After the midday rest, Kancil was sent to the pendopo at the front of the house to help with preparations for the welcome ceremony. Girls and young women were sitting in circles around piles of banana leaves, palm fronds and flowers. Everybody’s hands were busy with something: splicing palm fronds to weave offering baskets, fashioning banana leaves into hanging decorations or plaiting jasmine and cempaka flowers to make dancers’ headdresses.
Kancil stood on the step, hesitating; the groups all looked complete. Wherever she sat she would be pushing in. She realised that she had become so used to being invisible that the thought of drawing attention to herself made her skin prickle.
Then another thought came to her. Was she becoming like Mother? Afraid to make a scene and accepting the scraps her family threw her? She would rather be like Kitchen Boy. He was an outcast but he didn’t let it bother him. In fact, he made the most of the freedom that his status afforded him. Or Small Aunt – she didn’t try to fit in and she didn’t appear to suffer for it. Of course, both Kitchen Boy and Small Aunt had skills the village needed: Small Aunt knew powerful jamu remedies and Kitchen Boy knew where to find wild honey and pepper. Kancil couldn’t think of any skill she had that made her indispensable to the village – or to the dalang’s troupe, for that matter.
Well, she thought, at least I know how to weave a temple basket. I’m not completely useless.
She sat down next to Hen, one of the girls from the washing pool, and set to work. She soon relaxed into the rhythm of attaching palm fronds to a circle of cane then folding and overlapping them to make a basket as she listened to her companions speculate about what the prince would look like and whether he would approve of the festivities they had planned for him.
Citra was sitting nearby with a group of well-dressed girls, plaiting flowers into dancers’ headdresses for the welcome dance. In contrast to the washing girls, their conversation seemed forced, as though the girls weren’t sure how they should behave in the company of someone about to become a prince’s consort.
Kancil had almost finished her basket when Citra’s voice broke through the cheerful buzz in the pendopo. “We’ll never get these done in time!” she whined. “Here, you can help,” she reached over and dumped a tray of flowers and twine in front of Kancil.
A gentle breeze played around the pendopo, carrying the flowers’ perfume to her nostrils. It’s better than straining coconut oil, she told herself as she began threading the flowers through the twine.
“Now, girls, where are my dancers? The prince will be here by nightfall, we must practise!” Ibu Tari was standing on the pendopo steps, her eyes shining with excitement. “And what about the headdresses? Are they ready?” she added.
“Here are mine, Ibu,” Citra leaped up, grabbing Kancil’s headdresses. Kancil could only watch in disbelief as her cousin held out the delicate chains to the old woman while Citra’s own lumpy efforts lay in a forlorn pile where she had been sitting.
“Oh, they’re beautiful, well done,” beamed Ibu Tari. As she spoke, Big Aunt and Mother emerged from the courtyard dressed in their temple clothes. “Look at the work Citra has done,” Ibu Tari said, showing them the flower chains.
Big Aunt looked at the flowers. She didn’t say anything.
“Well done, dear,” said Mother, filling the awkward silence. Kancil glared at her but she wasn’t looking, she had stepped back behind Big Aunt, her head bowed.
Something caught Big Aunt’s eye and she reached out for one of the chains. “This one’s coming apart,” she said, holding the end of the chain before Citra’s eyes. “You really should be more thorough.”
Kancil didn’t know whether to be cross with herself for forgetting to tie off the plait or pleased for getting her cousin into trouble. “Good work!” murmured Hen. Kancil settled on being pleased.
Two temple baskets filled with fruit, cakes and flowers were sitting on the edge of the pendopo. Mother helped Big Aunt lift one onto her head then she took the other for herself and they both left for the temple. The dancers, who turned out to be almost all of the girls in the pendopo, followed Ibu Tari to practise, leaving only a few girls to gather together the decorations and fill the remaining temple baskets for the other village women to carry.
Bibi and Ida emerged from the courtyard dressed for the temple just as Kancil was putting away the broom after sweeping all the leftover palm fronds and flowers into the bushes.
“Make sure you sweep the courtyard too before you’re done,” Bibi called out as they passed.
15
THE PRINCE
Kancil was hurrying along the main path that led to the north pendopo when a low whistle stopped her in her tracks. She listened and there it was again, coming from somewhere along a narrow path that branched off from the main way.
Trees towered over both sides of the path, their branches meeting in a tangle overhead, blocking out all but the most persistent shards of afternoon light. Kancil stepped cautiously towards the sound, peering into the gloom. She leaped back as a figure dropped from an overhanging branch. It was Kitchen Boy. She pretended to throw a stone at him and he ducked then laughed.
“What took you so long?” he asked. Kancil mimed sweeping.
“Ah, you’re good,” he said. “Come on then.” With that he turned and started walking down the dark path.
Kancil stayed where she was and waited for him to stop messing around. He kept walking. She clapped her hands to get his attention and he turned.
Kancil pointed at Kitchen Boy and shrugged her shoulders to make a question.
“Who am I?” Kitchen Boy asked, a mock puzzled look on his face. “You know who I am. Have you had a knock on the head?”
Kancil glared at him. He was being stupid on purpose. She pointed at him again then walked two fingers across the palm of her other hand and shrugged her shoulders. She exaggerated her movements the way people exaggerated their speech when they spoke to her.
“Where am I going? I’m going to the north pendopo, of course.”
Kancil pointed back towards the main path. A few stragglers were still making their way along it, their steps hurried. She turned to follow them.
“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you,” Kitchen Boy said. “At best you’ll spend the evening with your nose squashed into somebody’s back. It’s more likely one of the cooks will put you to work over the cooking fire behind the temple where you won’t get to see anything.”
He continued down the path. Kancil followed him. She didn’t like the way the path turned into a dark tunnel through the trees but she certainly didn’t want to spend the evening bent over a charcoal fire, roasting food for other people to eat.
Kitchen Boy bounded ahead and Kancil struggled to keep him in sight in the fading light. She could hear the gamelan music not far away so the path must be skirting around the back of the north pendopo. Suddenly, the path stopped at a dead end in front of a high bamboo fence. Kitchen Boy was nowhere to be seen.
The low whistle came again, this time from directly above Kancil’s head. She looked up and there was Kitchen Boy grinning down at her from the branch of a huge rambutan tree.
“Walk that way ten paces,” he called in a hoarse whisper, “and you’ll find the trunk.”
Kancil followed his directions. The tree trunk was broad and smooth and offered no obvious foothold for climbing. At home on the coast, coconut trees grew at angles to the ground, leaning out to sea. You could walk up them without even holding on. This tree was a totally different prospect.
Why, oh why, did she follow Kitchen Boy? Now she would have to run all the way back down that horrible dark path by herself. She kicked at the tree.
“Hurry up!” Kitchen Boy had returned a little way down the branch. “Put your foot there,” he pointed to a slight bulge in the trunk at knee height, “then leap up and put your other foot there,” he pointed to a fork in the trunk near Kancil’s head. “After that, it’s easy.”
Kancil took a deep breath. Climbing
the tree looked like an impossible feat but if she gave up now, she would never hear the end of it from Kitchen Boy and he would be right – if he could climb it with his arm as it was, what excuse did she have?
She hitched up her kain and checked that her kemben was secure. She had a sudden flashback to the day she arrived in the village, scrabbling around in the dirt, trying to hold her clothing together while Kitchen Boy laughed.
Well, she thought grimly, I’ll either die of embarrassment or a knock to the head when I fall out of this ridiculous tree. Either way, I won’t have to suffer another day in Bibi’s kitchen.
Before she had time for second thoughts, Kancil gripped the trunk with one foot and levered herself up. Her other foot didn’t quite reached the fork. Desperately, she lunged forwards, reaching with her arms for the trunk.
Miraculously, her knee caught in the fork as her body started to scrape down the tree trunk. The pain brought stars to her eyes, but she had enough grip to pitch herself forwards and grab at the bark with her fingers.
With all her might, Kancil dragged herself up into the tree. She was surprised at how strong her arms were – perhaps the hours spent slaving in Bibi’s kitchen hadn’t been for nothing after all. She managed to get her other foot into the fork and push herself up to a standing position. She clung to a branch, her body shaking all over.
“Not exceptionally graceful, but not a bad effort all the same,” Kitchen Boy called softly from above.
“I can’t believe I risked death just to get a better view of a Majapahit prince!” Kancil whispered back, her voice was as shaky as her body.
“Put your foot there and grab that branch,” Kitchen Boy instructed.
“Follow me to that fork. You’ll get a much better view.” He pointed to a further branch that looked to Kancil to be much too flimsy to hold them both, but curiosity got the better of her fear.
The branch was stronger than it looked and Kitchen Boy was right, they had a much better view – not only could they see over the roof of the pendopo to the open space in front of the temple gate, they could also see behind them, over the high bamboo fence.
Kancil twisted to look down into the garden behind the fence. Near the fence it was an overgrown mass of frangipani and hibiscus. Further back, she could make out the shape of a timber house, almost hidden behind unkempt fruit trees. A movement caught her eye – three figures were making their way carefully through the tangled undergrowth towards the pendopo. As they drew closer, Kancil realised it was Dalang Mulyo, the pesinden singer and one of the musicians.
She nudged Kitchen Boy. “Whose house is that?” she asked.
“That,” Kitchen Boy said dramatically, “is the house where the scoundrel was born.”
“Really?” Kancil breathed.
“I only made the connection myself when we visited Ibu Jamu the other day.”
“It looks … haunted.”
Kitchen Boy nodded. “They say when the mountain, Mbah Merapi, wreaked vengeance on the village all those years ago, the only buildings left standing were the stone shrines in the temple and that house. Even the garden survived, although everything was covered in ash so it looked as if it had all turned to stone.”
“How would that make it haunted? I’d have thought it would make it lucky.”
“Except that when everybody ran away from Mbah Merapi, the scoundrel’s father stayed and he was still there when they returned, sitting in front of the family shrine as though he was meditating. He had turned to stone like the rest of the garden.
“When the rain came, it washed away the ash from all the plants. They recovered so quickly that you could see the new buds growing before your eyes. But when the rain fell on the man, it didn’t bring him back to life. He melted away in a river of silt.”
“Really?” Kancil said again. Then she looked at him sharply. “How do you know? You weren’t there.”
“Everybody knows the story of the haunted house,” said Kitchen Boy. “It’s just the connection with the scoundrel that the old people fail to mention.
“Anyway, after the rain, nobody could bear to watch the garden growing. There was something wrong about it. So the first thing they did, even before they rebuilt their own homes, was to build that high fence. Not long after, the night watchmen started hearing noises inside. Nobody was game to go in.”
“It doesn’t seem very hospitable to put up the dalang and his family in a haunted house,” Kancil said.
“Maybe not, but dalangs are different to ordinary people. Bapak Pohon told me a dalang meditates before a performance so the gods will breathe life into his puppets. If you were doing that sort of thing regularly, you’d have to get used to the company of the not exactly living and breathing.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Kancil. A shiver ran down her spine when she looked into the garden. If she managed to escape from the village with the dalang’s troupe, she was going to have to live like them, and if her plan to find Agus didn’t work out, she might be living like them for a very long time. Did she want to spend the rest of her days moving from haunted house to haunted house?
Kitchen Boy nodded towards the roof of the pendopo below them. It blocked their view of the musicians inside, tapping their small hammers on the tuned metal rods of the gamelan instruments.
“Tomorrow, for the wayang puppet performance, we need to be under that roof so we can see the puppets,” he said. “I got us up here tonight so I think it’s only fair that you get us in there tomorrow. I suggest you work your charm on the singer. She’s been on the road for a long time without a servant. If you were to offer her a nice cup of tea, she’d be completely in your power.”
Kancil nodded. She was only half-listening. The village elders and their families were moving to their seats in front of the crowd. Big Uncle led the way, seating himself with a flourish on a teak bench that raised him a little above the people around him. Big Aunt kneeled on a mat beside him and Mother kneeled behind them both, leaving a space beside Big Aunt for Citra who would, of course, be leading the welcome dance. Kancil hoped Citra was as bad at dancing as she was at making dancers’ headdresses.
“There he is!” Kitchen Boy pointed towards a black and white parasol that had just emerged from the forest and was bobbing down the path through the terraced fields. The lookout saw the parasol at the same moment and beat the teak wood kentongan that hung from the lookout post at the village gate. There was a buzz of excitement in the crowd and Kancil watched as people craned their necks to see through the gate.
Someone came crashing through the trees below. Two boys were testing the tree trunks to find a way up to the canopy where Kancil and Kitchen Boy sat hidden by the thick foliage.
Kitchen Boy motioned for her to sit back against the branch to hide. He lay down flat on his branch and let out a low yowl that made Kancil’s hair stand on end. At the same time, he threw a withered rambutan fruit to disturb the leaves of another branch, so when the boys looked up in terror, their eyes were drawn away from where Kancil and Kitchen Boy sat. Kitchen Boy yowled again. The boys didn’t stay around to search the branches; they ran full pelt back to the north gate.
“How did you do that?” Kancil whispered when they had gone.
Kitchen Boy shrugged. “You pick up a few tricks in the forest,” he said.
Kancil watched the parasol making slow, bumpy progress down the hill towards the village. As it drew closer, she could make out the square shape of the jempana carriage behind the parasol and as it drew closer still, the figures of the parasol bearer and the jempana bearers came into view. Light, golden fabric was draped over the roof of the carriage, obscuring her view of the prince.
When the prince’s procession reached the lower terraced rice fields she could no longer see them above the village wall so she had to wait like everybody else for them to enter through the gate. The light was fading and men walked through the crowd, lighting lamps and bamboo torches. The long flickering shadows cast by the firelight gave the scene
a ghostly feel. Kancil shivered.
“Are you cold?” asked Kitchen Boy. Kancil shook her head but she moved a little closer to him all the same. “Don’t worry,” Kitchen Boy grinned. “The bad spirits won’t come near with everybody making so much noise.”
The lookout rattled the kentongan and the gamelan music, which had been meandering in the background like a lazy buffalo, suddenly came together with four crashing beats as the bearers carried the jempana through the village gate.
The parasol bearer called out an order and the jempana was gently lowered to the ground. The villagers sat in silence as the curtain twitched and the prince emerged. He wore a gold chest plate and gold armbands and over his sarung was a sash of fine ikat holding his kris, the ceremonial dagger, in place at his back. His shiny black hair was tied in a knot on top of his head and bound with a band bearing the Surya Majapahit seal.
Despite her intention to be unimpressed by the murderous Majapahit royalty, Kancil couldn’t help admiring his regal poise and glittering finery. The most impressive thing about him, though, was surely his moustache. It was thick and glossy, such a contrast to the scrawny caterpillars that most men allowed to crawl under their noses. Kancil watched with a smile as Big Uncle’s hand unconsciously reached up to cover his own facial hair.
The bearers moved the jempana away and a tall teak wood seat was brought for the prince to sit on. The musicians started up again and the dancers emerged one by one from behind the temple wall. They were dressed in plain kain, with indigo-dyed kemben wrapped tightly from armpits to hips to accentuate the taut bow shape of their bodies in their dancing poses.
Around each dancer’s waist was a long sash of patterned cloth, the ends dyed a deep red that glowed in the flickering lamplight. The dancers moved with such tiny steps that they seemed to glide into position in two lines, their heads tipping from side to side in time with the music. Petals of beaten brass stood out on thin wires from their floral headdresses, moving as their heads tilted so it looked like tiny golden butterflies were flying above them.
Tiger Stone Page 10
