OORR

ttthhheee aaadddvvveeennntttuuurrreeesss ooofff aaannn ooolllddd hhhiiippppppiiieee iiinnn IIInnndddooonnneeesssiiiaaa

by

Gary Crabb

Artwork by Yoes Rizal

Copyright 1994

2

c o n t e n t s

Part 1 – Bemo to Banyan ________________________________________________ 4

The Chubby White Man in the Flowered Shirt ___________________________________4

Emperor Wu and the Art of Tennis ____________________________________________9or What It Doesn’t Take to Win _____________________________________________________

The Details Are the First to Go_______________________________________________13or The Tidak Apa-apa Syndrome ____________________________________________________

Stompin’ at the Tropicana___________________________________________________15or The Complexities of Cultural Dilution______________________________________________

Blipsteria Hits Bandung ____________________________________________________18or Learning Not to Race Against the Pace _____________________________________________

The Third Phylum _________________________________________________________23or What Bandung Fred’s Pyjamas Mean to Me _________________________________________

Happy Hobby Time in the Tropics____________________________________________26or Dirty Little Pleasures ___________________________________________________________

The Art of Staring _________________________________________________________28or Sundanese Wave Theory_________________________________________________________

Mash Louse Terriers _______________________________________________________30or Fume-Sucking Karma___________________________________________________________

What’s Wrong? ___________________________________________________________33or What’s Right?_________________________________________________________________

The Jakarta Puff Up _______________________________________________________35or How Bandung Fred Almost Became a Mother________________________________________

The Future is a Banana _____________________________________________________38or Understanding Time in Indonesia _________________________________________________

Don’t Touch My Video _____________________________________________________41or The Heart of Darkness in a New Light______________________________________________

Sub-Virtual Vertigo ________________________________________________________44or No Matter Where You Are, There You Are__________________________________________

I’m Bored ________________________________________________________________47or Karoke Kreme Palace Confirms the Worst __________________________________________

Facts Are Stranger Than Truth ______________________________________________50or Undercover in Pointy Ears _______________________________________________________

A Productive Line of Work__________________________________________________52or Wild in the Streets _____________________________________________________________

The Last Jaipong __________________________________________________________54or What Indonesia Means to Me_____________________________________________________

3

Part 2 - A Face Case __________________________________________________ 57

Faceless Fred _____________________________________________________________57or Another Victim of Jin Dice ______________________________________________________

Deep in the Kampung ______________________________________________________60or Meeting up With Gundoruwo_____________________________________________________

Exponentially Exotic Expatriate ______________________________________________63or Whipping Cream Courage _______________________________________________________

Tuyul and the Gloom Room _________________________________________________65or I Don’t Want A Baso Buggy______________________________________________________

Bandung Fred Meets Nyai Roro Kidul ________________________________________68or Watery Wizardry on the South Coast_______________________________________________

Face Culture at the Manhattan _______________________________________________70or Get a Grip on Your Cue _________________________________________________________

The Last Banana __________________________________________________________74or Real Compared to What? ________________________________________________________

Glossary _____________________________________________________________ 76

4

Part 1 – Bemo to Banyan

The Chubby White Man in the Flowered Shirt

isten, pal,” the chubby white man in the flowered shirt says, “I don’t wanna

scare you or anything like that, but you’re riding a vehicle of the last

frontier. You can stand on the street anywhere in Bandung, flag one down

— a twitch of the finger will also do the trick — and you could end up in a neighboring

village not on any map, at the lip of a volcano, South Manhattan, in the jungles of Irian

Jaya, or with a little luck within spittin’ distance of your home. Your wife isn’t the frantic

type who gets hysterical if you’re a few days late for dinner, is she?”

The traffic downtown is heavily braided. Dividing lines are mere suggestions, notrules. The green, yellow and red of traffic lamps, the ones working, are pretty colors andnothing more. We scoot, twist and ply and fake our way through the battlefields of theIndonesian streets despite the size of this tin bucket on wheels. Will anyone call our bluff?If it comes to hand-to-hand combat, I’d rather be high up in one of those nice big dumptrucks.

Careening around one corner, I grab the hot exhaust pipe to steady myself and let outa screech. My hand is blistering in rainbows.

“Here,” the chubby white man in the flowered shirt says, pulling out a big greenbottle of beer from his plastic shopping bag and uncapping it in the same movement. Ipour some on my hand. “No, you fool! Like this.” He yanks the bottle out of my hand anddrinks down half in one enormous gulp. “It solves most of the problems here. Now you tryit.”

After drinking the warm beer my hand doesn’t hurt but my stomach sloshesuncomfortably. I came downtown to buy socks with lungs able to breathe in Bandung, 700meters high, just below the equator, Java. Now I wonder whether I’ll be able to retrace myway back home, for somewhere in this massive city packed into a dry lake bed surroundedby volcanos there’s a family waiting. Not for the socks but for me. The naked August sunwas reducing the newly arrived foreigner to a grease spot on the sidewalk when the rightbemo, an ABD Muis line, finally pulled up. The diminutive 3-wheeler came to my armpits.Two banks, each the width of my finger spread, faced each other, enough room for amaximum of three slender people on each side. Five people stared out at me. I climbed inover the sputtering exhaust pipe and forced myself down into the one remaining spacebetween a delicately thin old man and a metal bar that served as tailgate. The old man heldup a live chicken by the legs. Looking like Samuel Beckett, it blinked critically at me.

“L

5

“Nice chicken,” I said. The man nodded, smiled, and put his chicken back downbetween his knees.

We stopped and the impossible happened: the chubby white man in the flowered shirtgot in carrying a large plastic shopping bag in one hand and a chicken in the other. Whenhe squeezed into place across from me, taking about two-and-a-half Indonesian places, Icame to the conclusion that Indonesians can compress their bodies like sponges. ABDMuis leaned precariously to the white man’s side. He held up his chicken, the oldgentleman next to me held up his chicken, the two Becketts eyeballed each othersuspiciously, ducked and spat and struggled to get loose. Both men nodded approval.Each other’s chicken was Ok. I wished for the first time in my life that I had a chicken,too.

In one significant way, the ABD Muis bemo is structurally like a Boeing 707: it’s gotthree wheel assemblies — one in front and two in back – and a pointed nose. Thecomparison may be better made to a golf cart, but under the circumstances I prefer tothink of our driver as a capable pilot rather than as a risk-taking sportsman.

Exhaust fumes curl back into the passenger compartment like flannel scarves. Iwonder whether I should breathe or not. Will fewer brain cells die if I hold my breath untilI get out? I ride the dilemma in the middle and breathe just deep enough to keep alive,imagining that my face is showing oxygen-deficient blue blotches in its pink distress.

Our top speed is about 20 km/h in a world of country-fair bumper cars that neveractually collide. But what with our squealing and tipping forty-five degrees on the corners,and being very low to the ground (except when we fly over asphalt moguls), theBOOMing in my head, like broken sound barriers, keeps the Boeing comparison alive.Too bad the analogy doesn’t extend to cocktails, salted nuts and leggy stewardesses. Theengine, probably a twin-cam Toro borrowed from a lawn mower and running onbicarbonate of soda and vinegar, never misses a power stroke.

Separated from us by metal sheeting is the driver. There’s a rectangular hole in thesheeting big enough to see his left ear. The hole is our channel of communication to theear. Yell towards the ear in the hole if you want to stop. From my position I can’t seethrough the hole to what’s coming ahead — just as well, after seeing from the rear whatwe’ve just gone through.

The driver, I’ve decided after a particularly hair-raising passage through the rapids, isan important element of this vehicle. Without him I don’t think we’d survive long. Onecould even go so far as to generalize, in a loose sort of way, that he’s on our side.Shooting without hesitation through gaps in traffic no wider than the wing spread of asmall vulture, the driver guides us indomitably to our destiny. He wedges throughapparently solid walls of buses and Mitsubishi mini-vans, paying no attention tomotorbikes swirling like scraps of paper caught in a fickle wind.

“Nice, isn’t it?” the chubby white man says to me, grinning, sweating, breathless.“Pardon?”“Nice.”“Sorry, what’s nice?”“Abdul.”“Who?”“Abdul Muis. He was an Indonesian writer.”“Oh, I see. ABD Muis you mean.”“You must be a tourist,” he says, looking disappointed.

6

“Why?”“Only ignorant tourists ride on these things, and then they take a picture and go

home and brag about it for a year. ‘I almost died on Java,’ they cry. ‘We zoomed andlurched and pitched to the brink of life. Marco Polo wasn’t ever in more danger in theAndes than I was in the Java bemo.’”

“Was Marco Polo in the Andes?”He strokes the tail feathers of his chicken and chuckles to himself.Suddenly the bemo jolts to a complete stop. We’re listing so to one side that the

people on the opposite bank can’t help but fall all over us on this side. The chubby guy’snose is in my ear and several hands, shoulders and elbows deep massage my inner organs.

“Chuckhole,” he says. “We gotta get out and push.”Nobody moves except the chubby white man.“Are you sure?” I say, not certain this guy has all his hatches bolted down.“If we don’t do it, nobody will. Come on.”How this old phrase would echo with new meaning over the next year in foreign-aid

ridden, project-plagued Indonesia. If we don’t do it, nobody will — the first and last resortof those with messianic goodwill, of those with money and development plans to spill, ofthose finding an inexplicable drag at the root of the intended beneficiaries, perhaps bestcaptured in the unguarded comment of a dispirited Indonesian who, commenting on theforeigners woven into the fabric of Indonesian development efforts, said: “We don’t wantthem but we need them.”

The chubby white man and I get out and grunt and heave while the others watch untilwe finally rock the bemo out of the chuckhole.

When I get back in and we putter on, the old man next to me holds up his chickenand grins.

Becaks pedaled by square-calved men mark the banks of the motorized rapids. Theyrarely venture into the white waters of traffic, but when they do, it’s evidently on BlindFaith, for the rare half glance tossed over the shoulder is more a signal of intention than anattempt to find out who is queuing up to flatten them.

From the back of our cave on wheels I see pedestrians trying to cross the busy street.A comely poor woman wearing children (as others you would never find in the middle ofthe street are laden with jewelry) is stranded in mid-stream and waiting for an opening tocontinue across the street; she is wrapped in the shrouds of ABD Muis’ exhaust as welabor by. The young mother and her necklace of children dissolve into the gray-blue fumesof the street landscape from which vehicles continuously emerge like marauders advancingfrom a ravaged village.

We leave the downtown area and gradually begin to climb. People get in and out. I’mlulled by the constant rocking and the tree-lined streets into thinking of a small genericmid-western town in the States with its lazy shady streets in summer. Being at the end of along axis through the Earth from Main Street, Anywhere, willingly I’d like to add, I shovethe similarity out of mind and concentrate on the differences. And so, as I sweat, bounce,and breathe through the top of my head where the air is more oxygen rich, I display myheroics for the world to see and work at being glad to have more than a fair share ofdifferences to occupy me.

For one, I was having a hard time making out what the rules were and whetheranybody was following them. To make it worse, Indonesians drive on the left side of theroad (inherited from a short bout of English colonialism), which, for an American, is

7

something like trying to shave drunk and left-handed with a rusty butter knife. ThoughI’ve known the harrowing traffic of Buenos Aires, Rio, Shanghai, Watts and The GreatAlaskan Highway, I had been living in Germany before coming to Indonesia and amaccustomed to rule-oriented behavior concerning driving: even if German drivers tailgateat 200 km/hour, they are predictable because they follow the rules, as a rule.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” the chubby white man says, uncapping another bottle of beer.“The traffic, I mean. A distinguished Indonesian professor once explained it to me this

way. He said: ‘In otherplaces, Singapore forexample, they look at thetraffic signs to the left andright, at the lights overhead,at the freshly painted arrowson the asphalt, warnings,directions, dos and don’ts,codes of every sort, and ifyou even think about riding aline or disobeying a signthey’ll nab you and slap youwith a fat fine. So they’re allwatching directions andwatching themselves to makesure they follow thedirections. That makes themhave accidents. Here inIndonesia we just watch outfor each other and never haveany accidents. Not having carinsurance helps, too.’ Ofcourse the good professor wasover doing it on that never haveaccidents bit, but there’s akernel of truth in what he said, ifyou bite down on it.”

He swallows half a bottle ofbeer. “I take the bemos just to

reinforce the illusion I live a charmed life. And where elsecan you get so much licit body contact with such a variety of people? I’ve had oldgrandmas nuzzling my neck, I’ve rubbed hips, ankles and elbows with grave diggers, cityofficials and young bronze-skinned beauties. When I feel too much infected with myself, Iride bemos for perspective.”

As we enter another epicenter of traffic, I begin to think the longer I sit here, thesurer I am I’ll never see a familiar face again. The metal insects of traffic are mimicking theThird World War of locusts, flying at us, gunning for us, grinning at us from all directions.Motorcycles charge for the throat, becaks drop Molotov cocktails, big city buses likecrazed whales come at us with open jaws and we pass miraculously through.

8

Somewhere in the middle of the phantasmagoria, the chubby white man, sweatingenough processed beer from his large pores to water the flowers on his shirt for a fullseason, yells towards the hole in the metal sheeting to stop.

He can’t get out now! I don’t know where I am, I don’t speak the language — Ican’t make it by myself!

“Bandung Fred’s the name, Bandung Thrills is the game,” he says getting out. “I’vegot Javanese jamu for the Bandung blues. I’ve got Sundanese slows for your office go-gos. I’ve got jaipong and wayang when you need a song. I’ve got political absurdities andThird World anomalies. I’ve got a drawer full of Ramayana’s undies and gossip aboutexpatriate hubbies, pills for diarrhea and a cure for cultural schizophrenia. I’ve got aBandung thrill for all your ills.”

Digging into his plastic shopping bag, he pulls out a soggy business card and gives itto me.

“Where do I get out?” I ask, getting panicky. “I just want to get home!”Fading into the fumes he hollers, “Believe in Bandung voodoo and your feet will

know what to do-oo . . . ”Somehow I did in fact get home. In time for dinner. By the middle of the same week

— I think.

*

9

Emperor Wu and the Art of Tennis

or What It Doesn’t Take to Win

hadn’t seen the chubby white man in the flowered shirt for a while. But then on my

way out the door of a local software shop (stocking up before the copyright crunch

hit Indonesia’s software paradise), I received a sharp blow to the back of my thigh. I

turned and saw Bandung Fred winding up to deliver another forehand slice with a ruby-

studded tennis racquet aimed roughly at my left ear.

I jumped, clutching to my breast thousands of dollars worth of the latest softwarehad for a fraction of that in rupiah, and Bandung Fred’s racquet grazed my ankle. Had Ijumped so high?

“Sorry, old man,” BF said, “the ball was loaded with top spin and took a sudden diveat your feet.”

“What ball, BF?”“The one Barefoot Beni is going to be hitting my way this morning. I’m practicing

for him.”He wound up and knocked a load of bananas off a passing becak. The 360-degree

follow-through removed the velvety black peci off a strolling Bapak who stooped topocket a few of the yellow fruity cylinders rolling about underfoot. Bandung Fred quicklymelted into the crowd. I ran after him with the enormous bag he’d left on the pavement.The thing weighed a ton.

“Say, BF, what’s in the bag? It’s a little early to be playing Santa Claus, don’t youthink?”

He stopped in his tracks and gave me a lingering look. Was I worthy of his time andconfidences?

“You’re a lucky man, my unenlightened friend, because today I’m filled with a raregenerosity. This,” he said proudly, “is a tennis bag.”

“Gee!”“I’m going to give you a lesson in the art of modern tennis warfare and the

technological tools of the craft that make the act of demoralizing opponents with fuzzyrubber balls not only possible but also satisfyingly grim fun.” Bandung Fred, fuzzy andspheroid himself, set his mammoth bag down on the pavement and began extricating itscontents from the depths. “I’ve just been to Mohammed’s Sport Shop and MassageParlour,” he began reverently, “to prepare myself for battle with first and foremost sagecouncil. Some fools study the backs of cornflakes boxes for tips from the Moderns, but Iprefer the Ancients. And this,” he said holding up a slim black book, “is my wise council.

I

10

It’s called The Art of War and is a treatise on Chinese military science compiled about 500BC and codified with a commentary during the Wei Dynasty, around 75 AD, by EmperorWu.”

“I didn’t know tennis was played 2,000 years ago.”“The principles of military encounters are no different from those of tennis; they

apply equally to office politics, business, child rearing, junk bonds, and especiallymarriage. The NEW is nothing but a superimposition on the OLD — and rarely a goodone at that. To begin with, then, is equipment. Emperor Wu says: ‘In the conduct of warthousands of chariots and carriages and tens of thousands of soldiers may be deployed.’Behold my soldiers and chariots!” Bandung Fred said while emptying his bag on thesidewalk.

These troops included several pairs of anti-gravity footwear inflatable for differentbattle venue; cannon balls vacuum packed in Sweden; fur-lined sweat bands for everyappendage of the body; sun visors, bowlers, panamas, a motorcycle helmet, a fez, anembroidered peci, a ten-gallon Stetson, a diving mask and snorkel and various otherheadgear for a dozen combat conditions; five rolls of grips in all the colors of the rainbowfor the handle of his ball-beating device; a padded jock strap dangling a rip cord foremergency bail out conditions should an overhead smash zero in to enforce populationcontrol; deep pile, half-volley anti-stink socks; fortified doping-proof sport tonicsswimming with the spirits of dragons and scorpions; designer shorts with aerodynamicracing stripes; tennis shirts hand painted by David Hockney (a small concession to thesuperimposition of the Moderns, BF said, adding, “You’ve heard the expression dressedto kill?”); for sweat control, scented talcum powder of rutting rhino (“The true warrior,even in the blood and guts of battle, must always appear to be ready for tea and egg rollswith the Empress”); and a set of insults and war cries on cue cards conceived to derangethe enemy.

“Lastly,” Bandung Fred announced, having reached the bottom of his stockpile oftreacherous technology, “the main artery through which flows truth, beauty and egofulfillment: the rapier of ravage, the savage saber, the club of combat, the truncheon oftriumph, my scimitar of noble struggle.”

“That’s a tennis racquet your holding up, BF. I used to knock off the heads ofpoppies in Afghanistan with one of them when I was a kid.”

“Indeed! Now, my innocent boy, tennis racquets are used for whittling down theegos of opponents to the size of worm droppings.”

He shoved his ruby-studded racquet and the other items of warfare back into hisduffel before heading down the street. “You may tag along with me to a warrior’sbattleground — if you’re man enough — and witness how an adept wields the power andwisdom of the Ancients.”

If you asked me, it was quite an ordinary looking tennis racquet. No emanations ofmystical power, no enchanted vibrations issuing from its graphite head, no Aeolianmelodies sounding from its lime-green synthetic strings.

I went along anyway.It was high-noon at Sampoerna Sports Club. Bandung Fred against Barefoot Beni, a

malnourished ballboy with three long whiskers on his chin and a wooden racquet heldtogether with rice glue. His bare feet slapped back and forth across the burning surface ashe battled Bandung Fred, who, for his part, was decked out in full gear. In terms of

11

resources it was NATO against Java, Indonesian conglomerates against Javanese farmers.Java farmers harvested an early lead and kept increasing the gap.

After one particularly brutal skirmish a half hour into the contest, Bandung Fredretired to the sidelines and drank down a pint of vintage Korean Ginseng. He then handedme The Art of War and instructed me to shout out certain underlined passages to him ashe played.

When he fell once chasing a drop shot, he called over to me, “Page twenty-four!”I found the page and read out to him: “‘The truly great in warfare are those who win

with ease.’”After a ball exchange in which BF kept hitting directly back to Barefoot Beni’s

infallible forehand, “Page eighty-three!”“‘Be subtle, unpredictable, almost mystical, intangible.’”After his slow-footed lumbering for a line ball and arriving about 5 minutes too late, I

shouted: “‘You must be able to move like the wind.’”Once he cringed in a heap to the ground anticipating Beni’s overhead smash, and I

read: “‘Stand firm as a forest.’” Emperor Wu was clearly of an age that knew nothing ofthe power of lumber conglomerates to level entire rain forests in a day.

Bandung Fred continued to lose the lesser and greater battles. Rice-fed Java waseasily crushing steak-and-vitamin nourished NATO.

When I yelled out ‘Kingdoms can be lured by temptation of gain,’ BF unpocketed aten-thousand rupiah note, perhaps forgetting that his opponent wasn’t an underpaid civilservant, and pressed it into Barefoot Beni’s hand. But the onslaught persisted, until . . .

It was match point. Frazzled, frustrated and as overheated as a Cadillac limo in theGobi Desert, Bandung Fred looked over to me with pleading eyes for some ultimate bit ofwisdom Emperor Wu could offer. The poor pink fellow was on the brink of defeat.

Barefoot Beni walked back to the baseline to serve.I thumbed and thumbed and scanned and skimmed The Art of War for a passage that

would turn the tide for the sentimental favorite. Finally I had it, but I couldn’t haveanticipated what bizarre form his interpretation of Emperor Wu would take.

I yelled out, “Emperor Wu says: ‘Just as water has no fixed form, warfare has noinflexible rules.’”

After a moment of intense reflection, Bandung Fred limped over to the other side ofthe court and got down on his fat pink knees in front of Barefoot Beni. “Please, don’t beatme. My wife and kids think I’m the greatest tennis player in the whole world. You’ll ruinmy family, my web of ego lies, my status in the community. You don’t want my kidshanging around smoke-filled buses disillusioned with transportation, learning five-syllablewords and joining the Green Movement, do you? You don’t want me to end up alone inJakarta sleeping on newspapers under an overpass, do you? If you beat me I’ll be a ruinedman.”

Thankfully he stopped short of sobbing wetly.Well, to make a long story short, Barefoot Beni, a man evidently possessing an

overabundance of human compassion, suddenly developed foot cramps and couldn’tcontinue playing, thus defaulting the match. Bandung Fred had won. Bandung Fred’smelodramatic grovelling had been nauseating but effective.

“Is this the fruit of your tennis technology and ancient wisdom, BF?”

12

Beaming triumphantly, wobbly kneed, the grime of battle streaked by swollen riversof sweat, Bandung Fred retorted: “But my dear Tennis war neophyte, to quote EmperorWu: ‘War is mainly a game of deception — to simulate weakness, one must be strong.’”

*

13

The Details Are the First to Go

or The Tidak Apa-apa Syndrome

t was one of those oppressively gray afternoons at Alun-Alun. The climatic inversion

in the Bandung basin had increased the specific gravity of all creatures to such a

degree that flies stuck to your skin and refused to fly away unless you beat them with

a club. I was crawling past the turbid fish pond when I saw Bandung Fred sitting on a

bench by himself and tossing bread crumbs on the ground. I climbed up beside him.

“BF, why are throwing bread crumbs on the ground?”He looked at me as he often does when I ask him an idiotic question, and grunted,

“Feeding the pigeons, you idiot.”I looked under the bench, behind us, all the way up to the steps leading to the mesjid.

“BF, there aren’t any pigeons here.”He brooded on the carpet of bread crumbs at his feet. “Don’t you think I know that?

I’m thinking, and there’s nothing like feeding the pigeons to help you think things out.You know what I was thinking? I was thinking about how long I’ve been here inIndonesia.”

“And how long is that, BF?”“You came along at the right minute, my friend, because maybe you can help me with

a couple of minor details. Here’s what I know: I arrived in Indonesia one fine day about— let’s see — it was, ah — I used to know, but, anyway, the month was . . . um, it waseither February or July. No matter — I’ll think of it in a minute. Now, the year is easy —that was nineteen-eighty something, because I’d just gone through a mid-life crisis when Iwas 40. I’m pretty certain I was just forty, but then again I went through the same crisiswhen I was thirty. So I guess that could mean it was nineteen-seventy something. This isnineteen something, right? That’s the minor matter I need your help with. What the hellcentury is it?”

The usual amber glow emanating from his bald spot had turned gray.“It’s the 20th century, BF. It’s almost 1994.”“Now we’re cookin’. Let’s see now, it’s almost 1994, that means—” Bandung Fred

squinted into the distant blue and mouthed calculations to himself “—that means I’ve beenhere somewhere between 2 months and 10 years.”

He looked to me for some encouragement, but my expression must have given meaway, for Bandung Fred was looking pained, puzzled, and cryptogrammed. One eyebrowshot upward like an electrocuted worm while the other hung lifelessly into his eye.

Finally he said, “This confirms what I’ve been suspecting — tropical rot. I’ve got it.Tropical fungus rot of the lower hypothalamus. All the greats had it. Now me too. The

I

14

details are the first to go. You wake up one day and try to remember when you came tothe tropics, why you came, with whom you came, what you came for. Gone. It’s all gone.Smothered in tons of fried bananas. Choked by low-grade diesel exhaust. Compassionedto numbness by poverty. Scared out of its wits by kretek-chomping bemo drivers. Boredto death by endless plains of white rice. Smiled to smithereens by 190 million people. Andthe pigeons forget to visit public squares and help people like me remember who they are.”

“Tidak apa-apa, BF,” I offered empathetically.“Yeah. Tidak apa-apa. That’s when it all began. The first time someone said Tidak

apa-apa to me I felt a wee numbness at a point just behind my third eye, as if a smallcluster of brain cells in my frontal lobe had gone into a long deep sleep. Tidak apa-apa. Doyou realize how many times a day I hear that?”

“Don’t worry, BF.”“Sure! Don’t worry, he says. You ever wonder what goes after the details?” The

whole outline of life. The headings, subheadings, annotations, the footnotes and endnotesof life. The whole bloody bibliography of a life crumbles and is lost in the sands of time.”

*

15

Stompin’ at the Tropicana

or The Complexities of Cultural Dilution

oping to get a bead on what was going on around town, I happened into the

Tropicana on Jl. Cihampelas the other night.

A couple of white men at the bar hunched over beer and cigarettes. SomeIndonesian yuppies at the only occupied table looked like they were looking for

what I was looking for. They were apparently fresh from the hair dressers, for they movedtheir cranial spheres stiffly as if afraid a hair, not a brain cell, might fall from grace. Theylooked at me. I looked at them. The men at the bar looked into their beer. This was whereit was happening.

I took a stool at the bar next to the men taking solace from the bubbles in their beer,and I was soon hunched myself over beer and popcorn, having given up looking forwhatever I’d come looking for and wondering whether I should convert to one of thereligions I hadn’t tried yet and stop looking for the things I was looking for in the places Iwas accustomed to looking for them and start looking for things I normally didn’t look forin places I was unaccustomed to looking. I looked into my beer, a place I was accustomedto looking for nothing in particular — I didn’t find what I usually don’t find looking backup at me. There’s too much foam in life, I thought to myself. Foam is the real enemy.

“Any live music tonight?” I asked the bartender, who was looking nowhere inparticular.

He nodded toward the far end, where cables, amplifiers and assorted musical deviceswere crowded on the small dimly lit stage.

“When’s the music start?” I asked.He was real talkative, nodded a second time toward the gleaming hardware of

modern music.I looked again. A curious emanation of light, a collection of reds and blues and

yellows coming down from above somewhere, mixed at a focal point with a singularintensity; the primary color was a reddish amber, but it seemed to oscillate rapidly acrossthe light spectrum, giving the impression of a Java sunset played over and over again veryfast — from white-bright yellows to deep-blood purples and back. I began to hum an oldSinatra tune, think of Lauren Becall in soft lights and see-through bed sheets, and getmisty into my beer all at the same time.

Just when I was sure someone had salted my popcorn with magic crystals, I lookedmore carefully at the source of this incredible light display: it was Bandung Fred’s nearlybare dome. He was sitting cross-legged there amongst pop hardware and silently fingeringa bamboo flute.

H

16

“BF,” I said, joining him cross-legged on the stage, “what are you doing here?What’s with the bamboo flute?”

“It’s not a bamboo flute — it’s a suling. And I’m playing it. What I’m doing,” hecontinued, adjusting the light from his large bald spot to strike a mirror and ricochet intothe faces of the white men at the bar, “is fighting the rising tide which is attempting towipe out the local culture. It’s going to look like L.A. or Frankfurt or Perth around here ifwe don’t do something about it.

“Like Perth?”“Yeah, and maybe like Sarajevo, too.” Bandung Fred blew into his suling but no

sound came out. “You see, my dense friend, doubtful tentacles from Central Control arecreeping around the earth and bringing everything under its dominion. If things keep upthis way we will have Kentucky Fried Chicken fried in Yokohama, Peking Duck basted inLondon, mie bakso packed in Kansas City, and nasi goreng served in time capsules oninterstellar flights.”

“You’re a little behind the times, BF — it’s been that way for decades. And anyway,that hardly speaks for Central Control.”

“That’s the very clever disguise they use. They’re everywhere.”“Who is they?”“They won’t let themselves be named, so let’s not quibble over their exact identity.

The point is that local cultures are first being diluted and then wiped out.”“BF, it’s just the global community bringing us all closer together, that’s all.”“You’re paying attention to short-term consequences, my short-sighted friend.

Tourism — I’m talking about tourism in Java. A local culture in tact means tourism, andtourism means money and money means . . . well, who doesn’t know what money means!We’ve got to keep the local cultural identity in tact to promote tourism.”

“But tourism means diluting and perhaps wiping out the local culture.”Bandung Fred first answered by playing a furiously silent marching band piece before

announcing, “Paradox has a pressure valve for self-regulation — worry not about themechanisms of the world and they will not worry about you.”

His grasp of matters was once again superbly spherical.“And so you’re playing or looking like you’re playing a bamboo flute in order to help

preserve a local culture which is being threatened by cultural dilution from the outside, vis-a-vis the tentacles of Central Control, so that more tourists will come to Java on the wingsof tentacles, so to speak, to spend money and thereby threaten the purity of the localculture while increasing its financial resources. Now that means money, and with that youcan buy the power to fend off the threat of cultural dilution and pollution that it attracts bybeing pure.”

Fred smiled as a teacher smiles whose slow but persistent student finally understandsthe concept of infinity in a finite world.

“But, BF,” I said, trying to apply my new understanding, “that’s a Sundaneseinstrument you’re playing and not playing — and you’re not Sundanese.”

“Does it matter?”“Isn’t that a kind of cultural pollution?”He tilted his bald spot at me and its laser-like reflection hit me directly between the

eyes.

17

“It’s the Sundanese against the tentacles and the Sundanese need all the help they canget. Culture needs a multi-strategic front, using at times the most unlikely means to keepitself alive. This is my small contribution.”

About this time a couple of lanky Sundanese musicians circled us, checking us outand exchanging knowing glances with each other. Bandung Fred played a silent 3rdCentury Sundanese rondo. The musicians picked up their instruments, blew, plucked andclubbed a few notes to tune up.

A moment later, a saxophone was ripping up and down the blues pentatonic scale inthree octaves, an electric guitar was imitating a freight train crashing into a nuclearwarhead, and the bass was pulsating volcanically with an amplified strength that madeBandung Fred’s eyeballs leave and return to their sockets like caffeine crazed yo-yo’s.

After the bouncy little tune was over, Fred uncrossed his legs, stood up and said witha raised eyebrow to the guitarist, who had “Harley” tattooed on his upper lip and“Davidson” on his lower, “What’s the name of this musical dis-organization youpresumably call a music band? I want to enter it into my notebook as needing specialattention for cultural rehabilitation.”

In a perfect big city blues Southside Chicago dialect, the young man answered, “Wecalled The Tentacles, pops. You smokin’ that bamboo flute or playin’ it? Let’s have a looksee.”

He pulled the suling out of Fred’s hands, he stuck it in his mouth and chewed on itlike a piece of Cirebon sugar cane.

*

18

Blipsteria Hits Bandung

or Learning Not to Race Against the Pace

ere it is — Bandung, West Java, The Republic of Indonesia, Southeast Asia,

Southern Hemisphere, World, Galaxy Gumbo, Universe Boulevard No. 3. It’s

raining and raining because at this particular address on Universe Boulevard under

the lizard-green banana leaves swaying on their axes it’s musim hujan, the rainy season.

It’s raining in the streets, on your head, down your collar, in your shoes.Everything’s pretty wet. Finding yourself in the rain and going through the streets feelinglike a soggy newspaper — that’s bad enough — but when Bandung Fred latches ontoyour elbow and is feeling talkative despite the argument of mud, you know you’ve hitbottom and it may be weeks before you recover.

“You’re walking,” BF begins rhetorically enough, “you’re walking in Bandung.”“You’re quite right about that, BF. And I’m wet, muddy, miserable, late, needing a

drop of gin in a medicinal way and consequently bad company.”Was that a clue? Did Bandung Fred get it? Fat chance. His mouth was in double-

barreled turbo drive.Mick and Surachmat’s Bar and Satay Stall was just up ahead in the murky afternoon

rain.“No big deal. You can walk, right? You’ve been doing it for years and feel pretty

confident about it. You’re walking and you’re doing just fine, no problem. Are youexpecting a problem?”

“Not until you showed up.”“Of course not,” Fred continued, “Bandung is a pleasant enough city in a pleasant

enough world and walking is a pleasant enough activity. Arms moving unimpeded at theshoulders, swinging to the front, swinging to the back. One to the front, the other to theback. They know what to do. Ever try walking both arms to the front and then both to theback?”

“Only when I’m happy. Last time back in ’63.”“Now here is a problem. Called lurching. Your arms are moving nicely, alternating

just as they should. Who even thinks about that sort of thing anymore? Too muchscheming, plotting, worrying about how to make fantasy mountains of money to bemonitoring whether your arms are doing the right thing or not—”

Blips!

H

19

“What was that?” Fred sputtered. “Something just nailed me on the back of thehead.” He quickly scanned the banana-tree tops for snipers. “Probably just a stray blipsswinging gaily through the universe.”

“No doubt.” No doubt I had no idea what he was talking about.“Legs. Now the legs are much like the arms, your arms, your well-functioning arms

which need no monitoring. Your legs do all those things they’re supposed to, whichconsists of — let’s see if I can remember, it’s been a while since I thought about my legs.In one sequence or another, a leg at a time lifts off the ground—”

Blips!“There it—” Blips “—goes again. Your leg lifts off the ground, bends at the knee,

flings the foot outward to full extension and you pitch forward on that leg so you can vaultup and over while the other foot, attached to the other leg, can swing free. At this point,that foot leaves the ground behind you—” Blips “—thus completing another miraculouscycle in standard locomotion.”

Blips! Blips!“Where are those blipsae coming from? Something going on here that makes us want

to take a closer look.”“Your foot, BF. Take a look at the science of placing one foot in front of the other in

the rainy season.”He did. But not without his mouth being the audio-graphic record of his observations

thus: “When your foot is extended forward,” he began anew with the intensity of someonediscovering that the atom is a small model of the solar system, “and ready to come downon the ground, we see there’s a thong on it — volksfootwear, the humble rubber sandal.Your average thong doesn’t Thong when it hits your heel, as some too easily deduce fromthe name. It goes Slap! Slap! There’s one on the other foot, too, but you can’t see it nowunless you swing both feet forward at the same time like some people do their arms if theyfeel like lurching a bit. No matter. It’s actually the other one, the one you can’t see, that’sgoing to blips as soon as you take it off the ground. Know why?”

“Gee, why?”“I’m ready to formulate. They’ll call me the Ptolemy of Thongtology. Here goes: (a)

You’re wearing thongs —”“Um.”“Please don’t interrupt. (a) You’re wearing thongs; (b) it’s raining; (c) there’s mud

on the thongs; (d) the thong thuds when it comes up against your heel; (e) you think:thongs don’t really thud; (f) you become suspicious; (g) it’s too late; (h) blips; (i) a kilo ofmud hits you just above the collar; (j) you become enlightened; (k) you die of a water-borne disease before you realize you’ve become enlightened. It’s beautiful!”

“It’s muddy.”“It’s blipsterical, Malcolm.”“I think I hear your mother calling.”“You’re a terribly earth-bound creature, my incurious friend. You should try being a

little more cosmic in your view of things. Being in Bandung and not having gone walkingin thongs in a good messy rain is like having been to Disneyland and not having shakenhands with Mickey Mouse.”

“Um.”“It begins when you feel a harmless blips like a cold pearl of spittle strike the palm of

your hand. What you don’t notice is all the blipsae accumulating on the back of your pants

20

and shirt in a pattern-no-pattern fashion similar to what photons do when they’re beamedthrough a single slit in a bed sheet onto a photosensitive plate.”

“Photons?”“I’m glad you’re showing a little interest, Malcolm.”“My name’s not Malcolm.” We were nearing Mick and Surachmat’s Bar and Satay

Stall and I didn’t press the point when he ignored me.“There are two main causes for becoming blipsterical,” Fred blathered scientifically

on. “First, walking as if you had to get somewhere on time — in Indonesia? — will getyou a full complement of bliptic impressions all the way up and down your tailor-madeshirt. Second, navigating away from an illicit rendezvous at such a pace that the neighborswon’t be able to connect the blur of your face with the scene of the betrayal — this willget you not only a superior randomness of blipsae across your hindside that would makeNils Bohr and a host of other quantum physicists green with envy but you’ll also get a fewblurpse on the nape of your neck and backs of your ears as well. A blurp, by the way, hassome of the more unpleasant qualities of a large cold clam with sinus trouble. Because ofits great weight, a blurp when propelled by hurried locomotion travels much farther than ablips could ever dream of.”

“They dream?”Mick and Surachmat’s had just been hit by a mud slide and wasn’t serving cocktails

at the moment. On through the unremitting gray rain we slopped, my chubby shadow andI, my thirst for spiked quinine mounting exponentially. I recalled that Achmad’s Pub &Chips wasn’t too far up the road. I picked up the pace.

“I once heard tell of an expat chap leaving a building where he had just been in ameeting with his Indonesian counterparts whose mutual task had been to decide what toorder for lunch. The expat expert was so distraught after 5 hours of talks and noconsensus about lunch that he fled the spot with such speed that a nova blurpse, a rareoccurrence in which several blurpse get together for group touching, catapulted from therim of the man’s thong and thonked him squarely on the back of the head, provoking theobdulla longata to form a separate state of its own. The fellow fell cold to the ground,blipsterically out of his mind, where he presently drowned in a rain-gorged chuckhole thecity fathers had promised to fill within the next five-year economic plan. The moral of thestory— ”

“Thanks.”“But there’s hope.”“Gin and tonic.”“As I study your foot action and your general cultural-psycho physiognomy, I

propose the following if you want to avoid becoming blipsterical. First, don’t ricochetwildly out of meetings with your Indonesian counterparts. Second, learn how to use thedeception of shadows rather than the speed of a schoolboy. Third, above all, you musttune yourself to the cultural pace. Having fulfilled these conditions, you may be able toenjoy rain-washed locomotion in Bandung without plastering yourself with gobs of mud.”

“What about wearing shoes, BF?”“Shoes? No flimsy rubber sandals? Unthinkable! That alternative is suitable only for

expats who wish to remain detached from the good Java earth we live on, for those whobuild buffers between themselves and the world, those who ride through life withouttouching it. No, Malcolm, don’t isolate yourself in knee-high rubber waders, Teflonbehavior, or a plexiglas Pope-mobile.”

21

“Gin and tonic Ok?”“Assuming you are a real person or have serious intentions of becoming one, not

wearing thongs in the rainy season is not a solution but rather the creation of a wholeconstellation of other problems added to your cultural-psycho physiognomy. ‘Ok,’ yousay, wearily giving in to my well-argued position, ‘How can I avoid blipsteria?’ you askyourself. ‘How can I avoid the bliptic mess on my back that causes others to make fun ofme while at the same time still be able to walk in the rain on the good Java earth?”’

“Mud, you mean — good Java mud.”“The answer is to be found in close observation of the Sundanese, who manage to

out-trick mud blipsae. Are you ready for the final formulation?”“I think I see Achmad’s Pub & Chips up the way.”“Good lad! Ok, here it is. How are to we understand the following evidence? The

Sundanese think nothing at all of strolling out in the thick of it in loose thongs, cleanpants, white shirt and mud mud mud all around, while blipsae and blurpse bubble underevery pebble. And they come through with just a nominal bit of mud between their toes!How do they do it? The trick is deceptively simple. The first clue is that the victors overblipsteria don’t act any differently in the rainy season than they do in the dry season.”

It was Achmad’s Pub, and people were going in. Medicinal succor was just a fewsteps away. I doubled the pace but Bandung Fred kept right at my elbow.

22

“If your aim is to learn from the indigenous culture,” BF went on, “and adopt itsways to the extent that you get the maximum benefit from the given conditions, thesolution to blipsteria is drag your heels.”

I made a run toward the open door of Achmad’s. Mud balls populated the soggy air,blipsae pelted my hindside and I began to feel the weight of the universe settling down fora long, deeply deserved rest on my shoulders.

And then it hit me. Right between the ears at the back of the head — a supernovablurpsa.

The last thing I remember before going down into a muddy muck of trampledcabbage offings, filthy plastic shopping bags and egg shells was Bandung Fred crying fromthe arms of another world: “Drag your heels, if you want to survive in Indonesia! Dragyour heels, man!”

*

23

The Third Phylum

or What Bandung Fred’s Pyjamas Mean to Me

aturday morning. My eyes peel back the wraps of sleep, that place where I have

forgotten everything — how to walk, how to talk, how to be human — everything.

I comfort myself: it’s just the tropics. Some comfort.

Feet to floor. Hand to door. It’s a long ontological journey back to 20th centuryhomo Sapiens, me dragging my body across the cool stone tiles into the living room.

Under a signed photograph of Fritz the Cat is a bandungius Fredicum, not the sort ofencounter I need first thing off. But there it is. A species of the third phylum, bandungiusFredicum stands with its limbs hanging limply at its sides with his nose — gulp — pressedconspicuously against the wall.

Remember, it’s Saturday morning in good ol’ Bandung; the day when expats go offto the playfields of leisure, on outings to the countryside, buy munchies for the weekend atthe local luxury toko, take a morning dip in the mouth of a volcano. But me? I’ve got thebandungius Fredicum with his greasy nose against my freshly whitewashed wall. I’m goingback to bed and start over. Why do I wish it were any Tuesday night in Beirut?

I haven’t yet begun to wonder what he is doing with his nose against the wall. Whowould? The instinct to survive is merciful. I barely think.

Fritz the Cat sniggers down from on high, indicating the papaya-shaped creaturebeneath him whose pyjamas are covered with multi-colored figures of Donald Duck, theForeign Minister of Madagascar, Ho Chi Min, Mick Jagger, Mother Theresa, Lucille Ball,Yassar Arafat, Franz Beckenbauer, Arjuna, the Board of Directors of IBM, Dewi Sukarno— all of these ladies and gentlemen forming a spiralling chain of contemporary worldculture up the pyjama legs, where they knot at the crotch and rush for the throat beforecascading in spectacular confusion over the rounded shoulders and down the arms to thefrayed cuffs of Bandung Fred’s pyjamas.

Bandungius Fredicum does not move so much as a freckle when I put a spoonful ofBali coffee in a cup and stir in hot water. Donald Duck’s large orange lips are frozen onthe collar. Mother Theresa stretches a hand across his heart and waits. The ForeignMinister of Madagascar considers the international situation in the cloister of Fred’sarmpit.

I pour down the cup of grainy coffee and wish against hope that the world soonbecomes a nice unilateral place to inhabit once again.

The third phylum creature — his nose still pressed against the wall — sighs, notloudly, but still, this is an encouraging sign . . . for something, I’m sure, for something.

You see, late the night before, the person usually recognizable as Bandung Fredarrived on my doorstep, saying that Marston (the head cockroach in his household) had

S

24

kicked him out of the house because he wanted to invite a few leggy friends over for aroach party. BF, an accommodating sort of fellow at heart, thereupon came over to myplace for sanctuary (and a few big cold green ones). I didn’t think anything unusual —Marston and Winston rule BF’s house. And now he was standing limp armed with noseagainst the wall. (I knowingly switch to past reference here, believing as I do that languagehas the power to affect how we remember events, or, in this case, how quickly we are ableto forget them.)

“Want some coffee, BF?”Another sigh. And then, “I only want to sigh. Sigh.”“I see,” I lied.The second cup of grainy muck was slithering down my throat when he said,

“Malcolm, do you think I’m normal?”I looked around the room, thinking maybe someone else was there.“Are you speaking to me, BF?”“Am I?”“Are you?”“I’m so confused, Malcolm.”“My name’s not Malcolm, BF.”“Does it matter?”I’d never thought about it.“Everyone’s asking me if I’m normal,” BF continued.“Really?”“Uh-huh.”His nose twitched against the wall like a needle on an EEG graph. “I wonder who

started this business.”“Which business, BF?”“The Normal Business, Malcolm.”Coffee wasn’t doing a darned bit of good. I had the wretchedly hopeless desire to

understand. Was my name really Malcolm?“They want a certificate attesting to my normality.”“Certificate? Normality? They?”“They.”“They who?”“Does it matter?”I’d never really thought about it. “I see what you mean, BF. You mean the

authorities.”“No. I mean Marston and his friends.”“You mean — you mean to say a band of cockroaches want certification of your

normality?”Was there anything left in the big green bottles?“It’s probably only a formality, Fred. Why don’t you take your nose off the wall and

sign the paper that says you’re normal.”“They said I had to be normal to sign the Normal Certificate.”“Oh, I see,” I lied. “Well, think of my wall, BF. You’re going to leave an indelible

grease spot on it. Have you thought about bribing someone?”“Easy solutions lead to moral contusions, my unscrupulous friend. And besides, they

want thumb prints, too.”

25

“Marston and the cockroaches?”“They, you fool, they!”IBM’s entire Board of Directors hunched in conference on Fred’s pyjamas bottom

and jiggled with corporate glee.“That’s normal, BF.”“And eighteen passport photos.”“Normal.”“And a nose print.”“That’s not normal, BF. Are you sure they simply don’t want some —” I looked to

see whether the Kantor Imigrasi inspector was around, since my visa was up again forrenewal — “some, you know, a little lubrikasi, a little unofficial foreign aid? Something forgood service?”

“They didn’t say, Malcolm.”“They wouldn’t exactly say, BF.”BF’s nose squirmed in a counter-clockwise circle against my immaculate wall. “What

would they do if they wouldn’t exactly say?”“They might ask for your nose print, for example.”“How did you know? That’s exactly what they did.”“You see? If they ask for your nose print, they just want some—”“Would Mother Theresa bribe? Would Mick Jagger? Would Arjuna? And they want

a financial statement from 1956 as well, and a letter from my embassy certifying I didn’tcrawl out of the swamp and hatch, and an affidavit from my mother saying I never pluckedthe wings off of living flies. Ever since Marston and the gang kicked me out of my ownhouse last night, I’ve had this funny feeling that I’m not normal. Do you think I could everget a Normal Certificate, Malcolm?”

“It’s normal to feel that perhaps you’re not normal when a cockroach kicks you outof the house because you can’t produce a Normal Certificate issued by an agency thatrequires nose prints for normality.”

“The world is sometimes otherworldly, Malcolm. Ever notice?”Now he began struggling in earnest with the wall. Fritz the Cat, under glass in his

frame, looked alarmed. Finally the wall released the nose.“There. I think I’ve got it.” Pleased with himself, he stood back and studied the

grease spot on the wall the exuding pores of his nose had made. “If that’s not a stamp ofnormality, then fish don’t suck water!”

With one eye on the bandungius Fredicum — escapee of the only two earthly phylaknown to man — Fritz the Cat cautiously slid out of his frame and down the wall. As heslinked past me towards the door, he whispered, “There was a time, Malcolm, when aframe was a safe place from the likes of him. But now all the Donald Ducks and MickJaggers are mixed up with the Foreign Ministers of Madagascar and deposed dictators ofdementia in one big gado-gado. Bandung Fred’s pyjamas are the new international flag.”

“Fritz, my name’s not Malcolm.”“But you’re not sure, are you, Malcolm?”

*