Destiny

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.