Storytelling shines in 'Gadis Pantai'

Gadis Pantai (The Girl from the Coast); By Pramoedya Ananta Toer; Hastra Mitra, Jakarta (April 2000); vii + 231 pp; Rp 25,000.

JAKARTA (JP): When you read the editor's note at the beginning of this book, you may be left pondering the same question as me: What is it about Pramoedya's writing that provoked so much animosity from the New Order regime?

It surely could not be his eloquent choice of wording. The journey this story was forced to take in order for people to be able to read it in Indonesian is enough to boggle the mind.

The novel is part of a trilogy and the only part that survived the trashing by the regime through the Supreme Court at the time. It was initially published in serial form in the daily newspaper Lentera/Bintang Timur from 1962 to 1965. The last two parts of the trilogy were irrevocably lost in what the editor called "the 1965 act of political vandalism".

The manuscript came into the hands of the publisher in 1987 in the form of a copy of a microfilm belonging to the library of the Australian National University, Canberra. It was published as a book in the same year, but was immediately banned by the court on the grounds of dispersion of Marxist-Leninist thought. Ironically, the book has been published and reprinted six times in Dutch and available in English (The Girl from the Coast) since 1991. This latest publication of Gadis Pantai, dubbed the "freedom edition", is the first Indonesian version printed since the toppling of the New Order.

The book's publication history might be enough to inspire a John Woo movie, although the story itself is hardly as physically oriented. It is a socioromance story about an unnamed girl, who the author calls gadis pantai, the girl from the coast. She was born and raised in a backward fishing village. At the age of fourteen, she is brought by her parents to the city to be the consort to a priyayi (an upper-class man).

She enters into life in a mansion with an unfamiliar social order. She becomes Mas Nganten, the honored lady of the house. Her husband is kindly although somewhat aloof to his lower-ranked wife.

After time spent struggling to adapt to her new life, the beach girl asks her husband's permission to visit her parents in her home village. The drama unfolds upon her return. Her already dubious servant-companion, Mardinah, turns out to be a real villain. In an abortive plan of action, Mardinah tries to manipulate the woman to return to the city with her and her cohorts; their plan is to do away with her.

Mardinah confesses that she was hired by a relative of the woman's husband. The husband's family was concerned and embarrassed by the fact that he always chose women of lower status and not a "real wife" from the same social stature. The Mardinah affair comes to an end through a unique resolution by the villagers. The woman returns to her husband in the city, eventually giving birth to a baby girl. However, the novel concludes on a sad note for the woman.

Pramoedya tells a simple storyline but it's not that simple when one realizes he is the storyteller. Each character comes alive in the strong validity of a well-researched story. Although the protagonist may not be on a par with the heroine Dedes from his novel Arok Dedes, one must consider that the book is incomplete due to the loss of the two other parts of the trilogy.

The eminent modern novelist Emile Zola stated his view about naturalism in his Le Roman Expirimental. He said the novelist's task was "to undertake a social or scientific study, recording facts, styles and systems of behavior, living conditions, the working of institutions, and deducing the underlying processes of environmental, genetic and historical-evolutionary development". Without the slightest intention of classifying Pramoedya's writing under any "ism", it is apparent that he meticulously conformed to Zola's definition.

"She begins to comprehend, here she was not to have a soul to befriend as a mutual being. She feels an immense distance, an enormous space intervening her and this generous woman who hardly sleeps so as to take care of her, always carries out her wishes ... Her heart cries out: why I cannot be her friend? Why does she have to be a servant to me? Who am I? What is her fault that she has to be my servant?"

In this paragraph the author fluently formulates the essence of the relationship among aristocrats and commoners in Java at the time. By marrying a priyayi, she, a commoner herself, has become part of the ruling class. A mounting identity crisis is the price she has to pay. She does not really belong to the upper class; after all, she was a consort who could be replaced in a moment's whim.

Yet she could not live anymore among her fellow villagers, who came to regard her as someone from the aristocracy. Whether or not Pramoedya used the Marxist theory of the class struggle is not the main issue in the discourse. As always, the need to read Gadis Pantai arises from the superb storytelling.

-- Reita Malaon