Hut

By Dewi Anggraeni

The other sightseers were deserting the place. The few motor vehicles that had stayed on after four o' clock were beginning to move away. I looked back, tolerantly at first, then impatiently, at Marianne, who seemed oblivious of the time.

The misty fog was gathering around the top of Mt. Slamet, and Marianne was still taking photos of the orange Western horizon. As it became brighter it fascinated Marianne even more, and at the same time, filled me with discomfort.

I watched distractedly as the young hawkers rushed downhill, heading for home, carrying their empty baskets and other containers. Some of them were chatting and laughing, and turning to look at us. Their stares quickly moved from me to Marianne.

Some distance away, the stalls had packed away their merchandise, and the smoke of cooking fire was faintly visible. The smell of rice being cooked wafted into the atmosphere, inflicting a strange pain in my stomach. It was a combination of hunger and foreboding. I yelled at Marianne to hurry up. She slowly replaced her camera in its bag and began to walk towards me.

As we were walking towards our hired car, something occurred to me. I began to head for one of the stalls.

"Hey, where are you going? You rushed me and abused me for being distracted, now you're dilly-dallying yourself."

"Get in the car and wait there. I won't be long," I said to her before rushing away.

I asked the woman at the stall whether I could buy some rice and a couple of side dishes. She was actually cooking for her own family, but was happy to wrap some for me. In my broken Javanese, the best I could summon, I answered her questions. I told her we were heading for the coastal town of Tegal. She looked rather surprised.

"Just the two of you?" she asked.

"Yes." Knowing what she was thinking, I hastened to add, "I know it's a bit late, but my friend and I are quite used to traveling alone. We've traveled..."

"But not from here to Tegal," she said. "You'd better off going south to Purwokerto."

"We've just come from Purwokerto," I explained. "Don't worry, if we find it too hard to drive in the night, we might stop over somewhere."

I watched uncomfortably as she reopened the wrappings and put more food in them. "Please, don't put yourself out. You're giving us too much," I protested.

"No, no," she insisted, "We have plenty here. You'll need to be prepared for the journey."

Anyone would think we were going on a round the island tour, I thought. I accepted gratefully, however, and paid. We thanked each other, and I walked back to the car.

Marianne laughed at the parcels I was carrying. "So that's what's bugging you! You're just too hungry to wait until we get to Tegal!"

"Shut up, Marny," I snapped, "You'll thank me for this."

Marianne took a cloth out of her bag and began to spread it on her lap. Ignoring what she was doing, I put the parcels in the back seat and slipped into the driver's seat, ready to start the car.

"So we're not eating?" Marianne sounded disappointed.

"No, these are for just in case," I replied, turning the ignition on. "I don't know if we'll get anywhere near Tegal tonight. We might have to stop over at a small town somewhere."

"So, what's the fuss? Whatever small town we come to, there's bound to be foodstalls," Marianne protested, obviously annoyed by my seemingly irrational action.

I turned to her, not knowing what to say for a moment. Then, shrugging, "Well, there's no harm in being prepared."

I couldn't tell Marianne how I felt, because I didn't want to take it seriously myself. To dispel my misgivings, I wound the window right down, to let in the smells and sounds of the surrounding life. A somewhat reassuring sight relaxed my tight stomach muscles: stragglers from the farms. I could almost touch them from the car; women walking upright with baskets on their heads, men carrying poles on their shoulders, with a basket hanging on each end of the poles. Life, movement, familiar noises, that was what I wanted around me. I chuckled privately, it seemed to ridiculous for words. Whereabouts in Java could you not have people around? Only yesterday in Purwokerto I commented to Marianne that I'd lived in Australia too long. I'd become accustomed to solitude and silence, and what was more, craved them every now and again.

Suddenly I realized Marianne was unusually quiet. I turned too look, to see if she was all right. She was asleep. I rolled my eyes. Wretched woman! Insisted on walking all afternoon, as soon as she hit the car seat, she was dead to the world. I frowned at the thought. Dead to the world, I shouldn't have used that idiom. Not even in thoughts. Life! Life was what I wanted to see and feel.

"Don't be ridiculous," I finally said to myself, "What's wrong with you?"

The sun was very low on the horizon. People in the huts and houses had lit their lamps and turned on their half-strength electric lights. No more children were seen outside. I found myself desperately looking for signs of people inside their houses as we drove past. The sun disappeared, it seemed, in a matter of minutes.

The roads were very poorly lit. I had to drive very slowly, as I was not familiar with the winding road. The banana clumps and other fruit trees that lined the road seemed to close in on us and I felt slightly suffocated. It became increasingly darker every minute and I could no longer see houses or huts behind those clumps of trees. I had wound my window up again. The sound of the car engine in second gear reverberated inside my ears, though along the road, the fireflies, providing the odd spark of light, occasionally lifted my mental gloom.

I had been driving like this for over an hour, yet I hadn't come across a town. Had I driven past a small town without being aware of it? I wonder. Maybe it'd been obscured by the trees. No, it couldn't have been. Even the smallest cluster of houses would have been visible from the road. I looked to Marianne for moral support, but she was still asleep. God, she was so trusting of me. She thought I was in control, just because I was born and brought up in Jakarta. If she only knew, in this part of the country, at this moment, I knew just as little as she did.

I was still frowning from tension when I heard suffocated noises besides me. It startled me so much I hit the brakes. The car stopped and the engine went dead, but I was too preoccupied with Marianne to worry about the car engine.

Marianne was having a bad dream. She looked as if she wanted to scream, but only managed a squeak. I reached out and shook her shoulders. She stopped making the noise and opened her eyes.

"For goodness sake, Marny! What'd you do that for?" I asked testily, as if she'd given me a fright on purpose.

Marianne didn't answer. I looked into her unblinking eyes. They didn't seem to register. Panicking, I shook her harder. Her head lolled about from the impact, and slowly, her eyes began to focus, on me. Then she blinked.

"Where are we?" she asked, absently.

"Somewhere between Bumiayu and Tegal, that's as much as I know." I said, and surprised myself at my curtness. Then, before she was fully awake, I continued, "I've never driven here at night. To be frank with you, I'm a bit lost, myself."

"Shit," Marianne whispered.

"What did you dream of, anyway? Pretty bad, by the look of it."

Marianne shook her head like someone trying to erase a bad memory. "I'll tell you in the morning."

I didn't insist. I wasn't in the mood for a creepy story at the moment. All I wanted to do was to get somewhere, where there were people. A town. A village. A settlement. Anything. However, when I turned the ignition key, I groaned. Dead. No reaction from the engine. Nothing.

"Oh, my God!" I nearly cried, collapsing against the back of the seat. "Just what we need!"

Marianne had regained her calm. Reaching to pat my arm, she said soothingly, "Calm down, Rika. Leave it for a while, then try again. Why don't we rest here and eat, hey, since you've admirably prepared for emergency like this?"

I looked at her, annoyed at first at her apparent detachment. Then gradually, as I began to calm down myself, I felt grateful for her company. When she unwrapped the rice, fish and vegetables, and handed some to me in an improvised plate made of banana leaves, I remembered my hunger.

We ate in silence, enjoying the food in a strange way. We must have been hungry, because the food improved our outlook on life tremendously. After wiping our hands on a towel, with more optimism, I tried to start the car again. Still nothing happened.

I sighed, with less anger this time. "What now?" I asked.

"Look!" Marianne suddenly exclaimed, "See those lights behind the trees! No, come this way and look in that direction. Can you see them now? I reckon there are houses over there. Let's see if we can get someone to help."

I gave her a tolerating look. "Get real, Marny! You seriously think there's a mechanic among these farmers?"

"Who knows?" she retorted, "Besides, even if we can't get the car going, we can hardly stay here all night. We might as well find somewhere to bed down."

"Hmmm, all right," I said, picking up my bag, and our torch. "We'll leave our stuff here and lock the car. No one here anyway. What'd you think?"

"Yeah," Marianne agreed and picked up her own bag.

As we approached the small settlement I felt a floating sensation, as if we were stepping into a dream. I reached for Marianne's hand and we walked closely together.

A man came out of the first hut and stared openly at us. He looked pale under the faint kerosene lamp he was holding. His coarse cotton shirt had patches on the front and on one of the sleeves. I greeted him in Javanese. He didn't answer for several seconds, and when he opened his mouth, there appeared to be a delay between the movement of his mouth and the sound that come out.

I asked him whether there was anywhere we could stay the night, explaining that our car had engine trouble. He looked puzzled, as if I were speaking a different sort of Javanese. At that moment, a woman stepped out of the hut, followed by an older man. The first man told them, in rather quaint Javanese, that we'd been lost and wanted to stay the night. When the woman looked at us I smiled a greeting, but she seemed to gaze through me. Then I watched her gaze through Marianne as well, except this time I saw concern on her face. She turned to the first man and whispered, "We must hide her. She's a londo, a white woman. Otherwise, if they find out..." the man nodded, and gestured to the small entrance, saying, "Come in quickly, before anyone sees you here."

I was too stunned and mystified to think clearly. In a hypnotic haze, I pulled Marianne into the hut. The old man hadn't said a word since appearing outside. He hadn't been openly looking at us either. He was just there.

Once inside, Marianne whispered, "Shit Rika, where are we going to sleep?"

It was a three by three meter room, very rudimentarily furnished. The walls were made of palm fibers. There were no chairs. In one corner there was a very old wooden bench, with a big rice pot, a blackened wok, two wooden ladles, and several tin plates. Opposite that corner, next to another small doorway, on a mat on the floor, a mound of cloths suddenly moved. Two small heads appeared from beneath the cloths and stared at us. Marianne's eyes became tender and her face softened into a smile. But we didn't have time to talk to the children, because the woman whispered to us, gesturing to the doorway.

"The other room is darker. You'd better sleep there, we'll move out here. If anyone comes to the front door, don't come out."

Marianne shook my hand, "What's she saying?"

I'd regained enough presence of mind to say, "She says we can sleep in the other room, which is their sleeping room apparently. They'll move out here."

Marianne was going to protest, but I squeezed her hand and answered, "Thank you. I hope we won't be too much trouble."

The man told the woman to tidy up the room for us, and before I could stop her, she'd gone in. The old man had sat near the children, still not looking at us. The first man was trying to peep out through the holes in the wall. And Marianne and I stood close like two frightened schoolgirls waiting for the headmaster in his office. When the woman came out again we breathed a sigh of relief. Without saying anything else we went in.

We stopped after several steps, adjusting our eyes to the dark. It was a slightly smaller room than the first one. There was nothing but mats on the floor, so we bent over and took our sneakers off. Suddenly the woman appeared with some cotton cloths, saying, "You may need these. It gets chilly later on." We thanked her and took the cloths.

The cloths felt coarse and smelled of earth, and the room was warm and stuffy, so we just put them aside, within easy reach, for later. Despite the stuffiness, we lay very close together, using our bags as pillows. I couldn't see Marianne's face, but I felt her fear.

"What'd they say about me, Rika?" whispered Marianne.

"I don't know. I don't understand their Javanese, Marny. It must be a separate patois. I guess they were just fascinated by white people. You've been a fascination right from the start, don't forget. In this place, they don't see white tourists very much."

"I guess not. I just feel so uncomfortable."

"This is not exactly Hilton Hotel, Marny. Just grin and bear it for tonight. Tomorrow we'll find a good hotel."

Our whispering conversation kept me awake to a degree, especially when I suddenly remembered the incident in the car. The curiosity became so overpowering, I had to ask Marianne, "What did you dream Marny? Just now in the car?"

"Can't you wait till morning?" she asked.

"I can't sleep. I guess I'm overtired . Tell us, Marny, to kill time."

"You and I were driving in a tropical countryside, not unlike this one, actually. Suddenly we saw a group of soldiers. I think they were deserters. Their uniforms were in tatters, but they were carrying guns. The next minute we seemed to be traveling on foot together. These soldiers were speaking English. We came near a settlement, not unlike this one, actually. They decided to hide in the bush and send one to talk to the people. The man they sent could speak a bit of Malay. We watched from a distance. Then it looked like the man couldn't make himself understood and the people at the settlement wanted to detain him. He yelled out to the group, and some 20 soldiers burst out of the bush with their guns and killed the people. The whole lot. Men, women and children. Oh, it was horrible. Why'd you make me tell it? Now I feel all spooked."

I squeezed her arm, trying to soothe her. "Calm down now. It was only a dream. Let's talk about what you're going to paint when we get back."

We rocked ourselves to sleep with small talk. Just before I dozed off, I thought I heard someone outside speaking English.

I felt my shoulder squeezed. when I opened my eyes, I saw Marianne in the half light, sitting up. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking around, in confusion. When I began to take in my surroundings, I sat up in a jolt. We appeared to be inside a very old, dilapidated, disused hut. The earthen floor was covered with dust and bits of dry leaves, fallen from the roof. Soft sunlight filtered in through the holes in the eastern wall, highlighting the dust that we had stirred inside. I looked around for the cloths we had been given the night before, but there were only pieces of bark strewn on the ground. We both got up, slipped on our sneakers and rushed outside. There were five or six other similar huts to the west, but we were not in the mood to investigate further. Running as fast as we could towards the car, we grazed our arms on low tree branches but we keep running.

The car started without trouble. We drove northwards without saying a word to each other for a full half hour. And when we began to speak, neither of us talked about our experience on the previous night. When we arrived in Tegal about noon and checked into a hotel, I made a phone call to my editor's office in Jakarta. I asked him to check the historical records of the area north of Bumiayu. That afternoon, he rang me back.

"In 1942, a group of British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers, fleeing from the Japanese, went through several villages and settlements in Central and East Java. In some, they killed the whole village to avoid being reported and delivered to the Japanese. They did pass the area you identified. It's a horrific story. It'd be interesting if you could track down some of them in Australia when you get back..."

As I felt blood rush from my head, I saw Marianne's haunted eyes glued on me as if she'd heard the telephone conversation.

Born in Jakarta, Dewi Anggraeni lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children. She was the Australian correspondent for Tempo magazine, and now writes for The Jakarta Post, Forum Keadilan, and other publications in Indonesia and Australia. Dewi speaks English, Indonesian and French, and writes in English and Indonesian. Combining her skills as a journalist and novelist, her works have been published in both languages, in Australia and Indonesia. She has three books published in Australia: two novels, The Root of All Evil (1987) and Parallel Forces (1988), and the third, a trilogy of novellas, Stories of Indian Pacific (1993).