Grazing The Long Acre (5 page)

“May I speak?”

The ogres all stared at me. “He’s the one with no family,” murmured someone censoriously. I pointed out that he didn’t have a family, as such, either.

“But I never had one. If I’d had one and I’d seen them die, I’d have done the decent thing.”

“Hush, hush. Don’t upset him.”

When they weren’t bent on murderous squabbles, they generally had very gentle manners. It comes of everyone being armed to the teeth.

I could not tackle the question of altitude, it would just sound like magic. But I could try to make one simple point.

“Listen. Durjana says that the drugs—”

“He knows nothing about those drugs!”

“Of course not. I never said he did. But it is nonsense to say that Koperasi drugs would ‘cure anything’ and that the Aneh died because of their ‘bad magic’. Diseases have nothing to do with magic. Our own culture tells us that.”

They all frowned at me dubiously.

“You see diseases come from—Well, all diseases are really like the worms you get in your guts. They are…” I stumbled, at a loss.

“Parasites,” murmured Derveet.

“Yes, parasites. Very small parasites, too small to be seen. They come from, from….How should I say ‘dari diluar dunia,’ from outside the world?”

“From outer space?” Derveet suggested, with a grin.

“Yes, from outer space.”

The bandits nodded. Our people have unexpected scraps of knowledge, on a folklore level.

“They are very clever, like all parasites. Now all drugs, our own and the Koperasi kind, are the same. They help the body fight the cunning worm-things. But they only help, it is the body itself that either wins or loses. If the body is not strong and healthy, no drug will be any use in the end. It will only make things worse—”

“There! I told you! It was the Aneh’s fault!” Durjana had been following my words intently, moving his lips with mine to aid concentration. Now he bounced in his seat.

“No, no! The drugs were no good to them, because they were not strong enough. What they needed was better food, clean water—“

“Exactly!,” cried the bandit, slapping the table in delight. “Itu sudah! That’s exactly what I already said!”

“Oh yes.”

“It’s true!”

“It was the stupid Aneh’s own fault they died.”

“This educated person says so.”

Derveet had put her arms on the tabletop and buried her face in her arms. I stared at her through the bandits’ mindless crowing. I thought she had broken down in tears, so much weight seemed to be resting on her thin bowed shoulders. But of course she was only laughing.

I could not sleep. Derveet’s quarrel with the foolish ogres nagged at me like a toothache. The stupid Aneh, the contraband trade….In the dark I left my rustling shack and went to sit on the end of the verandah, in my sleeping sarong and a shawl. It was cold. The centre of the sky was dark blue and starry, but all the lower reaches of the dome had faded, the East was showing a few lines of muddy orange. A screen creaked and a door opened in the wall of the boy brothel: a big, crop-headed Koperasi stood looking out. He was naked. He stood there, touching himself absently, presumably not aware of me in the shadow above. In my mind’s eye I pictured that rod of flesh, swollen and upstanding, entering me: thrusting in and out, hard and strong. I have tried not to have such thoughts about them, I know they are brutes. Why does power attract?

Before it was fully light the inn family appeared, the women, boys and children. A little man, about three years old, wandered about playing with sticks and stones while the girls worked. Occasionally, a wail arose from him, and one of the women lifted him absently to a tit. His grief didn’t concern them, it was something to be turned off like a dripping tap. No one ever treats a little girl like that. To a tiny infant they will say, with their eyes and gestures, while they comfort her: Why are you crying? You must explain. You must learn to understand. If it isn’t a good reason you had better stop, you have work to do in the world.

Then they complain that we are irresponsible.

The girls, including one midget who could barely toddle, were taking it in turns to jump on the pedal of the heavy rice pestle: laughing, silent, breathless with effort, full of self respect. The grown women talked a little with their eyes. Probably they had something to say about “the one with no family” because they often glanced in my direction without bothering to conceal it.

Tradition! When I was fourteen I should have died. My neighbours would have considered castration a barbarity. Once you’ve been chosen to be a man no one can take away that sacred “privilege.” But they would have given me a beautiful, sharp knife and stood over me, very kindly, while I did my duty. Suicide is the decent way, for a gentleman who outlives his use. I had escaped, but I could never leave the shame behind.

Buffalo was right. It was not a compliment, when my adopted family let me come up here alone. They were “sophisticated Timurese”, living close to our Rulers, but they would not have been so casual with their own beloved son and consort. The full male is a necessary luxury, cosseted and disregarded. An unneeded male is nothing. If I wanted worthless “letters of introduction” I might as well have them. Why not? It would keep me quiet.

This country must change, I thought. This country must change.

The man-child wailed and was lifted to suck. Annet, the Aneh delegate, had said of the great Debate,
“Typical Dapur government. Stick something in the people’s mouths and shut them up, give them whatever poisonous thing they’re crying for.”
That made me smile, grimly. Good. Let them give Timur what Timur cried for, with all its “poisons,” without thinking too much about the consequences.

Derveet came up the road and turned into the yard, picking her way between puddles and cabbage stalks. Perhaps she had been spending the night with Annet, in her much-superior lodging. Halfway across she stopped and looked back over the dizzying panorama, making its brief early morning appearance. Rivers of pale cloud streamed away down the dark folds of the hills, plains of Timur imaginary in the distance: underfoot, the sordid thatch roofs of Canditinggi. She spoke. She was reciting quietly, for herself, a
pantun
: the Jagdanan quatrain. The subject was a lady travelling. The chill of the wayside inn at dawn is strange to her, strange and cold as her own desire to leave her family. The inn mothers raised their eyes, compressed their lips and nodded. They showed Derveet respect, but a dismissive kind of respect—
failed woman
. One of them spoke aloud, roughly, in the dialect. I think she said: “Fine weather madam.”

“Ya, fine weather.”

She came up to the verandah and leaned beside me. Our eyes met in rueful understanding, two outcasts together. Taking a silver case from her sash, she offered me a cigarette. I declined, knowing what one of those green skinned demons would do to me on an empty stomach.

“Well, Endang of Timur, how is your observing?”

‘They won’t let me in,” I said. “I came here as an accredited representative of my family, but they refuse to let me in to the debates.”

Derveet stared at me. “Oh, is that what you meant? 1 thought you meant you were observing- well, men’s business.” She seemed about to laugh, at her own mistake or mine.

“You are amused?”

“I beg your pardon. But if they’d let you in, it would do you no good, you know. You must have heard Annet: she is not enjoying herself. We have no Dapur skills on the mountain. Surely you realise—they don’t speak aloud.”

For a moment I didn’t understand her. “Oh that’s ridiculous,” I exclaimed, when I realised. “You can’t express complex ideas in eye-talk. It’s just a household pidgin, with a clairvoyant element that’s been grossly exaggerated. Lots of educated women are giving it up altogether.”

“Ah,” said Derveet, studying the end of her cigarette. “Is that what they are saying in Timur now?”

I was embarrassed, not wanting to contradict her. I am sufficiently a Peninsulan not to wish to oppose a woman. But we had other things to discuss this morning, and we both knew it. She waited me out.

“You are very anxious,” I began at last, “to implicate the KKK in this problem you have with misapplied medicines. Why is that?”

“Because I don’t want Gusti Ketut Siamang to be prince of Timur.”

Her directness made me flinch, and the look that went with her words was even more direct. Of course she thought I was a spy: eavesdropping on her, probably reporting to someone in the organisation, some covert “observer” of greater significance than myself. KKK: Kipas, Kertas, Kain. It was an open secret in Timur that the Fan, the Paper, and the Cloth concealed the operations of the Siamang family.

And Derveet knew I was a supporter of Gusti Ketut.

“I am at this inn by accident,” I said. “I have done you no harm.”

She smiled. “My dear, I know. Hasn’t Buffalo always been with you?”

It was stupid of me to be hurt by that.

I faced her firmly. “Very well. The Siamangs are the KKK, and the KKK is ‘in the pay of the Koperasi.’ That’s what you are telling the bandits in a roundabout way, and of course it is true. If you were realistic you would see that they know everything perfectly well already. The trouble is, you don’t understand the nature of politics.”

She inclined her head gravely.

“Have you ever been to the east coast? Have you seen the great Domes, out at sea?”

“Yes, I have seen them.”

“That’s where our real Rulers are. Can you imagine what life is like out there, how different from our squalor? Don’t you see? We must make terms with the Koperasi, our own brutal renegades, in order to reach the Rulers beyond. It is our only hope. For a thousand years, we’ve been sinking into the dirt. What has the traditional Peninsula to offer, compared with what the Rulers have?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. Not yet. We are on a different road, and a hard one. The question is, will they let us live to travel it any further—”

I had heard the expression “different road” before, and it only irritated me. It referred to something fantastical and absurd, a mystic, wish-fulfilment view of traditional culture, like the notion of a political debate conducted in eye-signs.

“Your story is incredible, ” I told her. ” A gangster unloads possibly suspect antibiotics on your Aneh. Out of this you make a conspiracy involving the Siamangs, the Koperasi and our Rulers themselves. You have no proof. You can’t possibly believe that the Koperasi have some monstrous secret order to exterminate our cripples.”

I had exaggerated wildly to show her how stupid it was. I read in her eyes that she believed exactly what I had said. I felt almost afraid to be talking to her.

“Of course I can’t prove that,” she agreed coolly. “But if I keep talking about this one little transaction I
can
prove, perhaps I’ll make some of them think.”

“You are trying to disrupt the debate.”

She nodded, as if I was a child who had suddenly seen the point of a very simple lesson.

“It’s quite outrageously irresponsible—”

“Endang, it only starts with the Aneh. Because we are the weakest, I suppose.”

She sighed. “The power that you Timurese admire so much is the power that comes from having no natural enemies. It is nothing to be proud of. Our Rulers come from another world, another time. Whatever they once were, they are alien now: parasites. They might as well have arrived ‘from Outer Space….’ Some parasites are quite rational, they know when to stop. Others, you know, consume the host. Without seeming to care that they are also destroying themselves.”

“I am sorry,” I said stiffly, after an awkward silence, “that I muddied your argument last night. It was not intentional.”

Derveet laughed. “Don’t worry, Timurese. I know what my chances are. If I can get them to support the election of this puppet-family
unwillingly
, it will be a great leap forward, with which I ought to be satisfied. So I am told.”

The sun was fully up now, enriching the thin air. The women moved more vigorously. The inn’s big, spotted cat rolled in a patch of warm light.

“Who do
you
think should be prince of Timur?”

“Ida Bagus Sadia,” she answered promptly.

“Why is that?”

“Because I like him.”

Her arrogance was astounding. I couldn’t answer, so I got up to leave her, bowing and muttering, “Excuse me madam.”

“Endang,” she remarked gently, as I turned away. “Since you are so well educated, why was I helping you with your High Inggris last night? Quite simple words, I thought.”

I was surprised. The Rulers’ language is functional, for official things, but it is not natural to us. Low Inggris is the first, the mother tongue. Of course I would sometimes stumble. I told her so. “Our language is our own, and we should accept that. Theirs is not for us. It is wrong to learn too much of it: it doesn’t suit the Peninsulan mind—”

“You’re right of course,” said Derveet. “But who told you that?”

Even if her outrageous invention were true, it made no difference. If the Rulers really were secretly culling our deformed, then all the more need to reach them, to make ourselves
count
. Timur must have the Siamangs. We must be the first state to have true government of
cooperation
, whether people liked the sound of the word or not. It was bound to lead to great improvements. I told myself that I admired Derveet’s stance, but she was hopelessly out of date. I was angry with myself for arguing with her. I went out and bathed. My Koperasi of the dark before dawn came in to the lavatories to take a piss, dressed now in that heavy slab of uniform. He eyed me, thoughtfully, across the stained tiles of the bathroom. They know, they always know…I smiled.

He did what he did with me, and we left separately; it was safer that way.

I thought I had been perfectly discreet, but perhaps not. At night in the commonroom Buffalo came and sat next to me, put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me, with a comically sad and gentle face, like someone comforting a hurt child.

The ninth month passed, the tenth began, and the debate continued. Monsoon downpours invaded the regular cloud rain, and nothing was ever quite dry indoors or out. The box-like sedan chairs were for ladies, and only the Koperasi had HC transport. My shoes were ruined. The wash boy at the inn claimed he “couldn’t understand” trousers, and returned my clothes crumpled and mysteriously sticky. I refused to be forced into native dress. Each day I made my round of the delegations, the states of Timur and the regions of Jagddana (I did not approach Gamartha). Naturally only a conservative element had come to Canditinggi. Even my own part of federated Timur was represented by families I had scarcely heard of: secluded, reactionary inlanders. I spoke to countless wizened boys in picturesque livery, never the same boy twice at any reception desk. I got nothing from them but that infuriating smile of tradition—
for all your education, truth evades you….