The Colour Of Things Unseen

Chapter 3

Pak Harto was smiling, “It’s an interesting piece, isn’t it? Do you know, I think you’re the first person who’s really seen it?”

The offer of the scholarship was hard to absorb and Adi turned to the side to brush away the tears of gratitude that were leaking from the edges of his eyes and onto his cheeks. As soon as he agreed to the offer, Pak Harto gathered up his briefcase, locked the office door, and they went by taxi to his aunts’ village. After Bude Kartini and Bude Nur had consented, they drove on to the family village to meet with Pak Totot and Mbak Yanti.

“The art school will waive its fees,” Pak Harto explained, “and an organisation in Bali has agreed to provide basic living expenses for three years, as well as a return airfare. They do this for three or four students a year,” he said. “Adi is not the first, nor will he be the last to receive such support.”

Hearing this, Totot was moved to express his gratitude and he got up from the mat and exited the room. As Pak Harto was preparing to leave, Totot reappeared with a small brown-feathered chicken in a bamboo cage and tried to present it to the teacher. While Pak Harto was declining the live gift, Yanti slipped out of the room and – just as Pak Harto and Adi, minus the chicken, were getting back into the car – returned with a laden branch from a neighbour’s rambutan tree and deposited it onto the back seat of the waiting taxi. Totot was relieved. No one, least of all him, would have been happy if the teacher had gone from their house empty-handed.

To many in the village, Totot’s second marriage to Yuni had seemed intemperate and ill-matched, but it soothed his ongoing terror that – even with Yanti and Suriani’s parents’ help – he was incapable of adequately caring for his children on his own. He had been a broken man following Suriani’s untimely death and, thanks be to God, the second marriage had not been entirely loveless. With time, the second family melded with the first and, with the exception of Adi who was still young, his and Suriani’s children were all married now and had children of their own. They too were contributing to their community, tending the rice fields and other crops, and making sacrifices so their children could get an education.

When Adi went to live with his sisters, Totot felt relieved because each time he looked at the boy – who had Suriani’s eyes, mouth and hands – it caused a fearful jarring in his heart. Some had been critical of Suriani’s parents for giving their daughter such a powerful name, but they named her, they said, for the light and warmth she brought them when they no longer believed they would be gifted with a child. For Totot too, her vivacity, sense of humour and unequivocal love and affection for him and the children was like a joyful bubble. And just as her parents had failed to curb her exuberance, so he too had given in to her deep need for personal freedom. If he tried to correct or bend her, she simply dissolved his ambition by making him laugh.

At any one time as a girl, Suriani could appear gracious, refined even, and then came the break out, and with some action or shout she would transform into a daring rascal. On a whim she might shimmy up a tree to fetch a coconut or jump fully clothed into the river to cool off. She didn’t care what people thought and, even after all this time, people in the market still recalled the time she stole a brand new bicycle and rode it round and round the market, ringing the bell and staying just out of reach of the pompous school teacher who owned it.

The depth of Suriani’s love for Adi as a baby, and then as a child, had disturbed Totot and left him feeling a little jealous and insecure. So when their entwined life broke apart, the boy’s demands for comfort compounded his own sense of loss. While he could not love him, and this haunted Totot and made him hard on the boy, he still cherished a hope that peace would blossom between them again one day.

As word spread of Adi’s good fortune, Totot felt a deep gratitude that Suriani’s youngest, and only the second generation after independence, had finished junior and senior high school, and was going to attend university in a faraway place. Adi would be the first in the family to go to university, or even overseas. Their society was changing. He could feel it and it made him happy, for he still cherished the memory of when he was a boy and President Soekarno came to their village in a black car with darkened windows to talk about independence.

On that day, when the news spread fast through the village and out into the rice fields and nearby villages that Bung Karno wished to speak to them, they came hurrying to the alun-alun. Men with bare torsos came direct from the fields, carrying a machete, scythe, or any other tool they had been using. Women changed into a clean kebaya, called out to their neighbours, and herded their children to stand in front of the makeshift stage that was still being erected next to the banyan tree. It was a subdued but excited crowd and people were still pouring in when Bung Karno climbed up onto the podium to address them. He spoke of freedom and independence, of the Pancasila – the five principles for the republic, and of the importance of education for all children, even the poorest.

Bung Karno sowed the seeds of the Pancasila that filled their hearts with the new republic’s promises of social justice, democracy, belief in one God, respect for all religions, and a nation united. He promised them that education would be the keystone to a fair and just society.

“The Dutch educated the aristocracy,” he boomed, “but not the ordinary people, and they educated them in Dutch. Now the Javanese will speak Javanese, but they will be Indonesian too and speak Bahasa Indonesia. And Indonesia’s motto will be Bhinneka tunggal ika. Unity in diversity. Many but one. We will bring all our nation’s many cultures, languages, peoples, islands together to form one strong, cohesive, self-governing and independent country: Indonesia.”

How they clapped and cheered. Hardly anyone spoke of Bung Karno nowadays, but the Imam often repeated his message, “Educate the children, the rest will follow.” And, “It is our spiritual duty to educate our children.”

All of Totot’s children studied the Pancasila at school and, while some in the village like his wife Yuni spoke Javanese only, most of the younger generations spoke Indonesian as well because they learned it at school.

No one wanted to learn or speak Dutch. Not anymore.

Chapter 4

Pak Harto’s efforts to land the scholarship for Adi were based on his belief that the student had a naïve and driving curiosity. While this was an important quality in an artist, it was his steely determination that most recommended him to the teacher. He would face considerable obstacles in a place like Sydney, but they would be of a different nature to the ones he would face if he remained at home. Of course, as in the myth of Daedalus, he might err and end up flying too close to the sun, but it was a risk worth taking. Adi, and you didn’t often see this, seemed to have been stamped an “artist” at birth.

Was he being idealistic, or plain unrealistic? Perhaps. But he knew that in his culture, as in many others, perhaps all others, an artist was a nobody, or a somebody in the same way that everyone was a somebody. It was not quite reputable as a profession and, unless Adi became very famous, it would do little to improve his social standing. Birth, family background and wealth were what determined a person’s position in society, what you might do, how you might live, and when and whom you might marry. But while family connections mattered, and overseas study would not change his social or economic prospects, it might provide him a ladder.

This was what motivated and excited Pak Harto and he believed, rightly or wrongly, that Adi was at just the right age to benefit from the skills, stimulation and encouragement the art school could offer. He knew this because he had once been a student, and then a teacher, there himself.

There was also the matter of a social debt. Decades earlier, when he completed his studies at the Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta, Pak Harto had gone to Bali and, like many other young artists there, the older artists had welcomed and occasionally fed him. They gave constructive criticism, helped him to sell his work, and treated him as an equal. Now he was in a position to offer the same belief to Adi, and it was his hope that when his student returned to Indonesia, he would in turn inspire and assist other younger artists. And if he remained in Australia, he would inspire them anyway because he would always be a Javanese, Indonesian artist.

***

On the day Adi was to fly from Yogyakarta to Denpasar, and Denpasar to Sydney, Pak Harto arrived in a taxi to take him to the airport. For the send-off, a slice of the community had assembled at Totot’s house. As well as his father, there were Adi’s stepmother Yuni, Yanti and her husband Goenawan and their children – seven-year-old Fitri and four-year-old Dimas, his brothers Budi and Ismoyo and their wives and children, and his younger sister and brothers. There were aunts, uncles and cousins, and almost all their near neighbours. They knew Adi was going a long way from Java and would be flying over the ocean for almost a whole day, and they knew that when he arrived he would be living and studying with londo – white people – and non-Muslims.

They had confidence in Pak Harto because he was a teacher, and he, in turn, felt honoured by their trust. For this reason, he had taken care when booking the airline tickets to ensure that family members would be reassured, when they consulted the Javanese calendar, to see that the day of Adi’s departure was particularly propitious for making long journeys and starting a new project.

After greeting Totot, the aunts, Yanti and other family members he knew, Pak Harto settled back into the front seat of the car to wait while they wished Adi a safe journey, and even pressed crumpled rupiah notes into his hand. Throughout the whole affair, Totot watched and waited as Adi went through the motions of shaking hands or receiving a hug.

Adi was holding his body in a stiff pose to help maintain his calm, and he began focusing on small details such as what his father and brothers were wearing – their best sarongs and batik shirts, or that his stepmother, aunts, sisters and sisters-in-law had their hair covered and were wearing the outfits they usually wore on important occasions. He himself had on jeans, a tee-shirt and trainers, and Yanti had cut his hair to shoulder length the day before. As the minutes passed, Adi strained to fix a snapshot of the colours and patterns of the sarongs, shirts and other outfits in his mind as a souvenir to take with him on his journey.

When everyone else had had their turn, Totot stepped forward, “Goodbye son, and remember to always be a good Javanese.” It was an instruction that made great sense and had real import for all who were present. And for Adi also. Then, just as Yanti was about to hand over his goodbye food parcel wrapped in banana leaves, a small figure flashed forward and launched herself upwards and into his arms, leaving him no choice but to swing up both arms to catch her. It was seven-year-old Fitri, and she almost succeeded in knocking him backwards onto the ground.

“Little uncle, please will you bring me back a kangaroo from Australia?”

“Of course, darling,” he said, hugging her tight.

When Adi went to lower her to the ground, his niece tightened her grip on his neck and her small frame began to convulse with violent hiccups that ignited the cloud of sadness and dismay that had gathered over them all. Throats ached and there was a twitter of concern as Yanti struggled to unpeel her sobbing daughter’s arms.