The legend that cocks crow at dawn is not correct. Or so it seemed to Darius Teluti, awakened by the head of his host's flock when the windows suggested it was still very dark outside. The cock's competitors from houses nearby joined the chorus and Darius was soon fully awake. Bird flu had not yet penetrated to central Java, nor had the fear of it lead to the destruction of household flocks. As Darius lay there, he recalled his host's explanation as to why the truly free range flock does not leave the garden or, if they do, quickly return. Pak Harto assured Darius that when the cock is purchased its head is bashed against the gate post three times and thereafter he remembers his home and keeps the rest of his flock in check.
Dawn's early light was discernable now and the house was full of movement. There were at least two and often more people in each of the four bedrooms and the noises of water splashing about as they bathed themselves in the kamar mandi and pots and pans clashing soon filled the house.
As Darius lay there in bed he thought about the cascade of events that had brought him to a tiny village in rural Java: the decision to become a policeman; the time spent in the Academy learning the trade; stints in Semarang, Medan, and eventually Jakarta; the transition to Polri and Densus 88 and the fight against terrorism. He wondered what the next years would bring.
But enough of these musings, it was time to get up. He had his own shower - there was one western style bathroom in the house to accommodate the bathing habits of a western son in law and his inability to cope with a crouch toilet – to the sounds of the 6am invocation to Morning Prayer, pre recorded and broadcast from the village mosque. Although Gombel was very small, maybe 50 houses, there was a small mosque and a couple of private places for worship. The best attended was a room in a house next door which catered for the especially devout.
Breakfast like every other meal, was normally rice, sambal and maybe something more – a small piece of chicken, or some vegetables. For Darius, however, fried eggs and exotic tomatoes were produced, and the beautiful local fruits – mango, papaya, jack fruit, salak and pomelo.
Darius decided after eating to sit on the front porch and watch the village come to life. This caused wonderment, if not consternation, with men, women and children almost crashing their motorcycles and bikes as they turned and stared at this unknown visitor in the village. It was beautiful sitting there in the early morning before the heat become too intense and would drive him back inside to a fan. They had even installed air conditioners in the living room and one bedroom but the power source was unable to cope with the demand and they were apparently rarely turned on.
For now the porch was cool enough – maybe 28'C – and there was a light breeze. The family compound comprised three houses. The large house in the center belonged to the parents and by tradition would pass to the youngest son on their death. In return he must stay at the house and look after them. The parents' house was a traditional Javanese wooden house with an earthen floor and there was a new house to the left of it as Darius faced the houses which a daughter had built with her earnings from Singapore. The main house was very beautiful with a cobblestone driveway of natural smooth river stones and many fruit trees in front. The house remained original with the earthen floored kitchen with open pit barbeque cooking and wooden walled bedrooms.
There was a third house on the right as he faced the compound, built for the oldest brother and his family and a fence running the length of the front pierced by two large wrought iron gates which rolled back in tracks and were the pride of the village.
As Darius relaxed on the porch others were busy. The youngest son was washing the car – a Toyota Kijang four wheel drive – and sisters, cousins and maids were sweeping driveways and gardens with straw bundle brooms, one hand behind the back in the manner of Prince Philip. Darius' twinge of guilt was only that, for he knew any attempt by him to do anything would immediately lead to some member of the family disenfranchising him of the task and altering their own priorities. So he sat content.
This day was an especially busy one in Gombel because preparations were underway for a large party on the following day to celebrate the youngest son's wedding. The wedding itself had been a couple of weeks earlier at his bride's home but now it was the son's family's turn to give the return party for the bride's family and neighbours and their own family. It would be a traditional concert with six ladies singing traditional songs with a gamelan orchestra. Today's task was to erect the tent, which ran across the whole property in front of the three houses, install the amplifiers and build the stage. Several hundred chairs and small tables were delivered during the morning to accommodate the expected guests on the morrow. All the women of the village were gathered in the kitchen cooking rice, vegetables and beef rendang which would serve as the wedding meal at lunch the following day.
It threatened to rain which was a great blessing for Darius because the rain would temper the heat considerably, but of course it complicated outdoor parties. By midday it was raining heavily but the tent was already erected and help up well. It was time for Darius to keep his meeting with the district police in Mojogedong, which he had promised Hartono he would do, so he said his goodbyes and thank yous to Pak Harto and his family.
Gombel is just in the foothills of the mountains to the north of Solo, so the trip was downhill all the way. Gombel itself is in a picture post card setting. The houses tidy and clean along two parallel paved but narrow roads. Coconut palms and durian trees in all the gardens, each house fenced with white washed walls in varying degrees of decay. As Darius left the village itself the true beauty of the area was revealed. The little road ran along a ridge between two valleys of terraced rice paddies and tapioca fields and then swerved down across the local river into the nearest town, Mojogedong. From there it would continue winding down through more rice paddy terraces until it reached Karanganyar and the flat plain of Solo itself. From Karanganyar to Solo the road was bordered the whole way by commercial buildings and houses. In front of the buildings there were frequent stalls selling fruit or various forms of local cuisine – bakso, mie, satay and so on. Although only about 15 kms to Solo the trip took the better part of an hour because of the quality of the road and the amount of motorcycle, truck and bus traffic. Cars were a rarity at first but would become more prevalent closer to Solo.
Darius had spent his first day in Gombel inspecting what the villagers had described as the murder site and interviewing the villagers about their knowledge of what had transpired. The first conclusion he had drawn was that the place where the body was found was not in fact the murder site. Although some days had past after the discovery of the body before Darius made it to Gombel, all his experience told him the body had been dumped alongside the little creek some time after the murder. There was no sign of the blood which would have flawed so amply when the hands were amputated, no sign of the blunt instrument used to smash in the face, no sign of any struggle.
The second conclusion that Darius had drawn was that the villagers had no idea whatsoever what had transpired in the river bed or elsewhere. One villager said she had seen the hantu air in the river bed after that night and was certain the hantu had taken the young man's soul. The villagers believed that the hantu was the ghost of a woman who died during child birth and had a hole in her stomach. She lived in the river but would rise up and wander the neighborhood looking for her son and taking the souls of young men in the real world. Another villager was certain he had been taken by another ghost, the Queen of the Southern Sea, because he was weaving a green tropical shirt and the Queen always kidnapped men in green shirts and took them to her kingdom under the sea. The Queen of the Southern Sea is the most widely believed of all the ghost legends in Java, but even accepting the possibility of her existence, the mountains of Central Java were a very long way from the beaches of the Southern Sea, and she was not known for hand amputation. Her victims simply disappeared.
None of the other villagers had seen or heard anything or had any theories to offer. It was time to fulfill his promise to report to the police station at Mojogedang and so Darius mounted the 150cc motorcycle he had been loaned by the Karanganyar Police Chief and picked his way carefully among the potholes in the narrow sealed road which ran along the ridge connecting Gombel to Mojogedang.
Inspector Kartini in Mojogedang lacked the political polish of his boss Hartono in Karanganyar and was at once both hostile and nervous. Darius could understand the hostility at several levels – he was a Christian, he was Ambonese, he was from Jakarta and he was a Major. The nervousness he found more difficult to understand. Did Kartini know something he had not yet revealed?
"How did you find Gombel, Major?"
"It's a beautiful place and Pak Harto was very hospitable."
" Did you catch the murderer?"
" No, nor do I believe the murder has anything to do with Gombel except that it was a convenient place to dump the body"
Kartini shifted in his chair and looked away.
"Look here Kartini" Darius said in a very un-Javanese tone of voice. "That body is clearly the body of a foreigner. This could be a matter of national importance. That is why I am here. If you know something you are not telling me it will have very serious repercussions."
"I don't know anything, Major. It's just that the day the body was discovered one of my men noticed a car on the Gombel road. Cars are very unusual on that road. He thought it belonged to the Mosque at Karangpandan."
"Where is Karangpandan?"
"North about ½ an hour. That road" he pointed out the window "leads directly to it."
Darius thanked Kartini and having extracted a promise to be notified immediately of any new developments, mounted the motorcycle and headed north up the foothills of Mount Lawu towards Karangpandan.
Karangpandan was probably the same distance from Solo as Gombel and the two were themselves about 20 minutes apart. The difference was that while the road to Gombel meanders across the foothills, the road to Karangpandan headed straight up the mountain. As a result, it was much faster to get to Karangpandan from Solo than Gombel, and Karangpandan was at a much high elevation and accordingly cooler.
Whereas Gombel was an integrated village community with centuries of stability and intermarriage (it seems everyone to whom Darius was introduced was a "cousin"), Karangpandan was a resort for Solo's rich to escape from the heat, with large houses spread along the feeder roads to the main highway. It too no doubt had its community but it was not one of which the large house owners were a part.
It was a sad comment on the state of the Indonesian economy at the peasant level that so much was for sale. The road was dotted with vehicles with for sale signs in their windows no doubt due to the necessary but evil moves to cut the high fuel subsidies.
The road between Mojogedang, and Karangpandan was one of the most beautiful on which Darius had traveled. The world is full of beautiful journeys by road and Darius had taken a number of them. Some of them are spectacular like Chuckanuk drive near Seattle, the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia and Route 1 though Big Sur Country in California. The road from Mojogedang to Karangpandan was not spectacular in that sense. It had a quiet beauty of orderly rice terraces cascading down sharp valleys and rainforest tumbling along the side of the road as it climbed out of the valley. Beginning at Mojogedang the road wound up a river valley which boasted the most beautiful rice terraces he had seen. It was bordered along the way by trees which are continually cropped for their branches so tall trunks stand with dark green bushy outcrops at various levels to the top. The trees reminded Darius of the ones he had seen in Southwest France along the roadside. There too the citizens have the right to crop the branches, resulting in thick strong trunks but curly bushes for foliage. Halfway across the valley the road crossed a little white bridge and then continued on the right side of the river instead of the left. As it left the valley, the road entered the rainforest for a few kilometers until the trees became orderly and free of undergrowth and he was in a rubber plantation. The road emerged at a fish restaurant and farm. The sort where the owners cook the fish you catch and you sit on the floor of the Indonesian equivalent of a tatami room and eat your fish.
The town of Karangpandan is characterized by a large bus terminus and busy market. To reach the Mosque, Darius had to continue up the mountain several more kilometers. Eventually he arrived at the largest mosque complex he had seen in Central Java. All shiny and new with bright silver aluminum copulas, with their crescent moons, on every building. The central large temple was surrounded by buildings presumably for schooling and housing the faithful.
It seems the reason the mosque was so large and prosperous was that it was longed to Abu Bashir. The noticeable impact of that was the squads of young trainees – about 100 in each squad – jogging by in military formation chanting. Each squad was formed in rows of three and dressed alike, either in red headbands and T shirts or blue headbands and T shirts. It would be impressive it was not so chilling, thought Darius, but it reminded him of movies of the Hitler youth movements.
Kartini had told Darius that the Javanese believed that man first came to earth by landing on the top of Mount Lawu. He had heard of the monuments on the mountain and he decided to spend the rest of the day exploring the area and tackle the mosque on the morrow. He followed the signs pointing to Candi Sukuh and Candi Ceto, the two famous monuments in the area.
Candi (pronounced Tjhandi) Sukuh and Candi Ceto (pronounced Tjheto) are Borobudur era temples not far from Karangpandan. The closest – about 10 minutes away – was Candi Sukuh and although the smaller and simpler of the two Darius would observe that it had the richest legacy in terms of carved stones. It was a relatively simple square with an entrance portal, now presumably unsafe since it was blocked off, and two levels each a few steps higher than the other with a flat topped step sided pyramid like structure at the top. The surviving carved stones were displayed around the gardens and several of them were in a good condition. The statues had not survived as well – what must have been a quite spectacular Garuda had lost its head to a vandal at some time over the centuries.
There was a walk beyond Candi Sukuh up into a national park higher on the mountain which looked worthwhile but Darius did not attempt it. At the monument itself was a satay stall which sold satay made from the local wild rabbit. Darius was hungry and ordered 12 thin stalks, which were truly delicious.
Candi Ceto was a little further away, perhaps another 10 kilometers. What made it so interesting was the road Darius took to get there. It wound up the next mountain in the range and was at times so steep that he had to crawl in first gear and the young with pillion passengers on their motorcycles had to dismount and push. The scenery was majestic. Sharply terraced rice paddies gave way to tea plantations as he climbed. The volcanic eruption which created these mountains had left a beautiful legacy of round cone like hills and deep valleys. The tea was being picked by teams of ladies with baskets on their backs hanging from cloth straps around their foreheads moving quickly along the rows despite the sharp angle of the hillsides.
Candi Ceto was larger than Candi Sukuh and much more complete, presumably the result of recent restoration rather than survival. There were more levels here too and each much higher than the one below resulting in many steps. The "gates" were very high narrow isosceles triangles with carved designs and no top. The most interesting stonework was set in the ground – designs of turtles and other creatures which formed the paths. At the top was a flat topped step sided pyramid similar to the one at Candi Sukuh, but here on the lower levels there were other buildings, too. Some took the form of large open sided pavilions. Others were small houses open only in the front in which was housed an object for worship or veneration, usually erotic.
His self indulgent tourism over, Darius headed back down the mountain to Karangpandan. It was too late to go to the mosque now so Darius looked around for somewhere to stay the night. He followed signs to a place called Amanah Farm, about 1 km from the mosque along a side street. Amanah Farm turned out to be all things for all people – at once a fish farm, a restaurant, a small hotel, a bakery and an amusement park for children. Darius was greeted defensively at first by the owner, Pak Darmawan, but once he had made it clear his objective was simply a meal and room for the night and that he was not on police business at the Farm, his host warmed to the task and insisted Darius join him and his wife at dinner.
The farm was on the high side of a road which cut across the mountain and accordingly had spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. The restaurant was situated in a high pavilion open on all sides with low tables and mats rather than chairs. The meal was seafood – fried lele and ikan bakar, the sweet barbeque sauced fish which Darius loved – washed down with hot sweet tea. Pak Darmawan proved to be an interesting fellow. He had been an oil engineer in Sumatera with one of the majors and he and his wife had finally retired to Jakarta. His wife had established a bakery business there which had proved very successful. They had opened branches in other cities, including Solo, and had liked Karangpandan so much they had decided to move there and focus on the Solo bakery and the Farm project. Their daughter had married an Australian engineer and now lived in Perth.
Darius asked Pak Darmawan about the Mosque. Pak Darmawan had heard the stories about links to Abu Bashir and also said the locals were spreading rumors that there were caches of weapons in the ashram. But he had seen nothing to verify these rumors. Of course he had seen the young men jogging by in military formation and had seen them practicing unarmed combat in the fields beside the Mosque but as far as he was concerned the Mosque was an unqualified positive. Before its expansion the area had been plagued by young people coming up from Solo on their motorcycles on the weekends, getting drunk and making lots of noise. The expanded presence of the Mosque had ended all that and the area was now safe and peaceful and the sort of clients attracted to Amanah Farm – families looking for an enjoyable weekend outing – had returned to the area.
Darius was getting used to the Islamic rhythm of village life and woke with the 4am invocation to prayer broadcast loudly from the nearly Mosque. He fell back to sleep and awaoke again at 6 am. After a splash wash, dressing and some rice and vegetables he said his farewell to Pak and Ibu Darmawan and rode the short distance to the Mosque.
Being a Christian, Darius could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had entered a Mosque compound and as he did so now he was unsure in the large complex of buildings in which direction he should be walk to locate the office. A group of rather sullen young men loitering reluctantly pointed to way to the Imam's office.
Darius wasn't really sure what to expect as he entered the office – a young hostile firebrand or an aging gentle teacher. As it happened he found himself face to face with the latter.
"How can I help you, officer?"
Over many years in the police force Darius had learned that by far the best way to commence every interview was to be frank and friendly.
"My name is Darius Teluti. I am a major in the National Police, stationed in Jakarta and assigned to Densus 88, the anti-terrorism task force. A body has been found in a river bed in the village of Gombel near here. The victim's hands had been cut off and his face bashed in, presumably to complicate identification. By his racial characteristics I believe him to be a foreigner, possibly Arab"
"Yes, I have heard of the incident. But what has it to do with me?" It was said evenly and calmly, with no hint of anxiety or concern.
"There is a report of a car belonging to the mosque being seen at the Gombel road shortly before the body was found."
Again the statement evoked no hint of a reaction from the Mullah.
"Well that, Major Teluti, is entirely possible. We have satellite Mosques throughout the Pendem area and I and others among the teachers frequently visit them officiating at marriages, births and deaths and the other ceremonies which are part of a our traditions." The Mullah's gaze never left Darius' face and his expression was open and calm. "But as to your body I am afraid we know nothing of that here."
"Would you mind if I inspected your vehicles?"
"Of course not. You are most welcome."
The Mullah called out and a young man appeared. He ordered the young man to show Darius the vehicles and then turned to Darius and said his goodbye.
There were four vehicles in the compound. A 12 seater Izuzu bus, 2 Toyota Kijangs and a Mitsubishi truck. Darius searched them all but found no signs or blood or anything else. Nor had he expected to. The car mentioned to him had been a blue Honda sedan.
"Where is the Honda?" he asked the boy.
"Eh, er, we don't have a Honda" he stumbled.
Darius thanked the boy. He had learnt all he could and all the needed to. It was time to pursue his inquiries elsewhere.