The Universe of Things Page 21

  Then they complain that we are irresponsible.

  The girls, including one midget who could barely toddle, were taking it in turns to jump on the pedal of the heavy rice pestle — laughing, silent, breathless with effort, full of self-respect. The grown women talked a little with their eyes. Probably they had something to say about “the one with no family,” because they often glanced in my direction, without bothering to conceal it.

  Tradition! When I was fourteen I should have died. My neighbors would have considered castration a barbarity. Once you’ve been chosen to be a man no one can take away that sacred “privilege.” But they would have given me a beautiful sharp knife and stood over me, very kindly, while I did my duty. Suicide is the decent way, for a gentleman who outlives his use. I had escaped, but I could never leave the shame behind.

  Buffalo was right. It was not a compliment, when my adopted family let me come up here alone. They were “sophisticated Timurese,” living close to our Rulers, but they would not have been so casual with their own beloved son and consort. The full male is a necessary luxury, cosseted and disregarded. An unneeded male is nothing. If I wanted worthless “letters of introduction” I might as well have them. Why not? It would keep me quiet.

  This country must change, I thought. This country must change.

  The man-child wailed and was lifted to suck. Annet, the aneh delegate, had said of the great debate — typical Dapur government. Stick something in the people’s mouths and shut them up, give them whatever poisonous thing they’re crying for. That made me smile, grimly. Good. Let them give Timur what Timur cried for, with all its “poisons,” without thinking too much about the consequences.

  Derveet came up the road and turned into the yard, picking her way between puddles and cabbage stalks. Perhaps she had been spending the night with Annet, in her much superior lodging. Halfway across she stopped and looked back over the dizzying panorama making its brief early morning appearance. Rivers of pale cloud streamed away down the dark folds of the hills, plains of Timur imaginary in the distance — underfoot, the sordid thatch roofs of Canditinggi. She spoke. She was reciting quietly, for herself, a pantun: the Jagdanan quatrain. The subject was a lady traveling. The chill of the wayside inn at dawn is strange to her, strange and cold as her own desire to leave her family… The inn mothers raised their eyes, compressed their lips and nodded. They showed Derveet respect, but a dismissive kind of respect — failed woman. One of them spoke aloud, roughly, in the dialect. I think she said: “Fine weather madam.”

  “Ya, fine weather.”

  She came up to the verandah and leaned beside me. Our eyes met in rueful understanding, two outcasts together. Taking a silver case from her sash she offered me a cigarette. I declined, knowing what one of those green skinned demons would do to me on an empty stomach.

  “Well, Endang of Timur, how is your observing?”

  “They won’t let me in,” I said. “I came here as an accredited representative of my family, but they refuse to let me in to the debates.”

  Derveet stared at me. “Oh, is that what you meant? I thought you meant you were observing — well, men’s business.” She seemed about to laugh, at her own mistake or mine.

  “You are amused?”

  “I beg your pardon. But if they’d let you in, it would do you no good, you know. You must have heard Annet: she is not enjoying herself. We have no Dapur skills on the mountain. Surely you realize — they don’t speak aloud.”

  For a moment I didn’t understand her. “Oh that’s ridiculous,” I exclaimed, when I saw she was serious “You can’t express complex ideas in eye-talk. It’s just a household pidgin, with a clairvoyant element that’s been grossly exaggerated. Lots of educated women are giving it up altogether.”

  “Ah,” said Derveet, studying the end of her cigarette. “Is that what they are saying in Timur now?”

  I was embarrassed, not wanting to contradict her. I am sufficiently a Peninsulan not to wish to oppose a woman. But we had other things to discuss this morning, and we both knew it. She waited me out.

  “You are very anxious,” I began at last, “to implicate the KKK in this problem you have with misapplied medicines. Why is that?”

  “Because I don’t want Gusti Ketut Siamang to be prince of Timur.”

  Her directness made me flinch, and the look that went with her words was even more direct. Of course she thought I was a spy: eavesdropping on her, probably reporting to someone in the organization, some covert “observer” of greater significance than myself. KKK: Kipas, Kertas, Kain. It was an open secret in Timur that the Fan the Paper and the Cloth concealed the operations of the Siamang family.

  And Derveet knew I was a supporter of Gusti Ketut.

  “I am at this inn by accident,” I said. “I have done you no harm.”

  She smiled. “My dear, I know. Hasn’t Buffalo always been with you?”

  It was stupid of me to be hurt by that.

  I faced her firmly. “Very well. The Siamangs are the KKK, and the KKK is ‘in the pay of the Koperasi.’ That’s what you are telling the bandits in a roundabout way, and of course it is true. If you were realistic you would see that they know everything perfectly well already. The trouble is, you don’t understand the nature of politics.”

  She inclined her head gravely.

  “Have you ever been to the east coast? Have you seen the great Domes, out at sea?”

  “Yes, I have seen them.”

  “That’s where our real Rulers are. Can you imagine what life is like out there, how different from our squalor? Don’t you see? We must make terms with the Koperasi, our own brutal renegades, in order to reach the Rulers beyond. It is our only hope. For a thousand years, we’ve been sinking into the dirt. What has the traditional Peninsula to offer, compared with what the Rulers have?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. Not yet. We are on a different road, and a hard one. The question is, will they let us live to travel it any further —”

  I had heard the expression “different road” before, and it only irritated me. It referred to something fantastical and absurd, a mystic, wish-fulfillment view of traditional culture, like the notion of a political debate conducted in eye-signs.

  “Your story is incredible,” I told her. “A gangster unloads possibly suspect antibiotics on your aneh. Out of this you make a conspiracy involving the Siamangs, the Koperasi, and our Rulers themselves. You have no proof. You can’t possibly believe that the Koperasi have some monstrous secret order to exterminate our cripples —”

  I had exaggerated wildly to show her how stupid it was. I read in her eyes that she believed exactly what I had said. I felt almost afraid to be talking to her.

  “Of course I can’t prove that,” she agreed coolly. “But if I keep talking about this one little transaction I can prove, perhaps I’ll make some of them think.”

  “You are trying to disrupt the debate.”

  She nodded, as if I were a child who had suddenly seen the point of a very simple lesson.

  “It’s quite outrageously irresponsible —”

  “Endang, it only starts with the aneh. Because we are the weakest, I suppose.”

  She sighed. “The power that you Timurese admire so much is the power that comes from having no natural enemies. It is nothing to be proud of. Our Rulers come from another world, another time. Whatever they once were, they are alien now: parasites. They might as well have arrived ‘from Outer Space’… Some parasites are quite rational, they know when to stop. Others, you know, consume the host. Without seeming to care that they are also destroying themselves.”

  “I am sorry,” I said stiffly, after an awkward silence, “that I muddied your argument last night. It was not intentional.”

  Derveet laughed. “Don’t worry, Timurese. I know what my chances are. If I can get them to support the election of this puppet-family unwillingly it will be a great leap forward, with which I ought to be satisfied. So I am told.”

  The sun was fully u
p now, enriching the thin air. The women moved more vigorously; the inn’s big spotted cat rolled in a patch of warm light.

  “Who do you think should be prince of Timur?”

  “Ida Bagus Sadia,” she answered promptly.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I like him.”

  Her arrogance was astounding. I couldn’t answer, so I got up to leave her, bowing and muttering, “Excuse me madam.”

  “Endang,” she remarked gently, as I turned away. “Since you are so well educated, why was I helping you with your High Inggris last night? Quite simple words, I thought.”

  I was surprised. The Rulers’ language is functional, for official things, but it is not natural to us. Low Inggris is the first, the mother tongue. Of course I would sometimes stumble. I told her so. “Our language is our own, and we should accept that. Theirs is not for us. It is wrong to learn too much of it: it doesn’t suit the Peninsulan mind —”

  “You’re right of course,” said Derveet. “But who told you that?”

  Even if her outrageous invention were true, it made no difference. If the Rulers really were secretly culling our deformed, then all the more need to reach them, to make ourselves count. Timur must have the Siamangs. We must be the first state to have true government of cooperation, whether people liked the sound of the word or not. It was bound to lead to great improvements. I told myself that I admired Derveet’s stance, but she was hopelessly out of date. I was angry with myself for arguing with her. I went out and bathed. My Koperasi of the dark before dawn came in to the lavatories to take a piss, dressed now in that heavy slab of uniform. He eyed me, thoughtfully, across the stained tiles of the bathroom. They know, they always know… I smiled.

  He did what he did with me, and we left separately; it was safer that way.

  I thought I had been perfectly discreet, but perhaps not. At night in the common room Buffalo came and sat next to me, put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me, with a comically sad and gentle face, like someone comforting a hurt child.

  The ninth month passed, the tenth began, and the debate continued. Monsoon downpours invaded the regular cloud rain, nothing was ever quite dry, indoors or out. The box-like sedan chairs were for ladies, and only the Koperasi had HC transport. My shoes were ruined. The wash boy at the inn claimed he “couldn’t understand” trousers and returned my clothes crumpled and mysteriously sticky. I refused to be forced into native dress. Each day I made my round of the delegations, the states of Timur and the regions of Jagdana (I did not approach Gamartha). Naturally only a conservative element had come to Canditinggi. Even my own part of federated Timur was represented by families I had scarcely heard of: secluded, reactionary inlanders. I spoke to countless wizened boys in picturesque livery, never the same boy twice at any reception desk. I got nothing from them but that infuriating smile of tradition — for all your education, truth evades you.

  Buffalo boy remained my bodyguard; there was nothing I could do about that. Childlike, he had become involved in my quest and didn’t seem to notice a certain conflict of interest. He pointed out that we were missing an opportunity. For if we went to Gamartha and said that Jagdana did not want a Timurese observer, surely that would be more effective. I said we would not try that. It would be useless. Gamartha people were too old-fashioned.

  Buffalo boy lowered his eyes. He said mildly, “You are not Timurese, originally?”

  “No. I am adopted.”

  I don’t think he understood the term, but he understood. He never pressed me again about the delegations I chose to avoid. I had meant to move out of the inn, but there was nowhere to go. So I went on watching Derveet patiently chipping away at the bandits. It was embarrassing to think how I had sympathized with the aneh in this little quarrel. If Derveet could break the hold of the KKK, and therefore of the Siamangs, over the brigands, the Dapur would know it instantly in this fevered town. It might disturb the whole balance of the debate. Gusti Ketut’s election rested on the fact that the women knew whom they were supposed to choose, like it or not. But a whole princedom full of politically dissatisfied criminals might seem even worse than Koperasi displeasure.

  However, I soon realized there was no danger. Man-like, the bandits enjoyed the attention they were getting, but it was clear they would stick with the KKK. They were just playing, toying with the idea of making a noble stand. As this became more and more obvious I began to get annoyed with Derveet, illogically. If she really believed that the choice between Siamang and Sadia was a choice between death and life, couldn’t she be more forceful? If she really believed we were facing genocide, surely it was not a case for gentle persuasion. I began to have a dream about Derveet watching a tree growing, while in the darkness around her the world was falling apart. I had given up remembering dreams and all the interpretation business, quite deliberately and successfully, when I left my first home. But I couldn’t get this one out of my head. Derveet’s patience had become agonizing to me, despite my own convictions.

  She was as friendly as ever; in fact we talked a good deal. It was puzzling and depressing to find someone who, like me, had no reason to respect tradition, supporting it so obstinately. She would like to see a world without boys, she said. She would like to see women and men living freely together as equals: sometime. But her faith in the Dapur was unshakeable.

  Silent, secret, slow: the debate went on. I walked about the streets looking at closed gateways, and wondered if it was true that only eyes were moving in there, never mouths. Derveet had made me uneasy. I wondered if even the progressive Timur delegates could be trusted to represent Timur’s real wishes, in this insidious Dapur atmosphere. Derveet told me that I only seemed to be shut out. In some mystical way my opinion was being counted. The debate’s only purpose was to reflect accurately the decision of the people, which would somehow be carried in the air, the fall of the rain, the turn of a leaf. If that was true then Gusti Ketut was safe. But I felt oppressed. The air of this town didn’t suit me, it was making me ill.

  The long wait was hard for Derveet and Annet as well. Their relationship was showing signs of strain. Annet did not come often to the inn, and when she did it was only to jeer at Derveet’s efforts with her bandits. When conversation failed she sat staring at her friend with angry eyes. An election like this is always “unanimous.” Whatever kind of pressure the Dapur used to achieve this, it was telling on the aneh delegate now. We were on opposite sides, but I sympathized. If only it could be over.

  A bandit called me a Koperasi-whore and Tjakil, my former admirer, knifed him. The question was only whose whore ought I to be. Why should I be expected to care which bully was my master? On the same day I was alone in a waiting room with a chair-boy, a Jagdanan about fifteen years old. He lifted his sarong to show me he had been excised: given a false womanhood. Boys do this to each other at puberty-age; they are proud of it. His eyes looked nowhere — expecting nothing, desiring nothing but further violation. I went back and shut myself in my windowless shack. I tried to picture the shining Domes, the pure life of our Rulers, but nothing would come. I kept thinking, unwillingly, of the dying aneh instead.

  This was the first quarter of the tenth month. The Koperasi patrols were uneasy too. They stood in knots on street corners, handling their weapons. We took care, if we had to pass them, not to brush against their space. Back at the inn Snake had fallen ill. He lay on the verandah wrapped in shawls, shivering and weak.

  “Why are you so sad?” whispered Derveet, holding his hand.

  He reached up and touched her cheeks, making lines for tears. “Yes, it’s true we are all sad. Poor Snake, I wish I could keep it from you. It’s too much for you.”

  In the streets people were saying that the debate was nearly over, and it was ending badly. I tried to pretend I didn’t know what they meant, but it was hard to resist the feeling that something was coming out of those closed courtyards: invisible, intangible, giving the town bad dreams. Who is to be the one then? I wondered. But
I knew.

  On the tenth of the month I got up, and everything was quiet. The kitchen house was shut. No sign of the family, no sign of any guests. A town with empty streets is an ominous sight, but there were a few people about — besides the Koperasi — so I dared to go into the center. I went into a little garden, a place where I often used to sit after trailing around the waiting rooms: a refuge. There was a round tank carved with monsters of some kind. I sat on the rim, under a frangipani tree, its white and gold-tinged petals at my feet. I looked into the pool, but the water seemed to be black. It was not reflecting anything. I wrapped my arms round myself and sobbed.

  Why was I crying? I didn’t know. The grief flowed through me like a current, but it seemed to be coming from somewhere deep inside. Gradually I realized someone was actually asking me the question. There was a woman, sitting on the stone bench by the pool. She was dressed in blue, deep dark blue; every line of her long binding sash, every floating fold of her robes was composed and perfect. In one bare hand she held the silver links of the rahula, the ankle chain. “Why are you crying child?” she asked again.

  “There is so much injustice in the world —”

  The spasm passed. Slowly, the tree and the sky returned to the water. I lifted my head. “Have you been here all along?” I asked hoarsely. It seemed entirely possible, at that moment, that she had been invisible when I walked in.

  “No. I saw you from my window, so I came down.” She smiled, the wrinkles of her aged face rippling smoothly. “I am from Jagdana, where we value beauty.”

  They had defeated me. I could not resist any longer. I knew what had happened, this morning in Canditinggi. The balance had fallen and there was a new prince for Timur. It had been a hard debate: the tension of the delegates’ minds, locked together, had reached us all, affecting each according to capacity. Now they had decided, in grief, and that grief had swept through our hearts. It was ours. This was the power of the Dapur. This was the different road. I thought of my adopted family. Had they intended me to have this experience? Perhaps they didn’t even know what would happen to anyone near a great debate. We had given up a great deal, in coastal Timur, for the sake of staying alive.