Apple and Knife
Page 12
The day before her marriage to Suparna, Maimunah approached Jaja and looked at him with a bitter expression on her face.
‘Take me away,’ she whispered.
Jaja knew he would never be able to make Maimunah happy and so he murmured, ‘I only take away the dead.’
For the sake of the peace of the village, the young girl married. She lived in a house big enough to hold both her and Euis, Suparna’s first wife. Each week, Suparna spent three nights with Maimunah, while the remainder belonged to Euis. Maimunah helped Euis care for her three children in accordance with the traditional co-operation of Cibeurit women.
The killer is still keeping watch, refining her plot, sipping her drink. A killer’s instinct always ferrets out the openings that lead into any shelter. She smiles, well aware that when Maimunah was not with Suparna she met Jaja at the cemetery.
Maimunah went out at night, even when pregnant. The villagers caught whiff of her dark affair with the dwarf watchman. Several people claimed to have seen a tall woman and a dwarf entangled in the bushes. The residents of Cibeurit were not prone to gossip, but acts of abomination needed to be dealt with. When Maimunah gave birth to a baby boy, the uproar was inevitable. Aunt Icih, the healer midwife, offered her praise: ‘Handsome.’
But the baby was not handsome. Its body was small, hairy, almost rat-like. The rumours of Maimunah’s affair must have been true. Damn it to hell! Suparna punched the wall until his knuckles bled. He gave his wife, the sinner, one night to prepare to leave his home. How shameful to have a baby that resembled a rodent. A bastard child, no doubt!
The next day, the whole house was awakened by Euis’s screams. She met with a plague of rats pouring forth from her husband’s room – he had been spending one last night with Maimunah. Hordes of black, slimy animals passed between her legs. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them, running amok. Maimunah was nowhere to be found. Only Suparna was dead, in horrific fashion. His flesh had been shredded, as if it had been gnawed throughout the night. Blood and tufts of fur covered the ulcerations that were his eyes. The rats scurried about.
The predatory rodents quickly spread throughout the village into the wells, the jars, the stores of rice. The inhabitants of Cibeurit had no opportunity to grieve for their village head as, in no time at all, the close-knit, peaceful community was attacked by plague. Corpses lay stretched out at every corner. No one was buried because Jaja had suddenly vanished as if sucked up in putrid air and a puddle of vomit. The village of Cibeurit was hemmed in by the stench of rats. The stench of disease, of death.
The long-legged woman and her dwarf lover were never found. The villagers believe Maimunah had gone off with King Rat and cursed the village. Those who escaped death formed a pact to forget and wandered like a gang of rogues. The kinship ties of Cibeurit dissolved. Aunt Icih, one of the survivors, told this tale to pregnant mothers who came to her. Destiny’s decree allowed her to live and to become the holder of a secret, though she was never able to answer the question of the mothers who asked:
‘Who sent those man-eating rats?’
—
May, the cold-blooded killer, has satisfied her appetite for destruction. She closes her small notebook. Yes. Satisfied. Her story is complete.
She parts her long curly hair, which dances to the swaying of her hips. Her eyes fix on the large crystal globe hanging from the ceiling, glowing like a planet in the evening sky. A writer who favours nostalgia over murder would certainly interpret this sparkling as a kind of firefly.
The woman doesn’t think she will put the finishing touches on her story in this Chinatown nightclub. She sips her drink again. Like many women of Manhattan, she is devoted to Cosmopolitans. Vodka, Cointreau, lemon, cranberry. She has always seen herself as a cocktail hotchpotch. Gado-gado is a hotchpotch too, but gado-gado signifies home, a native village, a longed-for place. It doesn’t mean journey.
On its journey, a pack of criminals murders and leaves a trail. When a foot gets entangled, it’s not easy to search for a shoe that has been tossed who knows where. May knows that one shoe was left in the village Cibeurit, so she finishes off that close-knit, peaceful village before it destroys her. She kills off the place and the memories lovingly, as if killing the father. In New York City, with a single shoe, she survives, like the thieves. Summon up the places of your past, then destroy them! Distant places, indistinct, remembered in fragments.
May’s intention to leave the nightclub is stayed by a sparkling figure. A firefly? Near her table sits a thickly moustachioed man in a gold robe. A sparkling cap covers his head. May squints, trying to convince herself she isn’t drunk. The man is no stranger. How short his legs are: dangling, not reaching the floor. May shudders, struck by a flash of realisation.
The dwarf watchman. He makes an appearance in this city, not a butt of jokes as in Cibeurit but a petty rajah. King Rat. May observes the staff in his hand. A crystal globe sits on its tip. It looks like a miniature disco ball.
May’s heart pounds. She thinks that Cibeurit has been obliterated, but its characters live on, forcing their way into her place of refuge. They have found her out. Cleverly, he has disguised himself as a fortune-teller. Though a little afraid, May wants to approach him to ask a question – or more accurately, to demand an answer, as when Maimunah whispered to her lover, ‘Tell me what the future holds.’
But the dwarf remains motionless, preoccupied with a martini, and doesn’t even glance in her direction. May gives the shirt that he is wearing a once-over. The words ‘Little Johnny’ are emblazoned across it. She comes crashing to earth.
She finishes her drink, laughing at herself for believing that the uneffaced remnants of Cibeurit have suddenly appeared in a Manhattan club. What a fool. He is Johnny, not Jaja. Swallowing back her disappointment, either because she feels stupid or because Jaja apparently is Johnny, May turns her attention to the crowd on the dance floor. The clubbers cheer when the DJ they’ve been waiting for mounts the stage. The music throbs like the raucous cries of thousands of famished rats. The club goers pump their arms in the air, entrusting their happiness to the skilled hands of the DJ.
The man next to May disappears. Now Little Johnny is on stage, beside the DJ, dancing with an extremely tall blonde. May takes a breath, feeling a second slap. The dwarf and the long-legged woman are part of tonight’s show.
Perhaps Longlegs is the dwarf’s lover. For some reason May is jealous, wondering why she is always the odd one out in a ménage à trois.
At that moment May understands that she is a firefly swirling like a disco light. It’s time to go. She weaves through the crowd of dancers, looking for the exit. She passes the club’s bouncer; some people are still queuing up to see the DJ. She wants to run, to rush, to damn the firefly, to await the attack of plague that obliterates all.
But she is a cold-blooded killer, and she is haunted.
On the Chinatown sidewalk, now growing quiet at one in the morning, something stays her steps. Not a firefly but Little Johnny standing before her, wiping away spittle at the corner of his lips.
The dwarf who only takes away the dead.
In front of the man with his bristly moustache, May stands like a statue. She cannot believe what she hears.
Where have all the rats gone?
—
Author’s acknowledgements
—
I would like to thank Stephen J Epstein for his faith, persistence, and creativity in translating my short stories. It was a great pleasure to work with Stephen, and also with Brow Books, one of the most fearless and cutting-edge independent literary platforms in Australia. Many thanks to Elizabeth Bryer, Sam Cooney and Dzenana Vucic for their insightful comments and suggestions that helped me see my work with a fresh eye, and thanks to Brett Weekes and Rosetta Mills for their work on the Australian edition of Apple and Knife.
The UK edition of the book would not have been possible without the commitment and enthusiasm of editor Ellie Steel and her team at Harvill Secker
. I am indebted to them and to my agent, Kelly Falconer, for her guidance and encouragement.
I highly appreciate the assistance from the LitRI Translation Grant as well as generous support from friends and institutions: Tiffany Tsao, John McGlynn (Lontar Foundation), Mirna Yulistianti (Gramedia Pustaka Utama), and the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University.
I would like to thank my parents – especially my mother, the first disobedient woman who inspired many of my early stories. Finally, I dedicate this book to both my partner/collaborator/first reader, Ugoran Prasad, and my daughter, Ilana, who have travelled and crossed many borders with me in the past decade.
—
Translator’s acknowledgements
—
Participation in this project has been a highlight of my academic and translating career, and I need to thank several people who have helped bring it to fruition. I would like to thank John McGlynn of the Lontar Foundation, who has been a great supporter of my forays into translating Indonesian fiction, and first introduced me to the work of Intan Paramaditha. Tiffany Tsao offered wonderful editing suggestions and played a key role in connecting us to TLB/Brow Books, who have been terrific to work with as publishers. Many thanks to TLB’s Sam Cooney, Elizabeth Bryer and Dzenana Vucic for their infectious enthusiasm and thoughtful reading of the stories, which has led to significant improvements. Sora Kim-Russell also read several of the stories, and her sharp translator’s eye has made for a better collection. I also want to acknowledge my many fine colleagues at Victoria University of Wellington and the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation; it’s great to have such a congenial work environment.
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Copyright © Intan Paramaditha 2018
English translation copyright © Stephen J Epstein 2018
Intan Paramaditha has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2018
First published in Australia by Brow Books in 2018
‘The Blind Woman Without a Toe’, ‘Blood’, ‘Scream in a Bottle’, ‘The Queen’, ‘Vampire’, ‘The Well’ and ‘The Porcelain Doll’ appeared in Sihir Perempuan by Intan Paramaditha (Depok: Katakita 2005; reprinted with illustrations by Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Jakarta, 2017).
‘Doors’, ‘Beauty and the Seventh Dwarf’, ‘The Obsessive Twist’ and ‘Apple and Knife’ appeared in Kumpulan Budak Setan by Eka Kurniawan, Intan Paramaditha and Ugoran Prasad (Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama, 2010).
The English translation of ‘Apple and Knife’ and ‘One Firefly, A Thousand Rats’ appeared in Spinner of Darkness and Other Tales (Jakarta: Lontar/BTW Books, 2015).
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Publication of this book was made possible with assistance from the LitRI Translation Funding Program of the National Book Committee and Ministry of Education and Culture, the Republic of Indonesia.