By Zoya Herawati
“There’s no exact time when life must begin. If someone says that life begins at forty, that’s a big lie. Life can begin any time we want because it’s like a glass of coffee. If ginger is added so that the fragrance trails through it, wow, it makes the nose tingle with joy; or if whipped cream with its smooth creamy texture of cream is left on the roof of the mouth; or on the other hand if there’s no sugar at all—it completely depends upon us. Or, life has gradations of color, slowly spreading from clear to dark and back again. If one goes on or gives up again, it all depends on several large canvasses with desires already set.”
There’s a mask on Amak’s face, stiff and rigid, the blood stopped right at the crown. His words evaporate—or more exactly, hit the roof of his mouth, filled with spider webs. Several half-finished paintings on the wall converge into a gray color, weaving together failure by failure on a long divided road leading up to his more than seventy years.
I chuckled, “No matter how cleverly you hide your fatigue, the dirt and sweat dripping down your groin hamper the movement of your legs, making your steps shuffle along, out of breath …”
Amak doesn’t react, but remains stiff and rigid, the blood beginning to thicken at the crown. Silence. A fly circles at the top of a glass half-filled with coffee, lands for a moment on the end of a red straw at the side of the glass, and waits for its chance, stirring the contents of my stomach with its contrasting colors, colors in my head. Tolerating the loathing, I follow it wherever it goes. Mischievously, it now makes a hole in a piece of bread and then enters deeper into it. It buzzes like saws clearing the forest, wiggling back and forth. Strange, there are no scattered crumbs even though the hole in the bread grows bigger. It looks like the thing has already moved the bread crumbs into its little stomach with no trouble. Truly, a perfect manipulative movement.
Amak is sound asleep. The canvas remains empty. On the porch several shirts in various sizes lay scattered about, stiff with mixed paint in several colors, which appears to be starting to dry. Smiling, I come to life, not doing anything which could really be done some other time. I look at Amak’s body bent over and wrapped in a sarong and a long shirt. A soft snore begins to well up, filling the room, taking Amak to meet dreams caught at a time when he was still awake.
“Oh, God, why did you create this useless creature, filling the air with snoring?” In the living room, Amak’s wife grumbles. Amak doesn’t react; he’s really fast asleep. I once told him, “I applaud the way you look at life. It takes great courage to support a wife and three children only by mixing colors on a canvas.” Then as before, we wasted time in his studio, a simple room behind the house with walls of woven bamboo, no more than nine meters square. In one of its corners, several paintings were stacked up. That time, Amak answered, “Whatever you say.”
If that’s called courage, then it’s certainly a foolish courage. Because if you take the time to look behind it, fears pile up which I don’t know how to overcome. And if you also ask why I don’t do my best, then I’ll answer lazily it’s too hard and talk nonsense. I’ll just bite my lips, the mystery behind the answer zigzagging and carrying me to another understanding of the meaning of life according to Amak.
The fly now lands silently on the edge of the glass, its body swollen, the green on its belly glittering more brightly. The bread crumbs have fattened it a little. It’s quiet for a while longer. I hope the fly will also remain asleep like Amak so that I can witness its body topple into the glass, the bottom of which is filled with coffee dregs. It will certainly turn a beautiful color, although for such a tiny creature it’s a tragedy. One, two, three minutes, and that which I hoped for hasn’t happened. The fly sticks to the edge of the glass as if its body is glued there, so that I want to rip it off and plunge it into the glass until it gasps for breath. But I don’t do any of that. I leave it weaving dreams, if it has any.
In a flash the shadow of Amak’s wife fills up the room in my sight. Now she stretches a rope to hang out the wash in the side yard. I’m amazed at her, a brave woman who pawned her life for a piece of poetry. I say that because that event is locked in my memory, how touched she was when Amak proposed to her with parts of a poem he had written down, something he got from the editorial desk of a campus magazine. I don’t know what magic lay behind those bullshit sentences. She appeared entranced, walking beside Amak who was smiling like a crocodile. Many years later I still see her boldness, although a bit of it has changed into a fierceness.
“Zen, get your brothers for lunch, no need to go to school first. Your father still hasn’t painted a picture so there’s no money for the tuition.”
Zen, Amak’s oldest child, nods and goes outside calling his brothers. His voice is strong enough to split your ear drums. But Amak doesn’t wake up, he’s still enjoying his sleep. Perhaps he’s freed from responsibility. But what responsibility does he have? Did he ever bother about responsibility? He hardly ever moves. Perhaps it’s others who most often bother about his circumstances. Or perhaps he’s already awake and is deliberately hiding behind his eyes, shutting out intimacy. He tries to avoid his wife, his children, me, his friends, and most importantly, himself. His breathing is still regular but his snoring has stopped.
“If you want to eat, please do. But there’s only sambal teri,” Amak’s wife grumbles in the studio. “Thank you, I’m happier sitting here.” I resist, but I’m getting hungry.
Life with dried anchovies in chili paste—perhaps that’s meaningful poetry for Amak. He deliberately cut off the most touching part of the poem because he never tried to connect it to something better.
“You’re the lowest man in the world,” I told him once. He just smiled. That time, he had found a young lover, still in her teens, and flattered her into intimacy with a small-time poet like himself. With hair as long as Carlos Santana’s, he captured the heart of the young girl.
“Note it well; this isn’t a gimmick. This is a technique, a strategy. Whoever’s legal, I’ll try it on them,” he said, chuckling.
“Zen, wake your father up. Tell him to eat before his kids eat everything.” Amak’s wife keeps on shouting, but Zen cannot wake Amak. He leaves the old man sound asleep. Now the Santana-like hair has become white and a lot has fallen out so he is rather bald. I peek outside. That brave woman is now busy pulling out stalks of galangal in the back garden. With knife in hand, she skillfully digs out the galangal roots, then gathers them onto a large winnowing tray. Years ago, she ruled the theater stages in the city with her mezzo-soprano voice. Now with her voice gone, she has buried the memories of her youth.
“Zen, when you’re finished eating, take this galangal to the warehouse at the end of the village, tell them to weigh out several kilos, and ask for all of the money,” she calls to her son. For Zen, that speech seems like a long script whose end he doesn’t know.
Silence returns. Amak changes his sleeping position. Now he turns his back on me. His sarong falls to his knees and his back is wet with sweat. The buffaloes calling to each other signals the farmers coming home from the rice fields. One or two night-locusts, singing in the treetops, drag the sun nearer its bed. When I was small, the moment the night-locusts began to sing, Father would call me, telling me to bathe before night fell. When Father died, the night-locusts went with his spirit, I don’t know where. And Mother also lost her spirit. All day long she sat silently on the front porch. When people asked her why she was there, she answered, “I’m waiting for my husband and children to return.” In fact Mother took lesser measures and surrendered herself to waiting for the mail—something that later continually whipped up my memories. Her body became covered with thousands of flies all day long. Week to week, month to month, year to year, those flies didn’t want to leave the house. They landed everywhere, on the chairs, on the tables, in the guest room, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, even on the eyelids. Their noisy buzzing stifled my heart.
The night-locusts call to everyone. Automatically, Amak wipes away the saliva trickling down his chin. Suddenly the fly on the edge of the glass moves back and forth. Its fat body slowly turns while the buzzing begins to drown out the sound of the night-locust. Now it lands on Amak’s body. With a flash, I want to see that fly enter Amak’s body. Not through the mouth, the ears, or the nose, because that’s too easy. I want that fly to make a hole in Amak’s body just like the one it made in the piece of bread, then slowly bite and save the pieces of meat in its little stomach. Amak’s body twitches, his mouth opens wide and yet no sound comes out. Slowly, part by part, Amak’s body turns blue and from every hole made by the fly trickles a yellowish-red liquid—dirtying the floor, the stacks of canvasses, the piles of shirts, the palettes, and finally the whole room where we often spent time together.
In a rush that brave woman comes into the room carrying a large wooden mallet. Now with a cool demeanor, yet with great power, she beats that fly, with pieces of its meat scattering about; she picks it up, and then throws it into the garbage.
Translated by Thomas John Hudak