Petualangan Para Desertir di Borneo

Judul   :  Desersi: Menembus Rimba Raya Kalimantan

Judul Asli  :  Borneo van Zuid naar Noord

Penulis  :  M.T.H. Perelaer

Penerjemah : Helius Sjamsuddin

Penerbit :  Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia, 2006

Tebal  : xiv + 286 halaman

Desersi. Istilah dalam dunia militer yang berarti lari meninggalkan dinas ketentaraan atau membelot kepada musuh dalam pertempuran. Sedangkan orang yang melakukannya disebut desertir. Memang itu tindakan pengecut tapi bukan tanpa alasan mereka desersi.

Banyak kisah mengenai para desertir ini. Meskipun mereka dibayangi hukuman berat, tapi toh mereka tetap melakukannya. Hal yang lumrah bila desersi terjadi dalam pasukan legiun asing karena mereka dibayar. Semakin besar bayarannya, semakin loyallah mereka. Jadi jangan tanya soal nasionalisme mereka di sini. Namun, bila terjadi dalam pasukan reguler, itu yang harus dipertanyakan.

Desersi terjadi sepanjang masa seperti kisah “fiksi” novel Desersi: Menembus Rimba Raya Kalimantan ini yang berlatarbelakang akhir tahun 1800-an dan Perang Banjarmasin. Novel yang disebut sebagai etnografis roman ini ditulis oleh M.T.H. Perelaer yang juga menulis Baboe Dalima, sebuah opiumroman. Latar belakang M.T.H. Perelaer di dinas ketentaraan memudahkannya menggambarkan serba-serbi kehidupan dunia tangsi ini.

Adalah empat serdadu bayaran Belanda yang desersi dari benteng Kuala Kapuas (sekarang Kalimantan Tengah) dan berpetualang menembus rimba raya pedalaman Kalimantan dari selatan (Kuala Kapuas) ke utara (Sarawak). Keempat serdadu bayaran itu adalah Schlickeisen dan Wienersdorf orang Swiss, La Cueille, orang Belgia dan Yohannes, keturunan Hindia kelahiran Padang (hal.2).

Alasan mereka desersi pun dituturkan jelas karena merasa ditipu mentah-mentah oleh petugas rekrutmen tentara Belanda. Ketika mereka merasa sebagai korban penipuan licik, maka kontrak yang ada dianggap tak lagi mengikat (hal.4). Petualangan selama 70  hari para desertir pun dimulai.

Pengejaran para desertir dipimpin oleh seorang kolonel, komandan benteng Kuala Kapuas yang meminta bantuan Temenggung Nikodemus Jaya Negara. Upaya pengejaran dan petualangan para desertir menembus rimba raya Kalimantan yang dibantu penduduk pribumi pimpinan Harimau Bukit ini digambarkan Paralaer dengan penuh daya pikat.

Misalnya cara menghindari serangan nyamuk-nyamuk hutan ganas di daerah berawa Kalimantan Selatan. Berbagai cara telah dipakai (salah satunya dengan membuat api besar) tapi hasilnya sia-sia. Hingga akhirnya dicoba “jaket nyamuk”. “jaket nyamuk” maksudnya mabuk berat. Pada saat mabuk berat itulah, orang menjadi kebal terhadap dengungan dan sengatan nyamuk. Inilah cikal-bakal kecanduan minum di kalangan serdadu kala itu (hal.36). Perihal nyamuk ini semakin menarik dengan diceritakannya legenda nyamuk yang menurut cerita, nyamuk-nyamuk itu merupakan hadiah perkawinan untuk putra Sultan Kuning, Jata atau Buaya – Raja Batang Murung dengan putri Anding Maling Guna, Raja Buaya Sungai Kapuas (hal.76).

Sementar itu orang Dayak percaya bahwa berburu buaya adalah hal tabu. Alasannya, Jata, saudara Mahatara, dewa orang Dayak adalah bapak semua buaya. Sehingga walaupun dibayar banyak, orang Dayak tak mau membunuh binatang ini kecuali karena balas dendam akibat teman atau keluarganya ditelan (hal.53).  Para desertir ini lah yang akhirnya memburu dan menghabisi buaya.

Untuk memudahkan pelarian, para desertir ini menyamar menjadi penduduk pribumi dengan jalan melumuri tubuh mereka dengan semacam tumbuh-tumbuhan dan mengenakan ewah, cawat dari kulit kayu yang dililitkan di pinggang dan ikat kepala. Sialnya, salah satu dari mereka yaitu La Cueille karena tak mampu menyembunyikan ciri fisiknya terpaksa menjadi orang Arab lengkap dengan tasbih serta ucapan beberapa kata Arab yang harus dihapalnya (hal.40). Penyamaran mereka cukup berhasil hingga mampu ‘memperdaya’ gadis asli Dayak yang akhirnya diperistri oleh salah seorang desertir yaitu Wienersdorf.

Antropometris ala Eropa juga muncul dalam novel ini. Di situ disebutkan ciri kaki orang Dayak yang bengkok. Penyebabnya adalah kebiasaan posisi mereka yang terpaksa dilakukan ketika mereka duduk bersampan. Karena berkaki bengkok itulah jika mereka berjalan seperti sempoyongan. Maka penduduk asli Kalimantan diberi nama Dayak. Dayak merupakan singkatan dari dadayak yang berarti berjalan sempoyongan (hal.41)

Desersi tentu bukan berpiknik sehingga bekal makanan yang dibawa sangat terbatas. Namun, itu bukan masalah para desertir diperkenalkan kuliner hutan yang ‘lezat’. Mulai dari rusa, celeng, tambilok (ulat putih), lindung, kujang (semacam umbi-umbian) hingga sop daging kera (hal.212).

Dalam novel ini juga diceritakan asal usul nama Kalimantan melalui tokoh Yohannes. Kalimantan adalah sebutan penduduk pribumi untuk “Borneo”, dan sebutan ini diucapkan oleh orang Eropa yang berasal dari kata “Brunai”, mengacu pada sebagian kecil wilayah pulau itu di pantai baratlaut. Ada lagi usulan asal-usul istilah “Kalimantan” yang berasal dari  “Kalimantawa”. Yaitu sebutan orang Dayak untuk buah durian dan pulau Kalimantan dianggap mirip durian. Usulan ini ditampik karena “Kalimantan” lebih dekat dengan kata “Kaliintan” (hal.76).

Para desertir mengenal istilah “jaga kepalamu!” yang berarti selalu waspada dari para pengayau yang mengincar kepala orang asing (hal.37) . Tengkorak ini sangat berharga karena dapat dijadikan bukti keberanian, barang dagangan serta hadiah perkawinan. Awalnya memang sebagai hadiah perkawinan, sebagai bukti keberanian dan kesanggupan pengantin laki-laki yang kelak harus melindungi istri dan anak-anaknya. Namun, lambat laun adat ini merosot. Tengkorak menjadi barang mewah dan barang dagangan gelap (hal 83)

Kritik Paralaer terhadap pemerintah kolonial pun muncul dalam novel ini. Diawali dengan menjelaskan alasan mengapa penduduk pribuminya tak giat bekerja. Ia menulis: “Negeri ini terlalu kaya, ia menghasilkan kekayaan tanpa perlu bekerja. Orang hanya cukup membungkuk untuk memungut hasilnya. Ini membuat mereka malas; dan kemalasan, kamu tahu, adalah akar semua kejahatan.”. Ia lalu melanjutkan: “Selama bertahun-tahun Kalimantan dijajah Belanda, dan dengan hati penuh dengki Belanda mencoba menjauhkan bangsa-bangsa lain yang mendekati pulau ini; mereka tidak berbuat apapun untuk mendorong penduduknya untuk giat bekerja.” (hal.104)

Para desertir itu juga sempat menemukan batu bara (hal.126), berburu emas dan bijih besi (hal.190), menyaksikan sistem pengadilan adat setempat yang menggunakan damar panas dalam menentukan siapa yang bersalah. Hal itu menunjukkan bahwa sebenarnya masyarakat Dayak sudah sadar hukum sejak lama (hal.176). Selain itu para desertir berkesempatan melakukan barter dengan orang-orang Ot yang tak menolak jika menikmati daging manusia tanpa lombok dan garam (hal.263). Orang-orang Ot ini rupanya dikenal memiliki ekor (262). Masalah “ekor” ini kelak terbantahkan. Hal itu dijelaskan oleh salah seorang nara sumber Dr. Yekti Maunati dalam disertasinya Contesting Dayak Identity (2001) yang telah diterjemahkan dalam Identitas Dayak, Komodifikasi dan Politik Kebudayaan (2004). Sebenarnya ekor tersebut adalah bagian dari cawat kulit kayu yang digunakan oleh kaum laki-laki Dayak.

Uraian detil Perelaer tentang adat istiadat Dayak ditunjang karena semasa bertugas sebagai tentara ia pernah diangkat menjadi Civiel Gezaghebber (pejabat sipil) di Groote en Kleine Dajak (sekarang Kalimantan Tengah). Pengetahuan yang luas itu juga dituangkannya dalam Etnograpische Beschrijving der Dajaks (1870). Sebagai narasumber utama, ia mendapat limpahan data dari sahabatnya, Temenggung Nikodemus Jaya Negara yang ditampilkan dalam novel ini. Ia juga pernah menjadi komandan benteng Kuala Kapuas dengan pangkat letnan satu. Di tempat ini ia bertugas dari 1860-1864. Bisa jadi tokoh kolonel merupakan personifikasi dirinya. Setelah berdinas di berbagai tempat termasuk ikut perang Aceh, Perelaer pensiun pada 1879 dengan pangkat mayor. Ia meninggal pada 1901 di Den Haag.

Novel ini dilengkapi juga dengan daftar istilah bahasa Dayak dan pengantar dari penerjemah yang memudahkan kita memahami isi novel ini. Secara keseluruhan, buku ini cukup menarik bagi pecinta kisah-kisah petualangan ala Karl May. Sesekali pandangan kulit putih dibenturkan dengan pandangan pribumi. Ada pula sedikit sentilan mengenai kemodernan dan keluguan, namun dibanding pribumi, tetap si kulit putih yang lebih diunggulkan. Lalu bagaimana akhir petualangan serta nasib keempat desertir itu, silakan Anda menyimak novel ini.

Sumber: Kompas, 3 Desember 2006

The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

Jed Rubenfeld takes his place in literary entertainment with grand eloquence in his first novel, The Interpretation of Murder, published by Henry Holt. This dandy psychological murder mystery is chockfull of history, biography, and geography. This would overwhelm a lesser writer, but Rubenfeld’s mastery of the subject matter, pacing, and sheer storytelling verve propels the reader into New York 1909, and puts the reader into the chase for a vicious, sadistic killer.

The novel begins as Dr. Sigmund Freud arrives in New York to deliver a series of lectures on the – at that point – very controversial subject. Dr. Stratham Younger, an American psychoanalyst, is appointed by the university to act as liaison officer for Dr. Freud. Several key members of Freud’s group of therapists are with him, including Carl Jung, the father of psychoanalysis’s most ambitious student, who ultimately tries to overtake his mentor’s glory.

Soon after Dr. Freud’s arrival, Dr. Younger is summoned to a case involving an attack on 17-year-old Nora Acton, daughter to two influential people in the city’s high society circles. The victim of a sadist, Nora was choked, whipped, and cut with a knife. The experience has left her with amnesia and bereft of voice. Dr. Freud offers the opinion that her case would be an excellent choice for Dr. Younger.

As he pursues therapy with the young woman, Dr. Younger finds himself entranced with Nora’s beauty and vulnerability. However, Nora’s returning memory proves false when she accuses the mayor’s friend, George Banwell with attacking her. Banwell is a married man and a rejected suitor of Nora’s who – she says – won’t take no for an answer. However, the night Nora was attacked, Banwell has the perfect alibi: he was with the mayor.

The mystery continues getting richer and deeper as Littlemore proceeds on a parallel course that turns up other clues. As it turns out, Nora wasn’t the only woman attacked, tied up, strangled, and whipped in such a manner. At least one other woman was, and she’s now dead. However, her body has gone missing from the morgue. Littlemore doesn’t know if the corpse was sold to the medical schools or if its disappearance is part of a cover-up.

Rubenfeld sets each scene with deft assurance. While reading the novel, I easily could imagine the city. I stood on the docks and awaited Dr. Freud’s ship, and could even smell the man’s harsh cigar smoke. As the story progressed from the luxury hotels and high society events to the narrow, twisting alleys, and to houses of prostitution and police holding cells, those scenes filled without thousands of extras came alive.

In the afterword, Rubenfeld acknowledges using the New York City geography as he needed to, but very few changes took place. The book is elegantly resourced and researched according to the time, place, and social mores. Rubenfeld’s depiction of Freud is based on a familiarity with the man through a thesis he wrote while at Princeton. Later, at Julliard, Rubenfeld studied Shakespeare, and Hamlet – which maintains a presence throughout the novel as well – becomes a topic that will interest many readers even if they’re not well-versed in the subject.

Taking his marks from the current successful thriller-writers, Rubenfeld gracefully intertwines Dr. Stratham Younger’s first-person narrative with third-person viewpoints of other characters (including the marvelous Detective Littlemore). The book would have been interesting through the eyes of Dr. Younger alone, but by building in the larger cast of characters, each with their own parts to play, the story takes on added dimensions that really incite the reader to turn pages.

An investment of time is required through the first quarter of the book. Rubenfeld sets a number of things into motion and takes time to make his New York expansive and deep, the characters rich and vibrant .(Detective Littlemore creeps in from nowhere, it seems, and very nearly succeeds in taking over the book at one point.) But after that initial investment, you need to block out the time to finish the novel because you’re in for a late night. Rubenfeld exercises a siren call, working dexterously with a small cast of suspects, pulling blind after double-blind, with enough twists and turns to satisfy a James Patterson or Jeffrey Deaver fan.

The Interpretation of Murder is truly a magnificent book - sprawling, epic, and jaw-dropping all at the same time. Anyone who can put it down 150 pages from the end has more willpower than I. After Littlemore figured out how Seamus Malley met his death, the plot simply explodes into action, and I had to struggle to keep up with all the twists and turns, which ultimately made perfect sense.

The mystery is satisfying, but so is the commentary on society at the time, the resistance of scientific thinking to psychoanalysis, and even the relationship between Freud and Jung. I can only hope Rubenfeld gets more opportunities to return to this exciting world and bring his readers more adventures of Dr. Younger and Lieutenant Littlemore.

An Extract:

"There is no mystery to happiness..."   

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn – or worse, indifference – cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning – the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life – a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

For myself, I have always chosen meaning. Which, I suppose, is how I came to be waiting in the swelter and mob of Hoboken harbor on Sunday eve ning, August 29, 1909, for the arrival of the Norddeutsche Lloyd steamship George Washington, bound from Bremen, carry ing to our shores the one man in the world I wanted most to meet.

At 7 p.m. there was still no sign of the ship. Abraham Brill, my friend and fellow physician, was waiting at the harbor for the same reason as I. He could hardly contain himself, fidgeting and smoking incessantly. The heat was murderous, the air thick with the reek of fish. An unnatural fog rose from the water, as if the sea were steaming. Horns sounded heavily out in the deeper water, their sources invisible. Even the keening gulls could be only heard, not seen. A ridiculous premonition came to me that the George Washington had run aground in the fog, her twenty­five hundred European passengers drowning at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. Twilight came, but the temperature did not abate. We waited.

All at once, the vast white ship appeared not as a dot on the horizon, but mammoth, emerging from the mist full blown before our eyes. The entire pier, with a collective gasp, drew back at the apparition. But the spell was broken by the outbreak of harbormen’s cries, the flinging and catching of rope, the bustle and jostle that followed. Within minutes, a hundred stevedores were unloading freight.

Brill, yelling at me to follow, shouldered through to the gangway. His entreaties to board were rebuffed; no one was being let on or off the ship. It was another hour before Brill yanked at my sleeve and pointed to three passengers descending the bridge. The first of the trio was a distinguished, immaculately groomed, gray haired, and gray bearded gentleman whom I knew at once to be the Viennese psychiatrist Dr Sigmund Freud.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, an architectural paroxysm shook New York City. Gigantic towers called skyscrapers soared up one after the other, higher than anything built by the hand of man before. At a ribbon cutting on Liberty Street in 1908, the top hats applauded as Mayor McClellan declared the forty seven story redbrick and bluestone Singer Building the world’s tallest structure. Eighteen months later, the mayor had to repeat the same ceremony at the fifty story Metropolitan Life tower on Twenty fourth Street. But even then, they were already breaking ground for Mr Woolworth’s staggering fifty eight story ziggurat back downtown.

On every block, enormous steel beam skeletons appeared where empty lots had been the day before. The smash and scream of steam shovels never ceased. The only comparison was with Haussmann’s transformation of Paris a half century earlier, but in New York there was no single vision behind the scenes, no unifying plan, no disciplining authority. Capital and speculation drove everything, releasing fantastic energies, distinctly American and individualistic.

The masculinity of it all was undeniable. On the ground, the implacable Manhattan grid, with its two hundred numbered east–west streets and twelve north–south avenues, gave the city a stamp of abstract rectilinear order. Above this, in the immensity of the towering structures, with their ­peacock- like embellishments, it was all ambition, speculation, competition, domination, even lust – for height, size, and always money.

The Balmoral, on the Boulevard – New Yorkers at the time referred to Broadway from Fifty ninth to 155th Street as the Boulevard – was one of the grand new edifices. Its very existence was a gamble. In 1909, the very rich still lived in houses, not apartments. They ‘kept’ apartments for short or seasonal stays in the city, but they failed to comprehend how anybody could actually live in one. The Balmoral was a bet: that the rich could be induced to change their minds if the accommodations were sufficiently opulent.

The Balmoral rose seventeen stories, higher and grander than any apartment building – any residential building – had ever climbed before. Its four wings occupied an entire city block. Its lobby, where seals cavorted in a Roman fountain, shone with white Carrera marble. Chandeliers in every apartment sparkled with Murano glass. The smallest dwelling had eight rooms; the largest boasted fourteen bedrooms, seven baths, a grand ballroom with a twenty- foot ceiling, and full maid’s service. This rented for the appalling sum of $495 a month.

The own er of the Balmoral, Mr George Banwell, enjoyed the enviable position of being unable to lose money on it. His investors had advanced $6,000,000 toward its construction, of which he had kept not a penny, scrupulously remitting the entire amount to the builder, the American Steel and Fabrication Company. The own er of this firm, however, was also Mr George Banwell, and the actual construction cost was $4,200,000. 

On January 1, 1909, six months before the Balmoral was to open, Mr Banwell announced that all but two of the apartments were already let. The announcement was pure invention, but it was believed, and therefore within three weeks it was so. Mr Banwell had mastered the great truth that truth itself, like buildings, can be manufactured.

The Balmoral’s exterior belonged to the Beaux Arts school at its most flamboyant. Crowning the roofline were a quartet of thirteen-foot floor to-ceiling glass­paned concrete arches, one at each corner of the property. Because these great arched windows gave off the top floor’s four master bedrooms, someone standing outside them could have had a very compromising view inside. On Sunday night, August 29, the view from outside the Alabaster Wing would have been shocking indeed. A slender young woman was standing within, lit by a dozen flickering candles, barely clothed, exquisitely proportioned, her wrists tied together over her head, and her throat embraced by another binding, a man’s white silk tie, which a strong hand was making tight, exceedingly tight, causing her to choke.

Her entire body glistened in the unbearable August heat. Her long legs were bare, as were her arms. Her elegant shoulders were nearly bare as well. The girl’s consciousness was fading. She tried to speak. There was a question she had to ask. It was there; it was gone. Then she had it again. ‘My name,’ she whispered. ‘What is my name?’