By Ratih Kumala
From a pair of lips, a fragment of memory is told.
Where I live there is a woman with a pitted face. If you think life is a blessing, you won’t think so after seeing her; but if you think life is a curse, you will be confirmed in your belief.
The woman lives in shackles in a tiny, unspeakable room. She is ugly and mute. They say that her brain is not quite right, so people call her an idiot. You will be scared if you see her. If she wants to say something, there is only the sound of a vowel without a consonant coming out. Her mouth can only flap. You will be reminded of the mouth of a fish that spreads a stinking smell. Some people are interested in that mouth when she tries to speak. They are kind to her out of pity and at first they try to understand what they are told about her. But then they actually enjoy a kind of strange disgust.
Her prison has a wooden door, which is always shut. The only window is a small square in the door through which her mother or other people deliver some food once or twice a day.
What is it like to live as an unwanted person? Just ask her this question. If she could speak, she would certainly tell you. They say that she was an unwanted baby. The victim of a failed abortion. The result of an affair condemned by society and God. The woman whom people call her mother is not really her mother. She was a wet-nurse who felt sorry for her, then took turns feeding two hungry babies—her own and that disfigured one, who was thrown out by someone and left at the edge of the kampong.
In earlier times, the woman with the pitted face was not chained. When she started to grow up she often walked around the kampong. But she rarely washed and she never changed her clothes. She was ragged and filthy. Young children liked to follow her, trailing behind and throwing pebbles at her. One day, on a bright afternoon, the girl with the pitted face was walking around the kampong by herself just as the children were leaving school. They started following her and throwing pebbles at her back. At first she just ignored them. But the longer she stayed quiet, the more they harassed her, as if her silence gave them permission to hurt her.
The girl with the pitted face finally picked up a big stone. Her dirty hands threw the stone at the children. One rascal got hit and his forehead was injured. Fresh blood flowed from the wound, turning his white uniform red. He ran home and told his mother. Then the other kids became frightened and scattered.
Then a not unexpected drama occurred. That evening the injured boy’s mother came to the house of the girl with the pitted face. She yelled and swore at the disfigured girl, who hid in a corner. The boy’s mother pointed to the bandage on his head and said it was the girl’s fault. She cursed her, saying that the girl with the pitted face only brought disaster and should be chained, because she didn’t even resemble a human being.
Reluctantly, the family of the girl with the pitted face decided to shackle her in a hut near the cemetery. She has been living there ever since. Months turned into years. Without knowing whether it is day or night, the woman stays inside and almost no one remembers she exists. She is visited only by people bringing her food. When she is hungry, her hearing sharpens to catch the sound of footsteps approaching her hut. She waits for the hole in the door to open; a hand stretches in with a bit of food. She is used to it now; eating, peeing, and shitting in the same place. People rarely cleaned her prison and then one day no one came to clean it any more. Anyway, her nose has become resistant to any smell.
What is it like living in isolation? Ask her this question. If she could speak, she would certainly answer. No one knows what she does in there, although sometimes you can hear her screaming. This makes the cemetery more eerie. People think it is the voice of a woman who has died in childbirth, a malevolent spirit, a kuntilanak coming out of one of the graves. No one dares to approach her. The woman with the pitted face has forgotten language without ever having mastered it. If she were free from that chain, how could she survive? She has become completely alone.
Her prison is deteriorating, becoming ever more gloomy. As in other cemeteries, people are reluctant to use lamps because they don’t want to see death. The hut is decaying. The woman with the pitted face has been forgotten. Termites and rust are eating a hole in the roof of the hut. Now there is a small gap there. Light can get in through that opening. The light is mixed with dust which floats in the stifled hut, where the air inside never moves.
Night is usually heavy and dark; but now the woman with the pitted face gets a tiny streak of light from the hole in the roof. Her head turns upward and she gazes at the moon. For many years she hasn’t seen the moon and has forgotten about it. Now for the first time, she has a companion and they greet each other. With a language which only she can understand, she chats with the moon. Every night she waits for her new friend to visit and have a chat.
But every night the moon’s face becomes more narrow and sunken, getting smaller and smaller until it is only a crescent. Its complexion grows paler. Its face grows sadder. The woman with the pitted face asks the moon to talk and tries to console it. Every night she waits for the moon to come visit her. She tries to cheer it up with her own language. Then night by night, the crescent moon gets rounder, although its face is still pale. When the moon is completely full, the woman is very happy because she has succeeded in comforting her friend. But then the moon gradually becomes a crescent again, as it did before. The woman never tires of consoling the moon in her own language. The moon then becomes full, over and over again.
Then one night, after the moon has been the slimmest crescent, it disappears. It doesn’t visit her. The woman with the pitted face is very sad and thinks that the moon doesn’t want to see her again. It rains hard. The woman believes that the moon is crying. She cries as well, feeling the deep sadness of her only friend. Once again, in the language only she can understand, she tries to woo the moon and comfort it. She never tires of it. But the sky is pouring with rain as the moon keeps crying. Rain seeps through the gap in her ceiling of her prison, falling on the woman until she is soaked.
Tired, the woman with the pitted face falls asleep. She shivers terribly. There is no one to care for her. The following morning she is woken up by a thin ray of light coming through the roof. The ray falls on a pool of water near her. She has a fever. But while she is awake, she thinks only of the moon. A bright new day is coming. The moon has gone home after hiding behind the cloud for the whole night, crying. She regrets not being able to see the moon last night. She approaches the pool of water, a dirty pool of water, mixed with dust. There is a shadow there. She smiles—and finds the moon’s face in it. Then she falls asleep and has no need to wake up again because her friend is with her.
Translated by Soe Tjen Marching