“Oh, I’ve been around too,” he said mockingly. “A great many years. I’ll tell you something, young man. I don’t give a damn for your oil discoveries and all that. I forecasted electric loads all my life — during the Depression, World War II, times of bust and boom. I’ve seen what Route 128’s so-called Massachusetts Miracle did for Boston. And I can say for sure that no electric load ever grew by more than 7 to 9 percent a year for any sustained period. And that’s in the best of times. Six percent is more reasonable.”
I stared at him. Part of me suspected he was right, but I felt defensive. I knew I had to convince him, because my own conscience cried out for justification.
“Howard, this isn’t Boston. This is a country where, until now, no one could even get electricity. Things are different here.”
He turned on his heel and waved his hand as though he could brush me away.
“Go ahead,” he snarled. “Sell out. I don’t give a damn what you come up with.” He jerked his chair from behind his desk and fell into it. “I’ll make my electricity forecast based on what I believe, not some pie-in-the-sky economic study.” He picked up his pencil and started to scribble on a pad of paper.
It was a challenge I could not ignore. I went and stood in front of his desk.
“You’ll look pretty stupid if I come up with what everyone expects — a boom to rival the California gold rush — and you forecast electricity growth at a rate comparable to Boston in the 1960s.”
He slammed the pencil down and glared at me. “Unconscionable! That’s what it is. You — all of you—” he waved his arms at the offices beyond our walls, “you’ve sold your souls to the devil. You’re in it for the money. Now,” he feigned a smile and reached under his shirt, “I’m turning off my hearing aid and going back to work.”
It shook me to the core. I stomped out of the room and headed for Charlie’s office. Halfway there, I stopped, uncertain about what I intended to accomplish. Instead, I turned and walked down the stairs, out the door, into the afternoon sunlight. The young woman was climbing out of the canal, her sarong wrapped tightly about her body. The elderly man had disappeared. Several boys played in the canal, splashing and shouting at each other. An older woman was standing knee-deep in the water, brushing her teeth; another was scrubbing clothes.
A huge lump grew in my throat. I sat down on a slab of broken concrete, trying to disregard the pungent odor from the canal. I fought hard to hold back the tears; I needed to figure out why I felt so miserable.
You’re in it for the money. I heard Howard’s words, over and over. He had struck a raw nerve.
The little boys continued to splash each other, their gleeful voices filling the air. I wondered what I could do. What would it take to make me carefree like them? The question tormented me as I sat there watching them cavort in their blissful innocence, apparently unaware of the risk they took by playing in that fetid water. An elderly, hunchbacked man with a gnarled cane hobbled along the bank above the canal. He stopped and watched the boys, and his face broke into a toothless grin.
Perhaps I could confide in Howard; maybe together we would arrive at a solution. I immediately felt a sense of relief. I picked up a little stone and threw it into the canal. As the ripples faded, however, so did my euphoria. I knew I could do no such thing. Howard was old and bitter. He had already passed up opportunities to advance his own career. Surely, he would not buckle now. I was young, just starting out, and certainly did not want to end up like him.
Staring into the water of that putrid canal, I once again saw images of the New Hampshire prep school on the hill, where I had spent vacations alone while the other boys went off to their debutante balls. Slowly the sorry fact settled in. Once again, there was no one I could talk to.
That night I lay in bed, thinking for a long time about the people in my life — Howard, Charlie, Claudine, Ann, Einar, Uncle Frank — wondering what my life would be like if I had never met them. Where would I be living? Not Indonesia, that was for sure. I wondered also about my future, about where I was headed. I pondered the decision confronting me. Charlie had made it clear that he expected Howard and me to come up with growth rates of at least 17 percent per annum. What kind of forecast would I produce?
Suddenly a thought came to me that soothed my soul. Why had it not occurred to me before? The decision was not mine at all. Howard had said that he would do what he considered right, regardless of my conclusions. I could please my bosses with a high economic forecast and he would make his own decision; my work would have no effect on the master plan. People kept emphasizing the importance of my role, but they were wrong. A great burden had been lifted. I fell into a deep sleep.
A few days later, Howard was taken ill with a severe amoebic attack. We rushed him to a Catholic missionary hospital. The doctors prescribed medication and strongly recommended that he return immediately to the United States. Howard assured us that he already had all the data he needed and could easily complete the load forecast from Boston. His parting words to me were a reiteration of his earlier warning.
“No need to cook the numbers,” he said. “I’ll not be part of that scam, no matter what you say about the miracles of economic growth!”
PART II: 1971–1975
CHAPTER 6. My Role as Inquisitor
Our contracts with the Indonesian government, the Asian Development Bank, and USAID required that someone on our team visit all the major population centers in the area covered by the master plan. I was designated to fulfill this condition. As Charlie put it, “You survived the Amazon; you know how to handle bugs, snakes, and bad water.”
Along with a driver and translator, I visited many beautiful places and stayed in some pretty dismal lodgings. I met with local business and political leaders and listened to their opinions about the prospects for economic growth. However, I found most of them reluctant to share information with me. They seemed intimidated by my presence. Typically, they told me that I would have to check with their bosses, with government agencies, or with corporate headquarters in Jakarta. I sometimes suspected some sort of conspiracy was directed at me.
These trips were usually short, not more than two or three days. In between, I returned to the Wisma in Bandung. The woman who managed it had a son a few years younger than me. His name was Rasmon, but to everyone except his mother he was Rasy. A student of economics at a local university, he immediately took an interest in my work. In fact, I suspected that at some point he would approach me for a job. He also began to teach me Bahasa Indonesia.
Creating an easy-to-learn language had been President Sukarno’s highest priority after Indonesia won its independence from Holland. Over 350 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the archipelago,1 and Sukarno realized that his country needed a common vocabulary in order to unite people from the many islands and cultures. He recruited an international team of linguists, and Bahasa Indonesia was the highly successful result. Based on Malay, it avoids many of the tense changes, irregular verbs, and other complications that characterize most languages. By the early 1970s, the majority of Indonesians spoke it, although they continued to rely on Javanese and other local dialects within their own communities. Rasy was a great teacher with a wonderful sense of humor, and compared to learning Shuar or even Spanish, Bahasa was easy.
Rasy owned a motor scooter and took it upon himself to introduce me to his city and people. “I’ll show you a side of Indonesia you haven’t seen,” he promised one evening, and urged me to hop on behind him.