Bald-headed
Ch. 5

Sugi woke up at five and kayaked for an hour in Situ Gintung, as usual. When he finished, he changed his work clothes, warmed up some food from the previous day, picked up an apple and added his breakfast menu with a cup of coffee.

He worked on the fence again, fixing most of the posts that needed maintenance. It was then that the sun appeared hotter than usual, the temperature was over twenty-eight degrees, and at lunch he was overheated, tired, and excited by rest.

He ate on the side of a small, flowing river as small fish jumped. He liked to see them jump three or four times and glide through the air before disappearing into the water. For some reason he was always pleased with the fact that their instincts had not changed for thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of years.

Sometimes he wondered if human instinct had changed by time and always concluded that it had not changed. At least in the most basic way. As far as he knows, man is always aggressive, always trying to dominate, trying to control the world and everything in it. The wars in Europe and Japan proved that.

He stopped working after three o'clock and walked to a small warehouse. He went in, found his fishing line, some bait, and some live crickets he kept, then walked to the shore of the lake, fed the hook, and tossed it.

Fishing has always made him reflect on life, and he is doing it now. After her mother died, she can still remember when she spent her days in a dozen different houses, and for one reason or another, she stuttered as a child and was ridiculed for it. He began to speak less and less, and at the age of five, he did not speak at all. When she started the class, her teacher thought she was retarded and recommended that she be expelled from the school.

Instead, his father took action on his own. He kept it in school and after that made it come to the logging site, where he worked, to transport and pile the wood. "It's good that we spend time together," his father would say when they work side by side, "like my father did, I mean your grandfather and I."

During their time together, his father would talk about birds and animals or tell stories and legends that were common on the island of Java or other islands and even parts of the world. Within a few months Sugi was able to speak again, although not smoothly, and his father decided to teach him to read with a book of poetry.

"Learn to read this out loud and you'll be able to say whatever you want." His father was right again, and the following year, Sugi had lost his stuttering.

But he kept going to the logging site every day just because his father was there, and in the evening he would recite the work of Chairil Anwar and Sapardi Djoko Damono out loud as his father sat swaying beside him. He has been reading poetry ever since.

As she grew older, she spent most of her weekends and holidays alone. He explored the Thousand Islands Forest and with his first canoe, followed the flow of the Cisadane river for twenty miles until he could not go any further, then hiked the remaining miles to shore.

Camping and exploring became his passion, and he spent hours in the woods, sitting under a black oak tree, whistling softly, and playing his guitar to wild white otters, geese, and herons. The poet knows that alienation in nature, far from man and man-made things, is good for the soul, and he is always identified with the poet.

Although he was quiet, his years of lifting heavy weights at the logging site helped him excel at the sport, and his athletic success made him popular. He enjoys football matches and running matches, and although most of his team-mates also spend their free time together, he rarely joins them.

Sometimes people think of him as arrogant, most simply thinking he is growing a little faster than everyone else. She had several girlfriends at school, but none of them ever impressed her. Except one. And he came after graduation.

He remembers talking to Ron about Birundasih after they left the festival that night, and Ron laughed. Then he made two predictions. First, they will fall in love, and second, it will not work.

There was a slight pull on the strings and Sugi was expecting a big-mouthed fat fish, but the pull finally stopped, and after pulling the strings and checking the bait, he threw again.

Ron was finally right on both counts. Most of the holiday season, she had to make excuses to her parents whenever they wanted to meet. Not because they didn't like her, but because she was from a different class, too poor, and they would never agree if their daughter was serious with someone like her.

"I don't care what my parents think, I love you and always will" she said. "We'll find a way to be together."

But in the end they couldn't. By early September the tobacco had been harvested and he had no choice but to return with his family to Surabaya. "Only the holiday season ends, Birundasih, not us" he said on the morning Birundasih left. "We'll never end."

But, for reasons he did not fully understand, the letters he wrote went unanswered.

Eventually he decided to leave Situ Gintung in order to help forget about it, but also because the depression in making a living in Situ Gintung was almost impossible. First he went to Tanjung Priok and worked at the shipyard for six months before being in-PHK, then moved to Batam because he heard the economy there was not too bad.

He eventually found work in a landfill, separating scrap metal from everything else. The owner, a narrow-eyed man named Yujin, intends to collect as much scrap metal as he can. Sugi, however, did not care about the reason. He's just happy to have a job.

His years at the logging site have made him tough for this type of work, and he works hard. Not only was it the work of helping him take his mind off Birundasih all day, but it was something he thought he should do.

His father always said: "Give a day's work for a day's pay. Less than that's stealing." That attitude pleased his boss. "It's a pity that you're not our descendant" Yujin said, "you're a very good boy in many ways." It was the best compliment Yujin could give.

Sugi kept thinking about Birundasih, especially at night. He writes a letter once a month but never receives a reply. Eventually he wrote a final letter and forced himself to accept the fact that the holiday season they spent together was the only thing they ever shared.

Even so, he remained with her in memory. Three years after the last letter, he went to Surabaya in hopes of finding it. He went to his house, found out that he had moved, and after talking to some neighbors, finally called a company.

The girl who answered the phone was still new and did not recognize the name Sugi was looking for, but she browsed through the personnel files for him. He learned that Birundasih's father had quit the company and no forwarding address was registered. The trip was the first and last time he looked for her.