Danse Macabre

In the car, on the way to Pak Long's house for Hari Raya, Ayah says that he no longer remembers the face of his mother, Mbah Kamsiah, who died when he was only four.

All of us at the back sit silently, respectful and empathizing, waiting for him to start bawling and crying his eyes out. But he does not show any further hints of emotion.

Mak then says matter-of-factly that that actually explains why Ayah was such a quiet and lonesome but temperamental young man when she first met him. A glut of jittery nerves. An utter wreck of a person. Such a difficult man to talk to and to be intimate with.

He grew up all by himself, without the nurturing love of a Mother, she says.

Ayah smirks silly.

I turned out okay, he says with a grin. Don’t you think so?





Pak Long says that Mbah Kamsiah died horrifically.

My three younger brothers, Ayah, and I listen attentively to Pak Long, while Mak helps Mak Long in the kitchen to prepare lunch. We lean forward and over the coffee table.

She was 21 years old. A beautiful young woman with fair skin, he says, sipping a cup of hot coffee. Sawo matang with flourishing black hair down to her broad shoulders.

She was truly a beautiful young woman, he says. Pak Long cuts several pieces of cloves using a very small scissors and then sprinkles and mixes them with his rolled tobacco.

I do not know how they met, what their love story was. But as best as I could recall, they were friends, or neighbors, or something, and had known each other for many years in the kampong.

Pak Long rolls the tobacco mix onto two pieces of paper and licked the edges lightly.

Too bad that your father and I do not have any daughters, he says. If not, she would very well look like Mbah Kamsiah. Pak Long sighs heavily.

I was six years old; your father was four or maybe five. Atuk was a rich young man with several plots of farmland all over Sabak Bernam. A few plots in Sungai Tawar and several more in Sungai Besar. Paddy fields, coconuts, and then later cocoa plants. All the orang besar and orang kaya in the kampong liked him. And because he was well off, some even wanted him to be their son-in-law. All the anak dara were naturally crazy about him, too, despite his average looks -- skin darkened by the sun from long hours and hard labor.

He was an honest man, a rich man, hardworking, polite and eligible.

Pak Long lights the rolled cigarette as Mak Long pours him another cup.

Just before getting married, Atuk bought a small piece of land up here, he points to the Northwest, where the River ends and the Sea begins, to build a house. Tanah tapak, not a tanah kebun, Pak Long clarifies. He wanted to build a house somewhere in the center of all his farmland so that he would be able to commute daily. You must remember that during those times the only mode of transport was the bicycle. So, he bought that land up there. The location made sense and it was cheap.

The one close to the benteng? Ayah asks.

The one where Mbah Jumri was our neighbor, he replies. Do you remember him?

Ayah nods ambiguously. No one is convinced.

There is something else about that land, I must tell you, Pak Long continues.

What about it?

Pak Long exhales loudly and a column of thin white smoke rises above him.

That land has a guardian, a penunggu, he says calmly to Ayah. However, at the time, Atuk did not know about that, Pak Long says, now turning his face to look at us children.

Is that why Mbah Kamsiah was so often sick? Ayah asks.

The story goes that the previous owner of the land had planted the guardian on that land to help him look after the house whenever he was away. And he was always away. He traveled often to faraway places because he was some kind of a pedagang, a wholesale dealer. He himself did not reside in Sabak Bernam. His wife and two kids lived in a rented house in the city of Klang. He got that land as an inheritance from his father who had passed away recently as a widower, and he was the only child. He did not want to sell the land, thinking perhaps to pass it on to his own kids in the future as an inheritance. So, he went on and planted a guardian.

Pak Long adjusts himself and stretches his feet.

During those days, it was common to do so. Many people did it. And not only were such sihir used to help guard land or house, they were also used to help kampong people clear forests and open new lands, or to build bridges and houses. More commonly though, they were used as weapons. I remember Atuk telling me stories of how in the very old days, Jawa people and Bugis people in the kampongs fought each other through such things. The Bugis would have their kerambit, a crooked dagger with jampi and poisoned edges. The Javanese would have their long parang, draped in the charmed yellow cloth. They would have the vendettas over trivial land disputes.

I remember the parang and the black vest, Ayah intervenes. One day while I was looking for my clothes, I found those things atop the grand wooden closet inside one of the rooms.

The black vest is some kind of body shield and power suit, Pak Long clarifies. It is embedded with Koranic texts, but people use the vest for sihir. I once saw it with my own eyes -- Atuk, whilst wearing the vest, clearing the coconut trees all by himself. I came by to deliver him lunch packed by Mbah Kamsiah and I saw that there was no one there with him. And yet, he cleared that land within tree days. By just using a few pieces of parang and an axe.

We are stunned to know that our dear Atuk was also a practitioner of such things.

What happened to the guardian? one of us asks.

Oh yes. Well, the landowner then died sometime after he had planted the guardian, Pak Long continues the original story. It was a natural death, I think, albeit a very sudden one. Some kind of sickness that he was having. But the bad news was that he did not inform anybody about the guardian that he planted. Neither his wife nor any member of his family knew about it. His wife did not want the land and her sons were all still very young; so, she sold it to Atuk, who was at the time looking for a suitable tanah tapak.

Ayah leans back and exhales anxiously. Pak Long smiles at him.

You were not yet born, he says to Ayah. Mbah Kamsiah was pregnant with you when we all moved into the land. She was perhaps a few weeks pregnant. But at the time, she was still healthy and strong. Those frequent sickness that you asked about had not yet occurred.

Ayah recalls how Atuk told him stories about Mbah Kamsiah when he was young, how his mother gave birth to him at night in difficult circumstances, how she fell sick with mysterious diseases after delivering the baby. He remembers how Atuk described carrying her at the back of his bicycle to get themselves to the jetty to go to distant places to get herself cured. They went from one bomoh to the next, having spent so much time and money, but getting so little in return. Sometimes she would return from such trips healthy and happy, but would then immediately fall sick again within mere weeks, oftentimes worse off than before.

This went on for many years, Mbah Kamsiah falling in and out of these sicknesses. Until one day when Ayah was three or four years old, she fell really sick to the point that she became bedridden for almost a year. She was oftentimes not able to walk or talk or eat properly and was constantly in a delirious state of mind. Her two children were then consequently always sent to houses of nearby relatives.

On the day that she died, Pak Long and Ayah were at home, running around in the open courtyard, playing normally as small children would. Atuk was at the nearby well, washing himself, preparing for Zuhur. Mbah Kamsiah had been feeling much better in the past two or three days, and was able to be left alone in the house, managing some menial and light chores. As Atuk was taking his wudhu, she called for him repeatedly. He did not answer her calls, but instead quickly finished his wudhu.

When Atuk reached the courtyard, she was no longer calling him. He quickly climbed the steps and entered the house by way of the kitchen, but she was not there. He looked for her in the bedroom, and there she was on the bed, lying down on her face, holding her stomach in dire pain. There was a long trail of blood and urine on the wooden floor. Atuk was so shocked that he did not realize he had stepped on it.

Pak Long recalls how Atuk then shouted from the top of his lungs from the balcony, informing the neighbors to quickly come and help him. The children, who were then had already wandered off to the benteng, came home surprised and confused to see so many of the kampong people, men, women and children, in their courtyard, in silence.

So, it really was true, Ayah says. She did die from that thing.

Well, I wouldn’t say it like that, Pak Long replies, his eyes glancing at us children.

She died because her ajal had come. God Almighty loves her more.





Ayah points to a large cluster of old unmarked graves, saying, She is here.

Which one? Mak asks, careful with her steps.

Somewhere here, he says. One of these ones. All these graves are her family.

Before Mak or any one of us children starts probing him further, Ayah immediately defends himself. In a calm voice, he says, clearly: I was a teenager when my father first showed me the grave of my late mother. At the time, he had already re-married, twice, one was a messy divorce. And between the three wives, there were fourteen children, all were estranged from one another. Unfortunately, we were caught in the middle of their petty divisions and arguments. At the time, Pak Long was serving in the military and I was in a boarding school in Kuala Lumpur.

The last time I was here was almost four, five decades ago.

Ayah stops talking, and finds himself beside a grave with wooden tombstones.

Her grave had a small tree growing on top and pearl white tombstones, he says rather loudly. He turns around and sees at least five graves that fit that description.

Mak is standing beside a grave that is fully submerged in water. One of her Raya sandals is covered in thick black mud. She is not happy, but she soldiers on quietly.

My youngest brother slaps a big mosquito on his neck. A blot of dark red blood is smeared on the collar of his baju melayu. Ayah, hurry up. Let’s get out of here.

This was written in late 2008 in Bintulu. It is a tribute to my father and my uncle and their tough childhood growing up without a mother. The details of this story are entirely fictional and have no relations whatsoever to the living or dead.