By Dyah Merta
My name is Nieh. The lonely stillness of this island has filled my entire life. The Simeulue estuary. I grew up with a boy deserted by a man whose features I no longer remember. I believe his life-breath has long since been silenced in the roar of waves. Every day when evening comes, our son whines and whimpers, asking for news of his father. I tell him that his father has gone to sea, to the island of the soldiers, and that he’ll never be back. That’s what he will always remember. The Simeulue estuary, with its great stretches of rocky soil. The sands here swallow the bodies of ships that run aground—pirate crafts and sometimes the boats of the soldiers that often anchor here.
It’s only men who set sail and go off to sea. The women are left behind on the estuary’s bare and rocky shores, until, stripped of life, their hearts too turn to stone. You, my son, might well be the only male left.
In the end it’s the women here who are left to build this settlement as soldiers come from the sea to carry away our wood and bore deep into the earth—for oil or for gas, they say. But the people in this village know little about that.
Soldiers once visited this village of women to coax us to join them. Ever since, the story about Nieh, the Simeulue estuary, and the stones there has blossomed on the lips of everyone in this village.
“Why did they come here?” you ask about the soldiers who came.
“To take away our wood, our pepper, our cannabis, and whatever else can fit in their ships,” I say. “They have cut down so many trees, the land here will soon be completely dry and will sink into the sea and disappear, like our neighboring island. It’s too bad we’ve never been able to build ships like the fine pinisi of the Bugis people, so we could sail to the place the soldiers came from and take back everything that they’ve stolen from us. But we can’t, because our own men, who can cut and build with wood, were also carried away on their boats.”
“Mother,” says my little son, “do you want me to sail after them? To bring back the men they’ve taken away on their boats? To bring back my father?”
Nieh doesn’t reply. Her eyes are cold as she stares at her son, Adun. Her expression turns to worry. Her son is no longer a child; he has already grown into more than she had imagined. She hoped that Adun would carry on their legacy, the legacy of all the people of Simeulue, before the soldiers could come and take him away. She took the lucky ring she wore on her little finger and gave it to her only son.
“Go now. Find a woman who can give us descendants and continue our story. If this land falls into the hands of the soldiers, our lineage will be lost forever.”
“How will I know her, Mother?”
“The woman who can wear this ring on her little finger is the one who will be your wife.”
And so Adun left his home and his mother. As he left, he kept turning around to keep her in sight, and then at last he set his face to the road that lay before him. All along the way he heard people whisper that his father had been a dog, the third living creature in their household, the dog that his mother had always petted so tenderly as long as they had been together.
Adun paid them no heed, and continued on, for everyone kept a dog. In that place where only women lived, it was a dog that made a family complete.
One day followed another and after Adun had been away some time a great storm rose up; it flooded the area and nearly drowned the village he had left so far behind.
One day Adun finally reached the seacoast. At first he followed the coastline, but though he walked all day no ship of soldiers or pirates where he could seek his fortune ever appeared on the horizon. So he turned away from the shore and proceeded inland, his route taking him to a hill where he came upon a woman who turned out to be the one whose little finger was the perfect size for the ring his mother had given him.
“My name is Nieh,” she whispered.
“You are to be my wife,” Adun replied.
Recall now the story told by people of a distant island, the story of Sumbi, a woman bereft, who took for her mate a man born of her own flesh and blood, her son Sangkuriang.1) Damned by this action, she was turned into a stone—a stone hidden deep in Sangkuriang’s heart. A stone formed from vengeance for a love never requited. Recall too the story of the boat—this one not just about Sumbi. The spinner of tales also told me about Malin Kundang: how his mother called down curses and how her words kindled disaster. 2) If some day that hill turns to stone, it won’t be because of Malin Kundang being cursed again by his mother.
But it was a curse that turned a mother to stone, to live out the many years she waited. Women are not born to leave behind stories. Even Lara Jonggrang 3) was cursed to become stone, to complete the full complement of ninety-nine stones that are found on the plain of Prambanan. For every wish not fulfilled, women form the completion; women are the finality, frozen into place by their stories. There are no stone fathers, only stone mothers.
Nieh is delirious, her mouth feels as if it’s on fire. Must it be, she laments, that the story of Sumbi takes root in this land, too, the estuary of Simeulue? The cooling wind seems to slice the flesh of her body, a body that has never become as old as her years.
The spinner of tales walks along unsteadily, as if she carried with her the suffering of many seasons. Her feet are like wood, becoming wrinkled like the brown dry land. She always tells the same tale, about the thousand women who were cursed to become stone. Her forehead is overcast with a gloomy sky. On her face is etched the gloom of every woman whose silence had turned to stone. The skin of her face carries the trace of all she has lived through.
“My name is Nieh,” she says every time she introduces herself at the beginning of a performance. She wanders from one village to the next, carrying with her the story that ends all stories. She always chooses to tell her tales in one of the guard-posts you find in every village, where people gather round to listen as they sit in little clusters at the edge of the road.
Her hands invariably tremble, and from time to time she points in a certain direction, as if to say that the tale she is telling comes from somewhere over there.
Smoke from the cigarettes she rolls from a young corn husk and that burn brightly with the aroma of her special tobacco, wanders from nose to nose among those who listen to her tale. During a performance she finishes off several quid of tobacco, which she stores in the fold of a piece of cowhide. The special aroma of her tobacco somehow tells the people of the places she visits among the villages spread out far and wide across the land. These are her footprints borne by the wind. So people of the villages always know where Nieh is, at least, or they understand when she will arrive in their village to lay before them her tale that never reaches an end, the tale of women who turn to stone.
After she performs, she usually finds a place to rest for the night at the home of some kind-hearted local who invites her to stay and gives her a mat as a blanket. Whenever anyone asks her where she comes from she just points in the direction of the sea. Over there, my home is there, in the estuary of Simeulue, she says. Then she will stroke the ring that sits firmly on her finger, and she smiles.
Nieh always begins her tale with a fragment of verse that she speaks in a sorrowful tone. “This is the lament of women who have turned to stone,” she whispers.
“They trapped us in a tale that is not true,” she says as she begins the tale. “Nieh, a woman who lived in the Simeulue estuary was accused of having married her own son. Isn’t that what you have always heard? And that she turned to stone because she didn’t want to share her bed with him?” The storyteller is silent for a moment while she sucks slowly on her cigarette.
“All the fathers in this village have been taken away by soldiers,” she continues. “And then the young men became a kind of opium, and the women endlessly yearned for their return. That legend has been passed down from generation to generation in Simeulue. Not because the women were thirsty for the touch of a man. There is no way I would let my sons be taken away by soldiers like their fathers were. It would be better that my children returned to my womb, or that I turn to stone.” Her voice then is flat and without emotion; the wind dies down as if to take its leave.
“And so after the soldiers took away all our husbands and sons, in the end we turned to stone,” she continues in a sharp, clear voice. “We didn’t want children from the soldiers, and so the tale of Nieh, in which she wanted to make a child with someone of her own flesh and blood, was invented. In the end it is always women who are supposed to endure everything that happens to them. And that is what makes them become strong and solid, like stones.
“Once I asked myself, why is it that in every story about women they must always turn to stone? And why is it that in every curse uttered in a story a woman must turn to stone? Must women always be like this in every tale that springs from the mouth of a mother or father? I have my suspicions about all those stones. They must be hiding something. For years I’ve been on their trail. Hoping that someday I would find out what it is behind those stones that grow from the tongues and bodies of women. Then, when I discovered that my own origins were in Simeulue, at that very moment it occurred to me that I must tell my tale to all the directions of the compass.
“This land has been conquered by the soldiers, but its women have not. Even though they have taken our men, they will never be able to take our children. That’s why the soldiers invented those stories, so that they could slowly destroy our power. And that is why they turned us to stone, and tore away our honor.
“Spreading the lie that we had sex with our own children. So that no one would ever believe our story. But the waves on the shore of Simeulue woke me from my sleep. They had stolen from us the one strength we had to build our land. The only road left open to me was to tell the story, so that there might be one among you who would truly listen to the tale I had to tell.
“Wake up, you people! All of your men have been stolen away and the women turned to stone so they can do nothing at all. The soldiers have taken off our pepper and all the fruits of our land to their own land. They never shared a bit of it. They took it all. Our men, our pepper. How could we endure all of that, except by finally turning to stone?
“I can only tell the story. But I don’t want to foster false tales. The soldiers who steal our crops and our land have been coming here for years, but they have been putting us to sleep for so long with the story of Nieh from Simeulue. But I too am Nieh from Simeulue, and I will continue to tell my story. My eyes have nearly turned to stone already. For they have turned my tale to stone so that you will forget that it is the stones of our own houses that the soldiers carry off to their land.”
“They’re burning down the guard-house!”
“Who is?”
“The soldiers!”
“Nieh?”
“There’s one charred corpse there, but I don’t think it’s Nieh.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no ring on its finger. They must have carried off Nieh!”
“Where to?”
“Maybe to the place they all come from.”
In the end Nieh too was cursed to become stone, to shiver in the corner of a prison cell after they had finished beating her. The people of the villages only knew that Nieh had suddenly vanished, that they no longer smelled the sweet aroma of her tobacco. Meanwhile Nieh lay sprawled like a baby in the cell, her forehead still carrying the signs of the darkening sky.
“The air in this cell is colder and more deadly than my loneliness in the Simeulue estuary,” she whispers.
Have you ever heard the tale of the storyteller whose tongue was cut out? She is preparing now a map to give to the children of the storytellers—a story that must be continued. The teller of the tale is Nieh.
I almost forgot that nearly every tale that is spread by the mouths of women will someday turn to stone. That it’s the women themselves who curse their children to become stone. That I have cursed my own self to become stone. Marked with the sign of Nieh. Looking out from the bars without a tongue. The year and date unrecorded. An obscure light that reveals her stone-like body.
The woman who takes Nieh her food is given a piece of cloth torn from her blouse, filled with letters in Malay-Arabic written in blood. A ring is wrapped up inside the bundle, along with a stick of tobacco that has started to wilt.
“Continue my story!” whispers Nieh.
Then the woman hurries out.
Translated by Thomas Hunter
Notes
1.) Sangkuriang is the hero of a legend from the region of Sunda in West Java. In this legend (which is said to account for the shape of Tangkuban Perahu, a mountain peak that resembles an overturned boat) Sangkuriang is separated from his mother, Dayang Sumbi, from his early childhood. During his travels homeward he meets and falls in love with a beautiful girl, to whom he proposes marriage. The day before the wedding the girl sees a scar on his forehead and realizes she is about to marry her own son. She tells Sangkuriang, but he refuses to believe her. To avoid a tragic sin, Sumbi sets the impossible condition on their marriage that he fill the entire valley where her village is located with water and build a boat for them to sail in, all on one night. With the help of local spirits he is able to dam the Citarum river to form a lake, and begin work on the boat. Just before dawn, when Sumbi realizes that Sangkuriang will be successful, she prays for supernatural help and with a wave of her magic shawl creates a false dawn that tricks the cocks and farmers to begin a new day. Enraged, Sangkuriang is said to have kicked over the boat, which then turns to stone and takes on the form of Mount Tangkuban Perahu.
2.) Malin Kundang is the hero of a legend popular on the west coast of Sumatra. A sailor from a poor family, he seeks his fortune on the sea and ends up becoming rich and marrying a princess. But upon his return home, he feels ashamed of his humble origins and refuses to recognize his elderly mother. She curses him and when he sets sail his ships are turned to stone. A coastal rock formation near Padang is said to represent the form taken by Malin Kundang after he and his fleet were turned to stone.
3.) Lara Jonggrang is the heroine of a tale that is said to explain the thousands of minor temples on the grounds of the great temple complex of Prambanan in central Java. The legend tells us that Prince Bandung Bondowoso fell in love with Lara Jonggrang, the daughter of King Boko, whose name is connected with the Ratu Boko plateau and temple complex that overlooks the plains of the Prambanan area. In this story Prince Bandung kills the king and usurps his kingdom, then insists on marriage with his daughter. She refuses but is eventually forced to accept. However, she sets the condition that he must complete the building of 1,000 temples in one night. He agrees, and once again—as in the legend of Sangkuriang—the heroine conspires to create a false dawn, which forces him to stop his efforts at the point where he has completed only 999 of the temples. When he discovers Lara Jonggrang’s trick he curses her to turn to stone, and she takes on the beautiful form of the statue of Durga that is located in the northern cellae of the central temple of the Prambanan complex, dedicated to the god Shiva.