Timo worked as a guide-interpreter for a British army battalion stationed near Serian Town during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation from 1963 to 1966.
In 1963, I was in Primary 4 at our village’s mission school, and by 1966, I was a Form 1 student boarding at Serian Government Secondary School.
During the confrontation and after, I often heard on the radio that the conflict was mainly about the creation of Malaysia, which Indonesia opposed.
Timo was in his early twenties and unmarried at the time. When the battalion moved, he asked to be discharged because he didn’t want to go overseas and risk getting involved in another geopolitical conflict.
He returned home a changed man and, by the time he was thirty, he lived a quiet, reclusive life on his homestead, far from our village. Even during the Gawai Dayak, our harvest festival, he rarely joined the villagers in their festivities.
Timo had become sarcastic and cynical and preferred to be alone, though he enjoyed the occasional visits from friends. Nobody knew why he had become so negative — not even his old friends. Maybe he had a bad experience in the army. Whatever it was, his outlook on life had become as weathered as the wooden fences around his farmhouse.
Speaking of the farmhouse, it was like no other within the farming community. While all his neighbours had conventional buildings, Timo’s riverside house had no walls except for the kitchen and a storeroom. Timo did not like being in any confined space for long.
The basic plan of his farmhouse was simple. He had tall logs driven vertically into the ground on all four sides, spaced apart so he could see through the gaps. These logs acted as a kind of wall, but not in the usual sense. His house was designed to fit into this stockade-like structure.
In the middle of the house was a waist-high privacy enclosure made of bamboo slats. Most nights, Timo slept in a mosquito net stretched over a bamboo bed in the centre of this enclosure. Without walls, he was exposed to the wind and mist. That, however, was what seemed preferable to him.
I remember Timo’s typical daily routine began soon after his cockerels crowed at dawn when he begrudgingly rose from his bed, feeling the weight of disillusionment already settling upon him like the morning mist blanketing the land outside.
With a sigh, he glanced out the window. During the farming season, he would see paddy farms stretching into the horizon, the outcome of the toil of neighbouring farmers. But to Timo, it was just another day in the endless cycle of struggle and disappointment.
He plodded to his modest kitchen, where he brewed a pot of strong, black coffee to soothe his weary spirit. For a second, he felt a twinge of gladness for having planted a few Arabica and Robusta coffee trees close to his farmhouse to satisfy his caffeine habit. While the kettle boiled, he listened to the news on his favourite shortwave station on the radio, his furrowed brow deepening with each headline detailing the hardships faced by farmers, the corruption of politicians, and the injustices of the world.
“More corruption, more conflict,” he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.
After finishing his breakfast, Timo trudged towards his paddy field. Despite living alone and not requiring a lot of rice, he still cultivated the crop. The exhausting physical exertion acted as an antidote to the relentless sense of futility in his heart. Amidst his toil, he often questioned the worth considering that the land appeared determined to yield so little in return.
During the midday break, Timo sat alone under the shade of an old mango tree, nursing his frustrations and a lukewarm lunch. Even the short walk to his farmhouse was sometimes bothersome for him. He saw and heard his fellow farmers chat and laugh just beyond the boundary of his farm, their voices carrying on the gentle breeze, but he remained aloof, lost in his thoughts.
Under the scorching afternoon sun, Timo worked with a mixed feeling of resignation and acceptance. He overheard his neighbours chatting about their aspirations for a brighter tomorrow. To Timo, though, their talk seemed overly hopeful and unrealistic.
As evening approached and the farmers began to pack up for the day, Timo lingered behind, his gaze fixed on the setting sun. Then as night fell over the farm, Timo retreated to the solitude of his modest farmhouse. Before it got too dark, he took a shower in a funky-looking bathhouse attached to his kitchen. If he had an appetite, he would make dinner; if not, he would eat fruits and plain biscuits which he would wash down with a mug of his customary bitter black coffee.
All the while, he would listen to his radio. His only source of light was a single kerosene lamp. Its yellowish light was just bright enough for him to flick through an old magazine full of pictures. He could read when he put his mind to it, but he seldom bothered. Still, the glossy photos soothed his weary heart.
Outside, the stars glittered like shards of broken dreams, but Timo paid them little heed. In the quiet stillness of the night, he felt the weight of the world pressing down upon him, a burden too heavy for one man to bear.
And so, as Timo retired to bed, his mind heavy with doubt and despair, he expected tomorrow to be another day of struggle and disappointment.
Had it not been for his dog, I would not have known Timo as well as I did. Bo was a big mongrel, probably a mix between a second-generation German Shepherd and a local dog. Timo loved him very much as he was a good guard dog, fiercely protective, and obedient. Bo did not like me at first. To gain his trust, I gave it bits of food. Over time, he responded happily by wagging its tail, barking, and howling whenever I called his name upon approaching Timo’s farmhouse.
Timo had to go away one day, to a place where he could not bring Bo. With permission from our parents, my little brother (Little B) and I, accompanied by a cousin, Ratum, spent a few days at his farmhouse looking after Bo and some chickens. It happened to be a school holiday and, being rambunctious kids, we thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of roaming the surrounding forest in Bo’s company.
When Timo returned, he gave each of us a white t-shirt, much to our amazement because we did not expect anything in return for helping him. To my father, he presented a plain cotton work shirt while my mother received a sarong. The gesture was so unexpected because he was such a brooding man.
Sometime in the second half of the 1960s when I was in a boarding secondary school away from our village, I returned home during a holiday to join my parents on their paddy farm and was told that Timo had abandoned his farm for good. They did not know where he went or why.
For whatever it was worth and for old-time’s sake, I took Little B to check out the place. It was not a leisurely walk like in the old days for the path was already overgrown with tall grass and creepers. It took us about an hour to cover the distance compared to less than half an hour before.
The farmhouse frame was still intact due to the sturdy construction, but the thatched roof was long gone. Creeping plants were climbing up the sides and all over the rafters. The fruit trees such as citruses, rambutans, mangoes, breadfruit, and coconuts still survived but were not in season.
Amazingly the bamboo bed in the middle of the house was still there. As it was all rickety and rotted, we kicked it down to hasten its demise and were surprised to find a trapdoor underneath. We lifted it and saw in the ground below a covered trench going under a wall and from there leading to the nearby river. We deduced that it was an escape route of some sort as we could not think of any explanation for it and it was deep enough for a man to crawl along.
Poor Timo! He left the army to escape the war, but the war followed him home. Sadly, we never saw Timo again. It was as though he had disappeared into thin air.
As we went away, Timo’s favourite song, ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Simon & Garfunkel played in my head as if reminding me of what the reclusive man had become and endured. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January 1966. It was a significant hit for the duo and became one of their iconic songs.
“Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again,” sang the duo.
Oh, yes, Timo had struggled with darkness. It was in his thoughts most of the time.
“In restless dreams, I walked alone,” continued the song.
Oh, yes, Timo had restless dreams. We had seen and heard him struggling with his demons in his sleep. Poor hapless man! I still feel for him.
‘In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.’ — José Narosky, an Argentine writer and aphorist, known for his concise and poignant sayings. His work often focuses on themes of human nature, ethics, and life observations.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Sarawak Tribune.
