Twilight in Jakarta

May-1

MaySaimun tightened his belt, his stomach again rumbling with hunger. He’d had nothing to eat since waking and now the day was getting on. The drizzle which had started at dawn increased his hunger; Saimun blamed the rain. With his bare and grimy foot—mud, filth, and germs were stuck to that bare foot—he kicked a refuse-filled basket off the top of the rubbish heap. The basket rolled down until it was stopped by the dilapidated wall of a hut, one so very battered, so very rotten, and so sadly dripping in the drizzling rain. A woman stuck her head out and shouted hoarsely, “Hey, watch it! Where’re your eyes?”

Saimun started a little, then looked down and stared at the woman. He laughed roughly, without anger or malice, because he always laughed that way; momentarily, lust stirred in him at the sight of the breasts of the woman in the hut, visible through the rents of her worn and ragged blouse. For an instant the desire flickered in him to go down and take the woman, but then he heard the rumbling of the municipal garbage truck. Turning quickly, he sprinted and jumped on as it was moving away.

Saimun crouched down at the side of his friend, Itam, who was lighting a clove-scented kretek cigarette. He looked at his feet on the truck’s wet and dirty floor, felt the hard boards against the bones of his behind shaking loose all the tense muscles of his body, leaned against the wooden wall of the truck, and stretched out his hand towards Itam. “Please, just one,” he begged.

Itam looked at him, and the reluctance behind his eyes vanished quickly. He handed his kretek to Saimun, watching closely how Saimun inhaled deeply, deeply, retaining the smoke in the hollow of his chest, then returned the cigarette to Itam, who immediately took a long drag. Together they blew the smoke slowly through their nostrils, for the moment forgetting the drizzling rain, the dirt, and the smell of the truck, even forgetting themselves. There was only the scent of the kretek, the warmth of the cigarette upon the tongue, and the relaxation of the body.

Itam inhaled the smoke once more, then he handed the cigarette to Saimun and scratched the back of his ear, while the other hand brushed off the flies, swarming in the truck, from the scabs below his knee.

“I’m hungry,” said Saimun.

“One more drag, then we’ll go get our wages. But first we can stop and eat at Ibu Yom’s.”

“Just thinking of food, my body goes limp,” said Saimun, his stomach feeling emptier and emptier, as if that emptiness was draining the last bit of strength left in his blood. He leaned back against the truck wall. Suddenly he felt exhausted and very faint.

Itam offered Saimun another drag from his kretek. Saimun inhaled avidly; Itam watching anxiously how rapidly the glow moved towards the end of the cigarette. As soon as Saimun finished, Itam retrieved it hastily, drew on it until it burned his fingers, and then threw the tiny stub out of the truck.

Saimun pondered. How was it that when something is difficult to get or you don’t have it, and you get a chance to taste it for just a moment, a small matter can become so big, doubling, trebling, growing ever larger? This morning one kretek cigarette dominated his whole soul—as if his life depended on one cigarette and if he could get that cigarette his life would be prolonged, as it were, forever. One cigarette could fulfill his existence. He remembered that when he was still in his village—before it was attacked by a group of bandits, and his father and mother died in the slaughter, and he fled to the city when the harvest was over—he didn’t think twice before throwing away a half-smoked cigarette; or throwing away a boiled yam after only a few bites. And when there was a wedding feast, or the lebaran holidays, or some other celebrations in the village, no one ever gave a thought to a drag on a cigarette. Now, to smoke a kretek with Itam was like some kind of grand ceremony. Each drag was of enormous significance; it was done carefully and with undivided attention. All one’s senses were keyed up to tasting this one drag on the cigarette. A kretek never tasted as good as in this dirty and stinking garbage truck.

Meanwhile, if he remembered life in the village, it all felt like a dream. Sometimes he didn’t believe that he had ever lived in such a village, as though it had been another person altogether, not himself, who had worked in the rice field, who had bathed in the river with Putih, the buffalo, which had gotten its name from the white patch of hair behind its left ear. Ah… he still remembered it all so well, but now somehow did not believe that it was really he who went bathing with Putih. It was as though a person’s existence was shut away in different boxes that had no connection with each other. As though he had become a stranger to himself—with no connection at all any more to that man who had been himself in that other life-box.

He remembered how, in the first weeks after his arrival in Jakarta, he had wept when evening came and he didn’t know where to go; how he’d looked for a place to sleep under the awning of a shop—until he met Itam, who befriended him, and they got work as garbage coolies. Later they were able to rent lodgings in the hut of Pak Ijo, a pony-cart driver. Just one room, next to the room where old Ijo slept with his equally old wife and their three children. But the hunger which gnawed at his guts never ceased, and the weariness in his bones never really went away.

“How about driving a becak? Wouldn’t that be better than this sort of work?” said Saimun suddenly.

“I don’t think so,” said Itam, thinking of the strength required to drive a pedicab for a living. “You remember Pandi, don’t you, that becak driver who died just like that, spitting up blood? Drove a becak only a year before his heart gave out!”

Saimun scratched with his toes at the floor of the truck, its thick crust of dregs, and for the moment all life around him seemed to vanish, himself remaining in a dismal void, suspended alone in that void, as if all dimensions of life were lost: there was no past, no present, and there was no future, only himself alone in existence.

He woke with a start as the truck stopped, and Itam called, “Come on, time to get to work.”

Saimun felt stiff all over as he forced himself to get up, jump off the truck, and lift a basketful of refuse into it.

By noon the truck was back at the dump, and as he was unloading the rubbish, Saimun remembered the woman he had seen that morning. He stepped down towards the hut. The woman was there, bathing in a small pool, a few yards from the hut, its stagnant water dirty and yellow. Saimun shouted to attract the woman’s attention, and his desire revived as he saw her, naked and bathing in the shallow pool. The woman laughed at him, turning her body, challengingly. Saimun unwillingly turned away only when he heard Itam call his name and the sound of the truck’s engine. But he called to the woman, “I’ll be back.”

Garbage carts and trucks were assembled near the office where the men were to be paid. There was a row of vendors, selling cigarettes, packets of cooked rice, and fried bananas. An Arabic-looking man with a blue notebook and an umbrella and another heavy-bodied man sat eating fried bananas under a tree. The distribution of wages had not yet begun, but Saimun caught a glimpse of the cashier, busy counting the various denominations of rupiah notes that were stacked behind the small window.

He walked with Itam to Ibu Yom’s food stall. As soon as they were seated, the woman served them, knowing already what they wanted to eat.

“When you get your wages, don’t run away,” Ibu Yom reminded them.

Saimun and Itam were silent; they ate ravenously.

“s**t, I owe close to five rupiah,” Saimun said, “so Big Boss Abdullah and his sidekick, Iron Man, over there are going to have to wait. How much do you owe him, Itam?”

“About five rupiah! That damned Arab; there’s never an end to a debt with him.”

“Lucky I owe only a ringgit, two and a half rupiah,” said Saimun, “but I still have to pay him four rupiah this week.”

Saimun calculated his wages. Garbage coolies were paid twice a month, every third and eighteenth day. Today was the third. From the last eighteenth he had worked only eleven days, because there were two Sundays off in between. As a new hiree, he was paid only four and a half rupiah a day, which meant that—eleven times four and a half—he would be paid just forty-nine and a half rupiah. But deducting what he owed to Pak Imam in the office, who had sold him a pair of shorts for thirty rupiah in ten-rupiah installments, he would get only thirty-nine and a half rupiah. It’s lucky that this was the last installment. But the shorts, thin as they were and made from some kind of flimsy green material, looked to not last much longer either. What else? Taking off the debt to Abdullah, that left thirty-five and a half rupiah. Minus the five rupiah debt he owed Ibu Yom, plus one more rupiah for the meal he’d just eaten, that left him with only twenty-nine and a half rupiah.

Bewildered, Saimun counted and recounted. With just twenty-nine and a half rupiah in hand, he had to live fifteen days more, until the eighteenth day of the month. The price of a plate of rice with vegetable broth cost one rupiah and he had to eat at least twice a day. Coffee and a fried banana or a yam was another half a rupiah, which meant he needed fifteen ringgit—thirty-seven and a half rupiah!

Even before adding in anything else, he was going to be short eight and a half rupiah. What about cigarettes? Counting one pack a day, the cheap kawung cigarettes that were rolled in palm leaf cost one and a half rupiah. All that, and that wasn’t even counting the rent, which cost him five and a half rupiah a month.

Finally, Saimun stopped counting and resumed his meal, gulping his food as he ate. His eyes caught sight of a plate of fried chicken. For an instant he was tempted to ask for a piece but then he remembered the price—the calculations ran through his head—and, with heavy regret, he suppressed his appetite and drank his coffee, to the last drop.

The other coolies had already started to line up before the cashier’s window. Itam told Saimun to join the line, too.

Ibu Yom called after him as he left, “After you get paid, don’t forget to pay your debts!”

“Such a nag,” Itam muttered beneath his breath, “like we never paid our debts.”

As they had joined the line, Itam announced, “I’m going to stop eating at Ibu Yom’s and find another place. She’s always harping. For me, it’s forbidden not to pay a debt. Even if all you’ve got left is your underwear, you still have to pay your debts, especially a debt for food.”

Saimun felt refreshed by the food and coffee. “Yeah, she nags, but she has a good heart. Even when we’re in debt she never refuses to serve us. The ones I hate are the boss and Iron Hand. What’s your life worth if you don’t pay what you owe them?”

Itam suddenly coughed and spat towards the ground, accidentally hitting the foot of the man standing in front of him.

“Damn you! Where’s your eyes?”

Itam said nothing and turned to Saimun. “There was a guy once who tried to run off without paying his debt to Abdullah. You know what happened to him? Iron Hand beat the s**t out of him.”

“Where do you want to go after we collect our pay?” Saimun asked.

“I don’t know. Any ideas?”

Saimun thought of the woman in the hut near the garbage dump. “I don’t know either.”

After Saimun had received his wages from which the installment of ten rupiah for his shorts had been deducted, paying four rupiah to Abdullah, and six rupiah owed for food to Ibu Yom, he stood at the roadside waiting for Itam who was still calculating his debt to the food stall owner. He bought himself a kretek cigarette, feeling guilty and rather extravagant, but unable to resist the craving for the aroma of cloves from the cigarette. He squatted beside the road, at the edge of the ditch, smoking with deep contentment. Calm now reigned in his heart and he felt at peace with the world and his fellow man. In his pocket were twenty-nine rupiah. He felt rich. But his thoughts kept returning to the young woman in the hut near the dump. His mind was no longer on the kretek cigarette, or the tens of kretek that he could buy. All he could think of now was the woman. These thoughts did not disturb his feeling of peace, however. In fact, they were accompanied by delectable visions, burning and enchanting. He fingered the small roll of money in his pocket.