The Communist

The Communist

By Manaf Maulana

After 34 years of self-exile in a faraway province, Murtiono
decided to go home to Central Java. His decision was not only
based on his longing for his family, but also inspired by the new
government policy on those who were allegedly involved in leftist
activities before the abortive communist coup in 1965.

The nation's new leader announced recently all former
communist activists who left home to seek refuge abroad in the
wake of the coup, were now free to return without fearing
prosecution.

Murtiono did not flee the country. The poor peasant left his
village when he and fellow villagers were persecuted for their
alleged involvement in leftist activities.

Before that Murtiono lived peacefully with his wife, tilling a
small plot of land. Then came the coup attempt, which quashed all
his happiness. He and many other villagers were members of the
Indonesian Farmers Association (BTI), a wing of the Indonesian
Communist Party (PKI), which was extremely active in rural areas.

Murtiono did not understand politics as well as educated
people. He was led to believe that all farmers had to join BTI in
order to get an allocation of fertilizer and seeds, and to avoid
any conflict with the policies of the ruling regime.

He and his fellow BTI members can now assure anybody who cares
to ask that they were not involved in any illegal activities
during those years. The only thing they did was attend briefings
at the house of the local community leader.

However, after they heard some Army generals had been brutally
murdered by left-wingers in Jakarta, the lives of Murtiono, BTI
members and everyone else who attended the meetings at the
community leader's house became frenzied. They became the targets
of public anger. Cold-blooded murders followed. Brutally
mutilated bodies were found floating in the river or laying in
the paddies.

It did not take Murtiono long to decide how to save his neck.
He asked his wife's blessing to leave for a faraway province. In
short, during his three decades of self-exile he tried his hand
at everything to make ends meet. He worked as a construction
worker, market porter, plantation laborer and the last thing he
did was roam the streets selling traditional sweet drinks.

During these long years Murtiono completely lost contact with
his wife. No words did he ever receive about her fate. He prayed
to God to protect her from the fiery campaign of revenge by the
anticommunists. And may she wait for him to return.

***

Only recently Murtiono alighted from a bus at the small
station near his home village. It was early in the morning. He
carried a bag, which contained a couple of kebaya, or traditional
dresses, three necklaces and two pairs of earrings for his wife.
While in his pockets he had three million rupiah. Murtiono did
not allow himself to stop and imagine how ebullient his wife
would be to see him again.

Since it was still dark he did not ask the ojek to take him
directly home because his wife must still be asleep. From the
nearby mosques he heard people reading the Koran, waiting for the
subuh (dawn) prayer. He wanted to spend the time with a cup of
coffee at a nearby food stall.

"On your way home,Pak *)," the stall owner said to him.
Murtiono nodded smilingly.

"Where do you live?"

"Randuwangi village."

"You come from there?"

"Yes, it is my birthplace, but I have been away for too long.
Now I'm returning"

"Then we're neighbors, Pak."

Murtiono was surprised. He looked straight into the man's eyes
but could not recognize him. The stall owner must have been a
teenager when he left the village, he thought.

"Who's your father," Murtiono asked.

The stall owner looked down poignantly before answering the
question. "I'm the only son of the late Pak Paijan. I'm called
Kasmin."

Murtiono did not say anything to this. Paijan's face was still
fresh in his memory. The jovial fellow was his good friend.
Paijan was one of the earlier victims of the anticommunist
bloodbath in the village. Paijan's body was dumped in a field,
his head nearly severed from his body. The bodies of other
victims were scattered nearby.

"My father was murdered when I was still a small boy."

Murtiono repeatedly nodded his head in full understanding. He
said at last: "He was a victim of cruel slander, which ruled our
village at the time."

"The slander killed my father and condemned me this life. All
I can do is run a stall like this, because since my father was
accused of being a communist, I was denied my right to join the
Army, the police or the civil service."

"How about your mother? Alive?"

"No, she has followed father to the grave."

Murtiono took a long breath. He tried to imagine how ill-fated
Paijan's wife was, the widow of an alleged communist activist.

Suddenly Kasmin began to cry. "By the way what is your name,
Pak?"

After Murtiono told him his name, Kasmin's face beamed again.

"Oh, you're Pak Murtiono. You were also accused of being a
communist, but you managed to escape. My mother used to tell me
about you."

"Now Kasmin, please tell me anything you know about my wife."

Kasmin did not say anything for several minutes, letting the
silence drag on. He knew Sumi, Murtiono's wife, who was now
married to Pak Barjo, the former village head.

Kasmin thought about how to tell Murtiono this bitter truth.
The old man would certainly be crushed to hear the news. He
stared at Murtiono's face with a deep sense of sympathy. Kasmin
had heard from his mother that the Murtionos were happy together
until he left the village. Kasmin decided to tell Murtiono the
truth in the kindest way possible.

He had hardly stopped speaking when he saw Murtiono's face
turn pale. The old man appeared to be extremely offended by the
betrayal.

Murtiono's mind roamed back to when he and Barjo were still
bachelors. Both of them fell in love with Sumi, who was the most
beautiful girl in the village. But Barjo was not much of a
competitor, because as a lover he was too timid and gutless to
win Sumi's heart.

However, Barjo seemed to have difficulty accepting his defeat.
Ever since, the relationship between the two former rivals was
never very good. Barjo was the most fervent accuser of Murtiono.
To him, Murtiono was the most dangerous communist criminal in the
area. Simply put, Barjo was the cruelest man behind the witch-
hunt of suspected leftists in the village.

Murtiono understood Barjo was wielding a banner of revenge and
a poisonous ambition to make Sumi his wife -- or at last to sleep
with her -- through any means necessary. And he did it.

Deep in these painful memories, Murtiono was no longer
listening to Kasmin, who was asking him where he planned to go
because he wanted to close the stall.

Kasmin repeated the question: "Pak Murtiono, do you still plan
to go home and live with Sumi?"

Murtiono could not find the right answer.

"I advise you Pak, please don't go there. My house is open to
you, stay with me."

After Kasmin said he was closing the stall, Murtiono realized
that morning was approaching.

"Okay, Pak, let's go to my house. I feel almost like you were
my own father."

They walked side by side. On the way home Kasmin told Murtiono
about his family. He was married and had two children, who, he
said, would love to welcome Pak Murtiono into their home.

Arriving at Kasmin's house, Murtiono found true hospitality.

***

However, the older neighbors did not have the same reaction to
Murtiono's return. Injurious gossip against him started and
spread swiftly like a brushfire, because anticommunist sentiment
was still high among the rural people of the country.

When news of Murtiono's return reached Sumi's ears, she
panicked. She thought her former husband had come back to take
her from Barjo. Besides her dismay, Sumi also felt guilty because
she had not waited for him. She had betrayed Murtiono.

Barjo also heard the news. Silently, he panicked too, because
he had married a woman who was not legally divorced. But as a
former village head, the most powerful man in the area, he
manifested his reaction in a different way.

Barjo began a campaign to preserve the village's stability
against the dangerous communist virus. This virus, he said, had
returned to the village under the guise of Murtiono, the only
local communist still alive, who wanted to revitalize communism
here.

"It is against the state philosophy," he said, "and that's why
all the people should go hand in hand to crush it."

Because Barjo was a former village head, many villagers were
easily taken in by his words.

Murtiono realized he would be easy prey for Barjo's campaign
to chase him away from his place of birth. But this time he had
no plan to surrender. "If God Almighty wants me to die here now,
I will face death like an innocent man," he told himself.

***

Several days later, some villagers decided to solve the
dilemma of Murtiono's presence. In the darkness and silence of
midnight, several masked men forced their way into Kasmin's house
and dragged Murtiono outside. Kasmin was too powerless to help
the old man from the dagger-wielding men.

The next day, he and other villagers heard that Murtiono's
severely mutilated body had been found in a ricefield.

Translated by TIS.

*) Pak means father, but it is also used to mean Sir.