The office of Nusantara News on Jalan Asem Lama seemed to have running through it some kind of demarcation line separating members of political camps. On one side were members of the Communist Party; people who sympathized with Party goals; members of LEKRA, a cultural organization with close links to the Party; and even people who simply liked to spend time with the artists who belonged to this organization, the League of People’s Culture. On the other side and at the opposite end of the political spectrum were staff members who shunned anything that might be labeled leftist. Among them was my friend, Bang Amir, who was pro-Masyumi, the Islamic political party founded by Natsir, whose pan-Islamic philosophy was antithetical to leftist thought. As for me, I was a bit on the fence. I supported Marxist ideals and enjoyed reading all the books that Mas Hananto gave me on the subject; I enthusiastically listened to political discussions between Mas Hananto and other colleagues in the editorial room, and it wasn’t rare to find me tagging along with them as they continued their debate over coffee at Kadir’s stall in Senen Market. Even so, I also liked, and found much comfort in, talking to Bang Amir about things of a more religious or spiritual nature.
But that sense of wonder stopped at my body, not my soul.
Both Mas Hananto and Mas Nugroho strongly believed in the virtues of socialism, but I saw numerous weak points in their theories and, even in the face of Mas Hananto’s derision, I continued to stand by my view that while there are some things that the government should ultimately be responsible for — public health and services, to name two — there are other things that are far better left entrusted to the private sector.
Lately, I had felt the political temperature in Jakarta rise precipitously, nearing the boiling point. At the top of my mind was the ever more strident war between LEKRA artists, who clung to the notion that art only has value if it serves to promote awareness of social issues, and artists who did not belong to the League and upheld the principles of individuality and humanitarianism. I then thought of literature. A literary work was, for me at least, a matter of the heart. Just because its theme or story line involved the struggle of farmers or laborers didn’t mean it would have an enlightening effect. That power came from the ability of the work to touch the heart of its reader. In this matter, in particular, I was greatly at odds with Mas Hananto’s point of view.
Hananto Prawiro… He was not just my superior; he was also my friend. I called him “Mas,” after all, the Javanese term of address for a man older than oneself with whom one is a friend. But he was also my guru and my mentor. Mas Hananto, head of the foreign desk at Nusantara News, was constantly lending me books he thought might help to expand my world view — which he deemed to be excessively tainted by bourgeois thought and opinion. Novels like Madame Bovary, for instance; plays like Waiting for Godot; and all of Joyce’s work, for that matter, he criticized as being self-indulgent.
“They’re playing with their belly buttons!” he said of such writers one day as he was flipping through A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “They’re not concerned with this world; they ignore class differences and poverty.”
“But Joyce, through his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, is trying to find himself through religion and art. I feel the process to be entirely rational,” I argued, trying to explain myself in a manner not even entirely convincing to myself. I had read the novel several times and never found myself bored by it. Dedalus is both a tragic and humorous figure. Sure, he might be a tad too serious about himself at times, but was Mas Hananto unable to see the bitter humor underlying such a work?
Mas Hananto had the most annoying habit of often repeating his views and opinions, so much so, I swear, that if my ears could have replied they would have screamed that he was merely sputtering clichés. Among Marxist followers in Indonesia, social-realist jargon was sacred. And anyone who wanted to curry favor with the editor-in-chief, a man who happened to be close to Communist Party leaders, had only to drop such terms or quote a few lines from The Mother and then act as if he had read the entire book to gain access to the editor-in-chief’s inner circle of colleagues.
For me, Gorky’s novel, which had been translated into Indonesian by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, was boring beyond belief. All its focus was on social issues with no concern for style or literary execution. My thought was that if the only thing a writer is concerned with is social issues, then he had better not write novels or poetry; he’d best stick to writing speeches or propaganda essays instead.
Mas Hananto once referred to me as a “Wibisono,” the younger brother of the ogre king Rahwana in the Ramayana, who allied himself with Rama, his brother’s foe. But in Indonesian politics, I didn’t know who was Rahwana and who was Rama. What I did know was that Mas Hananto didn’t quite know what to make of my views; they weren’t straight forward like his. And, frankly, if I were going to be called by the name of any character from the legendary Javanese pantheon, it probably would be Bima, who, among the five Pandawa brothers, was the one with the softest heart. Even though Bima fell head over heels in love with Drupadi, when his older brother Arjuna made known his desire to have her, Bima willing stepped aside. Oh, and by the way, this reference to Bima has no relation to past Indonesian politics, but everything to do with my former love life.
Mas Hananto knew that the way to deal with me was not through a battle of wills or disputation of my tastes. He knew I had little regard for the novels that he praised for their defense of the masses. I once rebuked him by asking if it wasn’t the case that we were supposed to be defending all of humanity, not just the proletariat. Why couldn’t we inculcate the concept of embracing the humanity that is found in all of us? Mas Hananto guffawed at my comment. But, unlike Mas Nugroho, whose hackles would rise because of my argumentative manner, Mas Hananto seemed to take on the role of a patient older brother trying to educate his whining younger sibling. That was why, even with the demarcation line running through the office, dividing friends and foes of the Communist Party, I seemed to reside in a kind of Swiss neutral zone, and was able to move from one side to another and to engage with Bang Amir and his friends.
I called Amir “Bang,” a term of address that derives from abang or “older brother,” because he was indeed like an older brother for me. Also a journalist at the Nusantara News, Bang Amir was highly critical of “Bung” or “Comrade” Sukarno, judging the president guilty of too closely embracing the Communist Party leadership and also of having imprisoned Mohammad Natsir, the former prime minister and one of the country’s top religious leaders, on charges of treason.
What with the constant wrangling between the two camps in the office and especially because the editor-in-chief had allied himself with Mas Hananto and Mas Nugroho, who were committed leftists, my in-between position was sometimes an uncomfortable one. Yes, Bang Amir was vocal in his opinions, but he was also a top-notch journalist, and when he was abruptly moved to the marketing and advertising division, I thought the move not only surprising but an insult both to him and to our profession. Regardless of the fact that “marketing and advertising” is essential to the success of a company or institution, Bang Amir was our best reporter. With his easy-going manner, he was able to get along with and, in fact, had become close to the leaders of all the political parties — except for the Communist Party, that is, whose leadership Mas Hananto claimed as his key source. Furthermore, as a writer, Bang Amir was both fast and effective, the very characteristics a news agency needs in a journalist.