The De-Segregated Dead

In the summer of 2016 I traveled to Indonesia with my sister to research a novel, and found my dad’s dead brother. His name was Peter Hubertus Groenen back when he was a kid in Holland. Then the Franciscans got hold of him and he became Father Cletus, renowned Dutch theologian, linguist and teacher who dedicated himself to the people of Indonesia, the country in which he would finish out his years. Back in the ‘60s when he was translating the bible into the now obsolete traditional languages of West Java, I’ll bet Uncle Cletus never thought his Catholic soul would end up resting alongside Buddhist and Hindu, Muslim and Protestant, a sprinkling of the faithful sharing this earthly soil.

I met Uncle Cletus when I was a child. He’d come to see the life my dad was carving out for his family in far-off Canada. But he seemed mostly bewildered by our house of seven girls and women, the place strewn with female paraphernalia we didn’t recognize as making anyone uncomfortable. Uncle Cletus did try. Bought me a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ piano book. My parents had suggested I was musical, but neglected to say I had only a chord organ and no lessons. Full-scale Pooh concertos were akin to hieroglyphs. But you have to appreciate someone who would try like that.

His efforts made it so much worse that I thought he was a freak. There he stood at the altar in my Canadian church, tall and hungry-looking with pious prayer hands, narrow face dwarfed by enormous square- framed glasses, earth-brown robe cinched at the waist by a corded white rope, and sandals on his feet. Quite a sight in our little prairie church. He stood alongside our regular Canadian priest who wore normal white robes and proper leather shoes. And me all of ten, painfully aware of the reaction of my friends; they all thought the guy was a nut job.

He was, in his way; worked himself nearly to death writing theological treatise about the West’s responsibility to help the poor and suffering of the Indies, while translating the bible for people who within a decade would mostly abandon it for the Koran. The man barely ate, smoked like a steamer and wandered with his head firmly entrenched in contemplation of the big questions. Impatient with human weakness and its manifestation in the world, he was a bit of a radical, and his students loved him for it. Not a nut job then; only eccentric.

Forty years after that visit, I found myself on a quest to find his grave. My dad knew we were headed to Indonesia so I could research, but suggested we might look for the grave, take a photo. He knew his brother was buried in Depok, a commuter city south of Jakarta. We’d be nearby, perhaps we could make time? Dad cocked his 92 year old head of thinning white hair, searching our faces with cataract- tinged blue eyes as he leaned more heavily into his cane. He knows how to get what he wants.

The first days of the trip were spent navigating the crazy stew of Jakarta where remnants of colonial grandeur compete with nose clogging pollution that hangs over sludge filled canals. Skyscrapers and Gucci outlets tower over tin- clad shacks clustered on streets laced with eight inch deep gutters running with sewage and plump rats. Incongruous. Fascinating. Jordi, our bed and breakfast host, lives as a Christian in a largely Islamic nation. Intrigued by the story of Uncle Cletus, he thought a moment, and called Mister Zul.

Zul arrived driving a small black SUV and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, small wire reading glasses perched on his wide nose. Tall and gregarious, good humour sparkled in Zul’s eye as he assured us that we could easily detour through Depok on the way to Bandung. He would find our uncle. We had no idea what we were asking. And if he knew what he was getting into, he didn’t let on as he loaded our bags and introduced his wife. A darkly beautiful woman with wide set eyes, Fatil was stylish and perfectly coiffed. In the backseat, our sweat- wrinkled menopausal selves watched in awe as the couple up front held hands, smiling fondly at one another and conversing quietly in Bahasa Indonesia when they weren’t pointing out the sights in perfect English.

It turned out the whole of Java was on the road, off to celebrate the end of Ramadan with relatives. Two lanes of traffic become four with motorbikes and becek taxis dodging between cars and pedestrians hoisting baskets and bags. Hawkers added to the mayhem, selling everything from deep-fried noodle balls to wood carvings of long red chilies with an uncomfortable resemblance to spicy dildos. Depok is about 50 kilometers from Jakarta. It took two hours to get there.

When Uncle Cletus died in Depok twenty-five years ago it was a small city. Today’s population is almost two million. And all we had was a name. I learned something about the Javanese that day – they will go to any length to ensure that what one is promised is delivered, even if the promise is virtually un-deliverable.

Fatil punched away at her cell phone and Google maps delivered three potential locations. Like men everywhere Zul questioned his wife’s veracity, trusting instead a skinny man in undershorts pouring water over his head from a makeshift bucket shower. The man in undershorts did direct us to a Catholic cemetery where a fully-clothed fat man sat in the shade watching over a tumble of tombstones of assorted shapes and colours. Verdant green fronds of things waved from between their crumbling stone edges.  Catholics, yes. Priests, no. Undershorts man was wrong. And Fatil was right. Hadn’t she said so? She punched Zul lightly on the arm as we maneuvered back to a main thoroughfare and found our way.

Whether optimistic or delusional, Zul navigated his SUV through streets so narrow you couldn’t open a door without hitting a house, and around corners so tight he was forced to back blindly out of them inches at a time. Three cemeteries, a lot of driving, asking and wandering, and we were stumped, tired and hot. I tried not to picture my dad’s disappointment. What I didn’t expect was Zul and Fatil’s.

“One more try,” they said. I breathed deep; one more try. But first, lunch. The SUV snaked its way to a restaurant where Fatil hurried away.

“She wants to pray.” Zul waved toward his wife who pulled a taupe headscarf from her purse and disappeared into a mushola, the prayer rooms of every size and shape found across Java. “I’m more of an atheist,” he said, putting yet another cigarette to his lips and wandering off to smoke.

I hadn’t thought what Fatil’s faith might be. Ninety-eight percent claim Islam as their religion, but Indonesia is a secular country and its women evince wholly independent expressions of their faith; from buttoned right up, to jeans with a headscarf, to those impossible to differentiate from a baptized and back-slid Canadian Catholic. The whole of Indonesian culture is infused with centuries of fragmented traditions. And their faiths are as well; a Hindu might set out offerings to ward off black magic, a Muslim burn incense as homage to local spirits, or a Christian consult a shaman.

Looking out from the restaurant patio at a volcano puffing over the fog-filled valley, I thought Uncle Cletus would be happy with this melding. Despite years of work, he’d willingly given up on Catholic translations of the bible to make way for a kind of ecumenical cooperation. My dad always said his brother’s deepest calling was to enhance the dignity of the person and to foster peace. It seemed to me the babel of language and tradition and religion I saw in West Java was a kind of cultural ecumenicalism of which he would approve.

Fatil’s prayer over, we ate a lunch of sambal-flamed bakso ayam soup tempered by sticky rice and were on our way. One more try. Up and away on a mountain plateau edged by jungle, we drove into a cemetery stretching far as the eye could see, arched green trellises gracing the entrance to each section. Catholic, Buddhist, Protestant, Muslim. Organized. Neat. Tall teak trees shaded small flowered shrubs, bamboo thickets whispering in the wind. Peaceful and green and lovely. A rope- thin old man in flip-flops and crushed ball cap led us down wide shaded paths, stopping to point reverently at a dozen graves in a walled corner.

 And there it was. In a fateful vortex, the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago whorled in toward this one island, Java, with its press of millions, to this cemetery of a few hundred departed souls, to this one grave. His life was a droplet in the spray of Indonesia’s long and sometimes sordid history, but my Uncle Cletus’ work and life obviously mattered to whoever laid him to rest in that lovely shaded spot, his grave framed and adorned with polished black marble and white rock.

With help from Christian, atheist, and Muslim, two Canadian women found the grave of a Dutch Franciscan in the heart of Islam. Who would have thought? Each body there was buried according to religion, but in that moment I imagined their souls woven together into the Indonesian fabric, a common blend of culture and tradition and faith. I pictured them answering the muezzin’s call or the church bell, the smell of incense or a mudras gesture, the dead released from their segregation to share a drink and shake their heads at the foibles of the living. And my Uncle Cletus wandering happily amongst them.

Me and my sister were jubilant. And Zul hugged me hard, the tears in his eyes as real as my own. Unable to speak, I could only nod in gratitude for his efforts. When my vision cleared, I took a picture of the grave to carry home to my dad, proof that his brother rests easy.

(Many thanks to the Saskatchewan Arts Board who funded my travel research)