Eka Kurniawan - Man Tiger

Eight years of life in the godown stole Nuraeni’s youth and charm, and the young woman she had been rarely resurfaced. Her cold, catty attitude deepened when Komar asked for her wedding ring so he could buy House 131. She had to hide behind a veil when the family moved, to hide her sadness.

Their new home triggered a change in Nuraeni. She started to talk a lot, and the words sprang from dissatisfaction and unhappiness. The problem was that the words weren’t directed at anyone, but to her stove and pan, her constant companions since the day of her marriage. The stove was full of rust, its flames flaring up to different heights, while the holes for the wicks were really a mess. The pan, too, had been riddled with holes until a traveling welder patched it up. She muttered dismally to the stove and pan at all hours of the day. She was particularly vituperative about the warped wicker sidings, saying they were no better than a cow shed.

Komar took the hint, and one day, after a year of living at 131, he bought rolls of new wickerwork, and with Margio’s help removed and replaced the old walls. They worked hard for a week, cutting and pegging, securing them with small wedges and painting them with lime. The house was brighter after that, thanks to their work, but it didn’t touch Nuraeni one bit. Sure enough, before long a storm roared through the cacao plantation and lashed the new sidings, and with the changing seasons they twisted into shapes reminiscent of a storm-lashed sea. The lime paint cracked and fell in flakes on the ground, and all of this was related bitterly by Nuraeni to her stove and pan.

There were other issues, of course. Despite Komar’s repairs on the first day at the new home, many of the old roof tiles had cracked, opening a number of leaks. If Nuraeni didn’t furnish the middle room with pails and bowls, the dirt floor turned to mud. Komar had to go to the brick factory for new tiles, which meant a whole day of work lost. This took care of the mud problem for a while, but when the rainy season returned, more tiles cracked and the pails and bowls reappeared. In the company of the stove and the pan, Nuraeni mocked herself.

Komar could never make the house as nice as the ones lining the side of the big road, and he knew it. To shut her nagging mouth, which always found cause for complaint, Komar had a ready excuse. “There’s not much we can do as long as Ma Rabiah still owns the land.”

Yet later, when they did own the land, little improved, and Nuraeni kept up her conversations with the kitchenware. Komar began to think his wife had gone mad, but he never let that thought deter him when it came to plundering her flesh.

Margio seldom saw his mother happy, and often thought of doing things to cheer her up. He would go back to their kampong and look for gifts for her. If he had some money from doing odd jobs at other people’s houses, Margio would buy his mother ten sticks of satay or a new pair of flip-flops, which lifted the gloom for a little while. Nothing worked for long, and when he realized that he started to direct his frustration at Komar.

Back then, Komar often hit Nuraeni right in front of their son, beating her black and blue. Margio was still too small to intervene, and he often got whacked himself. He would lean against the door, with Mameh at his side biting the hem of her dress, while Nuraeni cowered in a corner and Komar stood above her with the rattan duster in his hand. Komar always found some excuse to swing it at her.

Sometimes the beatings happened outdoors, and Nuraeni would run round the house for all the neighbors to see. Komar chased her, and devils orbiting them stoked his anger, until Nuraeni ran into the house to shield herself with the door. But Komar always pushed his way in, on one occasion shivering the door to pieces. He would throw her to the floor and kick her thighs over and over. The watching neighbors would rub their chests, and Margio turned his face away. Mameh was the only one who cried, sobbing for a long time afterward in her mother’s embrace.

His mother’s stubbornness began to manifest in Margio, who wouldn’t fight Komar but took to provoking him, goading him to swing the rattan cane. Sometimes Komar didn’t like it when Margio left for his grandfather’s kampong, but the boy stood his ground. On a Saturday afternoon, he’d leave without saying a word, returning on Sunday night to face Komar’s rage. The next day Margio would limp to school, after Komar had beat him, plunged him into the water tub, yanked at his ears and thrown a coconut shell dipper at him. Komar would often feel envious when he watched the boy calmly playing with his marbles, trading cards, and crickets. Margio would grow more unyielding to Komar’s grumbling, chipping away at the man’s patience until he got smacked. Margio never fought back, as everyone knew, but stayed calm with his toys until Komar seized them and threw them into the trash. Margio would pull them back out, and Komar would run after him, dragging him along by one of his feet, with the boy’s sprawled body scraping against the ground. Margio would be lifted and tossed into the house, smashing against a chair leg. The boy would simply grimace, and the unsatisfied Komar would come after him again, grabbing him by the hair and banging him against a wooden pole. On one occasion the kid’s forehead gushed blood, but Margio never backed down.

Even gentle-mannered Mameh got her share of the rattan duster, the same way he’d lash out at a stray cat when it passed him. Peace came only in the idyll between Komar’s departure on his bicycle to the barbershop at the market and his return.

When they finally acquired the land from Ma Rabiah, Komar decided to lay down a cement floor. It was his last effort to quiet Nuraeni, and he ordered Margio to help. Margio was then fifteen years old, a young man who had once joined Major Sadrah’s boar-hunting party, and strong enough to mix the cement. They worked on Sundays. Komar mixed the cement with lime to make it stickier, while Margio turned the paste with a mortar. Nuraeni served them sweet tea, bananas, and sweet-potato fritters, but wasn’t happy about Komar’s big plan.

Their floor did not reveal itself in a day, but gradually emerged. First there was the living room, where planks were laid down while the cement dried. The next Sunday they covered the two bedroom floors. After four weeks the entire house had hard flooring all the way to the kitchen and even on the terrace. Mameh could sit on the floor to play board games like mancala with her friends, or roll out a mat and lounge about. Komar grew increasingly affectionate, praising Margio’s work, and still Nuraeni remained cold to him, and untouched by the pretense.

Five months went by and they found a crack in the floor. At first Komar thought it must’ve been caused by the raw lime and was certain that it wouldn’t get any worse. But the crack grew, and by the end of the month it was a kind of crater, as if a five-ton steel ball had bounced off the floor. A neighbor said it was probably caused by the damp, another told them that a trash hole or a well must have been there once. Holes emerged, one in the living room, two in the kitchen, and a small one in a bedroom.

Just as she had with the bamboo walls and the roof tiles, Nuraeni celebrated the crumbling of Komar’s work by gossiping about it with the various utensils in the kitchen. After listening to this babble, Margio could only walk away, because he knew that once Komar’s patience had reached its limit, he would drag Nuraeni into the bedroom and slap her, or throw her against the stove.

His home was a wild place, and Margio humbly admitted that in all his years he hadn’t understood the relationship between his parents. How did two people dedicated to punishing each other come to live like this? In Komar’s place, Margio wasn’t sure he could bear Nuraeni’s sneers and scathing whispers; and Komar was utterly contemptible. The man never hesitated to use his fists on his family, driving them closer to their graves every day. But in the end Komar gave up and yelled at Nuraeni: “Everything in this house is your responsibility!” And so it was. Komar became increasingly engrossed in raising chickens and rabbits. He had a gamecock that he would take to the cockpit, and he bred pigeons to race at the soccer field or the abandoned railway station.