The Bones of the Mountain, the Blood of the Sea--The Story Tole

Tole’s first memory was sound.

Not the sea’s gentle lapping on Molas beach or the coconut fronds whispering in the tinoor wind, but a sharp, percussive crack that split the humid afternoon. It was 1958, and he was four. His mother, Ma' Sartje, dropped her wooden pestle, swept him from the dirt, and ran for the shelter of their bamboo house. Another crack followed, then a low, shuddering boom that seemed to rise from the earth itself—the sound of a world breaking.

His grandfather, Opa Elias, did not run.
He stood on the beranda, knotted hands resting on the railing, eyes fixed on the city of Manado and the wide Celebes Sea. His sun-creased face was unreadable.

“The giants are arguing again, Tole,” he said later, drawing the boy onto his lap. The familiar scents of clove tobacco and earth clung to his shirt. “They shake the mountains when they are angry.”

“Giants?” Tole asked, wide-eyed.

“Ee, giants,” Opa Elias nodded, lighting his pipe. Smoke curled upward like script in the air. “But not fairy-tale giants. These are our ancestors—Toar and Lumimuut.”

So Tole learned the world, not from schoolbooks—those would come when the fighting paused—but from his grandfather’s stories, as solid and present as the volcanic soil beneath their garden.

That evening, as the sun bled into the ocean, Opa Elias began:

“In the beginning there was only the sea and a great rock that pierced the waves. Upon this rock the spirit of the heavens, Opo Empung, placed a beautiful woman, Lumimuut. Alone, she wandered the empty world until a miraculous wind brought a man from the west: Toar, strong and brave. They did not know they were mother and son, separated by fate and time….”

The boy listened, spellbound, while distant artillery echoed the old man’s gravelly voice. From Toar and Lumimuut came the first walak, the tribes of Minahasa. The mountains were their bones, the rivers their blood, the earthquakes Toar turning in his sleep. When men fought, the giants felt their pain.

Through that lens Tole understood the civil war.
The Permesta conflict was not merely Jakarta versus Manado, central power versus regional autonomy—it was sickness in the body of the ancestors, a fever in the land.

His father, Bapa Nikolas, a sought-after mechanic, sided with the rebels. When home, he listened tensely to the radio, scanning skies for government aircraft, speaking in hushed tones of “Soekarno,” “Jakarta,” “CIA,” and “invasion.”

“Why is Bapa sad?” Tole once asked.

Ma' Sartje, ever weaving coconut leaves or scrubbing laundry, answered softly:

“He fights for what he believes is right. But fighting brings a shadow to the soul. Remember Toar and Lumimuut: strength without wisdom is only noise; wisdom without strength is only a whisper. We are out of balance.”

The war closed in. Market trips meant checkpoints manned by nervous boys with rifles. Once, a government MiG screamed overhead and a thunderous blast shook the ground. Face pressed to the earth, Tole thought only: Toar is turning. The bones of the mountain are shaking.

That night he dreamed of the great rock and a woman with ocean-deep eyes—Lumimuut—pointing to a burning shore. Men who looked like his father fought one another. A giant, Toar, watched in sorrow, his mouth opening only to release the roar of exploding shells.

At dawn he ran to Opa Elias.
“I saw them. Toar was sad.”

The old man laid a gnarled hand on his head.

“The ancestors are never far. This war is a family fight—children of Toar and Lumimuut killing each other. It breaks their hearts. That is why the land cries.”

The vision did not end the war, but it gave Tole a way to endure. Soldiers became lost cousins. Fear remained, but it mingled with tragic purpose: he was a descendant of giants on a living, suffering land.

Years passed. Fighting ebbed into tense occupation. School began in a ragged building where the teacher battled outages and drills. Official history spoke of national heroes; Tole carried another, older history—one whispered in the wind.

He read the landscape with new eyes: forests were Lumimuut’s hair, boulders Toar’s bones, the waruga stone sarcophagi proofs of ancestral presence. Bullet casings and ancient pottery shared the same soil.

Then his father disappeared. Weeks stretched to months. Ma' Sartje’s fear hardened into grief. Both the local Reformed pastor and the walian came—one with prayers, the other with quiet invocations.

Anger flared in Tole, raw and unfamiliar.
“Why does Toar let this happen?” he cried at the waruga’s edge.

Opa Elias’s reply was steady:

“Should he crush soldiers with a mountain? Would that bring your father home? Our ancestors have seen Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch. We survive because we remember who we are. Toar’s strength is for building, for carrying burdens. Lumimuut’s wisdom is to know when to bend.”

The lesson was bitter but enduring. News eventually reached them: Bapa Nikolas was alive in a Javan prison camp. Survival, not vengeance, became the family’s focus.

Tole worked beside Ma' Sartje—gardening, fishing, repairing engines with the skill his father had taught. The war ended, but new political tremors from Jakarta rippled through the 1960s. Now sixteen, Tole faced them with steadier heart, embodying both Toar’s strength and Lumimuut’s wisdom.

He courted Lena from a nearby village. Evening walks through clove plantations became lessons in shared heritage. “Our strength is in mapalus,” he told her—the tradition of mutual help that ignored religious lines. “If he is from this land, he is a child of Toar and Lumimuut.”

At twenty, an official letter confirmed what they feared: Bapa Nikolas had died in the camp. There was no body. Ma' Sartje, her face a mask of resilient grief, chose a place under a kenari tree, set a smooth river stone, and called it his waruga. The Reformed pastor prayed; then Opa Elias, frail but resolute, chanted in old Tontemboan, summoning the ancestors and blessing the soil.

Rain began to fall—a sign of acceptance in Minahasa belief.
Tole felt the inheritance settle in him: Reformed hymns and ancient chants, Bible and giant myths, cross and waruga—all one truth. Strength to feel pain, wisdom to endure it.

He was Tole, son of Nikolas, grandson of Elias, descendant of Toar and Lumimuut.
The bones of the mountain were his bones.
The blood of the sea was his blood.
And he would endure.