The Flame Tree (6 page)

Isaac said, “Hey, Slob, Mr. Suherman is right, we really shouldn’t be ignorant. After all, we live in a Muslim country.”

“Who’s ignorant?” Slobert shot back. “Who’s stupid enough to play down by the river at sunset with his good Mussie friend and get all bit up by malarial Mussie mosquitoes? Hey, maybe instead of getting malaria, you’ll come down with a good case of Islam.”

After school that afternoon Isaac’s parents summoned him to the study at the house. His father, face like granite, held out the front page of the day’s
Jakarta Post
. Isaac grew slightly faint because on
the front page was a photograph of him with his head tilted sideways, chin thrust upward, a scowl on his face, exchanging glares with the square-faced police lieutenant. He glanced away, at the short gray safe in the corner of the room, wishing he were inside it.

His mom said, “I thought we had an understanding, Isaac. Can you tell me what that understanding is?”

Isaac lifted his gaze from the safe and looked out the window, as if trying to find the answer written down somewhere. The light from the lowering afternoon sun, instead of softening and turning golden, was merely coagulating. Despite the air-conditioning, it was clammy hot in the study. The silence lengthened. Isaac puffed out his cheeks, let them deflate, and said, “I have to ask permission before I leave the compound.”

“And did you ask permission yesterday?”

“But you and Dad weren’t here, you were at the hospital.”

“Isaac.”

Isaac muttered something.

“What was that?” his mom said.

Isaac muttered more distinctly, “It’s sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Mary bit the sides of her cheeks. Graham took a deep breath and said, “That sort of attitude got your grandfather Williams fired by the president. Remember, you are a PKO boy. Polite, kind, obedient. You made us a promise, and we expected you to stick to it, not break your word. You could have been seriously hurt in that riot.”

Isaac studied his dirty sneakers.

Graham said, “The ‘O’ in ‘PKO,’ let’s work on that.”

Mary said, “You are grounded starting immediately; you are not allowed outside the compound by yourself at any time. Is that clear?”

Isaac nodded penitently. A heavier punishment could have been meted out.

From her large canvas tote bag, Mary produced a Reebok shoe box. A pair of red-trimmed Reeboks. “Those old ones are irredeemably filthy,” she said.

Isaac’s eyes widened. “Wow, cool. Thanks, Mom.”

When his parents left, he put on his new Reeboks and trotted around the study, admiring how they molded to his feet.

The clank and sputter of an uncooperative lawn mower filtered through the study’s window. Isaac stopped and looked out. Tanto squatted in the shade of the gardening shed at the far corner of the compound, trying to start the machine.

Isaac raced to the front door of the house, stood there for several seconds working up his courage, and then opened the door and strolled with hands in his pockets toward the shed. He squatted in front of Tanto, watching him disassemble the carburetor with practiced ease. Tanto ignored his audience. An unfiltered clove cigarette popped and crackled in his mouth. Smoke twirled up around his broad nose and over the thick protruding ridges of his eyebrows. The ash on the cigarette grew longer. He finally took a deep drag that put enough weight on the ash to break it. He let the smoke dribble out of his mouth and nose as he fastened his gaze on Isaac, the pupils of his eyes as flat and impenetrable as lead disks. “Why have you been staring at me?” He spoke in Javanese.

“I haven’t been staring at you,” Isaac said. “I’ve been watching you fix the mower.”

“This is interesting, is it? Maybe you want to be a mechanic when you grow up.”

“Mas Tanto, can I ask you something?”

Tanto did not answer. He took another drag.

Isaac said, “I’ve been seeing pictures of an old man in a white turban around town. His name is Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar. Do you know anything about him?”

Tanto put the burning cigarette butt underneath his bare right heel and squished. “His father was Bugis, and his mother Madurese, but he is the slave of Allah.”

Isaac’s heart turned into a vacuum, sucking all blood from his limbs. The Bugis had long been feared as bloodthirsty pirates. During the colonial era, many a Western mother had warned her naughty child, “Stop that, or the Bugis man will get you.”

Tanto said, in Indonesian, as though reciting a memorized passage, “Soon we will see the day when justice reigns in this unjust land, when the evil corrupters who steal from the poor to fatten their purses finally face the wrath of Allah, when infidels who mock the name of Allah and the Blessed Prophet meet their fate.” Memorized or not, Tanto sounded as though he meant it.

The empty feeling in Isaac’s chest expanded into his throat, pressing against his vocal cords. He coughed, clearing his throat so that he could ask, in a small voice, “Is the Tuan Guru Haji going to kill all the infidels?”

Tanto’s eyebrows rose to meet the flat trim of his crew cut.
“The Tuan Guru is an honorable man, with the honor of a true slave of Allah. Why do you ask this question?”

This wasn’t, Isaac noted, an answer. “Because that is what somebody told me,” he said in a smaller voice yet.

“That woman who works for you.” Tanto spat on the ground. “She is nothing, she has turned away from Allah, and He will answer her.” He ran his tongue around his teeth and then slapped his knee as he laughed. “And you believe this, from an apostate worm lower than a
kafir?
You are afraid that because you are a kafir the Tuan Guru will kill you?”

Well, yes
, Isaac thought, but he said nothing.

“
Hai
, little Isak, it is true that you are an infidel, but it is also true that not everyone can be a Muslim. In a world that is not paradise, there must be at least a handful of infidels allowed to exist. Hmm?” He patted Isaac on the back, his calloused hands rough against Isaac’s neck. A small smile played across his lips and then disappeared. “But let me tell you, little Isak, that there are good infidels and bad infidels. Which are you?”

“What’s a good infidel?”

“A good infidel is one who accepts Islamic rule and pays the proper taxes.”

“And a bad infidel?”

“An infidel who deliberately tries to poison Islam, who tries to turn Muslims from the straight path. Against these infidels the Tuan Guru Haji has declared jihad.”

“So is he going to kill all the bad infidels? How will he know the difference?”

“
Ma sha’allah!
Why do you speak of killing? There are many ways of jihad. I have said, the Tuan Guru Haji is an honorable man.” Tanto smiled again. “He has a human side, you know; he is a great fan of the bull races and even has a small stable of his own racing bulls. He races them, but he doesn’t gamble, because gambling is a sin. Now, I’m tired of talking and I have this bastard of a machine to bring to life.”

“Thank you, Mas Tanto.”

Tanto did not reply. He lowered his head to the mower and began inspecting the fuel lines.

Isaac returned to the school library to start his book report on
The Lord of the Flies
. The room was empty except for Miss Jane, the new American teacher from Georgia. Despite her contact lenses, she was the only person Isaac knew who could trip over smoke. Isaac spread the
Jakarta Post
on a table. On the third page was a smaller picture of him on stage, showing him in a polished Javanese dancer’s pose, which actually sort of pleased him. Fortunately, the pretty bencong didn’t look like a bencong at all. He read the article about the Nahdlatul Umat Islam, a new and somewhat secretive Muslim organization, whose “enigmatic leader refuses all requests for interviews.” The Nahdlatul Umat Islam, the article said, was an unusual exception to the constant, virulently anti-American militant stance of most of the fundamentalist Indonesian Islamic groups in that it was mainly concerned with internal rather than external politics, with its principal aim of establishing
shariah
law within the country. An unnamed State
Department official was quoted as saying that, unlike several of the other groups, there was no evidence that the Nahdlatul Umat Islam had any links with any Middle Eastern terrorist organizations.

Is that so? Imam Ali sure sounded anti-American enough to me.

From behind him, Miss Jane said, “How does it feel to be famous?”

Isaac returned the paper to its place. “I’m not sure I like the idea of a whole bunch of people I don’t know reading about me.”

“Tomorrow they’ll forget all about you.”

“Hope you’re right.”

He turned on the computer at his usual stall and opened the word processing program to start writing his book report. He thought for a minute before typing,
It is said that the beast of the book is the evil within man, but that’s not entirely correct. There are beasts without as well
…

His fingers slowed. The back of his hair prickled. He sensed a presence in the dim shadows of the book stacks. “Miss Jane?” he said, turning around. But she wasn’t there.

A figure leaped out from behind a stack. “Arrrrrggghhhh!”

Isaac yelped, jumping backward.

Slobert roared with laughter, his jowls quivering. “That was great! Should have seen your face.”

“Very funny,” Isaac said.

“Hey, how about dancing for us sometime?” Slobert struck a silly pose.

“Very, very funny.”

“Maybe when you grow up, you’re gonna be one of those
queer ballet dancers or something. A Mussie queer ballet dancer.”

“They’re called Muslims.”

“Feeling any malaria yet?”

Isaac saved his work and shut down the computer. “Get real, Slobert.”

Slobert’s face reddened. He clenched his thick fists and shouted, “I
am
real. You’re the one who’s not real, slumming around with that Mussie boy instead of us American guys, too smart for us, nose-in-the-air teacher’s pet.” He snorted. “And a mama’s boy, too.”

Isaac jumped to his feet and headed for the door.
Stupid Slobert, a nothing beast of a boy.

But there were greater beasts, of that Isaac was sure.

O
N
T
UESDAY MORNINGS
, Isaac’s special project was to continue with last year’s assignment of helping in the hospital laboratory. Although he wasn’t anything more than a glorified dish washer, it was still an important job, making sure all of the dirty labware was meticulously sterilized and put away spotless. The best thing about the assignment, though, was that the hospital’s morgue was next door to the lab. Isaac wasn’t morbid or anything, but he was a curious boy, and Mas Gatot, the morgue attendant, had occasionally let him have peeks at corpses. The thing that struck Isaac was how utterly still they were—forget this nonsense about dead people looking as though they were asleep. They looked, well, dead.

This Tuesday, since it was Spiritual Emphasis Week, Isaac went to the lab earlier than usual. After washing the beakers, he crept around the gray metal cabinet and out a door in the back of the lab. The hospital corridor beyond was empty. To Isaac’s left was a cargo elevator and to his right, at the corridor’s farthest end, a portcullis gate.

The gate was open. Beyond, in a sparkling patch of garden, rosebushes in seemingly perpetual bloom triumphed against the outdoor heat, casting off a powerful scent. Mas Gatot was curved
over one of the bushes, his full attention taken up by a bud. He was a Muslim whom other Muslims considered a mystic.

Mas Gatot looked up at Isaac’s approach. Isaac could not recall a time when he had not known the morgue attendant. Mas Gatot was a part of his life like the flame tree was, old but never aging. He had pinched cheeks and oversized dentures that looked suspiciously like those ready-made choppers available at Mr. Muhammad Ali’s dental office. They gave his face a puckered expression.

“Hi, Mas Gatot,” Isaac said. “What do you have today?”

“A new hybrid,” Mas Gatot said, smiling around his big teeth. The size of his dentures seemed to promise thick, moist lisping, but his speech was always dry and precise.

“I mean—”

Mas Gatot chuckled. “I know what you mean. One: a man gored by a bull, stomach ripped open.”

“
Aiyah
,” Isaac groaned.

“And two,” Mas Gatot said, “a beheaded man, with his feet and arms cut off for good measure. A black magician, I am told. My assistant is in the process of sewing him together so I can say the prayers for the dead.”

Isaac gaped. “A
beheaded
man?”

Mas Gatot sighed, shaking his head. “He was probably innocent. What is our world coming to?”

Isaac wasn’t listening. He was already pushing through the morgue’s heavy ironwood doors, metal sheeted across the middle for slamming gurneys.

The decapitated torso, its genitals covered with a cloth, lay on a stainless-steel autopsy table in the middle of the room. To Isaac’s continual disappointment, autopsies were rarely done, since Muslims considered them to be desecration. Mas Gatot used the table to ritually wash Muslim bodies prior to burial. Mas Gatot’s nephew, who resembled his uncle except that he was younger with a smaller set of natural teeth, was attaching the black magician’s right hand, stitching rapidly, digging deep with the large needle, making tight loops with the heavy nylon. The head was a lump underneath another cloth, placed just above the severed neck.

A gurney with a sheet-covered form was shoved up against the refrigeration units. Despite the heavy-duty fan in the ceiling that sucked air out of the room and the liberal use of disinfectant, there always lingered the sour green smell of death and decay. On the right-hand wall hung a blackboard. Two pieces of chalk lay in the board’s tray, rusty brown on their fat end, the color coming from bloody hands.

The assistant hummed a dangdut song, the one the bencongs had sung. Isaac frowned at him, wondering if he’d been at the square on Sunday. Mas Gatot’s nephew had been working here for a few months, without official hospital wages. Isaac still didn’t know his name. The assistant, accustomed to Isaac’s presence, ignored him. He briefly admired his handiwork on the hand before plucking the cloth off the severed head.

Isaac stepped back with a gasp. Adi the tofu maker stared lifelessly at him through half-opened eyes. Isaac started to slump.
Mas Gatot caught him and sat him down in the single chair underneath the blackboard.

“Deep breaths, take deep breaths,” he said. Isaac slowly recovered. Mas Gatot said, “You’ve seen lots of dead bodies. I guess this man you knew.”

“Adi the tofu maker. Lives on Ismail’s street.”

“It’s always harder when you know the person,” Mas Gatot said sympathetically. They sat there until his nephew had the head sewn back on. “Well, the Nahdlatul Umat Islam people took him apart, and now he’s together again.” Mas Gatot stood at the foot of the table and closed his eyes, lifting hands with palms upright. He intoned in Arabic words that Isaac knew by heart from hearing so often, “In the name of Allah. To Allah we belong, and to Him is our return.”

His nephew handed him latex gloves, which he put on. He took the hose and washed the body. Next, he took three dazzling white cotton cloths from the supply cabinet and began wrapping the body. When he was finished, the body looked like a mummy packaged in a white candy twist. He turned this mummy over on its right side and stood once more at the foot of the table. He glanced at Isaac, who got up from the chair and stood behind Mas Gatot out of respect. Mas Gatot lifted his head, closed his eyes, and cried out in a loud voice, “
Allahu akbar!
” His lips moved in a silent and private prayer. He repeated the cry and his private prayer three times. He smiled at Isaac and said, “
As-salamu alaikum wa rahmat ullahi
.” The peace and mercy of Allah be upon you.

Isaac replied solemnly,
“Alaikum as-salam.”

Mas Gatot and his nephew transferred Adi’s sheeted corpse to
an empty gurney. They hoisted the sheeted corpse from the other gurney onto the stainless-steel table. The nephew said he was stepping out for a smoke.

Mas Gatot pulled off the sheet. Isaac stared down at a dark-skinned body, still clothed in bloodied shirt and shorts, with the curly black hair and sharp features of an eastern islander.

“This one was a Christian,” Mas Gatot said.

“How do you know?” Isaac asked.

Mas Gatot lifted up a shirtsleeve, exposing the biceps tattoo of a cross intertwined with the words
Yesus Kristus
. Isaac refrained from mentioning the fine theological point that the name of Jesus tattooed on the flesh does not save the soul.

Mas Gatot used scissors to cut off the shirt, revealing a gory tear in the abdomen. He shoved a pair of long narrow forceps into the wound and poked around. He answered Isaac’s slightly horrified and unasked question. “Standard procedure. Always check holes. You never know, you might find a broken-off knife blade or a live swamp eel. The other year in Surabaya a corpse was booby-trapped with a grenade. Well, nothing in this one.”

When he was done washing the body, he said, “Would you say a prayer for this Christian, young Isak?”

The unexpected request startled Isaac. “Me? But I’m not a pastor or an elder or anything, I’m only a kid.”

Mas Gatot looked surprised. “Christian children are not allowed to pray for the dead?”

“No, we’re allowed…,” Isaac said, and was quiet for a moment, before he added, “and so I will.”

He clasped his hands at his waist, closed his eyes, and prayed in English, “Dear God, I don’t know who this is, but if he is a believer, then welcome him to heaven; and if he is not, then…” Here Isaac faltered, because if the dead man hadn’t been a Christian, then his soul was destined for only one other place. He ended with the phrase he had heard pastors use before, realizing for the first time how diplomatic it was: “And if he is not, then have mercy on his soul. Amen.”

Mas Gatot said, “I need to smell my roses.”

Isaac went out into the tiny rose garden with him and had a cleansing whiff himself. They sat down on the wooden bench there. Isaac said, “I wonder if Adi was alive when they beheaded him.”

Mas Gatot said, “Oh, yes” with such certainty that Isaac started.

“You saw it?”

“No, no, I didn’t see it. There are ways to tell. I guess the hands and feet were cut off afterward, though.” Mas Gatot rubbed his nose.

Isaac shuffled his new Reeboks on the ground and then asked, “Do you think the Nahdlatul Umat Islam is going to behead any more people?”

Mas Gatot smiled and said, “Such as hybrid little boys who are neither American nor Javanese? Don’t you worry about them. You are sweet-smelling unto Allah. As the Holy Qur’an says, Almighty Allah made men into different tribes so that we would learn how to cooperate, instead of how to fight and kill one another.”

A sense of reassurance stole into Isaac’s heart, like a fresh sun
rising into a clear sky.
Ismail is okay, and what I’m going to tell him is that God made us different so that we can be friends. And then we’ll go to the mall and buy a couple of those Magnum chocolate-covered ice-cream bars.

Once more he used the secret gate. He had to. This wasn’t a matter of breaking rules. It was a matter of moral principle, which far outweighed any promises he might have made to his parents.

He ran across the street and down Hayam Wuruk Avenue, dodging pedestrians, afraid that at any moment he would feel a heavy hand fall upon his shoulder and hear a stern voice ordering him to march straight to his father’s office.

None of those hands did fall, but another one snaked out from the fruit shop entrance and grabbed him, swinging him around to a stop. Udin, the creep who used to work at Ah Kiat’s store until he’d been fired the previous week. Now all he did was hang out at the mosque. He said, “Isak, what’s the rush?”

“Let me go,” Isaac said, trying to pull away.

Behind Udin the new turbaned proprietor was grinning. The poster of the Tuan Guru observed all. An old woman in long dress and white scarf was in the shop, her back turned to Isaac, counting her change from a purchase of oranges. She turned around at the commotion. It was Ibu Hajjah Wida, who snapped at Udin, “Let the boy go.”

Udin did. “Just having some fun,” he said.

Isaac didn’t wait to hear what else Ibu Hajjah Wida had to say. He sped up again, running past the legless beggar at the bus
station’s security post. Then, ten steps beyond, what Mas Gatot had said slammed down on his brain and put the brakes on his feet. If God made different tribes so people would learn to cooperate, then God allowed beggars to exist so people would learn charity.

Reluctantly, thinking of the ice cream he was now forgoing, he put his two 5,000-rupiah notes in the cup.

The legless beggar stirred. “Water,” he whispered, a cracked tongue flickering out of parched lips. He extended a trembling hand. “Water.”

Isaac stared. The poor fellow was literally dying of thirst. Isaac grabbed the rupiah notes and ran back to the fruit shop. Ibu Hajjah Wida was not there, but neither was Udin. He marched in and told the surprised proprietor he’d like as many bottles of the Aqua mineral water there on the shelf as 10,000 rupiah would buy.

The proprietor, recovering from his surprise, laughed. “I don’t sell anything to Americans, and I don’t sell anything to Christians. And as for American Christians—” He drew a line across his throat.

Isaac backed up a step, but he persisted. “It’s not for me. It’s for the legless beggar down the way; he’s dying of thirst.”

The proprietor said, “Get out of here.”

“But he’s a Muslim!”

The proprietor’s face darkened menacingly. “Don’t you tell me of Muslims. If it is Allah Almighty’s will for him to die of thirst, he will die of thirst. Now go!”

Isaac spluttered, “You’re mean and stupid and…and…not even a Javanese!”

The man cried out in rage. From behind the counter, he picked up a machete and smashed the flip-top counter open to rush at Isaac, who flew out of the shop on wings of fright. He dashed up the sidewalk toward the hospital, looking over his shoulder. The proprietor stood in front of the shop, brandishing the machete.

Isaac kept running until he reached Ah Kiat’s store, where he bought three large bottles of Aqua. He returned to the beggar, using the other side of the road to pass in front of the fruit shop. Isaac started to open one of the bottles, but the beggar grabbed it out of his hand. He couldn’t get his shaky fingers to open the plastic pull tab of the bottle cap. Isaac tried to take the bottle to open it for him, but the beggar snarled at him, whipping the bottle away, holding it close to his body. He put the cap in his mouth and bit it off. He guzzled the water, which gurgled down his throat. When half of the bottle was gone, the beggar paused, groaning, his eyes closed in rapture.

Isaac put down the other bottles and left. He looked up at the murky sky and thought he glimpsed the blue of heaven, and a cool refreshing breeze seemed to blow upon his sweaty skin.

Ismail went to school only in the mornings. He’d be home by now. At the Trisno house men in sarongs and black
peci
caps thronged the living room and veranda. What was going on? Isaac opened the latch of the gate without announcing himself, as he usually did, but this time his entry was more cautious. From within the house, the television blared. Isaac caught a glimpse on the screen of the impassioned orator, a tall Arabic man wearing a turban and
robe. He had a crooked face and a long beard. The men on the veranda craned their necks to see. At places they cheered, yelling, “
Hidup
Osama!
Hantam
Amerika!”

One man spotted Isaac, and his excited face instantly hardened, eyes as cold as frozen coal. He said something, and the others turned around to stare at Isaac. Somebody muted the television. The silence and the collective chill of their gaze halted Isaac, as though an invisible avalanche of hostility had entombed him.

The men by the door made way for Ismail’s father. Bapak Trisno should have been at work. His expression was no warmer than the others’. Isaac’s heart plummeted into his shoes, but he still bowed and said, “
Al-salamu alaikum
.”