The culmination

By Satyagraha Hoerip

It was suffocatingly hot. Dust was dancing all over town. Since early morning the wind had been blowing harder that usual, stronger than yesterday. I saw hats blown off and rolling around the streets. The children's kites were out of control, whirling pointlessly.

I paid for the syrup and the pack of peanuts, then asked the vendor to wrap up three small cakes for the kids at home. With my purchase I got on my bike, ready to go home. But then I saw Wimbadi speeding up on his bike, coming towards me from the east and signaling with his left hand for me to wait. Quickly he sped past the square, pulling up in the intersection, out of breath.

His shirt was as wet as a used towel. He was drenched in sweat. His hair looked positively bedraggled.

"Mas, Mas, I've been looking for you everywhere," he said, still not entering the grassy town square.

"Well, Dik, congratulations. It appears we'll be able to stage Caligula, do you hear?" I called out to him excitedly. Then I told him that Hari Sumardjo seemed willing to provide the capital for my plan to stage Albert Camus' play in our small town -- a plan which had been my obsession for many years. "And you must play the lead: Caligula. Oh yes, it's got to be you, Wimbadi. And I'll kill you if you ham it up," I continued, laughing.

But Wimbadi, an art student and a talented young actor, did not seem to sense my light heart. If he had heard my words at all, he was quite indifferent. In his husky voice he said bluntly, "Kuslan is here in town, Mas! The boys saw him in his house, early this morning. And he is still there." His great black eyes glittered like the headlamps of a car as he spoke.

I was dumbstruck. I knew too well what was coming to that brother-in-law of mine. "So what?" I finally asked.

"Don't worry, Mas. The boys have surrounded his house. Jono, Peno and also Edi, Kun, Samsul, Burhan and some others. Danarto has even called the Banser Moslem Youth to help us."

"How about discussing this matter at my house?" I asked him. "I want to get home quickly, my kids are waiting."

"All right. Only to take the buns home," he said, eying the package that hung from my handlebars. "Don't be long, Mas. And remember, it is time for action. No more talk, okay? And... it is you alone that we ask to take that action. Come on!" His very words stabbed my heart like a kris that was plunged and then repeatedly drawn in and out of the wound.

"That will be a matter for later, okay?" I said, starting to pedal. He pedalled after me, still sitting on the passenger seat of his bike. "Let's talk it over at home. I simply can't think here."

"That's impossible, Mas! It is not the time for talking anymore. You see, now we must act, and quickly. It can't be otherwise." Wimbadi fired out those words while shifting his buttocks onto the saddle of the bike. We left the town square.

I was suddenly dizzy and my head was heavy because so many things kept cropping up, each growing after its own fashion. I paid no attention to what Wimbadi said on our way to my house, nor did I heed the wind or the heat and the cakes on my handlebar.

"Just think it over, Mas Sus," he continued, restlessly. "Among all the people in this world -- not just in this damn town -- who was the one person most severely betrayed by that bastard Kuslan... eh? Who was humiliated in public? Again and again? You! Yes, it was you, wasn't it?"

Wimbadi's eyes were like an occulist's examining his patient's.

Wimbadi was a well-built third-grade student in the Academy of Fine Arts. Long before we met, Wimbadi confessed to me, he had read and enjoyed my short stories. When he came to my town to study, we became friends. It was a friendship that blossomed, and we worked together easily.

If we staged a play, I generally relied on him to play the lead role, or even to be the co-director. And if I was out of town and could not do the poetry reading program at the local state-owned radio station -- this was before my Cultural Manifest group was crushed by President Sukarno under pressure from the communists -- it was Wimbadi I would ask to take over from me. And in the days before he himself was toppled from his position as chairman of the cultural section of the student body of his academy by the communist student movement and the red-tinted local artists association, Wimbadi asked me to lecture on the cultural problems of Indonesia. Not just once, but three times. The topic was quite a taboo for party-oriented cultural organizations in my town. As a result, he had almost been expelled from his academy.

He also often spent hours at my house. First he began by just dropping in, but soon he was borrowing books, sometimes even money from my wife. We discussed all kind of things and he had not hidden his private troubles from me or my wife. So he had become a part of our family, almost my own little brother.

"Don't deny facts, Mas Sus," he continued, more heatedly. "When he was as poor as a rat, Kuslan and his family were under your wing, in your very house. Out of such a poor pocket as yours, shame! But as soon as he started getting money from the PKI, a bit of status, remember how he paid you back, denouncing you as counter-revolutionary! Was that right?"

I kept my month shut. And so Wimbadi continued. "Not only did Kuslan fulminate against you the most among those who purged you, so that you were fired from your post with strangers shouting obscenities at your house night and day, but it was Kuslan who proved to be the evil genius behind the campaign against you in this town..."

When we arrived at my house, I gently got him to sit with me beside the well, near the clothesline. I also promptly explained things he actually already knew, in a near-whisper so that my wife and children did not hear me.

"You should realize that I gave shelter and food to him and his family because Kuslan's wife is my little sister, the only one of my mother's daughters who lives in this very town. And remember that his children are my nieces and nephews. How could I see his children and my own sister suffer, while I'm still in this town? It was not Kuslan I helped. Beyond that, I also understand that his position as LEKRA leader led to my removal; and although he was unhappy about it, Kuslan insisted that he did what he did because he truly believed in the justice of communism. I think Kuslan had no choice..."

"Of course he had!" Wimbadi cut in without hesitation. His face suddenly reflected his nausea.

"But you see, it is up to you, if you want to kill him," I finally said. "I will not stand in your way, although, if possible, I will try to stop you, all of you, from doing so. Please don't expect me to do the killing. I abhor such acts. In my eyes, violence is typical of communists. It's not for us, their enemies. Us true Pancasilaists should be entirely different."

"Mas Sus, listen to me, will you?" Wimbadi cut in again. "If Diman, who was only a floor sweeper in the cinema house, was slaughtered by his own neighbors when they discovered he was on the communist committee to ban American movies, how can a big pig like Kuslan be allowed to escape, huh?"

I clearly heard his teeth grinding. He clenched his right fist on his thigh and his brows knitted.

"Remember, Mas Sus, it was you who told me about the atrocities during the second communist uprising, right here in this town. In 1948, while we were busy fighting the Dutch. You mentioned how shocked you were because slaughter was introduced by the communists into the Indonesian political struggle."

The wind blew hard but it had no effect at all on Wimbadi's face.

"You also mentioned," he continued, "that there were tens of thousands... brutally killed, slaughtered, by the communists. And that such a monumental betrayal should never be forgotten. I'm awfully sorry, Mas," Wimbadi went on, bitterly, "but it seems that you, our 'Man of Culture', who are so pure-hearted, is nothing but a fake son of a bitch. Do you hear me, Mas Sus?"

Standing, he continued, his bitter words shook me beyond expectation. "Where is that Divine Light which in your own judgment must not only be steadfastly adhered to, but spread wide across this country? Mas Sus, isn't the Light of God not only a matter of peaceful and intimate love and affection, but also a command to brave actions, whatever they might be? Listen Mas, that Divine Light you are always talking about, mustn't it be served by positive actions, too? Or, is it just to be discussed at greater length, and in weighty tomes?"

Strange. It was his face which turned red with anger instead of mine. He fled from my house after brushing aside my embrace and without a proper word to my wife or the kids. I ran after him. At the guava tree in front of the house, he stopped and said that he would come to fetch me around mahgrib. His eyes and face were a sea of disgust.

When alone in my bedroom, I tried and tried but failed to get rid of the memory of Kuslan. Although that brother-in-law of mine was only seen this morning -- after a whole year abroad on a trip arranged by his political party -- I already knew what awaited him when he visited his family. Recently, hundreds of times, angry people of my region -- as the rest of the nation -- had acted wildly against anyone who had embraced the communist ideology as Kuslan had done.

The violence had begun just three weeks earlier, yet the toll of victims had risen to perhaps 30,000 or more. Not even fellow- travelers and sympathizers were spared from the mass slaughter, to say nothing of prominent leaders like Kuslan. First, they were handed in to the local authorities, then the following night or perhaps another night, they would be asked for by the ormas and were taken out somewhere out of town, from whence only their names returned home. Their names and their personal effects, and that only so that their relatives would know they should not come to visit anymore.

Could it be that Kuslan was unaware of such great danger?

I was sure that he did know, for he must have arrived from abroad some time ago, even if he was only detected this morning. I really did not know why he was such a great fool. Nor could I understand why those young men like Peno, Jono, Wimbadi and the others were waiting for me. Why did they not just finish Kuslan on their own?

I had told my wife that I did not want any lunch, as I wanted to be alone in my bedroom. Yet, as soon I was alone, I found my narrow and cramped room was torturing me. I put on the shirt I had worn this morning, and made up my mind to see Mas Hari Sumardjo, to seek his advice. A man his age was certainly wiser than Wimbadi and his gang, I thought. Especially on matters of other people's life and death.

"I'm leaving," was the only words I had for my family. Intentionally I averted my face from all of them, lest I smile or kissed the kids, as I used to do. I did not even give heed to my children's shouting, "Bye Daaaad, bye-bye Daddy ..."

I ignored them. I...

Obviously, my thoughts were in turmoil as I rode off. It was as if my nerves were strung up on telephone poles. I cursed the very particles of dust in the street. Was I addressing myself, mouthing obscenities about filthy beasts and dirty things as well?

Why, I suddenly cursed myself, did I force my mother to accept Kuslan's marriage proposal to Yayuk, my little sister?

I knew that her response to his overtures was born of sheer loneliness, as she had been deserted by her lover, a jet pilot who married a Russian girl from the town where he had been sent for special training. Was Yayuk not only 21, at that time ? It sure was not a matter for haste, there was no need for her to accept the very next proposal that came her way. Would it have been possible that she would have found another husband, whom she would love deeply, if she had waited a little longer? Yayuk was good-looking, and had nice breasts, too.

And now? After her children had been born and had to be left fatherless, wasn't it I who would be the most aggrieved? Such grief that I could not tell, or share, even with my own wife.

And what if later my mother (who, since Kuslan's departure to Red China, stayed with Yayuk to look after the children) should learn that actually I was the one who could save Kuslan's life, and yet did nothing -- would that not be a slow torture for me?

I was distraught and cursed Kuslan in my heart. Was he not aware that his appearance could mean his death? Right in front of his wife and children? Or, was it because his love for his wife and kids were so deep, that he finally came to such a foolish choice, rather than to hide like his comrades?

Did Kuslan, who was not a stupid fellow at all, never acknowledge that materialistic atheism -- which was so central to his party's ideology -- was, in fact, diametrically opposed to his own belief in the glory of God? If in the beginning he joined LEKRA out of consideration for his family's bellies, why did he have to be so dedicated in the years that followed? To say nothing of other avenues of life and various rational matters that might be a challenge his intellectual agonies? Only now I realized that actually I did not know him that well.

But on the other hand, couldn't it be possible that Kuslan's impending and tragic death was really God's will? Including my role as his executioner?

But why must it be me? An author, who deeply opposed killing on principle, rather than one of those angry young men who were so inflamed by the mood of the community -- whereas I was only drawn into the situation after the fact had been accomplished?

If I had to face my own death, no matter how great my struggle against it, yet if it seemed that it was the will of God --- well, all right, I thought I would be able to accept it willingly, in as full a surrender as was humanly possible. For I believed that to die willingly, was to die an ideal death. Thus, however great my fear and struggle at first, if it had been my turn I could only wish to die with full acceptance, and with a genuine smile on my lips.

Indeed, this would not only relieve those whom I left behind, but myself as well. And before my breath left me, I would wish to pray to His glory, to thank Him for his Mercy and to ask His forgiveness, in the name of Christ.

"Long live Pak Susetyooooo!" came a sudden cry. It was apparently from some of my former students, who waved their hands to greet me. "Crush LEKRAA... Hang Aidit, chairman of the PKI. Long live ABRI!"

"Long live the people, Paaak!" one of them cried, alone.

"Long live Pancasila," followed another.

I waved back to them and forced a smile to my lips. I had not expected that in the moment I could represent my work to my readers, that I should find my newly-regained freedom, must be redeemed by such a dreadful inner conflict. It was a far heavier moment than when I myself had been purged and expelled from school, with some of those same pupils yelling insults after me as an anti-revolutionary villain. For now I must turn executioner, and the would-be victim was nobody else but my own brother-in-law, Kuslan.

I was bewildered, and sad, too. Even to hear of another man becoming a killer terrified me, much less committing the act myself.

So I cursed the dust, the men involved -- the chairman of the commie party, Aidit, Lieutenant Colonel Untung, the commander of the Red forces on the President's Guard; or Kuslan himself, as well as those youths who anxiously waited for me, even now. But mostly I cursed myself because probably I would have to become a real killer. In real life, mind you, not in a short story!

Satyagraha Hoerip, 62, was a co-signer of the Cultural Manifest. In 1987 he won the Literary Competition held by Republica de Chile. He taught Modern Indonesian Literature and Culture at Ohio University (1982) and was a Visiting Research Scholar at Kyoto University, Japan (1990). This story has appeared in some translations in German, Japanese, Dutch and French. Its original title was Pada Titik Kulminasi published in and won a prize from Horison, a prominent Indonesian literary magazine, in the mid- sixties.

Note: Pak = short of bapak, mister Mas = from kakangmas, Javanese way for addressing older males Dik = from adik, addressing younger people Banser = Barisan Serba Guna, a Militant Moslem Youth organization in the 1960s Ormas = mass organizations, usually affiliated to one political party Mahgrib = Moslem sunset prayer Lekra = communist-affiliated artists group PKI = the now-banned Indonesian Communist Party