Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 14
The Bali University library was a large room filled with warped bookshelves and
musty tomes. At the front desk, Tina filled in a call slip to access restricted material and
waited an hour before she was ushered into the head librarian's office. He was a fusty
man who reminded Tina of a silverfish. Perhaps they had stealthily evolved out of the
library's shelves and ended up running the place.
"Why do you wish to see the Harian Rakyat microfilm?" he asked with suspicion.
"I'm doing academic research," Tina said as reassuringly as she could.
"We can't just let anybody see those archives," he said. "It is dangerous. The
propagation of Communist doctrine is illegal."
Tina showed him her references and research permit, affixed with many stamps.
After photocopying her permit, he extracted a set of keys from a desk drawer and
led her to a locked and darkened room. It took him a minute to find the right key, and
when he turned on the lights, the florescent bulbs flickered before they steadied. Tina
hoped the microfiche machine on the lone table actually worked, but the air-conditioner
was as dead as the cockroach in the corner.
Tina opened a storage cabinet, and discovered that the only reference material
they held were the microfiches for the Harian Rakyat editions. This room, she thought,
was like a solitary confinement cell of an especially hostile prisoner. "Is there a printer?"
"Only notes are allowed," the librarian said. No copying, no printing. The serpent
never dies. We must keep a careful eye on it."
Thankfully, the machine worked, and despite the humidity, the film was still
good. To narrow her search, Tina started with the January 1960 editions. She
concentrated on the letters, but also perused a few articles and photographs from the
Classic Age of the Cold War. The articles were replete with the jargon of class struggle
and dialectic analysis and imperialist hegemony, spiced with local references to the
Seven Village Devils and the Crush Malaysia campaign.
A photo of Bung Karno, the Great Leader of the Revolution, at a microphone,
snarling at America, "To hell with your aid!"
And Foreign Minister Subandrio, smooth and oily and double-tongued.
Communist Party Chairman Aidit in his fancy white ministerial uniform, giving a speech
at a national conference, demanding that the peasants be given arms and turned into a
Fifth Force. No wonder the Indonesian army was alarmed. They had the guns, and men
with guns, Tina reflected, weren't very good at sharing.
The Harian Rakyat exuded an arrogant sense of destiny and success. And for
good reason. The PKI was the world's third largest Communist party. Under Sukarno's
protection and patronage, it was becoming more powerful by the month. No wonder
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