It was only when Bibi ordered her to take a cup of ginger tea to the juru kunci that Kancil figured out who he was. Mother had told her about the juru kunci, the seer who communicated with the spirits to interpret the moods of the mountain, Mbah Merapi, and advise the villagers how to respond.
Gradually the crowd dispersed, leaving the elders alone in the pendopo.
“This is an important opportunity for us,” Big Uncle said. “We must make sure the prince is satisfied with his visit. We all know that the bandit threat gets worse every year that we don’t have royal protection.”
The priest, Ki Sardu, cleared his throat. “I believe the possibility of a marriage was discussed with the messenger yesterday,” he said to Big Uncle.
Big Uncle nodded. His smile shone nearly as bright as his oiled forehead.
“Don’t get me wrong, Citra is a fine girl,” the priest continued. “Yet doesn’t it seem rather … unlikely? A prince marrying a village girl?”
“Not at all,” Bapak Iya jumped in. “Don’t you remember the old Bhre Mataram took that girl from Salatiga as a wife all those years ago? Not a first wife, granted, but a wife all the same, and a good thing for Salatiga it was too. They don’t have nearly the trouble with bandits that we do.”
“Perhaps our juru kunci might have some insight into this matter,” Big Uncle said, turning to the ancient seer.
There was a long silence. Kancil was beginning to think the juru kunci might actually be asleep this time when finally he raised his head and gazed into the middle distance. “The spirits,” he said, “have nothing to say on the matter.”
“Well then,” said Big Uncle, “tomorrow we should get to work rebuilding the joglo. It would not do for the prince to arrive and have nowhere to stay.” He started to rise, pausing when he realised that the juru kunci hadn’t finished speaking.
“A royal wedding might bring wealth to this village, but it will not bring back the temple treasures,” the juru kunci said.
There was an awkward silence as the other three men looked at each other, none wanting to be the first to speak. Finally, Bapak Iya spoke up. “A royal match can’t be a bad thing, though. Can it?” he asked hopefully.
“No, of course not. You’re right of course,” Big Uncle blustered. “And, er, forgive me,” he inclined his head towards the juru kunci, “but after all these years, I’m afraid we must accept that the temple treasures are lost forever.”
“Perhaps,” said the juru kunci, quietly.
7
MOTHER
The news of the prince’s visit threw Big Uncle’s household into a frenzy of preparation and within a week Kancil and Mother had slipped into a routine. They rose each day before sunrise and Kancil would cut a lime for Mother to suck on to treat her cough. The treatment wasn’t working but Mother waved away Kancil’s concern saying, “It’s the inland air. I’ll be fine once the rains stop.”
Mother spent her day weaving with Big Aunt and Citra in the pavilion at the front of the house while Kancil worked in the kitchen. Before Bibi came in to start ordering her about, she lit the fire, swept out the hut and sprinkled the floor with water to settle the dust. While she was doing this, Kitchen Boy would arrive with the day’s rice for her to prepare. Apparently, it wasn’t in his nature to walk in the door and announce himself like a normal person. Instead he had to sneak in and find a different hiding place to leap from each day. The first time Kancil screamed and dropped the watering bucket on the floor, leaving a muddy patch that resulted in her first proper beating from Bibi. The second time she screamed but managed to hold onto the bucket. The third time she hit him with the bucket. He laughed every time.
Once she had hulled the rice and put it in the steamer, Kancil would spend the rest of her morning bent over a pan of spitting coconut oil or grinding spice paste or picking bugs out of kangkung leaves. When the rice was ready, Bibi would divide it up. A portion of rice with greens was set on a tray for the weavers in the pavilion; a bigger portion with greens and dried fish was for Big Uncle and the men repairing the joglo where the prince would stay. Bibi and Ida kept a portion for themselves, with whatever greens and fish they could hold back from the others without questions being asked. Kancil and Kitchen Boy got the scrapings from the steaming basket.
When Mother returned with the leftovers from the weaving pavilion, Bibi and Ida would grab the tray and return to their position on the daybed. This was the cue for Kitchen Boy to stretch out on the ground and for Mother and Kancil to walk around the tamarind tree to their shack, to shelter from the midday heat. The sound of Bibi rapping at the iron pot with her cane was the signal to go back to work. The afternoon proceeded in much the same way as the morning, except that Kancil got to leave the yard with Ida for a short time to bathe and collect the washing.
In the evenings, Mother would dress in her good kain and walk to the pavilion to continue Citra’s lessons. Kancil spent her evenings waiting on the men in the pendopo. It wasn’t such a bad job – mostly she sat near the fence, listening to the men’s conversation and waiting for Big Uncle to clap his hands and call “tamarind” or “ginger”.
On her second night at the pendopo she was startled by something in a nearby tree. At first she thought it was a forest cat, stretched out along a branch, but when she looked more closely she realised it was Kitchen Boy grinning down at her.
She never saw him climb up or down the tree but he was there every night. Kancil would hear a soft thud as she collected the empty gourds and cups from the pendopo – just the kind of sound a forest cat would make leaping from a tree – and Kitchen Boy would be behind her. He slept in the pendopo at night. “By order of Bapak Thani, Big Uncle to you,” he told her one time. “So you can rest easy knowing that I am protecting the household from a tiger attack through the front gate.”
One night, Kitchen Boy followed Kancil into the kitchen when she went to put away the dishes. She braced herself for a practical joke. Instead, he went straight to the heavy grinding stone that was used to prepare jamu ingredients and shook a small parcel of bark and seeds onto it.
“Stoke the fire and get the water boiling while I grind these,” he said. There was an uncharacteristic seriousness in his voice. Perplexed, Kancil did as she was told.
Kitchen Boy tipped the powdered ingredients into a small clay pot and motioned for Kancil to pour the boiled water over the powder. “This is for your mother’s cough,” he said, handing her the pot and a cup. “These have to be back on the shelf before Bibi arrives in the morning or your life won’t be worth living,” he added.
Mother’s rasping cough and the dark circles under her eyes had been getting worse ever since they arrived in the village, but Kancil had let herself believe Mother when she said the damp air was the cause. Now Kancil felt ashamed. She should have paid more attention.
After that night, making jamu for Mother became part of Kancil and Kitchen Boy’s routine. Kancil didn’t know where he got the ingredients or why he was being so kind, but Mother said it was making her feel better. Kancil wasn’t convinced that she was coughing any less but she told herself she just noticed it more because Kitchen Boy had made her realise it was serious.
The midday rest was Kancil’s favourite time of day. Usually Mother managed to hide a little parcel of leftover greens in the folds of her kain and Kancil would eat them up greedily before stretching out on the bamboo platform in their shack. It wasn’t the food, though, that made this time of day special. Their shack was far enough away from the kitchen and the house for them to talk quietly without being overheard, and the chickens next door always warned them if someone was coming down the passageway or from the kitchen.
“Why did Bibi call me ‘bandit spawn’?” Kancil whispered the first time she dared to speak.
“Don’t pay any attention to her, she’s jealous,” said Mother. “Her life hasn’t turned out well and she takes out her bitterness on anyone she thinks is weaker than her.”
“But why ‘bandit spawn’?�
� Kancil wasn’t going to let her mother change the subject.
“The forests around here are full of bandits,” said Mother. “If someone doesn’t have a father, it’s an easy insult to say their father was a bandit. Don’t listen to her, child. Nobody else does.”
Each day Kancil coaxed a little more information about the past from Mother. She found out that her parents had met in the village when Father visited to sell frankincense. Mataram was different in those days; pilgrims came from far away to meditate at the great forest temples nearby. Where pilgrims went, traders followed and for a while the village did very well from the passing traffic. But where there is pilgrim gold, bandits are never far away.
“The prince, the old Bhre Mataram, kept soldiers here,” said Mother. “They helped keep things in order and the prince would reward them each harvest season when he visited. One year, the year your father came here, the prince didn’t visit. The soldiers grew tired of waiting for their wages and abandoned their duties. Nobody knew then that the old Bhre had died, but knowing why he hadn’t visited wouldn’t have made any difference.
“Some very bad things happened. You don’t need to know the details. Your father wasn’t involved but people stopped trusting the Sunda merchants and there was no way I would have been allowed to marry him. When Mbah Merapi began to fume, the juru kunci warned us that he meant to destroy the village. It was a terrible thing to happen, but it gave us the opportunity to get away in the confusion.”
Kancil was shocked. “You and Father eloped?” she whispered.
“Tsk!” said Mother. “You make it sound like a scandal. It wasn’t like that; it was … complicated. That’s all I’ll say about the matter so don’t bother asking me any more. Digging up the past won’t do any good.” Mother began to cough, so Kancil let the subject drop.
Whenever Kancil couldn’t sleep, her mind drifted back to that moment in the pondok when she thought she heard her father whispering to her. Every time she tried to remember the scene the same thing happened – she strained her ears to hear his voice, but all she could hear was a rushing noise, like the wind in the trees or the sound inside a seashell. Then the image of her necklace sinking into the mud would appear before her eyes.
At that point she would shake herself out of the daydream; she certainly didn’t want to remember that moment. But one day she let the image stay. All but three shells had vanished into the mud. As each of the last three shells sank, a thought burned brightly in Kancil’s mind: the scoundrel, the temple treasure, Agus.
She sat up, gasping. I must have fallen asleep, she thought. It was just a dream and hearing Father’s voice was my mind playing tricks because I’ve got nobody to talk to. The scoundrel is best forgotten, the temple treasure is none of my business and Agus …
Kancil couldn’t think of a reason why her brother would appear in the same dream as the scoundrel and the temple treasure.
Could Father be telling her that the scoundrel and the temple treasure were the keys to finding Agus? Make up your mind, she scolded herself. Is it Father’s voice or my imagination? A part of her didn’t want to believe that Father’s spirit was talking to her because that would surely mean he was dead. On the other hand, if Father’s spirit was trying to guide her to Agus, then that meant her brother must still be alive.
A loud tok-eh broke the midday silence. If a gecko called tok-eh nine times, Kancil always made a wish. She counted each call … six, seven, eight … The gap between each call grew longer and longer; geckoes hardly ever made it to nine. Tok-eeeeh. The final call was a drawn-out sigh. Kancil looked up at the thatch. The gecko was staring down at her. “Send me someone to talk to,” she whispered. The gecko turned tail and vanished.
The next morning Bibi decided that Kancil should take over the laundry from Ida. To Kancil, leaving the kitchen and joining the circle of girls and women at the washing pool felt like being released from prison. Best of all, Ibu Tari was there; the kind old lady she had met on her first day in the village.
“Does she not speak at all?” one of the girls asked Ida when they reached the pool.
Ida shrugged. “Apparently not. It’s her foolish mother’s fault. She brought a curse upon herself by leaving here in the first place. Now she’s come crawling back with no husband and an idiot daughter for company, and she expects her family to welcome her with open arms.” Ida snorted. “She’ll be lucky.”
Fortunately, Ida left as soon as she had shown Kancil where the family’s washing stone was.
When Kancil waded into the river, the girls in the washing circle looked at each other. Nobody wanted to stand next to a curse. Ibu Tari motioned for the girls beside her to make room and she welcomed Kancil with a warm smile. Following Ibu Tari’s lead, the girls around her nodded in greeting and some even smiled shyly.
“She’s got funny eyes,” said one of the younger girls. “Look, they’re the colour of teak wood. They’re not like normal eyes at all.”
“I think they’re pretty,” said another. “I wonder if she sees the same way out of them as we do. Maybe colours look different to her.”
“Really, Hen. You come up with the strangest ideas,” said Ibu Tari. “Now leave her alone; you’re embarrassing her.”
The group gathered around the flat slab of rock at the water’s edge and gossiped openly about Citra and Big Aunt. Kancil was reassured to discover that they weren’t well liked. The girls showed no further interest in her though; without a voice to join in with the gossip she was invisible here, just as she was invisible at the pendopo in the evenings and in the kitchen – except when she did something wrong.
“Do you think the prince will marry her?” a girl asked as she slapped a sodden kain onto the rock and began pummelling it with her washing stone.
“Who?” asked one of her companions.
“Citra. My father says the prince’s messenger told Bapak Thani that the prince is looking for a wife and the spirits told the juru kunci the prince is going to choose Citra.”
“Well, fancy that. Poor thing,” said Ibu Tari.
“Who? The prince or Citra?”
At this the whole group laughed loudly and splashed the speaker. The washing was forgotten. “Back to work girls!” Ibu Tari scolded, but she smiled. “You should feel sorry for them both,” she continued. “Citra would be a handful to be sure, but being married to a prince would not be easy.”
The girls’ faces showed that they didn’t believe this last remark. Ibu Tari sighed. “You don’t think a member of the royal family is going to take a silly village girl as his first wife, do you? Marrying Citra would be a convenient way for him to show he’s serious about being Prince of Mataram, get us on side and happy to give him a generous share of the harvest. Bapak Thani gets status, Ibu Thani gets some more gold to hang around her neck. I don’t see that Citra gets much out of it, though.”
Kancil listened as the gossip continued around her. It wasn’t quite the same thing as having someone to talk to but at least it was talk, not the barked commands and flying cooking implements that served as communication with Bibi. Kitchen Boy had learned some of her sign language but he didn’t make conversation, he played games.
The girls’ talk was all about the prince – about the joglo the men were building for him to stay in and the progress of repairs to the village pendopo at the north gate where the prince would be welcomed with dance and gamelan music.
Ibu Tari was responsible for teaching the young girls the steps of the welcome dance. The girls’ attention was wholly focussed on Ibu Tari, trying to tease information from her about who would be in the front row of the dance.
“It’s a lucky thing Bapak Thani’s sister came back when she did,” Ibu Tari said, trying to change the subject. “You should see the weaving she is doing for the joglo furnishings – she must have learned a thing or two in Lawucilik.”
“My mother said she was supposed to marry the person we don’t talk about and she ran away to Lawucilik because she knew–” one of the
girls began.
Ibu Tari cut her off. “That’s enough idle talk,” she said, looking around in alarm. “You know voices carry on the water.”
8
KANCIL SPEAKS
Kancil couldn’t wait to get back to the sleeping shack after her midday meal. She was sure that the scoundrel and “the person we don’t talk about” were the same man and she was determined to get some answers from the only person she was able to ask. As she walked from the kitchen she grew impatient with how slowly Mother was moving and skipped ahead of her.
“Why are you so energetic today?” asked Mother as she eased herself onto the bed.
“I went to the washing pool today,” Kancil whispered back. “They were all praising your weaving.”
“Is that so?” asked Mother. “That’s nice.”
Kancil was too excited to hear the weariness in her voice. “They said something interesting too about someone you were supposed to marry,” she continued.
Mother was quiet for a moment, then she said, “You shouldn’t listen to common people’s gossip.”
“Common people?”
“Yes, common people. You’ve no business listening to washerwomen’s chitchat. Our family is above that sort of nonsense.”
Kancil couldn’t believe her ears. “Our family?” she gasped. “You mean my snooty aunt who insults you at every opportunity and treats me like dirt, and my halfwit cousin who can’t manage even the simplest sentence in polite Jawa?”
“Be grateful you have a home, and leave the past where it is,” Mother growled. “You’ll get a slap if you answer back again.” With that, she turned away angrily.
Kancil was silent but fury bubbled up inside her. She desperately needed to scream. When the rhythmic breathing beside her told her that Mother was asleep, she carefully rolled off the bed. Without knowing where she was going, she let her feet carry her along the path to the bathing pool. Kancil was used to the sounds of laughter and splashing water echoing off the rocks and trees that skirted the pool. But that was in the early morning or the late afternoon. Now the sun was beating down from its highest point, baking the rocks and dazzling her as it reflected off the still water.
Tiger Stone Page 5
