Chapters (18)
Her husband stared straight ahead. Bambang must have had it all planned. In total control, like the way he drove.
When she thought back on the incident, Ratri couldn’t remember how long Jamal struggled. She had reached for the lock but Bambang seized her wrist. Her hands were weak. Jamal flailed at the door. He continued to stare inside and his mouth moved, as if he were saying something. The glass began to fog up. Ratri was still trying to make out what he had said when she realised that she was staring at the wide eyes of a corpse.
Jamal’s body slumped against the car. A final door that did not open for him.
—
Ten years after Bambang’s death, Ratri sat behind the wheel of the Mercedes Tiger. She was now fifty-two years old. Beside her sat a young man. An activist, or so he said, although for Ratri he remained an enigma. Activist, slaker of lust or simply a young man the same age as Anton? They talked for a long time about the election and the return to candidacy of so many of the same old faces. ‘How funny,’ said Ratri. ‘So much had been forgotten in ten years.’
‘Yes,’ said the activist, yawning. ‘By the way, why don’t you sell this car? It gives me the creeps.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? It’s where your husband died. Sometimes I feel like I’m being watched.’
‘Do you remember how he died?’
The man relayed what was reported in the media. ‘Anyway, your husband was an important man,’ he said, trying not to offend Ratri with the mention of corruption. Ratri smiled. She nurtured a different memory, of something unheard, considered unimportant.
On the day Bambang died, she got the answer: not to the riddle of her husband’s death, but to a question of her own. She had wondered whether Jamal’s story had truly ended there. Indeed, she didn’t care why or how Bambang died. That day she knew that a message was sent, though it was not easy to decode. Maybe the ghost of Jamal was taking vengeance over unrequited love and the betrayal of his trust. But even the motive of revenge couldn’t explain away Jamal, a young man obsessed by doors, a young man who would force entry and refuse to budge.
Ratri pulled the car over. She dropped the activist off in front of his house. He gave her a peck on the cheek before getting out.
Ratri stepped on the gas and stared at the figure in the rear-view mirror, laughing.