Short Story: The Bomb - Sunaryono Basuki K.S.

By Wombat | March 18th, 2006 | No Comments

When I read this short story, I was impressed with its structured position in Indonesian history. Sunaryono Basuki K.S. portrays a situation in time when the country was in the throes of Independence.

The Bomb
By Sunaryono Basuki K.S.

A small plane circled over the sky of Bululawang village where we lived at the time. I ran out of the house and cried:

“Mama! Mama! Come! We have to take shelter here.”

I tried to hide among the crop of the banana plantation, hoping that I would be undetected from the sky.

Mother laughed when she told the story to people years after the incident.

***
I was then only a few months shy of my sixth birthday. I remembered it was July, and I had not entered primary school yet. Later, I found out that it was around the time Dutch troops attacked the country.

They said it was only a “police action”, since they claimed Indonesia was their territory and believed that they could do anything to the country.

The people protested, claiming that Indonesia was a free country. Soekarno and Hatta, on behalf of the Indonesian people, had declared our independence on Aug. 17th only two years ago.

The incident in the village was not funny. We were all terrified, since it wasn’t only that small plane that flew over our village. A bigger plane — a bomber — also roared through the sky, heading westward.

It was only a few seconds afterwards that I heard a bomb explode. The force of it shook the ground.

“Grandma! Grandma! Mama! That could be Grandma’s house.”

Mother looked at me, shocked, and then understood.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It could be grandma’s house.” She whispered no more words.

I did not understand, but years later I thought, mother was very shocked by the thought.

Father said calmly, “I hope that they are safe.”

***
Grandma lived with her cousin and the cousin’s two daughters, my aunts. We called her Grandma Atim, and she lived with her elder cousin Grandma Ning.

Only years later, after she had passed away, I learned that her real name was Manirah. I found out because it was engraved on her tombstone.

She got the nickname “Ning” because she was very beautiful.

Perhaps her beauty was the reason why the Dutch architect married her, but they had no children. The architect built two large, red-brick houses, both on a great plot of land that extended from the railway to the small stream.

A few years before the Japanese occupied the country, grandpa left for Makassar because the project he had headed was finished.

My mother, who was still single then, was about to be taken to Makassar also, but she refused. Had she accepted, her story — and my story — would have been different.

Would I have been born from my mother? Or a different woman altogether? Would I have been born in Holland?

My grandmothers lived in the next village, but it wasn’t easy to get there.

***
A rumor passed our way, saying that the Dutch were moving south, passing our village. The villagers dug a hole large enough for some people to hide in it, and we all rushed into the hole looking for a small place among other people looking for safety.

My eldest brother covered the hole with several sheaves of coconut leaves. We hoped that we would not be detected from the sky if a plane flew over us.

Only years later, I thought we would all have been killed if a bomb had been dropped into the hole.
In the darkness, we kept silent.

Suddenly, I heard steps moving closer. My heart pounded from fear. These could be Dutch soldiers’ footsteps that were moving closer to us. Would they find us, shout fiercely, point their guns at us, and without asking us to get out of the pit, spew hot bullets into us? We would soon be dead!

My breath faltered. I couldn’t think of anything but fear. I must have looked pale. I trembled, but no one noticed.

The steps stopped at the edge of the hole. Some heads, bare of any military helmets appeared.

One of them said in Javanese: “Be careful! They are coming.”

I exhaled. I understood clearly that he was talking about the Dutch.

The Dutch troops had not arrived by that evening, but Father had decided that we had to move on to Wajak, a smaller town further east.

My father, as I found later, was a Republican school inspector. He was in charge of several primary schools and their teachers. He kept all the important official documents at home, but when we moved, he carried them with him to the new place.

We carried away all our belongings on a two-wheeled buffalo cart. Father, Mother, and my younger brother and sister traveled on a horse-drawn buggy, but me and my older brother preferred the cart. I didn’t know then, but my brother had in fact been placed in charge of all our belongings.

We moved from one place to another as the Dutch systematically shrank the Republic’s territory. They occupied Bululawang and stopped at the Krebet sugar factory, one kilometer south of Wajak. They established a line of demarcation there.

So we moved to Gondanglegi to stay ahead of the enemy, then moved southward to Pagelaran, but later returned to Gondanglegi — only to come face-to-face with the fact that Dutch troops had already occupied the village during the second wave of aggression in December 1948, and a year had already gone by.

My father and our family were trapped inside Dutch territory.

When one day, a Dutch military officer visited our rented house and forced father to return to service, we fled deeper into Dutch territory to Pakisaji, where Grandma Atim lived.

***
I finally saw my two beloved grandmas again. I remembered they were good at making traditional cakes, and Grandma Ning always prepared a cup of hot sweetened milk and a slice of bread for me.

The bomb that had frightened me had destroyed the two giant fuel tanks in the yard, which stood about 200 meters away from the main house and in turn, had destroyed the house.

The beautiful house, mother said, that was built in a Dutch architectural style, was flattened to the ground. No sign of its beauty was left.

But the other, empty fuel tanks were still there. Perhaps people had come and stolen the fuel, or perhaps the freedom fighters stole it to prevent the Dutch troops from making use of it.

Still, we were fortunate that we could stay in the other house, the one built in accordance with traditional architecture. This house had a large, open veranda and the walls were high.

Grandma asked some people to help channel water from a small nearby stream to the house. Father later built a filtering tank to purify the water using sand and fibers from the sugar palm.

I would climb up the ladder attached to the wall of the tanks, which reached about four or five meters high from the top. I could see the stream, the rice field beyond it, and the rest of the village from this place.

I had enjoyed my time as a child, unaware of the political crises. I went to school, to the Republican school established by Father, where my aunt and big brother both were.

***
The bomb had exploded but I was happy, joined my two grandmas — and I could go to school. I didn’t know then that

Father received no salary, and that Mother supported our daily life by selling groceries in the market.

Even so, this is my most precious experience of my childhood, knowing that war had brought full independence for the people.

I didn’t know whom I had to thank: father, mother or the freedom fighters.

– Singaraja, 2005