Hiroshima dan Bu Kris

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk. At that same moment, Dr. Masakazu Fujii was settling down cross-legged to read the Osaka Asahi on the porch of his private hospital, overhanging one of the seven deltaic rivers which divide Hiroshima; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, stood by the window of her kitchen, watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an air-raid-defense fire lane; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order’s three-story mission house, reading a Jesuit magazine, Stimmen der Zeit; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city’s large, modern Red Cross Hospital, walked along one of the hospital corridors with a blood specimen for a Wassermann test in his hand; and the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door of a rich man’s house in Koi, the city’s western suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full of things he had evacuated from town in fear of the massive B-29 raid which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer. A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next—that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.

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Kakidashi Hiroshima itu sebenarnya biasa saja. Seperti laiknya berita di koran sore Amerika. Panjang. Dengan deskripsi yang apik. Namun tak ada yang berlebihan di sana. Tak ada pula kalimat yang benar-benar mencolok sehingga bikin mata pembaca melekat.

Hiroshima dikerjakan oleh John Hersey pada 1945, dan diterbitkan pada Agustus 1946 di majalah The New Yorker. Saking istimewanya –dan juga panjang– Hiroshima menjadi satu-satunya tulisan di edisi New Yorker itu. Sekitar dua bulan setelah terbit di New Yorker, Hiroshima dicetak dalam bentuk buku. Laris manis. Terjual jutaan kopi. Masih dibaca hingga sekarang. Karya itu kerap disebut sebagai naskah jurnalistik terbaik sepanjang masa.

Kemarin sore, seperti biasa, saya dan Rani mengerjakan ritual sehabis gajian. Ia pergi cuci mata. Sekalian membeli kado di mall Blok M. Saya berkeliling Blok M Square untuk cari buku bekas. Di sebuah kios, mata menumbuk Hiroshima terbitan Vintage. Saya menawar.

“45 ribu,” kata si penjual.

“15 ribu aja lah. Tipis gini.”

Tebakan saya, sang penjual tak tahu Hersey. Saya menambahkan kalimat provokasi yang biasanya selalu berhasil kalau menawar buku.

“Nemunya di bawah ini. Keselip. Gak bakal ada yang beli dah.”

Sang penjual setuju. Saya keluarkan tiga lembar lima ribuan. Lucunya, di toko yang sama, saya menemukan Hiroshima versi Bahasa Indonesia. Saya sudah punya. Tapi ingin beli lagi untuk diberikan entah pada siapa. Saya coba tawar.

“Samain ya, 15 ribu?”

“Wah jangan, buku terkenal itu. 40 ribu dah.”

Saya nyengir. Batal beli, tentu saja.

Malam itu kami pungkasi dengan bersantap di penyetan Bu Kris, di bilangan Fatmawati. Di Surabaya, tempat asalnya, kedai ini bisa dibilang legendaris. Cabangnya ada di mana-mana. Saya memesan bakso goreng penyet. Rani pesan garang asem daging. Sambalnya, seperti biasa, nonjok dan mengoyak lidah. Garang asemnya kuat rasa kecap. Gelap dan manis. Malah ada seperti jejak kluwak. Nyaris mirip rawon.

Usai itu, kami pulang dengan bahagia. []