Читать книгу Ramadan Sky - Nichola Hunter - Страница 6

All that was more than twelve years ago. I am not a child anymore, but that’s not easy to explain to five older brothers and six older sisters. Rhamat is still the bossiest and the worst. Although my mother is the head of the family, and she still tries to do things according to my father’s directions, Rhamat argues with everything and always wants the best of everything for himself and his dog-faced wife.

He is twenty years older than me, and all of us hate him. We wish he had not taken the place as the first man of the family. My mother has said that perhaps one day he will be run over by a bus. When she said that I told her that he is our brother and we must try to love him, but in my secret heart I was glad to hear it spoken.

Our mother works very hard and watches over us, especially me because I am the youngest, and my next brother Satiya because he is lazy and will not settle down to a wife or a job. He is ten years older than me and we have four sisters in between.

Everyone says that Satiya and I are the handsome ones in our family and also that we could be twins, but I don’t think so. For a start, he is shorter than me, and he covers his face with a beard. I can see that his eyes are dark like mine and he has high cheekbones and curly hair that he grows long and ties with a red bandana. I keep my hair short and my face clean-shaven. Satiya stays out most nights and refuses to answer to anyone when he comes home in the mornings. He eats and then goes off to work, his eyes sullen and drooping from lack of sleep. He did not like school and cannot speak a word of English, whereas I still have the certificates that I won in high school for best English student two years in a row – the year my father died and the next year. After that I came back home, to Jakarta, as there wasn’t any money to keep me there.

Night is the best time for Jakarta. Our houses are small and hot, so we hang out in the street or down by the river, where there are a few scraggly trees and a warung that sells tea. We also buy snacks there, and sometimes a little vodka, and other things if the right person is buying. There are piles of rubbish along the street and clouds of insects rising from the river, and a straight stretch of road that is good for racing. Our motorbikes roar like stallions, kicking up dust over the oily moon. There are no women here – all wives, mothers and sisters are in the homes that they are constantly spinning for us, like spiders. When we return at dawn, wives will be sulky and silent, mothers will scold.

Everyone who has a bike comes down here to try to earn a little extra money by racing and betting at the balap¹. We do this every Friday and Saturday night – unless the police come. Then they take whatever they can get out of us and send us home. Sometimes there is very big money to be won at the balap, and then the police will allow it, for a share of the prize money. If you want to win big, though, you have to put up top money. This is why you must be very careful about lending money to your friends. They will sometimes borrow from many friends on the same day, in order to do this racing. When they lose, they will have no way to pay anyone back.

One night I won three races, all of them against the second brother of my street enemy, who had cost me both my girlfriend and my job. My friend Budi was there, and he told me:

Take this bastard, Fajar, and show him who is the winner and who will be the winner, always, in the end.

We had put two hundred thousand rupiah on the first race. They called the start and from the beginning I felt the bike rush out fast and straight and I beat him easily. His face was blank as he called for another race. We always double the money if another race is called for. I told him he would be very sorry to lose four hundred thousand more. I could still feel the magic coming from my jeans and the warm seat of my bike, so I agreed and again, I beat him easily. This time he was sweating and showing his teeth after the finish.

He slowly walked over to where his friends were standing and talked for a minute and then returned. He wanted to race for eight. I had already won six and Budi was telling me to stop, but I was looking at the sweat forming on his forehead and I knew I would beat him again. Give me two hundred thousand, I told Budi – I knew that he had some money, although he had lost his job at the same time as me. This time he wanted to double the distance but Budi said:

No. He will run off the end if he loses.

Leave my eight here, my opponent said, and nobody runs anywhere.

So we raced with two men from each side at the finish line and I beat him again. I was happy to take his money, although we never usually race for this amount and I surely knew he would have to borrow to live and would struggle to pay back his friends for a long time.

The next night he wanted to race me again, but I refused.

You are three times the loser. I won’t waste my time racing such a rider.

His body stiffened and he glared at me for a moment but said nothing, and after a few seconds he got on his bike and drove away into the night.

My blessings to your brother, I called after him.

I was relieved to see him go. In truth, I couldn’t feel the magic in my body that night and I was sure he would have beaten me.

In the daytime and some nights I had been working as a security guard at KFC. I had a uniform and was earning one million rupiah per month. There is a trick to that job that not everyone knows: you can take your free meal, which you are given every day, and sell it outside for half price. You take the back lane, or the car park, and there is always someone who will buy it. If you can find a way to get two meals out, and nobody notices, it is even better. In this way you can increase your salary and that is how I could get a deposit for my motorbike.

Aryanti was my girlfriend at that time. I had told her that as soon as I paid the bike we would be married, but soon after that I became impatient and did not want to wait. Aryanti’s mother was the one who refused.

He can wait and pay the bike first, she told her. Have an umbrella ready before the rain.

My own mother was not in agreement because she did not want me to follow in Satiya’s footsteps. I was already twenty-four and she was anxious not to have a second son in his thirties with no wife, but she told me to respect the wishes of Aryanti’s mother without argument.

It was some time later that I lost the job. Remi, the brother of the man I later beat on the bike began telling stories about me and Budi. First he told them that we were smoking ganja when working, but he could not show any proof. We were called into the office, where Mr Iskandar, the boss man, looked into our eyes for signs of drugs. This was the same man who had squeezed our testicles at our job interview, in order to check that we were virgins. I had shaved all the hairs from around my penis and testes, as I had seen done in many porn movies, and he was very surprised to see this.

What is this for?! he demanded.

I was standing with my pants around my ankles with everybody looking at my poor exposed bird.

Do you have the crabs? Or are you some kind of perverted infidel?

I wanted to tell him that he was the perverted one to lay his hands on my private parts, but instead I told him about my terrible heat rash, from riding the motorbike and wearing jeans. I quickly showed him the bribe money and he told me to do up my trousers.

There had been three of us on that day and we all got a job, but the third man died soon afterwards in a traffic accident. He was run over on his motorbike on the way to work, and somehow never replaced. I wondered if Iskandar had continued to take his pay, because we had to cover three floors between two people, when it should have been one floor each. Budi and I had worked together like this for two years, when the same boss again called us in to the office. This time he looked into our eyes, instead of other places, to see if we showed any signs of smoking drugs. I could see that he had not gotten over his earlier dislike of me. He let Budi stand to one side and tried for some minutes to get a confession from me, but I held firm and he did not fire us.

The next day we brought cigarettes to his office, with Budi leading the way.

Please accept this small gift from my father.

Iskandar gestured for him to put the carton down on the desk and then turned his eyes on me as I produced an identical package.

Do not let me hear any more tales about either of you, he scowled.

We closed the door and immediately began mocking him as we walked away.

Please accept this gift from my father and please kiss my biji.²

Does this man’s mother have a penis?

No, his wife does; may she smoke him while he smokes our cigarettes.

The truth is, everyone takes a little ganja when they can get it, even Remi, our accuser, and especially when working at night. That first time we did not get fired, but some months later Iskandar began to complain about other things – twenty minutes late and such. It all ended in a bag search where he found some money, which had been placed there.

It is hard to prove you have not stolen money that is sitting right there in your bag, and if you make a fuss they can call the cops and then you have your hands in your wallet until they bleed. Iskandar told us we were fired. I had the feeling that only he could have placed the money there, because only he could have a spare locker key. This time I talked straight.

Are you sure it was us, you old spider monkey? Do you want another look at our eggs before we go home? And then you can go and spank yourself!

For the second time I stood before him with my trousers down, while Budi laughed hysterically and gathered our belongings.

Fajar, you are the craziest son of your mother, Budi spluttered, when he had pushed me outside.

And he was right. I am famous in my family for having a very hot temper that makes me do crazy things.

We got on our bikes, but did not go home. Instead, we rounded up some friends and three of my brothers and went to find Remi. We caught him by surprise – although he surely must have expected us to act against him, but perhaps not so quickly.

Our jobs were taken by his brother and nephew, but Remi himself found that he was unable to work for several weeks, as he fell off his bike that night and broke his arm and smashed up his face.

For the first month without a job I was looking everywhere for work. My cousin wanted to sell me a job as a ticket conductor on the train to Surabaya. He told me that I should pay two million rupiah. It is not permitted to buy a job in this way, but many places will not employ you unless you do so. We cannot ask for our money back if they decide to take the job away later; they will simply deny that any money ever changed hands. This time my mother said that we would not pay, as she had already laid out money for my first job and the man had seen fit to fire me anyway. So I kept looking. I still had a little money and I told myself that everything would be okay.

My father was the lucky one, who could do magic with money and animals. He could buy small things and sell them to people at a higher price. In his memory, I tried to do this myself with the raincoats. I drove a long way to the markets and bought ten raincoats at a cheap price. I tried to sell them to the other drivers in my street, but they all looked at me suspiciously and asked many questions. How much did you pay for this? Why do you want to go shopping for us like a woman? After that I tried at many places for every kind of job. I still had the bike but the payment was two months late. We should pay every month, and if we pay late, they will take extra interest from us. If they don’t get a payment for three months, they will come and take the bike.

One day, on the street, when I only had one week left until the third payment, I met an old friend from my high school. His name was Hidayat, and he was not exactly a friend, but someone who had been in the higher class than me. I only knew him from playing football a few times, but he was easy to recognise because he had a wide forehead and very large ears for which he had been teased by many of the boys and even some of the teachers. I noticed that his ears had not grown smaller with time, as he held out his hand in welcome.

Assalam alaikum, he gave me the greeting from our school times.

He was drinking tea and asked me to join him and after a short time I found myself telling him of my recent troubles.

What if I told you I have a way to give you one hundred thousand right now? he asked.

I protested that I could not borrow any money, but he stopped me before I could finish.

It is not a loan, he said. You will have to earn it, but it will only take a few minutes. We’ll take your bike.

So I drove, while Hidayat sat behind me and directed me to a money changing shop a few streets away. Then he took a twenty-dollar bill from the United States of America from his wallet, and handed it to me. I had never seen one before and I was turning it over in my hands when he said quietly:

Stop acting like a hillbilly or someone will notice. Leave the keys in the bike. Go and change the money and then come straight back.

For a moment, I thought it was a trick, and that he would run away on my bike. He looked at me with impatience.

What are you waiting for?

Hidayat had said that the moneychanger would ask for my ID and then give me the two hundred thousand and some small notes in exchange for the twenty and that is exactly what happened.

When I got back to the bike, he was sitting in the driver’s place with the engine running.

Get on! he hissed.

We drove back to the tea stall where he handed over my share as promised.

Come again tomorrow, he told me. We will try a fifty, but not at the same place.

I told Hidayat that I did not understand why he would want to give me this money. He looked at me for a moment and then spat on the ground and shook his head.

I thought you were the clever one in school, brother, he said. The money is not fucking real. My job is to give you this money, and yours is not to ask me where it comes from, and to get it changed.

This information worried me, because I had used my ID to change the money. What if they found it was a fake later on?

They do not write it down like that, he said, on each note. There is no way for them to do anything now.

We arranged for him to text me in coming days to try again, and I left.

I drove through the heavy afternoon traffic and went straight to pick up Aryanti, to take her for ice cream. I was eager to tell her the whole story, but she was not pleased.

Tell me, she asked. You were not good friends with this big telinga³ in school? Then why does he want to give you all this money? Are you suddenly a brother to him?

I do not know, I replied.

Well perhaps you can tell me this, she said, and she looked very stern, despite her tiny build and the glass of strawberry ice cream she was eating. Who is the person who will be caught with the fake money – you or him?

I did not answer.

If they catch you, you will not find him anywhere. He will drive away on your bike.

You are very clever, I told her, and it was the truth, especially as she was only nineteen years old.

Yes, I am clever, she said. Fajar, please don’t see this man again.

Hidayat sent me many texts the next week but I did not answer any of them, as promised, and after a short time he didn’t send any more. But time was marching past me and there didn’t seem to be any way forward.