Drive-by Saviours (35 page)

Bumi shook Mathias's hand with the bone-crushing force of a hungry predator, just as the Changs had taught him, Canadian style. Mathias pulled his limp hand back and shook it three times. He pursed his lips and glared at the giggling Bunga.

Under her stepfather's gaze Bunga became silent and looked to the ground for solace. She behaved as a young woman should, remaining silent so the men could talk.

Bumi apologized to Mathias and explained that the handshake is a contact sport in Canada. He turned to his daughter and stared at her again in disbelief. “You're practically grown up,” he said. “You must be taller than your mother.”

“A little,” she said. She scratched the dirt with her bare feet.

Robadise invited himself in and Bumi and Bunga followed, with Mathias at the rear. “Make some tea,” he said to Bunga.

The inside of the house was much smaller than their house in Makassar, but larger than Bumi's childhood abode. It was sparsely decorated with a picture of a white serene Jesus on the wooden back wall. They sat in cushy chairs in the main room and drank sweet tea.

“Yaty's in the market,” Mathias told Robadise. “With Baharuddin and Beti.”

Robadise nodded and took a deep breath.

“So, what brings you?” Mathias said.

“Who is Beti?” Bumi blurted before Robadise could answer.

“My son,” Mathias said. “Bunga and Baharuddin's brother.”

Bunga looked up from her teacup at Bumi and mouthed the word ‘half' at him as Robadise launched into his version of diplomacy.

Bumi mouthed back to Bunga, ‘how old?'

She put down her tea and held up five fingers. Unlike Bumi's children, Beti was born into a dictatorless Indonesia. Even with Bunga's shy smile cast reassuringly upon him, Bumi burned with jealousy and hatred for this Mathias.

Robadise started with what seemed to Bumi an excessive amount of small talk. His words produced vague sweeping images of a hero's return, despite his having no knowledge of the details of Bumi's seven years abroad, or his unexpected return. Robadise made no mention of the circumstances of his former brother-in-law's departure, his death or his destination. He talked and the others slurped until their tea was gone, and a little while longer than that, until a small boy tore crying through the front door and into Mathias's lap.

Mathias dropped his empty teacup to the floor and cooed at the child, stroking his hair and asking him what was wrong.

“They had no durian at the market,” a voice from Bumi's past said.

Bumi turned to see Yaty in the doorway, and the shadow of a slumped figure behind her skirt.

“Bumi,” she said, wide-mouthed. She dropped her groceries to the floor.

Robadise rose quickly to his feet, hugged his non-responsive sister, and picked up her bags.

Bumi finally rose on wooden legs and Yaty fled from the house with Robadise in pursuit. Baharuddin stood alone in the doorframe and picked his nose.

Bumi approached the boy slowly and crouched until their eyes were level. “Do you know who I am?” Bumi asked.

“Of course he doesn't,” Mathias's voice boomed from behind Bumi as Baharuddin removed his finger from his nose and slowly nodded his head.

“Daddy,” he said.

Bumi nodded and the tears returned.

“Don't cry, Daddy,” Baharuddin said.

“It's only because I'm so happy to see you again,” Bumi said.

“They said you were gone.”

Bumi glanced back at Mathias, who smiled weakly over Beti's still-heaving shoulders. “I was,” he said to his son, the former toddler. “Now I'm back.”

“Forever?”

“For good,” Bumi assured. “Can I give you a hug?”

Baharuddin nodded and Bumi scooped him up. He squeezed as if clinging to life, kissed his boy on the cheek and turned to face Mathias. He held Baharuddin with one arm and stretched out the other for Bunga, who joined the embrace. Bumi held them and Mathias's gaze until Mathias took Beti into the kitchen. Bumi kneeled without letting go of his children, buried his face between their cheeks and cried softly.

YATY TOOK ROBADISE FOR A WALK ON A FOOTPATH NEAR THE
house. It was his first visit since he dropped her there six years earlier.

The Sunday sun had chased the mountain mist high and left Yaty's mid-level valley a day-glow green. Still it was cool and Robadise shivered slightly as he took her hand. “You're not used to mountain air,” she said. They walked through a farmer's rice terraces, watched a buffalo wallow in the mud and said nothing for some time.

She was grateful to him for his protection from the authorities who chased Bumi away, then from the vigilante democracy hunters. Her anger at being abandoned and never visited had faded, replaced with a fresh wave of gratitude and fury.

He had returned her husband, as promised. The timing was wrong. He always delivered and usually in the wrong circumstances. Whether this practice was cunning or buffoonery she would never decide. She watched him stoop to shake crumbs from his pocket for a stray dog and knew that his intentions were good. She had little choice but to trust him. Only he could satisfy her curiosity and calm her nerves.

“Did he take medicine before?” Robadise asked.

She had no recollection of Bumi ever taking medication. He had generally avoided putting anything in his mouth other than the food she prepared for him in the most sanitary conditions.

“Well, he takes it now,” Robadise said. “He seems calmer, no more twitching. The whole way up he sat calmly in the car. But as usual he ignored my advice and burst onto the scene to hug his daughter like some orangutan through an open cage.”

“Why is he here? How?” Yaty asked. She clutched both his hands in her own. She had half-hoped and half-feared that this day would come, but such reckoning was far ahead of schedule and she was unprepared, undecided about how to handle it.

“He didn't say much,” Robadise said. “Only that a friend had repaid his debt. Anyway he's here and he demanded to see you. We must all sit down and talk about this situation openly, like Europeans. There is no obvious solution.”

She returned his earnest gaze and saw how he had aged, the crow's feet and snow in the mountains, softened belly and hardened skin. She knew she had all the same signs, and her eyes were hardened too. “For a mother there is always an obvious solution,” she said. “Though I love Bumi and always will, Mathias has given us what he could not: safety, comfort, a good life.” She took his dampened hand and walked him back to where Baharuddin and Bunga competed for the ghost of their father's love.

THE SIGHT SHE'D LONGED FOR HALF HER ADULT LIFE BROKE HER
heart when finally seen. It was the image of her dreams: Bumi squatting on his haunches tracing a hardened crooked finger over a drawing by his son, a picture of a hardened crooked fisherman hauling a net from the sea. Bunga sat cross-legged at his side. Baharuddin tried to flip the page of his sketchbook to reveal his own favourite: two demons locked in carnal kung fu battle over a Big Mac. But Bumi pressed firmly on the fisher with his index finger.

Yaty wondered where Beti and Mathias had gone. This was Mathias's home, and her home too, and yet Bumi and their two children sat so comfortably in the living room as if it had been his toil and not Mathias's that had afforded her safety and security for these past six years.

“Hello, Bumi,” she said.

Bumi's head snapped upward and the rest of his body snapped to attention. He dropped Baharuddin's sketch pad. “Yaty,” he said in scarcely more than a whisper. He stepped carefully over the sketch pad and approached Yaty like a preying mantis, slowly, deliberately, carefully. He held out his arms to her.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Yes, we do,” he said.

Bunga stared up at them and sucked her teeth sympathetically. Baharuddin had flipped the page in his notebook and stared at the two fighting demons.

“Come outside with me,” Yaty said. She ignored his extended arms and took his right hand in hers.

He allowed himself to be led and said nothing.

Robadise waited outside. He squatted and smoked a cigarette.

“Go inside and rediscover your niece and nephew,” Yaty said to her elder brother.

Robadise crushed his cigarette on his heel and obliged her.

BUMI ACHED FOR YATY'S EMBRACE MORE PAINFULLY THAN HE
ever had before, so that his body shook in anticipation and an incumbent dread that he may never touch her again. To come this far and be denied his wife's touch would be the cruellest torture in a savage journey.

She led him to the shade of a tree then turned to face him, placed her hand on his chest and bowed her head. As he reached to touch her face she sank suddenly to her knees and put her arms around his waist, held onto his buttocks. He cradled her head in his hands and felt the jolt of her periodic sobs.

THIS WAS NOT AS YATY HAD PLANNED. ALL THE STRENGTH SHE
had summoned from millions of years of mothers abandoned her with one look into Bumi's long-suffering, over-sized eyes. Most men, having suffered like Bumi had, would have hardened hearts and cruel expressions, or be mad or dead. Bumi somehow had come through his ordeal cleaner and kinder than before. Perhaps Canada had treated him better than she had expected.

Her well-planned words churned still in her mind. They refused to complete their dress rehearsal. “Bumi,” was all she could say.

He joined her on the ground then, pressed her teary face to his, kissed her salty lips and laughed.

“Bumi,” she whispered.

“Yaty,” he said. He pulled from his pocket a tattered piece of paper and handed it to her. “My friend in Canada drew this of me,” he said. “It is for you, so you can see how I looked in Canada.”

Yaty stared down at the picture and half smiled. “Bumi, why are you so good?” she asked.

He stared at her blankly and offered no reply. The picture hung wilted in his hand.

“You are so good to me,” she said. “And so bad for me.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I did all I could. I returned.”

“You did more than expected, Bumi. I wasn't ready for you.”

“What would you have done?” he asked.

She shook her head, put her hands on his chest again, pushed him away. “Prepared,” she said.

“Shall I go and come again?” he asked. “I'm sorry I left.”

“Me too,” she said. “They say you never could have protected me from what followed anyway, but I think you could have found a way. People always underestimated your strength. Your return proves it again.”

“Or proves my bad timing,” Bumi said.

The words in Yaty's story finally overcame their stage fright and flew from her mouth as if to compensate for lost time. She told him what needed to be said, that Mathias was a good man who had done the needful and become a good second father and husband, and had even touched her heart and womb, given her another great blessing, a third child, a second life. Everything she had done had been for the children and any benefits to her were secondary. They were safe in the mountains with the cheek-turning Christians who would crucify any Buginese Muslim foolish enough to try to kill one of Bumi's children as recompense for the children they thought Bumi murdered, especially now that Yaty had converted. Conversion had been necessary in order to gain acceptance in Tana Toraja during a tense revolution, and she had no regrets. They were safe there and nowhere else, so there they had to stay. They had to stay with Mathias.

“Then here I too will stay,” Bumi said, chest puffed and brow furrowed.

Yaty had said her piece and suffered no delusions of controlling the actions of obstinate men. She turned and left him there with half her heart. She walked past Mathias, whom she had not noticed watching from the doorway, and straight to their bed, into which she flopped heavily, her strength vanished.

IN THE HEART OF RANTEPAO, THE CULTURAL AND TOURIST CENTRE
of Tana Toraja, Robadise and Bumi found an outdoorsy shop serving mostly foreign backpackers. Bumi used the last of Sarah's mother's loan to purchase a one-person tent, a camp-stove, a super-lightweight cooking pot, a plastic bowl and a metal spoon.

Robadise left Bumi with some grocery money and drove back to Makassar. The brothers-in-law had reached a mutual unspoken agreement that in this domestic affair Bumi was on his own. Robadise would give no more assistance, protection or interference. He left with only a brief warning: “Be careful. These mountain dwellers are docile but mad. They'll slaughter you like a working-class pig if they see you as a threat, and Mathias is a popular man.”

“You chose my wife's keeper well,” Bumi said.

Robadise took Bumi in a surprise embrace and said, “I hope you know I did it out of love, Brother. I admire you now as always.” He released Bumi from his gorilla grip and said, “Maybe in this new democracy your brain will be useful.”

THE CAMP WAS COMFORTABLE ENOUGH FOR THE FIRST FEW DAYS.
Bumi had ample rice and even a few eggs and spices. Bunga and Baharuddin occasionally brought him a bucket of water from the house, and he caught Beti sneaking curious peeks from afar. He quickly abandoned the hopelessness of thinking he was waiting for Yaty to come to her senses. From his little hovel, he witnessed glimpses of her second life. Beamed through window slots and a Chinese-made tent mesh, the star of these short films wore a genuine smile while her second husband brimmed with the confidence of a saviour. Unlike back in Makassar, neighbours and extended family came round with waving hands, little warm touches and cordial greetings.