Hobbies

Who knows why somebody can suddenly crash and burn, fall into a deep depression and spend whole days on his back staring at the ceiling? I was married to a beautiful woman, had two really sweet young kids, lived in a fucking palace, for Christ’s sake, and one day found I couldn’t get out of bed. Nothing seemed worth getting up for. My wife was mad at first, then she got worried. I was just lying in bed watching tv and not eating much of what she brought me. She didn’t let the kids in the room; she didn’t want them to see me like that.

I hadn’t been that way since back in Philly, when my first wife left me, sold the house and cleaned out the bank account while I was on a ship. Back then I stopped taking showers and shaving and a couple of old pals forced me to clean up and then go get help from a shrink.

I’m not one of those people who think that psychology is only for total freaks, guys who jerk off while wearing women’s underwear with a noose around their necks. The stress of modern life can unhinge a man, even a simple, retired deckhand like me in beautiful South East Asia.

Wulan did some checking around and found a guy, the foremost Islamic psychologist in all Sumatra. I stifled a groan when she told me. There’s no such thing as a plain and simple secular headshrinker here. Instead of Freudians and Jungians — I picked up a little jargon when I got counseling that time in the States — you’ve got Islamic, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist therapists. Not being religious myself, I didn’t see how this man could help me.

Dr. Mansur was his name. His office was pretty unimpressive. It was dark and there was a layer of dust coating everything. The furniture had bits of stuffing sticking out of the upholstering. There was a large portrait of the doctor’s plain wife and gap-toothed kids.

Dr. Mansur was a chubby little man with a few strands of hair combed across a bald head. Indos are rarely bald. He grinned at me and pumped my hand like we were old friends.

“Delighted, delighted, please, please,” he said, pointing to the chair facing the desk.

“No couch, doctor?” I asked.

“No, we don’t use them here and I think they are rarely used anywhere now. Those European Jews who pioneered my profession wanted their patients to feel like small children waking from a bad dream, with the wise, surrogate father at hand to console them. We’ve gone beyond that, I think.”

Then he grinned at me, kind of slyly. “You are not exactly awed by my office, are you, Mr. Kowalsky?”

I got a little nervous then. If this guy could read my mind, then he wasn’t just a psychologist, he was a dukun also. Here in Kota Kasar nothing is what it seems. When you need your car repaired you take it to a garage where they claim they use magic to fix it. Wulan told me that she’s heard hammering noises when she’s passed by those places late at night, with no lights inside. After our maid told me she thought there was a jinn living behind the refrigerator I just nodded. I stopped scoffing at this kind of stuff long ago.

Dr. Mansur laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not a dukun,” he said (of course, this made me more nervous).

“I find it effective to unnerve a new patient just a bit, just a little to startle him. With you, a Westerner, I use a different approach than I would with my countrymen.

“I must tell you of an experience I had with another patient, a Tamil man. He claimed that he had no problems with his family, that his home was an enviable sea of domestic tranquility. I raised my hand and stared over his head.

“ ‘Do you hear that sound, Pak ?’ I asked him.

“’I hear nothing but the sound of a chik-chak, ‘” he replied.

“I told him,’yes, the chik-chaks in my office are not simple house lizards. They are special. They listen to everything that is said here and they whisper very faintly, they say,’true, true’, or else they make a distinct noise when they hear something that doesn’t conform to reality, and I think I heard one making that sound while you were speaking’”.

The little man roared with laughter and slapped his desk. “You should have seen how big his eyes became! He broke down and started crying, he confessed that his home was a shrieking hell: his wife ran with other men and beat his head with a skillet in front of his friends and he was seriously considering a resolution that involved drinking insecticide. It’s fortunate that I studied a little bit of Hindu mythology and their stories of talking animals, yes?”

Now he was laughing so hard that tears ran down his face. I was startled. I thought these people all had some sort of confidentiality oath . Maybe he’d be entertaining the next guy he saw with a story about me.

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Mansur said as he wiped his face with a grubby handkerchief, “anything you say stays here. I was able to tell you that story without violating my patient’s trust because he is dead.”

“Did he end up drinking Baygon?” I asked.

“Never mind that. Just tell me why you are here.”

I explained how nothing seemed worth doing and how my energy was sapped. He listened and nodded.

“Your wife told me that you are not a devout Muslim. You don’t practice puasa, do you?”

Here we go. Another guy trying to make me religious.

“No, I don’t. Wulan and I made a deal when we got married and starving for a month wasn’t part of it.”

Dr. Mansur smiled. “That’s quite all right, I’m glad you’re being honest. You might be surprised how many people here cheat during Ramadan by sneaking a cigarette or snack. As you know, women are exempt from fasting during menstruation. I had a patient who routinely suffered from hysterical menstruation during the entire fasting period. As far as I know, this is the only instance of such an affliction. I wrote a paper on the case which attracted some renown.”

Dr. Mansur frowned. “Unfortunately, the journal article that followed provoked some bitter and envious responses from certain quarters. Damnant quod non intellegunt.”

I could tell this guy was a real piece of work. I looked up his Latin proverb on the internet later and I had to laugh.

“Well, Mr. Kawalsky, to tell you the truth, there might not be much I can do for you. If you stopped treatment now, your wife would be upset, wouldn’t she? Let’s see, now….”

We ended up playing chess for the rest of the hour. He was beating me until he got greedy and his queen snapped up a pawn that I had covered. When I took his queen he gasped and then a look of pure rage passed over his face. His nostrils flared and I saw his yellow teeth when he curled his lips. I got my hands loose; it seemed like he was going to jump over the desk at me. He calmed down and I agreed to see him a week later.

“As you may know, the police control the ganja trade here.” Dr Mansur leaned back in his chair and puffed on a Adipata cigar. “The army leaves drug transactions to the police and instead offers protection to businesses and oversees illegal logging. There are clear boundaries between the enterprises of these two entities, a modus vivendi has evolved over the years.”

I didn’t know if coming to see this guy was making me any better, but I liked hearing him talk. Diplomas on the wall of his office came from Munich, Cairo and Chicago. I’m sure he could have been somewhere else making a lot more money.

“Not long ago, a policeman arrested a young soldier who was selling ganja out of his van to neighborhood dealers. Quite a lot of ganja, perhaps fifty kilos, was found in the vehicle. The policeman turned the evidence and the suspect over to the shock police, the Mobil Brigade. “

Dr. Mursidi chuckled and picked a bit of loose tobacco from his teeth.

‘The Mobil Police commander was quite angry, you know. This was a grave breach of protocol. Selling ganja in that part of the town was his bailiwick.

He slapped the boy a couple times and then had him locked up. The ganja was added to the drugs that were stockpiled in the police station basement.

“The police had failed to take into account that this was no ordinary soldier. The boy was from an elite unit based just outside the city, a parachute battalion that had acquitted itself handily in fierce fighting stemming from the Aceh province revolt. Oh yes, these were not a bunch of effete extortioners; they had suffered many deaths and killed a fearsome number of enemies.

“When the police locked the soldier up they forgot to confiscate his cell phone. Within an hour the station was surrounded by armored cars, half tracks, heavy machine guns and several hundred enraged paratroopers. I’m sure you heard something of what happened next.”

It dawned on me that he was talking about something that happened around a year ago. It was all very mysterious; the papers were vague and nobody seemed to want to talk about it, but the gist of it seemed to be that there was real tension between the police and the army and a lot of people were afraid that some kind of civil war would break out between the two.

“The battalion commander addressed the policemen using a bullhorn. They were given five minutes to release the soldier and return the stolen property — that wording makes me laugh, Mr. Kawalski. Apparently the police commander decided that events had gone too far for him to back down.

“Too bad, he was one of the first to die. Twelve Mobil Brigade men never went home alive to their families. Two soldiers were injured. A rather lopsided score, but just consider who has the heavy weaponry.

“The policeman who arrested the soldier and caused the whole mess was himself arrested. He was sent to me for psychiatric evaluation. Yes, Mr. Kawalski, he sat where you’re sitting now, a frightened, yet defiant young man. Although the police are generally despised here, there were some who considered the surrounded men to be heroes: outgunned, outnumbered, yet willing to fight to the last man for the honor of the shock police. The incident attracted interest in the foreign media and the government was desperate to stifle the whole scandal.

“Of course, the simplest solution would have been the liquidation of the young policeman and there were senior army officers who strongly advised that option. I arranged for him to be transferred to a remote village in Irian Jaya that offered scant opportunity for him to get into trouble again. He will never leave that place.

“I can tell you this story without violating confidence because the young policeman, although still breathing, might as well be dead in that godforsaken hinterland.” I kept going to see Doc Mursidi and looked forward to bullshitting with him every week. At the same time I found myself doing odds and ends around the house — building a pen so the kids could have pet rabbits, starting an herb garden, things like that. I didn’t see that worried look on Wulan’s face anymore.

We didn’t always play chess. Once we arm wrestled — the little bugger was a lot stronger than he looked. After he beat me a few times he suggested that we ‘add a little spice to the contest’ by tethering scorpions on either side of our arms on the desk so that the loser would get his hand stung by one of those god-awful huge Sumatran scorpions.

“Doc, how did you come up with something that twisted?”

“It was in a movie I saw, a Marlon Brando movie. I thought it was rather cool.”

At times I got confused about who should be sitting where in that office.

Things got to the point that Mansur showed me he wasn’t exactly a fanatic when it came to religion. He talked sometimes about his student days in Europe. “Mr Kawalski, you haven’t lived until you have enjoyed a weeklong Oktoberfest in Germany. The beer flowed and the German girls considered me exotic.” He grinned at me. “I liked being exotic”

Dr Mansur’s fee wasn’t too high, but I reached a point where I felt a lot better and didn’t need to keep coming.

“Yes, I think your depression was not profound. Your career kept you busy and now you need something to do. I think it’s that simple. I have an idea.”

Kota Kasar is the largest and most important city in Sumatra. Practically all sea-born trade passes through the nearby port and it’s a hub for air travel. This town is also the center for the illegal drug trade.

Shabu is the most profitable dope. It’s what we call crystal meth back in the States. I’ve seen what this vile shit does to people. Two of Wulan’s relatives, a brother-in-law and a nephew, both got strung out on shabu. One killed himself by hanging and the other drank Baygon but lived — if you can call him alive. The poor bastard twitches, mutters and shits himself. The extended family contributes what they can to hire somebody to take care of him.

I don’t have much sympathy for the dealers and smugglers. If they get caught with enough weight they’re shot by a firing squad, after about a ten year stay in one of Asia’s nastier prisons. We had one of those prisons on the outskirts of town. There were some bule there, Europeans and Americans. They were a mix of petty and serious criminals. Mansur suggested that I could make myself useful by dropping by from time to time and visiting the guys, maybe bringing them some cigarettes and snacks.

I thought it over. I didn’t feel sorry for the shabu smugglers, but I was curious. What drove them to do something that desperate? Besides, maybe some of the bule were there for petty stuff, maybe just for visa overstays or smoking ganja.

Wulan was not happy about me going there. She argued with me as I filled my backpack with packs of clove cigarettes, candy, chewing gum, snacks and old National Geographic magazines. The prison had a really bad reputation. In the colonial days the Dutch locked up farmers who wouldn’t cooperate with the Dutch planting schemes. Then the Japs took it over and locked up the Dutch and the half breeds. Then the Dutch returned and used it for revolutionaries. Finally the Indonesians got it and use it for criminals.

“All those people tortured, starved, beaten, murdered,” Wulan said. “The ones who work there lose their health, they have bad dreams. Why do you want to go there?”

Good question. Did I want to help unlucky people or was I going there out of morbid curiosity?

The place was pretty much like I expected. A bunch of Quonset huts surrounded by a high concrete and plaster wall topped with raggedy barbed wire. It reminded me of the prison in Egypt I spent a week in due to a misunderstanding.

Mansur had called ahead and cleared me with the warden. A guard took me to the office. The warden, a fat little man with a glass eye, had me dump the stuff in my backpack on his desk and rifled through it.

“Why you come here? These people no good.”

I told him that I just wanted to talk with the inmates and hand out snacks. It was hard not to stare at his glass eye.

“Next month we shoot some. You sad?”

I didn’t answer, but I couldn’t help staring at that fake eye. A lousy effort had been made to match the color of his good eye. He caught me gawking and his face flushed.

“You go now, see your friends.”

I repacked my stuff and walked out. His hard little grin let me know that he would have loved to have me there under different circumstances.

The guard left me in the yard. There were clusters of men squatting on the ground smoking clove cigarettes and murmuring. Before I could get a good picture of my surroundings a bule ran up to me and started pumping my hand.

“We heard you were coming, thank God, thank God!”

He was a skinny, wiry guy in his forties. I could tell he was from Boston from his accent. As he launched into his story flecks of spit flew out of his mouth. He got more and more excited and I had to tell him to slow down a couple times.

“I’m a freelance journalist, I’m sure you’ve seen my byline somewhere, anyway I decided to write a book based on what I uncovered here.”

And then he went on to tell me what his book was going to be about, the title was ‘Power Politics in Kota Kasar’ and he was going to blow the lid off all the underhanded dealings here. The corruption, the collusion between government and criminal gangs, the murder for hire rackets, the narcotics trade carried on by the police, the piracy commited by off-duty navy men, the tolerance of under-aged prostitution, all of it, everything tied up and layed out for the public. This book would have shattered the system and led to massive reforms.

“It would be like kicking in a door and the whole, goddamned rotten structure collapsing. And it wouldn’t stop here, the entire country would have to confront itself. But then somebody high up got wind of my research and here I am. My notes and manuscript were destroyed and I’m here incommunicado, with no charges against me. Please, help me, get the word out!”

Then he went on to mention fearless writers who defied authority and suffered for their work: Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Zola, Bukowsky. He told me he didn’t mind dying forgotten in a stinking hellhole if someday his work would lead to profound changes.

I got the guy’s name, shook his hand and hurried off. Holy shit, one of my countrymen was being crucified for trying to get the truth out about the greed and corruption that make Kota Kasar infamous throughout Asia! The bastards disappeared him!

I rode my little Honda bike over to the US consulate. After an hour wait the receptionist waved me into the consul’s office. Oh shit. It was him, the same guy I had a run-in with before, a stick-up-the-ass young Republican who reminded me of some of the snotty academy mates on ships.

I poured out the story of our countryman unjustly rotting behind the walls of one of Asia’s worst prisons. The smirk on the consul’s face made me furious and I tore into him.

“Aren’t you supposed to look out for Americans here? While you’re playing golf and chasing girls at discos, a man who layed it all on the line is eating maggoty rice and sleeping on a pissy concrete floor.”

The guy smirked and nodded for a while longer. He was enjoying himself.

“Mr. Kowalsky, we are well aware of this man.”

Then he let me have it. After fleeing child molestation charges in Massachusetts, the guy I was fired up about decided to set up shop here, calling himself an English language tutor. Within a couple months the police rescued him from several outraged fathers who were about to drench him with gasoline and set him on fire.

The authorities could have had him shot, but the consul went through channels to get him a ten year stint.

“It made me sick to my stomach to plead on this degenerate’s behalf, but I had no choice. I had orders from above. But you, Mr. Kowalsky, have no such obligation. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time? Have you considered starting a stamp collection?”

Many years ago I got my ass stomped by three bikers in the parking lot of a grody gin mill in Philly. Eating crow while that little shit gloated was worse.

I didn’t give up. Next day found me back in the prison yard. Boston Short Eyes rushed me again, but this time I shoved him away and kept going.

There was a cluster of young Western kids squatting on the ground playing gin with some torn-up cards. I had some fresh packs I brought and broke one out. I played a few hands with them and they told me their stories.

One, a tall gangly boy with an American flag bandanna and a Che Guevara t-shirt, told me he was there for beating up two Indonesians. I was puzzled; he looked like the typical American hippy-type, why would he travel halfway around the world and attack a couple locals?

“I really loved this place when I first got here, dude. Me and my friends were sleeping on the beach at the lake, copping cheap weed and doing mushrooms. I could relate to the people — they went through oppression and colonialism and all that patriarchal bullshit. You ever read Fanon?

“So anyway, I walked into the little town nearby to get us some fruit and veggies. I’m bopping along, got a nice buzz going, when I hear this awful sound. These heart-rending screams of anguish. I ran around a corner and then I saw them. Two dudes and a dog, one guy’s holding the poor thing and the other is beating it with a wood mallet.

“Could I have turned a blind eye and kept going? Sure, and then carried shitty karma till the end of my days. I was beyond triggered, dude, I was imbued with righteousness and those two animal abusers got off easy.”

As grim and fucked up as the situation was, I wanted to laugh myself sick.

“Look, son, you do know that some people here, Batak Christians, do eat dog, right?”

“Ok, I understand that now, but they didn’t kill the poor thing right off, they were torturing it.”

“Sounds like they were tenderizing it. Back when the Bataks ate people they would cut them up and rub chili and lime juice into the wounds. While they were still alive.”

I met some of the other bule inmates and got their stories. Some were there on drug charges. They bought weed from petty dealers who turned them in to the cops. The ones who couldn’t get their hands on enough bribe money — maybe a thousand bucks — ended up in that nasty place.

There wasn’t much I could do to help those guys. The ones who could arrange to have money wired from overseas had private cells and bought tolerable food. The ones without that kind of support were in awful shape. They slept practically on top of each other and had to use filthy privies.

I wasn’t shocked. The poor in this country lived like that. Why should foreign criminals have it better than a lot of the locals?

There was a bule kid sitting apart from the others who looked like he’d been smacked around. Both eyes were blackened and his nose swollen and off angle. I asked Dog Lover about him.

“That’s the German. He doesn’t talk much, but the guards told us what his deal is. The dude was sleeping in a hostel that was right across from a mosque. Apparently the loudspeakers on the tower were super amped-up and jarred everybody out of bed for morning prayers around five. Homeboy here decided that his uninterrupted sleep trumped everything and he crept up the tower late at night when he thought nobody was around and cut the speaker wires with a knife. Half the neighborhood turned out to beat his ass and after the cops rescued him they had a go at him too.”

I still drop by the prison from time to time and play cards or pass out cigarettes. Other than that there’s not much I can do for those guys. Some, like the molester and the German kid, are damned lucky to be alive and have no reason to beef. Others are just plain stupid and probably shouldn’t be allowed out of their countries.

I thought about what that consul said to me about getting a hobby. Even though he was being sarcastic, he planted a bug in my ear. Stamps are actually pretty interesting. They carry little bits of history with them. There are so many from so many countries that you have to narrow the field; you have to have a specialty.

Mine is the stamps issued in Indonesia during the Japanese occupation. I’ve got an album full of them now and there are a lot more to go.

There’s even a stamp collector’s club here in Kota Kasar, a bunch of guys that get together every two weeks. I thought about joining. Too bad nobody drinks here.