When one arrived, addressed as always to my parents, my mum or dad would always call me and hand over the letter to me. They always asked me to read it out and I was delighted to do so. They would smile as I excitedly told them all Heri’s news and they would then tell me they were going to write back to him as soon as possible. However, a day or so later my mum would usually tell me she and my dad were ‘far too busy at present’ to compose the letter and they wouldn’t mind if I wrote to Heri instead. This, of course, was something I loved to do. Again, it was not until years later I realised the significance of this ritual.
My brother seemed to be doing well in his new life in Jakarta. He told us in his letters that he had got a job working in a motorbike repair shop and he was learning about the business and saving as much money as he could in readiness for opening up himself, and in his letters he always had some advice for me, too.
‘Work hard at school, bung,’ he would say. ‘I need you to come here and help me when I set up my business.’
I worked hard. I wanted nothing more than to join him and make him as proud of me as I was of him, but when I was fourteen I had no choice but to leave school. My mum and dad couldn’t afford to send me to senior high school and they needed me to go to work and help them to help our family.
I was a bit disappointed to leave school, but I had always known this was going to happen and I considered myself lucky to have had nine years education. People often say your schooldays are the happiest of your life; well, I don’t know about that but I know I did enjoy mine. Now, however, I was ready for the next stage in my life.
No matter how much I pleaded with my mum and dad, I couldn’t convince them I was old enough or ready enough to be permitted to join Heri in the city, and so I took up as a trainee mechanic in a little shop in the village. I should use inverted commas here while describing my job title, because I received very little in either training or mechanics in general. In reality I was employed as a pembantu or ‘helper’. It was my job to keep the shop clean, wash the vehicles and generally run errands.
It wasn’t the greatest job in the world, but I reasonably enjoyed it. I saw it for what it was; the first step on a very tall ladder. I worked hard again, or as hard as I was able to in such a limited position and environment, and did as well for myself as I could for a couple of years, but then something happened and I ended up leaving the village.
It wasn’t my fault and it was most unfair and upsetting at the time, but all has been put right since then and there has been no lasting damage. I can go back to my village now as everybody now knows the truth of what happened but at the time things looked pretty bad for me.
I suppose I should tell you what happened. Well, one day I was working in the garage and the boss, Mr. Simon, decided to go home early. He told me to lock up the garage when I had finished and take the keys home then come in early in the morning so I could open the shop up. I didn’t mind this, and so carried on working for a while before tidying everything up and heading off home as instructed.
Well … the next day when I got to work there was already a large crowd gathered around the place, and as I got closer I could see Mr. Simon. He was very red in the face and was shouting a lot and seemed on the verge of some sort of breakdown. He saw me approaching and flew at me with his fists, screaming, ‘Kau babi! You pig,’ over and over. I was amazed and speechless. Why was Mr. Simon, who had always been decent to me, acting like this all of a sudden? What ever had I done wrong?
I tried to fathom out what was going on and why he was so angry, but he was beside himself with rage and I could get no sense from him for what seemed like ages. People were holding him back to stop him attacking me, while others were trying to usher me from the scene. I just couldn’t make any sense of it and had no idea of how to deal with the situation.
It was then my father and our village chief appeared and some sort of order started to be restored. Mr. Simon was persuaded by the village chief to calm down and to explain what had happened. He told my father and the chief that his business had been broken into in the night and all the money in the safe had been stolen, along with quite a lot of valuable machine parts and, as I had been given the keys and the responsibility of locking the premises up, I was clearly the culprit.
I was speechless, but luckily my dad wasn’t. He is a quiet man and well respected in the village and community and so when he talks people, no matter who they are or
