Bald-headed
Ch. 3

He finished his tea, went inside, found a book, then turned on the porch light on his way out. After sitting down again, he looked at the book. It was old, the cover was torn, and the pages were stained with oil and water. It was Sarinah written by Sukarno, and he took her wherever she went for a long time. It has even been a pillow or short chair for emergency times.

He rubbed the cover, cleaned it up a little. Then he left the book open randomly and read the words in front of him.

"I call this book Sarinah as a sign of my gratitude to my nanny when I was a child. My mother was named Sarinah. It 'takes' me... From him, I learned a lot about loving 'little people'. He himself was a 'little person', but his cultivation was always big!"

Ir. Sukarno

This is the herbalism of the soul, your free flight into silence, it fully appears, silent, staring, contemplating the theme he likes the most,

night, sleep, death and the stars.

He smiled at himself. For some reason Sukarno always reminded him of someone, and he was glad he was back.

Although Sugi had been away for eleven years, this was his home and he knew many people here, most of them from his teenage years. That's not surprising. Like many cities in the south, the people who live here never change, they just get older.

His best friend these days is Aceng, a seventy-year-old brown-skinned man who lives down the street. They met a few weeks after Sugi returned to the house, when Aceng showed up with homemade liquor and ginger stew, and the two spent their introductory night together with a little drunk and telling stories.

Now Aceng will appear a few nights a week, usually around eight o'clock. With four children and eleven grandchildren at home, she had to leave the house occasionally, and Sugi could not blame her. Usually Aceng would bring his harmonica, and after chatting for a while, they played some songs together. Sometimes they play for hours.

Sugiono considered Aceng a family. There has really been no one else, at least since his father died last year. She was an only child, her mother died of influenza when she was two years old, and although she once wanted it, she never married.

But she fell in love once, that's all she knows. Once and only once, and for a long time. And it has changed him forever. Perfect love does that to someone, and it's perfect.

The clouds slowly began to roll across the night sky, turning silver with the reflection of the moon. As they thickened, he leaned his head back. Leaning himself on the rocking chair. His feet moved automatically, maintaining a steady rhythm, and as he did almost every night, his mind drifted back to a warm night like this sixteen years ago.

Just ahead of class, the opening night of the Youth Music Festival. The city was full, enjoying the boiled corn and the game of luck.

The night was damp, for some reason he remembered it vividly. He arrives alone, and as he walks through the crowd, looking for a friend, he sees Ron and Eva, two people who grew up with him, talking to a girl he has never seen before.

She was beautiful, that was what Sugi thought and when he finally joined them, he looked towards her with a pair of eyes that kept stealing glances. "Hi," she said briefly as she reached out, "Ron has told me so much about you."

An ordinary beginning, something that would be forgotten if it was anyone but him. But as he shook his hand and met with those glaring hazel eyes, he, he knew before he took his next breath that he was the one he could look for for the rest of his life but would never be found again. He looked that good, that perfect, while the summer breeze blew through the trees.

From there, the wind blew like a whirlwind. Ron tells him that he spent the holidays with his family at Puncak because his father worked for the tea plantation.and even though he just nodded, the way he looked at him made his silence seem fine.

Ron then laughed, as he knew what was going on, and Eva suggested that they buy tea in the famous box before the store closed, then the four of them stayed at the festival until the crowd thinned and everything was closed for the night.

They met the next day, and the day after, and they soon became inseparable. Every morning except Sunday when he had to go with his family, he would finish his tasks as quickly as possible, then walk straight to the crossroad, where he was waiting for him.

He taught the girl how to bait and fish in shallow waters and took her to explore the small forest by the side of the lake. They rode up the canoe and watched the sunset and for him it was as if they already knew each other.

But he learned a lot too. At the town dance party at Balai Bulat, it was she who taught him how to pitch and perform Charleston, and although they stumbled on the first few songs, the girl's patience towards him finally paid off, and they danced together until the music was over.

He drove her home afterward, and when they stopped on the porch after saying good night, he kissed her for the first time and wondered why she had waited that long.

Then ahead of the holiday he brings the girl to this house, looks past the damage, and tells her that one day he will have it and fix it.

They spend hours talking about their dreams, their dreams seeing the world, their dreams of becoming an artist and on a humid night in August, they both lose control for the first time. When the girl left three weeks later, she took part of herself and the rest of the vacation with her.

He watched her leave the city on a rainy morning, looked through the eyes that had not slept the night before, then went home and packed a bag. He spent the next week alone in Situ Gintung.

Sugi combed her hair and looked at her watch. Eight twelve. He got up and walked to the front of the house and looked at the street. Aceng was nowhere to be seen, and Sugi thought he would not come. He returned to his rocking chair and sat down again.

He remembers talking to Aceng about him. The first time he mentioned it, Aceng started shaking his head and laughing.

"So that's the ghost you've been leaving behind." When asked what he meant, Aceng said, "You know, ghosts, memories. I've been watching you, working day and night, working so hard that you barely have time to catch your breath.

People do that for three reasons . Either they're crazy, or stupid, or trying to forget. And with you, I know you're trying to forget. I just don't know what."

He thought about what Aceng said. The driver is right, of course. Situ Gintung is haunted now. Haunted by the ghost of his memory. He saw her in the lily garden, their place, every time he passed by. Whether sitting on a bench or standing by the gate, always smiling, black hair gently touching his shoulders, his eyes hazel.

As she sat on the porch at night with her guitar, she saw it beside her, listening quietly as she played her childhood music.

He felt the same way when he went to the Koliong Drug Store, or to the Twenty-One theater, or even when he was strolling downtown. Wherever he looked, he saw his shadow, saw the things that brought him back to life.

Strange, he knows it. He grew up in Situ Gintung. He spent his first seventeen years here. But when he thought about Situ Gintung, he seemed to only remember last holiday season, the holiday season when they were together. Other memories are just fragments, pieces here and there about growing up, and few, if any, that evoke any feeling.

He had told Aceng about it one night, and Aceng not only understood, but he was also the first to explain the reason. She simply said, "My dad used to tell me that the first time you fell in love, it changed your life forever, and no matter how hard you tried, that feeling never went away.

The girl you told me this is your first love. And whatever you do, she'll stay with you forever."

Sugi shook his head, and as his image began to fade, he returned to Sarinah. He read for an hour, occasionally looking up to see Cemongs and squirrels running around by the river.

At ninety-thirty he closed his book, climbed into the bedroom, and wrote in his journal, including personal observations and the work he had completed in the house. Forty minutes later, he fell asleep. Cemong walked up the stairs, sniffed it while he slept, then paced around before finally curling up at the foot of his bed.