Man Tiger (18 page)

Later that afternoon, at the nightwatch hut, he started drinking everything he could get his hands on, mostly bottles of beer mixed with arak from Agus Sofyan's stall. Lying there vomiting and coughing, he raved about a damned woman and a bloodthirsty fox. His friends couldn't make head nor tail of any of this. And he rambled on: “For that smile, I'll forgive you for sleeping with any bastard.” He almost went mad thinking about the chaos in his family, until in a moment of strange epiphany he took his mother's side. He couldn't deny her a little happiness.

After Marian's death and his mother's spiraling sadness, Margio longed for his father's head. The man finally showed up, basking in victory, not long after the burial. But Margio couldn't find the courage to take a machete to his father. The memory of Nuraeni's and Anwar Sadat's naked bodies restrained him, making him pity his father, despite the old man's loathsome arrogance. But the urge to put an end to Komar's life wouldn't abate. On the morning he met his tigress, it was intense. He could feel it boiling inside, a goad to the beast, who wanted to leap at Komar bin Syueb's throat.

Rage gripped him even more tightly when he faced Maharani, who showed up the day after Komar's death. Margio was on the verge of celebrating the family's liberation, looking forward to a glorious life without his brute of a father. But then he ran into Maharani that night and she confessed her love for him. He would have to tell her everything, to put an end to any idea of the two of them being together. The longer he delayed, the harder it would be to come cleam.

The second reel began, which meant they'd been sitting holding each other, exchanging timid kisses for nearly an hour. Margio's awkwardness was driving Maharani to distraction. She broke off her latest attempt at a kiss and looked at him accusingly, silently demanding an explanation. Filled with guilt and shame, Margio braced himself, ready to be punished for a crime he hadn't committed.

“Tell me, don't you like me?” she said, and her shoulders began to shudder. Hearing her sobs, Margio faced her and held her hands, but she pushed him away. Margio reached for her shoulders, but she backed off. It was no pretense; she was distraught. There was no easy way out for Margio.

“There's something you don't know,” he said. This time his voice sounded clear, determined. Maharani continued to cry. His cryptic declaration didn't interest her. Whatever he said, it would lead to the same conclusion: their relationship was a waste of time; the kisses, the tenderness between them meant nothing; her feelings didn't touch him. He didn't want her, and that was that.

“It's impossible for us to love each other,” he said.

“Why?”

She looked him in the eye, her nose red and wet. Sodden hair stuck to her cheeks. Looking at her made him shrink inside, lamenting all that was now unraveling, wishing away what his mother had done so he could hold her, kiss her. But Maharani was staring a challenge at him, demanding an answer. There was no going back on what he had started.

Margio grunted, and what he said next tumbled rapidly off his tongue:

“Your father slept with my mother, and a little girl named Marian was born. She died on the seventh day of her life, because my father found out and beat my mother so badly that Marian was born prematurely.”

It was enough to cut off the girl's sobs. Instead, she gaped at words she was at first unable to digest. She only knew Margio had uttered a truth as significant as any Koranic lesson from Kyai Jahro's sermons, which echoed through the town on Friday afternoons through the mosque's loudspeaker.

Maharani stood up, her eyes locked on Margio the way she might squint at a liar. She stuttered, longing to say something, but gave up and merely bit her lip. Margio returned her stare, silently attesting to the truth of what he'd said. He didn't have to describe the window where he had seen the two lovers wrestling to inflame each other. In the simple steadiness of his gaze Maharani could judge his words, and she walked away from him. She crossed the street without bothering to look out for cars that might smash her to pieces, her flared jeans flapping as she charged forward. Wiping her eyes, unable to stop crying, she headed home. This was the night his daughter would baffle Anwar Sadat with her strange behavior, locking herself in her room until morning and then fleeing the house.

Margio went home before the movie ended and felt relief, even though the pain of losing the girl was excruciating. He sat on the front porch, looking at his mother's flower jungle, and swore that all the misfortunes of his life had to come to an end. Two hearts were broken, but it couldn't be any other way. He was still there when the night was at its darkest, and a light rain washed the earth. There was a fresh, reassuring breeze, bearing the scent of damp dust. Mameh opened the door and told him to come inside, but Margio stayed put, spinning in a whirlpool of speculation and reflections.

The rain fell harder, water overflowing the gutters. He hoped the sky would exhaust itself, and the next day would be dry for the boar hunt. The memory of his hunts brought him back to life, and he foresaw brilliant days ahead. He had the tigress, his loathsome father was gone, and so was Maharani, who had become a burden. Mameh and their mother were all he needed at home.

He stayed up all night. The rain had stopped come morning, but the winds blew, and something in the turbulent air told him Maharani had left the village. He toyed with the idea of seeing her, to make peace. She wasn't to blame for what had happened. Fate had done it all. A drifting scent told him the girl still brimmed with tears, as she hurriedly carried her bags to the bus terminal, refusing to let Anwar Sadat see her off. Margio ought to be at her side, as he had been when they huddled under the umbrella. He should carry her bags, help her up onto the bus, tell her he would be there for her when she returned, and wave when the engine roared and the wheels turned on the asphalt. But that was a daydream, and in real life everything was lost. All that remained was a precious lesson that love causes pain, and the conviction that it couldn't be otherwise.

His eyes were bloodshot, but he had no desire to sleep. Mameh and Nuraeni had woken up. Mameh was creating a hubbub in the kitchen, her kingdom for the past few years, while Nuraeni sat in her chair drinking the sweet, steaming coffee her daughter had prepared. She looked shriveled, even more wrinkled than during the sad years she lived under Komar's fist. Marian's death had been the greatest blow, more agonizing than the hard rattan duster. Margio looked at her and wondered if Komar's death released them at all, whether the suffering he had created would ever really end. The answer was in a face that resembled a cracked riverbed.

Margio snacked on a piece of tofu he found lying on the dining table and wandered outside, to feel the warmth of the rising sun. Maharani was certainly on her way. He could see Anwar Sadat in his shorts and ABC jewelry store undershirt at the pancake stall, complaining about his daughter. They exchanged glances, and in his heart Margio knew this was the only person who could make his mother happy. Margio didn't stop by the stall, and walked instead to Major Sadrah's house to play with the ajaks. He liked to play with the animals, getting them to skip around him, but his mind would circle back to Nuraeni and Anwar Sadat nonetheless, and he was on edge.

He walked the narrow alleys of the township, meeting friends without exchanging many words. He didn't go home that day. He ate only guavas picked from the pawnshop's front yard, and bummed a cigarette off Agung Yuda. He had intended to sleep at the nightwatch hut, but his eyes wouldn't close. Strange thoughts about his mother made him restless.

He wanted to talk with his pal Agung Yuda, but embarrassment and shame deterred him. The two of them clowned around in the soccer field before lying down to watch pigeons flutter in the depths of the sky. Then he dragged his friend to Agus Sofyan's stall. Even there he couldn't get the news off his chest. Instead he tortured himself with thoughts of Maharani, who could listen and talk to him without constraint.

At the end of his day's wanderings, he found himself stranded in Anwar Sadat's front yard. He was unarmed, and had no intention of killing the man. He only wanted to talk. What made him hesitate was embarrassment, not fear. When he saw the door open and spotted Anwar Sadat, still in the clothes he had worn that morning, appearing exactly as imagined, Margio went to him. He had to speak while he had the courage.

“I know you slept with my mother and Marian was your daughter,” he said.

The declaration hung in the air. Anwar Sadat was ashen-faced.

“Marry my mother and she'll be happy.”

Anwar Sadat shook his head nervously, and his reply came out brokenly.

“That's impossible, you know I have a wife and daughters.” Something in his face said the proposition was absurd, making what he said next redundant. “Besides, I don't love your mother.”

That was when the tiger came out of Margio, white as a swan.

I would like to thank Tariq Ali and Benedict Anderson for all their help and advice as early readers of this translation.

E. K.