Retired marine tells of submarine romance
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Pacar Cantik di Kapalselamku
(Pretty girlfriends in my submarine)
Rahmat Ali
pp 279
Majas
Marine First Sergeant Darmadi, a.k.a. Mad, a.k.a. Madov, kept two girlfriends aboard an Indonesian Military submarine during a tour of duty in the 1960s from Indonesia to Vladivostok on the eastern coast of Russia.
One girlfriend "has white skin" while another "has brown skin", but both are "beautiful and give me plenty of attention", the Javanese Madov said.
He hung two life-sized pictures of the two women above his bunk in the submarine, which caused a stir among the crew. In the end, his commander let Madov keep the pictures, reasoning that they boosted his spirit and morale.
Thus unfolds the love triangle between Madov, the Javanese Ningsih and Russian Martina Debruska, with a cast of 360 marines against the backdrop of the Indonesian navy.
Author Rahmat Ali, himself a retired marine who once sailed in a submarine to Vladivostok, seems to have woven his own life story within this romantic tale.
"To my knowledge, this is the first novel that tells readers about the world of our naval forces, a world unknown to many of us, in great detail," Apsanti Djokosujatno, professor emeritus of literature at the University of Indonesia, said during a discussion about the book.
In order to paint an accurate picture of naval life in his novel, the author not only poured out his own experience in print, but also conducted some in-depth research into ships.
"The novel is also special because it tells us about crucial (historical) moments following our independence up to the early 1960s, when our country was still wealthy enough to buy a number of special naval ships," she added.
The author interweaves the fiction against the backdrop of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, with Indonesia sandwiched between them.
"The book tells us of Madov's experience, lessons he picked up in Vladivostok, about a beautiful Russian language teacher named Shirley Ivanova, the stern Major Garin, his love for Martina Debruska, through the dialog typical of navy people and along a pleasant journey from Vladivostok to Moscow. All of this is placed in stark contrast to the sad stories of Madov's family in Alas Roban, on Java's northern coast," literary critic Sihar Ramses Simatupang said.
He added that Pacar Cantik di Kapalselamku, or Pretty girlfriends in my submarine, also provided a detailed description of a submarine's technical aspects.
In fact, too detailed.
"Specifics about submarines, their various sizes and numbers in a fleet took up three paragraphs, which interrupted my enjoyment in reading Rahmat Ali's work," Simatupang said.
A glitch that could have possibly been smoothed over by the publisher, Jakarta-based Majas publishing company.
Apsanti also noted that many sentences in the book were incomplete or fragmented, and were laden with Javanese terms.
Majas is a newcomer in the publishing industry, which could excuse this lack of editorial precision. Nevertheless, at the very least it could have not made the book look like a too-thick pulp fiction novel by designing a better cover.
The publisher also wasted its energy in providing a contents page, because the book's subchapters are untitled, only numbered.
The contents page is thus full of numbers, which is rather confusing.
Rahmat, a veteran fiction writer, could have chosen more established publishers to promote this unusual tale.
His Narapidana Luar Galaksi (Convict in outer space), for example, published in 2002 by Grasindo, has a far more attractive cover and less grammatical errors.
All in all, however, the rare experience to be gleaned from reading a romance set against submarine life, written by a former marine, is worth picking up this book.