” he replied, laughing and taking both her hands in his and squeezing them with affection.
“How is this possible, ‘Min?” Wanti asked, not entirely convinced that it was true, her doubts giving way to laughter at the wonderful surprise.
“The League, Wanti, the League,” he answered hurriedly, his excitement bubbling.
Wanti’s reaction was mixed. Her excitement at Sutarmin’s good fortune was tempered by the mention of the Communist body responsible for his exuberance. Her mood changed quickly as the ramifications of what might now follow dawned on her and she sat, hands still clasped in his, looking into his eyes.
“I am happy for you ‘Min,” she said but in her heart she had doubts.
“Wanti ,” he whispered, “listen to me. Join the League now, and you too could have the same chance next year. With your excellent grades you would certainly be selected. ”
She slowly extracted her hands from his grasp, so as not to offend, then sat smiling at her naive friend. It was not necessary for her to respond, as both knew that what he suggested would be impossible. Her brother’s anti-League activities in the Student National Front would exclude her from selection. She would have little chance unless Bambang ceased his damaging activities on campus and even then it would be highly unlikely that the League would be that forgiving. Wanti smiled again and turned to see if her friends were still watching them together.
“I must go now, ‘Min .” She tried to sound bright. “I am really very happy for you. ” Smiling, she rose and waited for him to leave before returning to her girl friends, all of whom were now giggling together, anxious to discover what had taken place between the couple in private conversation. To their dismay she simply refused to be baited, electing to smile and leave the rest to their vivid adolescent imaginations.
That evening she had discussed Sutarmin’s scholarship with Bambang without mentioning that he had encouraged her to consider joining the League. She did not sleep that night and,unknown to her, neither did Bambang. Both deep in thought, their eyes wide awake as they considered their futures, imagining ‘what if? ’ and the extrapolations of these possibilities and their nebulous consequences.
When morning came neither spoke again of Sutarmin’s scholarship. Both realized the doors were permanently closed to them and it would be best to resign themselves to the fact that neither would ever see the inside of the famous university in Jogjakarta, the object of many a student’s dreams. Or at least, in their case, certainly not as undergraduates. Neither should have had such grand designs, they knew. They were farmers’ children and should therefore contain their ambitions. These serious yet despairing thoughts passed sluggishly through Wanti’s mind as she and her group finally arrived at the Sekolah Menengah Atas , her high school.
The red dust was their only welcome as they pushed their bicycles into the grounds. There were no gates. There was nothing to steal here. The class rooms were inadequate and the demand for learning was so great that classes were organized on a shift basis so that two full sessions could be run each day. Unfortunately, the same poorly paid teachers were obliged to cover both the morning and the afternoon classes.
Bambang had mixed emotions when the reports first spread through the school. He, like many of his contemporaries had become instantly excited while many of the other students were just a little frightened and confused. They had gathered together to listen to the Voice of America on the short-wave band, quite in violation of the government’s ruling regarding foreign broadcasts, when news broke internationally for the first time.
Often the youngsters would use the village head’s old cabinet set to listen to the overseas broadcasts. Its valves were always running hot, threatening to destroy the entire apparatus. Foreign pop music was just not available anywhere at that time and the boys (girls were banned from participating as they could never keep a secret) prided themselves on being able to recite the words to such fabulous songs as the Beatles A Hard Day’s Night. They all, without exception, adored the wonderful music. Life was dull in the village and these clandestine gatherings added untold excitement to their young lives. The lurah would leave the boys alone in the care of his son Sutarmin, as he disliked the strange sounds and could not understand what the young men saw in the racket which blasted from his Grundig with its thirty centimetre speakers.
The old Bedford truck and this radio were the prized possessions of the village head — even he couldn’t remember how both these antiquated items originally turned up in their village. Not that it really mattered. These items were his, a warisan, left to him by his father and no one in the kampung questioned their origins nor their use. The villagers would always know when the headman was returning from an outing as, during the dry season clouds of red volcanic dust would trail behind his noisy truck, distinguishing it from the government machines of Soviet manufacture.
When the old man drove down the four kilometres to the sealed highway he would load the truck with children, their parents, and their produce, and a large number of caged chickens for sale at the roadside markets. He was a good man. A simple man. But he was not a Communist.
There was a small foot track from their kampung which cut the distance by half to the main road and the outside world. The children took this path when walking as all they had to do was step carefully along the hardened tops of the mud-caked walls separating the paddy fields and, within the hour, they could reach the small market. When the heat was intense, just before the storms which heralded the beginning of the ‘Wet’, the old man would stop and load the school children, some with their bicycles, up into the remaining space after his trip into town. He knew they would be near to exhaustion, hot and in despair climbing the last few hundred metres over the small knoll and down to their hidden corner of the world. He loved all of the village children and certainly didn’t object to their using his wireless.
On this day, as he brought the Bedford to a halt he could see a large number of them, more than usual, crowded outside his hut. Immediately concerned, he approached and heard the intermittent foreign voice fluctuating across the air waves. The radio squawked sending out a signal piercing the young listeners’ ears.
They sat silently trying to comprehend the words as the broadcast continued. Only Bambang and Sutarmin, due to their constant use of the radio, were capable of understanding the general gist of the commentator’s message. One of their group, frustrated with not understanding the broadcast reached across and moved the large tuning dial throwing the program into another frequency, which happened to be broadcasting music, the oscillating sound waves providing a much distorted Jerry Lee Lewis singing Shake, Baby Shake.
The smaller children laughed. Bambang whacked the errant member and quickly re-established the correct frequency. They all sat huddled together, transfixed, as Sutarmin interpreted what he understood from the foreign broadcast. And long after the news was over they continued to sit there in silence, dumbfounded, as Bambang, reality slowly sinking in, glared angrily at his close friend.
The report they had just heard was not specific with detail but the message was very clear. The Indonesian Communist Party had made its move. They were taking over the country’s leadership.
Bambang, unlike his sister Wanti, was regularly involved in political rallies so he was used to political disturbances. Was it not correct for students to do so, to lead the uninformed village people through to better lives, to attempt to achieve a standard of living that was all but an impossible dream to his nenek mojang, his forefathers, under colonial rule?
Ah, the Dutch! Bambang would sit for hours listening to his parents rhetoric recounting the Revolusi . Heroic tales of untrained soldiers armed only with bamboo spears fighting the Dutch Army stabbed his heart until he, in chorus with the other children would cry out in unison ‘Merdeka !’ ‘Freedom!’ each time the story gave an opportunity for their participation. Their dislike of the Dutch turned quickly to hate as each tale they heard depicted the horrors and cruelty of the War of Independence, which raged from 1945 until early 1949, and there would be tears on the cheeks of all when they listened to the sad