The Wandering

by Intan Paramaditha

  A few nights before a sad event, Toha will ambush Epon as she tiptoes out of the room.

  ‘Where are you going? Why are you creeping around like a mouse?’

  Epon, heavily pregnant, will return to bed without seeing the firefly.

  Even as her life reaches its end, Epon will never have seen a real firefly. But a tiny baby will be born into the arms of Aunt Icih, a healer and midwife. The baby will be a girl, lovely, as if gifted with gleaming wings. A beautiful firefly, Epon will murmur before she dies. Our killer agrees, although she also has her eye on a firefly in another graveyard. The cold-blooded killer is still skulking around Cibeurit, which remains indistinct and fragmented in her mind. She knows that Toha named his daughter Maimunah, and though nothing connected Maimunah and fireflies, all the villagers agreed that she glowed.

  At thirteen, Maimunah began to attract the attention of Cibeurit’s young men. Yet many were reluctant to approach her because she was too tall, or at least taller than average for girls of the village. Her childhood friends nicknamed her Longlegs. Single men felt inferior before her, worried about being ridiculed as midgets by jealous rivals. They also worried when imagining Maimunah ten years hence, remembering that the girls of Cibeurit tended to plump up after marriage and their first child. After passing her prime, Maimunah would be a large, tall woman, an amazon. Even now she was imposing.

  Feeling no different from other women, Maimunah walked without slouching, her back straight and chest out. Her long wavy hair danced to the swaying of her hips. She always spoke her mind. Toha began to fret because his daughter feared nothing. With her provocative walk, she could be raped by goons on her way home from bathing in the river. Now, none of the lads in this peaceful village were hooligans. But chaos could arrive with transients, like the gangs of criminals who would wander from forest to forest stealing and violating innocent girls before vanishing. The sight of Maimunah’s wet tresses was sure to awaken their hunger. And it was the end for a girl if she lost her virginity.

  At seventeen, Maimunah grew tired of being the centre of attention. She welcomed her admirers but would soon grow bored with them. They didn’t want to know anything about a woman beyond what was to be found inside her bra. Maimunah preferred to spend her time at the house of Aunt Icih, who, in Maimunah’s eyes, possessed extraordinary knowledge. Every day Aunt Icih grappled with spreadeagled legs, the darkness of the womb and clots of blood beneath women’s sarongs: women living; women dying. From the dukun, Maimunah came to know how her mother had looked before death snatched her away.

  ‘Your mother said you’d be beautiful, like a firefly.’

  ‘Where can I see a firefly?’

  ‘I’ve never seen one myself, but your mother said a firefly dances in the graveyard.’

  History repeated itself. Like Epon, Maimunah went in search of the glowing insect. However, it was not a firefly that she met but Jaja, the cemetery watchman. He rarely showed himself as he was often mocked. He was a little man, no higher than Maimunah’s waist, dark-skinned and bald with a bristly moustache. Hair covered his stubby hands. The movements of his tiny body were so nimble that the village children dubbed him a giant rat. The Rat King. The adults forbade their children from making fun of others since that was not the nature of the people of Cibeurit, but none of them were eager to linger with the watchman.

  The first time he encountered Maimunah, Jaja simply looked up for a moment from the grave he was digging. He enjoyed his work so much that saliva would collect at the edges of his perpetually open mouth.

  ‘If you become a corpse, you will be just as ugly as me,’ Jaja said, wiping the spittle from the corners of his lips.

  Perhaps because radiance didn’t dazzle Jaja, Maimunah found him more interesting than her peers. It was rotting flesh that enchanted the man, not fresh meat. Whereas Aunt Icih held the secrets of life beneath the stained red of women’s sarongs, Jaja knew of all that was destroyed, decayed and porous. He possessed the key to the world of the dead.

  Toha soon learned of Maimunah’s odd relationship with the graveyard, like her mother before her. His face turned white when a few people reported Maimunah’s intimacy with the watchman. That couldn’t be allowed. It was time to act decisively for the sake of his beloved daughter’s future. Toha offered Maimunah in marriage to Suparna, the village head, as his second wife. In his forties, Suparna owned acres of rice paddies and a jeep. Suparna understood Toha’s anxiety and, as befitting a resident of Cibeurit, was prepared to come to the aid of a neighbour; thus, he opened his arms wide to save Maimunah’s honour.

  The day before her marriage, Maimunah approached Jaja and regarded 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 peace, 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 rest of the week belonged to Euis. Maimunah helped Euis care for her three children in accordance with the traditional ways of Cibeurit women.

  The killer is still keeping watch, sipping her drink and refining her plot. A killer’s instinct always winkles out the openings 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 after she was with child. The villagers caught whiff of her dark affair with the watchman. Several people claimed to have seen a tall woman and a little man entwined 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 dukun 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 Maimunah, the sinner, one night to leave his home. How shameful to have a baby that resembled a rodent. A bastard child, no doubt!

  The next day, the entire house was awakened by Euis’s screams as she found a plague of rats pouring from the room of her husband, who was spending one last night with Maimunah. Hordes of black, slimy animals rushed out between her feet. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them, running amok. Maimunah was nowhere to be found. There was only Suparna, dead, in horrific fashion. His flesh had been shredded, as if gnawed on 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 Cibeurit into the wells, the jars, the stores of rice. The inhabitants 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 at every corner. No one was buried because Jaja had vanished, as if sucked up in putrid air or dissolved in a puddle of vomit. Cibeurit was hemmed in by the stench of rats. The stench of disease, of death.

  The long-legged woman and her lover were never found. The inhabitants of Cibeurit believed Maimunah had gone off with the Rat King and cursed the village. Those who escaped death formed a pact to forget, and they wandered like a gang of rogues. The kinship ties of Cibeurit dissolved. Aunt Icih, one of the survivors, told this tale to the pregnant mothers who came to her. Destiny’s decree allowed her to live and to become the keeper of a secret, though she was never able to answer the question the mothers asked:

  ‘Who sent those man-eating rats?’

  Turn to the next page.

  You stare at the ceiling, your body rigid, haunted by the image of thousands of rats padding over feet, ready to attain the thighs. Deafening rodent squeaks and the stench of human carcasses surround you.

  Two o’clock.

  You take quite a while to realise that you are still where you were. You are lying alone. You are in your bed, in your apartment. You are in J
ackson Heights, New York. You feel a need to fix your location, to name names. You want to confirm that everything is where it belongs, before you fall asleep.

  Just a dream.

  Just a dream that causes the corners of your eyes to water. You don’t understand why you experience such a story so vividly, a story that is so distant and foreign, so incomprehensible. Isn’t it simply a series of fragmented, random images that appeared because you saw rats chasing each other on the subway tracks? But the dream agitates you, maybe because it felt so real, maybe because it made you cry. You aren’t sure which.

  You don’t know who you were in the dream. If dreams allow us to become others, which role was yours? The village girl? The watchman? Or someone else?

  Who asked the question at the end of the story? Was it Aunt Icih, or was it you?

  If you want to know who sent the killer rats, turn to page 61.

  If, on the other hand, you think curiosity could kill cats, turn to page 75.

  You’re standing in line once more, in the cabin of a plane, waiting to reach your seat. You remain patient even though your progress is delayed by other passengers cramming their bags into the overhead compartments. One man is grumbling loudly enough for you to hear. ‘What kind of moron goes against the flow in such a narrow aisle? He’s holding everything up. Does he really have to take a piss right now?’ You don’t understand why the man is so short-tempered. If he can’t deal with the inconveniences of a cramped space, he should fly business class. But perhaps he travels a lot and is sick of these petty irritations. You, on the other hand, have scarcely ever been on a plane. For you, this is all part of an exciting adventure.

  You make your way slowly to row 32. You have been assigned 32A, next to the window. The seat beside it is empty. But, from 32C, a familiar face smiles up at you. A white-haired gentleman greets you warmly.

  ‘We meet again.’

  You apologise as you force him to stand so you can reach your seat. Once settled, you fasten your seat belt and flip through the airline magazine. Before long, the flight attendant announces that the cabin doors have closed and that you will be taking off soon.

  The white-haired man turns to you. ‘It appears that the passenger between us isn’t coming.’

  You lift your eyes from the magazine and glance at the vacant seat. You look around, scanning for empty places. The plane is otherwise full.

  ‘Maybe a last-minute cancellation,’ you speculate.

  ‘Anything can happen. Maybe he died suddenly.’

  You frown. What a horrid supposition.

  As if reading your mind, he smiles again and says, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not as young as I once was. Anything could happen to me too.’

  You regard his face, then counter politely, ‘You look very healthy.’

  You’re not just making small talk: he does look hale, even handsome. You can’t guess his age. Seventy? He could stake a claim to fifty. Soon the flight attendant pushes the drinks trolley along. You choose orange juice with ice, and the gentleman next to you asks for water.

  ‘Do you live in New York?’ he queries as he lowers his tray table.

  You intend to say yes, but then shake your head because you don’t know what you were doing in New York before the taxi took you to the airport. You can’t very well tell him about Demon Lover and the red shoes that upended your life, so you make up a story about visiting your sister. He nods, and asks where you come from.

  ‘Indonesia. At least, that’s what it says on my passport.’

  Your answer possibly sounds sarcastic. You’re still a bit annoyed with Devil. Visa status: ‘exchange visitor’? What the hell does that mean?

  He laughs. You don’t sound proud to call your country home, he comments, but you don’t respond. What should you share with a temporary travel companion? Jakarta’s sweltering heat, made all the more oppressive by noise and pollution, your longing for the Orient Express, or one simple word: boredom? And soon you’ll be thirty.

  ‘Are you from New York?’

  ‘Call me Muhammad.’

  The man – Muhammad – doesn’t answer your question. He only says that he hasn’t returned home for a long time. His family is scattered around the world and he is currently on his way to Berlin to visit his grandson.

  ‘Now, as far as passports go,’ he returns to the previous topic, ‘I treat a passport like a marriage certificate, or any other document that’s no more than rows of letters and numbers. It doesn’t decide who you are, who loves you, or who waits for you.’

  You nod in agreement. You don’t need an official slip of paper to live happily with someone.

  ‘But we can’t just throw a passport in the trash because we feel like it,’ he continues. ‘A passport ties you down, determines what is possible for you and what’s not.’

  ‘And you can throw a spouse away just like that?’

  ‘You know the answer.’ He blinks. ‘A passport is worse than a marriage certificate. You can choose a husband, but you can’t choose where you were born.’

  ‘It’s a curse. But at least you can go abroad.’

  ‘Ah, yes, they do say that international borders are more relaxed these days,’ he replies. ‘But that passport of yours may experience things differently.’

  He fumbles in the small backpack at his feet and draws out a box from which he removes a transparent sphere, a snow globe of crystal. Inside you see a miniature cottage, complete with chimney and garden, just like in a fairy tale. Muhammad shakes the little ball, setting a flurry of white particles into motion.

  ‘In a snow globe world, you don’t need a passport,’ says Muhammad. ‘A round little world – all for you.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s confined in glass.’

  If you lived in a miniature house, you’d probably be jumping around every day, straining to break the glass walls imprisoning you, desperate to escape. But, of course, after that there’d be no snow. How sad. Look, this miniature world is beautiful.

  ‘It was a gift for my grandson. You can take it.’

  You decline gently. How could you steal a child’s happiness? Like other kids who grow up in the tropics, you’ve always longed to see snow. You have yet to witness it, but you’d rather wait for the real thing than admire it in a toy.

  ‘I have another one, with the Empire State Building,’ he says, half forcing the gift on you. ‘He wants something that has more of a New York flavour. Take this one.’

  Seeing the sincerity in his face, you take the snow globe. Your fingers make contact with his, dry and cold.

  ‘Thank you.’

  You shake the ball and watch the snow flurries inside the glass. The longer the sphere sits in your hand, the more enthralling it becomes.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  You nod shyly.

  ‘Do you know the story of Snow Red?’

  On planes, we rarely escape a travelling companion who entraps us with tales. You have no choice but to continue on to the next page.

  Snow Red

  And you all know, security

  Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

  Macbeth, Act 3, scene 5

  On a winter’s night, when all your eyes see is an endless blanket of heavy snow draped over cars, houses and withered trees, Snow Red will appear, like a droplet of fresh blood. Cold weather makes those forced to leave home scurry along, all huddled up, but Snow Red, with her cowl, and her long scarlet dress trailing over the ice, stares straight ahead, dragging her feet in slow steps. Sometimes she shows up in the company of a person or two hastening homeward, but not all can perceive her. She only comes to those who long for her, waking the dozing and the dead. So when your time comes, hold your breath and look the other way; pretend you do not see her, and she will pass you by, just as you pay no heed to the minutiae of your own life.

  Unless you long for the contrary.

  Berlin, 1977. Helga recounted the legend of Snow Red as Ismail, engrossed, sat staring out the window from his desk. It was Ismail’s nightly ro
utine, like brushing his teeth. Helga forgot when this ritual had begun, though they had been married just a month. Sometimes Helga felt their marriage had already lasted decades, not because they had come to know each other so well, but because they no longer asked why they had developed certain habits. Perhaps silence was a recipe for happiness. Though Helga understood what had happened, it was never enough. The only thing that could save them was the future.

  She threw her arms around her husband from behind and whispered, ‘Be careful. You’re going to fall for a beautiful woman who likes to roam about in the snow.’

  Ismail turned and kissed Helga on the lips. He smiled happily, as if he were being surprised by the arrival of his wife, back from work earlier than expected. But Helga had been home for hours. She’d cleared the table, washed the dishes and changed into her nightgown.

  Helga was six when Oma told her the tale of a woman in a red dress who went wandering on snowy nights. Helga remembered Oma as a petite woman with waves of grey hair cropped short, big brown eyes and angular features. Oma was not actually Helga’s grandmother, but she asked Helga to call her Oma. At first it was Oma Rachel, and eventually just Oma. She lived next door to Helga with her son and daughter-in-law. They had no children in the house. When she was lonely, Oma would invite Helga over to sample whatever she baked (Helga especially liked cherry pie), and then she would play the piano or sit in her rocking chair, knitting and telling stories. No one could tell stories like Oma. Her brown eyes would grow wider and wider when she came to the suspenseful parts, an invitation to belief. Helga had grandmothers by blood from her father and mother, but now, at forty-two, she only remembered one Oma.