The Rainbow Troops (25 page)

WE
WERE hating Samson's hard-headed behavior. At the moment, we were having a big debate under the
filicium
tree. Nine against one. He foolishly fought for his position. He didn't want to lose.

The topic of the debate was actually quite simple. The night before, we had watched the film
Pulau Putri
, or
Princess Island
, which starred a legendary Indonesian comedian, S. Bagyo. In the film, S. Bagyo was stranded on a deserted island, inhabited only by women. The kingdom—or rather 'queendom'—of the island was being terrorized by an ugly witch. The witch's cackle was enough to make the movie watchers wet themselves.

Twice a month, we watched movies after
magrib
prayer at a barn-like building that was usually used as the PN coolies' meeting place. The movies were provided by PN especially for children of non-PN staff. It was also known as the blue collar cinema. The cinema was of a low-end drive-in quality, and it had two TOA speakers to project the sound. Because the floor wasn't designed like that of a normal movie theater, the viewers farthest back were not able to see. The ten of us, including Flo, filled the bench at the very back of the theater.

The PN staff children watched at a different place called Wisma Ria (House of Fun). Movies were played there every week. The moviegoers were picked up by a blue bus. And of course there was a strong warning outside of the theater: "No Entry for those without the Right."

We had no idea that the beautifully titled film—Princess Island—was actually a horror movie. From the title, we thought we'd see a few beautiful princesses smearing themselves with suntan lotion, running around and giggling on the beach.

"Cool," said a glowing Kucai.

But we were way off. Just a few moments after the film started, a witch arrived with her sinister cackle. Ghouls joined in the cackling. S. Bagyo ran for his life.

Sitting in the back, I could see the coolies' children shrinking into their seats every time the evil flying witch appeared. The girls cried. A few children who weren't strong enough to watch ran for their lives from the ramshackle theater and never came back.

From my seat I saw Samson to the left of me not watching at all. He hid under Syahdan's armpit. Syahdan hid under A Kiong's armpit. A Kiong under Kucai's armpit, and Kucai hid under my armpit. Trapani and I hid under Mahar's armpit. Trapani cried like a baby for his mother every time the witch destroyed a village. Mahar kept his head down like someone praying.

The only ones still sitting tall were Sahara, Flo, and Harun. They laughed loudly at the sight of S. Bagyo running like crazy from the witch. When he succeeded in getting away, they clapped their hands.

On the way home from the theater, we held hands. When we passed the graveyard, Trapani's hand was cold as ice.

The next day during our afternoon rest period, Samson insisted that the witch was being chased by S. Bagyo. Why he thought this, we had no idea. We all protested in unison because that was the opposite of what actually happened.

"Impossible," argued Kucai.

"I saw you shaking under Syahdan," A Kiong disputed.

Samson tried to defend himself. "Did you watch? As far as I know, Sahara, Flo, and Harun were the only ones not hiding."

Sahara glared at us with disgust, "All boys are cowards!" she said sassily.

Harun nodded in full support of Sahara's opinion.

"Just because we only looked up every once in a while doesn't mean we don't know how the story went," Kucai said, cornering Samson, but staring at me.

Hearing the words
looked up every once in a while
, Sahara became even more disgusted.

"Boys are pathetic!"

Harun gave her a high five. Samson responded to Kucai. "Ah! What do you know anyways? Go fix your hair or something."

We giggled. Kucai took out a comb.

We were in a war of words, but Trapani stood in a daze. Lately, Trapani was quieter than usual and often in a stupor.

Samson stuck to his truly wrong opinion. I knew why. He was ashamed to admit he had hid under Syahdan's armpit. He didn't want his macho image to be destroyed just because he had been scared watching a film.

The battle grew more heated. We needed a mediator with broad knowledge and smart words to end this useless debate. unfortunately, the smart one, the one who always provide the solution for us, hadn't been seen for two days. There was no news of him.

The next day, Lintang was absent once again, and we started to get worried. In all our years together, he had never been absent. It was rainy season, not time for copra work. It wasn't clam-harvesting season either. The rubber trees had been tapped last month. Something serious must have happened to make him miss school, but his house was too far to send for news.

Thursday came, and Lintang had not shown up for four days. The class felt empty without him.

I stared longingly at the empty seat beside me. I gazed sadly at the
filicium's
branch where he had perched to watch rainbows. He wasn't there. We felt lost and fretful. While we were studying, I stared at the first place Academic Challenge trophy, the greatest achievement the poor coastal boy gave to our school. I missed Lintang.

Class wasn't the same without Lintang—it seemed incomplete, it had lost its charm, and our drive was gone. Everyone became quieter. We missed his great answers, we missed his intelligent words, and we missed watching him debate the teacher. We even missed his messy hair, his lousy sandals, and his rattan sack.

Bu Mus tried to find out what was going on and gave a message to those who might have passed by Lintang's coastal village. I fretfully imagined all of the terrible possibilities. We waited until the end of the week.

The following Monday morning, we hoped to see Lintang with his bright smile and his latest surprising story. But he didn't come. While we were talking about going to visit him, a thin shoeless man came. He was from Lintang's village. He handed Bu Mus a letter.

Bu Mus read the letter. We had been through a lot of sad times with Bu Mus over the years. Endless trials fell upon her, but this was very first time we saw her cry. Her tears fell on the letter. We were very taken aback. I went up to her, and she gave me the letter to read. It was short.

Ibunda Guru,

My father has passed away. I will come to the school tomorrow to say my goodbyes.

Your student, Lintang

As the oldest child of an impoverished fisherman's family, Lintang now had to support his mother, many siblings, grandparents and unemployed uncles. He had no chance whatsoever to continue his education because he had to take on the obligation of making a living to support at least 14 people. That large burden had to be shouldered by a boy that young because his thin, kind-faced father had died. The pine tree man had fallen. His body was buried along with the great hopes of his only son and, sadly, his death also killed his son's great aspirations. These two extraordinary people from the coast were buried in irony.

We would say our goodbyes under the
filicium
tree. I was dying inside. My heart felt empty. The farewell had not yet begun and Trapani was already sobbing. Sahara and Harun sat holding hands, weeping. Samson, Mahar, Kucai, and Syahdan repeatedly washed their faces 'for praying,' they insisted, but it was really to get rid of their tears. A Kiong was in a daze and wanted to be left alone. Flo, who had just met Lintang and was not easily moved, was now melancholy. She stared at the ground with glassy eyes. It was the first time I had seen her sad.

We had to let go of a natural genius. He was the highest ranked member of Laskar Pelangi, a gentleman among us. He had given us the highest achievement we ever received and he was the hero that raised the dignity of our poor school. I remembered the glints of his intelligence from the first time he held the wrong kind of pencil on the very first day of school. I remembered the clarity of his thoughts, the brightness of his heart. He was my Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, and Andre Ampere.

Lintang was like a lighthouse. He was like a guiding star for sailors lost at sea. He emitted such great energy, joy, and vitality. Near him we were bathed in light, which clarified our thoughts, ignited our curiosity, and opened the way to understanding. From him we learned humility, determination, and friendship. When he pressed the button on the mahogany table at the Academic Challenge, that was the moment he boosted our selfconfidence, making us dare to dream, to fight our destiny and have aspirations. Lintang was like a star that exploded at dawn while people were still in bed. The light of the explosion lit up the sky without anyone knowing, without anyone caring. Like a shooting star, Lintang explored the planets of knowledge alone, then faded away, and today went out. Just three months before the final examinations. I felt incredibly sad because a super genius boy, a native of the richest island in Indonesia, had to leave school because of poverty. Today, a little mouse died of starvation in a barn full of rice. We had laughed, cried and danced around bonfires together. We never bored of his fresh and rebellious ideas. He hadn't left yet and I already missed his funny eyes, his innocent smile, and every intelligent word that came out of his mouth. I missed the unique world of endless intelligence in his head and his neverending humility. Lintang's story was a classic story in this country about smart children from impoverished, ignored families. The day the pine tree man had dreaded all those years ago had finally come. Today, I lost my deskmate of years. This loss was all the more painful because the loss of Lintang's potential was the greatest waste ever. This wasn't fair. Lintang, who had fought to the death for education, now had to leave. When our school was going to be destroyed, he held on to raise our spirits. I hated those who lived in the lap of luxury at the Estate. I hated myself and my classmates for not being able to help Lintang because our families were too poor. Our parents had to fight every day to try and make a living.

When Lintang came, his face was empty. I knew his heart was crying, desperately fighting the feeling of not wanting to say goodbye. The school, his friends, his books and lessons meant the world to him. They were his life and love.

It was dead silent. The birds that usually played in the
filicium
were silent, too. Everyone's hearts were drowning in tears at having the pearl of knowledge taken away from school. We hugged Lintang as a symbol of saying goodbye. His tears fell slowly, his hug tight like he didn't want to let go. His body shook when his noble soul was forced to leave the school.

I couldn't bear to see his miserable face, and no matter how hard I tried, my sadness won and emptied my eyes of their tears. It turned into a silent, tearless cry; it was so painful. I couldn't even utter a fragment of a word to say goodbye. We were all sobbing. Bu Mus' lips quivered holding back tears, her eyes red. But not one tear fell from her eyes. She wanted us to be strong. My chest ached seeing her like that. That afternoon was the saddest afternoon in the history of Belitong, from the Linggang River delta to Pangkalan Punai Beach, from Mirang Bridge to Tanjong Pandan. It was the saddest afternoon in the world.

At that moment, I realized that we all were actually the brothers of light and fire. We pledged to be faithful through strikes of lightning and mountain-moving tornadoes. Our pledge was written in the seven layers of the sky, witnessed by the mysterious dragons that ruled the South China Sea. Together, we were the most beautiful rainbow ever created by God.

A
MIDDLEAGED woman walking with a man named Dahrodji approached me. Trouble—there must be some kind of trouble again!

"If you're going to get angry, Ma'am, pour it out on this messy man," Dahrodji snapped.

The woman, who was quite attractive for her age, examined me closely. She whined for a moment. Her makeup, the strange way she said her R's and G's, her raised eyebrows, and the way she was looking at me gave me the impression that she had spent quite a long time overseas, and she had had enough of this country's inefficiencies.

She must have had a serious problem. Yes, it was serious. The tax refund letter for a painting she got overseas, sent by the customs office, had arrived in her hands late because I had erred in sorting the letter. It should have gone in the Ciawi box, but I accidently threw it in the Gunung Sindur box. Human error.

I had already messed up three times this week. I blamed it on being overloaded with work. Dahrodji, the head of expeditions, didn't want to hear about my problems. I couldn't handle the explosion of letters and the extensions of postal codes I was unfamiliar with.

I looked hopelessly at the three letter sacks marked
Union Postale Universele
while the still attractive woman was complaining. At that moment, I hated my mess of a life. One of the signs of an unsuccessful life is being yelled at by a customer before you've even had a chance to eat breakfast. However, having worked at the post office for so long, I was skilled in temporarily turning my ears off. Therefore, that lady shaking before me looked like Greta Garbo in a silent black and white movie.

"Hoe vaak moet ik je dat nog zeggen!
" She dumped her words on me and turned to leave. I was right, wasn't I? Her sentence meant
I have complained many times and you are still making mistakes
!

I returned to absentmindedly staring at the three letter sacks.

Even though I was feeling down from being yelled at, I still had to sort all the letters, because at 8:00 in the morning, the first shift of postmen had to take the special delivery letters. I was a postal worker, a sorter, in a time-sensitive dispatch department, on the morning shift, that started working at
subuh
—at dawn.

I was in a deep funk over the irony of my life. My plan A from all those years ago to become a writer and a badminton player had disappeared, stuck in the bottom of the letter sorting box. Even my plan B to be a writer of a badminton book had failed, although deep in my heart I still held close the sweet endorsements from the former badminton champions and the Minister of Education.

The book had already been written. It was at least 34 chapters and more than 100,000 words. To write it, I had conducted intensive research on the badminton federation. I even studied pop culture and trends of personal development to enrich my book. Even its title was impressive:
Badminton and Making Friends
. Indonesia had never seen a book like that. unfortunately, based on commercial considerations, there were no publishers willing to print the book. They were more interested in pornographic literary books full of words like condom, masturbation, and orgasm because those kinds of books were more profitable. The foolish publishers had forgotten the principle of
mens sana in corpore sano.

Look at me now, nothing more than a man who tries to reassure himself every day. And no matter how hard I tried to reassure myself, to make myself strong, I was almost drowning under the stack of failures piling up on top of me. Long ago, Bu Mus and Pak Harfan had taught me not to back down from any difficulty, but at this point in my life, destiny had created a technical knockout—a TKO.

Then, on one especially frustrating morning, under the pouring rain, I bundled together with plastic twine four master copies of my writing along with six floppy disks containing the files. I tied a half-kilogram tin paperweight, the kind usually tied to the postal sacks, to the bundle with an unbreakable knot. I ran toward Sempur Bridge, Bogor, West Java. Then, compelled by my broken heart, I closed my eyes tightly and threw my human interest genre plan B badminton book into the depths of the Ciliwung River. If it didn't get stuck in the river bottom stones, it would float along in flood waters headed toward Jakarta, drifting away with my dreams.

Whenever faced with uncertainty, I often ran to the most beautiful place I knew—the one I had discovered in childhood when an enormous love attacked me for the very first time. The place is a beautiful village with flower gardens surrounded by grey stone fences and trails in the woods shaded by plum tree branches. Oh, Edensor, the nirvana of my imagination.

That village is the cure for my broken heart. The more difficult my life became, the more frequently I re-read Herriot's book. I often visited Edensor in my dreams. When I woke up, my chest ached because I was reminded of A Ling, and life became more unbearable.

One day, when I came home from sorting letters, I sat down alone under a random tree at the edge of Sempur Field near my boarding house, faced the Ciliwung's lapping water, and protested to God. "Allah, didn't I ask You long ago to make me anything besides a postal worker if I failed to be a writer and badminton player? And not to give me a job that starts at
subuh
?"

Apparently, God had answered my prayer with exactly the opposite of what I asked for. That's the way God works. If we consider prayers and their answers as variables in God's linear function, then they are no different than the rainy season. The most we can do is make a prediction. Let me tell you something, my friend, God's actions are strange. He, God, doesn't comply with postulates or theorems.

So here I am now. In a conservative assumption, officials from the government statistics bureau would describe people like me as
those who work in the public service sector, consume less than 2,100 calories a day, and are near the poverty line.

Poverty, my lifelong friend. We had been close buddies ever since I was in my mother's womb. I was a poor baby, a poor child, a poor teenager, and now a poor adult. I was as accustomed to poverty as I was to taking my daily bath.

Living life alone, ignored, working ten-hour days, and falling within the 20-30 year old age range was my demographic. But my psychographic identity was: a lonely man desperately starving for attention. Marketing people would consider me a part of their target audience for hair oil products, height pills, hair-loss preventing products, girdles, stench-preventing deodorant, or any product related to boosting selfconfidence. The world didn't care about me and the country only knew me through my nine-digit employment number at the state-owned postal company: 967275337.

There was no joy in the sorting job. This job had not been included in professions displayed by PN School students at the Carnival. Every day, I was swamped with dozens of postal sacks from nations whose names I didn't even know. Sweat mixed with dust. The future for me was retiring poor, regularly visiting the scant clinic provided by government insurance, and then miserably dying a nobody.

After work, I was too exhausted to socialize, and perhaps because of the frustrations of broken dreams, I began to suffer from a sickness typical of those under stress: insomnia. Every night, half-asleep, halfawake, I was hypnotized by
wayang
stories on the radio. After the
wayang
story finished, I still couldn't sleep, and I started to enjoy listening to the radio static until morning. The disease of insanity slowly but surely started to descend upon me.

After the tormenting night, very early in the morning, while the people of Bogor were still snuggled in their warm beds, I had to leave for work. I crawled out of my bed in the cold and wobbled on my bicycle toward the post office along the Ciliwung River, still covered in thick morning fog, to sort thousands of letters. When the people of Bogor woke up, yawned, and snuggled back into their beds like caterpillars or shook open their morning papers in front of their hot tea and toast, I was enjoying breakfast too—the complaints of the Dutch madam.

That was my life now. My future was unclear and I no longer had any notion of what it would hold. Everything was uncertain. The one thing I knew for sure was that I was a failure. I cursed myself every time I had to stand in the post office's yard on the 17
^th
day of every month for the Indonesian Government Employee Corps flag ceremony.

If there was still something that could be called exciting in my life, it would be Eryn Resvaldya Novella. She was smart, religious, beautiful, and goodhearted. She was 21 years old. I called her
awardee
because she had just been given an award as one of the most accomplished students at one of the most prestigious universities in Indonesia, where she studied psychology. Eryn's father was my brother, who had been laid off by PN. I took over the responsibility of financing her schooling.

The exhaustion from working all day would suddenly disappear whenever I saw Eryn and her enthusiasm for learning, her positive attitude, and the intelligence reflected in her eyes. I was willing to work overtime and extra odd jobs as an English translator, typist, or part-time photocopier. I would sacrifice anything, including pawning my tape recorder, my most valuable possession, to finance Eryn's studies.

My bitter experience with Lintang was traumatic. Sometimes I worked very hard for Eryn to compensate my guilt for not being able to help Lintang. Eryn had brought out the feeling that no matter how miserable or failed my life was, I was still a bit useful to the world. There was nothing in my life I could be proud of at the moment, but I wanted to dedicate my life to something important. Eryn was the only meaningful thing in my life.

Eryn was in a state of panic. Her thesis proposal had been declined over and over again by her advisor. It had already happened dozens of times. She had actually finished her class requirements last semester, and now she had spent the past five months looking for a good topic for her thesis. Along with the latest rejection letters, her advisor attached 15 pages of thesis titles already written by other students. I took a look at the titles. It was true, almost 30 students had already written about personality disorders, while dozens of others had written about work satisfaction, Down syndrome, and child counseling. Countless students had written about autism.

Eryn's advisor demanded that she write something new, different, something that would make a scientific breakthrough because she was an award-winning-student. I agreed.

In fact, Eryn already had a concept of what that unique topic would be. She enthusiastically told me she would like to research a psychological condition in which an individual is totally dependent on another individual to the point where the dependent individual cannot do anything without the one they depend on. She told her advisor, and he approved.

The problem was, that sort of condition was a rarity. There were some existing cases of dependency, but their intensity was low, so no special treatment was needed for them. Eryn was looking for an acute dependence. In searching for her case, she corresponded with psychologists, psychiatrists, university professors, mental health institutions, and mental hospital doctors all over Indonesia. Eryn had been searching for a case for almost four months and hadn't found one. She was getting frustrated. But, today, good fortune was on Eryn's side. She received a letter from the director of Sungai Liat Mental Hospital in Bangka saying they had a case like the one Eryn was looking for.

We were so excited because Bangka Island is Belitong Island's neighbor. The two islands are in the same province, Bangka-Belitong. So when Eryn asked me to accompany her, I didn't mind taking leave from my letter-sorting job. We also planned on visiting our hometown in Belitong.

Sungai Liat Mental Hospital was very old. It had been built by the Dutch, and the people of Belitong called it
Zaal Batu
, or
stone room
, because the walls in the examination rooms were made of stone. Because there were no mental hospitals in Belitong—which still holds true to this very day—people there who suffered from serious mental illnesses were often sent across the sea to the mental hospital in Bangka. For that reason, the name
Zaal Batu
always meant something painful, desperate and dark for people in Belitong.

When we arrived, the azan was ringing out from the mosques around
Zaal Batu
. We entered the old white building supported by tall pillars.

The other scenery included steel doors with large locks, medicine rooms filled with short bottles, rolling examination tables, workers in white, and patients talking to themselves or staring strangely. It smelled like a hospital.

A male nurse approached us. He knew we were waiting, so he opened the door. We entered a long hallway with patient rooms lining each side. I stared at the faces of the patients behind the steel bars. The steel bars transformed into dozens of human legs, and between the gaps in the legs, I could see a pockmarked, familiar face. The sadness of the mental hospital opened a dark place in my head— the place where Bodenga hid.

The nurse took us to Professor Yan's office, the director of the hospital who had written Eryn the letter. The professor had a calm face, and his fingers were moving over the beads of a
tasbih
—prayer beads—in his hand.

"This case is one of an extreme mother complex," he said with a heavy voice.

"The young man cannot be torn away from his mother even for a minute. If he wakes up and doesn't see her, he screams hysterically. The chronic dependency has all but made the mother insane. They've been here together for almost six years."

It was devastating to hear that.

Professor Yan led us to a small isolated room. I was afraid to imagine what I would see. Was I strong enough to witness such immense suffering? Would it be best if I just waited outside? But it was too late—Professor Yan had already opened the door.

We stood in the doorway. The room was big and dead silent. The only light came from a low lamp that failed to project light up to the high ceiling. There was no furniture in the room except a long, skinny bench off in the corner.