There was some comic by-play at the front desk where the young widower Irwan was the butt of the jokes. The standard of gila, crazy was tossed around. Who among us had the propensity? Who fell most prone? how? when? under what circumstances?
Mostly Irwan was fine and proper, the pleasant middle-aged woman who often partnered Irwan at reception testified. Truth be told, however, sometimes he could go a bit gila.
Possibly the fellow was prone to waywardness where perempuan, women were concerned, maybe.
This was let pass by the receptionist. Not something for her comment.
A chap behind seemed to appear from out of nowhere, thin air. From the rear access to the prayer room possibly.
Oh yes indeed. Certainly. Gila to the max our Irwan, take it from me. Flapping his arms and rolling shoulders.
The sign that followed left no room for doubt. With the fingers of both hands entwined the fellow impressed his point. Hands clasped as if in readiness for earnest prayer or beseeching, he started a rapid hammering of one palm onto the other. A kind of nut-cracker effect with the jaws in a frenzy of snapping.
SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP
Some kind of voracious creature that had leapt from the paddy or jungle was evoked, one native to the region.
WhooWhooHoo. Big wide smiles; cackling. A little adolescent.
Poor darkly eye-bagged Irwan thirteen months widowed from his dear wife. Irwan was also one of those incessant screw-tight blinkers that one commonly found in the Tropics. A few days before he had given the name of his departed partner. In his wallet the dead woman’s ID was kept by her mourning husband. The document showed a plain-looking woman in dull orange-brown scarf on one side of the card and a larger image of her finger-print on the other.
A year now after the loss Irwan, a good Muslim, could marry.
— But not easy you know, these days…
Someone backstage needed Irwan.
The substance and depth of these superficially plain, unmade-up and scarfed women had been established over the twenty-five months in the region. Sitting at Starbucks again after the jollity at the lobby one watched the familiar fashion parade over the polished tiles, recalling Irwan’s wife and others like her. If Irwan now went a little gila where women were concerned it would only be grief involved.
The disaster had been more terrible still as the wife had perished in child-birth, the baby with her.
Irwan lived with his parents, his brother and family close-by in the compound, an hour out of central Jakarta—always depending on the traffic.
Hotel Kalisma stood a kilometre from the Bunderan, the chief roundabout in the city; perhaps two kilometres from Monas, the main square with the Soekarno-era Freedom monument. Irwan’s home was kampung, village country-side. If there were roosters and chooks behind Room 120 at Kalisma one kilometre from Plaza Indonesia and Bunderan—as there certainly were—more would be found where Irwan lived. In a car trip well within the inner circle of the city there had been a small herd of goats roadside, evidently for sale.
Irwan the young widower wanted to show the foreigner, the Bule, White something of a Javanese kampung. There was much to see in Jakarta, a “dynamic city”, according to Irwan. The city was one thing; the kampungs something entirely other, the man insisted.
It had been difficult to convince Irwan that this Bule knew kampungs; that he indeed hailed from one in Europe actually. That Europe even today was not all Champs Elysees and Westminster. Indeed goats, roosters and thatched housing was a common heritage.
A trip that promised much. Toil over the pages prevented it that afternoon after Irwin’s work-shift.
NB. Published in a longer sequence titled “Land of Brothers” by New World Writing Quarterly, Feb 2022
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