Twilight in Djakarta (2 page)

In the bookcase were stacked records; from the works of
Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Chopin to tangos, sambas, rumbas, foxtrots and American jazz.

Suryono turned over, overtaken by laziness and remembrances of his life in New York, so marvellously luxurious and pleasant compared with his boredom and desolation during these three months at home. It seemed as if there was no place for him in his own country. He was at a loss as to what he should undertake. Nothing really seemed to attract him.

His stepmother suddenly opened the door and entered the room, saying,

‘Yon, are you still sleeping?’

Suryono smiled at her, unashamed to be seen in bed with only his short underpants on, and said,

‘Ah, what’s the use getting up in the morning? You come to the office and there is no work there, anyway.’

His stepmother moved past his bed to open the curtains, but as she passed Suryono caught her by the hand and pulled her on to the bed.

‘Fatma, has Father left?’ he asked, kissing her neck intensely.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but don’t be naughty now, the babu
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is sweeping the middle room.’

She stood up, opened the curtains and Suryono looked at his stepmother, Fatma, who was still young, his age-mate in fact, just twenty-nine years old. His father had married her while he, Suryono, was abroad, a year and a half ago. His father, Raden Kaslan, was fifty-six years of age; his mother had died when he was fifteen. When he heard that his father had remarried, Suryono had only shaken his head in surprise. And now, lying on his bed and looking at his stepmother, Suryono was surprised again, wondering how it was possible for a relationship between himself and his stepmother to have developed as it did. When he returned from New York his father was absent from home, and
for two weeks he was alone with her. They lived together, went together to shows and went dancing together, and then Fatma told him not to call her mother, it was enough to call her just Fatma, and then … and then … Suryono smiled to himself recalling what happened between him and his stepmother for the first time, and in his father’s room at that. They had just returned from a dance, and his stepmother had already gone into his father’s room. There was not a soul in the house. He remembered that he had wanted to see an old family album, and went and knocked at the door.

‘Come in,’ he heard Fatma’s voice. He opened the door, and saw that Fatma was changing her clothes within the screen near the wardrobe.

‘I want to look for Father’s album, Fat,’ he said. ‘Do you know where it is?’

‘Here,’ said Fatma, ‘come and take it.’

He hesitated at first, but then went up to the screen after all, and saw that Fatma had already taken off her clothes and wore only a very thin nightdress. Suryono could not clearly remember how it began, all he remembered was how later he was getting up from his father’s bed, with Fatma still lying on it with no clothes on her at all, and himself rushing out, back to his room. In his perturbation he was surprised nevertheless to find that he did not feel remorse, but was filled by a feeling of satisfaction. True, for a moment his innermost conscience spoke, but he quickly suppressed it with the thought – Ah, it’s Father’s own fault. Why did he marry a young woman?

And then he fell asleep. And when his father, Raden Kaslan, returned, the situation was further eased when, hearing how Fatma and Suryono addressed each other by nicknames (they did not try to conceal this), he said,

‘Ah, I see you two have already become close friends. Fine!’

Raden Kaslan worked as director of the trading company Bumi Aju and was a member of the council of the Indonesian
Party. Formerly he had been a government official, but after the transfer of sovereignty he withdrew from the bureaucracy which did not offer him the desired satisfaction. His enterprise grew rapidly. It was easy for him to secure support because of his party connections.

After the first incident the second one occurred easily, and so it continued. After that first night, during a whole week he slept every night in his father’s room with Fatma. They were both as if drunken. And only when the cable arrived from his father asking to be met at the Kemajoran airport did they come to from their intoxication, and Fatma said,

‘What if your father finds out?’

But there was no fear in the question of the woman, nor was there any trace of anxiety. The question had a taunting tone, as if she were convinced that she could manage to deceive her old husband.

Also, in bed, Suryono once asked her,

‘Whom do you really like, my father or me?’

And Fatma, with a little laugh, bit his cheek and embraced him with ardour.

‘You’re crazy to ask that. Don’t you know?’

And Fatma told him that his father was impotent, and had married her only for the satisfaction of having a young woman at his side, which gave him self-assurance, and could be shown to other people to cover up his own weakness.

‘It isn’t even once a month that he comes to me,’ said Fatma.

At first Suryono felt uncomfortable discussing his father with his stepmother thus, as if his father were a stranger. But this feeling was soon drowned by the passion inflamed by the body of the young woman who was his stepmother.

Nor did they ever raise the question of love. Whether he loved his stepmother or whether she loved him. It seemed that what they were doing was sufficient reason for doing it.

A week after his father’s return all tension in him disappeared, as if nothing had happened between them, and his father oftentimes even asked him to accompany his wife to a show, to a feast or some such other occasion, when he himself could not join her.

This is how it came about that Fatma’s neck was kissed this morning on his bed. The drizzling rain continued to fall outside, and he felt Fatma’s body becoming tense and taut under his hands, and the woman embracing him hard, kissing his mouth and then suddenly extricating herself and running to the door.

‘Aduh, you are really naughty,’ she called, opened the door and went out.

Suryono laughed to himself, feeling excited and gay, and rejoicing in his male superiority, even defeating his own father.

He put on his bathrobe and went to the bathroom. As he undressed to bathe, he stopped naked before the tall mirror on the bathroom wall and contemplated his own body. Too thin, he thought, gripping his thigh, and the chest is not full enough. I must go in more for sport, he thought further. Then he examined his face. The features were handsome, and his new moustache was just beginning to grow. The eyes were too hollow, the hair was wavy. And he rubbed the cleft in his chin. He was rather pleased with that cleft; he shared it with Cary Grant, the film star. He got out his razor, soaped his lips and chin and started shaving, looking at his face in the mirror and humming away. He was really pleased this morning, there was nothing to trouble his thoughts. There was no work in the office to give him headaches and there was not a thing to worry about.

On this morning he almost felt at peace with himself, and his disappointment at having to stay in his own country was almost forgotten. A fleeting thought passed through his mind. If I have patience enough for another year they’re sure to send me abroad again. It was a cheering idea and he whistled repeatedly a tune,
very popular at that time in Djakarta – ‘High Noon’.

He had breakfast together with Fatma, who awaited him. The two of them sat at the table, and Fatma sliced the bread for him and spread the butter on it.

‘What would you like this morning – chocolate or marmalade?’

Suryono, looking at her, said,

‘Wah, the goodness of this mother, it’s truly marvellous. I want a layer of butter, with a layer of thinly sliced cheese on top of it, and over the cheese, a layer of marmalade, and then …’ Suryono nudged Fatma’s foot under the table and Fatma giggled with pleasure.

‘You are a bad child, unmannered, and with your own mother at that,’ she said.

And they both laughed.

Before going to the office he kissed and caressed Fatma in her bedroom, then combed back his dishevelled hair, and just before leaving the room he held for a moment Fatma’s breast, then went out whistling, hailed a betja and was off to his office.

‘What’s in the newspaper this morning?’ he asked Harun, who sat at the desk next to his own.

Harun threw the newspaper which he was reading on to Suryono’s desk.

‘Read it yourself,’ Harun said. ‘You’re late again. Only the day before yesterday the Secretary General issued a circular warning all officials to be in on time.’

Suryono laughed. ‘Let him arrive precisely on time himself. It’s easy to make rules. He has a car which brings him to the office. How about us?’

And again he felt resentment. Resenting the Secretary General of the ministry, resenting Harun who faithfully appeared at the office from day to day and then sat at his desk without anything to do, resenting the whole ministry, resenting his country, his
people, resenting humanity, resenting life.

He threw the paper back to Harun.

‘Read it yourself first,’ he said. He was bored no end, knew not what to do with himself. He sat down and picked up the telephone. He waited for a long time, but the switchboard operator did not respond. After a while the operator answered. Suryono gave the number, and soon afterwards heard the ringing tone at the other end.

A woman’s voice, caressing his ear, came floating over the wire,

‘Hallo!’

‘Is it you, Ies?’ asked Suryono.

‘Yes, so early in the morning, and you’re on the phone already, Yon!’ The voice was full of smiles and laughter.

‘You know that you’re in my mind day and night!’

‘Ah, where did you learn to say such things?’

‘Ies, what are you doing tonight?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘I know what you want to do.’

‘Yes?’

Then Suryono suddenly changed his playful tone and said seriously,

‘Ies, I want to come tonight.’

‘I won’t be home.’

‘Don’t play with me.’

‘No, I certainly will not be home. I am not home for a man who is bored, annoyed and depressed. Don’t think I don’t know you, Yono. You’re coming to me only when you are bored and lonely. Good morning!’

Ies put down the receiver, and Suryono banged down his. Harun regarded him with lightly smiling eyes.

‘No luck?’ he asked.

Suryono looked at him, annoyed.

‘You’re rather eager to overhear other people’s conversations, aren’t you?’

Suryono sat in his chair, took out a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, lit one and after only two puffs threw it on the floor and crushed it with his shoe. Even the cigarette had no taste that morning.

When Sugeng returned home from his office at the Ministry of Economic Affairs he found his three-year-old daughter crying and screaming in the front yard.

They’ve been fighting again, he thought, approaching the child. ‘Come, Yam, why are you crying?’

The little girl, Maryam, raised her head at the sound of her father’s voice, stood up and jumped to hide her head at Sugeng’s knee, and said between sobs,

‘Iwan took away my marbles!’

Sugeng picked her up, held her in his arms and kissed her lovingly,

‘Nah, it’s all right, don’t cry. Father will buy you new marbles!’

Inwardly he sighed and cursed the necessity of living in a house shared by three families: children got into fights every minute, and oftentimes this caused rows between the parents too. It was a year now they had been staying in this crowded house with two other families. In the beginning there was always hope of getting another home, as promised by the ministry. But now it looked as if they would have to live like this for ever.

The house was an old-fashioned one, with a long verandah running along its front, now divided in half by a bamboo screen. He had one front room and one part of the verandah which was screened in front as well as at the side. This was the sitting-room, as well as the kitchen – with an oil stove to cook on – the
dining-place
and also the place for ironing the laundry. The room behind it was the bedroom. The bath and the lavatory were in the passage
at the rear of the house and were used jointly.

When he entered, carrying Maryam inside, he saw that his wife was not in the verandah-room.

‘Hasnah!’ he called, ‘why do you let Maryam stay all alone outside, crying?’

Only a moan, coming from the bedroom, answered his call.

He stopped on the threshold and saw his wife who lay on the bed. She slowly opened her eyes.

‘Are you sick?’ Sugeng asked anxiously.

‘Yes, I am dizzy again and suffer so much nausea. It’s already a week late!’

Sugeng quickly put down Maryam, stepped over to the bed and held the head of his wife.

‘Maryam will get an adik?’
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he asked joyfully. ‘I hope it is a son.’

His wife looked at him. Something in her face disturbed Sugeng, so that he asked,

‘Aren’t you happy? We have wanted little Maryam to have an adik for a long time. She’s already three years old. And we do want a son, don’t we?’

Hasnah nodded, then said,

‘Yes, but when Maryam’s little baby brother arrives, and we are still here …’ And Hasnah looked around the room meaningfully; its appearance told the whole story of their difficulties in such overcrowded conditions.

Instantaneously conscious of all this, Sugeng was saddened too, but he said,

‘Ah, before the baby is born we surely will get another house. My ministry keeps on trying and they say they’re beginning to build houses for their employees in Kemajoran. Don’t you be afraid!’

Hasnah blinked and said,

‘When we moved into this house you also said it would be for only a few months. Now it’s over a year. I cannot live here, with two children. And with a baby at that. Where will we put him? How about his health? If you are not sure that we’ll really get a house before then isn’t it better that we don’t have him? I heard there is a doctor who can help, with just an injection. It’s only a week now, there is still time.’