Destiny

By Lie Hua

"So you are Rusmini's daughter?" he asked again, his eyes gazing penetratingly at the fair-skinned girl with an oval face, her hair cut short to reveal the nape of her neck.

As if disbelieving his eyes, the man, in his mid-forties, asked again, wanting confirmation that she was indeed Rusmini's daughter. Taken aback, the girl could only answer in a weak voice.

"So alike, so alike, no wonder," the man said again, nodding his head, the hair graying and receding. Then he looked at her again up and down, making her stand awkwardly, moving her right leg and her left leg forward in turn.

The two of them were standing outside an empty classroom. All the students had rushed out as soon as the bell rung.

The girl, a newcomer, was getting ready to leave when the teacher, Mr. Fuad, approached her and said he wanted to have a word with her. He asked her which school she came from and why she had moved to this one. She answered the questions efficiently. Nina was a rather quiet girl. She would talk only when she thought it necessary to. She found it rather strange that the teacher had suddenly come up with a question about her parents. She knew she could have mentioned any name but the teacher's eyes, as if begging for an honest answer, told her she had to tell the truth. So she told him her father's name was Lukman and her mother's Rusmini. It was when she mentioned her mother's name that she noticed a change in her teacher's expression. He knitted his brows together a number of times and his eyes were moving as if in search of something lost. Quite a long silence ensued before she heard Mr. Fuad ask her to confirm that her mother was Rusmini.

"So you are here with your parents?" he asked. What a silly question to ask, she mumbled to herself. A girl of sixteen lives with her parents naturally.

"Yes," Nina said. For a brief moment she noticed Mr. Fuad's face beam. Then the history teacher sat down, his eyes looking far off into the distance. Nina was still standing. "Come on, let me go," she said to herself. Mom must be waiting. The first day at a new school and coming home late. She knew her mother would be waiting anxiously, especially after reading horrifying media reports on the increasing crime rate in the capital.

"Take care," her mom had told her just before she left the house that morning. They had moved from a small town in West Java following her father's promotion to a position at head office. On her first day in Jakarta, she had had a headache. People were everywhere. On foot, in buses, in automobiles, on motorcycles, on bikes. All sorts of people. All indifferent to her.

Mr. Fuad was still sitting in the same position, his eyes transfixed at something Nina could not see. Thinking she had to fill the silence, Nina emboldened herself to ask if she could leave.

"Oh yes, yes, yes, of course," Mr. Fuad said, as if waking up from a deep slumber. He looked at Nina's face again, nodding his head several times. Nina did not know what to do. She only wanted to run home, to her waiting mother.

"So you are Rusmini's daughter. How alike," the teacher repeated. Then he took out his wallet and fumbling into it, he produced an old folded piece of paper, yellowed by time. He looked at it briefly and then moved to his desk. Nina was following her teacher's actions with curious eyes. Mr. Fuad took out an envelope and put the paper into it. Then he wrote something on the envelope and looked at it again. There was an obvious hesitation in his eyes. He was lightly holding the envelope in his right hand and then turned to Nina. The girl approached him.

"This is for your mother. Just tell her it's from an old friend," Mr. Fuad said in a flat tone. "You may go home now. By the way, I'm sorry for keeping you here."

She felt a heavy burden fall off her shoulders. Before she left, she could still notice the wrinkles on Mr Fuad's face. It was a dark face. But Nina was too young to understand that a person's expression can change within seconds. Man's heart is not to be fathomed but the reflection in his face hardly tells a lie.

Nina half ran, eagerly wishing to be in her mother's embrace. Fuad followed her until she disappeared outside the school building. He heaved a deep sigh. Then he took out something else from his wallet. He looked at it closely, very closely. Then he kissed it lightly and heaved a deep sigh again.

Rusmini was at the peak of her anxiety. On the first day of school and her daughter was so late in coming home. This is Jakarta and anything can happen to anybody, let alone a young pretty girl like Nina. She had read in today's newspaper that a teenage girl, not much older than Nina, had been gang raped by a number of jobless youths. Another story said a girl the same age as Nina had been missing for days and was found later dead -- raped and mutilated. The horrors of the capital made her ever more restless and anxious.

She was just about to telephone Lukman and ask him to pick Nina up at school when she heard the voice she was waiting for.

Nina was at the door. She looked tired. The hot weather had made her face red. She was sweating, too. Nina had to transfer buses twice and then walk about 100 meters home.

She opened the door and was perplexed by Nina's gaze at her. The girl did not hug her which was her habit. She simply stood in front of her, some 50 centimeters away.

"What is it, dear? What's happened to you," she asked. The crime scenes she had read about in the newspaper flooded her mind. Cold sweat stood out on her back, arms and face.

"What is it, dear?" she whispered again as Nina stood still, not saying a word to her.

Nina slowly opened her school bag, the one her mother bought her for school moments before they left for the capital. She took something out: A white envelope. Nina placed it in her mother's right hand.

Rusmini took it, and drew it toward her in a slightly trembling, wet hand. She was curious. Without asking Nina what it was or who it was from, she opened the envelope and found an old yellowish piece of paper. She unfolded it and suddenly huge letters jumped out at her. The whole world was bright. Too bright. Dazzlingly bright. Then darkness fell upon her.

A quarter of a century earlier a young man and woman promised to wed each other, come hell or high water. They had been going together for close to six years when one day they decided to promise before God that they would not forsake each other despite their families' opposition to their union.

The young man was a sailor. He was on the boat for months and then returned home for a brief period. Then he was out sailing again. He was quite handsome and would make a fine husband.

His girlfriend's family, however, would like him to find a job on land. Sailing was risky, they would tell her. Yet the girl was obstinate. Love had complete control over her. She would rather die than be separated from her lover.

So that morning, she snuck away to meet him in a clearing one kilometer away. It was a clear morning. The sun was shining brightly. Birds were chirping, flitting from one twig to another. There under a leafy banyan tree, the boy was sitting. The two were silent. Their hearts talked.

"Let's now promise to ourselves that no matter what, we will never leave one another." Then they kissed and hugged, softly, timidly.

Three months later the shocking news came. The ship sank somewhere in the Mediterranean with reportedly no survivors. Her boyfriend had been on board the ship. She fainted.

Days passed. Years came and went. Old wounds healed. Rusmini never heard another thing about her fiance. She got married to another man and had a daughter.

The history teacher was still sitting in his chair. His eyes were transfixed at an object far away.

"So you are Rusmini's daughter. That's why," he kept mumbling.

It was the letter he meant to post to Rusmini as soon as he arrived at Port Said in Egypt. The first letter after their solemn promise, in which his dream about their future was painted in rosy letters.

Destiny sets its own course. It kept Fuad alive, the lone survivor struggling for his dear life for days in an alien sea.