Clandestine

By Seno Gumira Ajidarma

Well, it's hard to explain. Lately I've been feeling like I have an enemy, like I am fighting someone -- but I don't know who this enemy is. I go through the names of all the people I know, and I can't name anyone who would consider themselves my enemy. So why do my hands feel bound, my legs shackled, and my neck chained? I feel like a soul without a body, floating and drifting like a ghost, worried about thoughts that are impossible to articulate. Are my thoughts so dangerous that the ink has been siphoned from my pen, the electricity cut from my computer and not one sheet of paper on earth has been spared for me?

I think, and think and think, perhaps my enemy could be the system. My method of thinking could be prohibited and forbidden. That's so uncivilized! Who thinks they have the power to control other people's minds?

Again I think, the system must be challenged by another system. So, I take up their offer, those rebel spies. One day, I lift the lid to the sewers, plunge down the dark well, and join the community of the underground.

"Welcome," says someone who hands me a necklace of bunga bangkai, "you are our newest member."

"I have come to think freely," I say, "Take me to your leader".

The person leads me down a long dark tunnel. At first sunshine seeps through the cracks in the walls. I can still hear footsteps, the roar of car engines, and the sound of someone spitting above. How close the Earth's inhabitants are, I think, and they have no idea what or who threatens their existence. "We've been planning this for many decades," says my guide without being asked, "so when it is time, we will destroy everything that has been built above, and then we will replace it with a new system, a better system, more just and strong."

I don't answer. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark. Far ahead I see dim lights flickering. I touch the vibrating walls. Faintly I hear the drone of machines.

As I get closer and closer, the noise becomes deafening. My guide hands me a helmet with an attached flashlight. Along the path I see many people descending from an upper level through sewer holes. We form a long line heading in one direction -- the direction of the deafening machines.

In the haze, I see my guide yelling at me, but I cannot hear him. I press my lips to his ear.

"Your leader! I want to meet your leader!"

He signals for me to follow him. The tunnel then becomes wider, like a giant cave. The farther I walk down the tunnel, the more tunnels there are and all the other winding tunnels become one huge labyrinth. The longer I walk, the more people I see. Here is a world without sunlight, a world perpetually in darkness.

I have entered an underground city. According to my guide, three generations have grown up here. I see people printing leaflets. I see people lecturing to clusters of crowds. I see people eating at food stalls. All these people wear flashlight helmets, because despite all the electric light bathing the city, the tunnels which lead to their homes -- caves transformed into rooms -- are still dark and dim.

There are so many tunnels, and so many people -- I had no idea that all this was going on underneath my city. There are uniformed men and women with stern faces walking around. Once in a while they drag back a bloody prisoner.

My guide presses his lips to my ear. "We are active in terrorism, kidnapping people from above through the manholes, and forcing them into slavery here. That's why there is often news of people falling into the manholes. Actually we kidnap them. Warn your friends and family not to stand near manholes."

"How can I tell them?"

"Why, you can call from here."

He points to a public phone on the cave wall.

"Coin or phone card?"

"Free! Just dial!"

If they want, they can appear anywhere, kill anyone, throw grenades, or explode bombs, and then disappear again. That's how fragile the power of the people above is. I imagine the future as frightening, a future full of chaos and calamity, vengeful and cruel.

I signal to my guide that I want to meet his leader, but he blinks with incomprehension, or perhaps he does not want to understand. I continue to follow him toward the source of the deafening noise.

"This is how we are destroying the system," he says.

It is a massive project. Immediately I can tell that people work day and night building a huge well, as huge as the city itself.

When the time is right, explosives will destroy the buffer zones between the cities, the big buildings, the nerve systems of the state apparatus, leveling the city and making way for its descend into the dark and sweltering underground -- as hot as an active volcano.

It is truly a system to destroy the system. The giant well has been under construction for 100 years with progressively sophisticated tools, and its depth has expanded to dozens of kilometers. The city above will disappear, as though it was never there. Archaeologists may never even find it again.

Millions of people are boring underground. Of course for me this is a new way to do battle. Who is my friend and who is my enemy? Many of their warring grandparents are deceased. All that is left of the leader, the object of their praise, is their children and grandchildren, who live with one objective: to bring the city above to its knees. I hold my breath. How can someone's ideas inspire hatred through seven generations? Thoughts, thoughts, how stifling they can be.

I start to envision a frightening scenario: an explosion bringing the city underground, people on sidewalks falling through the massive well while screaming, "Aaaaaa!!!!!". I see people working in their offices, driving their cars, drinking at bars, calling others and falling into this seemingly bottomless well.

Heaven forbid, the possibilities are frightening. Buildings possibly crashing to the ground like stacks of cards, and who can imagine the panic inside? Toll roads crumbling, statues cracking like ceramics, mansions breaking into pieces -- everything fluttering in the air, plunging into the deep ravine. Even after everything is destroyed, screams will still be heard. What kind of revenge begets such catastrophe?

"Let them taste it," I heard my guide say, "so that they know. They're not the only ones able to slaughter the defenseless!"

Revenge?

"It's not the victims that should pay, my friend, but it's their arrogance, the way they think that they're so right -- that's the biggest insult to humanity. That is what we must fight!"

My guide offers me a drill when I again ask about his leader. I want to bombard this leader with questions about whether this alternative system is better, to avoid becoming a blind follower.

Once again my guide hands me the drill.

"This is our leader," he says, "This is our ideology."

I still don't understand, but I accept the drill anyway.

"War," he reiterated fervently, "Our ideology is war. We don't care who wins or loses, we fight for the sake of fighting.

"Yes, but..."

"Our ideology does not accept questions. There can be no negatives -- our way is always right, perfect, and with no weaknesses. Only by following it militantly and fanatically can we destroy our enemy. Don't ask any more questions. Do something. Prove your vengeance with action."

The noise of the machines grows even louder once the guide leaves. I am still holding the drill, and standing among thousands of passersby. I feel like an alien, watching all these faceless people. Their faces become one. Here is the face of the meek, the follower -- soldiers who will fight with confidence, but without the ability to think for themselves.

Without realizing, I see a big billboard as wide as the cave walls. I see a picture of their leader. Vaguely I can make out who he is. My guide! I smile. To hell with him.

I look left and right, looking for a way out. I don't need a conspiracy, I don't need to join with anyone else, and I don't need an alternative which claims to be the best in the world.

I start drilling. I look for a way back to earth, away from these people who want to destroy it. All is darkness. Darkness and more darkness. So I drill from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year looking for a way back to the world above.

My face is now the color of earth. Not one person recognizes me. It is like I never existed, but I don't care. I know maybe I'll never reach the surface of the earth again, but that is not so important. I keep drilling, creeping, drilling, with much joy. I don't need to destroy the city, I just needed to free my thoughts -- from the most perfect ideology there is.

Translated by Dini S. Djalal

Seno Gumira Ajidarma was born in 1958 in Boston and was raised in Yogyakarta. Klandestin was first printed in Kompas daily on Aug. 22, 1993. It was among the short stories in Lampor, Kompas's Selection of Short Stories 1994, which was published by PT Gramedia in 1994. Seno is the deputy chief editor of Jakarta Jakarta weekly.

Note: Bunga bangkai or Raflesia Arnoldi is the name of rare flower with a diameter of up to one meter, which smells like a decaying corpse.