Editor’s Note:
This story was contributed by one of our readers and reflects their personal experiences living in Indonesia and their household staff. It is shared as a humorous glimpse into expatriate life and the unique relationships that often developed between expatriate families and their long-serving household staff.
Pak Mul. Now he was a super jaga. Of indeterminate age. Small, wiry and strong. He came with the property. We were instructed not to tip him too much because the property owner paid his salary, as he had done for the last 50 years.
He conveyed a beautiful expression in his gentle face. He occupied himself in the two-acre garden from dawn till dusk. He lived in the garden shed. He was always a very busy man, although now I come to think of it, I never actually saw him physically work, as he always induced the trainee gardeners and house staff to do the manual hard slog.
He was not really a servant. He was his own man, beholden to no one.
Every day he would forget my preference and make my morning coffee too sweet so he could “correct” it and make another one with no sugar. Of course, he would have to drink the sweet one himself so as not to let it go to waste.
He had three weaknesses—gambling on the TSSB (an underground lottery), pinching my coffee, and he loooved kretek cigarettes.
He seemed able to keep one cigarette butt going all morning. He smoked with such style—seated with his head tilted back, letting the smoke lazily drift from his mouth—like Oscar Wilde on a good day. He never knocked the ash off; gravity seemed to have no effect on it.
I held him in awe, as my ash usually fell down my shirt front, and most of my shirts were full of little burn holes from flying clove sparks. Not Pak Mul. His old shirt and shorts were always immaculate.
Usually, after a yell of “PAK MUL!” aimed somewhere into the garden, he would appear at the door ready for an errand.
One hundred metres to the warung usually cost me one pack of twelve kretek cigarettes.
After an hour he would return with the requested goods and give me the change—minus one pack of twelve cigarettes.
“Uang bensin,” he called it.
Usually he did quite well out of me for his smokes. He made a couple of trips to the warung every day, plus the cigarettes he “borrowed” from me throughout the day.
I hate rats.
Pak Mul’s main job for me was keeping the house clear of them. It was an ongoing battle because we lived on a right-of-way property surrounded by restaurants. The rats never stopped coming.
I paid Pak Mul one pack of kretek cigarettes for every five rats he killed.
One August I was going bankrupt buying his cigarettes because he was catching about twenty rats every day.
Now I’m smarter than the average bear, and I knew we simply didn’t have that many rats.
Sure enough, I discovered through a paid spy (three packs of kretek) that Pak Mul was “buying the rats in” from a street kid at the rate of one pack of cigarettes for twenty rats. He was also recycling the rats he’d already caught in the live traps.
At about the same time, my wife confessed that she’d felt sorry for Pak Mul and, for the past year, had been quietly giving him extra cigarettes every time he went to the shop for me.
“Well,” she said, “he had such a pleading face.”
And he did graciously accept any cigarette that came his way.
I had words with Pak Mul.
His cigarette supply was cut off.
I refused to loan him any. I instructed our guests, friends and clients not to loan or give him any kretek either.
Poor Pak Mul was doing it hard… cold turkey.
I bought an air rifle and pellets for about US$75 and killed my own rats.
I walked to the warung myself.
Pak Mul didn’t drink my coffee or read my newspaper anymore.
In fact, I hardly saw him for six weeks.
I missed him, really.
Then one morning I wandered into the kitchen for breakfast.
There sat Pak Mul at the table, reading my newspaper and drinking my coffee as though he’d never been away.
The pot cupboards were a complete mess, with their contents spread all over the kitchen floor.
“Darling,” my wife called from the bathroom, “can you give Pak Mul a couple of cartons of Gudang Garam Super? He caught and killed a snake in the kitchen early this morning. That’s why it’s still a mess.”
I did.
He slowly slit open one carton, carefully unwrapped a pack, and looked at it with complete triumph in his eyes—indeed, in his entire being.
He borrowed my lighter and lit a cigarette with his usual leisurely style.
A serene expression of victory drifted out with the smoke from his upturned mouth.
(I already knew through the grapevine—more cigarettes—that Pak Mul had paid a neighbourhood kid five packs of cigarettes for a road-kill snake.)
I drank my coffee in silence.
I stayed quiet about it until this very day.
I know when I’m beat.
