Without Rice Fields, Without a Fixed Salary: How We Survive on the Edge of the Southern Regency

Chapter 4

The vulnerability of the lower class does not belong solely to Slamet and Sumi's household. It constitutes an invisible web ensnaring every corner of the village, binding one poverty to another in a shared knot of powerlessness. No secret can truly be kept tightly guarded; in a place where house walls are built from unplastered concrete blocks and alleyways are agonizingly narrow, every murmur of anxiety always finds a crack to leak outward, becoming collective nourishment chewed slowly amidst daily routines.

In the afternoon, as the sun slowly faded behind the jungle of banana trees and the residue of road dust settled, Mbok Nur’s sundry shop transformed into the focal node of this social network. Several women gathered beneath the shade of a rusted corrugated zinc roof, clutching used plastic containers, pretending to be busy sorting through the remnants of wilted, rotting vegetables in the corner of a winnowing tray. There lay the community’s true "data room"—an open stage where rumors, anxieties, and destinies were weighed alongside retail commodities, forming a paradoxical solidarity: watching over one another while quietly pitying each other.

"That Sumi acts all calm when walking to the public well, but I saw with my own eyes yesterday how Anto from Bank Titil stopped right in front of her house," whispered a neighbor draped in a faded house dress, her voice low, eyes darting sharply toward the dusty end of the alleyway as if the debt collector's shadow still haunted the air.

Mbok Nur, busy weighing loose granulated sugar into thin plastic bags, glanced briefly at the neighbor. She drew a short breath, paused her scales for a moment, and shook her elderly head—a head that had long witnessed the ebb and flow of the village economy.

"What else can you expect? Her husband is merely a daily laborer," Mbok Nur interjected, her voice raspy yet brutally honest, piercing the layers of gossip without mercy. "Contract work in town looks busy for a second, then stalls for a week or two without clarity. If Sumi doesn't leverage loan-shark credit, how on earth is her kitchen supposed to stay lit? You just love talking about people—do you really think your debt in my ledger differs much from Sumi’s situation?"

The neighbor let out an insipid laugh, a quintessential chuckle of the impoverished common folk who perpetually employ bitter humor and self-resignation as a palliative against public humiliation.

"I suppose you're right, Mbok," she replied while patting her chest, dampening the sting of the pointed remark. "Speaking of which, my tab in your book has reached the second page already, hasn't it?"

Meanwhile, in another corner of the village cloaked in the darkness of night, the frail guard post (pos ronda) constructed from fragile bamboo slats served as a sanctuary for the men. As the night deepened and the chill wind slipped through the unsealed gaps of the weathered wood, Slamet sat in a circle with Pak Mat and several other day laborers, finding brief solace on the cracked concrete floor.

Right in the middle of their circle perched a soot-stained zinc kettle containing leftover thick black coffee brewed in the afternoon, resting alongside a discarded biscuit tin stuffed with dozens of unlit, stubbed-out cigarette butts—silent witnesses to long nights spent contemplating uncertainty.

"The building project in the sub-district wraps up next week, Met," Pak Mat remarked, pulling his sarong tightly across his chest to ward off the biting night wind. "No signs of another call from the main foreman yet. At best, next week we'll only get assigned to shovel river sand."

Slamet muttered a soft curse, spitting onto the earth beside the bamboo bench. He drew a deep breath, then relighted his half-burned cigarette, its glowing tip briefly illuminating his dull face, damp with cold sweat, and lined with deep, hardening traces of exhaustion.

"Shoveling river sand again? My lower back feels like it's going to snap if I have to mine from morning till evening. And food prices at the market just keep climbing without ever dropping, driving me out of my mind."

"Just endure it for now, Met. The important thing is the smokes don't run out," Pak Mat quipped with a bitter tone, a worn-out joke instantly met with insipid, hollow chuckles from the other laborers inside the guard post—a harmony of quiet despair.

Yet, deep down, all of them understood perfectly well that the laughter slipping between the plumes of cigarette smoke was nothing more than a mask to cover their shame. Behind the boisterous banter and crude jokes at the guard post that night, these husbands harbored the exact same anxiety: a suffocating dread upon facing the morrow, when the foreman would tap their shoulders and casually declare, "Take the week off; funds haven't cleared from headquarters yet."

They deliberately chose to close their eyes and ears, feigning ignorance of the fact that the very same terror was being fought by their wives inside cold homes—struggling to sustain the breath of their kitchens day by day by mortgaging their family's future to the clutches of usurers disguised as saviors.