by Frank Wynne
‘Yes! A threadworm that’s sucking all the nourishment out of your sister’s intestines. Why didn’t you give her some worm medicine?’
‘We don’t have time to argue about it. We’ll kill it with our scalpels!’
They stabbed at the approaching threadworm with their surgical knives. A white fluid squirted out around them. Showing its sharp teeth, the worm writhed in agony. Two more thrusts, then three. It was a fight to the death between man and threadworm.
The battle was over in five minutes. Bontarō’s arms were heavy with weariness, and for a few moments he was dazed. He thought of the summer two years before, when he and Sayuri had gone to Gōichi’s summer cottage in Hayama and put on aqualungs to go spear-fishing. He couldn’t understand why such a memory should surface at a time like this.
A solid black precipice loomed before them. They swam back and forth, jabbing at the obstruction with their scalpels. It had the consistency of clay, but seemed to be quite thick.
‘Listen, at this rate it will take us more than a day to dig a hole large enough for the submarine. There’s no alternative. I’ll ask Dr Inokuchi and Dr Hirano to abandon ship.’
‘Are you just going to leave the craft here in the intestines?’
‘I’ll give my sister a diarrhetic tomorrow and get her to excrete it.’
While Gōichi returned to the submarine, Bontarō plied his scalpel with all his might. After ten minutes all the feeling had gone out of his arms. ‘Why didn’t they give her an enema?’ He cursed the careless nurses. He wanted to give them a good piece of his mind.
Suddenly a hole broke open in front of him. Fortunately his scalpel had been gouging away at the thinnest portion of the mass.
‘I’ve done it!’ Encouraged by his success, Bontarō dug in with increased vigour. At the same time, the figures of the two chief doctors – safely equipped with gas marks – could just be distinguished in the distance through the muddy liquid.
After passing through the large clay-like formation, the doctors at long last reached the tip of the alimentary canal. Yet here, too, an impasse they had not considered was awaiting them. Bontarō was the first to realize it. He looked around at the three masked men and said, ‘Doctors, the anus isn’t necessarily open all the time. In fact, speaking in strictly clinical terms, under ordinary circumstances it remains in a closed position. With our flagging energy, we will not be able to force our way through that orifice. We cannot make contact with the team outside. What shall we do?’
After struggling this far, they had no idea what to do next.
‘We’re almost out of oxygen.’
‘How much is left?’
‘We’ll only last another ten minutes or less.’
The four men no longer had the energy to go back the way they had come. Unless something were done, however, Dr Inokuchi – the pride of the K. University Medical Centre – Dr Hirano, Gōichi and Bontarō would all die a miserable death in the faecal matter inside the intestines. A miserable shitty death.
To what end have I studied so diligently? Even if they did belong to Sayuri, how miserable to breathe his last here inside her intestines, thought Bontarō. It would grieve his mother back home to find out that her son had studied so hard only to meet with such an end. The face of his aged mother in the provinces darted across his mind.
‘I have just one idea,’ Dr Inokuchi, who had been silent up till now, said gravely.
‘What is it, Doctor?’
‘We’ll make the patient fart.’
‘Fart?’
‘That is correct. If we cause the patient to pass wind, the anus will open. And we will be blown out by the rush of wind. This will of course place our bodies under considerable stress, but we’ll just have to accept that. It’s the only way.’
‘Are you sure we won’t get whiplash?’
‘Listen, this is no time to be worrying about whiplash!’
‘But, Doctor, how are we going to make her break wind?’
‘We must all stimulate the inner wall of the intestine here. Use both hands and tickle it as hard as you can. I don’t know whether it will work or not, but let’s give it a try.’
The four doctors began to stroke the brown wall with their hands. They did their best to make it budge. But the wall, like a huge rocky cliff, did not even flinch.
‘One more time!’
The second attempt also ended in failure. A third try fared no better.
‘It’s no good.’
‘Just once more. If that doesn’t work, we’ll all join hands and die singing “At Sea Be My Body Water-soaked”.’
As they tried a fourth time, their eyes began to swim. They had exhausted every resource of mind and body. Then, far in the distance, they heard Gōichi calling, ‘Doctor, the intestine has started to move!’ At that instant, Bontarō was swept up by ninety-mile-an-hour winds like those at the centre of a typhoon. As he lost consciousness, he knew he had been saved.
*
Five days later Bontarō was able to walk again, and that morning he summoned up the courage to visit Sayuri’s room.
He was uneasy. He wondered whether he could still feel love for Sayuri after the experience he had gone through.
When he knocked on the door, he heard her charming voice. Dressed in a pale blue gown, she was eating some gelatin with the help of a nurse.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Thank you so much.’
Sayuri had no inkling of the route the doctors had used to exit from her body. That was a medical secret, something that could not be divulged to the patient.
‘My, what’s happened to you? Look at your face!’
Bontarō’s face was covered with dark red bruises, souvenirs of the hurricane-strength winds that had struck him squarely in the face as he was whisked from her intestines.
‘Oh, nothing. I got drunk and fell down the stairs.’ Bontarō mustered a pained grin. Blissfully ignorant, Sayuri flashed her pearly-white teeth in surprise and said, ‘What a stinker you are!’
Her face was stunning. One by one Bontarō recalled the experiences he had endured inside her intestines five days earlier – swimming out of the submarine with a gas mask on his face; the combat with the threadworm; breaking through the wall of clay. Despite it all, he thought she was beautiful. He knew he loved her. In the end love had won out over physiology.
‘You’re right. I’ll be more careful from now on.’
He went out into the hallway, drinking deeply of the euphoria that rightfully belonged to a doctor in the year 2005. But then, seeing a patient restored to health is a great joy for a doctor in any day and age.
ALL THAT IS GONE
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Translated from the Indonesian by Willem Samuels
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925–2006). Born in Blora, Java, in the former Dutch East Indies, Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s work chronicles Indonesia’s struggle for independence, the Japanese occupation, and the post-colonial dictatorships of Sukarno and Suharto. His writings saw him imprisoned both by the Dutch Government and later by the Suharto regime. While incarcerated on the Island of Buru, he wrote his most famous work, The Buru Quartet. Since he was not permitted access to writing materials, he recited the text to other prisoners who had it written down and smuggled out.
The Lusi River skirts the southern edge of the city of Blora. In the dry season, its bed of stone, gravel, mud, and sand heaves upward to expose itself to the sky, leaving scattered shallow pools. But when the rainy season comes and the forested hills are covered by clouds and the sun refuses to shine for forty to fifty hours, the river’s greenish water changes to a mud-clotted yellow and rises to a level of twenty meters or even higher. The peaceful current becomes a crazed torrent. The river, swirling through its course, clutches at and then rips out clumps of bamboo from the banks like a child pulling weeds. It fells the levees and sucks into itself the bordering fields. So suddenly, the Lusi transforms itself.
*
Fr
om my home one can see groves of bamboo, blackish green in color, the tops of which weave and twist gently when the wind blows. When I was a boy, the dance of the tips and the whistle of the staves as the wind rushed through them never failed to frighten me. I can recall running in terror to my mother, burying my head in her lap, and starting to cry. Even now I can still hear her chiding me, “Whatever are you whining for?”
Her hands, no longer the soft hands of a girl, stroke my thin cheeks. Between my sobs, I gasp, “The bamboo is crying, Mama!”
Taking my head in her hands, she pulls me to her lap and tries to reassure me, “No, my baby, it’s not crying. It’s singing to you.”
And then she starts to sing, something soothing and sweet, a folk song perhaps that rocks me, sways me, and then finally drowns my fears. Often it is her gentle voice that lulls me to sleep. Sometimes, as she sings, I run my fingers through her wind-tousled hair. I play with the lobes of her ears and the diamond-studded earrings that adorn them until finally, I hear her calm, sweet voice: “Come now, you’re sleepy. I’ll put you to bed.” Hearing that, I open my eyes as wide as possible, hoping to persuade her to continue the song, but more often than not I find myself unable to keep my eyelids raised. But all that is gone now, vanished, along with the riverbanks and the clumps of bamboo that the high waters of the Lusi drag away.
*
Once, during an afternoon nap, I dreamt I found a one-cent piece, and when I awoke I clenched my fist for fear of losing the money I had found in my dream. I jumped out of bed and ran to find my mother. “Mama, Mama!” I called to her in joy, “I found a one-cent coin!”
She smiled at me, taking pleasure in my delight. “Wherever did you find it?” she asked. “Where is it now?”
I stuck out my fist and yelled, “Here it is! Right here in my hand!” But upon opening my fist I found my hand completely empty.
“Where did you say it was?” my mother asked me softly.
I stood there, dumbfounded by shock and disappointment. I wept as a great feeling of emptiness entered my chest.
My mother laughed and coaxed me gently: “You were only dreaming. You’re awake now. Don’t cry …” But I continued to sob.
My mother lifted the edge of her blouse to dry my tears. “Hush, be quiet now …” From the fold in her waistcloth, she took out a half-cent coin and handed it to me. I played with the coin in silence, as I tried to repress my lingering disappointment.
“It’s late,” my mother told me. “It’s time for your bath. Nyi Kin will help you.”
I removed myself from Mother’s lap, but when I didn’t immediately make my way toward the bath, her features darkened and her voice—no gentleness there now—grew stern: “Go on, off with you!”
Her tone, harboring no room for protest, made me reconsider an appeal. Slowly I walked away to look for the servant.
*
I can still see Nyi Kin quite clearly. Like so many women in this world, she had been forced to marry a man she didn’t even know. And all that the marriage gave to her was syphilis, an illness that left her with an intense dislike of men. The disease destroyed her relationship with her husband and caused them to divorce. It robbed her of one of her eyes, wasted her beauty, and caused deterioration in one of her hip joints. When she walked she dragged her leg.
During the day Nyi Kin had little time to bemoan her fate; chores took up most of her attention. But when night came and her painful weariness made it difficult for her to sleep, it was then she mourned her loss.
Nyi Kin’s arranged marriage, illness, and divorce had taken place before she came to work at our house. Perhaps it was because she had no children of her own—the syphilis had eaten her womb—that she showered so much attention on me. Even now, whenever I think of her, no matter where I am, I can feel her love and affection.
Sometimes Nyi Kin would stroke my cheeks as if I were her own child. When carrying me, she’d hide her face behind the long scarf she always wore around her neck, but then suddenly pull it away and pucker her lips. “Boo!” she’d say.
No matter how many times she did this, I’d always break out in giggles. Such pleasure that little game gave me. And she too would laugh with delight, but then just as suddenly stop the game and refuse to show her face. When I finally succeeded in pulling the scarf away, I’d find her staring vacantly. The precarious nature of her existence seemed to emanate from her reddened eyes. Hastily she’d pull my face against her own and hold it there for a long time; I imagine now that she was dreaming of the children she longed for but would never bear.
Nyi Kin always set aside part of her wages to buy snacks, most of them going to me. It wasn’t until later that I learned my mother paid her just 80 Dutch cents a month.
Like my mother, Nyi Kin was always telling me stories, but they were different from the ones that Mother told, which were about Asian war heroes. Nyi Kin’s stories were about talking animals who had created for themselves kingdoms in the jungle. I can’t recall how old I was when she told me these tales, but I do remember that she would remark how good the people of yore must have been to be able to understand the speech of animals. People these days, she said, are too sinful. They’re cruel and unkind to one another, which is why, she also told me, they can’t understand what animals say.
She talked about her own experiences as a girl and about an incident that had taken place when she was only a few years older than I was at the time. That particular story I would ask her to repeat again and again. She never refused, and each time I listened with surprise and awe. This is how the tale went:
“I was just a girl at the time and the bupati who governed the Blora regency was Ndoro Kanjeng Said. One year, for some reason, our area experienced a double rainy season. The Lusi River rose over its banks, and our safe and peaceful city was soon buried beneath the muddy floodwaters. Because the city square lies on high ground, that bit of land became an island in the midst of a large sea. All the people in the area were herded by the rising waters to the square. They brought their children, their buffalo, and their cattle with them. Those who didn’t leave their homes quickly enough risked being swept away to the river’s mouth.
“Down and down the rains came, and soon even the regent’s home was jammed with people. So then what he did was he went out of his house with a whip in his hand, and walked to the water’s edge, which was already lapping at the city square. He lashed the water with his whip and said a prayer. And slowly, very slowly but just as surely, the waters began to recede and finally retreated to the banks of the Lusi.”
I remember that story very clearly. Nyi Kin had about twenty-five tales that she would tell me again and again, but to me they always seemed new and I never failed to listen with rapt attention. She told me about babies crying in the rain and how courageous the regent had been, how willingly the people served him, and how they had bowed to him when he came out of the house to save them from the flood.
Her story put me in awe of the regent. By the time I was born, he was long dead and buried. Even so, the mere mention of his name, Ndoro Kanjeng Said, evokes a kinder world that still lingers in the memory of the people of Blora.
Other stories that Nyi Kin told were about the gods and cacodemons that roam the world by day and night in search of people who are not on guard. Or, when looking at the clouds, she would recant fantastic tales from the Ramayana—how Dasamuka had hidden behind the clouds in wait for Sita and about his struggle with the great garuda bird Jatayu, who tried to stop him.
She told me about the heroes of the Mahabharata, too. She told them in a simple yet beautiful way. I was able to understand some of what she told me and stood in awe of the greatness of people of olden days. Looking back now, I see that I was like many people, both now and then, who would rather think about the past than deal with the present.
*
Important moments in life are not easily erased from memory, even that of a child. Such moments remain until the end of one’s life. I remember one time when it
was dark in the house and I was crying. My home was far from the closest power line and when night fell, the house grew gloomy inside. I remember Mother taking me outside that night. The dew made my body damp and shiverish, but it also helped to assuage the emptiness I was feeling inside. Maybe I had just been hot, I don’t know, but Mother kissed my chin and whispered softly to me, “Oh, my little darling, why do you cry so much? Don’t you know your mother is tired from working all day? Go to sleep, my baby. Tomorrow the sun will bring a new day and with it a new sky and new air. Then you can play to your heart’s content.”
The timbre of my mother’s voice helped to soothe my feelings. I embraced her and gave her breasts my tears. She held my head against her chest, and I listened to the beating of her heart. As she began to sing, my fidgeting eased. The night’s cool air and the dew seemed to make her song all the more poignant. After that, I don’t remember what happened; when I next opened my eyes the sun was high in the sky and outside was the new day my mother had promised. I had a new day, a new sky, new air, and a new song, too. But all that is gone now, vanished from sensory perception to live forever in memory.
*
I remember the time when Nyi Kin suddenly disappeared. “She’s sick,” the other kids told me, but even so, I couldn’t understand why she had left without saying goodbye. I looked for her everywhere but couldn’t find her. I started to cry. I must have cried for at least two hours. Mother tried to calm me by offering me a banana, but that did nothing to check my tears. I felt an incredible emptiness inside me. Mother kept telling me: “Nyi Kin’s gone home, honey. She’s not feeling well, and when a person’s sick you can’t be near her or you’ll get sick, too.”
Mother’s words did little to fill the vacuum inside me either. I kept on crying until exhaustion finally forced my body to sleep. When I awoke, the emptiness was still there and I started to cry again. Tears fell from my eyes like the drops of liquid that used to seep from Nyi Kin’s hollow socket, the one she would wipe with the tip of her scarf.
