Jakarta, August 27th 1967, 07:01 PM
-----
Death
How are you?
Servant
I'm fine, Sir
[10 seconds silence]
[Sound of tobacco bag hitting the surface of wooden table]
[Sound of matchstick box hitting the surface of wooden table]
Death
Light some. I can't see that "I'm fine" on your face. What's the matter?
[Matchstick igniting]
[Cigarette burning]
[Sighing]
[5 seconds silence]
Servant
Why Sir Gandaria?
[Cigarette burning]
[Exhaling]
Death
Not my problem. Not my job to know. You even asked me by using his code name, didn't you?
Servant
Why Sir–
Death
Stop. Do not speak his name. I'm going to tell you slowly. We are not a division that asks a lot of questions. You're just not used to it yet. Five years from now, you will stop asking eventually. Believe me.
[Exhaling]
Servant
Have you also stopped asking questions?
Death
I have, for a long while. Probably longer than you would hink.
Servant
Do you feel at peace with that?
Death
This line of work will never give you a glimpse of peace. Even that fact rings true by being an ordinary soldier. But here, I tell you this. Until now, if you ask the veterans out there, they would still remember vividly the first enemy they hewed. The second? The tenth? The hundredth? They have been forged by it. Numbed by it. Even though each enemy was still human. Still had stories of their own. Still had families of their own. Still had significant others of their own. What differentiated the first and the hundredth enemies, eh? Just their sequence.
Servant
Then, this... Gandaria... is our enemy?
Death
Correct. Not only the enemy of us both. Not the enemy of Father or his superiors. But the enemy of the nation.
YOU ARE READING
As We Waited for the Servant: Forgive Me, Father, for I Will Sin
Historical FictionAt the end of the 70s, a year after the mass killing of communists in a Southeastern nation named Indonesia, a shadowy division from the military recruited a new soldier to be a spy.
