Lampu Kerja

“Pak Lloyd menandatangani pelepasan dua minggu sekali, dan hari penandatanganannya tetap Senin tanggal empat belas,” saya membacakan dengan suara keras. “Beliau berterima kasih atas surat Anda.”

“Mr Lloyd signs releases once a fortnight, and his signing day remains Monday the fourteenth,” I read aloud. “He thanks you for your letter.”

Saya berdiri di toko, di antara beras dan koran, pukul empat sore hari Selasa, dan ayah saya sedang melayani seorang ibu yang mau membeli perangko. Surat saya adalah surat yang sangat bagus, dua halaman, sopan dan sedikit menakutkan. Surat itu meminta kepala perizinan membuat pengecualian darurat dan melepaskan pondok-pondok lebih awal, supaya tiga puluh pondok itu bisa diperbaiki sebelum sidang sepuluh hari lagi. Asistennya butuh enam jam untuk mengatakan tidak.

I was standing in the shop between the rice and the newspapers, at four o’clock on Tuesday, and my father was serving a woman who wanted stamps. My letter had been a very good letter, two pages long, polite and slightly frightening. It had asked the head of licensing to make an emergency exception and release the huts early, so that thirty of them could be mended before a hearing in ten days. His assistant had needed six hours to say no.

“Beliau berterima kasih,” kata ayah saya. “Itu baik sekali dari dia.”

“He thanks you,” said my father. “That is nice of him.”

Malam itu, setelah ayah saya tidur, saya duduk di meja dapur dengan skema pelimpahan wewenang dewan kota di laptop saya. Itu dokumen sembilan puluh halaman yang memberi tahu setiap petugas apa saja yang boleh dia putuskan sendiri, dan saya membaca semuanya, pelan-pelan, seperti orang membaca kontrak kalau dia curiga pihak lain menulisnya dengan terburu-buru. Pukul tiga pagi, di halaman tujuh puluh satu, dalam sebuah paragraf tentang cuti dan sakit yang tidak diubah siapa pun sejak 2009, saya menemukan satu kalimat. Kalau kepala sebuah bagian tidak ada dan keputusan tidak bisa menunggu, seorang petugas senior di bagian itu boleh bertindak atas namanya.

That night, when he had gone to bed, I sat at the kitchen table with the council’s scheme of delegation on my laptop. It is a document of ninety pages that tells every officer what they are allowed to decide on their own, and I read all ninety, slowly, the way you read a contract when you suspect the other side wrote it in a hurry. At three in the morning, on page seventy-one, in a paragraph about holidays and illness that nobody had changed since 2009, I found one sentence. Where the head of a service is absent and a decision cannot wait, a senior officer of that service may act on his behalf.

Kalimat itu dibuat untuk orang yang ada di rumah sakit, bukan orang yang ada di rapat. Kalimat itu lemah. Tetapi itu satu-satunya pintu di antara sembilan puluh halaman, dan saya menemukannya karena saya membaca halaman-halaman yang tidak dibaca siapa pun.

It was meant for a man in hospital, not a man in a meeting. It was thin. It was also the only door in ninety pages, and I had found it because I had read the pages that nobody reads.

Pada Rabu pagi saya menelepon kantor Lloyd dan minta bicara dengannya. Menurut asistennya, dia ada rapat di sisi lain kota sepanjang hari dan tidak menerima telepon. Saya menelepon lagi pukul satu, dan meminta dia mencatat bahwa saya sudah menelepon, dan kapan. Lalu saya naik bus ke dewan kota dan menaiki tiga lantai ke kantor Hannah.

On Wednesday morning I rang Lloyd’s office and asked to speak to him. He was at a meeting on the other side of the city all day, his assistant said, and wasn’t taking calls. I rang again at one, and asked her to write down that I had called, and when. Then I took a bus to the council and climbed three floors to Hannah’s office.

Dia sedang makan sandwich di mejanya. Dia melihat wajah saya dan meletakkan sandwich itu.

She was eating a sandwich at her desk. She looked at my face and put it down.

“Halaman tujuh puluh satu,” kata saya, dan meletakkannya di depannya. “Paragraf tiga puluh empat. Kalimat terakhir.”

“Page seventy-one,” I said, and put it in front of her. “Paragraph thirty-four. The last sentence.”

Dia membacanya dua kali, lalu menatap saya. “Anda ingin saya menandatangani pelepasan itu.”

She read it twice, and then she looked at me. “You want me to sign the release.”

“Saya ingin Ibu menandatanganinya untuk dia. Dia tidak ada, saya sudah mencoba dua kali hari ini dan kantornya punya catatannya, dan kalau pondok-pondok itu tidak keluar dari halaman itu minggu ini, tidak ada pasar, dan kalau tidak ada pasar, tidak ada tanah.” Saya memaksa diri mengatakan sisanya, karena itu benar dan dia pasti memikirkannya juga. “Yang saya minta Ibu pertaruhkan bukan pekerjaan saya. Pekerjaan Ibu.”

“I want you to sign it for him. He’s absent, I’ve tried twice today and his office has a note of it, and if the huts don’t come out of that yard this week, there’s no market, and if there’s no market, there’s no land.” I made myself say the rest, because it was true and she would think it anyway. “It isn’t my job I’m asking you to risk. It’s yours.”

Dia menatap jendela, yang menghadap jendela di seberang. Tanaman yang hampir mati itu kehilangan satu daun lagi sejak hari Senin.

She looked at the window, which looked at the window opposite. The dying plant had lost another leaf since Monday.

“Dia akan sangat marah,” katanya.

“He’ll be furious,” she said.

“Mungkin.”

“Probably.”

“Dan dia berhak marah. Paragraf itu untuk orang yang kakinya patah. Bukan untuk orang yang sedang rapat di seberang kota.” Dia duduk diam sekali untuk waktu yang lama, memandangi halaman itu. Lalu dia mengambil formulir pelepasan dari baki. “Saya sudah bekerja di sini tujuh tahun. Saya belum pernah melonggarkan aturan. Sekali pun.”

“He’ll be right to be. That paragraph is for a man with a broken leg. Not for a man who’s in a meeting across town.” She sat very still for a long time, looking at the page. Then she took a release form from the tray. “I’ve worked here seven years. I’ve never bent a rule. Not once.”