Twilight in Djakarta

At the time the novel was written in the early 1960s, the city was spelt as Djakarta (1942–1972). In 1972 the spelling changed to Jakarta as part of Indonesia's spelling reform. Indonesia's capital city has taken different names since it was first founded: Sunda Kelapa (397–1527), Jayakarta (till 1619) and Batavia (till 1942).

Translation or rather transposition into English of any other idiom naturally presents a great number of problems. Among those peculiarly related to Indonesian is the absence of a pronoun for
it
and the avoidance of pronouns
you, he
and
she
, including their possessive form. This often produces a repetitiousness in the naming of a subject or object. On the other hand it was, or may have been, the intention of the author to hammer away at a certain concept (e.g. truck, woman, stepmother, horse, etc.), thus evoking a semi-obsessive or all-pervading presence. This translator was inclined to retain some repetitive structures wherever the boundary between the original idiomatic necessity and the stylistic intention seemed to overlap, and thus to retain the flavour of both language and style. The difficulty of finding some convincing equivalent to the colourful and phonetically idiosyncratic Djakarta dialect spoken by the uneducated city workers and the impossibility of rendering its full local flavour need not be belaboured. As for the transcription of Indonesian names and terms, the reader will come closer to their sound if he gives the vowels approximately the following sound-values:
a
as in father;
e
as in pet in closed, and as in gale in open, syllables;
i
as in see or pit;
o
as in law; and
u
as in boot.

The translator is deeply indebted to a generous friend, who does not wish to be named, for many excellent suggestions, incorporated in the final version, which he made after careful comparison of the Indonesian and English texts,

The author thanks
Arthur Koestler
for permission to reproduce the following introductory quotation from
Arrow in the Blue: An Autobiography.

… Now this Wang Lun had one secret ambition in his life, but it took him fifty years of strenuous effort to realize it. His ambition was to be able to behead a person with a stroke so swjft that, in accordance with the law of inertia, the victim’s head would remain poised on his trunk, in the same manner as a plate remains undisturbed on the table if the tablecloth is pulled out with a sudden jerk.

Wang Lun’s great moment came in the seventy-eighth year of his life. On that memorable day he had to dispatch sixteen clients from this world of shadows to their ancestors. He stood as usual at the foot of the scaffold, and eleven shaven heads had already rolled into the dust after his inimitable master-stroke. His triumph came with the twelfth man. When this man began to ascend the steps of the scaffold, Wang Lun’s sword flashed with such lightning speed across his neck that the man’s head remained where it had been before, and he continued to walk up the steps without knowing what had happened. When he reached the top of the scaffold, the man addressed Wang Lun as follows:

‘Oh cruel Wang Lun, why do you prolong my agony of waiting when you dealt with the others with such merciful and amiable speed?’

When he heard these words, Wang Lun knew that the work of his life had been accomplished. A serene smile appeared on his features; then he said with exquisite courtesy to the waiting man:

‘Just kindly nod, please.’

ARTHUR KOESTLER
Arrow in the Blue

S
AIMUN TIGHTENED
his belt. His stomach was rumbling with hunger again. He’d had nothing to eat since morning. And it was still early. The drizzle which had started at dawn increased his hunger; Saimun blamed the rain. His bare and grimy foot – mud, filth and germs were stuck to that bare foot – kicked a refuse-filled basket off the top of the rubbish heap. The basket rolled down till it was stopped by the dilapidated wall of a hut, so very battered, so very rotten, so sadly dripping in the drizzling rain. A woman stuck her head out and shouted hoarsely,

‘Say, take it ’bit easy! Where’re your eyes?’

Saimun started a little, looked up and stared at the woman. He laughed roughly, without anger or malice, just 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 up to go down and get that woman, but then he heard the rumbling of the municipal garbage truck. Turning quickly he sprinted off and jumped on as it was moving away.

Saimun crouched down at the side of Itam, who was lighting a kretek cigarette. He looked at his feet on the truck’s dirty, wet 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, saying,

‘Please, just one, ’Tam.’

Itam looked at him, the reluctance behind his eyes vanished quickly and he handed his kretek to Saimun, watching closely how Saimun inhaled deeply, deeply, retaining the smoke in the hollow
of his chest, long, returning the cigarette to Itam, who immediately took a long drag, and then, together, they blew the smoke through their nostrils, slowly, and for the moment they forgot the drizzling rain, the dirt and smell of the truck, forgot 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. He handed the cigarette to Saimun, and while scratching the back of his ear with one hand, reached with his other hand to brush off the flies swarming around the scabs below his knee.

‘I’m hungry ’lready, ’Tam,’ said Saimun.

‘One more, then we’ll go get our wages. While waiting for wages we can first stop ’n eat at Mother Jom’s.’

‘Thinking o’ food, my body’s limp, no strength left,’ 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 draught 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 come that when something is difficult to get or you don’t have it, and you just get a chance to taste it for 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, for ever. One cigarette could fulfil his existence. He remembered, when he was still in his village, before it was attacked by the grombolan,
1
and his father and mother died,
slaughtered by the grombolan, 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 lebaran,
2
or some other celebrations in the village, no one ever cared for just one drag on a cigarette.

Now, to smoke a kretek with Itam was just like a grand ceremonial. Each inhalation 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 dustcart.

Meanwhile, if one remembered life in the village before it was attacked by the grombolan, it all felt just like a dream. And 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 the carabao Si Putih
3
– got his name because of the white colour behind his left ear – ah, he still remembered it all so well, but did not believe that it was really he who went bathing with Si Putih. It was as though a man’s existence was shut away in different boxes, and one part of it shut up in one such box stayed in it, and had no connection any longer with the life in the other box. As though he had become a stranger to himself – with no connection at all any more to the man who had been himself in that other life-box.

He remembered how in the first weeks after his arrival in Djakarta he wept when evening came and he knew not where to wander any more, and 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-removing coolies. And later they were able to rent lodgings in the hut of Pak
4
Idjo, the driver of a delman ponycart. 
Just one room, next to the room where Pak Idjo slept with his 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 ’bout driving a betja,
1
isn’t it kind of better than this sort of work?’ said Saimun suddenly.  

‘Nuh,’ said Itam, ‘don’t lu
2
remember that Pandi, the betja driver, died just like that, was spitting blood? Ran a betja only one year. Upset his heart!’  

Saimun scratched with his toes at the floor of the truck, its thick crust of dregs, and for a 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,  

‘Ayoh,
3
this here is the end.’  

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 in the hut whom 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 all naked, bathing in the shallow pool. The woman laughed at him, turning her body, challengingly, and Saimun only unwillingly turned away, hearing Itam call his name and the sound of the truck’s engine. But he called to the woman, saying he would be back.  

Garbage carts and trucks were assembled near the office
where they were to be paid. There was a row of vendors of cigarettes, of cooked rice and fried bananas. An Arab 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 paper money, quarter and
half-rupiahs
, rupiahs and ringgits
4
stacked behind the small window.

He walked with Itam to the place where Mother Jom was selling rice. And as soon as they were seated Mother Jom served them, she knew what they wanted to eat.

‘When you get your pay, don’t run away,’ she said in way of reminder.

Saimun and Itam were silent; they ate ravenously.

‘Aduh,
5
the debt there’s ’lready close to five perak.’
6
said Saimun. ‘And Tuan
7
Abdullah with his Mandor Besi will have to wait. How much you owe him, ’Tam?’

‘About five rupiah! He’s the very devil, that Arab, never ends a debt with him!’

‘Me, I’m lucky, only a ringgit I owe him,’ said Saimun, ‘but I must repay him four rupiah this week.’

Saimun calculated his wages. Garbage coolies were paid twice a month, every third and eighteenth day of the month. This was the third, and from the last eighteenth he had worked only eleven days, because there were two Sundays when people do not work and for which there was no pay. Because he was a new coolie, his wage was only four and a half rupiah a day. So he would get only eleven times four and a half, just forty-nine and a half rupiah. Deducting the debt to Pak Imam in the office, who sold him a pair of shorts for thirty rupiah on the instalment plan, each instalment being ten rupiah, he would get only thirty-nine and a half rupiah.
It’s lucky that this was the last instalment. But the shorts too were almost worn thin, made as they were of green twill that is not too strong. Then, taking off the debt to Tuan Abdullah, the Arab, there remained thirty-five and a half rupiah, and then the five rupiah debt to Ibu
1
Jom plus one rupiah for the meal now, there remained only twenty-nine and a half rupiah. Bewildered, Saimun counted and recounted: and with these twenty-nine and a half rupiah he would have to live fifteen days longer, until the next eighteenth day of the month. If one eats only one plate of rice with vegetable broth, its price alone is already one rupiah, and one must eat at least twice a day. Coffee and a fried banana or yam – half a rupiah, so he needs for this alone fifteen times a ringgit, which means thirty-seven and a half rupiah.

Already he’s short eight and a half rupiah, and no cigarettes have been allowed for. Were one to smoke just ‘kawung’ cigarettes, one would need one and a half rupiah a day, or ‘kretek djinggo’, a packet of ten, gone are one and a half rupiah, too. And not yet counted is rent – five and a half rupiah a month.

Finally Saimun stopped counting and resumed his meal, eating avidly. His eyes caught a piece of chicken meat. For an instant he was tempted to ask for a piece of fried chicken. But he remembered the price … calculations ran through his head, 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 was urging Saimun to join the line, and Ibu Jom presently called,

‘After getting your wages don’t forget to pay your debts, yah!’

‘Wah, what a nagger,’ said Itam, ‘as if of course we never paid our debts.’

As soon as they joined the line, Itam said,

‘I’ll just stop eating at Ibu Jom’s and find ’nother place. She’s
too cranky. As for me, it’s forbidden not to pay a debt. Even if your jacket goes and only your pants are left, a debt’s got to be paid. All th’more a debt for food.’

Saimun felt refreshed by the food and coffee. He said,

‘Ah, she’s just nagging, but her heart, that old woman’s, ’s good. When we’re still in debt she never refuses. But the one I hate is that Tuan Abdullah and Mandor Besi. What’s a body worth who doesn’t come across with payment of a debt to them?’

Itam spat, hitting the foot of the man who stood before him.

‘Where are your eyes, spitting no matter where?’

Itam was quiet.

‘There was a man, wanted to run off without paying his debt to Tuan Abdullah. The outcome? He was beaten up by Mandor Besi.’

‘Where we going after pay?’ asked Saimun.

‘Who knows, I don’t know yet,’ Itam replied. ‘You – where to?’

At that moment Saimun remembered the woman in the hut near the garbage dump, but said,

‘Don’t know.’

After he had received his wages from which the instalment of ten rupiah for the shorts had been deducted, paying four rupiah to Tuan Abdullah, and six rupiah owed for food to Ibu Jom, Saimun stood at the roadside waiting for Itam who was still busy calculating his debt to Ibu Jom. He bought himself one loose kretek cigarette, feeling guilty and rather extravagant, but unable to resist the craving for the aroma of cloves from the cigarette. He crouched on the sidewalk, at the edge of the water ditch, smoking with deep relish. Calm now reigned in his heart and he felt at peace with the world and man. In his pocket were twenty-nine rupiah. He felt very rich. But his thoughts kept returning to the young woman in the hut near the dump. His existence was no longer filled with one kretek cigarette, or a dozen kreteks which he could buy. His mind was filled with the image of the woman. Yet his thoughts did not disturb his feeling of peace, they were even accompanied by most
delectable visions, burning and enchanting. And he fingered the little roll of money in his pocket.

On that morning, while Saimun the garbage coolie was busy unloading basketfuls of refuse on to the dump in the drizzling rain, Suryono was stretching his body in his warm bed, too lazy to get up; how pleasant was the feel of lying this way, looking out at the drizzling rain blown by the wind against the window-pane. For a while Suryono lay very still in the dim light, contemplating his room, and then he recalled his room in New York. Three months ago he was still in New York, only three months ago he was still in that giant city. And now, three months later, he was back again in Djakarta. He still felt ill at ease in Djakarta after working three years abroad. Djakarta had so many shortcomings, he felt.

It is decidedly more pleasant to live abroad. One is frustrated here. It’s annoying to work in an office which is all confusion. He was still attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but had not yet been given a definite assignment. He was also dissatisfied by the way he was treated. Going to the office was difficult as he had no car. He was sorry not to have brought his own to Djakarta from America.

He looked round his room filled with things he had brought from overseas. A radio, an electric record-player. In the corner, on the table and on the floor were piles of books in French and English, on economics and on international politics and dozens of other subjects. Everything still looked quite new and very pretty. On his desk and on his night table were stacks of Westerns and sex novels from abroad with covers depicting women in a variety of poses. One was sprawled on the floor with her thighs bared, her eyes closed and a part of one breast in view, while behind her in the shadows loomed the figure of a masked man; and the title of the book was
The Sex Murders
.