Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 33
"They found their Luhde Srikandi," Arini said to Tina. "I had no idea what my
husband and Dharma and Mantera had planned. I wasn't even in Batu Gede on that night
of the new moon. Catra insisted that we go on a pilgrimage to the Temple of the Crater
Lake."
Arini paused and rubbed her forehead.
Tina broke free from her horrified enthrallment. "For god's sake, Arini, we're in a
hospital. Let me get something for your headache."
Arini lowered her hand. "This pain is easy to live with," she said. She caught her
thoughts and said, "This pilgrimage—I was perplexed, because Catra never had feudal
sensibilities, and I certainly did not. I didn't know it was his excuse to get me away from
Batu Gede that night. I didn't protest. I had my own worries. I was pregnant. I didn't
know what to do. Why not a pilgrimage as a way to collect my thoughts? "
"It wasn't Catra's child," Tina said gently.
"He was a careful family planner. He took the responsibility upon himself. An
enlightened man. No, the child was not Catra's. I later I found out about that night. Mak
told me some of it, how the Gerwani women had been rounded up. She told me Reed
Davis had burst into our compound looking for me. He had Naniek with him, bound and
naked. Mak helped her get dressed—Naniek was heavily traumatized, unresponsive.
Reed took her to the airport where her brother was waiting. As for the others, I made
Mantera tell me."
A truck rumbles through the coconut grove to the beach, swaying heavily on the
rutted tracks. In the back bed of the truck huddle the naked women. Black shirted men
ride the cab's sideboards and perch jauntily on the tailgate, smoking cigarettes. In the cab,
Dharma and Mantera sit side by side, next to the driver.
The truck backs up to a swale behind a high berm of beach. In the dawn light,
low clouds scud on a strong westerly breeze that ruffles the lagoon. The Black Shirts
lower the tailgate and prod the women into the swale. They are gray and silent with fear,
but then Desak says to Dharma, "The Dutch were never so cruel."
The Black Shirts force the women to kneel. Some of the lads complain that this is
a waste, that they should be able to drag the women into the palms and enjoy them for a
spell in the age-old manner of triumphant victors, but Mantera finally finds voice and
with a orders them to be silent.
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