Man Tiger (11 page)

The girl wasn't told until dusk. Her father said, “
Nyai
, one day you will marry Komar bin Syueb.”

She really didn't know the man at all, aware of him only as someone in the village, a name to which she could barely attach a face. The fact it was him didn't surprise her, because she had no expectations. Like every other girl, she had been waiting for the moment her father would tell her who she would marry, but there was no young man she favored over the others. The news itself was enough to make the twelve-year-old girl happy, despite the inevitable fear of what would follow. At least now Nuraeni was able to tell her closest friends she had a fiancé. Nothing was more embarrassing for a girl older than twelve than not knowing who would be her husband.

The evening changed many things, because little Nuraeni had become the young woman Nuraeni. Her mother bought her crimson lipstick and an eyebrow pencil, and she no longer let her slightly protruding breasts be exposed in the breezy air of the hillside village. The news rippled out swiftly, reaching the ears of relatives and friends, of the girl whose fate was half bound with Komar bin Syueb's, and they felt happy for her.

She no longer followed her father to the rice fields in the morning, to stand on the plough so it sank into the mud while two buffaloes walked slowly along the plots, splattering her with earth. Nor would she lead their two sheep to the grassland on the hillside, herding them with the other shepherd kids, carrying two dry coconut stems as firewood on the way home. No, these tasks were now her younger brothers', while she stayed at her mother's side. In the morning she would light the grill to cook rice and learn every aspect of making the perfect
lodeh
dish. She still went to the rice fields, not to till the land, but to scatter seeds that had been soaked overnight. When their light green spikes shot up, she would join the other women to pull them out and plant them in the plots drawn with crisscrossing lines by her father and younger brothers. As they waited for the rice to grow tall, her father and brothers spread the fertilizer and kept watch on the water lest it turn stagnant, and she and her mother would carry the lunch hamper to a hut by a levee. She would return to the fields with her mother again when the algae and weeds needed clearing, and there would also be a time for her to harvest the ripe grains with an
ani-ani
knife, back in the days before the villagers used sickles. Other than that, Nuraeni had to look after her body in order for it to blossom, and to mind her language. For now she had a fiancé and was preparing for her wedding.

As for Komar, in keeping with local conventions, he had left his village shortly after turning twenty, since there wasn't much to do at home for men of his age. Syueb had several plots of both wet and dry fields, but he could manage them with his wife without help, and had all the time he needed to serve as the only barber in the village. After a short lesson on how to shave people's heads, how to use a blade to trim mustaches and stubble, and after several attempts to replace his father, Komar followed a friend and wandered out into the world, equipped with the knowledge of how to shave a man's chin. Naturally, at first he didn't want to be a barber at all, and hoped to get a job at some factory instead, like other young men.

He would come home once a year, before Eid ul-Fitr, more commonly called Lebaran, together with many other young men and wandering families, who during this great homecoming would appear in rows on the hilly path, with cardboard boxes and bags in their hands or on their shoulders. His hair was greasy with pomade, and he sported a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, corduroy pants still smelling of the barbershop, a watch, and a pair of black leather shoes that prompted him to tread carefully around the ubiquitous mud holes.

In his large bag was tobacco for Syueb, a batik skirt for his mother, pretty gowns for his younger sisters and, since he'd heard about his engagement, a present for his future wife as well. She was a stranger to him, but he knew she was beautiful and welcomed the marriage. He remembered the day the girl was born, because he'd been playing right next to her house and had watched people gather in anticipation of the baby's delivery. He'd seen Nuraeni several times when she was a schoolgirl, since the school wasn't far from his house. But his knowledge of her didn't stretch much beyond her long, curly, dark hair, often tied back with a ribbon, a pointed nose, plump cheeks, and gleaming round eyes. When someone told him that his father had chosen the girl for him, sure enough Komar dreamed about her every night, until he decided to come home earlier than usual.

They met on the eve of Lebaran. Komar gave her a tin of biscuits and a pretty pink purse, and bashfully handed her a photo of himself. He was pictured posing in front of a bright yellow Volkswagen Kombi, which obviously wasn't his and was clearly sitting in a parking lot. He looked awkward with one hand half sunk in a pocket, but his expression was cheerful and rather proud, as if no one could contrive a better pose and location.

They spent the whole Lebaran day together, going from houses to house, shaking hands with neighbors and relatives, and bragging that they were soon to be husband and wife, just as other couples were doing who had only met that day. Komar and Nuraeni walked side by side, stopping many times to greet passersby, the couple blushing from a mixture of joy and embarrassment. Nuraeni held on tightly to her pink purse, while Komar couldn't really decide where to put his hands, first slipping them into the pockets of his corduroy pants, then folding them across his chest, and finally letting them hang clasped behind his back, as it certainly wasn't yet time for them to hold hands. Even the slightest touch would make both of them shiver, their faces reddening.

Komar took her to try Wa Dullah's meatballs at the noodle stall, which had a reputation for quality and high prices. It stood by the river in a row of stalls where people waited for the ferry. Customers jostled to be served, and when the couple's order came they found a big rock to sit on, and ate there, holding the bowl with one hand and the spoon with the other. At one point Komar slipped, and a meatball was flipped into the air, and they giggled, warm and full of love, the way it should be at the beginning. In the afternoon they had grilled fish at a shack under a hog plum tree, after fishing with some friends at Wa Haji's ponds. It was the habit of the locals to bring cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves to his land on the hillside, and fish there and cook the catch without going home. Days passed, but it felt like their time together would never end.

One night Komar took Nuraeni with a group of friends to see a play at the village theater. After Lebaran the theater would always be packed, since there was little to do at night unless you traveled far away to another town. They would always remember the play's title,
Titian Rambut Dibelah Tujuh
, though the other details became blurred. It was about a heartless son, rather like the humble folk hero Malin Kundang, who becomes so rich and proud that he rejects his own mother and is turned to stone. At the office was a poster of a man burning in Hell. They would never forget that evening, because it was the first time they touched. In the dark, sat on a plank bench, they held hands. Not squeezing, just holding and that was enough to make them sizzle as if a fire had been lit in their bellies. That night they went home and both dreamt of being bitten by a snake.

Not too long after Lebaran, Komar had to resume his wanderings with his friends and earn some money, and Nuraeni accompanied him to the village hall with tears in her eyes. She thought she was truly in love, and hoped the wedding would be soon. But Komar convinced her he had to go, and that he would definitely be back for next year's Lebaran. Bags were piled up on the hall floor, full of clothes, pineapples, green bananas, and snacks the mothers made for their sons to eat on their journey. Before Komar left to cross the hills for the ferry, Nuraeni made a short plea in simple words spoken by every one of the abandoned girls: “Write to me.”

The letters usually arrived on Mondays at ten in the morning. A postman would come on foot, his bag on his shoulder, his shoes always smeared with maroon clay, to hand out letters at the village hall. Treated to warm sweet tea and potato chips, he would remain there half an hour before returning the way he had come. The girls would wait in front of the hall; some would receive letters from their fiancés, while others sulked in disappointment, remaining hopeful that next week would be different. Of course there would always be letters for other people in the village, but believe me, the numbers were insignificant.

The Monday after Komar left, Nuraeni was busying herself from dawn in anticipation of his letter. She cleaned the house and mopped the floor so she could get to the village hall early. In those days most of the houses stood on stilts, with wicker flooring that needed mopping every day to keep away the grime and dust. When her father returned from the surau, the floor was already glistening in the glow of the wick lamp. Nuraeni rushed to the kitchen, lighting the stove with coconut fibers, blowing on it through a bamboo shaft to get it blazing, and stoking the fire with pieces of firewood as the flames danced. She heated some water on the stove, and while waiting for it to boil, she washed some rice and let her mother do the rest, because she had to hurry to the water spout to wash their clothes and dirty dishes.

The girl was nimble and swift in everything she did that day, carrying a bucket of dirty laundry in one hand and a pail full of dirty plates and glasses in the other. Her family owned a fishpond by the water spout where they showered and did the washing, with water flushing through bamboo pipes stretching for miles all the way up to the springs in the hills. The spout was surrounded by a chest-high wall, with sugar palm leaves for a roof, and served as the family's bathroom. As she did the washing, her father fed the fish with taro leaves plucked from the pond's levee.

The sun rose as Nuraeni finished the dishes and tossed the kitchen leftovers into the pond, the fish competing for the remnants of rice and stale food making the water bubble. Sunlight dappled the ground. Some villagers in tattered shirts and worn-out shorts walked by carrying hoes with which to wrestle the earth, while others checked their dry fields and gathered wood with machetes. A floating mist crept up toward the hilltops, as the shrill voices of girls chatting across the distance between two waterspouts drowned out the sparrows and woodpeckers. Schoolchildren lined the fishpond levee, throwing pebbles into the water, bags swinging behind their backs and caps covering their little heads.

Nuraeni took off her clothes, threw them on top of the wicker wall, and modestly covered the entrance to the spout with a towel, although the plaited bamboo strips didn't conceal her shape entirely. Holding her knees, she sat under the plentiful and sparkling water pouring from the bamboo pipe, wet hair draping her body. Washing away the sweat, the shower lifted her spirits, as she rubbed her skin with soap, checking the creases between each toe, scrubbing off the dirt, rinsing her hair with aloe, and remaining sat under the spout, just as she was, as she brushed her teeth.

The chatter of the girls at the other spouts faded; they were leaving, and perhaps some of them were already packing the village hall's veranda, waiting for the exhausted postman. Nuraeni stepped out of the cabin, dried herself, and wrapped a towel around her body, covering the top of her thighs and her unripe breasts. She coiled her hair up, picked up the bucket of wet laundry with one hand and the pail of sparkling plates and glasses with the other, and moved with catlike steps, treading on the levees between the ponds, exquisite under the rising sun. She was unconscious of her beauty.

Just before ten o'clock Nuraeni was at the hall, with her damp hair in two neat braids and tied with a faded yellow bow at each end. She had guessed right. The other girls were already cramming the long bench under the announcement board bearing last Ramadan's timetable as well as other information that could easily be ignored. Some girls who didn't get a seat gathered under a mussaenda tree by the bamboo fence, and Nuraeni joined them to exchange funny stories about Lebaran.

And yet she was still thinking about the letter, because this was the first time she had ever waited for a letter from a man. Her heart was pounding. What kind of surprise would that first letter hold? Ugly handwriting, perhaps. Even this was enough to feed her excitement. Maybe it would be sprinkled with scented powder, like the letters her best friend, Nyai Sri, got from her boyfriend.

What happened was entirely unexpected. The exhausted postman arrived with a stack of letters held together with an elastic band. The girls spread them on a table while the postman fanned himself with an old newspaper. Girls yelped upon finding their names on those white envelopes with blue-and-red stripes along the edges, while others snorted in disappointment having found nothing addressed to them. Nuraeni was among the persistent searchers who scoured the few unclaimed letters remaining, most of them addressed to the village head and a few to parents from their children. She stood looking at the scattered envelopes, almost in tears. None of the letters was for her. She went home with red eyes and lips pursed shut, thinking desperately of the following Monday. She had never known bitterness like this, and it was all because of Komar.

She grew increasingly distressed with the absence of a letter the following week, and the next, and in the weeks thereafter. The other girls might miss out on a letter now and then, but at least once a month one would turn up. Some would get beautiful presents; one or two were sent the money to buy a ring, while others might find sewing machines with their names on. One girl was even sent a wedding dress, but there was never anything for Nuraeni.

After a few agonizing weeks, she stopped going to the village hall. The photo of Komar posing before the Kombi, which she had framed and placed next to her bed, now lay inside a tattered box under her bed. At first she had wanted to rip it up and throw it into a blazing stove. She stopped hoping for anything, didn't want to talk about him, let alone allow him to toy with her imagination by intruding on her daydreams, and if he sneaked into her sleep, the dream would turn into an aggravating nightmare.