Man Tiger (9 page)

Afterwards, this woman Nuraeni just went to the kitchen and sat on a small stool facing the stove, mumbling to herself, to the stove and to the pan, which wasn't that unusual. She was a bit out of her mind, or at least that was how her daughter saw it. Mameh followed her to the kitchen, stood in the doorway, stared through the dimness, and waited. She had no idea what to do with her dead father. She hoped Margio would come back soon and bring them some direction, or else they might just let Komar bin Syueb rot in his bed.

In that stillness, Mameh heard a kind of sobbing, a soft whimper that seeped between her mother's meaningless mumbling. It shocked Mameh greatly to discover that this woman could miss the husband who spent his whole married life beating her up for this or that mistake or for no reason at all. Mameh was pretty well convinced that her mother was heartbroken not because she had loved Komar, but because she had grown used to a life with him, as tormenting as it was.

The animals Komar kept caged in the backyard were noisy, eager to be fed. Ever since Komar's decline began, there had been neither rotten vegetables nor bran for those poor creatures, and Mameh took over the task of caring for them, providing whatever leftovers she could find in the kitchen. Perhaps they might die now their master had left, she thought. But then again they might be sent after him sooner than that, should anyone wish to send him prayers in a ritual later that day. Mameh would be happy to cut off their heads, the way Margio had often secretly done.

The sobs from the kitchen droned on, and Mameh was still standing in the doorway, as if, at the end of a play's final act, she waited for the curtains to close on her. She wanted to distract her mother, to force her to do something, but she backed off, conceding that neither of them had any idea what was required. Mameh now turned on the kitchen lamp, whose switch was in the rice storeroom. It wasn't really a rice storeroom, more like a big boxroom containing a trunk in which papayas and bananas had been left to ripen, next to no more than two or three kilos of rice, which Komar would have bought from the market after trimming people's hair. Under the bright beam, Nuraeni's whimpering paused, but she remained in an ecstasy of sadness, staring at the stove with her back to Mameh.

Trying to keep busy, thinking that things could probably go on as usual, Mameh took the pan which Nuraeni was communing with, and filled it full of water from the well. She lit the stove's wicks, and the creeping fire cast a light on her mother's puffy face, which suddenly looked as crumpled as a tiny doll's and paler than the corpse itself. As she put the water on the stove to boil, the way she had always done when she woke her father up at dawn, Mameh wondered if Komar bin Syueb's death could really be that painful for her mother. She herself was rather delighted.

They stayed silent a long time until she heard the voices of people returning from the surau. It crossed her mind to go outside, to greet them and announce that Komar bin Syueb was dead in the hope they would offer some help in dealing with the body, but she didn't know how to explain herself. It would be embarrassing and inappropriate to say, “Uncle, my father is dead,” because the cheerful tone in her voice would betray her. She waited for the sound of footsteps to disappear, wishing Nuraeni would provide some advice, perhaps telling her to go to a particular house to deliver the news. When Marian died, Margio handled everything. Mameh didn't even know who to speak to.

Sounds of life multiplied, right and left, from the neighboring houses, as earthen and oil stoves were lit and children pissed on banana plants. Dirty dishes were stacked in the washbasins, water buckets were hoisted from the wells, and tubs were filled. She could hear bicycles passing by, rushing to the market carrying empty baskets, or full ones if the bicycle's owner was off to sell. Far along the street the bells of horse carts clanked in harmony with the clatter of iron horseshoes. Again the dogs barked, before rolling on the sandy ground to snooze once again. But in the kitchen there was only the sound of the simmering water and the soft rustle of Nuraeni's shaking shoulders. This is the woman Komar bin Syueb used to ride so cruelly, Mameh thought.

It was an incident long past, but Mameh would never forget what happened on a night so cold it brought on a frantic need to piss. She dammed up the urge until a flood threatened. Her bladder would be contained no longer and forced her out of bed. When she couldn't find her mother, she went to another room where Margio slept like a dead man. It was such a dark night that Mameh didn't have the courage to go to the bathroom alone, but the tranquility of Margio's sleep discouraged her from waking him up. Wondering where her parents were, Mameh crawled toward the kitchen, feeling around for the storeroom's light switch.

She didn't turn on the light. A neighbor's terrace lamp gleamed through the lattice window into the storeroom. Upon the trunk she saw two naked figures struggling with each other like the jockey and steed she had once seen at a Sunday horse race at the coconut plantation. As she stared at the silhouettes on the big trunk, images from that race flashed vividly through her mind. Nuraeni was bent forward like a horse at the gallop, and Komar bin Syueb was thrusting into her from behind. She could see Komar's buttocks whipping savagely, and each thrust was followed by Nuraeni's moan, like a cow whose throat was being cut. That idea was vivid, too, since Mameh had herself seen a cow's throat slashed for the Festival of Sacrifice.

She nearly wet herself, standing there, watching the sweat-soaked figures and listening to the moans of her mother being violently penetrated. She crawled to the bathroom, spilled the contents of her bladder, and returned to her room without once wanting to peek again into the storeroom. She couldn't sleep afterward. Over the years, the memory lived on, producing sadness and disgust respectively at the sight of her mother and father.

Mameh was only fourteen then, an age when she was perturbed and fascinated by the changes in her body, and in particular by the flesh that, as she put it, talking to herself, “had suddenly poked out of my chest.” She looked at her nipples and thought, half-proudly, “They're like bullets,” somewhat annoyed by their inconspicuous shape. If her shirt exposed her breasts, however slightly, men probed her with their eyes unpleasantly. Every morning her chest size seemed to have expanded overnight, a thought that sometimes made her wonder if a separate woman wasn't starting to emerge from the teenage girl.

She was happiest with her body when shut away in the bathroom. There was a large mirror over the water tub, the remains of a cupboard a cat had knocked over and smashed. The mirror was a magic window into an alternate world. Half of Mameh's time in the bathroom was spent standing naked, admiring her own form and those growing breasts. Here she felt like a complete woman. She liked her new breasts, praised them, cupping them with her hands, measuring their growth from one shower to the next, and sometimes jiggling them, wondering what was inside. She was urged on by her admiration of the bold and curvaceous mature women seen on the neighborhood streets. She was smaller in size, but in front of the mirror she mimicked the movements of the bigger, older women.

But the world accessed through that mirror was a vulnerable one, because the bathroom door no longer had a latch. Everyone thought to buy one when they took a shower, but no sooner were they dry than the idea was gone. Noise was the only sign that the room was occupied, and once, when Mameh had not touched the bathwater for minutes as she stood examining her new figure, the door was abruptly flung open. Time stopped.

Komar bin Syueb stood there in briefs and an undershirt, a cigarette in his mouth, hands holding the briefs' string to prevent them from slipping. Mameh screamed, floating and drifting a moment in consciousness, before collapsing and burying her face between her knees. Mameh would always recall the incident as taking a long time, lasting longer than her own life. Without lifting her face, Mameh heard Komar shut the door and slowly walk away without a word, feet wide as he struggled to restrain his need to shit. The moment he was gone, Mameh pissed herself.

Father knows my breasts stick out and there's a bush between my legs, she thought. He had uncovered his daughter's secrets. Throughout the years, Komar knew Mameh wished he could forget what had happened. Komar never did, though no one can say why. And Mameh knew as much. At first she avoided him whenever possible, and Komar had to leave her pocket money on the table. He had never wanted to see his daughter naked, and didn't now, despite the demonic nature that could possess him. But Mameh felt violated, and he could tell she did and prepared himself for the day when she came at him with a kitchen knife. But like Margio, she demurred. Instead she nursed him as he died.

Komar's death was a happy event for Mameh. That same sense of happiness should have come to Nuraeni. Or was her sobbing a way of celebrating, a form of release?

Morning had come, and neither woman had done a thing with the body, which was stiffening on its bed. They remained imprisoned in the kitchen, moving around from time to time to ease their aching joints. The water had come to a boil with a whistle, and Mameh turned it off. She should be cooking rice, but the urge to get busy wilted at the sight of Nuraeni still ensconced on the stool in front of the stove.

Outside, schoolchildren had already passed by and the world had become warm and full of song. Only inside the house did the murkiness increase, with the closed doors, the scruffiness of the two women, their faces unwashed since daybreak, with no desire to shower. Time had stopped. Mameh turned to stand by the door, and Nuraeni gradually stopped crying but didn't move. The smell of death had become less oppressive with the day's arrival, the sunlight slanting through the perforated ceiling, the lattices and the cracked walls.

It was one o'clock before they knew it, and Mameh went to the bathroom to piss. She opened the door without thinking, and dazzling daylight burst into the kitchen, while her feet moved on aimlessly, her nostrils widened to the fresh aroma of the front yard and its lush flowering shrubs. She stood on the terrace in her crumpled clothes and tangled hair, resembling a scarecrow hit by the previous night's storm, until their neighbor Jafar approached the house and stopped to consider Mameh's wretched appearance. They stared at each other. Mystified, Jafar thought the girl had lost her mind. Her eyes were blank and lusterless.

“What's wrong, kid?” Jafar asked.

The reply came out of nowhere, and Mameh didn't mean to phrase it this way: “My father is dead and rotting.”

It took a while for Jafar to grasp what she meant.

“Oh God. Has it been weeks?”

“Last night.”

Finally, here was someone to take care of the dank and putrid body before it really started to decompose. Jafar told Kyai Jahro, and then Ma Soma made an announcement over the surau's loudspeaker, bringing more of their neighbors to the house. Someone brought a divan and prepared buckets of water for the washing of the body. The gravedigger measured Komar's corpse with a bamboo pole and bummed a cigarette from the kyai. Before he left, Mameh told him to dig the grave right beside Marian's. Repeatedly, she insisted that he respect the dead man's wishes.

Even with the bustle of activity around them, the body being carried onto the terrace, to the well, and to the surau, Mameh and Nuraeni remained stupefied, staring numbly at what was happening or at nothing at all. Mameh was perhaps a little more lucid, talking to people, to some of her uncles, although she still hadn't combed her hair, changed her clothes, taken a shower or even washed her face. Nuraeni, on the other hand, was still in the kitchen. Now realizing that the moment for Komar bin Syueb to be buried was drawing nearer, she relapsed into grief and sobbing. No one bothered her, knowing her tendency to lose her wits. They would let her do as she liked, so long as she didn't insist on being buried, too.

This was when Margio returned home, his face shining as if the whole world were lit up by his presence. He took over the burial procession, the well-mannered child apparent once more, and went on to the surau to deliver the burial prayers. No one could fail to see how happy he was. Mameh picked flowers from their yard, all planted by Nuraeni, who was clearly unhappy with what she was doing. In some deft and complex manner, this crazy woman expressed both her grief and her objection to flowers being picked for her excuse of a husband. But Mameh didn't care. She kept plucking flowers, collecting them in a basket.

The coffin was covered by a golden sheet with silvery tassels, inscribed with the words of the Shahada. Kyai Jahro led the
salawat
chants as it left the surau, a few people following behind, mostly Margio's friends who had been hunting boars on the mountain and gave no thought to their mud-smeared clothes. Margio was among them, right next to the coffin, scattering the flowers Mameh had picked along the way. Komar bin Syueb was to be buried at the Budi Darma public cemetery, accompanied by frangipani and champak, a furious little Marian waiting for him on the other side.

They left, and the house was quiet again, save for the slowly fading
salawat
chants. Mameh and Nuraeni were returned to silence. Nuraeni had come out of the kitchen, looking hungry and stiff, but there was no food, so she dragged herself past the living room, slouched onto the terrace and sat on the divan where Komar had been washed. She could see that most of her favorite flowers had vanished. Mameh followed her with her eyes, still carrying the image of her miserable mother from that terrible night, when Nuraeni was near dead on that trunk, lying beneath her husband, groaning like a cow with its throat cut. Suddenly a thought came. Mameh walked over to her, and spoke in a sharp voice.

“You should remarry, mother.”

Nuraeni came to her senses and slapped her daughter hard. Mameh's cheek was hot and stinging.

They moved to House 131 when Margio was seven, a trip he would later refer to as the Cow Family Joyride. It was a dramatic three-hour journey to a place Komar repeatedly called “our own house,” passing along coral-paved paths that turned into swamps for the water buffaloes, which the family had to cross like the Jews at the parting of the Red Sea, a story Ma Soma would occasionally relate in the surau after teaching the Koran.

The family rode in a cart pulled by a pair of fat cows, borrowed at no cost from the owner of the rice mill. A truck was beyond their means. The man sat upfront, one hand dandling the reins ineffectively, the other energetically brandishing a whip to which the cows paid no heed. Beside him sat Nuraeni with little Mameh on her lap. Her head covered by a dark green veil with a silver floral motif, she tried to reassure her children as they whined about their relocation. Margio sat on the rolled-up mattresses, trying to keep their pan and buckets from falling off, despairing when a bump in the road threw their belongings to the ground. Margio would then have to get down to pick them up while the cart trundled on. Then he'd run after the cart, throw in the fallen objects, and leap back up, either to sit or lie down to watch the birds above.

There was actually a shortcut in the form of a wide asphalt road that hugged the coastline, much used by buses and trucks, but Komar bin Syueb worried about how the cows would react to the traffic. Instead, he pursued a meandering route, crossing hills, cutting through rice fields, passing through villages with rows of houses shaded by clumps of bamboo, the women out drying rice in the yards and the men collecting firewood. In every village people would stop working to stare in awe at the joyride, causing Nuraeni to sink deeper behind her veil, although Komar bin Syueb was unabashed. He said his hellos, and whenever someone asked where they were moving to, he would unhesitatingly reveal their destination.

Margio couldn't care less about the barefoot, half-naked children staring at them from the roadside. He was too busy reading his Mahabharata trading cards, chewing over which one was Arjuna and which Karna, and desperately trying to tell the twins Nakula and Sadewa apart. He was only disturbed when a poorly tethered teapot or bag of clothing sprang out as the wheels hit a fallen branch or a rock the size of someone's head. He did resent having to leave his previous home, losing the friends he traded cards and marbles with, who flew kites and went hunting for crickets with him. There was no guarantee that in the new place he would find anyone half as good.

Their home had stood at the intersection of two coral-paved roads, where a market was held every Monday. Once a week, it would be teeming with vendors setting out their baskets at the roadside or on terraces or filling up empty lots. They sold coconuts, bananas, papayas and cassava, and some spread out beautiful clothes over wooden frames mounted on their bicycles. An old woman sold flowers in trays, and there were people leading cows, water buffaloes, and sheep they hoped to sell. There were chickens tied by their feet to ducks, and buckets of fish and eels. Women came here to shop, and small trucks were sometimes loaded up with produce, leaving almost nothing behind. If there was anyone outside on his terrace on days other than Monday, it was Komar bin Syueb the barber, set up with a large mirror leant against a table, a shaving kit, and a chair, with towels and cotton cutting capes hung from a few well-placed nails.

Home hadn't been a real house. It was nothing more than a coconut godown. Beside it stood a grand mansion, with large glass windows and a floor of glistening ivory tiles, scrubbed clean by the housemaid every day. Around it were orchards of rose-apple, orange, and mango trees, and a yard where two trucks were often parked overnight. One day the owner of the mansion had built a bigger godown behind his cooking-oil factory, and then mysteriously abandoned his wife and children. The original godown was left vacant until Komar and Nuraeni settled there—Margio still crouched in his mother's belly—renting it for the price of twelve heads on the shaving chair every month and with the obligation to look after the mansion together with the occupants.

Their home was a single concrete square a few feet on each side. The parents unrolled a mattress in this space— which had first to be purged of coconut fibers, scorpions, insects, and mice—and then crammed their bedding next to a bicycle, a closet, and a wicker mat to sit on. There was no kitchen. Nuraeni put the stove, the plate rack, and buckets beneath a melinjo tree behind their home. She had to surround her stove with a moldy little plywood fence to stop malevolent winds from blowing out the fire. After cooking, she would carry food containers, vegetable bowls, and a rice basket into the house, placing them next to the mattress, and they would eat there. There was no bathroom, obviously. Every morning and late afternoon they would go to the mansion, where they were lucky enough to be lent a bathroom and a toilet, separate from those used by the owner's wife and children. Margio and Mameh were born there, lived in such a fashion, and life seemed pretty good.

In their last few years at the godown, Margio's jobs were to fill the bathtub and to carry three buckets of water to the back terrace kitchen. He did this before going to school, and then again in the afternoon before heading to the beach to fly his kite. He made a lot of friends in the neighborhood, including the son of an ice vendor who was kind enough to supply him with popsicles. Then they moved to House 131.

The mansion's owner returned without warning, just as he had left. He sold the house, the orchards and, of course, the coconut godown, and moved his family away. Komar explored nearby areas, until he got lost near a soccer field, not far from the military base and the town market, and found that number 131 hadn't been occupied for eighteen months. He asked around to track down the owner and, when he found him, didn't have much trouble getting permission to live there, for the old owner thought the house was going to collapse. He returned to the godown with the news, but first had to persuade Nuraeni to hock her wedding ring to pay for the new house.

It wasn't easy to convince the kids to relocate, and even Nuraeni seemed unwilling, despite her years living without a kitchen or bathroom. Margio was the most stubborn. He pleaded to stay behind, and refused to understand that the mansion's new owner wouldn't lease them the godown, which he intended to turn into a shop selling toothbrushes, soap, and candy.

“Besides,” Komar bin Syueb said, “we'll all be living in
our own
house.”

Margio wasn't impressed. At seven years old, he was popular among his friends, leading them in eel hunts on joyful Sundays, selling the catch in the Monday market and taking the rest home to his mother. He went with the kids to collect firewood in the plantation, before it fell into neglect, and it was Margio among the boys who had to muster the courage to confront the foreman when he raised a stink because the boys knocked down the unripe fruits as they tore at the dead coconut fronds. He would sell the firewood, since his mother didn't use a wood stove, and with the money he could buy marbles, as well as paper and thread to make kites. Plus he had more boxes of crickets than any kid his age. Little Margio thought he had it made, and viewed the move with grave suspicion.

He sulked and threatened to run away. He would stay put even if it meant sleeping on a neighbor's terrace, or in a shed in the cacao plantation. Finally, Komar dragged him to a corner of the godown and gave him a talking-to, calling him an ungrateful brat. Margio said nothing, so Komar bin Syueb told him to speak, and when Margio was about to open his mouth his father saw something insolent in his expression and landed a biting slap on his face. His cheeks reddened and his eyes turned wet, but Margio never let himself cry. He said nothing. Infuriated by his silence, Komar grabbed the rattan cane used to beat the mattress and slapped it against his son's calf, making Margio slump against the wall with one leg up. He could resist, but he was going to lose.

And so the mattress was rolled up, bound tightly with a plastic rope, and stacked on the cart over a sheet of wicker matting. The plate rack was attached at the rear, while the plates and glasses were in a basket, wrapped with fabric and pillows. The shaving kit was folded and hidden under a bag filled with their clothes, which was crammed in with the chairs and tables, their pan and buckets, a stove, and bowls. Margio sandwiched his boxes of crickets and marbles between the pillows, while the rubber-band-tied trading cards were stuffed into the pocket of the crimson-red school uniform shorts he was wearing. He stood there by the cow cart, in a shirt missing two buttons, his hair stiff and reddish, his slippers mismatched, until Komar told him to hop on once the tailgate was shut and they had said their goodbyes.

If he were to recall the saddest day of his life, this would be it. Margio could see his mother's reluctant face behind a veil she had never worn before, sat next to Komar. Margio wondered whether she was more upset about moving or losing her wedding ring. He had thought of his mother as an ally, but her silence made him realize how little help she would be, and in frustration he climbed onto the cart and perched on the mattress, watched by his friends, who were standing on the terrace where Komar bin Syueb had been plying his trade all these years.

They weren't really going far, but the cows' sluggish pace and the choice of route dragged out the journey. Later on, Margio could walk to his old haunts and visit friends. Now mostly silent on the mattress, he sometimes lay on his back to stare at clouds or passing herons, sometimes turned to look at the meandering road behind him, stretching far into the distance, or propped his chin on his hands to watch the rolling pungent rice fields. Nuraeni didn't say anything either, holding herself hunched as if tortured with shame. When they passed someone on the road, she gave no sign of acknowledgment. She might have been a newlywed guarding her dignity, except in her arms she held a daughter who, despite the rattling of the cart, slept like a log. Later on Margio would tell his sister how lucky she had been to sleep through this humiliating journey.

Komar bin Syueb alone sat upright, every once in a while entertaining himself with a song. Now and then they took a break when the two cows seemed tired. Meantime, the passengers would have a drink and eat bananas and fried rice crust.

When they emerged onto an asphalt street, Komar announced that they were almost there. Behind them in the mud were the parallel tracks of the cart's rubber-rimmed wooden wheels. They had reached the outskirts of town, an avenue of beautiful houses. They had yet to see their new home, but at this welcome sight, at the glistening colored fences embellished with ornate ironwork, bright lights, and mailboxes, Margio started to get excited. He glanced at his mother, hoping to see his feelings mirrored there. But Nuraeni remained hunkered deep inside herself. Margio forgot her when he looked again at the people on their terraces, the hanging pots of elephant-ear plants, and orchids growing on posts. Which house would they stop at?

But instead of stopping here they turned into an alley so narrow the cart almost couldn't get through. Margio had to pull back the plate rack, which stuck out and bumped against the fences. The cart trundled more slowly than ever, more shakily, past densely packed shacks and untended gardens, all previously hidden by the bright houses they had passed. Finally, they stopped under a kapok tree that had just shed its flowers. Number 131 stood before them.

“Here's the house,” said Komar, with a pride that met no response from his family.

The house was bigger than their old godown, measuring perhaps forty feet a side, so there had to be a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. But Margio reckoned one wicked storm would be more than enough to blow it away. A falling coconut could flatten it. At a glance you could see it was tilting to one side, on the verge of collapse. It looked somber and smelled of death, damp, and misery. The roof was made of faded red clay tiles, blackened by the sun-baked moss. Margio bet the water came slithering down right into the heart of the house when it rained. The walls, made of bamboo wickerwork, were warped and moved in the wind. The old lime coating had flaked off, baring the cut sections of each piece of bamboo.

Komar opened the padlock hanging on the front door while his family stood behind him, dumbfounded with disappointment. Swelled by the summer humidity, the door didn't open easily. One they had opened it, the damn thing wouldn't close properly. Inside it was dark and reeked of rotten garbage, neglected for eighteen months, hosting spider webs and feeding the rats, who scurried away at the sound of their footsteps. A startled bat flapped around the room before escaping. The pervading smell of bat and gecko shit faded a little with the breeze once the windows were open.

The floor was nothing but dank dirt, gritty against the soles of their feet. Margio had been right about the rainwater dripping into the house. They couldn't possibly unroll the wicker mat and the mattress on the floor as in the previous house. They would have to get two bedframes.

“Is there anything more battered than this?” Nuraeni said, opening her mouth for the first time.

“Oh, shut up. Battered as it may be, it's our own home,” Komar replied.

Nuraeni should have known how little they would get for a six-carat wedding ring. The house was theirs, although the land it stood on was not.

For a whole week they cleaned up, brushing away spider webs and catching rats that teemed inside nests that they swiftly plugged up. Komar borrowed a hoe to level the floor and to clear it of various animal droppings. He climbed onto the roof with Margio to fix the tiles disturbed by the wind and the pigeons. Margio's resentment deepened. Yet there wasn't much he could do other than follow his father's instructions, else he would have to face the rattan cane a second time. They also had to cut away the ferns and fungi, and chop down the coral tree by the well at the back.