Honda driver put away his mobile phone and, grabbing his girl, threw his unfinished snack into the gutter where cats sprang on the vegetable scraps. Flying a banner from its aerial, the winner of an earlier drag-race parked alongside the Honda. Laughing, a girl in a red polo shirt and black Guess jeans ran over and kissed the winning driver under Joni’s nose. The driver, cocky with success, followed through with another public kiss and held it as his college mates cheered him on. ‘Doesn’t it bug you to be working tonight while all these guys get the girls?’ the Terminator asked, slurping his soup. Joni did not answer. He had been hanging out at Blok-M at Jimmi’s bar, running errands and hoping for work, but after last night watching the foreigners paw local girls he was glad to be elsewhere. Japanese, American, Korean, Australian — it was all the same. He had protested to Jimmi who had only shrugged his shoulders: ‘That’s life, kid. They’re only doing to our women what they’re trying to do to our country.’ ‘You know this area at all?’ the Terminator asked.

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Joni nodded. He saw the lightning-bolt around the Terminator’s neck: some university club pendant, no doubt. The Terminator laughed when asked where he studied: ‘My university is the streets. And this is my textbook,’ he pulled a ragged copy of Pos Kota from his back pocket. The newspaper’s front page was awash with lurid colour pictures depicting accidents, rapes and murders. ‘BUS CRASH — 54 DIE’, one headline screamed, with an accompanying photograph of the torn metal shell open like a sardine tin; lumps covered by blankets and sarongs on a roadside: BEKASI, Friday: A Patas bus containing 65 passengers collided head-on with a furniture truck on the Bekasi tollway east of Jakarta. The bus driver appeared to have fallen asleep at the wheel and veered into the oncoming truck’s way. The bus driver, who was killed instantly, was later identified as Pak Tomo of Jatinegara, East Jakarta. He leaves a widow and six children. Another driver for the Patas line told Pos Kota it had been Pak Tomo’s 14th straight day driving, returning Jakarta workers to their home villages for the annual Idul Fitri religious celebrations. Other passenThe story continued on page 15. ‘Good story, that one,’ the Terminator pointed with his spoon to another of the cover items. Joni read the caps spilling down a column: ‘DELICIOUS RAW, LET ALONE COOKED!’ Without a photograph, for reasons that became obvious, he might have overlooked it: it was about the trial and sentencing of a woman who cut off, cooked and ate her husband’s penis after finding out he had been sleeping with their maids. Joni turned to page 9 where the story continued after the first paragraph. According to the report, after asking why she did it, the judge crossed his legs and asked what it tasted like. ‘Delicious raw, let alone cooked,’ she replied through tears. ‘It’d make a tasty stew, heh?’ the Terminator chuckled. It was the sort of sex story Jimmi would like. He’d even make a joke about the bus tragedy and retell the one about the horny bride sitting astride her new husband in the backseat of the Bandung bus, bouncing up and down pretending to be asking the other passengers where they were going. ‘Hard world lho we live in,’ the Terminator said, slurping his soup as sirens wailed in the night distance. ‘Want some more?’ Joni asked, suddenly glad of his company. He nodded, and Joni gave him another bowl. ‘Sometimes, when I see how unfair life is, I’d like to be Sylvester Stallone and shoot everyone dead,’ the Terminator said.

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Joni laughed: ‘I thought you were Arnold Squashanigger.’ ‘Hard name to pronounce, that. Don’t you feel like sometimes you want to get even with the world like those guys?’ The sirens came closer, and some of the foodsellers began packing up hurriedly. ‘We live in violent times. Without friends you’re nobody.’ ‘Police or ambulance?’ Joni asked, wondering whether he should risk a fine or worse himself. ‘Fools, what do they expect will happen to them?’ the Terminator had taken off his glasses and Joni saw for the first time their milky coldness. ‘Kid, leave your trolley and show me around Setiabudi. I’ll pay you good money,’ he urged Joni. ‘I can’t — I’ve got to look after it for its owner.’ ‘You think these rich people respect other people’s property?’ he waved his arms at the cars streaming past. ‘How are you ever going to get ahead in Jakarta?’ the cold milky eyes cut straight to Joni’s small-time ambitions. The sirens died down and passed by the night-market. ‘How much will you pay me?’ Joni finally asked, looking up. But the Terminator had already disappeared.

3.5 ‘Well, what do you think, Munin?’ From his usual corner of the Prapat Foodstall, Munin gazed out at the extra benches under a yellow tarpaulin to catch the Saturday evening trade: ‘Very impressive, Jacinta. You’re moving Tobing’s little foodstall right upmarket into another category. Soon you’ll be too good for this neighbourhood.’ ‘Well, it’s no shophouse, but it’s a start. You know, you could do the same with your garage.’ Munin refused a shoeshine from a small boy, pointing to his plastic sandals. The boy retreated to the back of the stall where other youngsters, weighed down by their loads of watches comic-books dictionaries for sale, waited for new customers in the throng of people streaming past outside. ‘Who’s going to help me like you’ve helped Tobing?’ Jacinta laughed and wiped down another bench. A gaggle of young women in jeans and T-shirts with English-language nonsense messages, scouring the night-market out of boredom or love interest or simply because it was Saturday night and they did not have to work tomorrow, laughingly requested a love song from a waria banging a tambourine. 80

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Munin recognised the waria as an old-timer working this area. He sipped his coffee and thought about the young one he was meeting here tonight, suddenly fearful she had forgotten him. ‘Lia!’ a voice on the street called out and the waria spun around on her heels. ‘Chenny!’ she shrieked. ‘What are you doing here lho?’ She pressed cheeks with another waria in a red miniskirt. So that was her name! Munin’s heart raced. ‘You mean who am I meeting here?’ Chenny said smiling. ‘Whoooo?’ ‘Nobody you know. Now be a good girl and run along lah before your ears burn.’ All eyes were on her as she strode long-legged across the tent to his table and addressed him directly: ‘Pak Munin?’ She knew his name! ‘That’s me,’ Munin responded to her directness. ‘And you are?’ ‘I think everyone here knows my name after Lia’s introduction,’ Chenny laughed and her dark eyes sparkled. She was prettier than her friend: her heart-shaped face, accentuated by a fringed bob of black hair, was more animated and natural. ‘May I sit down?’ ‘What, no song first?’ he flirted. Her dark eyes flashed at Munin: ‘I came here to talk with you about the hair clippings I gave you. I don’t begin my nightshift for another few hours. So please don’t make fun of me when I’m not working.’ She looked up and Munin saw she had been crying: her mascara had run and ringed her eyes with dark patches like a panda. ‘You know,’ she sniffed, ‘I work two jobs — this and hairdressing — so I can make something of myself. I’m going to Singapore soon for my operation so I can stop being this parody of a human being.’ ‘No,’ Munin said; but he knew some people in their kampung thought of waria as demons — unnatural men in women’s clothes — and accused them of all manner of evils, from rising rents to the drying up of a mother’s breastmilk. Wiping her eyes, she sniffed and looked at him directly: ‘Save your charity for this one.’ Coming towards them, a beggar hobbling one-legged on crutches, his head wrapped in flybuzz-stained rags and waving a tin mug in his bandaged hand. The smell was terrible: Munin threw a few coins into his tin to wave him away. ‘Don’t worry, it’s shrimp paste, not gangrene,’ Chenny said. ‘It’s the season for beggars. He’s probably just an ordinary farmer who’s got family expenses at Idul Fitri which he can’t meet from his land. So he’s forced to come to Jakarta and pretend 81

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he’s a cripple to make ends meet. But he’s left his alms-gathering so late he may not get home in time. Crazy kan?’ Munin thought of some of the ordeals he had put poor fasting Wahidin and his Volvo through recently. He put the bag of hair clippings on the table between them. ‘Have you found out anything?’ Chenny asked. ‘Whose hair was it?’ ‘A client’s. I was worried about her.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Her husband is also a client, in my night job.’ Her matter-of-factness surprised Munin. ‘I sprinkled some as part of the offerings for a car I was repairing last night. It burnt a mark into the car.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘The spirits are very strong. The car belongs to Pak Ricky, our landlord here. The person whose hair you gave me is also close to some terrible danger, but how and what exactly is not clear yet. Whose hair did you say it was?’ ‘Not so fast, I want to find out too.’ ‘The spirits can be dangerous.’ ‘Surely you can protect me from them?’ she said. She was much prettier when she smiled in invitation; and he let himself hope. A high-pitched squeal broke the moment: Munin turned to see a man in a black T-shirt and wraparound glasses twisting the ear of one of the small boys who had been trying to sell him a watch earlier this evening. ‘Where did you get these from, you little thief?’ the man snarled at the boy, twisting his ear until the boy was on tiptoes screaming and crying. He dropped him into a sobbing heap on the floor between tables and proceeded to the counter where Tobing hurriedly put a few kretek packets, a bottle of beer and glasses between them. Other blackshirts spread out in paramilitary style, blocking all exits. ‘Drunkenness as well as stolen goods?’ the head blackshirt whispered, sipping the beer. ‘Dangerous. What other undesirable activities happen here?’ Munin tried to slide the plastic bag containing Tina’s hair clippings off the table as inconspicuously as possible but another of the blackshirts put his hand on Munin’s shoulder from behind: ‘Get up!’ Munin rose to his feet slowly. I have no rights, the mantra from prison came flooding back. The head blackshirt swaggered over and picked up the incriminating bag of hair from the table; sniffing at its contents, his nose twitched at the smell of avocado 82

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conditioner. He passed it to the first blackshirt who confirmed the unfamiliar smell indicated something illicit. ‘What’s in the bag, old man?’ he said. Head hung low, guilty by manner, Munin did not speak. ‘Show me your identity card.’ Munin handed over his KTP and watched as the blackshirt examined it. Now they would see he was a former political prisoner, banned by law from public employment, forced to dwell on the margins. Add to this suspicion of drug peddling which confirmed in their jaundiced eyes the low opinions of former political prisoners, and things were starting to look pretty bad for him again. Munin began giggling, recognising it as a mark of extreme nervousness and stress. In prison after the coup, he had seen men, broken by overwork and underfeeding, laugh in their captors’ faces and be beaten for their seeming insolence. The cock of a pistol and the feel of cold metal against his grey-haired temples brought him back to the tent. ‘This gun is loaded,’ a voice whispered in his ear. ‘I have the right to kill you.’ The gunman stood so close Munin could smell the noodle soup he had eaten for dinner. The banal detail relaxed him; head still, he rotated his eyes and saw the man breathing into his ear, boastful and young enough to carry out his threat. ‘Leave my client alone, you bullies,’ Chenny stood up and faced the blackshirts. ‘Move on, you freak, before we force you to,’ the head blackshirt growled, a pendant glinting around his neck. Chenny reached into her cleavage and pulled from the end of her necklace a lightning-bolt charm similar to the blackshirt’s pendant. The head blackshirt gestured for his offsider to sheathe his pistol. ‘Undercover?’ he asked Chenny, looking at her low-cut top and miniskirt. ‘You could say that,’ Chenny replied shortly. ‘Now go, and leave my client and this street alone.’ ‘I’m still taking this as evidence,’ he said to save face, putting the plastic bag containing Tina’s hair in his trouser pocket. He signalled to his men; the blackshirts nodded to Chenny and headed out. One held back, attempted to take a kretek packet from the counter but Tobing beat him to them: ‘The waria told you to clear out.’ ‘You’ll keep,’ the blackshirt sneered, before disappearing into the street outside. ‘Good work, Tobing,’ Jacinta said sarcastically. ‘For the cost of a few measly kretek packets, what trouble can we look forward to now?’ 83

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Chenny bent over Munin who had slumped across the table. She put her arms under his, sitting him up against her. ‘Tobing, make Munin some more coffee!’ Jacinta ordered him. Munin rested against Chenny’s warm body. He let her sugar his coffee and raise the cup to his lips, her firm fingers cradling his head as he sipped. ‘It’s all right, they’re gone now,’ she said soothingly. The strong coffee cleared his head. ‘You’re quite a woman,’ he turned to her; their faces nearly touching, something long lost stirred inside him. ‘How on earth did you do that?’ ‘Lucky for you I saw their pendants. I think I know who is behind all this — he gave me a matching one the other night,’ Chenny fingered the lightning-bolt charm which Munin could not fail to notice hung in a deep cleavage. ‘Tommy Tekanli.’ ‘The Police Chief?’ Chenny nodded: ‘The blackshirts are his boys. And I saw him talking with Pak Ricky the other day at my uncle’s restaurant.’ ‘But what would our landlord and the Police Chief have to do with these thugs?’ Munin wondered. ‘Wait, there’s more. The hair belongs to Tina Tekanli.’ ‘So they’ve confiscated their boss’ wife’s hair?’ Munin’s face creased with a smile. ‘Yes,’ she nodded grinning. ‘Just imagine what they’ll make of that.’ Munin burst out laughing. ‘So what are we going to do?’ Chenny pressed him. ‘We?’ Munin held his breath. ‘Well, I assume you’re as interested as I am in getting to the bottom of this. These blackshirts are here on Tommy Tekanli’s orders for a reason. I’ll be at the Tekanlis’ house on Monday to cut Tina’s hair again. I could have a look around for anything that may tell us what they are up to.’ Munin shook his head wonderingly. ‘What is it?’ she asked. He smiled: ‘Soekarno once said prostitutes made the best revolutionaries and were the most faithful party members he had ever known. They always had money for party donations and ways of eliciting information in the party’s interests.’ ‘I’m a great fan of Soekarno,’ she played with the fine hairs on his wrist. ‘You are?’ Munin said guardedly. He had let down another barrier without realising it and she was already pressing for the next to fall.

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‘Sure. Anybody who can build a 100-metre tall monument to his manhood like he did at Monas Park is okay by me. But seriously,’ her fingers slipped between his, ‘I’d like to hear lots more about him.’ ‘But you said you were working tonight.’ ‘Not if you make me an offer I can’t refuse.’

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4.1 GRAHAM THOUGHT HE HEARD HIS NAME called in the stream of joggers and cyclists taking advantage of the Sunday morning ban on cars along Jl Sudirman, and he remembered last night. ‘Boule? Funny name that,’ the finance consultant’s spouse accented the second syllable like the Indonesians did. The solitary European among Asian spouses at the Sundowners’ ball, she sniffed then sipped her glass, her mouth puckering: ‘Too many almonds — don’t you think — Graham dear?’ Unsure whether she referred to the taste of the wine or the eyes of the other females, Graham shrugged and had another mouthful. His head throbbing from too much wine, Graham dodged a bicycle and narrowly avoided a phalanx of girls in red T-shirts marching in formation to the whistle blasts of their leader. The girls covered their faces giggling as he passed them, sucking in his belly. God, it was hot. He could not believe how anyone could do any work in this climate, scurrying from airconditioned hotels to aircon offices in aircon cars choked in traffic jams. According to some of the old hands among the Sundowners, nobody in government did anyway: everything was fixed with coffee money in brown envelopes. Their words played on his suspicions and had inspired his run this morning.

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Ricky had vaguely agreed last week to show him around the development site, but Graham figured it was better to do his own research in addition to any supervised visit. He ran down a carless exit ramp from Sudirman to a secondary road along a canal. Beyond the underpass, sunlight streamed through the mist across lowlying houses on the fringes of Ricky’s land. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Graham continued along the canal to a point where the waterway widened into a pond. Stopping, he looked across the water to the squatter settlements Ricky had told him about after golf. It was worse than he imagined: orange plastic sheets draped over driftwood and tin frames, perched crazily on bamboo stilts atop the water. So this is Setiabudi, Graham thought to himself. Just off the main roads but insulated from the modern world by office blocks east and west. He sniffed the sour black-stink of the bubbling water: fetid open drains emptying their poison into the pond. It was a prime location, close to the heart of town and near the new diplomatic and business district. The land was becoming too valuable not to develop. Something wet and dark slithered in the water; Graham’s eyes followed a dancing rope-line across the water to the shacks where a man in a scrap-wood punt waiting for passengers jerked the rope to attract his attention. Shaking his head in refusal, he ran along the canal side and cut up onto the roadway where the ghostly lime-stained form of the incomplete Regent Hotel marked a local conglomerate’s illstarred foray into Setiabudi land redevelopment several years ago: evidence of why they needed people like him. Graham ran through the grassy building site where barefoot boys played soccer with a bamboo ball, serenely observed by black goats and a tethered buffalo: he had heard there was a religious festival coming up next week and these animals presumably would be slaughtered. ‘Hello, misterrr!’ one of the boys cried; he and his mates abandoned their soccer game and ran after Graham. Through knee-high grass, Graham scampered like a black goat along a narrow track littered with plastic bags and paper scraps behind houses. He turned between houses into a narrow alleyway but his passage was blocked by a foodseller’s trolley and a crowd of people waiting placidly with their bowls. The very sight made his bowels rumble in protest. Red-faced and dripping, Graham sprang across an open drain into another side alley — scattering dogs, chickens and women with babies on their hips — and ducked under a makeshift clothesline. Women in bras and sarongs

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stood around talking while waiting their turn at the communal water pump. Another woman, her wet hair streaming down her back, emerged from a mould-stained Besser-brick building and glared at him. Graham shrugged his shoulders apologetically but held his ground until after the boys ran past screaming and laughing. Following another path through the maze of hugger-mugger houses, Graham found himself lost in a stand of bamboo and bananas. The mushy ground below his feet suggested he was near the waterline again. God, plant a broom and it would sprout here, he thought to himself. What do they use for fertiliser? And then he realised as his feet sank into the slime of the city. Feet slurping, Graham dragged himself out of the mud, and wiped the worst of the slime off his running shoes with bamboo blades, cutting his hands. He tried to remember when he had his last tetanus shot. Still, if tetanus did not finish him off, septicaemia would. Wiping his hands on his shorts, Graham heard voices and walked around to a point opposite where he had first viewed the neighbourhood. The punt was about five metres out filled with gabbling boatmen who were hauling something dark and heavy from the water with a makeshift gaff hook. As their catch rose from the water, one of the men turned the other way and doubled over vomiting into the pond. Graham saw sheer cloth clinging to swollen flesh and braceleted wrists manacled together: the waterlogged body of a woman, her hair loose like black weed. Graham forced himself to breathe steadily and deeply. What was this country’s population again — 120, 150, 200 million? With those numbers, no wonder life was cheap. Used up and discarded, the flotsam of city life, she looked like the bargirl from Tanamur nightclub a few nights ago who rubbed his thigh and whispered honey in his ear. He stumbled back down the laneway into an open square where children and adults played badminton on a bare earth court marked out with strips of bamboo. ‘What are you looking at?’ he snapped, and the players, understanding his tone if not his words, silently resumed their game. The place looks like a demolition site already, he thought as he ran along the main roadway past people picking over the burnt-out shell of a building. Yes, he and Ricky would be doing these slum dwellers a favour: they would be much better off in clean apartment blocks close to public transport on the edge of town, than playing and breeding in the dirt like animals.

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Having seen enough to confirm to his satisfaction Ricky’s estimation of the slum, Graham ran back towards Sudirman where, swept along in the dense throng of Sunday morning exercisers, he was carried past the hotel before he could turn off. A footbridge across the roadway offered escape and he squeezed out of the wave of Jakarta humanity, up the rusting iron stairs. Graham picked his way through an obstacle course of beggars blocking passage on the metal walkway above the roadway. His leg was grabbed by an amputee, his gangrenous stump wrapped in fly-blown rags, who refused to let go. Graham reached into his pocket and flung a few coins he had pocketed for taxi money at him; the beggar released his leg, scrabbling on the walkway with others. At the bottom of the footbridge Graham cut back towards the Hilton, taking sanctuary at the first hotel gate. He passed other joggers and tennis players, making their way along the freshly laid bitumen track curving gently across the neat lawns connecting hotel facilities. At the poolside bar, white-shirted waiters hung back beside the potted palms, waiting for orders. It felt good to be in a place where the jungle was under control. Ripping off his shirt, Graham ordered a Bloody Mary and collapsed into a banana lounge.

4.2 Jacinta looked out the window of their plywood shack across the water to where recyclers scavenged on the sludgy shores. A group of men were excitedly examining something they had dredged from the pond. It was too floppy to be a length of wood, and the strips of cloth adhering to it suggested clothing, a body. She drew the sarong back sharply across the window and crossed herself. God, how many others had they attacked last night? On a makeshift bed beside her Tobing groaned. ‘Easy, my love,’ she dabbed tenderly at his face with a moistened cloth, avoiding his puffy eye and swollen lips. Why would someone attack her gentle Tobing? Not even his yellow T-shirt — a gift from Golkar during the last election — had protected him. She had seen the murdered woman late last night, shivering in her black cocktail dress; clutching her arms around herself, enhancing her breasts. A car stopped and she bent her cleavage into the window to talk for a few moments before getting in the front between the two men.

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There but for the grace of God go I, Jacinta thought to herself. Aunt Maria lay on the floor, her feet — raised on a pile of sacks like the nurse had suggested — wrapped in clean new bandages. ‘Auntie, pray for us,’ she whispered into her ear. She felt her brow: Maria’s temperature was steady. She had thought, being so far from home, her family’s troubles would cease to follow her. But then the Timorese boys living nearby had failed to escape it either. Working as bouncers in Tanah Abang and Kota, it was only a matter of time before they got taken aside by police for questioning. If they were lucky they were released the next day black-eyed and bruised like Tobing; some ended up like that poor girl taken from the pond. Jacinta took one of the aspirins the nurse had given her for Aunt Maria’s fever. ‘Come on, sit up and take this,’ she cradled Tobing’s head in her hand and held a glass of water to his swollen lips. He winced before slumping back exhausted, his head in her lap. Jacinta stroked his hair, holding back tears. She had heard the roar of the departing car as it raced off into the city: the same car as had taken the woman away? ‘Where’s Marhaen?’ a man in a black T-shirt asked from the car window. ‘There’s no Marhaen here,’ Tobing answered, continuing to stack benches. ‘He was here tonight. Murdani said he lived around here.’ ‘There’s a Munin,’ one of the remaining customers offered. ‘Munin?’ ‘Who are you anyway?’ Tobing asked suspiciously. ‘Never you mind,’ the driver retorted. ‘In that case,’ Tobing offered, ‘I know where you might be able to find your Marhaen. Around Priangan, about three hours east of here, where Soekarno found him — unless your boss has turned the Bandung hills into golf courses as well!’ He winked at his customers and they laughed. ‘Smart-arse, are you?’ the blackshirt snarled. ‘I said you’d keep.’ He stepped out of the car with a truncheon. A smash and the hurricane lamp spilled burning kerosene over their stall. His lightning-bolt glinted in firelight as beer bottles arrayed on shelves crashed and scattered tinkling onto benches upended in the flaying of flailing fists thudding figures against the wall of the Blitar Magic Garage. It was like a bad dream playing over and over in her mind: ‘What did they want from Munin anyway?’

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Tobing opened his good eye and squinted at her like a bird: ‘How would I know?’ ‘What about that stuff they took from him last night? He must be doing something wrong to have those people chasing him.’ ‘Sure, like your family did. Munin’s been a friend to me, I’m not interested in why they would be after him. I don’t care about what he’s done in the past. If you want to blame anyone, blame Murdani.’ Jacinta thought of the chief guard who had been conspicuous by his absence last night: ‘What about the money we’ve given him to keep our stall going? Where’s our protection when we need it?’ her voice rose in anger. ‘What about our land and building tax, our security levies?’ Tobing laughed bitterly: ‘Forget it, we’re ants. Crush one and there’s a dozen others who’ll fill its place in the line.’ He wheezed and clutched his side where a few kicks last night had cracked a rib or two. Filled with impotent anger, Jacinta knew it was true. She and Tobing and Aunt Maria were just three of 10 million people in Jakarta, fodder for development. How could she hope to provide for the three of them now their savings had gone up in flames? She thought of the story of the widow and the gabus fish Munin had told them over coffee one night. A poor old widow, left alone without family, made her living by collecting sticks for firewood and selling these to her rich neighbours. One hot dry day she passes a dried-up pond and sees some gabus fish in the mud, crying ‘Allah send us water or we will die’ and sure enough it rains. So she tries this at home: ‘Allah, send me money or I will die.’ The noise she makes angers one of her neighbours who plays a trick on her: filling a sack with rubble he climbs on her roof and drops the sack through a hole on to her head, knocking her out. When she regains consciousness she opens the sack beside her, filled not with rubble but with gold. Allah has answered her prayer! She builds a big house with her new wealth and her neighbour becomes jealous. He instructs one of his domestic workers to drop not one — but two — sacks on his head and back while praying, breaking his bones, but when he opens the sacks he finds only rubble. He cannot work anymore, has to sell his house and is soon destitute — as destitute as the old widow had been before he dropped the sack on her head. But that was the stuff of dreams; unlike the widow the rubble of their lives remained rubble. If only she had more of Aunt Maria’s faith to sustain her. Sobbing, Jacinta tore Tobing’s stained yellow T-shirt into strips.

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4.3 ‘Utik — dammit!’ Ricky looked with disgust at the catfish he had just landed. He swapped his rod for another the crew had prepared and cast off again. The lures festooning his fishing hat jiggled as his line sailed over the water to plonk about 30 metres from the boat. A crewman grabbed the gasping catfish: his thumb slipped into its gill as he twisted it, tearing the hook out of its mouth, and threw it into an esky. The shallow bloody water boiled with the thrashings of other fish startled by the new arrival. Mulya checked his line for any bites but could not feel anything; but then he was not sure what he was feeling for. He began reeling in his line to check whether his bait had been taken and discovered he had hooked a catfish himself without knowing. ‘Smaller than your hand, throw it back,’ his father instructed, already reeling in his own line again. Mulya did as he was told but the catfish floated silver belly up in the water, its grinning whiskers reproving him: it had drowned on his line. ‘Son, to catch a fish you’ve got to think like a fish,’ Ricky said, his rod bending almost double with the weight of his latest catch, a spotted coral cod. It was a beautiful-looking fish, orange with tiny blue spots, but out of the water, its colours were fading quickly in death. Mulya had seen them in their full living splendour diving off Bali. ‘The skin is thick and rubbery,’ Ricky said, his watery eyes twinkling with childish delight, ‘but the flesh is sweet-tasting. Almost as tasty as red emperor.’ ‘I’d still rather look at them than catch them,’ Mulya said. ‘If we were meant to go under the water we’d have gills.’ ‘Under the water you can see where fish hide,’ Mulya persisted. He hated his father always knowing best. ‘That’s what the old man is here for, son. He tells us where to fish, choosing the right sort of seabed — sand, rock or mud — for different fish with his old stick and length of rope.’ ‘Like water divining.’ Mulya could not believe how his father could maintain a senior government job and still believe in the old mysticisms. Contradictions like these held their country back. ‘What about my fish computer?’ Ricky protested. ‘I put all the old man’s fishing sites into it for future reference. Son, if it works, use it, even if you don’t understand why.’

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Mulya shook his head, but followed his father to the bridge where he fiddled with the dials until a dim image appeared on the screen. ‘See that shadow on the screen there, at 32 metres? That’s the becaks, and the cloud floating a few metres above it is the school of fish, waiting for our baits. It was the old man’s idea, you know, to dump the becaks out here for an artificial reef after they were taken off the streets in 1986. He’s taken Pak Harto fishing here too,’ his father added. Mulya looked at the wizened oracle in his sun-bonnet and over-large shorts: with his wiry legs, he could have peddled a becak himself. ‘If we’re fishing off a reef made of rusty old becak, is it any wonder we catch catfish?’ Ricky laughed, a big open laugh hiding nothing, and the ice between them melted a little bit more. ‘Any nibbles?’ Mulya shook his head and Ricky put down his rod: ‘Let’s try some trawling instead.’ They had been fishing the becak reef for about an hour, hardly long enough for the fish to settle again from the roar of the engines to show serious interest in their baits, but this had been the pattern all morning: moving from one location to another since dawn. They had set out from the island in the darkling pre-dawn. Oil rigs flamed their production of export dollars on the horizon as the cruiser purred through the nightdark, the steady throb of its engines and the bow-slap of oil-black nightwater the only sounds. Lamplit shapes loomed in the dark: men night-squidding by lamp on their fishing pontoons, nets suspended in wait as the hapless squid swam toward the light. Ricky stopped near one and, chatting with the squidders, threw a line over and caught a couple attracted by the glint of his many-hooked lure: ‘Good for bait, son.’ Mulya wondered why his father did not simply buy squid bait from the seagypsies and move on; but his father seemed not to want to hurry. He failed to see that money would kill the fishermen’s camaraderie; the continuity his father relished in the pontoons, oil rigs and their cruiser each in their own way harvesting wealth from the sea. It must be that Siska’s words yesterday were still upsetting him. As they walked to the jetty by waning moonlight, Ricky explained that she had morning sickness and would not be joining them: ‘Gives us the chance to talk about men’s things.’ But not the one thing they had most in common. What if Siska’s child really was Mulya’s? That made his father a grandfather.

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‘Dut, prepare the berley!’ Ricky shouted to one of the crew, a fat bald man with oily mackerel skin. ‘This will attract bigger fish into the area for trawling,’ he explained to Mulya. ‘Maybe even some barracuda!’ The fat man flipped the transom seat and, farting with the strain of lifting, dragged a grey plastic lump from the storage space beneath: the berley bomb. ‘It must be pretty heavy to force that out of you!’ another of the crew, pop-eyed as if suffering from a thyroid deficiency, shouted to more laughter from Ricky. The old man remained stony-faced in his sun-bonnet. ‘It’s full of concrete dong!’ Dut roared, revealing a few black teeth in his red maw. ‘If the fish aren’t attracted by the berley we can brain them with it instead!’ ‘I designed it myself,’ Ricky said proudly to his son. The berley bomb was fashioned from a piece of PVC piping with holes drilled in it; flanges of halved PVC pipe were riveted on at 15 degrees to vertical. Mulya thought it looked like a jet rocket or the Challenger space shuttle. He smiled as he read a texta message scrawled on its side in his father’s handwriting: ‘FREE BAIT RESTAURANT — RED EMPEROR WELCOME!’ Dut fiddled with the rusted hasp on the lid of the berley bomb and scooped in an ice-cream tub of crushed minnows; the fish would soften in the water and filter out through the holes. Mulya examined the flanges on the berley bomb: ‘These are meant to help it spin kan?’ ‘Yes, to disperse the berley as the bomb drags behind the boat,’ Ricky said. ‘Can I suggest — Dad — these flanges get sawn down by half again? That way they’ll spill more water and the bomb will spin faster to dissipate the berley.’ Ricky moved the bomb around in his hands, spinning on its flanges, frowning all the while; Mulya wondered whether he had offended his father in suggesting a refinement to his home design. Suddenly his father looked up: ‘I knew I sent you to engineering school for something,’ he laughed excitedly. ‘Du-u-u-ut!’ he yelled for the fat crewman, ‘Get the tenon saw and fix this before we drop it overboard!’ Glowing with pride and parental approval, Mulya began to understand the mystique of fishing, how mucking about on boats with limited resources and slapdash remedies appealed to the overgrown boy in every man. At sea, away from women and the crowds of Java, his father held sway over a floating feudal Javanese court, replete with clowns for crew. His father seemed more alive than Mulya had seen him for a number of years. But how were they ever going to get ahead if they remained so rooted to past practices? 95

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‘Release it lah!’ Ricky ordered. Fanfared with another loud fart, Dut hurled the remodelled berley bomb off the transom into the water, feeding the line through his fingers clear of the engines. The old man and the others prepared the trawling rods with their heavy lines for larger free-swimming fish. ‘Pick your trawling lure, son,’ Ricky offered his hat. ‘Evil,’ the old man hissed at Mulya, unnerving him. Mulya smiled back nervously, wondering what the old man had picked up on. ‘Evil — it’s a lucky colour, this one,’ Ricky explained, helping thread a blue-green metallic lure on Mulya’s line. Mulya snorted: ‘Get serious, Dad.’ But relieved. ‘You just watch when we set the line then. Make yourself useful now, son — go on up front and keep a lookout.’ Dismissed to the watch like a naughty boy, Mulya clambered fore over fuel drums lashed to the deck. Only his father did not know just how naughty he had been. But Siska would deny it anyway. She had said as much yesterday. And what if it was his father’s child after all? Damn it, he thought, I’ll go and tell him. He went back and found his father tapping away feverishly at the fishing computer: ‘It’s someone’s secret fishing location!’ Ricky said, nodding towards a marker buoy floating to their port side. His eyes twinkled: ‘I’ve put it in my computer.’ ‘Shall we try here now?’ Mulya asked, excited by the prospect of more illicit fishing. ‘Not now, we’ll keep trawling now the lines are set. I might even bring Sumitra and Tony up here one weekend and try it with them. Do you think they’d like it?’ Mulya frowned: as the elder child and only son, Mulya felt he should have been his father’s favourite. But his sister was his father’s pet. He looked up: ‘Dad, do you have any plans for Sumitra now she’s back?’ ‘Well, it depends on what plans she has for herself,’ Ricky smiled, watching the trawl lines dancing in their wake. ‘What, more factory protests?’ His sister had got herself into trouble over these previously, and had been whisked off overseas to keep her out of trouble. Ricky looked at him. ‘Son, haven’t you realised, you’ve got to bite the hand that feeds you. That’s how we get ahead in life. What’s good enough for one generation should not be good enough for the next. Your generation does not have to worry where your next meal is coming from.’

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‘It’s all your fault, you encouraged her, rewarded her bad behaviour by sending her to Australia.’ ‘It’s not like you to show concern for your sister’s welfare,’ Ricky said quietly. ‘And now she’s gone and married an Australian,’ Mulya continued, his voice rising in an indignation masking his own treachery. ‘What’s Tony got to do with any of this?’ ‘That’s the last thing any of us needs, an in-law telling us how we do everything wrong. It’s bad enough needing the Chinese in your own country.’ The crew had stopped talking among themselves. Ricky hesitated: ‘The Chinese aren’t the villains, they’re just better at making money. They can help you in business if you let them. I know good people, including Chinese and Australians.’ ‘Why do we need Australia anyway?’ ‘Well, apart from our family connection, I suppose we don’t — if we want to remain like these fishermen.’ Surprised, Mulya looked at the old becak driver and his pop-eyed offsider sitting on a pile of hessian sacks in the deckhouse: Popeye’s thyroid problem was a thing of the past in developed countries, where modern medicines were widely available. ‘Son, Australians helped us to be ourselves when few others would almost 50 years ago,’ Ricky said gently. ‘Our country was born in idealism and a common purpose in getting rid of the Dutch colonists —’ ‘Save the Independence Day speech, Dad.’ ‘— but we couldn’t do it alone,’ Ricky ignored him. ‘Communist union workers in Australia helped us by blockading Dutch ships, and then their government took our case to the UN —’ ‘But that’s a long time ago, Dad.’ ‘— but we wouldn’t have got started without them. We mustn’t forget that, even if they do sometimes.’ ‘It’s like talking to a brick wall — you’re just as bad as Uncle Tommy with his thing about Elvis Presley,’ Mulya shook his head. One of the rods bent sharply, its reel whirred feeding out line. ‘Fish!’ Ricky yelled. ‘Truk, get the rod belt!’ Mulya watched as if in slow motion as the skipper, long-nosed and swaybacked like his comic wayang namesake and no good for lifting work anymore, cut the engine. Dut scrabbled in the transom box and dragged out a leather rod belt. The old man sprang like a mousedeer to the free-flowing reel as the fish took the line. 97

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‘Barracuda’s taken your evil lure, Mulya,’ Ricky smiled, handing over the belt and gripping his son by the forearm. ‘Nothing unusual in that?’ Mulya met his father’s watery gaze; wavering for a moment, his eyes set, he shook his arm free. He did up the leather strap at the back and jiggled the front, flared and weighted like a boxer’s prizebelt, till it rested snug on his pelvis. The old man handed him the rod which slotted into a pivoting metal housing, balanced to take the crushing force of landing the big fish on the line. Younger and stronger, he wished Siska could see him now, his manhood straining against the fish: maybe she would reconsider. ‘Drop anchor!’ Ricky yelled. Crewmen scrambled along the side rails. There was a scream followed by a loud splash from the bow. Turning to see the source of the noise, Mulya flicked a catch on the reel and the line went slack again. Chirruping in anger, the old man grabbed the line from him and reeled it in fast but it remained slack: the fish had got away. ‘Sorry, Dad.’ His father patted him on the shoulder: ‘Don’t worry about it. We may have lost a barracuda but we’ve landed a whale.’ Puzzled, Mulya followed his father to the port side where Dut floated in the water. ‘I thought it was the anchor overboard,’ he laughed. ‘He’s heavy, but he still floats,‘ Ricky said, steadying himself on the rail. ‘Let’s land the whale!’ Dut screamed and the water around him bubbled as Popeye leaned over the coaming, the gaff hook’s sharp points flashing in the sunlight. ‘Careful, he’ll sink if you puncture him! Use the blunt end dong!’ Ricky laughed.

4.4 Chenny woke to see Munin on the balcony talking softly to the birds in the fading dusk light. His hair tousled from her pillows, he wore her sarong rucked loosely around his thin brown waist. She pulled on his white shirt, snuggling into his smell, and crept up behind him. He jumped before easing into her embrace. ‘Ah, my little mosquito,’ his hand brushed against her cheek. Chenny kissed the palm of his hand, soft like a rosebud surrounded by the thorns of calluses on his mechanic’s fingers, those strong searching fingers. Trembling with recollection, her rosebud tingled between her legs as she drew him back into the rumpled bed.

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‘Smells like durian in here,’ Munin smiled at her. Chenny laughed. ‘I can’t think about durian in the same way anymore, after what you did to poor Wahidin.’ ‘He’s complaining the whole car stinks of it. Says it’s spread to the seats and penetrated the leather.’ ‘Leather is like human skin,’ she said, stroking his, ‘and the best way to remove the smell of durian from your hands after eating it is to pour water into the fruit’s husk, then wash with it.’ Her fingers curled in the hairs surrounding his seashell nipples. She felt drawn to this gentle man, poor but dignified, with whom she had spent the last 24 hours. At the wayang last night, the shadow puppet-master sat crosslegged centre stage, his back to the audience, salting the centuries-old screen stories with today’s ironies. Lullabied by the frangipani rhythm of the gamelan, Munin explained the eternal battle of the Kurava and Pandava cousins and the thick grey line joining good and evil; of kings and gods who to avoid being taken seriously concealed their godliness in their incarnations as clowns; and other onion-skin layers of personality which peeled away over the nightlong session: like this extraordinary man Munin himself, this former political prisoner who treated her better than the sideburned general who dumped her in a dark back street. With the full range of human possibilities within his reach — the shadow puppets’ buffalo-horn handles skewered into banana trunks arranged to his left and right — the puppet-master made the shadows dance and argue on screen and leap from the shadows into the bloody reality threatening their home in Setiabudi. ‘If we only knew what Tommy Tekanli was planning,’ Munin’s kretek glowed and crackled. ‘Would there be any written instructions?’ ‘Doubt it — if this blew up in their faces they wouldn’t want records of it. Maybe if we just got some general information on him we could know how to take him on.’ ‘What sort of things?’ ‘I don’t know yet. Whatever tells us about him. Anything special or unusual.’ ‘I’ll be there Monday, remember.’ ‘I know, but it’s risky. What if you get caught?’ ‘You think of a better way then.’ The more she learned of him the more there was to know. ‘How could they do that to you?’ she protested when he told her of his misfortunes going back 20 years.

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‘They do it to anyone with a different dream. You waria have had a hard time too.’ ‘No, we don’t dong! Some of our best customers are government officials!’ Munin sat up in bed: ‘Want to hear a joke?’ ‘Why, sure,’ she said, taken aback. ‘There’s this guy,’ Munin began, ‘who has a flash new car, so he calls in three religious leaders, a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk and a Muslim imam, to bless it. The priest goes first and he splashes water over the car from his ciborium. The owner is impressed and gives him a tip. Then the monk chants, burns incense and claps his hands over the car. The owner gives him a bigger tip. Then it’s the imam’s turn — he pulls out a saw and starts cutting off the exhaust pipe. “What are you doing?” the owner asks.’ ‘Turning it into a girl?’ Chenny stole the punchline, laughing. ‘No, he’s circumcising it — he’s a priest, get it?’ Chenny frowned: ‘Doesn’t go far enough for me.’ ‘How far do you want to go?’ he looked at her, suddenly serious. Chenny hesitated, remembering her divorced uncle’s warnings about Javanese partners. She had known many men, but this one was different: she felt dizzy with excitement and something new, falling into him faster than she believed possible. Chenny dared herself to think the unthinkable: that he might make Singapore unnecessary. ‘Munin?’ she began. Munin looked at her. ‘Why wasn’t there ever a Mrs Munin?’ Munin frowned, and Chenny wondered whether she had offended him. She touched his shoulder and he looked up, his eyes moist: ‘I don’t know really. When I was young it seemed like there was no need to rush, and then after my brother-inlaw’s arrest I needed to look after my sister and her family. Then I got taken away myself and I wasn’t much of a catch after that.’ He shook his head sadly: ‘Too old, too poor and ex-tapol. Nobody would want me.’ ‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ Chenny nestled into his chest, her fingers tracing the tiger tattoo on his upper arm. She felt the muscle flex beneath the tattooed skin: his strong arm around her shoulder, holding her close, the tiger-tattooed limb enveloping her, warding off danger. They lay, wrapped in each other, as the afternoon faded, until the tinny sound of the mosque speakers calling the faithful wavered through the air: ‘Relax, we can break our fast now,’ he quipped. ‘And not a moment too soon,’ she added, pulling the sheet over her head.

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4.5 ‘My uncle used to tell me stories about his uncle in Padang Panjang,’ Chenny stroked his hair afterwards, ‘who was a tiger magician.’ She ran her nails down his back. ‘Go on,’ growling softly, Munin relaxed into her touch. ‘Tiger magicians rid villages of unwelcome tigers,’ Chenny’s nails nipped the leathery flesh of his shoulders and neck, dancing along the bony ridge of his spine. ‘My uncle’s uncle sang to the tiger, at first trying to convince it that it should return to its home in the forest. If this didn’t work, he’d ask permission from forest spirits to trap the tiger, build a tiger trap and sing the tigers into the cage.’ ‘Would he kill it?’ ‘Certainly not! In my culture tigers are special creatures. We believe the soul of a sinner can become a tiger to warn surviving friends of dangers; and that the tiger was entrusted by Allah to carry out punishment.’ ‘That’s wonderful,’ Munin said, his eyes shining. She was reassured by his moustache, droopy like Zainul’s; teased its hairs out into bushy whiskers. She bent over and grabbed her makeup bag from the floor. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Close your eyes lah,’ she sat up and threw one knee over his chest; astride him, she bent forward and smoothed orange lipgloss onto his tremulous lips: ‘Trust me.’ With her finger she smeared gloss across his nose and under his eyes. She brushed his eyelids carefully, touching up and defining his eyebrows into points; drew lines with eyeliner pencil along the furrows of his brow and down onto his nose, where it blended with the orange gloss; and outlined his white cheek patches. ‘And best of all, tigers are the great lovers of the jungle. Now open your eyes,’ she held a mirror before him. Munin looked at himself in the mirror and burst out laughing: ‘It’ll take a lot more than makeup to transform me!’ ‘Don’t you see, darling, I’ve already sung you into my cage,’ she smudged her tiger’s lipstick away with her mouth.

4.6 ‘What do you really do in your magic garage?’ ‘I fix cars,’ he said simply.

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‘And?’ Facing her, Munin smiled, his moustache crinkling her cheek: ‘Can I trust you with my trade secrets?’ Trust was the first step to love, Chenny thought. Her heart thrilled, but she played it coolly: ‘I’ve shown you some of my magic,’ she quipped, ‘now it’s your turn.’ His face was smudged with makeup and he looked quite unlike any other garage mechanic she had known before. She could not help smirking at his appearance. ‘What is it?’ ‘Seems like my magic is wearing off,’ she said, handing him a mirror. Munin looked at himself. He tried wiping the makeup free with the end of a sarong but this only made the smudges worse. ‘Wait, I’ve got some makeup remover in the bathroom downstairs, let me clean up your face properly.’ Chenny grabbed his sarong and, wrapping it under her armpits, disappeared from the room. Left alone, Munin looked around her room. There were clothes piled in one corner, the makeup bag spilling its contents over the bed, a few pictures torn out of magazines taped to the wall: a many-roomed Minangkabau house with its distinctive buffalo-horn roofline; Madonna; a Singapore Airlines ad featuring a smiling hostess. It had been a long time since he had been in someone else’s house in this way; and he felt touched by the unfamiliar intimacy of being left alone among her few things. He could not work out the feeling, then he realised: she trusted him, alone, among her things. That, for the first time in a long while, he was not someone to be suspicious of, as his identity card with its ex-tapol stamp warned. He relaxed into the bed, drinking in her heady musk on the damp sheets. Had the spirits brought them together? Could it be fate? Was it tiger magic? There were so many coincidences in their coming together he did not know what to think anymore. Chenny returned with a bottle of makeup remover and tissues: ‘Now then, my tiger, let’s see what’s really under your stripes. Look at me,’ she directed him. Munin looked into her face as she leaned over him, felt her deft hands dabbing and wiping. He smiled at her. Her eyes questioned his smile. ‘Just thinking I could get very used to this sort of attention.’ ‘Seems like my magic is working after all,’ finishing, Chenny kissed him on the cheek.

102

SUNDAY

‘You know,’ Munin whispered into her ear, ‘a man like me would do a lot to hang on to a girl like you.’ Chenny’s heart was pounding so hard she wondered Munin could not hear it in the enormous silence enveloping them. When words finally came to her, her voice was croaky with emotion: ‘Munin, how long have you and I been living here in Setiabudi without knowing each other?’ ‘Too long. Just be glad we finally found each other.’ ‘Before it was too late.’ ‘Come here,’ he said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her on to his lap. ‘My magic garage. I studied in Blitar a long time ago. It’s not about magic so much as harnessing the spirits. The spirits are real and can help us or harm us. If we learn to listen to them carefully enough, they can tell us a lot. Why don’t you come over and stay the night at my place, see for yourself?’ Chenny stiffened. ‘You’re not frightened of the spirits, are you? I’ll protect you.’ ‘I believe you would,’ she said, staring into his eyes.

4.7 In the dreamy still of night, she lay afterglowing in her tiger’s bed, as Munin told her about babi ngepet, the Javanese changeling pig. ‘But I thought you Javanese didn’t like pigs?’ ‘It’s Islam that thinks pigs are unclean. This is an old belief, before Islam. Many Javanese, even Muslims, retain their spirit beliefs.’ Chenny’s eyes shone as this thin animated man sitting cross-legged beside her — smoking a kretek and waving the glowing stub in the air casting shadows and light in his own puppet-play — explained another of the seeming contradictions of Java to her. ‘At sundown the woman lights a lantern and the man transforms. Under cover of darkness the pig goes wandering, stops outside a rich person’s house, rubs his side back and forth on the perimeter wall and money and other valuables are magically drawn out into his body. At dawn the pig transforms back into a man and the valuables are in his pocket.’ ‘Like what men do to us in bars lho — rubbing up against us to try stealing our jewels, and then transforming back into family men at dawn.’

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‘I’m serious. I can do this, to get things from the Tekanli house. But I’ll need your help.’ ‘How can I help you?’ Chenny thrilled that he would share these magical secrets with her. ‘Will you guard my candle?’ ‘Why, sure, if that’s all you want,’ she felt a little disappointed by his offer. ‘Please, I have to be able to trust you guarding my flame — and you have to honour that trust by ensuring that you watch the flame at all times. My life could be in danger if you ignore it. Can I trust you?’ ‘Trust me,’ she said, willing herself to do the same.

104

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5.1 SUJONO RAN DOWN THE THREE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS of the Armed Forces Headquarters building to the canteen, passing officials sitting chatting in corridors, who looked up in wonderment at his speed: something must be happening upstairs. He returned with Lieutenant General Tommy’s order plus several packets of smokes for the nervous operations team waiting outside his office. These he distributed, then, knocking on the door, he entered with his tray piled with coffee and fried snacks which he placed on Lieutenant General Tommy’s desk, ignoring the lump wrapped in the red-and-white flag in the corner. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Sujono,’ Tommy unwrapped his head from the flag, flashing an American smile showing the wonders of dental prosthetics. ‘Yes sir, good morning sir,’ Sujono smartly saluted the photos of the President and Vice-President hanging on the wall and backed out of the room into the fug of kretek smoke: his curious colleagues waiting outside. ‘Where was he hiding this time?’ the voices all wanted to know. ‘He’d wrapped himself in the flag,’ Sujono whispered. ‘Old Elvis has gone too far this time,’ Colonel Yamin said angrily; with the authority of his years in headquarters, his words rippled through the group. ‘Shh,’ Sujono hissed. They heard the squeak of boots on linoleum and the rattle of a key in the lock. Yamin shook his head sadly. 105

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Inside, Tommy drew the flag tighter around his shoulders like a cape, chewing on a fried banana to keep warm: the airconditioner was playing up again. It was supposed to have been fixed on the weekend. He washed the banana down with sweet black Sumatran coffee and returned to the report he had been reading: The Indonesian Communist Party are behind current demands for greater openness in society. The conditions for communist agitprop (agitation and propaganda) are remarkably similar to 1965. But be warned: this time, their methods are different. Before the coup the communists used mass movements such as the farmers’ federation as cover; now they are waging an information war using pro-democracy, human rights and environmental movements as means for their agitprop. To maintain the status quo we need to be able to move swiftly and efficiently wherever necessary. His boys had done well in their weekend raid in Setiabudi: guns, knives and videos confiscated as well as a bag of an unknown illicit substance which the lab was currently testing. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before. Smelling faintly of avocado, it felt like human hair, but obviously it was some very sophisticated synthetic drug treated to look that way. He took a fried potato croquette from the plate and bit into it, reading on: The communists are still lurking waiting to take advantage of society. They have already stabbed us in the back three times in 1926, 1948 and 1965. Are we going to sit back and let them do it to us again? Tommy felt something caught between his teeth. He carefully removed the hair as if it were a bomb fuse, prised open the croquette with his fingers, finding only the usual fish and potato filling. Wondering if his staff were trying to drug him, he wiped his greasy fingers on the report so they would know he knew. What the report failed to mention was that 1965 had failed to wipe the communists out completely. They had gone underground and were finally snuffed out in Blitar in 1968. Tommy recalled from his own investigations in Blitar at that time there had been some unspecified link with a Pak Turut, an old mystic who was reputed to be bankrolling the underground Blitar movement through black magic, but he vanished into thin air before questioning could extract a confession out of him. Any political revival coming from Blitar these days was more likely to revolve around Soekarnoism than communism, given that the founding president of the republic was buried there. But you could never be sure. He pencilled the three words ‘TURUT — BLITAR — 1968’ into the margin near the smeared fish and potato for Yamin and the intelligence staff of Directorate A to double-check.

106

MONDAY

Shivering, Tommy draped the flag over his shoulders and squeaked in his new boots to the water dispenser in the corner of his office. He poured himself a glass of water but thought better of drinking it: they could have put something in it over the weekend. He went to tip the water into an ashtray still containing last week’s kretek butts, but hesitated to examine its contents first. Fifteen butts — weren’t there only 14 on Saturday? Or had he added one at the last minute to trick them? They could have sprinkled teargas powder into the ashes for this very purpose. He lifted a plate doubling as a lid on the water dispenser and slowly poured the water back in, listening carefully for any irregularities. Was the airconditioning really playing up or had the person who poisoned his drinking water also put something into the filters over the weekend? Legionnaire’s disease seemed a spookily appropriate virus for HQ. He rushed back to his desk and pulled out his gas mask. The stale rubber stung his eyes and lungs. It had been a good friend to him over the years: he’d used it numerous times with the Udayana battalion in Timor and later during the actions to reassert government authority at Tanjung Priok and Lampung. Tommy caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror behind the door he used to check his uniform before parade or when receiving special visitors. In his gas mask with the flag draping to the floor like a cape, he looked like that warrior with the really nifty laser-sword in that American space film. Wish they had some of them for special forces — imagine what you could do with a laser! Tommy mimed drawing his laser-sword: whooshing the air with his empty hand, his flag-cape fluttered. He caught sight of his empty hand in the mirror. Wouldn’t the journalists and their Western observer cadres like to photograph him like this to spread their agitprop! Hell, even old warhorses like Ricky were susceptible to their poison: at their lunch meeting last week he told Tommy how he wanted to go quietly on the kampung, make sure nothing made the press this time. It suggested a disturbing liberalism. Tommy looked at the words scribbled on the report. They never had found Turut. Didn’t ‘turut’ mean ‘to join in’, as in ‘join the cadres’? If it were a code name, as Tommy had long suspected, the snakehead — the undercover movement’s leader — was called something else. But his staff might be in on it as well: the enemy cadres were often closer than you knew. He tore the annotated page out of the report, folded it and put it for safe keeping in his bulletproof cigarette case in his shirt pocket.

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Turning back to the report, he read on the following page: Four categories of communist party membership were identified in the aftermath of 1965: ‘A’ for core leaders, ‘B’ for active members, ‘C’ for card-carrying members and ‘D’ for those under investigation. In addition to these the army research team has recently identified category ‘F’ for intellectuals and students. We have proof that Category F exists and is active. Tommy whistled: the new communists were very smart, using workers’ protests to spread their poison in the current generation, polluting the minds of the best and brightest the nation had to offer. In that way they represented a greater threat now than in 1965. Category F had already infiltrated the families of the military establishment. Sumitra Supangat had been arrested a few years ago during a protest over workers’ rights at the Nike factory along Jl Daan Mogot. Tommy’s boys circulated among the crowd, photographing protesters, as the local guards and strikebreakers mopped up, arresting dozens. Sumitra was released after her father Ricky stepped in and had the charges dropped on the agreement he send her overseas to cool down. Sumitra had returned to Jakarta recently; Tommy could not help wondering whether this had anything to do with an upsurge in Category F related activities. When she left there had been the usual slaps over the wrists and warnings not to step out of line again, but it had left Tommy wondering why a father would not stop his daughter making such a spectacle of herself. As Elvis said, girls needed tender loving care. Unless Ricky supported her protest? But what sort of father, Tommy wondered, would sacrifice his daughter in that way? One who would do the same with his wife. Tommy looked at Tina smiling at him from the photo on his desk, her hair high in the beehive of their early married days: sure, his marriage was lacking in some areas, but at least he had not traded in his wife a few years back on a younger model like Ricky had. Tina had been devastated, fearful that Tommy would follow suit: a man who failed to stand by the mother of his children was worse than a communist, she said. That was it: Yamin would be tailing Ricky until further notice. Tommy shivered and huddled into his chair, drawing the flag tightly around his shoulders. They were lurking everywhere and he was not going to let them stab him or his loved ones in the back again.

108

MONDAY

5.2 Chenny unpacked her shoulder bag of hairdressing equipment behind the closed door of the Tekanlis’ upstairs bathroom in Menteng. Setting out her scissors and brushes, she noticed the rows of Amway and other imported products in their sleek plastic bottles lined up. She sniffed one with its chemical blossom sweetness and wondered whether the subtler natural fragrances of her own potions would appeal. A plaque bearing a photo of an older man with huge sideburns and a garland of flowers around his neck hung on the wall near the toilet, with some English words Chenny could not entirely comprehend: something about taking care of business and an unfamiliar word starting with the letter C. He looked like the master of the house. Funny, she thought, to have an image of yourself for contemplation in an intimate room like this. But then she hardly knew Tommy Tekanli. ‘Can I come in yet?’ Tina cooed from her morning room where Chenny had left her, neck and shoulders soaking in an Amway moisturiser cream bath, in a bizarre reprise of an earlier Tekanli massage. ‘Not yet,’ Chenny singsonged back, playing without enthusiasm the role her client expected of her: her interest was elsewhere today. Soekarno said prostitutes made the best spies — and she was certainly beyond suspicion in her innocuous white dress. Fetching a bowl from the kitchen downstairs, she had taken the opportunity to scout around the house as Munin had requested. The main living area bore the usual ostentation save for a large display cabinet containing a collection of sorts. By the front door a small room appeared to be a study — papers scattered on a desk could have been important, but a maid disturbed her before she could have a closer look. A few short days ago the promise of a big bonus would have been enough in itself. Home visits often paid better than what passed for sex; and more money brought her long-planned Singapore visit and surgical release ever closer. But money was of secondary interest today. What a weekend! Lia had laughed at her man trouble. It had come at the worst possible time, confusing everything she wanted, but she felt happier than she could remember ever being in Jakarta, able to face anything. Glowing with love, Chenny called Tina into the bathroom to have her hair washed. Shirtless after her cream bath, Tina mistook Chenny’s smile for her, feigning embarrassment over her provocatively lacy bra. She really was being a dreadful flirt, thinking she was safe in her home territory. But she was playing with fire.

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‘I spoke to Ibu Siska about you,’ Tina leant back over the basin. ‘How is she?’ ‘Still suffering from morning sickness, but that will pass. It did with my three. Now they’re all grown and gone,’ Tina sighed. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘Siska’s big in the Ladies’ Auxiliary who are very active in women’s rights issues. I asked for their help with the waria in your kampung but was outvoted.’ ‘Thanks for trying,’ Chenny was surprised by Tina’s offer; and not unhappy with the result. In her years in Jakarta she had learned to enjoy being on the outside, the freedom beyond the boundaries of men and women. And free from the help of do-gooders like the Ladies’ Auxiliary. Distracted, she scooped cold water from the washbasin over Tina’s head. ‘Oeyyy!’ Tina grunted in surprise. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Chenny ran the hot-water taps. She let the basin fill, testing the water temperature with her fingers; satisfied, she sluiced it over Tina’s scalp before massaging in shampoo. ‘You know, I sometimes feel like Priscilla living at Gracelands before she married Elvis Presley,’ Tina confided. ‘Lots of affection but no sexual interest. The man on the plaque,’ she added, seeing Chenny’s incomprehension. ‘I thought that was your husband on the wall.’ It seemed even odder to have someone else hanging in your bathroom: intimate, like a photo of another lover on your bedside table. ‘Tommy? Really?’ Tina sounded inordinately pleased. Her head fell back into Chenny’s hands as she rinsed out the shampoo and their eyes met. ‘I know this sounds silly, but I feel like there’s a mysterious connection between you and me. I can’t explain it,’ Tina’s gaze invited the sharing of illicit secrets. As everyone wanted from their hairdresser. And I won’t explain it, Chenny thought to herself, lathering Tina’s hair a second time, calmly awaiting the gossip in Tina to overcome her discretion. She steered the conversation back to hair: ‘What did Pak Tommy think of your beehive last week? Did your hairdo set him on fire?’ ‘Well, not exactly,’ Tina murmured sadly. ‘How about your love life? Anyone special at the moment?’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ Chenny paused while rinsing Tina’s hair, ‘there is.’ She smiled as she thought of Munin. ‘You seem very happy.’

110

MONDAY

‘Yes, but.’ ‘But what?’ ‘But it scares me a little,’ Chenny confided in her client, more new territory for her. ‘Can it last or is it just infatuation? Will we stay together or will he move on?’ Chenny combed her homemade conditioner through Tina’s hair. Made of lime juice, bird grit and egg yolk for condition, with tomatoes and carrot juice for sheen and depth, it worked magic with hair; not unlike Munin’s magic with damaged cars, she thought to herself. Ah Nin, she sighed, will you really take care of me? ‘This stays on for a few minutes,’ she explained to Tina, ‘so it gets deep into your hair filaments.’ ‘Ah, those hands of yours,’ Tina murmured, melting under Chenny’s skilful touch. Chenny continued massaging her client’s scalp, thinking of Munin, until Tina broke in on her reverie: ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but given your worries, I think you could do with some advance warning. I’ve heard Tommy talking about things late at night on the phone.’ ‘What sort of things?’ Chenny asked, trying not to sound too interested. ‘Well, I don’t know the details of course, but it seems there’s going to be a crackdown shortly in your neighbourhood.’ ‘Is that so?’ Chenny thought guiltily of poor Tobing, bashed and left to die outside his warung on Saturday night. She and Munin had not known until this morning, so focused had they been on each other. Others had been attacked as well; and they had both been surprised by the numbers of people milling around the kampung in a show of support for the victims. ‘Sounds like the petrus all over again,’ she referred to the mysterious killings, in which thousands were killed by death squads in the mid-1980s under a presidential direction to clean up crime in Jakarta. ‘I don’t know about that. I do know waria have also been targeted. You and your new friend should watch out.’ ‘Kenapa?’ Chenny asked why, although the stated reason hardly mattered. As a public health risk, perhaps. Privately, it would simply be that someone like Tommy had decided they were expendable, like at Taman Lawang previously. Waria like herself could embarrass too many well-placed people who blamed their existence on decadent expatriates. She knew if their client base were ever made public, it would alter forever outside perceptions of Indonesian family values. She smiled grimly to herself. ‘I might be able to help you,’ Tina continued. ‘Put in a good word with Tommy.’

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‘But why would Tommy care about me?’ Chenny asked, fingering her lightningbolt pendant: I’m not going to tell you what your husband made me do to him. But she did not need to. Tina saw the pendant; her bottom lip quivered and Chenny realised she knew she and Tommy had met before. ‘Wait, let me explain.’ ‘I think you’d better leave now,’ Tina sniffed. Chenny recognised the frigid middle-age mannerisms that drove husbands to waria like her, and which would judge her harshly, unjustly. ‘But I’m not the only one.’ ‘What?’ Tina screamed; her face crumpled and she slumped into the base of her seat, sobbing. Was she really ignorant until now or had she simply ignored the tell-tale signs of her husband’s behaviour? From the outside it was impossible to gauge the ground rules of any relationship. She put her hand on Tina’s shoulder. Tina looked up, her teary face streaked by mascara: ‘Tell me, how do you please a man? I’ve borne his children and I’m not as young and firm as I used to be — but I’ve stopped eating pineapple, I’ve dressed up for him, I’ve even tried taking it armystyle — I just can’t seem to get through to Tommy anymore.’ Chenny wiped Tina’s tears away, smoothing her cheeks, and felt to her surprise Tina’s neglected skin responding. She knew she should dislike this woman for all that she represented, for all that her husband had done and threatened to do, but somehow she could not. She was not answerable for her husband. Tina had bared her feelings before her, and Chenny felt ashamed of herself: she was a healer, not a hurter. ‘Believe me, there’s many ways of having sex apart from army-style,’ Chenny said gently, her hands swirling chakras on Tina’s body; she thought of Munin’s grey receding hair, his stubbly chin and Adam’s apple, his thin brown chest with his seashell nipples and seaweed chest-hairs, the pit of his sternum, his grizzled navel as Tina relaxed into her touch, moaning softly as her bra and skirt fell to the floor. Chenny glanced through the bathroom door into the couple’s bedroom heavy with chintz bedspreads and curtains, pink like lollies. Some would find it romantic, but not Tommy — it seemed parked cars were more his scene these days. She took Tina’s hands and led her to her lolly-bed, freeing her body of her damp knickers. ‘What about my haircut?’ Tina whimpered, her papaya thighs trembling as she teetered on the brink of her seventh chakra.

112

MONDAY

‘La-a-a-a-ater,’ Chenny aspirated, her free hand around Tina’s neck as she slumped forward, hugging her in release. Ah Munin, my sweet reason.

5.3 Ricky drummed his fingers on the carved coffee table and hissed to a white-shirted waiter for another kopi tobruk: the bule was late. Popping another emping nut chip into his mouth, he looked around the Hilton gardens. The place reeked money, from the ornamental palms draped with hanging orchid baskets to the manicured lawns leading to the swimming pool. At tables along the hotel verandah, Japanese and Korean businessmen in golfing gear — prospective tenants for his Setiabudi condominiums — discussed their latest deals. He sipped the last of the sweet muddy brew, felt coffee grounds stick and grind between his teeth. Pulling a face, he recalled Mulya’s anti-Australian diatribe yesterday. Ricky liked Australians: without the superpower superiority of Americans, he came to the negotiating table every bit their equal. He remembered the Australian novels of Idrus and Achdiat, set in Sydney and Canberra, reassuring in the way they showed Australians every bit as venal and hopeful as Indonesians deep down. Perhaps he should dig them out for his son. But reading hardly seemed Mulya’s type of recreation. A waiter returned silently through the palm grove along the shaded wooden verandah with another cup and bowl of emping on a silver tray. Although Ricky had dismissed it at the time, he now wondered what family problems Mulya’s latest outburst was covering up. Looking again at his daughter’s mounting room bill, his headache from the drive from Pondok Indah returned. The Volvo stank like a garbage bin after his stupid driver had doused the leatherwork with rainwater collected in a durian husk. ‘But boss, that’s what Pak Munin at the magic garage said would fix the smell,’ Wahidin protested as they drove to the hotel. Ricky thought he would strangle Munin if he ever got his hands upon him. But he forgot about Munin as soon as he saw the bule approaching along the walkway, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Ah, Pak Bule,’ Ricky stood and greeted Graham warmly. ‘Pak Ricky,’ Graham held out his hand. It felt like boiled squid in Ricky’s grasp.

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‘The hot weather’s turning me into a sweating pig,’ Graham joked, the rattan chair creaking in protest at his bulk. ‘What do you call them — babi ngentot?’ Ricky was surprised to hear the bule refer to the Javanese changeling pig: ‘I think you mean babi ngepet.’ He pictured the bule perched on a barstool, dwarfing the bargirl beside him, teaching him the rudimentary Indonesian of sex-talk: he too had known the loneliness of a hotel room in his time. ‘It’s a children’s story,’ Ricky explained. ‘As Muslims we don’t eat pork, pigs are unclean — but as Javanese we believe in magic pigs, that men can change their form at night to steal money or jewels from their neighbours.’ ‘Interesting. And what about magic garages? Are they really magic or is that just marketing?’ ‘I see you’ve been doing your homework, Pak Graham,’ Ricky laughed. ‘Who really knows what goes on in magic garages? With their mixture of the supernatural and the mechanical, I’d say they neatly describe my country at its present stage of development. And that is why we are discussing business, is it not? Coffee?’ he poured a cup. Graham sipped his coffee: ‘I went for a run yesterday. Got away from the crowds on the main roads and did a little reconnaissance around your land parcel,’ he combed his hair with his fingers over his bald patch. ‘So what did you think of the traditional village lifestyle?’ ‘Poor wretched people, living like that. The water is filthy — don’t you have laws here against that sort of thing?’ Typical crass bule, charging in pretending concern for people he knew little of and cared nothing about. ‘Of course,’ Ricky said evenly. ‘But fining the polluters would put people out of work. And that only makes the poor even poorer.’ ‘I see what you mean.’ The sooner Ricky was rid of the batik factory in Setiabudi the better. It was losing money like water. Not even a large contract for civil servants’ shirts had arrested its slide into debt. The cheap copy ikats and ship cloths which had been its staple for so long had lost their appeal as tourists became more discerning. And Sumitra was on his back again: barely off the plane and she was threatening him with protests for minimum wages and conditions. ‘I thought I saw people fishing a woman’s body out of the water yesterday,’ Graham continued. ‘Where?’ ‘Setiabudi.’

114

MONDAY

‘A nasty end. It happens in the slums — life is cheap.’ Ricky had heard rumours of Tommy’s special forces going overboard on the weekend. ‘As you understand after your visit there yesterday, Pak Graham.’ When Graham looked up, Ricky knew he had a nibble. ‘I’m impressed, Pak Graham. You’ve learnt a lot about our country already. From what I’ve seen, most Australian businessmen aren’t very interested in Jakarta beyond making money. You seem different. Together we can help our brothers in the slums. Our low labour costs are very attractive to investors.’ ‘Yes, the business prospects seem limitless,’ Graham agreed. ‘Pools of cheap labour our Australian unions won’t allow us.’ ‘I admire your young and wealthy country, with its proud ideals. I wouldn’t have sent my daughter to study in Australia otherwise, would I? Or agree to her marrying an Australian?’ ‘I didn’t realise,’ Graham murmured. Ricky reeled in his line: ‘We held her family Islamic service on Friday. She’s staying here at the Hilton till her public reception. Have you been to a Javanese wedding? Please come along, learn about my history and culture. To you, Indonesia must seem like a land of poor brown men and superstition — of magic garages and changeling pigs.’ His eyes moist, Ricky paused: let mutual greed overcome mutual distrust. ‘We need to be realistic about development,’ Ricky continued. ‘Look at Nike and Reebok setting up shoe factories here, creating jobs for thousands in Jakarta alone. But where are their executives going to live?’ Holding his watery hazel gaze, Ricky continued: ‘Their investment and capital flows will assist in modernisation and help us to remake Jakarta, get rid of the slums and in their place create parkland or new residential developments for more executives. Development,’ he repeated the last word like a mantra. ‘So what happens to the people living in the kampung?’ ‘Those with land title will be offered alternative housing. Even the squatters will be given money to return to their villages. Don’t you want to assist in this development? Pak Graham, I’m offering you a partnership. How serious are you about doing business in my country?’ ‘I’m serious,’ Graham protested. Ricky knew he had his fish flapping out of the water, gasping for air. ‘Well, If you could just take care of this as a show of goodwill,’ he slid Sumitra’s room bill across the coffee table.

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Graham sat back, the bill untouched on the table between them. ‘Well, our politicians seem to be getting on with each other, provided we don’t remind you about Timor so often.’ ‘I served in Timor, I know what’s best for them,’ Ricky chose his words carefully. ‘My father served there as well during the Pacific war,’ Graham retorted. ‘I wonder what happened to the young men who helped him then.’ If, Ricky thought, you Australians had not fought a guerilla war so successfully in those hills against the Japanese in 1942, we would not have had such a problem there since 1975. But said: ‘Our countries have so much to offer each other. We need to learn to get on with each other as individuals.’ ‘I’ve got a lot riding on this deal as well,’ Graham said doubtfully. ‘You stand to benefit greatly from it.’ ‘So who else is involved?’ ‘That’s not important.’ ‘Come on, you’re not doing this by yourself. Who’s doing the dirty work for you? I have a right to know who else is involved before my backers commit money to it.’ Ricky was not going to let the bule and his backers sniff around Tommy if he could help it. He had grown with and tolerated Tommy’s eccentricities over their years in the troops together, but his heavy-handedness in recent times was straining Ricky’s loyalty: ‘Pak Graham, you have to trust my judgement on this one.’ The offer hung heavy between them as gamelan music wafted from inside. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Graham picked up the bill slowly from the coffee table. ‘You don’t,’ Ricky’s watery eyes twinkled. ‘But why would I cheat you when we both have so much to gain?’

5.4 To settle the baby, Maria bounced on her feet a few times until they hurt. She could feel the scabs blistering again and tried to steady herself so they would set. She felt cold, and drew the shawl closer around her shoulders. ‘Auntie, warm up, please,’ Maria felt hands rubbing her legs. ‘She’s in shock. Lack of circulation. But I can’t treat her here. Bring her to the hospital.’ ‘Where am I going to get the money from?’

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‘I don’t know. Change her dressings at least. Here’s a few clean ones for now.’ Hands undid the bandages on her feet and hands. Some thought she was a fake with the rags on her hands. Sobirin bandaged parts of his body in iodine-painted rags, spreading shrimp paste on them to attract flies and lay in the gutter at the Kuningan lights, writhing as if run over by a car. When, after a few days, this ceased to impress, he strapped his leg back and pulled up his loose-fitting trousers and hobbled on crutches between the cars. One evening at the lights he showed Maria his begging amulet: ‘From my sorcerer in Indramayu. People cannot refuse me with this,’ he said proudly. Maria reached out to touch it, but he snatched it back. ‘It’s mine,’ he hissed through his harelip. ‘I’ll make some money for my family and get out of here before the social workers grab me.’ ‘Auntie, this is Father Frans. He’s here to help you.’ ‘I heard about your aunt from some of my parishioners. I didn’t have any trouble finding you. She’s attracted quite a crowd.’ ‘Yes, people came here after Saturday night, and then a few saw her hands and feet and word got around. Father, some are saying it’s a miracle.’ ‘Let’s not talk about that, my child. How long has your aunt been like this?’ ‘A couple of days. She’s been talking a lot in her sleep, like she remembers things from the old days.’ ‘It may be too late to save her. She is going to need a lot of prayers. Light this candle and get the others outside to do the same.’ Maria felt a hand grabbing at her neck: ‘Scapular? Interesting, I haven’t seen one of these before. Which order?’ ‘Josephites. Their nuns taught us.’ ‘Who founded our order?’ ‘Maria McKillop,’ the class singsonged. ‘Yes, in Australia back in the 1880s,’ Sister Susiana tucked her hands into the deep sleeves of her brown habit. ‘Maria Fatima Lay, how does a person become a saint?’ ‘They perform miracles, sister.’ ‘What’s a miracle?’ Maria was silent. ‘A miracle is where the church can demonstrate that a person has sought and been granted intercession by a religious figure.’

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‘So if we pray to Maria McKillop, perhaps she’ll be a saint in heaven one day?’ Maria saw a light a long way ahead of her; smelt the sweet fragrance of frangipani. In the distance Federico waved to her. She called out to him but he could not hear her, only kept waving. Struggling, she drew towards him and the light grew brighter; she could now hear sobbing behind her. She looked back and saw Jacinta bending over a withered body on a makeshift bed, a priest beside her with his communion chalice offering the sacrament to kneeling people, some of whose faces she recognised from the kampung. Maria felt sad to see her niece upset; she was a good girl and had been through much herself. But the way ahead looked so inviting. The priest placed the chalice on the packing crate beside the bed, sat down and reached into his bag. Pulling out a dark cloth parcel, he unwrapped a phial of Oil of Prisms, with which he anointed her forehead, lips and breast: ‘I absolve you from your sins, Maria.’ Cloyingly fragrant, the oil smelt like the Motael church on Good Friday. Her throat was hoarse from calling Federico. Maria licked at the fingers as they dabbed oily crosses on her lips; heard her name called as if from afar. ‘Maria Fatima Lay, tell us about your name.’ Maria stood up, her heart pounding. She hoped she could remember it all for Sister Susiana: ‘Maria, Our Lady of Fatima, is the patron saint of Portugal.’ ‘Go on child.’ ‘In 1917, a young farm girl and her cousins saw the Mother of God near the village of Fatima. Thousands gathered to bear witness but only the children could see and hear her.’ ‘Blessed are the children.’ ‘Yes, sister. They were told a secret by Blessed Maria; a secret so terrible that it was given to the Pope in a sealed envelope to be opened only after their death.’ ‘Girls, remember His Holiness has still not released that secret to the world.’ ‘Sister, what’s the secret?’ The light grew dimmer and Federico faded away, still waving, still smiling: ‘Federico!’ she called out, but he was gone. Bang! A strong light shone in her eyes. Maria shrank from the light, crumpled into herself. ‘What’s going on here?’ ‘Get out and leave us alone!’ ‘Who are all those people? It’s lit up like a carnival outside with all those candles.’

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‘None of your business, Murdani.’ ‘Everything in this kampung is my business.’ ‘Is that so? You ignored us well enough on Saturday night. What about the protection money we pay you, what good did it do us two nights ago?’ ‘So this is some kind of protest?’ ‘Sure, we’re all protesting last Saturday night’s attacks, by saying a few prayers for my dying aunt.’ ‘I could have you charged, you know. Creating a public nuisance. Making a shrine to some old madwoman.’ ‘Try, Murdani. My new friends here may think differently about your making trouble for my family after the other night. But let’s make a deal: I won’t tell you how to do your job and you won’t tell me how to run my life.’ ‘You’ve been warned,’ scowling, Murdani withdrew from the room. ‘Oh, Auntie,’ Jacinta leaned over her dying relative, tears in her eyes. ‘When will they ever leave us alone?’

5.5 Munin crept along the bushes framing the boundary of the house, towards the lamplight glowing from the garage. All else was dark; spreading fig trees in the park opposite blocked the fading moonlight in the night-dark street. Munin’s pig’s ears, larger and better of hearing, picked up quiet conversation coming from within. ‘He’d worked for them for over six months, but the bule wouldn’t pay a bonus, not even to the maid who had been there for two years.’ ‘So what did he do?’ ‘He locked the car in and called me and a few other guards up. The bule was desperate not to miss his plane — he had all his bags packed in the car ready to go — and we stung him for another month’s bonus.’ ‘Incredible!’ ‘He was only here to make money as well. All we did was redistribute some of his wealth among ourselves.’ Munin clopped softly along to the gateway; prising the bushes apart with his snout, he dimly made out the shape of the nightguard and another person inside. Salivating, Munin smelt hot soup. His snout traced it to the soupman’s trolley parked in the driveway. The soupman took a bowl and wandered onto the street

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where he swilled out its still-warm contents into the gutter. Munin grunted in pig reflex at food going to waste. The soupman spun around and Munin flattened himself against the bushes in the shadows. ‘Did you hear anything?’ the soupman called out to the nightguard. It took all Munin’s human willpower to stop the pig in him from breaking cover and truffling the still-warm slops. He watched in frustration as a mangy dog, fresh from foraging in the park, rustled through the leaves in the gutter; ribs heaving in excitement, it started licking the slops. The hairs on Munin’s back bristled, stimulating his scent glands. The dog looked up; sniffing the rank musk in the air, it curled its tail tightly between its legs and ran off howling. ‘Must have been that dog,’ the nightguard said unconvinced. Munin breathed a sigh of relief. A domestic pig would have smelt less, but the blackish-brown hide of a wild boar offered better night camouflage. Even so, he kept to the shadows clopping through the broad Menteng avenues, avoiding wherever possible the houses of pig-eating Chinese and Bataks. But his target tonight — Tommy Tekanli — was a Batak as well. ‘You have to be careful of spirits roaming at night,’ the soupman muttered softly to the nightguard over a bowl of soup, little imagining the changeling on their doorstep. In the shadows, Munin looked for a place where he could rub against the wall quickly and get out of here. Chenny had said the front room to the right appeared to be a study, and to the left a living room: the study was where any papers would most likely be held. He felt uncomfortable being so close to the epicentre of danger. In an upstairs room slept the woman whose hair had damaged the duco of Pak Ricky’s car; the same hair that had later been confiscated by the blackshirts on Saturday night. Beside her slept the man who had authorised Tobing’s bashing. Munin felt responsible for Tobing: if he had not been out enjoying himself with Chenny on Saturday night, perhaps his friend would not have been caught out alone and suffered so terribly. Still, there was more than just Tobing’s livelihood at stake now. He thought of pretty Chenny waiting at home for him, perched over his life-lamp. Something about her had punctured his solitary old boar’s thick hide. But that was the nature of trust, he thought, as he dangled at the mercy of her flame. She had taken a huge risk for him on Saturday night, and the rest was history. They had barely been apart since then, delighting in each other, until Chenny kept her appointment with Tina Tekanli earlier today. Munin then willed himself to sleep for a

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few hours and was back at her place shortly before sundown, fresh and ready for the long night ahead. Lia answered the door, and looked up and down at the thin grey-haired man in his white long-sleeved shirt, dark trousers and plastic sandals. ‘Well, if it isn’t my friend from the night-market!’ She put her hands to her cheeks in mock surprise, showing nails freshly painted blood-red. ‘Of course, I forgive you!’ she swept up the bunch of yellow flowers Munin had picked for Chenny from the corner weeds in his garage. Chenny rescued Munin from the doorway. ‘Trims,’ she thanked Munin for the flowers Lia had commandeered, brushing her hand against his holding the hurricane lamp. But Lia saw this: ‘Lho child be careful. He’s a sorcerer. He’ll put a spell on your heart dong!’ ‘Maybe he already has,’ Chenny said, smiling at Munin, taking him by the arm and leading him inside. ‘Is he always so strong and silent, Chen?’ Lia followed them into the lounge room-cum-salon and sat beside Munin on the couch. ‘No, I’m sure I’ve heard noises in the night!’ Munin pulled a pained face. ‘Lia’s working tonight,’ Chenny explained, before turning to her roommate. ‘Go now,’ she said firmly, bidding her leave. ‘Sial,’ Lia cursed, ‘Just when I felt I was getting to know you, mister sorcerer. Some other time kok?’ She got to her feet slowly; Munin saw how the effort of brightness had tired her already: ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. That leaves you both plenty of scope.’ ‘Ever tried it with a pig?’ Munin said suddenly. ‘Kinky dong! Tebet, here I come!’ Lia looked at Munin with new respect, before flouncing out, banging her tambourine against her hip. They held each other on the couch as the afternoon light faded against the curtains. ‘What do you hope to find there?’ she asked him. ‘I’m not sure,’ Munin answered. ‘It’s more of a fishing trip at this stage. Did you see a safe or storage cabinet anywhere?’ Chenny shook her head: ‘Only the cabinet in the living room. You know,’ she snuggled into his chest, ‘we could always run away together after this. Just forget about the kampung’s troubles and set ourselves up somewhere new with the valuables.’

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Munin looked at her: he had been accused of many things, but was not going to start becoming a thief this late in life without good reason. But Chenny was a very good reason. ‘What about Tobing and Jacinta? And her aunt?’ ‘Well, there’s plenty of people concerned about Jacinta’s aunt now. The kampung is swarming with well-wishers. That attack seems to have backfired. If they thought it would quieten the kampung, the opposite has happened.’ ‘Yes, they seem to have turned Jacinta’s aunt into a saint,’ Munin agreed. ‘And what about Lia? If we just ran away from these troubles, who would take care of her? You and I have been lucky so far.’ ‘Very lucky,’ Chenny stroked his cheek. ‘Our luck could change and they’d be there to help us. This is our home. These are our friends. We can’t just abandon them.’ ‘I just wish it were easier to live our lives without these hassles.’ ‘Me too. And I’m sure the others feel that way at times too. Now just be still and hold me.’ Chenny nestled into Munin’s chest. Perhaps it was worth facing all the trouble, if it meant they were together. After the room was completely dark she prepared the hurricane lamp on the coffee table. ‘Remember, if I’m caught, the flame will flicker. Blow it out and I’ll turn back into myself.’ ‘I’m scared,’ Chenny buried herself in his arms. ‘All you need to do is guard the flame. Trust me.’ ‘I do,’ she said, moist-eyed. He kissed her forehead: ‘Go and open the door, so I don’t tear this place apart on the way out.’ When her back was turned the transformation was complete: Munin trotted squealing out the door into the street, leaving a strong tang of pig odour behind him. But that was hours ago. Under cover of the hedge, Munin waited and listened. The thorny branches offered little resistance to his thick hide. The nightguard’s raised voice echoed in the garage: ‘With her flowing black hair she’ll take you like a sundel bolong and castrate you!’ Munin was not surprised to hear talk of spirit women: whenever men got together the talk turned to sex.

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‘Bo-hong!’ the soupman disbelieved, ‘Give me a smoke.’ The nightguard offered a crushed packet and they smoked on in silence, huddling close to the hurricane lamp in the garage. Its flame flickered and Munin jumped, fearing capture. ‘Panaspati are worse lho,’ the soupman offered. ‘P-panas-p-pati?’ the nightguard’s voice wavered in the night air. ‘Monsters with no head on their shoulders. It’s between their legs.’ ‘You mean they’ve —’ ‘— got a dick for a head,’ the soupman let his words sink in. ‘Plus they walk on their hands and breathe fire.’ ‘Scary!’ the nightguard said in disbelieving wonderment. The soupman stood up, stretching, cracking his wrist and finger joints. ‘Well, I’ll be going then. More soup to sell tonight.’ The nightguard followed him out and Munin watched as he wheeled his trolley along the wide dark street silhouetted against the night as the glinting bronze statue of a pre-revolutionary hero in the park, standing lonely sentinel over the rich and well-connected. Alone again, the nightguard clutched his shivering sides, although the night was warm. He ran his fingers through his slicked-back black hair and flicked his kretek butt into the bushes where it glowed in the dark near Munin’s feet. Munin edged back into the bushes away from the glowing stub until his hindquarters jammed up against the brick perimeter wall beneath the hedge. Trapped, he grunted in fear. ‘Who’s there?’ the nightguard called out in a wavering voice. He pulled out his torch and shone it along the hedgerow. Munin closed his eyes to minimise reflections from the torch beam and squared his shoulders, preparing to charge if sprung. The nightguard paced slowly along the hedgerow fence, the torch beam casting monster shadows dancing on the leaves. Munin smelt fear in the nightguard’s sweat as he passed within a metre or so. ‘Must be that damn dog again,’ the nightguard muttered to himself. He crushed the still-glowing kretek underfoot and shuffled back into the safety of the lamp-lit garage. Munin knew he had to get out of here fast or the flame would start flickering back in Setiabudi. Breathing deeply, he scraped his bristly flanks back and forth against the brick wall. This isn’t working, he thought to himself, rubbing ever harder in frustration, until a sudden whoosh and thump sent him reeling as though he had been hit by a wave. The Krakatau tsunami of valuables from the Tekanli household

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entering his body lifted Munin off his four trotters and threw him crashing out of the bushes, rousing the guard in the garage. Dazed, Munin stood up with difficulty: his centre of gravity seemed to have shifted, his newly loaded flanks bulging and shifting, crushing his diaphragm as if he were pregnant. His whole body ached and his flanks dripped with whitish liquid: broken Amway bottles were scattered on the ground around him. He dabbed at the slick of liquid on the ground gingerly with his left fore trotter, the soft fleshy pad between the hard nails throbbing as if he had trodden on a thorn. His eyes stung from the chemical sweetness of the liquid; he shook his head and a blue terry-towelling hat fell plop into the middle of the puddle of Amway. He sniffed at its chocolatey brim, wondering what it tasted like, until the cock of a rifle demanded attention. ‘Alhamdulillah!’ the nightguard exclaimed, lowering the barrel of the rifle enough to be offline; Munin, his eyes black with adrenalin, charged between the startled guard’s legs, goring his thighs with his tusks. The guard screamed and fell to the ground clutching his bloodied shredded trousers. Turning, Munin made for another charge, but thought better of it; he had a long way to go and needed to make the most of his head start. He trotted away limping into the night shadows, his insides rattling with unknown valuables from the Tekanli household. A rifle shot at his departing flanks woke the whole neighbourhood: frightened by the noise, Munin farted and something clattered to the ground behind him. He looked back at the gold Rolex he had just jettisoned, grunting in wonderment at what it was doing inside him. It would have been worth some money — money for Tobing’s recovery, money for setting himself and Chenny up elsewhere — but then he was no thief under ordinary circumstances. More shouts from behind as guards from neighbouring houses found Tommy’s injured nightguard. In the protective shadow of camphor laurels, Munin crossed the roadway at Jl Imam Bonjol, shards of pain sweeping up his left leg. From the safety of undergrowth on the other side, he rested awhile, looking back at the scene he had fled. The street was lit up like a shopping centre as houses, woken by the gunshot, came to life hours early. The guards had been joined by other men; Munin started at the sight of the blackshirts who had threatened him on Saturday night. They must have been in Tommy Tekanli’s house, he thought, to be on the spot so quickly. The blackshirts were directing the search for clues, directing the local nightguards to search in a radial pattern along the street and through the park.

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It was time to head off again. Dizzy with pain at every step, Munin’s bowels knotted; his stomach bulged and rippled and a photograph clattered onto the footpath. Munin looked back briefly at the murky image of two moustached men shaking hands, and continued limping along the roadside towards the headlights of Jl Cianjur. Munin smelt lust and hot tar as he approached Jl Cianjur. Nobody would be expecting to see a pig, nor would they be looking for one: all eyes would be on the passenger side where waria, holding back from the roadway, smoked and chatted in the shadow of fig trees. He thought of Chenny and the flame at home keeping her away from this tonight and wished she were here to hide him. He limped downhill along the far side of the road until he came to a row of slatted stalls which by day were stacked with caged puppies for sale as pets or food. Resting for a while beneath the stalls, he tried rubbing and chewing at his sore trotter to dislodge the source of pain, but his current pig form lacked human flexibility and he only managed to wedge whatever it was more deeply into the soft tissue. Breathing heavily, Munin looked out between the wooden slats: like caged animals, passengers faceless behind the tinted glass of their vehicles watched the evening parade. A taxi driver, exhausted at the end of his 18-hour shift, had strayed into the traffic jam: Munin wondered whether he was there to make money or spend some. A waria in a short skirt, her blouse unbuttoned proudly revealing swellings of womanly breasts, wandered around to the driver’s side of the taxi. She leant her breasts over into the open window and from his low angle Munin could see the bulging G-string under her skirt, tantalising and mysterious. His arse tickled and his pig’s penis curled in anticipation as the first beads of a string of pearls eased their way out. A shout from the road behind broke off his thoughts; Munin looked back and saw pinpoints of torches swarming only 50 metres away. The blackshirts had found the smashed photograph and were on his trail again. He licked his penis back into its prepuce, baffled by the string of pearls banging on his testicles, before breaking cover. ‘Babi!’ someone shouted they had sighted the pig. Torches flashed behind him casting his fear-crazed shadow onto the roadway ahead as the blackshirts gained on him. Near Jl Cicurug a bullet whizzed past his ear, kicking the dirt up in front of him. Munin grunted in fear and the last of the string of pearls machine-gunned a reply from his fundament, doubling him over in corkscrew ejaculation. Falling down the slope, he bounced off a bumper bar and fell squeezing between cars in the midnight traffic jam. Invisible to the blackshirts, he hobbled between the parallel lanes of queuing cars, past incredulous drivers and passengers.

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By the time he reached the T-junction at the bottom of the slope, panting heavily, Munin knew he lacked the energy to stay ahead of his pursuers for much longer. Shards of pain shot up his left leg. Heartbeat racing, he shuffled into the open framed by headlights across the roadway and crashed into the bushes beneath the elevated railway tracks, hollowing out a tunnel through the scrub. ‘It’s heading for the river!’ one of the guards shouted. The blackshirts ran down the slope; torch beams crisscrossed through the scrub. Munin pressed deeper into the scrub, stepping into squelchy water where the Malang river overflowed its banks. They had all other exits covered — it was the only option. He threw himself into the stinking water, which Chenny and her friends had been tossed into by other blackshirts years before. Gagging as he came up surrounded by paper debris and plastic bottles, Munin heard them give up the chase: ‘Back to the filth it came from.’ He held his breath, his nostrils barely breaking the surface, grateful for the mud bath which shook off these parasites. Pigs are like people, he thought, clean except when forced to live in filth. The lights of the Jl Cianjur traffic jam and torch beams faded as the slow-flowing waters carried him back towards Setiabudi. He floated along under the starless smognight sky, dreaming of Chenny watching over him with the hurricane lamp. As the river widened into Setiabudi pond he saw the twinkle of lights in the kampung: people breaking their fast before dawn. The smell of the pond where the batik factory and others pumped their noxious waste was acrid, overpowering; but the poor of Setiabudi could not help living and working on top of this open sewer. This was what life held for Bung Karno’s little people in Pak Harto’s Jakarta, he thought grimly: people like himself. Munin waited in the shallows of the pond water for the sun to rise. As the eastern sky pinkened, he realised the lights were in fact candles held by dozens, if not hundreds, of vigilant people crowding the kampung, mirroring Chenny’s lifelamp for him. Had she told them of his raid? Were they waiting for him? And then he remembered Jacinta’s aunt. No matter — she would be. Satisfied, he clambered out and snuffled into sleep on the banks of Setiabudi pond. Munin woke in the morning sun to find himself transformed back into his human form. His shirt was torn and his trousers were covered in sludge. He examined his aching left foot and found a metal stickpin pressed deep into his instep, the surrounding skin the angry purple of infection after his unsavoury swim. He could not walk back with this; clenching his teeth, he dragged it out, gasping in pain. Mangled

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though it was, the letters TCB and a lightning-bolt were clearly discernible — like the pendant Chenny wore when she saved him the other night. He went to put it in his shirt pocket but found it was full already; he pulled out a gold cigarette case with a picture of Elvis Presley on it. Curious, he opened it and found a sheet of paper wedged between cigarettes and a small lighter, all dry despite his long swim. He lit a smoke and unfolded the paper: it appeared to be a report of some kind, smeared as if someone had wiped their dirty fingers on it, and with the words ‘TURUT — BLITAR — 1968’ scrawled in pencil in the margin. Munin’s temples bulged. Whatever Tommy Tekanli and his blackshirts were up to, its origins went deeper than Pak Ricky’s redevelopment deal. As far as Munin knew, he was the only connection to Turut and Blitar in Setiabudi; it seemed very much like Tommy’s boys were out specifically to get him and anybody close to him. Was that why they had bashed Tobing the other night — as a warning to him? Would they never leave him alone? An earlier generation of blackshirts had taken his family and his livelihood from him over 20 years ago; now they were sniffing around him again just when things were looking up. He refused to let them destroy his life a second time — this time he was going to fight back, protect his extended kampung family from their malice. He limped through the back laneways, avoiding the unfamiliar faces crowding the kampung, candles in hand. They glanced knowingly at him, muttering a prayer or two as he passed, mistaking his dishevelled condition for something much simpler. Jacinta’s aunt had certainly drawn attention to their kampung; but it would take more than the simple goodwill of these strangers to face down the challenge posed by Tommy Tekanli’s cryptic note. At Chenny’s laneway a bird in a cage sang out ‘Awas copet ’ as it had that first night he walked her home: she had called him the thief of hearts. Smiling in anticipation, he knocked softly on her door. The door opened to Chenny dressed in a sarong. ‘Darling!’ her face lit up and she flung her arms around his neck, sobbing with relief. ‘We’ve got to talk,’ he said between kisses.

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6.1 EMERGENCY LIGHTS FROM PATROL CARS and an ambulance parked in the driveway strobed through the picture windows into the Menteng living room. Moving jerkily under the strobe light, a woman in a pink dressing gown wiped her eyes with a tissue, before turning and sitting beside a man hunched limp on the couch. ‘It’s over now, darling,’ Tina said softly, cradling his head in her satin lap, stroking his hair. ‘What a night,’ Tommy looked sideways at the empty display cabinet opposite, its lock and glass panels still intact; and then at the scraps on the coffee table before him: the remnants of his collection the neighbouring nightguards and his blackshirts had managed to recover in the dawn light. ‘Easy lah,’ Tina smoothed his hair with her hand. ‘How could anyone have so little respect for another’s property?’ Tommy wailed, his face ugly with tears. The thieves had flaunted their robbery by dropping pieces in the street, exposing them to the elements and ruination. He did not know how he was going to get the moisturiser out of Elvis’ authenticated terry-towelling hat. Washing it would remove the chocolate stain as well, take away the link with Elvis and turn it into another Rp500 market offering. But it hardly mattered now: even the authenticating photo from the Presley Museum was damaged, smeared in faeces.

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‘Pull yourself together now. Have a smoke.’ ‘Can’t — my cigarette case is gone as well.’ Tommy was less concerned about the case itself than the paper inside, with its notes on cracking this conspiracy. It somehow held the key to this daring raid. The underground communists must be better organised this time around to have located it so deftly. Unless insiders were involved too. Tommy sighed; Tina would not like his sacking all their staff at home again. ‘Go on, they’re waiting for you outside,’ Tina pulled him to his feet, straightening the epaulets on his terry-towelling bathrobe, wiping tears from his fuzzy cheeks. ‘I’m going to make them pay, whoever they are,’ Tommy sniffed. He drew the band of his bathrobe tighter and headed outside through the garage. The men threw down their cards and snapped to attention but Tommy ignored them, heading for the ambulance where the injured nightguard lay on a stretcher with a nurse in attendance beside him. His thighs were heavily bandaged; red dabs of mercurochrome mottled his face and forearms. ‘Agus, you said you saw a pig?’ he said to his guard. The nightguard nodded, wincing at the effort. ‘Pak, this man needs to go to hospital to have his wounds stitched,’ the nurse said. Tommy nodded wearily; she shut the door and the ambulance headed off, siren wailing, into the thieving night-dark. Tommy turned to one of the blackshirts fidgeting with his lightning-bolt pendant. His store of these had been plundered, making it impossible to recognise his own recruits and the cadre’s double agents. ‘A pig, Sujono?’ Tommy snorted in disbelief. ‘A babi ngepet, pak!’ the blackshirt said. They had told him already the story of the changeling pig who robs houses by night. More Javanese mumbo-jumbo. A pig was only good for eating, its meat sweet but not as sweet as dog. Not that these Muslims would ever know. ‘How did it get away if so many of you were after it?’ ‘After it gored your guard, we trailed it as far as the Malang river,’ Sujono explained. ‘We had it cornered in the bushes, but it jumped into the water and disappeared.’ ‘Why didn’t you follow it into the river?’ ‘Pak, it was a pig!’ Yamin interrupted in horror. Tommy tried another tack: ‘How are we to recognise this pig?’

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‘It would have transformed back into a man by now, pak.’ His patience was wearing out: ‘Well then, when it was a pig, did you hit it? Can we recognise the thief in some way?’ ‘It was limping, pak.’ ‘The pig?’ Sujono nodded, and Tommy wondered whether he had fabricated this detail to save face. ‘What’s immediately downstream along the Malang?’ ‘Setiabudi kampung, pak.’ Of course — the snakehead’s lair, Tommy thought to himself: ‘You’d better start searching there for your limping culprit,’ he said. ‘The head guard Murdani should know everyone’s movements — get him to help you. Anything else to report?’ ‘Ya pak,’ Yamin handed over a bill from the Hilton hotel: ‘After I started trailing Pak Ricky yesterday, he met with a bule. He gave this bill to the bule who paid it. His name is Graham Boule.’ ‘The bule is called bule?’ it sounded to Tommy like a false name. ‘He’s Australian,’ Yamin continued. ‘Claims to be involved in property development. He’s been here three times in the last year and has met with Pak Ricky on several occasions. He’s also staying at the Hilton, in room 309.’ Tommy had a closer look: the bill covered room charges for Sumitra Supangat, back from Australia, freshly trained in troublemaking. He whistled. This was bigger than just Jakarta, with the bule bankrolling an international protest. It hardly surprised Tommy, given Australia’s views on internal matters like the communists in Timor. ‘Good work, Yamin,’ Tommy commended his deputy. ‘Seems like we’re going to have to teach that kampung respect for others’ property. Tonight — no excuses. Can you arrange extras at such short notice?’ The blackshirts smiled as he let them off their tight leash. Tommy watched as the patrol cars set off in packs and, plunging his hands into his pockets, stumped wearily back inside.

6.2 Tina pulled up alongside the plywood guardbox where a few men in faded yellow T-shirts played cards. Broken-tailed cats foraged for scraps under the benches, rubbing themselves against the men’s legs; after dealing, one in a cardsharp’s peak cap absentmindedly reached down and scratched its flanks.

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Ahead lay Jl Setiabudi, barricaded. In the rearview mirror, broken glass topped a concrete security wall. Tina wondered whether she was on the right side of the wall. But it hardly mattered anymore — since yesterday, so much had changed. After Chenny had told her of Tommy’s philandering, she wanted — but lacked the courage — to smash his display cabinet and the pieces lovingly collected inside; but then someone else had done it for her. Turning to her in his need, Tina put aside her own confused emotions as she consoled Tommy: they had been together too long for it not to be so. She told herself he was still the same person. But everything was different now. Tommy’s strange habits took on a more sinister light. After the ambulance took the guard to the hospital, she had lain awake in bed, listening to his phone calls and muffled conversations in the garage. And his latest talks focused on Setiabudi. Chenny claimed she was incidental to all this; but she had unleashed the flood of pent-up emotions in Tina which could not be checked. She had to see Chenny again. She owed her what she knew. Tina sounded the horn and the cardsharp looked up, his mouth snarling like a cornered cat. Seeing the boss’ wife behind the wheel, he threw down his cards and hurried over to her. ‘Why Ibu Tina, I didn’t recognise you with your hair tied back in a scarf.’ ‘Have you found the thief who took my pearls yet?’ Tina put him in his place. She was ill-inclined to humour any of Tommy’s lackeys today. ‘My men are looking for the culprit, I can assure you.’ ‘So I see,’ Tina said, looking at the card players. ‘What’s going on here anyway?’ she nodded at the barricades blocking the main roadway. Murdani made a show of removing his peak cap and scratching his spreading bald patch: ‘Ibu Tina, I don’t know if I’m really at liberty to tell you. At any rate, your vehicle won’t be able to get through.’ ‘That’s all right, I’ll walk,’ Tina hopped out of the Caravelle. She turned and headed down Jl Setiabudi in her pink tracksuit, ignoring the sniggers behind her. ‘What’s Pak Tommy’s missus doing here?’ Joni hissed to his father. ‘Dunno. How can I stop her having a look around if she wants to?’ Murdani muttered, picking up his cards. ‘Well, she’d better be out of here by sundown. Boss’ orders.’ Beyond the barricades the tiled shacks of the kampung stretched out along the muddy roadway. She looked down each narrow laneway as she passed but they all looked the same, with their small tiled houses crowded together. As Tina squelched

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towards the lane where Chenny lived, the road became busier with people kneeling in the mud. Hawkers bustled, selling candles and small bottles of brownish water. Tina stopped to buy a bottle. She uncorked it and was nearly knocked out by its astringency: ‘Lho, this is river water!’ she protested. ‘Holy water, blessed by Maria,’ the hawker whispered, before slipping away down a side laneway with his carry-basket of blessings. She followed the hawker down the winding path to where it opened onto a small bare-earth square crowded with people. The hawker had disappeared into the crush of sellers. Tina spun around looking for him. A nun in a brown habit thrust a booklet into Tina’s hands: ‘Maria bunda kita!’ The booklet was about Mary and told Tina how the mother of Jesus could help her. Perhaps she would give it to Tommy whose need was so much greater than her own, she thought bitterly. ‘Bakso!’ one particular foodseller had pilgrims swarming his trolley for his soup. ‘My meatball soup is made just the way the miraculous Maria likes it,’ he shouted. ‘Eat it and enjoy the blessing.’ ‘Is that blessing or bleng, Alimin?’ another foodseller called out to the laughter of the crowd. ‘My rujak has no preservatives.’ Tina was reminded of another simpler life — when she and Tommy had nothing but each other — as the woman peeled and sliced a green mango around its seed and ground it to a paste with a mortar and pestle, adding chilli and palm sugar to taste. She squeezed her way through to where others, taking advantage of the crowds, sold their sarongs and other wares. ‘Staying the night? You’ll be glad of one come nightfall!’ an ikat seller caught her admiring his fabrics. Tina fingered the red-base homespun, traced their inscrutable geometric patterns suggesting another sphere of imagination. She had seen similar fabrics in Dili, during Tommy’s tour with Udayana. ‘From Timor, the land of the miraculous Maria and her niece Jacinta. Buy one as a memento,’ the seller draped the ikat over her shoulders. ‘Special price for you.’ Tina handed over what she knew was too much money and wandered on, treading carefully to avoid stepping on the outstretched fingers of worshippers murmuring prayers. ‘Tina, what are you doing here?’ a familiar voice said in the crowd. It was Chenny, smiling at her: ‘I was just dropping in some spare clothes to Jacinta and her aunt, but I never expected to see you here. You’re looking brighter today,’ she laughed and Tina flushed, remembering yesterday.

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She followed Chenny along a path lined by crude humpies fashioned from rattan sheets, flotsam plywood and blue plastic sheeting. ‘I — I came looking for you but got sidetracked.’ ‘If you’d told me you were coming I’d have made coffee dong!’ They walked past clothes drying on bamboo poles strung between shacks; hooked beneath windows, washbuckets hanging over the water; a bicycle and birdcages stowed on rooftops. Tina pulled the ikat closer around her shoulders: ‘Please, Chenny, I need to talk with you.’ ‘This first,’ Chenny said. ‘Hail Maria full of grace, the Lord is with you,’ Tina heard voices as she followed Chenny past kneeling pilgrims on the boardwalk into a plywood shack. Inside, the dank sweetness of frankincense masked another sour smell in the room. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim candlelight, she saw a woman laying on a mattress in the middle of the room, her limbs propped up by pillows. Another woman, her crinkly hair marking her as Timorese, nodded to Chenny; she made room at the foot of the bed for the new arrivals. Close up, Tina smelt the sourness of impending death the incense tried to mask. She noted how the woman’s hands and feet poking out under the stained sarong were wrapped in bloodstained bandages, her fingers and toes blue from lack of circulation. This must be the miraculous Maria: but it was no shrine, just another poor person dying with a few more prayers than usual to see them off into the next life. Someone handed Tina a candle and crossed herself. Tina realised where she was and felt suddenly out of place in her pink tracksuit: ‘How long has she been like this?’ she whispered to Chenny. ‘Since Thursday.’ ‘Has anyone been to see her?’ ‘She’s better since the priest visited. The bleeding from her wounds has checked and her trauma seems to have eased.’ ‘What about a doctor?’ A young woman beside the bed, whom Tina assumed was Jacinta, looked up: ‘How can I afford a doctor?’ she sighed. ‘All my savings are gone. A nurse from the local health centre visited and gave her some aspirin but it ran out yesterday.’ Tina wondered the old woman was still alive, without proper medication and yet within a few minutes’ ambulance ride of the Dr Cipto Hospital where their guard Agus had been taken last night. 134

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‘My husband was injured when our warung burnt down. Can you help us? Anything you can offer.’ Overwhelmed, Tina plunged her hand into her shoulder bag and proffered a foil strip: ‘Try this, it may help,’ she offered. ‘Amway?’ ‘Oh dear,’ embarrassed, Tina emptied the contents of her bag and scrabbled around in the makeup and sampler tubes disgorged on the rattan floor mat: ‘Wait, here’s some aspirin.’ The other worshippers scrabbled on the floor for her Amway sampler tubes; Tina wished the ground would swallow her. The Timorese woman took one of the patient’s hands and began unravelling the patterned cotton bandage in a perfunctory manner. She tugged in places where the blood had dried; and the old woman groaned: ‘Fe, fer.’ ‘Federico,’ Jacinta explained, crumpling the bloodied bandage into a ball and tossing into a bucket. ‘Her son, buried in Baucau beside his brother Sebastiano.’ ‘Sebastiano! Where are you? Are you still in the mountains?’ ‘They killed him,’ Jacinta explained to Tina. She bent close to the old woman’s ear: ‘Auntie, it’s me, Jacinta. I’m here with you.’ ‘Who killed him?’ Tina asked, leaning forward. ‘The Javanese army.’ Their eyes met and Tina felt she knew somehow about Tommy’s tour of duty there. Jacinta held out Maria’s hand for inspection, the deep gouge on her palm upmost: ‘And they did this to her.’ Tina looked at the gaping wound and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Go on, have a closer look,’ Jacinta said, a bitter edge to her voice. ‘Seeing is believing.’ Tina leaned over, touching the old woman’s fingertips which trembled and curled under her own; she edged her fingers towards the palm where the skin broke down and bloody pus seeped out over the red fringes of the wound. The old woman snarled, and she fell back. Maria’s eyes opened wide, staring ghostly at Tina: ‘There’s others who’ll fight you in the mountains,’ she growled, the voice horrible in her throat. ‘We’ll always fight your cruelty until you leave us alone.’ Sobbing, Tina stumbled from the shack, her life with Tommy exposed as a travesty for the second time in 24 hours.

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Chenny ran out after her. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ she put her arm around Tina. ‘Something is terribly wrong,’ Tina sniffed. ‘We had a break-in last night and a lot of things went missing. Tommy’s men have traced the theft to Setiabudi. He’s a bit unhinged — I’m worried about what he’ll do in this state of mind.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘I heard Tommy on the phone today talking about some plans for Setiabudi. He’s arranged a meeting with a bule at a karaoke bar tonight in connection with it. It could be very bad for all of us. Could you go there and keep an eye on him for me?’ ‘But why me?’ ‘I don’t know who else to turn to. Please? Chenny, I’m on your side, I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But I’m worried about Tommy too, don’t you see?’ Chenny hugged her: ‘Yes — come on back to my place now. I have a few things to tell you too.’

6.3 Several Metro-Minis raced down Jl Sudirman, overtaking each other in an attempt to be first to the stop with their bounty of passengers. The conductor on the first, a boy in a striped T-shirt, trousers and thongs, leapt out while the bus was still moving and, his arms sweeping, rounded up passengers, pressing them towards his bus while the other was still pulling in. Munin was swept up in the flow. Ignoring the bellows of passengers wanting to alight, the conductor grabbed railings either side of the front door and yelled to the driver to go. The bus sailed past an immunisation campaign billboard showing President Suharto, needle in hand, bending over a screaming baby in the arms of its nervous mother. At the next stop a small boy hopped on leading a blind man in his fifties wearing the black velvet peci of the Muslims, mumbling prayers, holding out his hands seeking forgiveness and money, which were readily given in anticipation of Idul Fitri. Munin looked at his eyes: they were closed but seemed to flicker whenever he got too close to another person; he flipped a coin in the air which the blind beggar caught like an old pro. ‘Save us all from destruction, brother,’ he murmured to the beggar, who opened his eyes in astonishment. The blind man was surprisingly athletic as he sprang down between cars into traffic and into the arms of a waiting traffic policeman who forced him to do press-ups on the median strip as penance for not using the footbridge.

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6.4 ‘So you say Munin knows what’s going on with Tommy?’ Tina sipped her iced tea. There was a noise from the back of the house; Chenny spun around on the couch as Lia stumbled into the front room. Dressed in a long T-shirt, her hair rumpled and her face blotchy, she looked as though she had just woken up. ‘My flatmate,’ Chenny explained to Tina before continuing: ‘Munin is on to something with Pak Ricky. He’s on his way there now.’ ‘My throat’s so dry,’ Lia complained, pouring herself a glass, spilling iced tea over the table. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’ Chenny glanced at Tina: ‘One of my clients.’ ‘Here for another haircut?’ Lia mopped the spillage with the hem of her T-shirt, smearing the table. ‘She’s helping me with something else,’ Chenny said shortly. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, glaring at Lia as she disappeared out the back. ‘You’re not with Dharma Wanita are you?’ Lia asked Tina, referring to the Ladies’ Auxiliary. ‘It’s your tracksuit. They come around every so often making trouble for girls like us.’ Tina flushed as Lia sat heavily on the couch beside her. She smelt of stale sweat and — was that alcohol? Having exposed her own, Tina did not want to know about Chenny’s embarrassing domestic arrangements. ‘I’d better be going,’ Tina stood up. Chenny returned with a handful of paper towels. ‘No, stay,’ Lia cut in, glancing at Chenny, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m just being a busybody.’ Chenny glared at Lia as she saw Tina out. Low voices at the door continued for a few minutes; Lia was nodding off again when the front door slammed and Chenny stood over her, glaring at her. ‘Lia, what’s wrong with you? I pay your bills, I feed and clothe you. Who do you think you are to ask questions like that of my guests?’ ‘What’s going on, Chen? Ever since that magic man started sniffing around here you’ve been behaving oddly.’ ‘Leave Munin out of this.’ ‘What do you think he’s going to do — rescue you from all this? Marry you?’ Lia laughed bitterly. ‘I’ve been there before, don’t distress yourself.’

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Chenny drew her breath in; and Lia knew she had hit the target. ‘What chance do we have of love in this world, if not from each other? Chen, don’t leave me. Come to your big sister Lia.’ Lia patted the couch beside her: ‘Why are you trying to help these people? You think they’d do the same for freaks like us? Keep out of their business. You and me, we’re alike, we should stick together.’ Chenny softened; and Lia continued: ‘Besides, what am I going to do if you go away?’ Chenny froze. ‘I’ve got an appointment tonight to get ready for,’ she said shortly. ‘You think it over. And tell me in the morning,’ she slammed the bathroom door behind her.

6.5 ‘Lock the door, Yamin,’ Tommy instructed the head of his blackshirts a few hours later: headquarters had been buzzing all morning with stories about the brazen raid on Pak Tommy’s house. ‘Oey, but it’s hot in here,’ Yamin complained. The flag hung limp on its stand in the corner of Pak Tommy’s office. ‘Help yourself to a drink lah,’ Tommy said, fanning himself with the remains of his report; the airconditioner had been turned off at his orders. Yamin filled a paper cup from the water dispenser in the corner, and drained it in one gulp. ‘Have another one,’ Tommy offered. Pouring himself a glass of water from the Aqua bottle he had brought in from home, he watched closely for any tell-tale signs of poisoning as Yamin filled and drained a second cup. Tommy suddenly realised that if it were poisonous, he would need Yamin to brief him before he passed out. ‘How did you go in Setiabudi?’ ‘I spoke with the head guard.’ ‘Murdani? Did he find you anybody with a limp?’ ‘Not exactly,’ Yamin’s bottom lip quivered. Tommy was surprised at Yamin’s candour. He had never believed this pig story, but had nevertheless expected his men to maintain it and haul in someone they had bastinadoed as the culprit.

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‘However, Murdani gave us some other critical intelligence. There’s a whole flurry of activity in Setiabudi revolving around some Timorese holy woman. People staying up all night, waiting to catch a glimpse of her, holding candles and saying prayers, blocking roadways, selling food in daylight hours.’ ‘Not everyone’s a Muslim, Yamin.’ ‘Wait pak, there’s more. Seems that some Timorese in the kampung have been agitating for compensation after our visit on Saturday night. Murdani’s refused them of course and so he thinks they’ve come up with this as some attention-grabbing money-spinner.’ ‘Are the media on to it?’ ‘Not yet. Seems the woman masterminding all this is the wife of the man whose warung we burnt down on Saturday night. Seems she wants money to set up the business again.’ ‘So what?’ ‘Pak, it’s next door to a magic garage. Murdani says the owner’s name is Munin.’ ‘Does he have a limp?’ Tommy was beginning to wonder where this was all leading. ‘Don’t know — we haven’t been able to locate him. Seems he hasn’t been home for days.’ ‘Sounds like he’s out plotting something. Anything else?’ ‘One other thing: when we asked the warung owner about the magic garage on Saturday night, he said the owner’s name was Marhaen.’ ‘Thank you, Yamin.’ ‘Pak, I don’t understand.’ ‘You will,’ Tommy stood up, signalling that the meeting was over. ‘Stand by for tonight — await my orders,’ he led Yamin over to the door and locked it behind him. Back at his desk, Tommy unlocked the bottom drawer containing his service revolver in its holster. Under a false base to the drawer, he pulled out an envelope sourced from the Central Intelligence Archives. Opening it, he examined a dirt-spotted photocopy of the prison record he had requested, and read with difficulty the sloping handwriting: Turut of Blitar, b Jombang, East Java, 1928: sorcerer and garage proprietor, reportedly linked with underground communists in Blitar. Arrested 1968 as Category A, but disappeared before further action taken. File remains open. Tommy shook his head in disbelief. Category A classified him as a core leader of the communists — what was he doing still at large? Surely Turut was only a code

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name: after all, it literally meant ‘to follow orders’ and he had sent his acolytes out into the world — including Setiabudi — waiting for a word from him wherever he was. If so, then who was Turut? Tommy whistled through his teeth. It was a dazzling plan — revolution bankrolled by cadres using magic garages as fronts, in a revival of Soekarno’s discredited peasant socialism. Marhaenism, based in Marxism, was a godless philosophy not in accordance with Indonesia’s own god-based Pancasila socialism. It was communism by another name, and that explained the appeal to the Timorese in Setiabudi and by extension their Australian financier. Unless they were being used as decoys, cannonfodder; a fence-of-legs in Turut’s own counter-offensive. Tommy marvelled at the audacity of the plan, its simplicity and familiarity with the army’s own regional strategies. Was Turut a double agent, someone who had served in the Udayana command and lost faith in the army’s ability to serve the interests of the Indonesian people? All the pieces were falling neatly into place. Old Marhaen and his Timorese cadres had miscalculated badly in stealing his belongings last night. But perhaps this was precisely what they wanted. They were playing with him, teasing him with their trail of dropped goods, as if they were hinting at something bigger: the identity of Turut, the snakehead? And then the rupiah dropped. Didn’t Ricky say something over lunch the other day — at that Padang restaurant with the funny-looking waiter — about his own car being repaired at a magic garage in Setiabudi? The enormity of what he had stumbled upon took Tommy’s breath away. How long had he known Ricky? Tommy recalled Ricky’s frequent references to having been in Australia studying at the time of the coup, before joining the Brawijaya Regiment on his return, but they had only really got together again in Jakarta in the ‘70s. So his activities at that time were under a cloud. No point checking the official records for corroboration of his Brawijaya story — of course they would show that, they would have been altered to make him look a legitimate soldier. Ricky Supangat — if that was his real name — had sought Tommy’s involvement in the redevelopment deal as a front for assessing the strike strength of Directorate A’s counter-terrorist unit, before giving the nod to his waiting cadres. All the evidence pointed to it: Ricky had always teased him about his passion for Elvis Presley, and had derided the authenticated terry-towelling hat, saying it would be better with a few lures and flies stuck into it for fishing. Last night’s wanton

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desecration of the memory of the King was unforgivable, and the hat had been one of the chief victims. Well, he had outflanked old Turut Supangat this time. And not a moment too soon. Almost everything was in place for tonight. His boys were on red alert, awaiting further orders. The last piece of the jigsaw was the mysterious Graham Boule. He needed to do a little undercover work himself and see what the Australian knew. Perhaps he would bring him back to Setiabudi after their meeting to show him what army intelligence was capable of. This could have been huge, but he had nipped it in the bud. Tommy’s heart swelled: Pak Harto would make him a Minister for this.

6.6 ‘No return fares here lho,’ the taxi driver said to Munin as his battered vehicle puttered along the wide empty sweep of Jl Bukit Golf. Between houses the lurid green expanse of the golf course ringed the housing estate. ‘It’s like a rich man’s prison kan?’ Munin said, nodding towards guardboxes flanking the driveways. ‘To keep cockroaches like us out.’ Munin looked through the two-metre cast-iron fences at the over-large houses capped with parabola television disks. He scratched his stubbly chin. ‘You’re obviously out to impress whoever you’re meeting here,’ the taxi driver joked. Munin frowned: he had scrubbed himself till his skin bled to rid his flesh of the acrid smell of river water. He had planned to rest up, recover from his cuts and bruises from last night’s adventure, but the information Tina Tekanli had given Chenny this morning of Tommy’s plans made this visit a necessity. ‘Kiri,’ he instructed the taxi driver to pull into the driveway of a porticoed twostorey house with twin columns and a fountain splashing foamy water over concrete cherubs in the front yard. ‘Remember the durian driver I told you about? This is where his boss lives.’ ‘Man, you’re a great one for strong smells,’ the driver chuckled. ‘Just don’t put a spell on my taxi or my family don’t eat.’ Munin paid the fare and watched as the taxi whined around the gentle curves of the roadway past a parked car, the only other vehicle on the road. It bore the star numberplates of the armed forces. Odd, he thought, must be another visitor.

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He pressed a buzzer; a large black bird perched on the iron gate took fright and flapped lazily to its next perch on the parabola disk atop the roof. A uniformed guard came out of the gatepost which guarded a modern-day white mansion set in an expanse of green lawn as large as their kampung. Unlike Murdani’s post, however, no cats were in evidence. ‘Car doctor for Pak Ricky Supangat,’ Munin told the guard and was waved in without much interest. As he limped up the concrete driveway towards the grand entranceway, Munin nodded to a gardener squatting on the lawn trimming stray shoots with a pair of clippers. The lontar palms lining the boundary fence reminded him of the eastern islands, but the kitchen eggshells decorating their spiked tips bore all the village fussiness of Java, humanising the building beyond. The driveway curved under the portico to a marble patio with potted palms. The Volvo was parked in the garage; someone lay on a camp bed looking at pictures in a women’s magazine. ‘Hello, Wahidin.’ Wahidin threw down the magazine: ‘What do you want?’ he said nervously. ‘I’ve come to see Pak Ricky.’ ‘No more tricks?’ ‘Sorry, count them as blessings for the next world.’ Wahidin relaxed a little: ‘Pak Ricky’s very angry about the car. If he sacks me it’s all your fault.’ ‘Wahidin, this is serious. It’s gone beyond just Pak Ricky and his car. I need to talk with him. He may be in danger.’ ‘That may be, but all I look after is his car. He blames me for what’s happened to it. Talk to him for me please.’ Munin nodded: ‘I’ll do my best. Will you help me now?’ Wahidin led him to an open doorway at the far end of the garage. They heard splashing and giggling coming from the garden beyond and saw a woman in a swimsuit laying on a banana lounge. ‘Ricky’s wife,’ Wahidin explained. ‘They’re having a baby.’ A man came up to her, dripping from the pool and squeezed wet onto the lounge beside her. ‘Mulya, get off,’ she squealed in a tone suggesting the very opposite. Mulya put his hand on her thigh: ‘Come on in, Siska.’ Puzzled, Munin looked to Wahidin, who shook his head sadly.

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‘Where’s your father?’ Siska murmured by the poolside. ‘Who cares?’ Mulya’s hand slid up, embracing the roundness of her bottom as she ran her hand over his wet chest. ‘Does Pak Ricky know?’ Munin whispered. Wahidin shook his head: ‘Wouldn’t believe us if we told him anyway. Come on, let’s try the main entrance.’ They skirted around the front of the house where a white-uniformed maid swept the porch, one arm behind her back. ‘Ssst,’ Wahidin hissed, ‘Is Pak Ricky inside?’ Wide-eyed at the intruders from the garage-world, the maid packed up her cleaning things and scurried for the safety of the house. ‘Follow her, Nin,’ Wahidin urged. Munin ran after her into the house, but lost her in the vastness inside: rooms opening off a large living area with couches and tables covered in filigree ornaments and sundry other baubles of wealth. Ricky lay on a lounge chair watching golf on television. His white singlet and sarong suggested a more easygoing era when it was possible to visit government officials at home after-hours to discuss problems. A phone rang and Munin pulled back. ‘This is not the snakehead, Tommy,’ Ricky said tersely. ‘I know your voice. Stop talking in riddles. Turut? Turut to you too. And tell your boys to stop following me. Their car’s out front again today.’ Munin wondered what the other side of the conversation was about, and in what connection the name Turut cropped up. He fingered the cigarette case in his pocket and wondered how much Ricky knew. Ricky sniffed the air; turned to find Munin behind him. ‘You, Pak Magic Garage?’ Ricky pointed his mobile phone accusingly at Munin. ‘Looking for more work? Well, my car’s fine, now that it’s been steam-cleaned. Good advice you gave my driver. Car smelt like a garbage dump.’ ‘Pak Ricky, the water in the durian husk should have worked. There must be some mistake.’ ‘The mistake was sending him to you in the first place. Still, that won’t happen again.’ Munin wondered how much lay behind that comment. He parried: ‘Congratulations on your son,’ he said carefully. Ricky’s hostility evaporated. ‘Yes, I’ll be a father again in a few months time,’ his eyes twinkled with pride, and he ran his fingers through his white hair. ‘At my age too,’ he chuckled, ‘Sit down, have a drink. Tuti!’ he shouted for the maid.

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The maid returned with orange cordials and napkins. ‘You have children yourself?’ Ricky asked Munin. ‘Yes, one son and a daughter.’ He thought of his sister’s children as his own; they would be adults by now, wherever they were. ‘Ah, a model family planning family!’ Ricky wiped his mouth on a napkin; tossed it on the coffee table. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ ‘I’ve come to you for some information,’ Munin began. ‘What sort of information?’ ‘Your plans for Setiabudi.’ ‘My plans are none of your business.’ ‘I’m sure you appreciate how easily plans can get misunderstood,’ he pulled out the Elvis Presley cigarette case. A look of startled recognition flashed across Ricky’s face: ‘Where did you get that from?’ Munin unfolded the slip of paper: ‘Does this mean anything to you?’ Ricky examined the greasy paper with the three words ‘TURUT — BLITAR — 1968’. ‘It’s Tommy’s handwriting,’ he looked up. ‘Blitar 1968 is the underground communists kan? Who’s Turut?’ Ricky asked. ‘Their leader?’ ‘What’s Tommy Tekanli planning in Setiabudi?’ Munin asked him. ‘I don’t know what the message means, but I don’t want a repeat of 1965.’ ‘We would not have been communists then if we had had enough to eat,’ Munin continued. Ricky needed to be shown just how much Munin knew about him. Munin picked up a discarded napkin and shook it out. As he focused his intense gaze on the material, an image dimly formed on the cloth of a roomful of boys being roughly woken by soldiers and men in long cloaks and turbans, bundled into the back of a truck and heading down a dark road. The boys, praying in the back of the truck, were offloaded with machetes and ran into a night-darkened village, pulling men out of their houses away from their screaming families and hacking them to pieces in the village square. ‘What’s that?’ Ricky asked, shaken by the images. Munin tossed the napkin onto Ricky’s lap: ‘You. In 1965.’ ‘Not me, I was in Australia studying at that time. Not that it’s any of your business anyway.’ ‘My brother-in-law was taken away by gangs of boys like the one you led. Three days later we found his head on a pole at the end of a bridge across the river.’

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‘Why should I believe you anyway?’ Ricky said uneasily, getting to his feet and backing towards the door. ‘Save your sorcery for your panelbeating. What do you expect me to do?’ ‘Stop Tommy Tekanli. Get him to call his boys off before it’s too late.’ Ricky laughed nervously: ‘Pak Munin, I understand it’s all this talk of openness and democracy that brought you to me. Like my daughter and her university friends: “Dad,” she says, “democracy is like gado-gado. You find it too spicy, I like the flavour.” But she’s never had to struggle like our generation.’ ‘What’s that got to do with Setiabudi?’ ‘I don’t — can’t — control Pak Tommy. If you have a problem with him, see him directly. However, since you’re here, this is what I’m prepared to offer you. I’ll take his cigarette case from you for safe-keeping and give you a reward of Rp50,000. You keep quiet about our little talk today and I won’t name you in connection with the break-in in Menteng last night. Pak Tommy’s very keen to find the culprit — and in his current frame of mind I’m sure he won’t be asking too many questions before presuming guilt.’ At the doorway they stepped over a tiger-skin rug spread on the floor, its fangs bared but its eyes glassy and unseeing: a hollow shell of the magnificent creature it had once been. ‘Take it or leave it, Pak Munin. I can’t do anything else for you.’ Munin took the money offered him. He felt like the tiger on the floor, drained of all potency, as the front door closed behind him. Wahidin came running up: ‘What’d he say?’ ‘He doesn’t blame you.’ ‘That’s a relief!’ ‘Here, take this,’ Munin gave him the money. ‘For all the trouble I’ve caused you.’ ‘Bless you, Munin!’ ‘Pray for Setiabudi tonight.’ If Ricky was not prepared to take on Tommy Tekanli, there was no telling where this would all end. He limped down the driveway towards the gate, until a horn blared behind him. ‘Get in,’ Wahidin said, ‘I’ll drive you home. You’re not fit for walking anywhere.’ Munin smiled: ‘How’s the car smell inside?’ ‘Better than you — you smell like a pig. What have you been doing?’ ‘Too much — and not enough.’ He would go back to the garage to wait and see how Chenny got on with Tommy Tekanli this evening. But he had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve yet.

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6.7 Chenny wandered along Jl Cokroaminoto, brighter than daytime with the neon of multi-storey restaurants and shopping malls, dreaming what she would buy for Munin. The scene with Lia earlier today troubled her, but she was determined to see this through, for Munin and Tina — and Lia herself, when it came to it. A solidly built bule reeled out the swing doors of the Casa Pub and ricocheted between motor scooters, bumping into her on the black marble stairs. ‘Sorry, miss,’ he hiccuped, stumbling through the swing doors ahead of her. Perhaps this was the bule Tina claimed Tommy was meeting here tonight. Inside it was subdued, designed for karaoke duets and soulful groping on the black modular couches; which had suited her Japanese hosts on her previous visits here. The bule had disappeared, probably to either the toilets or the fishbowl where the hostesses waited for their number to be called. She pencilled a few requests on the back of a ‘Dynasty Karaoke Bar & Diskotek’ placemat and gave it to a passing attendant. The only visible activity in the darkened smoky room was on the large video screen where two lovers walked arm-in-arm along a narrow beach. ‘Tell me darring, Are you ronesome tonight,’ someone sang, following the dancing ball across the English titles at the bottom of the screen. ‘Elvis!’ the singer gasped as if he had seen a ghost; Chenny followed the spotlight to the man glittering at the door. It was Tommy — Tina’s directions had been right. Chunky, with long sideburns and wraparound sunglasses, his face gave little away; but his clothes were another story. The base cloth was a khaki, long removed from its origins in a safari suit: his tight-bodiced shirt was open to the navel, its high collars and bat cuffs on the sleeves spangled with diamantes. He stepped under a light and Chenny saw the full magnificence of his outfit. His trousers were heavily appliquéd along the outside seam from hip to flared bellbottom; on his back a satin-lined cape flashed and winked like a glitterball. Chenny had never doubted Tina’s concerns about her husband, but had not been expecting Tommy would have gone so far off the deep end. If this was any indication, Setiabudi was in real trouble. She stood in his way as he headed for the bar, challenging him to pass: ‘Pak Tommy, you look like a 1000-star general tonight,’ she smiled invitingly at him; saw her white knee-high boots, miniskirt and singlet reflected in his bug-eye glasses.

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‘I’m not afraid of anyone!’ he slurred. ‘I can see that. Why don’t you join me for a while?’ she gestured to her booth. The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly as he accepted her offer. ‘Whiskey!’ he hissed at a passing attendant ferrying microphones between booths. The attendant nodded and disappeared into the smoky crowd. Chenny snuggled into his side, patting his stomach and chest: ‘You’re strong, like Chuck Norris,’ she cooed into his ear, nuzzling his wispy sideburn and wondering where the bule he was supposed to be meeting had got to. ‘Don’t I know you?’ he asked. He took off his wraparound sunglasses, revealing eyes heavy-lidded as if drugged. She flashed the small lightning-bolt pendant he had given her almost a week ago: ‘The less you know about me the better my cover remains.’ Tommy nodded: ‘Oke Matahari, these are your orders. I’m meeting an associate here to discuss a deal. I’m on to something big here. Are you with me on this?’ ‘Turut,’ she shrugged agreement, humouring him. Tommy removed his glasses, looking at her puzzled, until the clonk of a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the table distracted him. The video screen flashed ‘Best Hits For Lovers 17’ before fading into the next song, Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’. ‘When you’re weary, feeling small,’ a voice slurred drunkenly as the video showed images of reptile-wrestling in a zoo before a group of Japanese tourists. ‘When tears are in your eyes’: a man wrapped pythons around his body and advanced towards a snapping crocodile emerging from the water in the reptile enclosure. ‘The crocodile snapping is code for Timor,’ Tommy hissed. ‘I’ll dry them all.’ Tommy’s ravings made no sense to Chenny; she looked around for the singer and found to her surprise it was the bule who had bumped her on the way in, sitting at the bar: the alcohol must have broken down his western self-consciousness. ‘I’m on your side.’ ‘Is that your target?’ she whispered to Tommy, but he was transfixed by the video images. ‘When times get rough, And friends just can’t be found’: the python man grabbed the crocodile’s jaws with his bare hands as cameras flashed, enraging the creature. He stuck his head inside the crocodile’s open jaws.

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‘Is this how it all ends, eaten alive by traitors?’ Tommy wailed. ‘Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down’: the python man removed his head and bowed to the Japanese zoo audience and the credits rolled on the screen. ‘Are you all right?’ Chenny asked Tommy, mopping his brow with a paper napkin. He seemed flushed and his mouth was dry. He gulped a glass of whiskey, licking his lips exultantly. ‘I’ve just cracked the grand riddle,’ he cackled. ‘I placed my head in the jaws of the snapping crocodile in Timor and survived. The bastards withdrew me from active service after that, can you believe it? Well, I’ll show them all — I’ve identified the snakehead — snared the viper in our midst — and the fire will flush the others out.’ ‘What fire?’ But Tommy was lost to his own thoughts. Chenny left him and went off to adjust her makeup, wondering just how far he would go in this mood. On the way through she passed the bule drunkenly peering in at the fishbowl. Close up, with his red hair and long nose he looked every bit a western devil, not to be trusted. Chenny stood beside him on tiptoes and looked through the eye-level perspex strip into where the women sat singly and in groups waiting, mostly in silence. Unlike her they wore numbers, making it easy to choose. The prettiest of them, a young woman in a long coloured silk shirt and black tights, sat by herself knitting, her thoughts elsewhere. Chenny felt the bule’s interest beside her. She turned and met his smile. ‘How you going?’ he breathed beer all over her. ‘Happy,’ Chenny used the English word: the stuff of nightclubs. ‘Get lost!’ the stout mamasan, fearing competition for her girls, hissed in Chenny’s ear. Wedging her thumb between her index and middle fingers, Chenny fisted her insult at the mamasan, winking at the bule whose eyes followed her hips slinking towards the toilets. She stayed inside long enough to ensure he would have lost interest, touching up her eyes and lips; wondering what this madman Tommy had been raving on about. Oh Munin, if only you were here you’d know what questions to ask. Outside, an invisible high voice fairly crackled with the spunky dangdut of ‘Cinta terbagi dua’, one of the songs she had chosen. She looked around for her own black and white men but the room had filled up and it was impossible to move around.

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‘He gave me a bill to pay, thassall,’ a slurry voice behind her shouted. ‘Getcha hands off me, Elvis. I paid it to guarantee the deal — whassa matter with that, that’s how you do business here.’ She heard sounds of scuffling which ceased when the video screen displayed the next song: ‘Hound Dog’ by E Presley. Tommy staggered onto the stage, the diamantes on his shirt and trousers strafing the audience with reflected light. He raised the mike to his lips as the guitars scaled the intro. ‘You ain’t nuttin but an an-jing, Howlin all the time,’ his free hand pointed into the faces in the room, until it homed in on the bule. The tracking spotlight hit him and his eyes screwed up. ‘An-jing!’ the crowd howled back the chorus as Tommy struck poses onstage: his right leg forward, left leg bent, knee jiggling the rhythm, toe tapping time. A hand grabbed Chenny roughly by the shoulder, forcing her to turn and face the bule: ‘You with him? He’s crazy,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘And you’re drunk.’ ‘No, I’m Graham,’ he giggled to himself. ‘Your friend was raving about snakes and how he’s going to flush out Setiabudi,’ Graham put his finger to his lips and winked at her. ‘An-jing, an-jing!’ the audience slow-clapped as Tommy — backlit by video images of the original Elvis — aped the slow hip-swivelling reprise, his thumbs tucked into his hipbelt, chain shimmying. ‘Says who?’ Chenny laughed nervously. ‘Says him onstage — wanted to take me along and show me but I wasn’t going anywhere with him. Says the landowner, who wants luxury apartments there. Says me, who’s been tendering to build and sell them. We talk friendship but we’re all busy trying to screw each other — we’re all bloody mad. And now he tells me his boys are going to burn the whole bloody lot to the ground tonight.’ Giggling, Graham staggered from the bar towards the toilets, as thunderous applause greeted the end of Tommy’s song. The news hit Chenny with a sickening thud. So this was what Tommy was raving about earlier. She had to get back there, warn the others. Only Tommy could stop it. ‘Lagi, lagi,’ the crowd yelled for more. One of the attendants came to take the mike from Tommy but he kicked his hands away, waiting for the next Presley track. ‘Love me tender, love me true,’ Tommy crooned in a surprisingly sweet voice. ‘Always be my love,’ he stepped down from the stage and, lit by the tracking

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spotlight, headed towards the bar: touching hands and faces with a kind look, kissing cheeks. Kohl eyeliner smeared across his sweat-stained cheeks; he mopped his face with his scarf and draped it over Chenny’s neck, pulling her close in the intimacy of the spotlight. ‘This place is full of spooks,’ Chenny hissed into his ear. ‘Let’s go back to Setiabudi,’ she tugged at his cape and the diamantes glittered. ‘Yes, come see it with me — it’ll be beautiful,’ he whispered back, shoving the mike under her nose. ‘Love me tender, love me true, Always be my love,’ Chenny croaked the next line, worrying about Munin and everyone else. She struggled in vain to hit the high notes, her oestrogen pills failing to overcome her bodily testosterone. ‘Look at the two impersonators smooching together!’ someone shouted and a ripple of laughter filled the room. The crowd was turning on them, Chenny noted with concern. Tommy sensed it too: ‘Meet me outside — I’ll cover your exit,’ he whispered, heading back towards the stage for the finale. ‘Oh my da-arling, I love you,’ Tommy wailed as Chenny squeezed her way through the jeering crowd, ‘Please to be so kind.’ At the exit she turned to see Tommy on one knee, his back to the audience, raising the corners of his cape like the glittering wings of a garuda. He’s gone too far — he really is mad, Chenny thought as the last notes trumpeted from the sound system. The silence was deafening as the spotlight held Tommy onstage, for what seemed to Chenny for eternity. She heard shocked murmurs from the audience at the profane misuse of national icons they had just witnessed onstage. Then a crash, and the spotlight died on Tommy amidst angry shouting.

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7.1 ‘AYO JONI!’ one of the blackshirts urged him on as they loaded fuel drums onto the back of the truck. ‘One more lah,’ he gasped, running back into the Blitar Magic Garage for a remaining jerrycan. Grabbing one, he tipped another over and its contents leaked into the sandy earth. The truck lights picked up stray cats and teenage lovers they would have rounded up on quieter nights, but whom tonight they satisfied themselves with jeering at in the bravery of numbers. Joni felt warm inside, after an afternoon spent playing cards and drinking Mansion House whiskey with his new friends. The Terminator had brought them together. He had won more money from his new friends than he could make in a dozen shifts selling soup till all hours. Roaring into life, the truck rumbled along Jl Setiabudi towards the water, scattering candle-bearing vigilants left and right down laneways. It groaned to a halt near the squatter settlement; the men spread out with their jerrycans as planned. Joni dragged his along the shoreline towards a line of stilted bamboo and plywood shacks. At the base where bamboo poles were driven into the muddy banks he piled up scraps of rubbish and doused them in petrol. He staggered along the waterline, emptying the jerrycan on rubbish woven flotsam-jetsam into the

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foundations of the boardwalk. Tripping over a piece of corrugated iron, he hiccuped giggling and left the can emptying itself into the pond. Back at the truck, the Terminator handed out the firestarters, bottles of Mansion House filled with petrol and wicked with clothes borrowed from Setiabudi clotheslines earlier today. ‘Remember, you’ve got about 15 seconds — take your time and hit your target,’ he said, igniting Joni’s wick with his cigarette lighter. Joni ran towards the squatter settlement, his features lit up by twinkling candlelight against the petrol-slick water. He hurled the bottle and it bounced off the plywood and plastic-sheet wall of a hump. ‘Bajingan,’ he cursed the bottle; ran towards it to throw it again but it had lost its wick and the remaining fluid inside ignited, detonating the bottle into spitting gobbets of fire. The blast knocked him to the ground. Stunned, Joni listened to the lick and crackle of fire as it built, crackling roar gobbling fuel, its heat-whoosh rush like a waterfall. Looking up, he saw the Terminator’s face lit up like day; in the reflection of his glasses flames leapt up the rattan walls of the shacks. The corners of his mouth creased: ‘Well done, kid!’ the Terminator dragged Joni, his cheeks glowing in the heat, to his feet. Joni coughed: the air was thick with smoke, stinging his eyes. Silhouetted by flames, people ran crying from their shacks. Running out sootblackened, a man gave the child in his arms to a neighbour and dashed back into his home only to be driven back by the swarming heat. Flames licked the boardwalk beams as people clattered crowding to safety on dry land. In the stampede the boardwalk groaned and collapsed, hissing steam punctuated by screams, into the water. Now the water was on fire, bodies floating like singed corks. The fire jumped from one tinderbox shack to another: an escaped monkey, its tail aflame, frustrating attempts to capture it. The crack of falling tiles and tinkle of breaking windows rent the night as fire invaded the kampung laneways on dry land. In the scurry of crying babies and mothers, men ran with waterbuckets, defying the flames; but it was too little. They stood by mutely watching, sobbing onto shoulders as their homes and livelihoods disappeared in a sheet of fire. Ahead and behind, Setiabudi was burning: smoke and ashes billowed into the sky and plastic bags floated flaming like barrage balloons.

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Joni sat in the back of the truck, too drunk to hear the screams from inside. Near the garage, about 50 metres short of the guardbox, the truck stopped and the Terminator bundled Joni out. He gave him a Molotov cocktail: ‘Kid, one last special favour for Pak Tommy. This goes over the garage wall and the whole place goes up like a tinderbox.’ The blackshirts sniggered from within, and Joni realised too late something was amiss. ‘Don’t leave me!’ he screamed as the truck roared off into the night. He staggered alone along Jl Setiabudi, past the burnt-out shell of Tobing’s foodstall, sobering rapidly as he realised the extent of damage to his neighbourhood. ‘Joni!’ It was his father. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ ‘It’s not my fault,’ he sobbed, crumpling against a wall. ‘Come on, son!’ Murdani dragged Joni to his feet, ‘Someone’s coming.’ They ducked down a side laneway watching as a couple staggered up Jl Setiabudi. The man was dressed in a cape which glittered in the firelight. ‘It’s Pak Tommy!’ Murdani hissed. ‘Who’s that with him?’ His companion — longlegged in white boots and miniskirt — Joni recognised as the waria who had given him Rp500 last week. Now he had helped burn down her home. He sobbed. ‘Look, isn’t it wonderful?’ Tommy shouted to the flames as the couple drew near. ‘Death to snakes,’ he cackled. ‘You’re hurting me,’ the waria wriggled under his grip, struggling to kick him, but he held her firm. The couple drew parallel to the laneway opposite the garage and Tommy pressed her against a wall: ‘Soon there’ll be luxury apartments here. Remarkable the pace of development in a modern city.’ ‘Munin!’ the waria screamed. A low growl came from within. Like thunder, Joni thought, but there were no clouds, it was not going to rain and put this out. ‘Who’s there?’ Tommy said, loosening his grip on the waria’s throat. Joni gasped as a tiger appeared atop the broken-glass-topped fence of the Blitar Magic Garage, backlit by flames from within. ‘How can that be?’ Murdani said wonderingly. ‘Turut, I know you’re in there, come on out and fight like a man,’ Tommy shouted. He pulled a gun out and waved it in the air, spinning around, backing up his

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threat by firing several rounds into the air. Joni watched in horror as the tiger pounced on Tommy, grabbing him by the throat and dragging him off the screaming waria; it disappeared with its prey into the smoke enveloping Jl Setiabudi. Murdani unclicked the safety catch on his service revolver. Ears ringing from Tommy’s gunshots, they could not distinguish roaring and crunching noises from falling timbers. ‘There it is, Dad!’ Joni called out as the tiger appeared again atop the fence, its massive whiskered jaws laden with the limp figure of Tommy Tekanli. Limping, it picked its way heavily along the fencetop. ‘Shoot!’ Joni shouted, forgetting regrets. ‘No,’ Murdani said, ‘I could hit Pak Tommy.’ ‘Where’s the waria?’ Joni hissed. The tiger stopped and looked at them, its green eyes murky in its flame-coloured face. She lay sprawled on the ground where Tommy had left her. Roaring from the fencetop, the tiger dropped its prey three metres to the ground with a sickening thud. ‘Now!’ Joni screamed, but it was too late — the tiger had dropped down the other side of the fence into the flames engulfing the magic garage. Joni scrambled out of the laneway to help the waria, but Murdani grabbed him: ‘This is not the time for heroics, son. You’ve done enough already tonight. I’m calling for reinforcements.’

7.2 ‘Ngiaou!’ a terrified cat, its bolthole under a sheet of corrugated iron exposed, swiped a singed paw at Joni a few hours later. ‘Brengsek!’ cursing, Joni let go its tail and jumped back as if stung. He tossed his towel rag at it; the cat hissed wild-eyed at him. ‘Show some compassion, Joni!’ Murdani called out from his seat beside the ute. ‘We don’t want to scare the remaining ones to death, after what they’ve been through.’ He smiled nervously at Pak Ricky beside him as the cat hobbled on burnt paws across still-warm ashes. Ricky had agreed to Murdani’s request for a delay of a few hours to get surviving cats out of the wreckage. It meant he could wander around with the kampung guard and try to piece together how things had got so out of control. Security police in their riot gear leant on their perspex shields, keeping non-residents out of the ruins,

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watching press photographers snapping children bombarding floating scraps of wood and plastic with the rubble of their homes. Ricky had to be careful with journalists around. ‘Those with proper identification and evidence of land ownership will be moved to low-cost apartments on the fringe of town,’ he practised a response to the compensation question. But this would bring the inevitable follow-up: ‘And what arrangements have you made for the others?’ ‘Another one alive in here, Dad,’ Joni called out. ‘Excuse me,’ Murdani ran over to the water’s edge. His hand darted below and he raised a singed puss paralysed by the scruff of its neck. Murdani gently lowered the cat into the pond: ‘Easy lah, this will help stop your paws from stinging.’ The cat let out an unearthly strangulated growl and wriggled free, doubling its misery: it fell full into the water, gasping and thrashing, bobbing amongst the ashes and plastic bottles. If only you had shown similar concern for the people under your guard, Ricky thought grimly, we would not have this problem now. ‘So what will your report say happened here? An accident?’ he asked, kicking a charred jerrycan. He caught Murdani exchanging glances with his son. ‘Well, it’s all the Timorese woman’s fault really. The fire would not have been so chaotic if she had not attracted so many worshippers. I’m inclined to conclude one of her vigilants dropped their candle at her bedside.’ Ricky wondered at Murdani’s version of events. Her death effectively ended the silliness of the past few days; it also removed what was threatening to become a major obstacle to redevelopment. But there were too many imponderables which even this whitewashing of events failed to address: the kampung should not have been allowed to get so overcrowded with internal migrants in the first place; the crowds of people coming to see the sick old woman should have been stopped earlier; and someone was bound to point out that, in their secular nation, worship of a Catholic mystic threatened stability. That was before you even began on obvious factors like burnt-out jerrycans floating on the waterline and the extreme unlikeliness of a fire spreading out of control by itself during the wet season. The fire was regrettable but there was no point in pulling out of the deal now. ‘But thanks to the prompt response of the local emergency services, only 15 lives were lost,’ Murdani reminded him. ‘Fifteen’s still a lot,’ Ricky protested, wondering whether the number alone was sufficient to justify an inquiry. ‘And what about Lieutenant General Tekanli?’ his face darkened.

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He thought of Tommy as he had seen him earlier this morning, laying on a slab of marble in the coolroom in the army hospital morgue. The nurses had cleaned him but still the deep scratches gouging his face leaked blood into his mangled sideburns. In death his cheeks sagged and his closed eyes shrank back into their sockets. He nodded, confirming identification as the nurse covered Tommy’s face with his glittering cape. ‘Any personal effects for his widow?’ his eyes moistened despite himself. The nurse handed him a crumpled brown paper bag; he took the cigarette case from his pocket and added it for Tina to make sense of afterwards. Driving to Setiabudi afterwards for this inspection, the hospital steam-cleaned smell of the car only heightened the sense of death he was now seeking to document. ‘Pak Ricky, this is very difficult to explain,’ Murdani said. ‘That Pak Tommy was mauled to death by a tiger in the heart of Jakarta? Try lah.’ Oh Tommy, you never did anything by half measures, not even your own death, you crazy mean bastard. ‘Well Pak, no tigers were reported missing from Ragunan Zoo.’ ‘Murdani, your report may be the difference between a state funeral and a parliamentary inquiry. Do I make myself clear?’ ‘Pak Ricky, it may have been dark but I saw it. What killed Tommy was unmistakably a Javan tiger. It was a magnificent creature, all the more remarkable because the species has been extinct since the last breeding colony in east Java were killed a few years ago. Trust me on this, I know my cats.’ ‘I can see that, Murdani,’ Ricky’s voice barely concealed his contempt. ‘But why should we report that he was killed by a tiger if we have no evidence of it?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Where’s the carcass full of bullet holes to soothe a grieving widow?’ ‘Joni saw it too.’ Ricky walked away; he would not get any more from these two. One of the remaining workmen wheeled by, his abandoned watercart piled high with the charred bodies of cats: ‘Murdani, lend a hand lah, here’s some more tiger extender. Shame you never caught the real thing but these will sell on the strength of your rumour!’ ‘Tiger extender?’ Ricky could not help himself. Try as he might to keep to facts, the tiger story had already taken on a life of its own. ‘Pak, people hear a tiger came through here and they’ll be queuing up at Chinese medicine stores,’ the workman said, tossing a few more cat bodies on his watercart. ‘The Chinese medicine man I take this to substitutes cat parts to make the tiger magic

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go further. See, a tiger is just about the most useful bit of flesh around. Eat the flesh and become impervious to snakebite. Or the heart, for strength and cunning. Grind the bones as a powder cure for rheumatism; mix the brain with oil and rub it on acne. Blend the gallstones with honey for abscesses; roll the eyeballs into pills and cure convulsions. And the kontol and two furry bakso — they’re the most powerful aphrodisiacs of all! Have you ever seen tigers mating? Twenty times a day dong dong dong!’ he punctuated his speech with the thrusting hips and shoulders of the jaipongan dance. ‘That’s good, recycle whatever you can,’ Ricky laughed. Always there was a pearl for somebody in the mud. ‘We’ll make a killing!’ the workman continued. ‘Eh pantek! my big mouth — shame we couldn’t donate some of our profits to the local health clinic,’ the workman stopped his dancing and looked at its blackened shell with the bulldozer idling nearby. ‘Or to the Ladies’ Auxiliary, to help the displaced families,’ Ricky suggested. The workman gulped: ‘Very well, pak. Good idea.’ ‘All clear?’ the dozer driver called out. ‘Wait!’ Murdani shouted, watching as a crinkly-haired woman walked along the waterline towards the ute, carrying something wriggling in a hessian sack. ‘The Timorese miracle woman’s niece,’ he explained to Ricky. ‘Jacinta!’ he called out to her, ‘There’s a bounty of Rp500 for live cats. From my own pocket, to help with your relocation.’ ‘Five hundred rupiah? For all we’ve lost? First my business, now my home as well? I pay security levies and our land and building tax and you still let this happen? It’s your people who bashed my husband, now they’ve killed my aunt!’ Ricky nodded to the security police to move in. ‘Keep your blood money, bajingan,’ Jacinta reached into the sack and pulled out a scorched ginger cat, growling low. She spun around and held the cat hissing at the security police in front of her. ‘If these are all you care about, Murdani, see how it feels.’ She twisted the cat’s neck slowly but firmly, its green eyes bulging until with a crack it hung limp in her hands. She threw it at Murdani’s feet and burst into tears. The cat’s tongue hung out of the corner of its mouth. Murdani bent down slowly and gently lifted it out of the bulldozer’s path. Holding it to his chest, he stroked its fur while the dozer lifted its scoop and tore clumsily at the brick wall. Its engine whined, its tracks gouging the earth as cracks appeared in the wall and widened, caving in and crumbling to rubble as the dozer trundled victorious over the top of what had been the health centre.

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‘Murdani!’ Jacinta screamed at him as the security police dragged her away. ‘We’re always being moved on. But this time you will be too.’ Shaken, Ricky pondered his own mortality. This fire was his fault ultimately, the latest of a string of things he had done in the name of national interest and selfaggrandisement. He needed to make his peace before it was too late. Especially in this season for forgiveness. Fingers trembling, he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled a number. ‘Subianto? Ricky Supangat here. Waalaikum-salam. Peace of Allah with you too. Listen, I’ve been thinking about making my hajj this year.’ He would clear it with Siska but she would understand his need to travel to Mecca to fortify his soul. Mulya could look after his stepmother; they seemed to be getting on pretty well these days. ‘What’s that about a cut-off date three weeks ago? Can’t you talk to some of your friends in Religious Affairs? Surely they can fix it for me?’

7.3 Chenny walked hesitantly along the Ratu Plaza arcade past the designer clothing stores. She looked at window mannequins dressed in 80-per-cent-off Armani and Lanvin, feeling out of place in her smudged white skirt and decidedly night-time thighboots. An attendant saw her and hissed at her to move along. Ignoring her, Chenny made a show of checking her makeup in the window, grateful that despite everything, she was not a shop assistant, selling clothes she could not afford. Even with these huge discounts, the clothes would still be cheaper in Singapore. But she wouldn’t be going there now. All the money she had saved in the coffee tin at home was gone. Her hairdressing equipment, her furniture and Lia’s, their wigs and clothes, their warning parrot on the balcony — all gone. What little the fire had left had been bulldozed into the ground. Chenny had nothing apart from the clothes she wore. She snapped her purse shut and continued along the arcade to where it opened out into an airconditioned atrium, with stores on three levels of terraces above. Murdani and his stooges would be looking for her in connection with his dead boss. She needed help. Lia — poor wreck — had disappeared into thin air. Perhaps the girls on the beat would know her whereabouts in the next day or two. Munin also had disappeared, his garage a charred mess. Were they still alive? Chenny trembled to think of her own close call last night.

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For a moment she entertained the thought of contacting Tina — she owed her — but the widow had enough problems of her own to deal with at present. No, Zainul was the only one she could turn to now. It was risky surprising him like this: Chenny wondered whether to buy a T-shirt and trousers in the Levi’s store or in Matahari with her remaining money, but after last night there was no turning back. By the time Tommy, drunk and boastful, brought her to the kampung after the karaoke bar, the fire was well advanced. Tommy wrestled her against the wall, madly exultant in destruction, laughing in her face, his thick hands probing and hurting. The tiger had come bounding over the wall and knocked him to his feet. With a few swipes of its massive paws, it slashed his face and ribboned his suit. Chenny backed against the wall in fear; the tiger looked up at her briefly, like Munin with his painted face on Sunday. The tiger’s green eyes frowned in its orange face; it emitted a low growl before grabbing the twitching Tommy by the throat and vaulting atop the fence of the Blitar Magic Garage. It was too incredible for words, the Sumatran tiger stories her uncle Zainul had told her as a child played out before her eyes: the tiger, ally of surviving friends, warning them of dangers, entrusted by Allah to carry out punishment: her limping sorcerer lover. After the tiger dumped Tommy from the top of the wall, it disappeared into the flames engulfing the magic garage. What had happened to Munin? Chenny smudged away tears as she rode down the escalator past the camera and electrical stores. She had to put aside her dreams of the Singapore operation and treat the fire as a new start in itself; learn to accept herself as she was, as Munin had done. In the basement, Chenny stopped in at the supermarket to buy some durian fudge. At this time of year, they made a better gift than the real thing. She asked an assistant and the girl shook her head, answering in a dull monotone: ‘Nggak ada.’ Chenny sniffed them out for herself — twice the price of gift boxes sold in the Tanah Abang markets — and returned waving a box of the fudge in the shop assistant’s face: ‘Oh, ada.’ ‘Keep the change dong,’ she told the bovine checkout assistant. Beyond the Pizza Hut and ice-cream parlours, the Bundo Kanduang restaurant was tucked away in a dark corner of the basement near the toilets. It was empty. Her uncle Zainul’s moustached face peered over the top of the bain-marie as Chenny entered and walked hipless to one of the tables. She had barely sat down before he came to her table with dishes stacked up his arm: ‘No Californian chicken for you today, miss?’

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‘Not when I can have a Padang rooster all to myself,’ she flirted with him, and his droopy moustache quivered in anticipation: it felt funny to be cruised by your own uncle. Zainul chuckled: ‘I’ll get us some drinks.’ When he came back with two cans of Green Sands shandy Chenny could tell he had combed his hair. He sat down opposite her: ‘I can afford to relax. Only a few days to Idul Fitri now and people will eat again.’ Chenny thought better than to mention the crowds at the nearby American fastfood stores. She spooned some kangkung and fish curry over her rice: ‘Going home for Idul Fitri?’ ‘No, staying in Jakarta with my nephew. He’s a good kid, you’d like him.’ Once she started eating she was surprised how hungry and tired she really was. ‘He likes kangkung as well. Bit of a pretty boy, like you.’ Chenny grunted, keeping her head down, concentrating on her food, waiting for Zainul to say something. To her surprise a slip of paper was pushed under her nose. It read: ‘Are you my nephew Chairil?’ Chenny put down her fork and spoon. It was too late to turn back. Trembling, she took the pen from the table; scrawled another line and pushed the paper back across the table. ‘No, but I am your niece Chenny,’ Zainul crumpled the paper into a ball. He stood up. ‘I watched you weaving around tables, helping out the other day,’ he said slowly. ‘And I did wonder.’ ‘Maaf lahir batin, mamak Zainul.’ Her heart pounding, Chenny knelt before Zainul, offering him the fudge gift box with her Idul Fitri prayer for forgiveness and understanding. ‘I always wanted a niece,’ Zainul said softly. ‘You know how important it is to us Minangkabaus to have a girl in the family. Happy Idul Fitri, Miss Chenny,’ Zainul’s arms reached out to her in a bearhug. For the first time in years, Chenny relaxed into his arms, his moustache tickling her brow. The love and compassion of the season filled her thoughts of Lia and Tina and Munin wherever they were. ‘Mamak Zainul, tell me about tigers again,’ she said, tears in her eyes.

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GLOSSARY OF INDONESIAN TERMS

Jakartan Indonesian abounds in slang, contractions and particles — that is, words which have no direct meaning of their own but which are used extensively as emphasisers. The more common words and phrases which appear italicised in the text are set out below for easy reference.

alhamdulillah

ejaculation or exclamation

asli

original, authentic

ayo

come on

babi ngepet

Javanese changeling pig

bakso

fish or meatballs used in soup, also slang for testicles

banci

transvestite (pejorative), see waria

bleng

preservative used in meatballs

Bu (ibu)

madam or missus (also mother)

buku stensilan

pornographic cartoon

bule

literally white, applied to persons of European origin

bundo

mother (Minangkabau)

bung

brother, comrade

dong

particle for you should know

durian

smelly fruit with thick spiky skin and fleshy segments inside 161

emping

fried peanut crisp

gado-gado

mixed vegetables served with peanut sauce, also used to describe melting-pot society

garuda

mythical bird and Indonesian national symbol

Idul Fitri

Muslim festival of forgiveness and gift-giving at end of Ramadan (Lebaran)

Jl (jalan)

street, road

jamu

herbal medicine

kampung

village, urban community, neighbourhood

kan

negative questioning, particle for isn’t it? doesn’t one? didn’t you?

kopi tobruk

thick Turkish-style coffee

kretek

clove cigarette

lah

particle for command

langsat

small sweet juicy fruit, also called duku

lho

particle for exclamation at something unexpected

mamak

uncle (Minangkabau)

merantau

to travel beyond one’s homeland (rantau) in search of fortune (Minangkabau)

Pak (bapak)

sir or mister (also father)

peci

velvet brimless cap worn by Muslim men

petrus (pembunuhan misterius)

mysterious killings

Ramadan

Muslim fasting month

Rp (rupiah)

Indonesian currency

rujak

spicy fruit salad served with peanut sauce and chilli

sate

kebab

Soekarno

Indonesia’s first president, known as Bung Karno

Suharto

Indonesia’s second president, known as Pak Harto

tapol (tahanan politik)

political prisoner

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toh

particle for nevertheless

trims (terima karih)

thank you (colloquial)

turut

to agree

tuyul

long-fingered spirit child, often trained for pickpocketing

waria

transvestite, from combination of wanita (woman) and pria (man)

warung

foodstall

wayang

shadow puppet plays telling stories based on the Indian verse epics Ramayana and Mahabharata

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