Trafford Publishing: Midnight Shadows

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Midnight Shadows

by Garrett Kam

188 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0052; ISBN 1-55395-689-3; US$19.00, C$24.95, EUR16.30, £11.30

In 1965, an alleged Communist coup fails in Indonesia. The bloody aftermath has terrible consequences for an innocent Balinese family caught in the crossfire between the opposing sides.

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About the Book About the Author Excerpts Catalogue Information

About the Book

An innocent Balinese family is caught in the deadly crossfire between between opposing sides after the alleged Communist coup fails in Indonesia in 1965. Supernatural forces bring about divine retribution in this exciting tale of mysticism and morality. It looks at the reasons behind the terrible violence that engulfed the island by interweaving actual events and history with mythology, dreams and rituals.

About the Author

Garrett Kam (I Nyoman Swastawa) was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has lived in Bali for many years, and since 1990 has served as a ritual assistant in one of the island's most important temples. He has written extensively on Southeast Asian art and culture. This is his first novel.

Excerpts

     It was late that morning when Wayan finally woke up, suffering from the ill aftereffects of drinking too much tuak the night before with his friend Nengah the gambler. His head ached painfully from the hangover, and the ground swayed like during an earthquake when he stepped outside his room in the bale dauh. Shielding his eyes with his hands from the bright sun, he slowly stumbled his way over to the kitchen. His unsteady steps sent chickens scrambling about and the dog into a frenzy of barking that made his head throb even more. He picked up a stone and threw it at the noisy mutt, but with his blurry vision missed.
     "Shut up!" he shouted as he bent down for another stone. The dog quickly ran outside the house gate for safety in the street.
     Wayan's mother was busy cooking in the kitchen. She looked at Wayan as he staggered into the dark and smokey room.
     "Any coffee, Mek?" he asked her.
     "Your father had the last of it before he went to the rice fields early this morning," she said, emphasizing the last three words for his benefit. But it didn't register in her twenty-five year old son's head. His mind still was clouded by the alcohol.
     "Tendas keleng!" cussed Wayan with the most crude Balinese words for head and penis, actually calling his father a "dickhead" for having used up the coffee. His mother scowled at him. She didn't like it when Wayan swore for no good reason. After all, he hardly ever helped his father in the fields. And he didn't do much around the house either. Wayan spent most of his time drinking with his friends, and so he had no reason to complain about anything.
     "How did I wind up with such a lazy son," Wayan's mother sadly thought to herself as she shook her head. Both she and her husband had been proud of having a son since the day that he was born. But a serious infection that she had caught during the birth prevented her from bearing any more children. So they pampered Wayan, and now were paying the price of it. Then she taunted him by reciting a clever little folk saying:

     Sangut, Merdah,
     Delem, Tualen;
     Bangun, ngamah,
     Pules, dogen.

     The names of the four clown servants,
     See how they rhyme;
     With waking, eating, and sleeping,
     All of the time.

     Wayan stared at his mother. He hated hearing this because it made fun of his laziness and other bad habits. "So why didn't you buy some more?" he rudely asked. She suddenly stopped grinding spices on the stone block. Glaring at him, she shot back, "Go buy some yourself! You're the one who wants it!"
     Wayan mumbled something to himself so that his mother wouldn't hear him. Or at least he thought she didn't. But he had badly underestimated her sharp sense of hearing.
     "What? What terrible thing did you just say about your own mother?"
     "Oh ... uh ... nothing."
     "What do you mean nothing! Is that the kind of thanks I get for giving birth to you? For nursing you at my breasts? What kind of son are you?"
     Wayan kept silent and looked away from her. It was too early for him to answer back and start their almost daily confrontation. Besides, his head already was aching too much to want to hear her yelling at him.
     Wayan stepped back outside and went over to the bale dauh. Outside on the porch, several glass bottles lay on their sides, emptied of their contents from a night of heavy drinking. "First no coffee! And now no tuak, too!" he muttered. Wayan looked around and picked up his sharp sickle lying in a corner. He needed it to cut into the flower sheath of a sugar palm tree to tap the nectar, which would naturally ferment into tuak. He tucked the handle into the back of the kamben that was loosely wrapped about his hips. His belly, distended from too much drinking, hung over the front. But he didn't care much about his appearance anyway, so without bothering to put on a shirt he stepped outside the house gate.
     As he passed by a roadside warung foodstall, his friend Nengah the gambler was sitting there on a wooden bench. He also had woken up late and was having some coffee to try to get rid of his hangover.
     "Where are you going, Yan?" called out Nengah.
     "To the forested hills near Muncan, Nengah."
     "What for?"
     "We drank all the tuak last night. So I have to find some sugar palm trees to tap and make more."
     "Make sure you get a lot!" Nengah stroked his mustache and licked his lips just thinking about the potent brew.
     "Of course!"
     "Nah, but have some coffee first. Looks like you really need it!"
     Wayan nodded and joined Nengah. They sat and chatted over glasses of sweet black coffee with some fresh rice cakes, which were stacked in small metal dishes on the narrow counter among the glass jars filled with dry biscuits and peanuts.
     "I just saw Arya a few days ago, Nengah. He told me about his latest plan."
     "Like what, Yan?" asked Nengah.
     "Arya just got some rifles from the Indonesian military forces to kill any Communists in the area, especially in Rendang village. So we have to learn how to use the guns, because Arya wants us to join his death squad."
     "So ... do you think ... that we should?" There was hesitation in Nengah's voice.
     "Of course!" replied Wayan as he looked at Nengah. "What's the matter? Are you afraid?"
     Nengah looked down and just shook his head.
     "Yeh! So show some courage, like how you take risks in the cockfights!"
     "I've got a wife and young child! Not like you!" shot back Nengah as he raised his head.
     "So why do you gamble away everything instead of taking care of them?"
     Nengah glared at Wayan in silent anger. It was true. He lost money by betting on cockfights. Especially on that day when he made a very big wager. Much more money than he actually had. Unfortunately, the rooster that he favored lost. And as a result, Nengah was about to lose his family's small rice field, the only source of food and income. Fortunately, his friend Arya stepped in at the last minute and paid off the bet. Ever since then, however, Nengah owed a great debt to Arya. But it was an obligation that he resented, for it made him feel like a slave to a feudal lord.

     The Balinese kingdoms were supposed to have been abolished after the bitter war of independence that was fought by the Indonesian nationalists against the Dutch from 1946 to 1949. Nengah's father had eagerly joined the struggle when the Balinese resistance forces passed through Selat during their "Long March to Gunung Agung" as they regrouped and decided upon their next plan of action. He was young and passionate, but a totally inexperienced freedom fighter.
     "The resistance says that blood will flow in the rivers, and people will cry out for their loved ones if we trust the Dutch," he told his tearful and pregnant young wife before departing with the marchers in 1946. He came back home just a few months later in a plain wooden box, dead from a Dutch bullet which had shattered his proud chest, and was buried in the village cemetery. There was not enough money even for a simple cremation.
     Nengah was born soon after that, so he never knew his father. Having a younger brother was a poor substitute for a dead father, so Nengah's older brother bossed him around. And beat him whenever their mother was not looking or happened to be away, which was usual since she had to work hard to support two young children. Nengah was too frightened of his brother's threats to tell his mother about the beat-ings.
     When Nengah discovered that he could beat another man in a different way at the cockfights, he quickly became addicted to gambling. But if they beat him instead, then he would take out his anger and frustration on his wife. He would beat her, only stopping not because of her tears but because of those from his little daughter. She couldn't understand why her father was so cruel. And she cried to see her mother being hurt.

     A beautiful joged dancer from the nearby village of Iseh, the young woman named Jegeg, who was to become Nengah's wife, provoked a rousing chorus of catcalls and whistles from the young men in the audience when she parted the colorful curtains that were strung between two trees. The lively rhythmic pulses of the ensemble of bambookeyed grantang instruments and the sweet melody of a bamboo suling flute, along with her equally animated and luscious movements accented by the drums and cymbals, only increased the excitement of the crowd of young men, who pressed tightly against each other as they jostled for a better look. The heat from their sweaty bodies raised the temperature of the sultry tropical night and further aroused their passions.
     Surveying the onlookers with her big flirtatious eyes that flashed along with the mirror chips in her gilt headdress crowned by fragrant frangipani flowers, Jegeg was attracted to the slender and rather fairskinned youth because he stood out from among the others, who were deeply tanned from working in the fields under the sun. With a colorful gilded fan fluttering in her right hand, she flitted like a playful butterfly over to him and gently tapped his shoulder with the fan, then tied a sash around his waist. This act of ngibing was an invitation for him to dance with her, which he couldn't refuse. Nengah's friends jeered at him, for he was not at all a dancer and moved with the same awkwardness as a goose being chased by a dog as he did a comic duet with Jegeg. But Nengah was so drunk that he didn't care, plus he was totally infatuated with her sensuous charms.
     Later that night after the performance was over, the two of them found a secluded place for more intimate play. But that one night of pleasure led to a more long term relationship with the sixteen-year old dancer. Jegeg became pregnant and Nengah, who was just a year older, was forced to marry her. The loss of his freedom at such an early age led him to slightly resent Jegeg, but it was a bad feeling which only deepened when she gave birth to a girl instead of a boy as he had hoped.

     "Enough!" shouted Nengah, angry at having his weakness pointed out.
     "Alright! I'll join the death squad!" The young woman who ran the foodstall stared at him. She could hardly believe her ears.
     "Yeh! You idiot! Keep your voice down!" growled Wayan under his breath. He shot a threatening glance at the woman, who immediately turned her face away and pretended to busy herself with tidying up the glass jars of biscuits on the counter, acting as though she had heard nothing.
     "I'll do whatever is necessary ... whatever Arya ... and you tell me," mumbled Nengah as he looked down to the ground. He knew that he was resigned to his fate.
     "Good!" replied Wayan. Then to make Nengah remember his debt, he added, "And don't forget! You owe it to Arya!"
     The sun was high in the sky before the two men finally went their separate ways.

Catalogue Information