Because the sound of the vacuum cleaner would surely disturb her father’s sleep, Lintang decided to put off cleaning the floors of the apartment. Instead, she concentrated on straightening the books on the shelf. After a half hour doing this, she then moved to her father’s desk in his bedroom, the only territory that was in relatively good order. Apparently, during this time of recovery, her father had been unable to do much work. She pulled out the rolling office chair and sat down. Her eyes fell on a manuscript, one that her father had been working on for some time now, apparently with the view of having it published one day as a book. On the first page of the manuscript was its working title: “Testimony.” She turned the first page to scan the table of contents. Chapter headings denoted that the manuscript contained life histories of people from various regions of Indonesia who had been hunted down by the military in the period 1965–1968. Subchapters were devoted to the fate of their families, their children, and the parents of the targets who were hunted down.
Lintang glanced at her father who was breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling like that of a baby. Near the desk were several large wooden chests apparently serving as file cabinets for her father’s work. Opening the lid of one of the chests, she saw that it contained clippings from newspapers and magazines, as well as scholarly books by Western political analysts with various views and theories about the September 30 Movement — whether the Indonesian Communist Party had been behind the attempted coup or whether the alleged coup had been the result of fractures in the military that pitted leftist officers against the military elite. Based on her research into materials available at the Beaubourg library, Lintang could see that her father’s collection was fairly comprehensive. It was also in neat order.
Closing the lid of the chest, Lintang’s eyes moved to the next one. When she opened the cover, the sight of its contents made her heart beat faster. The letters inside were her father’s personal domain, which could very well be out of bounds for her. She recalled a letter she’d come across years before, when she was thirteen years old. The letter was from Surti Anandari, the wife of Hananto Prawiro, her father’s good friend. Lintang shivered to remember that night. The letter had led to an explosive argument between her parents, and that same night her father had left the family’s apartment.
The letters in the second chest, it seems, were there because they related to her father’s work. Lintang went through the stack, careful not to disturb their order. One that was dated August 1968 was from her uncle Aji, her father’s younger brother. She perused its contents. In the letter Aji informed her father that his friend, Hananto Prawiro, had been arrested and that no one knew where he had been taken. He also mentioned that during the time Hananto was on the run, his wife Surti and their children, Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam, had been detained twice, first for a time at the detention center on Jalan Guntur and later, for a longer period, at the one on Budi Kemuliaan. The intelligence agents knew that it was Hananto who was supposed to have gone to Santiago. Why then, they asked, had Dimas Suryo had gone instead?
Lintang mused. If it had been Hananto and not her father who had gone to Santiago, her father would never have met her mother and she would not exist.
Lintang continued going through the stack of letters until she came to another one from her uncle Aji, but this was one that time had not served well. So faded its ink and so fragile the paper, her father had placed it in a protective plastic sleeve. In sections of the letter the ink had faded so much she found it almost impossible to decipher. It was written in “1968,” but she couldn’t read the month or date.
… 1968
Dear Mas Dimas,
Now that we’ve moved to Jakarta, I finally can give you some detail on what happened in Solo. In Solo, I was much too paranoid to write at length about the hell that the city became after September 1965. Even now, three years after the tragedy, it seems like only yesterday the world was turned upside down. Imagine: three years later and we still live in fear! How did it all happen? How did our hometown come to be divided into two ever opposing camps — with one in support of the PKI and the other against the Party — when previous to that time differences in opinion were accepted and tolerated? I remember you telling me before you left for Santiago that the pro-PKI people had become ever more aggressive in their tactics and had begun to go after their opponents. Maybe that’s why, after September 30, the table turned. But what I witnessed wasn’t just a matter of anti-PKI people getting revenge for the past actions of PKI supporters. A concerted effort was made by the military to inflame the enmity of the one camp towards the other, so much so that the hunting down and slaughter of communists came to be seen as normal.
I remember in mid-October, two or three weeks after the events of September 30, military troops arriving at Balapan train station. They weren’t brought in just to tear down anti-military posters or to help clean up the town; they were brought in to stir people up and drive them to burn and destroy all Communist Party offices, symbols, and equipment. By this time
the PKI in Solo was completely paralyzed and powerless — at least that’s what was reported in the news. With them now so weak, I thought the madness would end and the situation would be brought under control. In fact, it was allowed to spin further out of control.
One day when I left the house to send a telegram, I heard that the military had embarked on a coordinated roundup of senior PKI officials who were said to be hiding in the Sambeng area of Sidorejo. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but I heard it from Om Kiasno.
Even after the Party leaders had been arrested, the hunt continued, but now they were bringing in anyone thought to be sympathetic to the communists: mothers, wives, and friends. That was what made me worried: thinking of Mother being hauled into the city square where people were being held. Fortunately, Om Kiasno had enough power and authority to prevent that from happening. It was only because of him that Mother and I weren’t touched, though we were interrogated several times.
Now in Jakarta, even though we feel we still need a pair of eyes on our backs, we can at least pass the days a bit more calmly. It’s not that Jakarta itself is any safer but, for us at least, there is now a distance between ourselves and the calamity that happened in Solo. For the time being, at least.
I hope you are well. As soon as I find more information about Surti and the children, I’ll send you a cable.
Your loving brother,
Aji Suryo
Lintang shivered to think of how awful it must have been to live through that period of time. It was lucky her two cousins, Uncle Aji’s children, hadn’t yet been born. Lintang then removed another letter from her uncle, this one relatively recent, having been written in 1994.
Jakarta, June 1994
Dear Mas Dimas,
I just watched a news program on television about an incident that’s as shocking as it is disturbing. Last month the Indonesian government banned two news magazines,
Tempo
and
Editor
, and a tabloid newspaper
Detik
— which, quite naturally, angered the students and political activists, who took to the streets and staged a demonstration outside the Department of Information building on Merdeka Barat, which is only a few hundred meters away from the presidential palace. Rendra was there, reading his poetry. The crowd held aloft banners protesting the ban. The military came and victims fell. They arrested Rendra (but later let him go) and beat the painter Semsar Siahaan so bad they broke the bones in his legs.