หนังสือบุหลันวรรณกรรม

was down to the middle of her back. Her face was beautifully shaped.
The girl looking on had a feeling that this girl who had appeared from
the uniform must be partly of Western origin.
The boy picked up the book he had been reading earlier and
opened it. The girl in the school uniform walked and sat beside him.
They read the book together, whispering into each other’s ears. It was
a shame the spy-cam program could not transmit sounds, so it was
impossible to know what they were talking about. Nisara tried to check
out the book cover which was now turned towards the webcam, but
she could not read any word on it because of insufficient light and
webcam limitations. Only some ink smudges were visible. They
continued reading, taking turns pointing at some wording and giggling
together. The boy kissed the mysterious girl on the mouth again.
The girl sitting beside him took his hand and had it touch her breasts
and then pressed it to have it squeeze her small bosom. The
mysterious girl closed her eyes, chin up until her head went backwards,
her hair spreading on the bed. Then she gradually unbuttoned her
blouse, button by button, before letting it loosely slide off her back.
She then took off her upper and lower underwear and threw them in
the same direction.
Nisara gulped with difficulty as her throat was very dry. The
girl on the screen had medium-sized breasts, the budding breasts of
young teenage girls. Her nipples were small and round, indicating her
early reproductive age. While watching, Nisara felt so frisky that she
heard her loud heartbeats. The girl on the screen put her hand under
her blue skirt and took off her fragile white panties. Unnoticed, the
boy had taken off his football pants. He covered the lower half of his

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body with the blanket, reached for the girl who was now in her blue
skirt only. They fell on the bed in each other’s embrace, legs mingling,
bodies naturally moving in the universal rhythm that needs no tuition.
They pressed their bodies, making love under the dim, orange light.
This live feed was transmitted to the screen the sister was watching.
The image was uneven and broken because of disturbances of the
internet flow and limitations of the webcam under little light,
resulting in the transmission of only shadows moving like spirits. Even
so, the voyeur squeezed her thighs together helplessly. She pressed
her hands against her lower abdomen as if she had stomach ache. Her
thighs tightly brushed against each other unwittingly. She could feel
her juices overflowing, smothering her shame which subsided in defeat
to the excitement of her heart pumping her boiling blood down there.
The movement in bed quietened down for a while. The
red-haired girl got up. This was the first time the watcher had
clearly seen the naked body of the girl who emerged from the school
uniform. Her body was not yet in full bloom. Nisara looked down and
saw that the mysterious girl’s bush also had the same colour as her
hair.
Her brother handed her a white towel to cover her body.
He was already wearing asimilar towel. There was the sound of the
door opening at the end of the corridor. Nisara wanted to open her
door to see with her own eyes, but her legs felt as though they had
been tied together so that she could not get up as her heart desired.
She was panting while lying down on her bed; at the same time, she
heard footsteps on the corridor wooden floor. She could not tell how
many people those footsteps belonged to. Sounds of the door opening

520 Bulan Sastra

and closing could be heard. The constant water splashing on the tile
floor was like the sound of the rain outside the wall of truth and
illusion. It took the conscience of the girl in bed into a juicy, dreamy
state, with the sound of gushing water in the background.
Nisara opened her eyes early in the morning at the usual time
as if her body clock had been set. She rushed to the computer screen.
It was automatically turned off according to the power-saving device
set by the operating system. She walked to the bathroom to answer
the call of nature. Taking off her cotton pyjama trousers to sit on the
toilet, she felt so embarrassed she blushed when she touched the
pyjama texture. She quickly threw them into the small washing bowl
and hastily opened the tap to drown them in water. After finishing her
business, she took off the pyjama top and threw it in the same bowl.
Her naked body stepped into the shower enclosure. The bathroom floor
in the morning was cool and dry as usual. She turned on the hot
water system before letting lukewarm water flow over her body and
on to the floor with a splash.
When water from the shower-head was all over the tile floor,
the small lock of reddish hairs that had scattered around was pushed
by the water out of sight into the hole of the dark drain.

Indonesian Short Stories

The Missing Husbands Solidarity Club

Intan Paramaditha
Translated by Labodalih Sembiring

Clad in black, everyone including you sat in a circle. You began to
recollect some names: Carmencita from Mexico, Soon Yi from South
Korea, and Boston-born Andy. Doña Manuela, a tall, plump,
sixty-five-year-old Argentinean woman, was the founder of the club.
She kept an ear out while wiping framed photographs, the music box
and her collection of miniature houses. Apart from you, all the
members were based in Los Angeles. But in Doña Manuela’s living
room, borders had to be crossed on journeys to the past. Tracing
memories from Tijuana to the East China Sea, the Missing Husbands
Solidarity Club was an international body.
You had not expected that a city with a lousy public
transportation system would allow you to get there. But it wasn’t Los
Angeles you were indebted to; it was a toilet in a police station.
A policewoman had been writing down notes related to your
husband’s disappearance. Her brows furrowed while you mentioned
some of his characteristics (sixty-two years old, white, stocky,
asthmatic). Her eyes skimmed through the first page of your passport,

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 523

as if trying to convince herself that you really were not yet thirty years
old, and every once in a while she would glance at your beautiful
scarf. The way a laudable public servant should, she finished the report
and warmly said, “We’ll do our best”.
In the toilet you came across another woman. She had grey
hair, cut in a bob. She was probably in her eighties. She gave a
friendly smile and then greeted you in rather stiff Indonesian. “From
Indonesia?”
After leaving Malang in the sixties, she had never returned
home. She had lived in The Hague for years before moving to
California.
You confided to her that you had just filed a report about
your missing husband. You and your husband had planned a
honeymoon in New York. You had flown earlier to Los Angeles
because he’d had to attend a conference in Europe, but three days had
passed and he had yet to show up. All means of communication had
proved useless.
The lady nodded, looking alert rather than sympathetic.
She reached into her handbag and produced a business card. While
she was washing her hands, you perused the strange name printed on
it.
“I used to be an active member. Who knows, it might be
useful for you. Just say you got the information from me, Yunita.”
“You came to them . . . because your husband went
missing too?”
“Oh no! I’d lost my wallet.” She turned off the faucet.
“My husband has been dead for more than forty years.”

524 Bulan Sastra

Yunita rotated her wrinkled hands under the dryer. Your
condolences were swallowed by the machine’s whirs. She sneaked a
peek at the mirror to straighten down her short hair.
“I have to go now. I do hope you’ll find your husband.”
The Missing Husbands Solidarity Club did not trace the missing - it
enlivened losses. However, Doña Manuela was always willing to share
her contacts - police officers, private investigators, networks of
activists - as well as tips on dealing with the state apparatus. Don’t
let yourself become a victim twice; this was her principle. She was
active in various organisations that sought justice for victims of
Argentina’s Dirty War. Her mother-in-law was a member of the
Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.
“There are pictures I haven’t shown you yet.”
That was Carmencita’s husky voice. She opened her
purple-clad Dell laptop, ready to show some photos.
Carmencita and her husband had gone to Paris three years
earlier, in the spring of 2005, for their pre-wedding photo shoot. They
had hooked a lock bearing “Carmencita & Pablo” onto the legendary
Pont des Arts. A photographer friend immortalised the moment, with
Pablo’s arms coiled around Carmencita, who was wearing a white
dress that was short up front but dangled at the rear. She looked like
one of those telenovela stars.
One afternoon Pablo headed out to a Walmart supermarket
and never came back. Up until today his clothes were still neatly stored
in the closet.
“The lock will be there forever, just like our love.”

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 525

Next to Carmencita, Andy Horowitz rolled up his eyeballs.
“How romantic! Let’s pray no nut-job goes berserk and burns
that bridge down.”
“What a mean thing to say!”
“I think, quite frankly,” Andy said tunefully, “only fools hang
those love locks.”
“I know a couple of writers from Guadalajara who did it!”
Carmencita countered.
Andy did not believe in many things, including marriage, at
least not until he suffered a severe accident that necessitated surgery.
As Greg, his decade-long partner, could not be considered family, his
mother had to fly in from Boston to sign the consent form. After his
recovery, Andy gave legal matters a serious thought. If he were ever
to be in a coma for months, he’d like to be euthanized. He chose Greg
to be the person to make his last medical decision. But before
euthanasia ever did them part, Greg disappeared. The last time he
called Andy was when he was about to cross the Hecate Strait, known
for its storm-prone and turbulent weather.
At the Missing Husbands Solidarity Club, we recalled the
absent ones through repeated stories. We could embark from any point,
in either a linear - from how we met to how we lost our men - or a
flashback fashion. Some would go with the in-medias-res approach.
Contemplation on becoming old led to Andy’s decision to
get married in Toronto (in 2006 such a thing was not yet possible in
California). Andy’s story then jumped back in time, to when he and
Greg met at an art gallery. He was a film editor working in a confined
space, whereas Greg was a nature-loving photographer.
When it was time for you to talk, you unfolded the chronology
of your loss as you had done at the police station. Carmencita,

526 Bulan Sastra

looking more concerned than you, asked, “What do you remember
most about your husband?”
You looked around while grasping for an answer. Somewhat
nervous, you replied with a question instead, “Can I tell you some
other time?”
Your colleagues nodded, yet looked confused. And then Soon
Yi’s voice, soft and frail like her body movements, was heard. She
had a sweet face, but clearly she was older than Doña Manuela.
“That’s all right. I don’t remember much about my husband
either.”
Some things were scattered after the end of the Korean War
when the United States withdrew its troops. Great matters such as
wars had a tendency to leave behind tiny splinters, useless and foul,
such as syphilis and babies.
At the age of seventeen, Soon Yi had given birth to a
dark-skinned baby from a soldier she had come to call husband despite
not having gone through any wedding ceremony.
“I lost contact with him. He even gave me a fake address,”
Soon Yi said, still in a soft tone. “But there’s no reminder truer than
Ji Hoon, my son. His presence has made me a whore, because he has
no father and he’s black.”
The other members chose to remain silent. For some
reason you knew that this was what had always happened. Some
stories had their way of sneaking a stab, and never went dull in spite
of retellings.
Doña Manuela’s voice shattered the stillness. “Next?”
You began to understand how the members had come to embrace their
losses. The memories had become a temple in need of constant

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 527

cleaning to keep shining, like each corner of the framed photographs
Doña Manuela would wipe thoroughly. Some of them would busily
knit. Carmencita would polish her nails. Soon Yi would cook
bibimbap (you thought of it as a combination of rice and gado-gado)
for everyone to eat. Andy the film editor would be the only one who
felt that he needed no craftwork, for he dealt with one each day:
cutting, shifting and splicing stories.
On certain days the knitted work would be forcefully
dismantled and the nail polish would smudge the skin.
On one of those days you came early and stumbled across
Soon Yi in the doorway. Looking unwell, she was rushing home. Not
long afterwards you saw something on the bathroom floor. Someone
had spat there.
“You saw that?” Doña Manuela approached you. “Sorry.
That must be Soon Yi.”
“Is she sick?”
“She has a weak heart, yes. But spitting randomly - she
stopped doing that for quite some time,” said Doña Manuela.
“It used to be a compulsion of hers. She’d spit in closely guarded
places, like government offices and district libraries.”
You would not have the faintest idea what it was like to have
a black bastard child in Korea after the war.
Soon Yi had gathered the courage to flee. Through an instant
marriage, she finally landed in the United States in 1975. Since then,
she had always been gripped by a great urge to spit in public facilities.
She had once been detained by security, only to be released again on
the basis that she had been ill. Besides, she had a sweet, innocent face.

528 Bulan Sastra

You recalled having tried her bibimbap. The thought of Soon
Yi spitting gave your mouth a foul taste.
As you helped clean the bathroom, you heard more about not
just Soon Yi but also Doña Manuela, who had lost her husband
during the military regime in the 1970s.
“He’s obviously dead by now. But how it happened, I’ll
never know,” she said. “Maybe not so different from what happened
to Yunita’s husband.”
You could hear the whirring of the hand-drying machine in
the police station’s toilet as you came back.
Yunita, Doña Manuela said, never knew if her husband had
been gunned down or had his throat slit.
“Whether he died in Java or Bali, she’s not sure either.”
No machine, and yet your throat was dry.
Where I’m from people were eliminated in various ways, she
continued. They could be stripped down naked and thrown into an icy
river, or forced to jump out of a flying helicopter. Every day we got
to choose the fantasy itself.
You wished for something to be whirring in that bathroom.
But all you found were rolls of toilet paper, all clean and mute, and
hopeless.
“You must love your husband dearly, Doña.”
“Does it matter?”
She asked you if you loved your husband. You did not
respond.
“What matters is that my government did me wrong,” she
said as if delivering a sermon. Her voice then became soft and eerie.

บุหลนั วรรณกรรม 529

“In the Bible it is said ‘whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall
their blood be shed’.”
Doña Manuela, solid and sheltering, appeared as if she were
a volcano that had compressed its anger through small, particular,
trivial chores. When it erupted, you dared not imagine.
You were no longer coming to the club at the time of Soon Yi’s
departure. You flew to Los Angeles just to be at her funeral. In that
final moment you saw her, at the church, looking as beautiful as a
fairy inside the coffin. Carmencita had made her up.
You remembered you had once been disgusted by her
bibimbap, although one day at the club had changed everything. From
that day, Soon Yi’s bibimbap would always get eaten up. When Soon
Yi’s health began to fail, Doña Manuela came to her house to help
her cook.
That day Carmencita and Andy were fighting. The Missing
Husbands part required redefinition, Andy said, because it did not
apply to Carmencita. Her husband was not gone - he had left.
“Oh, wake up, Carmencita. We all know what happened.
Your husband is still in LA, living with his new girlfriend!”
Having heard Andy’s cynical words, Carmencita cried
hysterically. Doña Manuela glared at Andy.
“Sorry.” Andy didn’t seem in the least regretful. “I thought
we all needed some reality smack.”
“People don’t come here to get smacked,” Doña Manuela
said sternly.
It was at that point that Soon Yi, who had been quiet, opened
her mouth.

530 Bulan Sastra

“Andy’s right. We can use some smacking,” she said.
“My husband - I already found him, back in 1980.”
All eyes were on the petite woman. Doña Manuela clenched
her jaws tightly. Her broad shoulders heaved up and down. The fresh
fact that had just surfaced - one year after she had joined the
club - made her feel like a betrayed animal.
“How interesting, Soon Yi,” came Doña Manuela’s icy reply.
“After all this time, now we’re finding out that your husband was
never actually missing.”
Soon Yi took her time, looking down. And then you heard
her tranquil voice.
“He wasn’t gone. I made him vanish.”
A storyteller always knows when to erase.
In 1953, the father to Soon Yi’s baby had left Korea and
married an American woman. When Soon Yi finally succeeded in
tracking the man, he was a widower. He swore he had not known that
he’d had a baby in Korea, and asked for Soon Yi’s hand in order to
make up for her past ordeals.
Two days after their wedding, Soon Yi stashed a suitcase
into the trunk of her car. She then drove as far away as she could.
“I miss him. Sometimes, after all these years, I still feel him
lying next to me.”
Soon Yi wiped her watery eyes.
“Maybe what I put inside that suitcase…” She paused for a
while. “Maybe that wasn’t him.”
And then silence.
Doña Manuela rose and served the bibimbap around.

บุหลนั วรรณกรรม 531

Clad in black, you and your friends went to a Korean
restaurant after the funeral. Your husband still had not been found.
Perhaps you did not love him, but that did not matter. Missing and
losing were different strokes, both peculiar and slick. Sometimes the
two would overlap in exquisite ways, such as the ones you had learned
through Doña Manuela, Soon Yi, and the Missing Husbands
Solidarity Club.
Published in Kompas, March 31, 2013, and in The Solidarity Club of
the Missing Husbands: Kompas-Selected Short Stories 2013 (Jakarta:
Kompas 2014).

A note on Luta, an immortal man

Linda Christanty
Translated by Dini Andarnuswari

Helmut Herzog, a German anthropologist, had shown the picture of
this man to me three years ago. At the time Helmut was studying
immortal men. He went to various places in Kalimantan for two months
to collect stories about them.
The man in that picture was smiling broadly as he crouched
holding a chicken. Helmut had met him once and then returned to
Germany for the summer holiday. But he didn’t go back to
Indonesia. He wrote me an email, saying, among other things, that he
had met his college sweetheart and fallen in love again, and they had
decided to build a family. He asked me to continue his research and
gave me contacts to help me meet those immortal men. I didn’t fulfil
Helmut’s request immediately as I was busy studying poisonous plates
in Aceh.
On 17 September 2012, I went to Kalimantan. I decided to
search for the man in the picture, someone who had at least met
Helmut and understood the goal of this research. Luta, that was the
man’s name, apparently no longer lived in the same place. I was quite
desperate until a young man of the Meratus tribe said he knew Luta’s
new abode and was willing to take me there with an interpreter.

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When we met, I told him Helmut said hello. This Iban man
was about 160 cm tall and skinny. His arms and legs, chest and back
were covered in blue and green tattoos. In this plantation he lived with
seventeen tigers, that is three adults, two females and a male, and
fourteen cubs. Those tigers came from Sumatra, the Sarawak border
and Riau Island. He had them flown over from those places. Before
moving with his house and seventeen tigers to Kuala Kapuas, he lived
on Meratus Mountain. He said he had just moved in the week before,
by flying. Sometimes he rode a golden Garuda inherited from his
father to go to other islands or to cross the sea by himself. He preferred
to ride a white tiger to travel on land.
Several tigers roamed around his yard that morning. They seemed to
be oblivious to Luta’s guests. I was actually afraid and trying to hide
my emotions. Luta suddenly said, “These tigers are tame”.
Luta was three hundred and fifty years old. He only ate once
a year in a ceremony. He ate lemang, the glutinous rice cooked in
bamboo for offerings. His religion was Hindu-Kaharingan. This latter
word means “life”. Hindu-Kaharingan adherents praise Sanghyang
Jagat Dewa Bhatara and believe that they are the direct descendants
of Bhatari Maluja Bulan and Sanghyang Babariang Langit, or
Mother Moon and Father Sky.
Luta lived eternally to keep his people from extinction. He
had meditated for thirty years for this purpose. Those who failed in
their meditation died instantly. Luta had three friends of the same
persuasion: Datu Pasir, Datu Kutai and Panglima Burung, whom he
called brothers.
Panglima Burung was the oldest of the four of them, eight
hundred years old. He used to be about three metres tall, but had turned
into a man of Luta’s height, 160 cm. In this time and age, a body too

534 Bulan Sastra

tall will scare people, Luta said, repeating Panglima Burung’s words
about his changed height. This brother of his was tending a field on
an island, Luta added, without saying where the island was. Luta wasn’t
sure whether Panglima Burung was willing to be interviewed by me.
While we were conversing, Luta suddenly pointed to the
wooden floor and said, “This is Datu Pasir”. A small skink was
crawling there.
Helmut had never met Datu Pasir. I was pretty lucky to meet
this best friend of Luta’s. He was willing to be interviewed, Luta said.
He would morph into a human being again to answer my questions.
Luta’s mother too was immortal, and so was his brother,
Menoa. Both of them today lived in a village of Kenyah people. His
mother was fluent in the Kenyah language and only spoke Iban when
she met Luta. Menoa was the tribal chief there. According to Luta,
his mother was mandiwata: she had become a goddess. Like most Iban
women, she had long ears with metal rings hanging from the lobes.
Her strength had diminished and her body was dissolving. Luta had
to hold a bebalian, a ceremony, so that her mother could have a
tangible body again. He also diligently burned incense for her. Its
aromatic smoke wafted all the way through the Kenyah village.
His mother was delighted. When he wanted to see her, he simply
materialised in the village. He didn’t change into any other creature.
Some of his acquaintances turned into skinks, birds,
squirrels, zephyrs or golden jars. His teacher, a powerful balian, or
shaman, called Datu Garuhuk, always morphed into a dry twig. Datu
Garuhuk lived inside a cave on Mount Bondang. He was the king of
all ghosts and had tens of thousands of black-art soldiers. He was five
thousand years old.

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 535

Luta had another immortal best friend, Datu Papua. They had
met as Luta was meditating on Mount Jaya. Datu Papua once offered
to fly a pair of tigers from the Riau jungle to the courtyard in front of
Luta’s house on Mount Meratus. But those two tigers were too heavy
for Datu Papua, who finally gave up. Luta understood. He was worried
too that those tigers would fall from the sky all of a sudden and crash
onto men working in the plantation or rowing boats on the canal just
because Datu Papua couldn’t carry them in the air. He didn’t want
either to see the tigers fall on a bustling market or a government office
in the middle of a town, creating tumult.
Eventually Panglima Burung helped him. Not only by
moving that pair of adult tigers, but also by hauling fourteen cubs and
a tiger mother from the Sumatra jungle and the Serawak border. Luta
wanted to give all the tigers to Harimau Garang, the grandchild of
Datuk Tingkas, the king of tiger-men in Sumatra. He had run into
Harimau Garang in the jungle by accident. That young man was on his
way to Sarawak, fleeing from the police for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Luta told me that Harimau Garang by now was in Malacca.
He gave Luta a cell phone so they could communicate easily. A young
man from the Ngaju tribe had taught him how to use it.
At night Luta took all the cubs to sleep with him. But when
he was awake not a single tiger was there around him. The cubs left
the house before daybreak. They actually can’t stand man’s smell, Luta
said. The three adult tigers preferred to sit under the house or take a
nap in the daytime. The fourteen cubs loved to play and bathe in the
river. One of them was rather different from the rest. Its ability
surprised Luta. The little fellow nimbly leapt at a fish in the river then
dragged it, almost as big as itself, to its siblings so they could eat it
together. This cub had brighter fur than the others, shining like gold.

536 Bulan Sastra

Luta left home when he was eleven and never returned there,
never saw his mother again, and living on his own hadn’t been easy.
It was at that age that he had joined a war and practised headhunting
for the first time. Afterwards, he was tattooed and received the title
of bujang barani, brave bachelor. Headhunting and travelling were
important traditions for Iban men, although head hunting is no
longer done today.
In the 19th century the Dutch colonial government forbade
Dayak tribes to go headhunting. Though headhunting only happened
among the tribes, with Dayaks as targets, the colonial government was
worried lest the tradition spread and white people became
targets as well. Quite a few soldiers and priests were victims indeed.
According to a memo of the anthropologist Jan van Kampen,
hunting for white people’s heads was actually a way to strike against
the colonialists. The priests, who had nothing to do with the
colonial administration, were considered colonial accomplices because
of their skin colour. However, headhunting was also detrimental to
the Dayaks. Those tribes were threatened with extinction if the
tradition continued. When one tribe lost ten of their men they had to
headhunt for ten men of the enemy tribe…

As history goes, Iban men also pirated. In the 18th century, Sulu
people taught them how to pirate after failing to conquer them. At first
Ibans were on board the ships of Sulu pirates but later they built their
own fleet and sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, to Siam and to India.
By the time he was twenty, Luta had chopped off two
hundred enemy heads and received the title of pamegen. The
spirits of those enemies, according to his belief, would serve as slaves
in the next world, or jipen. His father’s grandfather was the

บหุ ลันวรรณกรรม 537

greatest pamegen, the one who had decapitated King Mempawah, the
ally of Mahapatih Gajah Mada in a war in Siam.
Majapahit was a large kingdom then. Its fleet ruled the coasts
and waters of Siam while the Siamese ruled only the cities. The
Kingdom of Siam and all the coastal states had to pay tributes to
Majapahit so they wouldn’t be robbed on their own territories. From
the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Tonkin and further to the South
China Sea, that strongest fleet ruled Southeast Asia.
Majapahit also conquered the Kutai Martadipura kingdom in
Muara Kaman. Rather than surrender, many fled inland. Luta didn’t
experience this. He wasn’t born yet. But several centuries later,
bumburayas, creatures that ate human and animal corpses, threatened
the lives of people in many places on the island. A typical bumburaya
was three metres tall, stocky, swarthy, and with thick hairs all over
his body each as big as a thumb. He could morph into a dog or a
buffalo, carrying a salipang – a rattan basket in which he kept a
weapon such as a machete, as well as herbs and amulets.
According to Luta, his people and he didn’t mind living side
by side with ghosts. They were accustomed to interacting with any
kind of ghost. But the bumburayas weren’t just like any ghosts. Ghosts
of this kind didn’t want to live alongside human beings; they wanted
to establish a ghost land. They destroyed worship halls and built
houses in forbidden jungles, including in the first settlement of the
ancestors of people with tattoos and long earlobes, Datah Otap. They
had their own god, which was worshipped by buzzing. The buzzing
made animals fall sick, dead or barren. Many trees collapsed. Rivers
went dry.
Information about bumburayas was first provided at the end
of the 19th century by a Dutch colonel who liked to walk outside his

538 Bulan Sastra

fort in Kuala Kapuas. The anthropologist Christopher Otten reported
on bumburayas as “creatures of unknown origin”.
Bumburayas eventually killed human beings. They attacked
pregnant women in the jungle. They took out the foetuses and ate
them. In time bumburayas took to hunting down pregnant women to
feast on their foetuses. The tribal chiefs started to become angry. They
agreed to do something. Panimba Sagara, Pembelah Batung, Garuntung
Manau and Garuntung Waluh were the main tribal chiefs who proposed
to hold an important ceremony. Admirals, generals and ordinary folk
convened in a worship hall to carry out bedarak begelak, feeding the
spirits of animals, humans and genies so that all of them fight against
bumburayas together. Kamang Tariu would raise the fiercest mystical
army.
The great hall was built on a patch of tassel land, a land of
potency. Strange things happened in land of this kind, such as a snake
failing to bite even when stepped on or a mosquito landing on your
skin and not deigning to bite it.
To confront the ghosts, other ceremonies were also held.
Deceased admirals were called upon the realm of human beings. This
great bebalian would make them reappear. When a leader or an
admiral died, his corpse would be laid down on a two-and-a-
half-metre-tall wooden bench and covered with a cloth. Beneath the
corpse a large earthenware urn, or tajau, was placed. Incense was
burned. The smoke touched the corpse. The flesh started to melt then
dripped into the tajau. This fluid from the corpse would later be mixed
with yellow coconut oil and other ingredients, and preserved as the
sacred oil of the tribe. Whenever there was a big war, the tribe held
a bebalian again to revive the leaders. They would materialise as
human beings to lead armies of human and mystical creatures to

บหุ ลนั วรรณกรรม 539

defeat enemies. There were various offerings in the ceremony, such
as buffalos, pigs, dogs, chickens and lemang.
The pole to hang the ceremonial accessories in the worship hall was
made of pulantan wood. This pole couldn’t be made with any other
wood. The leaders once held a contest to make the pole. Luta
remembered that Marubai, a king of Malawi, was one of the
contestants. He was famous for his power. But Luta wasn’t afraid. He
immediately had a block of pulantan wood with a diameter of one
metre flown from the Sarawak jungle and then had it set straight as a
pole. In a normal situation, pulantan wood of this size could have only
been carried by a hundred men. That was the largest block of wood
his folk had ever seen.
The pulantan pole symbolised batang karing, the tree of life.
In Luta’s ancestors’ belief, the tree was the origin of life. Gold, rocks,
human beings, all that existed on Earth came from one tree. Not
every tribe had a worship hall, though they shared the belief in the
tree of life. Two hundred years earlier Luta had built a worship hall
for the Meratus. Since then the tribe had been familiar with a worship
hall. Luta had also been the chief of the Meratus at one time. As a
real Iban, he always travelled. Wherever he went he was revered or
made chief.
The bumburayas then came face to face with the armies of
human and mystical creatures. They lost and withdrew further inland.
Luta slaughtered a thousand ghosts during that battle. Sometimes
people reported catching glimpses of bumburayas in the jungle after
the war ended. But the ghosts didn’t dare to get near men.
Immortal man has one problem only: eternal loneliness.
Having a best friend is crucial for a life that lasts until the end of time.
Most immortal men, according to Luta, set themselves in exile from

540 Bulan Sastra

the populace and lead their lives as hermits. Luta wasn’t like that. He
took delight in meeting people of many places and in helping solve
their problems. He had five foster children who helped him take care
of the cubs.
Not long ago, however, one dream had disturbed him
repeatedly. In that dream, he saw a giant bird standing in front of him.
When he looked up, on the back of that bird was a man sitting with
a spear in one hand and a harness in the other. Suddenly he heard a
familiar battle cry. He saw giant birds advancing behind this leader. The
riders were red-skinned men, like him. Black men wearing leopard
skins faced the bird troop with spears and shields. But soon they
tumbled and lay on the ground with spears through their chests. The
red-skinned soldiers deftly jumped off the backs of the birds, made
for those dying bodies and chopped off their heads with their swords.
Luta had gone to an oracle to find out the meaning of that
dream. The oracle opened tusut, the sacred book about the origins of
the Iban people, including the first datuk and wars of yore.
But the oracle didn’t find any story that matched Luta’s dream.
The event must have taken place prior to the texts.
The oracle, an intermediate between the realm of men and
the realm of spirits having knowledge of the past and the future, sought
out another way of finding an answer. He entered the realm of spirits.
According to him, they were Luta’s ancestors, the conquerors of
Hujung Wulangga, the birth land of Pao Janggi. Hujung Wulangga
meant Madagascar.
In the first century, Dayak people had sailed the sea to the
west over tens of thousands of kilometres and had colonised and
occupied the most important island in the east of Africa, which we
know as Madagascar. They founded the Kingdom of Merina, mined

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 541

the land profusely and paid respects to the alligator, a Malay
tradition. These people held sway in Madagascar until they were
defeated by the French as a modern Western imperialist power on the
threshold of the 20th century.
The latest fact shows that people with long ears on
Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean originated from the Indonesian
archipelago.
The giant birds in Luta’s dream were ancient fowl that lived
in Madagascar, known as Aepyornis maximus. The British called them
elephant birds. They could be up to three metres tall and weigh up to
400 kg; their eggs were one hundred and sixty times the size of a
chicken egg. Those birds were last seen in the 17th century. The cause
of their extinction is not known. H.G. Wells wrote a short story
entitled “Aepyornis Island” which was inspired by this, the largest
bird in history.
Luta planned to go to Madagascar but he would not carry
his house and all his tigers. He would only look around the place.
“Maybe Datu Pasir will come along,” he said, watching the skink
crawling on the floor. They would fly there.

Laluba

Nukila Amal
Translated by Miagina Amal

Let’s go to the sea, my child. It is time. I feel that they are close.
I can hear the echo of their voices blown in by the wind of dawn.
Listen, this morning the wind is hissing like shards along the road.
The wooden windows are squealing, the cracks on the doors are
murmuring, and coldness is bearing down on this house. The candle
flame, ablaze at times, keeps flickering. Darkness is forcing its
way in.
I have been sitting here all night, by the warmth of this
candlelight in the kitchen. I have been staring at the light’s edges
twisting, yellow and blue, casting my shadow onto the wooden wall
- it has been moving around like a dancer, despite my stillness. For
hours I was observing the wooden planks, skimming over their surface
full of cracks and lines that resemble pale arteries. But I did not talk
to them. I did not talk to you. I have not talked to anybody. I have
simply been sitting in this corner, waiting.
We will step outside very slowly, no need to rush. I want my
feet to tread firmly, to feel the wooden floor, the ground, the wet grass,

บหุ ลนั วรรณกรรม 543

and the fallen blossoms of the rose-apple tree. The fine threads of the
flowers feel soft to the soles, while many are stuck to the bamboo
fences. Let me slip one behind my ear. Your father planted this tree,
and it will be bearing fruit for the first time - I bet they will be sweet,
fresh. Look at it; it is almost entirely bright pink, almost fluorescent.
At night-time, people can see it even from the village outskirts.
Our village: houses lined up in anticipation of death; solid
walls that tremble. Darkness. Kerosene lamps inside the houses
glimmer, creeping into the dreams of souls that no longer sleep
soundly. I am certain you could not sleep either. Such loneliness. No
sounds but those of the wind, one or two crickets, and the smashing
waves. In serene moments like this, I wish I could capture the sound
of your heartbeat or your snore. There are also sounds from men
staying up and chatting in low tones. We do not need to pass by them;
we will take the side way to reach the back of the house. I am in no
mood for questions.
Behind the house is this sea-almond tree. Under it is this
upturned boat - your father’s. My back is aching; lately I have been
feeling sudden bouts of fatigue. We should sit here. To wait for the
sun, the morning, and whoever comes by.
From here we can see the house, the village, the cape, the
coastline, and the sky all at once. Look at our house. A wooden house
on stilts, with the top of the rose-apple tree peeking out from behind
the roof. No fruit until much later and yet I cannot wait to taste one.
Our house, I have been living in it for more than three years.
The village folks helped your father build it. Without pay, except for
two or three construction workers. Two kettles of coffee as well as
clove cigarettes in a bowl shared round every evening were sufficient.
Sometimes boiled cassava or banana fritters would be added. There

544 Bulan Sastra

are many things that have been built together in this village:
the school, houses, the prayer house, the village hall, and boats.
I remember cooking yellow rice for the gratitude feast. Later that night
the light of a kerosene lamp shone from inside the new house. Your
father and I were mesmerised watching the jolting movements of the
shadows along the wooden walls. Your father and I were not the only
ones dancing - the tables, the chairs and the cupboards were too.
This boat feels damp. So does the sea-almond tree behind
me. Are you leaning comfortably against the lining of my womb? My
child, my pillar. How circumstances have turned you from being a
pillar for hope into a pillar for worry. What could be raging inside
your mind right now? Anything resembling mine? Or are you going
through all this without any memory, hope, burden or obstacle? No
longer can I glance at the ground beneath my feet; you have blocked
the view. But I have no objection in carrying you around, even though
you have filled my body to near-plumpness - I am as swollen as a cow.
I remember one cow on the deck of a motorboat, a long time
ago. It lay there with its feet tied up, its eyes bulging towards the sky,
mowing. The boat seemed as if it were about to capsize, shaking
violently from the kicking and turning of the poor cow, not from the
waves. I grabbed your father’s arm; he smiled to appease me. Look,
he said as his finger pointed to one side. Two grey dolphins were
spotted swimming alongside the boat. Little children inside the boat
cheered while pointing, Oi! laluba! laluba! The arched backs of the
pair bobbed up and down, with smiley faces similar to your father’s.
Your father: teacher, earth worker, husband, man, human being. And
woman too. Yes, sometimes he could be more motherly than I.
Whenever my stomach ached, he would sit beside me to console you
with sweet whispers, to sing or tell stories to you. There were moments

บหุ ลันวรรณกรรม 545

when he would stay silent, all the while caressing the signs of your
form on the surface of my belly with utter fascination. We could sense
your tiny hands through my skin - your clenched fists, your kicking
feet (would you be a boy or a girl?). He would remain still during
instants like that, gazing alternately at you and me with his big, black
eyes. I suppose there were thoughts and feelings inside him so
clamorous that the utterance of words alone would not suffice.
I remember those pitch-black eyes, when he left that evening. Not
much was said. No promises. No sentimental goodbyes as in those
war-themed films. I only remember seeing his drenched feet jumping
into a motorboat that shook in the crashing waves on the beach. And
then the boat’s engine roared. Your father stood straight up facing
west, facing the cape across the distance, towards the vanishing sun.
Not once did he look back, until the rumbles of the engine finally
subsided and veered around the cape.
Your late father, victim of a battle he did not choose.
Gaze at the beach. Right over there, where the rows of
mangrove trees are and the boulders slightly protrude into the ocean
- that’s the cape. Our place of rejoicing. Your father and I went there
one morning after we had found out that you were a foetus inside my
belly. That day the sky was bright after an early shower, with a rainbow
arching in the south-western sky. Before me, your father slowly rowed
this boat. Between us were a thermos flask filled with coffee, walnut
bread, ground sago, two cans, and a roll of plaited mattress. Darting
above us were several small birds, flying low to scatter their chirps.
Beneath us were multi-coloured corals screened by clear, turquoise
water. And fish. Tiny, brightly hued fish swimming between the reefs.
On that beach we ate, and talked for a long time until your father slept
by a patch of mangrove. I lay on my back and looked into the sky,

546 Bulan Sastra

taking in how sweet I and everything else felt. I took that happiness
home, when the sun had moved to directly above our heads. We got
on the boat and went back. Water splashed on his paddle and I told
your father that I had already picked a name for you. Laluba.
If it’s a boy? your father asked.
Laluba, I said.
If it’s a girl?
Laluba. You will be able to swim as swiftly as a dolphin.
Like the other children of this coast. Their bodies exude the scent of
the sea. With hair red to near bronze, and skin copper black like that
of their fathers who work shirtless under the sun. In the morning they
would scatter out in cheers to greet their fathers’ boats returning from
the sea . . . Those men would leave again. Very few of them have
returned.
They ran out of males to defend the district. How odd,
I thought at that moment, a lack of men in a world where they are too
many, a world where everything is done according to their ways.
It was night-time when the backup men were sent off. Late at night,
but our village was not asleep. People were packing. Mothers were
standing with anxious looks. Children were running around. On the
beach, supplies such as yields of nutmeg and copra were stacked in
small piles. I stood by that beach, observing everything. Nearby, a
group of old men were talking about bodies that were no longer in
one piece, about bodies that were thrown into the ocean, about children
who were kidnapped . . . Your father caught my trembling arm and
asked me to stay away from the entire stir. We sat on a fallen coconut
trunk, and stared at the arched sky strewn with stars. Your father said
many had been wounded. . .
Wounded, injured, dying. We are all dying here, my child.

บุหลนั วรรณกรรม 547

Ah, pardon all of these recollections, my child. Memories
have come flashing back and I wish to drown them all into the
bottom of the deepest ocean, until none is left to swim up to the
surface.
What time is it? Look at the sea. The surface has turned
silvery grey. Only a few stars remain, and those golden tangerine
gleams hint at the sun on the horizon. I always love the ever-
beautiful morning sky, the evening sky too. A rising or setting sun
paints the sky with the same soft hues. Orange. Purple. Pink. Blue.
Grey. We would never be able to guess the beginning or end of any-
thing. We would become doubtful of time . . . You will learn to
treasure mornings, my child.
I dreamt about you a few nights ago. You, a tiny fish that
drowned, unable to swim up to the surface. You were white as a pearl,
while the sea changed from blue to red to green, clear enough to
reveal you within its depth. Above you a big fish was about to eat a
small fish that was about to eat a smaller fish. Their jaws opened wide
to expose their sharp teeth. I remember telling this dream to your
father the following morning. Your father guessed that it came from
spending too much time in the market the previous afternoon, the sight
of fish in multifarious forms and colours must have filled my mind
only to be carried into my slumber. Sitting on the veranda while
drinking coffee, your father narrated the beginning of life on Earth in
the ocean; how animals are descendants of sea creatures; how some
fish breastfeed their offspring; how there are blind fish; sea ghosts in
the form of giant-eyed octopuses; underwater canyons - troughs, that’s
the term your father quoted from a book. I imagined how the canyons
in such depths would amass the dreams of ancient fish to walk on

548 Bulan Sastra

land. Do you dream too? Do you dream about reefs and canyons, about
your mother, about humans? Perhaps your dreams are imageless, like
the dreams of blind fish at the bottom of caves, in ocean troughs or
in . . .
. . . they’re here. Just as the morning becomes bright. Bright enough
for them to attack.
Ah, you’re kicking in there. Almost like a lunge, as I can feel
your tiny blows on the lining of my stomach. What are you worried
about? Hush! Hush . . . no need to worry. That was just a bomb. Or
perhaps a grenade. Do you know they can build a soundless bomb
using coconut shells? Without any deafening blast, just a small
cracking sound inside a shell. What is heard next are mere screams
or groans as brain pans crack . . . Let’s rise. Those people, they have
arrived at the edge of the village. Their yells are harsh indeed. No
need to listen to them, or to feel hurt. They are used to yelling at one
another in the jungle or over the rumble of the ocean. Are you able
to hear sounds? . . . So many sounds assaulting my eardrums, but I
can still hear the crashing of the ocean waves. There is a bird
chirping on some tree I can’t place, too. Or maybe it’s a human being
squealing, I can no longer tell. There is a strange smell lingering in
the air, not a saline or grassy smell, but like that of the district’s
butcher house.
What direction are you facing now? Gaze clearly now, through
the lining of my stomach. Before you, the sand and water sparkle as
if speckled with a thousand diamonds. And dew drops from the tips
of reed blades. The sun has turned into a giant ball, blushing golden
red, silent, far from this entire riot. Oh dear, when death is so near,
life appears to be clutching you tightly in its embrace. I imagine that

บหุ ลนั วรรณกรรม 549

is how it will be for you when you first see the world. Will you be
relieved to leave that darkness for this kaleidoscopic world? You will
see it the way I see colours in their sharpest hues now, be captivated
by their suddenly menacing beauty. Everything springs into life. Gaze
with those clear eyes, treasure them, enjoy them. My child, are you
happy to see all of this?
Or are you staring through my back at the crowd over there?
They are running and slamming against one another like crabs inside
a wooden crate hurled at the market, like fish trying to escape the
snare of a fisherman’s net. And their eyes are bulging red like an
unwanted fish left out for a whole day. Columns of black smoke bil-
low in the air (I have heard that they never leave anything, or anyone,
behind). The orange fire looks as if it could block the sun; their hatred
is superior to their arrogance.
It is not good, it is not bad, merely a pity: pitted against one
another.
Forgive them, my child. Those men simply have never felt
what it is like to carry a life inside their bodies the way pregnant
women do. They carry death with their arms and fingers. Killing
devices are clanging against one another, while they are nothing but
brothers pitted against brothers. Perhaps they know that, or sense it,
or perhaps they know very well, or maybe they don’t want to know.

But you do need to know, my child. Because believing is never enough.
You may be tricked. And finally become helpless. I, you, us, they,
Galela, Halmahera, helpless.
Near my feet is this empty shell, as small as my thumb,
lying on the sand. I will hold it in front of my stomach so that you
can look closely. This is a sea snail’s house. A beautiful house, with

550 Bulan Sastra

a staircase that spirals up to its top. The waves have washed it so many
times with saline water that its salmon colour has faded to a pale white
without sparkle. It seems that the owner left it a long time ago.
Why did it go? Perhaps it had become too restricting for it, it no
longer fitted its body, it was no longer suitable for protection, no
longer a meaningful place to be in. So why should it stay? It decided
to leave, perhaps back to the sea. Crawling over the sand, to look for
another house in the depths. Yes, why stay, my child? They would
not let us grow here, on this beautiful coastline. This place, like any
other place, was never built to last for eternity. Let us leave.
To the sea. Only the sea can set you free. Every fork of any
river ends here. No longer will it have origin or number or trace or
colour. It is all the same. Aquamarine. Vast. Flat. Calm. Here each
drop of water blends, floats, rolls, shoots up to the sky. Azure.
. . . What is this? Something just zipped into the water, not
far from my arm. Let me look for it . . . Ah, it is an arrow, missing
its target. It may be that another one is now lodged in my shoulder.
It does not hurt that much, more like the peck of a cockatoo’s beak.
Let me take it out . . . There is blood on its point. Pungent red. My
blood. Good thing it did not hit lower down my back, otherwise you
would have been hurt in there.
Child, turn around and look at his face. The archer, standing tall
among the reeds. He has given up his intention to once again raise his
bow and aim. The weapon is simply hanging on his fingers. Maybe
because I turned around to look at him, to smile into his face. He looks
tired and handsome, wearing a check shirt, like most boys his age.
Living into teenage years is enough for him to feel that he has the
right and obligation to finish us off, that little Azrael.

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 551

I will just throw this arrow away. Do not cry, sweet child.
You are big now, nearly eight months, so stay strong. Let us
continue this journey. The ocean has stretched out its friendly arms,
greeting us on our knees. I promise: this will not hurt at all. You,
I, us, they, will all die. It is a matter of how. Humans never know how
death will appear before them. I simply do not want their evil hands
to rip my stomach open and take you away from me - you, my little
honour that must never be tainted. You must not die that way; it would
be too painful for you. I will save you.
Exquisite darling, my beautiful little fish inside the sea of my
womb, Laluba! With you, I have become complete. I have become
everything I ever wanted: daughter, student, worker, wife, mother,
woman, witness, winner. An early judgment day, my baby - is your
heart filled with questions? Why are you drowned to your breast,
mother, and why has the wave swept away the rose-apple blossom
from your hair? Why did the shell slip out of your grasp? Why are
you getting rid of me?
Will you trust my answer, the reason of all reasons? Will
you believe? Because I love you. In all the years my soul has gone
through, I have never wanted to kill this body, ending a life that only
has one chance. Let me save you, even though I must die for it.
Is that enough, my child? Because I truly love you, more than life
itself.
. . . As I bore witness along the path, I shall bear witness in
this depth.
To You, Lord, the destination of all prayers and testimonies
and questions in the cruellest nights of forcefully wrenched souls.
Thousands of silent murmurs, released into the air and up into the sky.

552 Bulan Sastra

Is one more prayer acceptable? I have grown weary of praying, and
my prayers were never for me, but for every miserable human being.
I also prayed for the hearts of those who love you, but could not use
those hearts to love other human beings. And this time, Lord, let me
pray for the unborn children.
Such silence. Such warmth. Sunlight still reaches this depth,
turning the water bright blue. A shadowy blue, it starts to grey.
A greenish grey now. Greener and greener. A school of tiny fish come
in circles, swimming knowingly. Behind them are floating shadows,
fluttering. Men. Pale white, blue, purple. They stare at us without
blinking, without a word, simply waving at us with their hair, fingers
and clothes. Those poor coral reefs . . . Ah, I can see your father, child.
Drifting among those other men, he is approaching us. Look at his hair,
flapping like the mane of a horse, and like the seaweed do his clothes
sway. He is looking at you with his translucent face and a smile as
wide as the clouds, at you, who are still bending with coyness. Take
his hand, child, for his soft, white palm is carrying a pink rose apple,
ripe with the juice of the ocean. Gulp it down, for it is sweet and fresh,
all the way down . . .

Edelweiss mourns in Ciputat

Yusi Avianto Pareanom
Translated by the author

Sunday, 10-10-10. Some people choose to get married or give birth on
this binary date. On this day, Aya’s body was discovered on the street
divider in front of Ciputat Market, South Tangerang. The body was
cut into ten pieces placed in four large black plastic bags. For three
days, these bags were thought to be a pile of junk.
Edelweiss heard the shocking news ten hours later in her
house in Nitiprayan, Jogjakarta. She was having dinner after a day of
painting in the studio. She ate while watching television; her left hand,
still smelling of oil paint, actively flipped through the channels.
Breaking News on one of the TV stations mentioned Aya’s full name,
and Edelweiss put the remote control on the table.
The news said that the suspect was already identified:
a housewife who was Aya’s relative and who also lived in the area of
Ciputat. Three days earlier Aya had tried to collect the money her
relative owed; the amount was ten million rupiahs. According to the
suspect, when she asked for an extension, Aya got angry and attacked
her; therefore her action was only a spontaneous defence. Aya was

554 Bulan Sastra

pushed and fell; her head hit the marble table in the living room.
The suspect cut up Aya’s body in the bathroom and hid the parts in
the kitchen. She waited until midnight, and after her children and her
husband had fallen asleep, she went on a motorcycle to place Aya’s
body parts in front of the market. She was hoping that the bags would
be taken away by the garbage truck the next morning.
Edelweiss unwittingly followed the news while still
spooning food into her mouth. However, as the narrative went on, she
stopped chewing. The beef rendang that had not yet been chewed
properly unexpectedly slid down her throat when the news ended. She
quickly drank fresh tea but then ran to the bathroom and threw up.
Still weak, she left the bathroom. Her first thought after that
was why Pandan had not yet contacted her. Pandan was Aya’s husband.
Five years earlier, he had been Edelweiss’s.
“Master has not yet come home from the police station,
Ma’am; he said they are examining him,” Pandan’s maid said.
The maid also told Edelweiss that the day before yesterday Pandan
had already reported to the police that Aya was missing, but at the
time he was told to wait.
Edelweiss went out to the front yard, lit a cigarette and smoked
it quickly. She lit another one before entering the house again. She
began to wonder if Danae had heard the news. Danae was Edelweiss
and Pandan’s only child. She was nine years old. Just the two of them,
Edelweiss and Danae, lived in their big house.
Edelweiss knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door and went in after
she responded. Danae was working on a math assignment. She rubbed
the back of her daughter’s head and briefly read the questions that she
felt were too complicated for fourth grade. From her attitude, Edelweiss

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 555

believed that her daughter did not know yet. Like her, Danae was not
fond of watching television.
“I have to go to Jakarta to meet your father.”
Danae’s face became excited instantly. “I want to come,
I miss my sister.”
Edelweiss shook her head. Then, carefully she delivered the
sad news without mentioning anything about the murder, let alone
mutilation. Danae cried.
Edelweiss booked the earliest flight to Jakarta. However she could
only get on the ten-o’clock flight. Danae insisted on coming, but
Edelweiss chose to leave her with her cousin in Jalan Kaliurang.
On the plane, one of the most significant memories of Aya
that popped up in Edelweiss’s mind was their last meeting at the house
in Ciputat. That time she was picking up Danae who was spending
her Eid holiday there. She was actually reluctant to go inside the house
she once occupied, and as usual Danae had to be persuaded to go
home because the child was so unwilling to be separated from
Zuleika. Danae’s half-sister was only one year and a half and
absolutely adorable. Merely her ego prevented Edelweiss from hugging
or kissing the little girl.
“Danae, you will remember the lesson that Mama Aya told
you, won’t you?” Aya said to Danae as they were saying their
goodbyes.
Danae nodded. Edelweiss was curious. “What lesson?”
“Oh, it was just a story, Sis’, of how we should follow
the behaviour of the prophets,” Aya said.
Edelweiss shrugged and said goodbye with a false smile.

556 Bulan Sastra

In the taxi that drove them to the airport, Danae told
Edelweiss, “Mum, Aya said that statues can cause idolatry and that
they must be destroyed, like Prophet Ibrahim did.”
“So you think the statues that I make are identical to
idolatry?”
“Of course not: we don’t worship them. What a strange
question you’re asking, Mum!”
Danae’s answer was soothing. For a moment, she wanted to
ask the taxi driver to turn around and go back to Ciputat. Aya had
dared to attack her and tried to manipulate Danae. However, she had
to call off her intention as Danae had to attend school the next day
and she also had an appointment with a tobacco entrepreneur from
Temanggung who wanted to buy a painting of hers from the early
2000s.
However, Edelweiss could not just let go of the incident. At
the airport, she called Pandan. As she expected, her former husband
first asked for understanding, just like the local government officials
who have no other answer when asked why a flood can never be
prevented. He then defended his new wife. He said Aya did not have
bad intentions; her intentions were even noble, because she had
wanted to strengthen Danae’s faith.
Edelweiss, who was already upset, got even angrier when
Pandan mentioned that the presence of the statues in her house in
Jogjakarta was not good for their children, and Danae should not
follow her lifestyle. Because she did not want her girl to hear and
because she did not want to make a scene in the waiting room, with
a muffled voice Edelweiss said that if Pandan did not undo his words,
she would not allow Danae to come to Ciputat ever again. Pandan

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 557

was stunned and his tone began to change. The man then apologised
pleadingly.
Edelweiss’s anger quickly turned into a miserable feeling.
She was really sad. She used to adore Pandan deeply; he was her sun,
her best friend. And now, it seemed the best quality Pandan had left
was squeamishness.
Another memory that still inhibited the mind of Edelweiss was an
incident that had happened six months earlier, also when she was
picking up Danae. At the time, Edelweiss was still willing to sit on
the porch waiting for Danae to finish playing with her sister.
It was then that she heard Aya singing these lyrics to Zuleika:
“Jewish laknatullah, America laknatullah ...”
Edelweiss’s self-control collapsed after the song was sang
repeatedly.
“Why sing a song like that?”
“It’s a good song, Sis’,” Aya replied.
“It has a heavy content.”
“Since young, a child must be taught who should be their
enemies.”
“Oh, why have enemies, and anyway what do you mean by
‘Jewish’?”
“All.”
“The people or the religion?”
“Everything.”
“Including the prophets like Isaac, David, Solomon, Moses,
John, Jesus, and many more?” Edelweiss said.
“Sis, you’re being hilarious, they’re Muslims.”
“Even if their religion is Islam, in terms of nationality and
blood, they remain Jewish.”

558 Bulan Sastra

“If they abide by Islam, it’s impossible for them to be
Jewish, Sis’.”
“Gosh. Okay, so, you think all the Jews will be cursed?”
“Yes.”
“God is not just, then.”
“They’re always against God, Sis’. So it’s no wonder they
are cursed; the Americans, too.”
Edelweiss knew that she would not be able to win over those
kinds of arguments with Aya, but that did not mean she would let go,
let alone when the words were uttered in front of Danae. However,
she believed that if she stayed for another five minutes, she would
literally burn the house down. Therefore she quickly left.
If it were not for Danae who was always whining for her sister,
Edelweiss would not take Danae to Ciputat. For sure, since the
argument about the Jews, she had begun to avoid talking to Aya more
than ten seconds, as Hemingway strove to avoid the use of adjectives
and a good cook would try to avoid the use of monosodium glutamate.
The incident regarding the statues made Edelweiss who did
not like Aya hate her even more, yet with a feeling of pity towards
her. She then sometimes imagined how good it would be if one day
she heard Aya had been caught by cannibals and boiled slowly before
being eaten.
The memory of that wicked thought which suddenly came
to mind during the flight that morning made Edelweiss’s stomach feel
nauseous.
During the forty-five-minute flight from Jogjakarta to Jakarta,
Edelweiss’s memories of Aya kept coming back to her. The more she
tried to remember the good things about Aya, the more reasons for

บหุ ลันวรรณกรรม 559

dislike came into her mind, not merely because the woman who was
fifteen years younger than her had married, indeed stolen, Pandan.
Aya had married Pandan around three years ago, two years after
Pandan and Edelweiss got divorced.
Edelweiss initially thought that Aya’s behaviour in front of
her was a mixture of embarrassment, insecurity and a little bit of
arse-kissing. Edelweiss believed that Aya’s attitude was not because
Edelweiss was one of Indonesia’s leading contemporary artists whose
work was discussed and hunted by collectors from inside and outside
the country – she was sure that her behaviour was caused by two
simple facts: that she was Pandan’s ex-wife and also arguably
half-owner of the house in Ciputat. Although the house was an
inheritance that Pandan had received, Edelweiss was the one who,
with her money, had bought the land on the right and left sides of the
property and had extensions added to the house. When she left, Edelweiss
never mentioned the house and she only left by taking Danae.
Edelweiss thought that Aya’s self-consciousness of her
position would last forever, or at least long enough. What she did not
know and expect was that Aya would boldly remove her works that
were left in the house and pile them up in the storage room.
Edelweiss did not want to make a fuss and blamed herself; she
immediately sent those works of art to Jogjakarta. However, she
really felt hurt knowing that Pandan did not even try to prevent Aya
from doing such a thing; yet in the past the man had been most eager
to support Edelweiss in her work and had always contributed to her
ideas. The works of art she left in Ciputat were very personal, ones
she would never sell because she had made ​t​hem for Pandan even
though she had never said so explicitly.

560 Bulan Sastra

While packing those works of art, Edelweiss wondered what
had become of the Pandan she once knew cheerful and funny. She
remembered that in the past they would discuss silly matters that
cheered the heart, about Bruce Lee, for example. Pandan showed how
the end of the movie Game of Death contained a ridiculous mistake.
The scene begins with Bruce Lee going into the enemy’s pagoda at
night time when suddenly it has turned into daytime as the warrior in
a yellow-and-black-striped costume battles the NBA basketball star
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This is shown when Bruce Lee punches a wall
so that sunlight will enter and disturb the sensitive eyes of his
opponent. When Bruce Lee comes out from the pagoda, it becomes
night time again.
“Maybe he fell asleep till night time,” Edelweiss said, amused.
“Cempluk, what do you think, if it was a real fight, who
would win: the small dragon or the frizzy giant,” Pandan asked.
Cempluk, or pudgy, was how Pandan used to call Edelweiss.
“Seriously? I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I don’t know either. However, from what I know, of all the
enemies in Bruce Lee movies, the greatest is Chuck Norris. I’m sure
if it was a real fight, Chuck Norris would win.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you know? There was a magician who could walk on
water, but Chuck Norris was able to swim through land. He is not
only good at it but also powerful. His tears are believed to cure
cancer and other serious illnesses.”
“Impossible.”
“Yes. Unfortunately Chuck Norris never cries.”
Edelweiss never laughed as hard as she laughed that night.

บหุ ลนั วรรณกรรม 561

At that moment she was sure that she could live with Pandan
for the rest of her life, whatever the circumstances. She did not know
that she was being too optimistic then.
A year before they divorced, Pandan’s father in Semarang fell ill.
Shortly thereafter, he died. During his father’s illness, Pandan could
only come once to visit because he was busy. He was working as a
consultant for a company that was about to go public.
Because of his father’s death, Pandan was consumed by a
feeling of guilt. He started to abandon his work in the office and he
even resigned. He then joined an Islamic organisation which had the
same course as the one followed by his late father.
At first, Edelweiss did not mind. She understood that Pandan
nurtured a deep feeling of sorrow. Therefore if he was able to get
some kind of consolation with his new activity, it did not matter,
Edelweiss thought. What Edelweiss did not expect was that the
organisation Pandan had joined was fond of prohibiting this and that.
For example, praying Yasin communally was not allowed. Whenever
Edelweiss objected, Pandan always argued that the decisions of his
organisation were always made based on the Holy Scripture.
They never had big fights in the sense of shouting at each
other. No harsh words came out and nothing was broken. Also,
Pandan did not ask Edelweiss to follow what he was doing. However,
the everyday tension that came to the surface was strangling Edelweiss.
She felt choked and she felt that she was unable to distinguish colours.
She was not a public transportation driver who merely needed to be
able to recognise three colours: red, yellow and green. She could not
work at home, knowing all the way she had to prepare for an imminent
solo exhibition in Singapore.

562 Bulan Sastra

Their divorce took place quickly and was deplored by many
relatives and neighbours, who were also sad when Edelweiss left with
Danae. After the divorce, once every few months Edelweiss took
Danae to stay with her father in Ciputat. She did that not because
Pandan did not want to come to Jogjakarta, but because she did
not want him to. Pandan visited her once and she felt really
uncomfortable.
Whenever Danae stayed in Ciputat, Edelweiss usually used
her time in Jakarta to meet with clients, friends, or just satisfying
herself eating in her favourite places. Initially, she still took time to
visit her old neighbours in Ciputat, but their questions regarding the
ownership of the house were almost provocative, therefore she chose
to avoid them as much as possible.
Also, Edelweiss could not stand to be in Ciputat because
every time she saw Pandan, her heart broke. Her ex-husband was
physically fine but his behaviour showed weakness in her eyes. There
were no more mischievous sparks in his eyes that once had been there.
He did not call her Cempluk anymore, but only Bunda Danae, Danae’s
Mother. “May seventeen samurais suffer,” Edelweiss cursed when she
first heard him greet her that way.
So, when Pandan said that he was getting married to Aya, a
kindergarten teacher, although she felt jealous, Edelweiss truly hoped
that Pandan would recover his happiness. But Edelweiss’s hope
vanished when she knew that Pandan was marrying Aya as an
arrangement set by the head of his organisation, and that Aya was
working in the kindergarten run by the organisation.
At the time, Pandan was no longer working and only
relied on his savings for a living. For this reason, Edelweiss
suggested he build small houses to be rented on the land which was

บุหลันวรรณกรรม 563

quite extensive on the left side of the Ciputat home. Pandan agreed.
The number of small houses quickly doubled and Pandan was able to
generate a substantial income, the kind of income that allowed Aya
to lend money to relatives who then cut her into pieces.
Aya was already buried when Edelweiss reached the Ciputat home.
In the morning, as soon as the remains were allowed to be taken from
the hospital, Pandan chose to conduct the funeral immediately.
Edelweiss thought it was a smart choice.
When she arrived, after a few seconds of awkwardness,
Edelweiss hugged Pandan. The man cried on Edelweiss’s shoulder,
maybe for a minute, but for Edelweiss, it felt like hours. Some
neighbours were crying. Several members of the organisation stared
and seemed to wonder, but they did not say a word. Edelweiss shook
hands with Aya’s parents, but not a single word came out of her mouth.
Guests were still coming until late at night. Some of Aya’s
relatives looked awkward because both the victim and the criminal
were members of the same extended family. Edelweiss chose to stay
in the backyard. She took some time picking and eating the srikaya
fruit she had once planted. There, for the first time she embraced, held
and kissed Zulaika, who was being taken care of by her babysitter.
The ceremony lasted until nine that night. Edelweiss
participated for a while. She had hoped for a ceremony that moved
the heart, but she was mistaken: the event was ordinary.
Feeling exhausted, Edelweiss took a rest in Danae’s room,
the room which was only occupied when the child came to visit. She
was not aware of when she fell asleep. When she woke up, she found
Pandan sitting on a chair not far from the bed. His eyes looked tired

564 Bulan Sastra

even though his lips tried to smile. Edelweiss got up and hugged him.
Pandan cried again. A few minutes later, driven by a strange feeling,
they undressed and made love. Edelweiss felt Pandan’s tears on her
shoulder. When it was over, Pandan fell asleep.
Edelweiss looked at her watch: one in the morning. She put
on her clothes, washed her face in the bathroom. Her mind was not
yet able to digest what had just happened. Consolation? She
freshened herself up and walked out of the room. There was no one.
She grabbed her bag and walked out of the house. In the front yard,
she lit a cigarette. She walked towards the street to find a taxi.

Gloria’s autobiography

A.S. Laksana
Translated by Dini Andarnuswari

After that night, you know, my grandmother once again had to go
through everything that had bored her before and she did it alone
because my grandfather was no longer there to be by her side. He was
still alive but it was impossible for him to leave the bars that confined
him. My grandfather and grandmother - henceforth Bob and
Leli - used to live on a hill slope in southern Semarang, not far from
a Chinese graveyard several spots of which had been vandalised. I
call them Bob and Leli because they would not like it if I called them
by their real names (though people would know who I meant because
only my family experienced this). Bob and Leli had three children and
had been longing for grandchildren for years.
Their first son, my uncle, finished his education in an
Islamic junior high school; he received religion lessons all the time
but never liked reciting. Afterwards he grew up in thugs’ raucous and
rowdy parties, becoming a drunken bachelor until he was past forty.
Many times my grandfather and grandmother pressed him to marry
but it was useless. My uncle remained a bachelor to his dying day,
two months before his forty-third anniversary.

566 Bulan Sastra

Bob and Leli’s hope to have grandchildren could only be
placed in their second child, a girl, who initially fell in love with a
sandpaper man in a furniture factory but then married a quiet and
old-looking insurance man. You might want to know how an
insurance man could beat a sandpaper man and win love, but
I must refrain from telling you about this now. I hope I can tell about
their love story some other time. It was this second child that got
married; the third one, also a girl, did not marry until she was
twenty-eight.
Let me go back to three years before I was born. By then
this second child had been married for seven years without getting
pregnant, while Bob and Leli’s wish to have a grandchild was
overpowering. Since they couldn’t wait any longer, Bob and Leli
started frequenting shamans and visiting sacred places. At the houses
of shamans they obtained various mantras and advice on what should
be eaten by their daughter, who still wasn’t pregnant. In sacred
places they sent prayers.
The first shaman they consulted prescribed for their
daughter to drink green coconut water every Thursday night seven
weeks running. This prescription achieved nothing, so they moved on
to the next shaman, with different mantras and prescriptions. After
four shamans, they went to sacred places. At first they came to a
monument erected on a little island in the middle of a river. Four
months later, on a neighbour’s advice they went to a spring and spent
the night there, carrying the water home for their daughter to drink.
Three months later, on another neighbour’s advice and on money
borrowed from a loan shark, they visited an old canon in Jakarta.
“You know what an old canon looks like,” the neighbour
said. “No one goes there and is disappointed.”

บุหลนั วรรณกรรม 567

On arriving at the site, they both felt sure that presently they
would be given a grandchild. The canon’s shape, you know, could
really convince anyone who came to pray. At its base there was a fist
with the thumb inserted between forefinger and middle finger - the
way you show it to someone irritating. Sitting beside the canon, Bob
and Leli very solemnly prayed. Five months later, with Bob and Leli
having spent two years milling around, my mother often fell sick. She
was pregnant. Bob and Leli’s wish had been granted by the canon;
in a few months they would have a grandchild. But happiness,
you know, sometimes comes with complication. They didn’t expect
that it would be my mother, their third child, who would get pregnant.
My mother wasn’t married. The neighbours would definitely gossip
about a husbandless pregnant woman. Had Bob and Leli had twelve
grandchildren, such gossip would have been coped with easily. They
could have yelled at my mother and taken her to a witch doctor to
have her abort before her stomach grew bigger. But they couldn’t do
that because it was their first grandchild who was growing inside my
mother’s womb - me.
“Try asking your friends if anyone knows some guy who
wants to get married to the worm,” Bob said to my uncle.
How freaked-out my grandfather was! To put my mother in
the hands of my uncle’s friends meant putting her fate, and mine
later on, in the hands of thugs. But I can understand his panic. He had
asked many times about the man who had impregnated my mother’s
womb but she had never told him. My uncle was more sober than my
grandfather. He told Bob that “the worm” should have been the one
to go after her man.

568 Bulan Sastra