Ab drove up the highway skirting the west side of the volcanoes, the side away from Klaten and Solo, for half an hour, then pulled over to the side under some trees next to a small warung and fell asleep. The next morning, he awoke feeling rumpled and foul. He put on his baseball cap, and had some soup at the warung. Then, feeling half-civilized, he drove north up the road toward Semarang through the blinding white haze of heat and dust and diesel fumes, on a road that climbed steadily, smoothly upward. For the first half hour or so, he tried to listen to his gamelan tape, but the music only jarred and perplexed him, so that he turned it off. He was even further from understanding anything now than when he had started.
After a drive of about an hour and a half, he turned left at the small town of Ambarawa, up a narrower, more winding road that could take him, if he cared to keep driving for a day, to the ancient sites of the Dieng Plateau. At the mountain resort town of Bandungan, he drove over to the market to buy some fruit and take stock of his situation before proceeding to find Pak Sani’s house.
Here in the mountains one could find fresh carrots, bright red tomatoes, green, but juicy oranges, apples—all the things that had to be trucked down to Yogyakarta and which deteriorated rapidly in the intense heat of the plains. He strolled leisurely through the market, savouring each cool moment, pacing himself, trying not to think about the fact that his life might be in danger, or Nancy, or what might lie ahead. He was just beginning to relax, to almost forget why he had come, when a voice behind him startled him.
“Well, Ab! If we’d have known you were coming, we could have come together!”
It was John and Claudia. “Didn’t know you were a Hasher,” said Claudia, leaning up for her kisses. “If we’d have known, we’d have done this more often. We almost never come to these British events, but John really wanted to this time, so…here we are.” She looked around.
“Where’s Nancy? Did you bring her along?”
“A Hasher?” His mind raced. Damn, he’d forgotten. It was Sunday, and Marie had said something about this at her party. It seemed aeons ago. “I’m not actually. Is that today?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know!” John put his arm around Ab from the left side. “Just came up here to get away with Nancy, did you?” John’s squeeze seemed painfully hard. “Good idea, to get away from all that stuff down there.”
Claudia took his right hand and held it against her as they walked, so that his knuckles brushed against the side of her breast. “Where are you guys staying? We’re at that great old Dutch place on the hillside, with the cottages and white rose bushes and the big trees. A bit run-down but the view down over the valley and the lake is incredible.”
The two of them seemed to be dragging Ab along between them. “You mean you really didn’t know that today is the Yogyakarta-Semarang Hash Bash?” John asked. “The place will be crawling with expats within the hour. We’re running over at the temples. No sneaking away, ha! Hey, there’s Peter and Gladys!” He let go of Ab to wave down the minivan that was slowly pushing its way through the market crowd at the corner.
“See you later,” Claudia waved as she ran after her husband.
Ab returned through the market to where he had parked his car, distracted, his mind racing. The Hash, especially a joint party like this one, was a bit rowdy for Ab, like a Wilkinsons’ party in the open air. But now that they’d seen him, how could he not go? And how could he explain Nancy’s absence if he did go? Ab didn’t know if he could stand it. And yet, if his life were in danger, there would be safety in being in a large group of expatriates.
***
He climbed into the car, pondering his next move: how to find Sani’s house. The policeman at the main kiosk in town gave him vague starting directions. But at least it was a start, he hoped, in the right direction.
From the main intersection in town, he turned right, and then left and up a very narrow, winding road out of town. Large sections of the road seemed to have been washed away, so that he had to drive slowly not to break an axle in the potholes. A steady stream of people hiked along the road and then headed up various side paths, bearing wicker baskets piled with produce on their heads, or in cloth slings over their backs. At one point, the road turned sharply to cross a deep ravine. The bridge consisted of rotting planks and logs with no side rails. Ab got out and tested it with his feet. Near the middle, one complete plank was missing. He walked back to the car.
Two women, their slings full of vegetables, had watched him with some amusement. He pointed to the bridge and then at his car, and shrugged his shoulders sceptically. They nodded and laughed. Did they know if Pak Sani Sentosa had a house up here? They conferred a moment on this, then smiled and waved on ahead. Three, maybe five kilometers. Near where they lived. Could they have a ride? Ab looked at his little Suzuki. Packing into a small space wouldn’t faze them. He looked at the bridge. After he was across the bridge, he said. The car bumped slowly over the boards, and slumped precariously at the gap. Sweat was leaking around the rim of his cap and trickling down his back when the car reached dirt again. The ladies climbed into the back.
The road seemed to get much steeper after the bridge, and a series of switchbacks tilted the car up at ninety degrees and put him into four-wheel drive. It felt like ten kilometres before the ladies touched him on the shoulder and indicated that they wanted to get out. Pak Sani was over there, the next road left, one of the ladies said.
The next road left was a deeply rutted dirt road that switch—backed down into a ravine and up the other side. He passed through a small village, and asked at a shop about Pak Sani. Further on, just a little, he was told. Maybe a kilometre. After another kilometer of road which turned suddenly into sharp stones, he stopped beside a young boy tending some zebu cattle. Pak Sani? Not far. Maybe five or seven kilometers.
He was beginning to think that he should turn around and head back while he still could, when he came over a rise and saw, on the next hill, cutting through a heavily wooded area, a brick and plaster wall. The wall was a good ten feet high, with broken glass worked into the plaster all along the top. Above that, short iron poles bent outward, and four strands of barbed wire were strung along the length of the fence.
He pulled up to the black, wrought-iron gate. There seemed to be no one about, and the roadway beyond looked like simply more of the same going up over another hill and into another set of woods. Ab shook the gate and called greetings in Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese. There was a buzzer beside the gate, which he tried, but had no way of knowing whether or not it was working. Knowing how things worked here in general, he suspected it didn’t.
He climbed back into the car, and, after five minutes of persistent honking, saw a small dark man in a tattered T-shirt and shorts come running over the rise in the road from the inside. The man peered at Ab through the bars of the gate. Ab asked him if this was the house of Pak Sani.
“Pak Sani? Yah, yah.” He nodded and smiled. Ab proceeded to explain, in Bahasa Indonesia, who he was and what he wanted, but the little man just nodded, smiled, and repeated, “Pak Sani, yah.”
While he was a very agreeable person, it was quite clear that he did not speak Bahasa Indonesia. Eventually, with a considerable dose of gesticulations, Ab managed to convince him to open the gate and let him in. He drove through and up over the rise. There, set among the trees, was a sprawling, white plaster-walled house with an orange-clay tile roof. The yard immediately in front of the house was swept clean, and the garden of shrubs and flowers looked bright and well cared for. There were no cars that Ab could see, and the place appeared deserted. He took off his cap, set it on the passenger seat, and smoothed down his hair with his hand.
With a sinking feeling, he stepped on to the cool, terrazzo-floored porch and pressed the buzzer at the front door. The wind pleasantly brushed against his face; from where he was, he could look down over the entire valley. Off in the distance, he could make out Merbabu, and beyond that, Merapi. The bottom of the valley itself seemed to shimmer in a haze. From here, it was hard to imagine how very hot and how very crowded it was way down there. Nearer by, he could make out some temple ruins on a series of hills just below the peak on which the house stood.
The guard, in the meantime, had run back from the gate, and disappeared into a side door of the house. In a moment the front door opened.
Ab had expected the gate-guard to be opening the door from the inside. Instead, an ancient, white-haired lady in a bright, many-coloured silk batik dress stood there, smiling, motioning for him to enter. Her skin was smooth, almost translucent, the texture of polished jade, the colour of honey, and her hair, not a strand out of place, neatly back in a roll. “Good day,” she said in perfect English. “Or would you prefer that I speak in Dutch. One is never sure these days.”
“I…English is fine.” Ab was flustered as she waited for him to take his shoes off at the door. This was not at all what he had expected. Was this the villain’s mother?
She guided Ab into a large sitting room with fine, antique batiks hung on the wall, and rich, silk covered couches. She motioned for him to sit down. “Please, have a seat Mr…”
“Dr. Ab, Abner Dueck.” He turned to shake her hand. They touched hands and she returned her hand to her breast in the gesture of respect.
“I am Mrs. Sentosa,” she said. “But then I suppose you already know that, or you wouldn’t be here. If you will be seated, I shall order some tea.” She rang a little silver bell which had been resting on the ornately carved coffee table at Ab’s elbow. They waited in silence until the maid came and departed again.
Mrs. Sentosa’s face wrinkled into a toothless smile. “Dr. Ab, I am very pleased to meet you. I have heard my husband speak of you.”
Ab found himself, against his will, hypnotized, lapsing into pleasant tea-time talk. “Good things I hope?”
She laughed, a light, chuckling laugh. “Oh yes, very good.”
The maid came in with the tea and a tray of sweets. She poured them each a cup and disappeared. For a moment they sipped at the sweet, hot ginger tea.
“I hope you like ginger. At my age, I feel it clears my thinking.”
Ab could feel the hot spice lift up into his sinuses. “Yes, it does clear the head, doesn’t it?” They were silent, then he continued. “You speak English very well.”
“Thank you. I have heard that you speak Bahasa Indonesia very well also.”
“Would you prefer that I…”
“No, please.” She waved a frail hand. “I so seldom have the opportunity to practice my English.” She paused to muse a minute and then added, “These days.”
Ab wondered where she had learned her English, but was not sure if it was proper etiquette to ask directly. “Your husband, is he home?” he ventured at last.
She seemed momentarily lost in thought, rubbing her hand back and forth along the edge of the divan on which she was seated. The silk there was almost worn through. She must sit there often, thinking and remembering, Ab thought. Remembering what?
“Mr. Sentosa is right now in Bali,” she said dreamily. “I am sure that he would be pleased to talk with you if you should visit there.”
Ab felt his heart rise and sink at the same time. Bali? He didn’t have time for another trip. He unravelled one of the rice sweets, wrapped in a leaf. He realized that he was hungry and had not had any lunch. “Would it be possible for you to let me know how I can contact him there? It is a matter of some urgency that I talk with him in the next day or so.” He stuck the rice cake into his mouth.
“Of course,” she said. “But why don’t you eat with me first. Do you have time? The cook is already preparing. Then I shall give you everything you need.”
“Tell me.” He set down his tea glass. “It seems so isolated up here. So difficult to get here—the road was hardly passable. How do you manage?”
She laughed. “Oh, you must have come in the old back way. There’s a perfectly good road that comes out by the temples just below.”
He felt his ears get hot. Sitting there on a silk couch talking with a very old and obviously very civilised lady, he wondered suddenly if he had been too close to the real picture to see it. Had George just got caught in a skirmish between the old Communists, like Soesanto and Susilo, and the new economic masters, Suharto and Witono and their lackeys? Were Sani and his family, being ethnically Chinese, simply used as convenient scapegoats whenever necessary?
Ab wondered how much of this he could talk about with Sani’s wife. “Ready,” the cook said, sticking her head through the door.
“Tell me,” Ab said impulsively as they stood up, “do you have a collection of kris?”
She patted him on the arm and sighed. “We have a very good and very old collection of kris which we keep in our house in Bali.” They entered a formal dining room, with two place settings at one end of a long table. “We used to have them here,” she went on as she sat down, “but during the time when there were serious troubles in Java, it was not safe to keep them here.”
“Not safe?”
She looked directly at Ab, as if unsure how much of this knowledge to trust him with. “Some of the very old kris are things of great power. If they get into the wrong hands…” She raised her hands.
She ladled soup out for both of them.
“After 1966,” Ab said, playing with his soupspoon, “were you…how did you survive?” He was looking down into his soup.
“Look at me,” she said firmly. “What do you see?”
He set down his spoon. “I see a very lovely and dignified Javanese lady.”
She fixed a steely gaze on him, which reminded him suddenly of Nancy. He thought: it is a look that can seduce and kill all at the same time. And then banished the thought as she spoke.
“You see a very Chinese old lady, a very old Christian lady, a very Communist old lady, a very dangerous old lady. You see a lady to be shunned by friends because to be associated with her is to risk your life. You see a lady to be hunted by enemies she has never met and never wronged.” Her voice had risen and was trembling. Her hands were trembling, and she spread her fingers out on the table on either side of her plate. “Do you believe what I am telling you?”
Ab felt as if he were staring right deep inside of her, and as if, in turn, her gaze cut to his very heart. “I see a very dignified and beautiful and very wronged woman,” he said quietly, wondering if, once again, he was being blind-sided by his weaknesses around women.
She was rubbing the table on either side of her plate, firmly, persistently. “You see a lady who had to change her name, who had to shun her own grandchild in order to save her life.”
She was staring now toward the steaming rice on the table, but in reality at a space both far away and incredibly close.
“I’m very sorry,” he whispered.
Abruptly, she changed her mood, picked up her spoon, and began to eat. “Please,” she said, “eat. To allow the evils of the past to spoil the present is to give them a power they do not deserve.”
For the remainder of the meal, they ate silently. When they were finished, she stood up and became very business-like. From a desk, she took some paper and wrote a message, which she inserted into an envelope and handed to Ab. Then she took out another sheet of paper and very carefully wrote an address and a telephone number. “When you get back to Yogyakarta,” she said, placing a hand firmly on his arm, “go to the Garuda airlines office and ask for Jacobus. Give him this envelope. You will be leaving for Bali the day after tomorrow, first flight in the morning. Before you leave, telephone—you have a phone, yes? Good. You telephone this number.” She pointed to the phone number she had written. “Tell them that Heimun said to call, and that they should make arrangements for you.”
She guided him to the door, but stopped him just before they arrived, and held him firmly, with both hands, at arms length. “You be very careful. And the kris, do not play with them. They are not for foreigners.” Ab stooped to kiss her on the cheek, then, on impulse, totally improperly, pulled her against him and hugged her closely. She felt thin and frail against him. The image of his mother came suddenly into his mind, and he felt an upsurge of regret for having ignored her all these years. He wondered if she would welcome a strange Chinese man into her home the way this woman had welcomed him. It surprised and pleased him to think that yes, she very well might.
“I’ll tell the guard to show you out the proper way,” she said as he opened the door, and then shouted instructions to the little man who had first let Ab into the premises. He smiled and motioned that Ab should take the drive around the house. Ab looked over his shoulder as he guided the car around the corner. Mrs. Sentosa stood alone in the doorway. He took a deep breath and followed the guard, who was running and gesticulating ahead of the car. He drove between the house and a barn.
A small, sturdy brown horse was tethered outside, grazing. It had a peculiar snake-shaped white blaze down its nose. As Ab drove by the door of the barn, a man stepped out, saw the car, and then quickly returned to the shadows. But not before Ab had seen him. It was Waluyo.