Eka Kurniawan: Man Tiger

This was when Komar should have named the baby. The child had been born in his home, after all, and for all the neighbors knew it was his. Instead, he went missing, leaving no word of his whereabouts. Margio searched for him again, but had no success. Neither the shaving kit nor the fighting rooster had gone. Since early morning Nuraeni had seated herself on the chair at the front of the house, singing a soothing lullaby as she softly rocked the baby on her lap. “Soon you will have a name,” she whispered. But Komar was gone, and there was no sign he would be coming back.

It was Mameh who told Margio to shave the baby. Without any of the usual ceremony, with only his sister and mother in attendance, he opened his father’s shaving kit to find a pair of scissors and a razor. The baby was still half asleep in Nuraeni’s lap. Her mother removed the baby’s cap, and Margio washed its thin hair. With two fingers of one hand he took a lock of soot-black hair, and with the other opened the scissors to start cutting. A piece of paper on the table caught the strands. Afterward, they would weigh the baby’s hair and, in accordance with tradition, make a gift of that much rice to a pauper. Margio and Mameh watched each follicle carefully to ensure nothing was lost.

The ritual was over in ten minutes, and Nuraeni’s eyes were glazed with happiness. She slipped a knitted cap once again over the baby’s bald head to protect it from the menacing air. Margio suggested his mother give the baby a name, and she chose Marian. The name popped out just like that. It could have been the name of a character from one of the radio dramas Nuraeni listened to in the afternoons, when their next-door neighbor put his radio on a chair in his front yard, and people squatted around it to listen. Or perhaps it recalled the name of a girl she knew in her youth. Margio and Mameh didn’t ask. That the baby had a name was enough.

She died later that day, before they had finished eating the prized fighting rooster Margio had vengefully butchered. The baby went without a sound, simply fading away, the twilight of its life giving way to darkness. Nuraeni walked into her jungle garden, doing her best to keep her body steady. She picked flowers, chanting sad songs, her eyes flooded with tears.

What Maharani didn’t know was that there was a deep wound within Margio’s family, and the dead girl touched every part of it. That night at the film screening, the question of whether to tell her who Marian’s father was, and that it was impossible for them to be lovers, tortured Margio. He wanted to lance the boil, to show her the true horror of the facts, but was deterred by his admiration for her and the girl’s relentless expressions of love while they embraced in a corner of the soccer field. They kissed, and the truth froze Margio to the core.

The girl could tell he was uneasy, and put it down to nerves and inexperience. When she touched him teasingly, trying to free him from self-consciousness, he only looked at her with anguished eyes, pained with the knowledge that losing her was inevitable, and wondering if he could bring himself to break things off.

He couldn’t possibly tell her what he had seen one particular day not long after Komar bin Syueb had found out about Nuraeni’s pregnancy and had beaten her half to death. That day, once her husband had gone, she had rallied. She sang and beautified herself. Her good mood was inexplicable to Margio, even perverse. There were bruises on her body, but she didn’t seem to feel them, and he was amazed by his mother’s endurance. Nuraeni looked fresh, more pampered than abused. She wore a beige dress, and rushed out of the house despite her protuberant belly. Margio followed secretly, and when she reached Anwar Sadat’s house, he lay down out of sight to keep watch. By then he had started to suspect Anwar Sadat, whose wickedness and roving eye were well known, and of course Nuraeni spent almost as much time at his place as she did at home. Margio wanted evidence, though he had no idea what he would do if he got it.

Dragging his feet, he crept closer to the familiar house. He entered through the side door without knocking, as he had done many times over the years. He found himself on the central porch where clothes were hanging out to dry. His mother would normally be doing laundry at the well or preparing lunch. The house was quiet, and there was no sign of life. Margio walked in without making any noise, his eyes fixed on a painting hanging on the wall. Maesa Dewi was in her room with her baby, the door slightly ajar. He went to the kitchen, but no one was there. Turning, he stood in front of Anwar Sadat’s bedroom door. He wanted to open it, but couldn’t. He chose to leave.

On the house’s western side, there was a raised bed about six feet square, bordered by a waist-high wall. The family grew oranges and bananas there, below the house’s many broad windows. The yard was taboo to outsiders, except for Margio, who had often gone there to chop down withered banana leaves. Through the front bedroom window, he could see the room was empty. Laila wasn’t there. As he had already observed, lazy Maesa Dewi lay under a blanket despite the daylight flooding her bedroom. The third window, which was Maharani’s, was always closed, opening only when the girl came home on vacation. Margio paused by the next room.

He heard muffled grunts from inside, and there was no doubt in his mind that Anwar Sadat and his mother were making love. Curiosity, or perhaps mischief, drove him closer, despite already knowing the truth. Through a glass window swathed by a crimson curtain, he saw his naked mother under Anwar Sadat. Unaware of the peeping Tom, their bodies rocked, intimate and inseparable. Margio wanted to see his mother’s expression at that moment, to know the brilliant hues of her sweaty face, on which twenty years of abuse had been washed away by passion. He was happy to see them absorbed in lovemaking. His gaze strayed over the twisting bodies, dissolving into one another, before good sense finally prompted him to step away and walk home. He needed to sit down and clear his mind. On the way back, a headache surged up more feverishly than any hangover. He wanted to cry.

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.