Mountain of Fire Read online

  Of course, this speech was delivered with a very stern face and a wagging finger. Usually followed by “Stay away from the crater” and “Stay away from Pak Eko”.

  Pak Eko lived just outside their village, a little ways up the mountain, on the outskirts of Fitri and Agus’ village. But he was consulted and respected by all the villagers in the area.

  People said he was about 70 years old, but no one knew for sure. He looked like something that the volcano had spit out and would one day swallow again. He smelled odd; her father said the smell was of menthol cigarettes. The Guardian disappeared for days on end – some said he went close to the hot, volcanic dome where no one else dared go. Basically, no one was quite sure of what he did and how he did it. He had no children and Fitri had often heard villagers talking among themselves about who the next Guardian of the Merapi would be.

  There was not a child in the village that did not fear Pak Eko and his mysterious powers over the Merapi.

  “Ibu! What’s going on? Why is Ayah talking to Pak Eko?” asked Fitri.

  “Fitri, something terrible happened today. Pak Irlandy was taking some of his goats up the mountain to feed. One of his goats was running across some rocks and fell into a hot mud pool.”

  Fitri looked aghast. “How hot was the pool? Did it die?”

  Ibu nodded. “It was boiling. Yes, the goat died.”

  Mother and daughter looked quietly at each other, and then towards the smoking mountain in the distant horizon. Boiling mud pools meant the earth deep inside the volcano was getting so very hot. It was making the mud boil up and bubble.

  That night Fitri had her second dream.

  Fear is of many kinds. There is fear of the dark. Then there is the way your heart jumps when you hear a loud noise. But then there is another kind of fear. The kind of fear that keeps you running because if you stop to think, you are sure that you will die.

  Fitri was running very fast. And she was scared, very scared. Something was running behind her but she did not dare stop to turn around. She could feel the creature’s hot breath behind her and hear its low, menacing, grunting sounds.

  “I have to keep moving,” Fitri muttered under her breath. “I have to keep moving or I will die.”

  She seemed to be clambering down the mountain with the creature chasing behind her. She ran, falling and slipping, down the slope and skidded to a halt near a large tree. It looked like her banyan tree, the one she had been twirling under in her first dream. But the tree wasn’t beautiful anymore. The leaves had disappeared and the branches were covered with a grey dust. It looked like it had died. In fact, all around her, all the trees, the grass, and the fields were covered with a grey, ash-like dust.

  Fitri’s home, her mountain, her beautiful village, her forest and its vivid green had turned grey.

  “What is this?” Fitri thought out loud. “What has happened to the forest?”

  She slowly came towards the banyan tree and as she came around the massive trunk, Fitri saw a woman resting on the roots spread out on the ground. She had her back to Fitri and she could not see the woman’s face. Something about her posture and the way she sat hunching made her seem old. The old woman had on a shawl with vivid colours, which seemed to stand out starkly against the grey ash. Fitri came closer and saw the woman’s white-streaked hair tied in a bun at the nape of her neck, and the deep wrinkles at the side of her face.

  In her dream, Fitri reached out to touch the old woman’s shoulder, but then the rumbling behind her startled her. She turned around, expecting for sure to see a horrible monster waiting to pounce. Instead, she saw that the sky had changed colour. It had turned red, but not a still red; a glowing, moving red, like something was on fire. It was also getting hotter.

  “It’s getting so hot,” she said. “Ibu, it’s getting so hot!”

  She snapped awake and sat up with a start, calling out to her mother. She was sweating and thirsty. The house was quiet and it was still dark. Fitri sat up on her bed, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down,” she whispered quietly to herself. “It was only a dream. It was only a dream.”

  She looked out the window, but it was impossible to make out much in the dark.

  “It can’t be true,” Fitri whispered to herself. “Nothing is going to happen.”

  It was only after a full 30 minutes that she calmed down enough to remember the old woman in her dream.

  Who was the old woman? thought Fitri.

  Many kilometres away, a great distance from the Merapi, an old woman, not unlike the woman in Fitri’s dream, sat outside her hut spreading out cloves on a red cloth on the ground. She worked steadily, her arms moving back and forth spreading out the spices.

  A man walked up to her and waited quietly, waiting for her to finish. Finally the woman stood up, steadying herself with her hands, and turned to look at him. He was much younger than her, and was wearing the distinctive white sarong and turban of the Petuluk tribe.

  “Selamat pagi, Ibu,” he wished the old woman. Good morning.

  She nodded, but did not say anything.

  ”Your granddaughter has had the dreams. She will soon know the location of the treasure. We should pay a visit to the Sacred Grove, Ibu.”

  The old woman nodded and spoke softly, “Yes, we should. Get the priests ready.”

  The young man nodded and left in a hurry. The old woman sat back on her haunches staring out in the distance, with the slightest frown on her face. She took in a deep breath and for a few seconds enjoyed the sweet and earthy aroma of the cloves before she went back to spreading them on the ground.

  Neither the young priest nor the old woman had noticed a shadow standing some distance away in the forest. This person also had on a white turban. He had a thin long moustache that hung down from both ends of his mouth. When he had heard the word “treasure”, his face changed and a tight smile curled around his lips.

  “This must be my lucky day,” he whispered greedily to himself. “At last, the riches I deserve will be mine... Mine!”

  Abruptly he turned around and disappeared into the forest.

  FOUR : THE BULE AND PAK EKO

  Fitri could not sleep any more that night and was wide awake when the sun started rising. She kept thinking of the “monster” and of the old woman sitting under the tree. Why on earth would she dream of an old woman?

  She could hear her parents beginning to move around. Soon it would be time to go to school and Fitri reluctantly got out of bed to get ready.

  But Fitri was not going to make it to school that day. This day, and all the days after, was going to get very exciting, and school and all else would be forgotten. It would all start with the arrival of a stranger in the village. Agus brought the news about the arrival of the foreigner by yelling at the top of his voice, making Fitri drop the water jug on her foot.

  “Fitreeeeeeeeee!”

  “Owww! What? What is it? Stop yelling.”

  “A bule! A white man! A white man from the city is here,” yelled Agus.

  “Big deal! Tourists come here all the time. Stop yelling and let me get ready.”

  Tourists often passed through the village on their way to the top of the Merapi. Foreigners were called bule in Indonesia.

  “No, no Fitri. He’s not a tourist. He’s here with the polisi! To see Mbah Eko. It’s something to do with the Merapi being alive. Everyone is going to see. Come on, Fitri!” He paused dramatically and said, “People are saying we have to leave the village, Fitri.”

  That got Fitri’s attention. Leave their village! Their homes! To go where?

  Children never went anywhere near the Guardian’s house, at least not when he was there. When he was off doing his business in the forest, it was another matter. Then the village kids would enter and poke around.

  Agus spent hours spying on Pak Eko. He spent a lot of his time running away from other children and the one place no one would ever look for him was around Pak Eko’s hut.

>   “Why are you always following him, Agus?” asked Fitri one day in exasperation when Ibu couldn’t find him anywhere and Fitri knew where he would be: hiding somewhere around the Guardian’s hut. “He’s yucky. He smells funny.”

  “No, he’s nice,” said Agus. “He knows all kinds of stuff about the volcano. He’s going to tell me one day. When I’m older.”

  “You just keep dreaming of that, because it’s never going to happen. The man has never actually spoken to you! He doesn’t know you exist. He’s always in the forest, doing God knows what,” exclaimed Fitri.

  No matter what anyone said, Agus would not stay away from the old man. And that was probably the luckiest thing for him, his family and the village.

  When the children got to the outskirts of the village, a large crowd had already collected. Anyone looking into the hut would have seen a normal village home, tiles on the floor, a sofa and a bed. It was a simple home, basic, and had no electric gadgets except for a radio. The usual pots and pans sat around, as well as slippers and the scarves he tied around his head. There was an overbearing, lingering scent of menthol cigarettes.

  There were a lot of maps, stacked up in neat piles. The maps were the only sign that this home was different from the other homes in the village.

  The stringy bed lay in the centre of the hut, facing the door. Pak Eko always slept with his head facing the volcano.

  A giant tree shaded Pak Eko’s house and over time its roots and branches had pushed the mountainside back, till a gentle hollow had been carved right behind the house. Fitri was going to push her way through the crowd of people, but Agus pulled her back and asked her to follow him.

  “Come on, I’ll show you a good spot to watch from,” said Agus, pulling on Fitri’s sleeve. ”It is behind the rock over the hut. No one goes there.”

  “One day you are going to fall into Pak Eko’s pot,” warned Fitri. “He’ll cook and eat you.” But Agus wasn’t listening and scampered away.

  He turned around and went up the road, just behind Pak Eko’s hut. The main mountain road went on ahead, curving through the mountain till it reached the watchtower, where Fitri had gone just the other day. But just after the watchtower, the road split into two; one fork went further up the mountain and half a kilometre away was a government signpost: Berbahaya!. Danger.

  Sometimes people would go towards the crater with many bags and ghost-like white suits. They would lower themselves into the crater wearing the white clothes. Her father said the people were men of science from the city who kept a check on the volcano.

  No one was stupid enough to venture beyond the government sign, unless they absolutely had to. Once a year, Pak Eko would lead a ceremony to the top and throw rice and offerings into the crater. This was to keep the volcano happy. But even that was done only when it was absolutely safe to go up there.

  “What is it like up there?” Fitri had asked her father once. Ayah always went on these ceremonies.

  “The air smells different, like burnt matches and rotten eggs,” he said. “It’s no place for children. Okay?” He had told Agus and Fitri he would tie him up and leave him near the crater overnight if he ever found out Agus had been there without an adult.

  The second fork from the watchtower turned around – like a sort of u-turn – and joined up with a path that led to an area just behind Pak Eko’s hut. Here Agus stopped and parted the leaves and branches to go through some bushes to a small clearing. There the mountainside extended out like a stretched hand directly over the hollow clearing of Pak Eko’s hut.

  Agus touched his finger to his lips and lay down on his stomach. He gestured at Fitri, asking her to do the same. Fitri rolled her eyes but followed him. The two children then slowly slithered on their stomachs till they reached the end of the overhanging rock.

  The large tree partly blocked the view and the children had to move around till they found a spot through the branches. There through the leaves of the tree, Fitri spotted Ayah, right upfront standing with a group of men. She did not recognise any of them. They were obviously from neighbouring villages. Word had spread like the wind. “A bule is here! To see Pak Eko!”

  Many people had come to see what the fuss was about.

  The white man, Pak Andersen, was speaking to the old man. “Mbah,” he said, using the respectful term of grandfather for the old man. “You must listen to us. The volcano dome on the southern side has expanded. The mountain is not safe.”

  Fitri could see Pak Eko shaking his head. “It is not time to leave yet.”

  “There are women and children to think of, Mbah,” said the man in the polisi uniform, softly, with a slightly bowed head. It was very important to be respectful to the old man. After all he was a village elder.

  “Perhaps we should listen to the bule. The government will look after everyone and you will be safe. You and the people can return once the volcano settles down.”

  “The signs are not right,” said Pak Eko. “I am the Guardian of the Mountain and it is my duty to protect these people. The mountain will not erupt yet. The signs say so.”

  The foreigner snorted impatiently. The polisi looked at him sharply and frowned a “no” with a slight shake of his head. If the old man got angry, that would just mess things up. They needed him to agree to the evacuation.

  Fitri’s heart sank. The bule wanted them to leave the village, their homes. That is why he had come to the village to see Pak Eko. She did not understand exactly what the bule meant by “the dome has expanded”. But she had heard the rest of what he said: “The mountain is not safe.”

  The bule lowered his voice and tried to explain the situation again. “What are these signs, Mbah? I have been working with the Yogyakarta’s Centre for Volcanology for months now. We are monitoring the volcano’s activity with eight machines. The volcano is alive! The entire area is on high alert. You must allow people to leave the village.”

  Pak Eko said he knew the Merapi as well as the machines. The Merapi’s spirits would tell him when it was time to leave.

  Pak Eko paused as if lost in his thoughts while the crowd stood alert, worried, waiting for the Guardian to speak. “The villagers must honour the mountain. They must let it know that they care about it, and not just take away greedily. A full moon night is coming and we will go on the Tapak Bisu to appease the mountain,” he announced.

  The crowd that had been listening silently while the two visitors talked to the old man exploded with chatter. Everyone started talking at once. Fitri could see her father, waving his arms around agitatedly.

  “What is the Tapak Bisu? What does ‘appease the volcano’ mean?” whispered Agus.

  “Shhh,” said Fitri, punching him to stay quiet. But the bule was also asking the same question.

  The policeman spoke up. “It is a ceremonial walk to please the volcano when it is angry, the Silent Walk. Pak Eko will circle our village and then make offerings to the Merapi. The ceremony must be done at midnight in complete silence.”

  He paused for a bit, and then said. “The next full moon is in a week.”

  “A week!” The bule grabbed the policeman’s arm and took him some ways away from the old man. “A week later! This is crazy. They need to evacuate right away. We can’t leave these people here for a week!”

  The polisi was shaking his head but he could do nothing. The villagers would not leave unless Pak Eko gave the order to do so. They trusted him completely. Besides, if they left, who would protect their homes, belongings and cattle?

  No, leaving their homes was not possible. The Silent Walk would have to fix this.

  People started straggling back home slowly. There was nothing more to be said. No one would ever disagree with the old man. If he said the mountain was safe, it was safe. That was that.

  Fitri and Agus saw their father walk up to the policeman and the bule. “It is late, Bapak,” he said using the respectful term of “Sir” to address the two visitors. “Would you like to stay at our home tonight? And go back to the
city tomorrow?”

  Fitri felt a twinge of pride for her father. Ayah was one of the few men in the village who had been to Yogyakarta, had a school education and spoke a smattering of English. Outsiders did not intimidate him, as they did some of the other village folk.

  Agus nudged her excitedly. “The bule is coming to our home!”

  “Yes, he is,” Fitri said, looking thoughtful. “I think Ayah has invited him to stay with us so he can ask him more questions. You know, about the Merapi. I think he is really worried.”

  The children stayed where they were for a while and then, in silence, made their way home. Fitri was lost in her thoughts and Agus, sensing she was worried, followed quietly. If Ayah was worried, the situation with the Merapi must be serious.

  On the way home, Agus felt a few pebbles hitting him on his head. He turned around to see three boys following them, giggling and making faces.

  “Hey Agus, ask the spirits in the Merapi to fix your face. Why don’t you go to the crater and ask them,” one of the boys yelled out.

  “Yeah, maybe you will fall in,” another boy said. They all started laughing.

  Agus lowered his head. Tears welled in his eyes and he hid his mouth with his hand. For the hundredth time he cursed his luck for being born with a deformed lip and wished he could somehow get back at these boys. “One day I’ll show them!” he muttered under his breath.

  Usually Fitri would have turned right around to yell back at the boys and protect her brother. But on this day, her thoughts were elsewhere. She kept a firm grip on Agus’ hand and walked faster to catch up with her father. She asked him the question uppermost in her mind, “Ayah, why do people listen to Mbah Eko?”

  “What do you mean?” asked her father.

  “I mean, how do we know he is right? The white man doesn’t think so.”

  Her father smiled, “Well, it’s like this. Why do you listen to your teacher at school? Because you believe he is right. Correct?”