This Translation Tuesday, our story takes place in a makeshift warung pangkon—a lap café—where the young Mita waitresses for her male customers in Kalibata, Jakarta. Dalih Sembiring, while better known for his translation of Indonesian novelist Eka Kurniawan’s Man Tiger, proves himself a beguiling storyteller in Nana’s mesmerising translation. First published in the 2010 queer anthology Orang Macam Kita (People Like Us), “Pangkon” is a moving story of work and the affinities between women.
She was nine years old, then. She brought home a packet of sweet condensed milk freely supplied by the school, which she mixed with a glass of warm water and later added a small spoon of coffee. No one else was at home, but she was cautious. Bapak could suddenly appear and scold her. Bapak said, coffee is for older people—for adults.
But how different the taste and aroma of milk mixed in coffee ground with green beans, she thought. She was nine years old, then. Yet to understand why some things are okay to do, and others not. It was not in her nature to question for reason. It was enough that she knew what was pleasurable was pleasurable, and what was not remained to be rejected. That is why she gets confused, now, at how blurry the lines that divide the right, the wrong, and the plain disgusting are.
“Where’s my bloody coffee, Cak!” shouts Bang Uwi to Cak Par, who is busy juggling his jars of coffee and sugar.
“Wait, one second!” Cak Pardi’s voice booms. “Who will it be tonight?”
“Mita will do, Cak. She’s like a drug.”
Bang Uwi’s words automatically invite laughter from all the men here.
The sound of rain on the roofs seems to compete with the increasingly loud chattering and cackling, and the loudspeakers drone a D’lloyd song from the VCD player. The rhythm of steel tires upon train tracks can sometimes be heard from outside. The chilly air coaxes the women on laps to press closer upon the bodies of their customers. Kretek smoke congregates thickly in the room as a sign: the night is still young.
Pramita brings a cup of coffee cloudy with steam. Bang Uwi smiles as he stares at her walking toward him. As a routine, the thirty-something man picks the small towel that hangs from his shoulder and sweeps at his own right thigh. As if that will make it cleaner, tidier.
Because nothing has changed with this dark skinned man in the one month period Mita has spent working with Cak Par. The same shirt and pants. Skin and hair that hold a lifetime’s amount of grease. The sour stink that emanates every time he opens his mouth. But Mita understands, just as everyone in this room understands, that Uwi’s sweeping and patting motions while setting his straddle wide apart is an invitation, a request, and also an order.
Also as a routine, Mita’s role is to be the first to ask, “Care for some company, Bang?”
“Yeah, Mit. ‘Sbeen five days since I ain’t been here, and I missed ya. Dontcha miss me?”
Mita flashes him a smile—a characteristic smile—before landing her bottom squarely on the lap of her customer. Born and raised in Tawangrejo Village, Madiun, she was never aware that this sort of coffee shop existed. Even Cak Par, who spent his youth in Ponorogo, was said to be exposed to this phenomenon only four years ago, when he returned to his hometown to visit his parents, wife, and children. Then, in the seedy corners of the city, the coffee shops with “benefits” were already a hit.
Counting the probabilities of how the same business would be more profitable in Jakarta, Pardono started one in Kalibata. Now, his motorcycle-wash business that runs during daylight turns into a warung pangkon, or lap café, nearing dusk. What men would not enjoy laying their daily fatigue by sipping coffee while a sexy woman hangs nearby, he thought.
News spread fast. Drivers of buses, trucks, and trishaws, dumpster divers, traders, and even college students were quick to become regulars. Those from East Java familiar with the nyete tradition would draw their kretek with coffee dregs using a matchstick before taking a drag. A cup of coffee at Cak Par’s Warung Pangkon costs a mere five thousand rupiah. But to have one of the eight waitresses here, who are always dressed in shorts and tight shirts, to coil around one’s neck, the price rises fourfold.
“It’s great, Mit. Just serving coffee and loafing around while they finish, and then we get paid at least twenty thousand. Ten for Cak Par, and ten for us,” said Arni two months ago, when the neighbor came back from Jakarta, bringing home a lot of money and souvenirs for the family.
“But we’ll have to sit on laps?” whispered Mita.
“Ah, it’ll just be sitting, y’know.”
“And they’ll be touching us?”
“So what? Are you telling me that in Hong Kong you were never touched by men? I heard you even got pregnant.”
“Says who!” There were many Madiun women sent to be the maids of Hong Kong households. She was not supposed to be surprised that the story of her getting impregnated by a Pakistani youth there should reach the village and finally reach Arni’s ears. Bad news has many ways to spread and become scrumptious feed. But her parents did not to know this. Or perhaps they have already heard?
“A little bird told me,” Arni answered lightly.
“I was not with child!” She aborted the fetus at almost two months.
“Yea, yea, I believe you. But I heard that things got really awful. You were being chased by creditors for borrowing money for the abortion and so your work contract was not extended. You used your father’s money to pay for it, huh?” Arni was relentless. “People here know that your father sold his cow for that. See, rather than just sitting here with no work to do, better come with me to Jakarta. Cak Par will gladly accept you. Still young, still pretty. You can stay at my place, do some other work during the day.”
Rain drizzles when that particular swishing returns, along with the honking of a motorcycle mounted by a woman who carries with her black plastic bags. Cak Par twitches his chin towards the plump woman. Her shoulder-length hair is tied back with a rubber band, and her face is always free of makeup. This time she is wearing a grey shirt and a black, knee-length skirt. Ling, or Cik Ling, that is how people greet the forty-something widow.
“Where’s Anton, Ling? How come you’re doing the deliveries again?” asks Cak Par. He accepts the bags filled with black, green, and white powders, and then arranges them by a row of jars.
“You know teenagers, Cak, they disappear every Saturday night,” answers Cik Ling. She then receives two sheets of twenty thousand rupiah each. And like last week, she replies Mita’s gaze with her own. They both exchange smiles. However, Mita ends it by looking away. Until something seeps into the heart of the younger woman: less than two minutes later, Cik Ling and her motorcycle disappear behind the small door that divides the shop and a road that sparkles from rain and street lights.
The visitors by the door are not accompanied by any waitress. Each of them is engrossed in shouting every time each ceki card is slammed upon the table. Mita has transferred herself onto the lap of a young man who sits with four of his peers. Their dirty words are not peculiar here, but the way they are smartly dressed makes them strange. Mita does not pay attention to the talk at this table. She remembers Cik Ling, who reminds her of another woman.
She was fifteen years old, then. Gossip began about a young Chinese girl who moved into a neighboring village. The girl was pretty, but a bit crazy, said Ibu to Bapak at the dining table. Mita saw her once. She was walking home from school and found the girl staring out blankly in front of the house of the relatives that took her in. Ibu said—people said—the girl almost died starving herself because her husband ran away and took their only child with him to live with his mistress.
According to Arni, Cik Ling was also abandoned by her husband. The only differences are that Cik Ling didn’t lose her son and she didn’t give up life. She kept on selling sugar, coffee, and many types of flour at the market.
Maybe their tales are almost the same: the girl from the neighboring village, Cik Ling, her. Stories of women who found their Prince Charming—a place to hang the most perfect dreams. But those men started to whisper dreams that lulled. And planted seeds. One took off with the bud. One merely took off without care. And one did not care should the seed turn into a bud or become uprooted before having a chance to grow.
Her thoughts scatter. She is surprised and suddenly stands up. Her right hand lands on the cheek of the young man who just provided her his lap. Who just squeezed her breast and startled her before she could even scream.
The young man is equally shocked. He stands up and slaps her back, and insults her by calling her a bitch. Mita is beyond caring what happens next: The other customers crowding their table; the yanking of shirt collars; the clenching of fists; knees shoving each other while curses fill the air.
She escapes into the drizzle. Walking past carts by the sewers that emit the foul smell of rotten garbage. Her steps are not guided by her mind that alternately flashes back to the recent scene and the incident in her rented room in Hong Kong: all she wanted to do was to show him where she lived, because their previous meetings at the open fields of Victoria Park were enough to spark special feelings in her. But the young laborer from Pakistan asked her permission to use the toilet. She was twenty years old, then. When her virginity was forcefully pierced after the man had smashed her head viciously, and repeatedly, to the cupboard’s edge. She felt it all. The pain. The screams that echoed in her head when her whole body was squeezed and her face was spat upon.
The sky is no longer drenching Jakarta. Near the mouth of an alley, on the sidewalk, she sits down listening to the contents of her head: Idiot! You already knew the risks of this job!
But Arni said I was only to sit on laps and wait…
Wait until those men went overboard with their lusts? Wait until their manhood swelled? Wait for them to ask the price of your body? Wait until their hands crept unto your breasts? Or wait to be pregnant again before you would stop being a pangkon coffee prostitute? Perhaps you are not yet like your friends who get taken to motels or to those abandoned coaches at the train station, but how else would one describe a woman who wears short tights, flimsy sleeveless shirts, and willingly sit on the laps of men—a woman like you—other than a ‘whore’?
She raises her body weakly. Not to go home or back to the coffee shop. Although she imagines that she is still close to the cafe. Because she can faintly smell the mixture of milk, coffee, and green beans. Yet she has walked streets that she rarely frequented such that she did not recognize the area.
Entering the quietness of the alley, Mita treads slowly. The familiar aroma fills her nostrils when she reaches the fifth house on the left. From an open window, she can see her. The friendly-faced, plump woman is sitting in the living room, stirring the murky brown drink, waiting for her son who is yet to return home. She picks up a cell phone that suddenly rang, reads a message, and then places it back on the table. Then, she sees her.
The door is opened. The woman stands in front of her, and easily that something that was gone seeps back in.
“You’re drenched. Come on in.”
She looks down before accepting the offer.
Ling rushes into a room, fetching a towel. Sitting beside Mita, she dries her neck and hair. “Cak Par’s place only closes after midnight, right? Why are you here?”
She does not answer. Again the bad memories, both past and recent, replays alternately in her head.
“Do you need to change your clothes? You’re shivering like a drowned rat.”
The simple phrase causes Mita to raise her head and smile awkwardly. She has never heard that allegory before.
“You have a very unique smile. I have never seen someone whose smile curves downward. This was the smile that I marked you with when I first saw you at the coffee shop. When was that? Last Saturday night?” Their faces are so close. Causing her to bow her head down again, although the curve stays. “Go on and enter that room, and pick out a shirt for yourself. I’ll make you a warm drink.”
“No need for that, Cik,” Mita softly replies. She gets up and closes the door and windows. Her hand shivers as she raises the cup on the table. Their gazes meet—as if she were asking for permission. Confusion flits on Ling’s expression. But it does not take her long to understand, although she does not fully grasp the idea nor know what to do.
Mita is twenty four years old, now. When for the first time she decides not to try to separate what is right and what is not. She only wishes to present her innermost feelings. But she remembers, a lot of her friends in Hong Kong enjoyed romancing between girls, although it is not in her nature to question for reason. She is also reminded of the time this woman smiled back at her a week ago. When their gazes were locked for a long time. Or for what felt like a long time. Who’s to count the sands of time when such swishing of the heart seductively appears?
Mita turns around and lowers her body. Sitting down the burden that lies heavy on her mind and muscles. She blows into the drink in her hand. Their fingers meet, sharing the warmth of the coffee that moves from the mouth of one woman to the other on the lap.
By the lips of the steaming cup, their story begins.
Translated from the Indonesian by Nana
Dalih Sembiring a.k.a Labodalih Sembiring—born in Binjai, North Sumatra, on May 4, 1983—may be better-known as a translator than a writer. His English translation of Eka Kurniawan’s novel Man Tiger/Lelaki Harimau (Verso Books, 2015), was long-listed for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. Once a contributor of feature articles to The Jakarta Post, he went on to become a full-time features reporter with the Jakarta Globe. He has published two novels. His short stories were run in various newspapers and magazines, as well as included in Jurnal Cerpen Indonesia (Indonesian Short Story Journal) and a number of short story anthologies.
Nana is a writer whose original games, poems and short stories have been platformed both in Malaysia and internationally. They mainly perform spoken word poetry and also have experience on stage and screen as a host, actor and director. In addition to publishing zines featuring original writings and artworks, they also taught drama in Malaysia and Brunei. Nana finished the Malaysia National Poetry Slam 2018 at Georgetown Literary Festival as a runner-up and was invited again as a speaker in 2019.
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