Man Tiger (7 page)

To Agung Yuda, he jokingly said: “I'm not single anymore.”

Agung Yuda thought he meant he was no longer a virgin, which wasn't earth-shaking news and he didn't pay much attention. He assumed Margio wanted to brag about sleeping with that Maharani girl. Who else could it be? He had seen them together during her vacation. And so no one found out there was a tiger inside his body, other than Mameh, who had caught a glimpse of it that one time, until Margio himself confessed shortly after killing Anwar Sadat.

On the night before Margio met his tiger, he had told his sister Mameh for the first time that he wanted to kill their father. Mameh had already heard this from someone else. Margio had been cursing their old man over and again at the nightwatch post, and similar sentiments had been heard elsewhere—that if the chance arose he would kill Komar bin Syueb. But nothing happened, and there was no sign that it would. It was just the rage of a boy resentful of his father. And such anger fades with time. So when Margio made the same boast to Mameh, the girl too ignored him; or perhaps she secretly hoped he would do it.

Back then she hadn't yet caught the feline glint in Margio's eyes, but she could sense the fury rising like heat into the crown of his head. The feeling became more intense over the days that followed, after their week-old baby sister, Marian, died. Mameh kept knives and machetes away from Margio, and kept a constant eye on him. She honestly didn't care if he actually killed their father, but every corner of Mameh's remaining sanity drove her to curb any such foolish intentions.

Incensed at the realization that he couldn't make good on his threat, Margio left home. At the time, there were tents lit up on the soccer field, girls selling tickets, the trumpeting of elephants, tigers roaring. When the Holiday Circus came to their neighborhood, it put on shows for two weeks. No one could predict its arrival, and it might be a year, two or even five, as once happened, before it reappeared. But its very presence was a great treat for the townsfolk, no matter how familiar the attractions had become. Not much changed over the years, except that the young women they called “plastic girls” were replaced by pinker and younger entertainers.

He went on his own, quietly bought a ticket, his hands thrust into the pockets of a dirty pair of jeans. He hadn't seen a circus in a long time, not since his father took him way back when he was a little boy, but this time he was impelled not by a desire to see something spectacular, but by a need to sink himself into a river of people, to lose himself in the noise, and to hide. He took a seat on the highest tier, almost touching the ceiling, and sat chin in hand waiting for the show to start.

His mind was a blank when the black-jacketed circus manager in a crisp bow tie welcomed them with a fixed smile, delivering a short speech that summed up the circus's journey across the archipelago. He described a ship where they performed on Navy Day, and rattled out plans for future performances. Even when a beautiful woman in a top hat decorated with peacock feathers, sporting a bright red waistcoat, black stockings, shiny red shoes and a matching miniskirt that revealed her underwear, read out the order of attractions through tantalizing crimson lips, Margio held fast to his meditation, free from the smutty thoughts that usually came to him when he saw a beautiful and provocatively dressed woman.

Squinting slightly, he propped his chin on his fist, sandwiched on one side by a fat woman and her small child, both eating peanuts and drowning out the music with their chomping, and on the other by an uncomfortable young man whose girlfriend kept squirming against him, pestering him for a hug. Perhaps he was wary of Margio, who fumed silently, his body language deterring all approach.

Margio had hoped to forget the anger he had brought here from home. He wanted to watch the plastic girls and could think of nothing more captivating than these lithe young women, their lovely legs entwined on a round rotating table or dangling from intertwining ropes. He closed his eyes so as not to see the orang-utan tracing circles on a tiny motorcycle. When it stopped, he knew its trainer would glumly have to push the bike along. Nor did Margio want to see a parrot on a bicycle, a sight that raised a clamor of applause from the children. The clowns annoyed him, too, making him wish he could make them disappear with a snap of his fingers. Even when the female acrobats, the plastic girls, came out and jumped on one another to form a human pyramid, which soon crumbled in the most graceful manner imaginable, he felt cold. The spectacle didn't touch him in the least.

Margio was about to leave for Agus Sofyan's stall and a drink, when they brought out a flat iron frame. He knew what that meant. Rooted to the spot, he waited with a pounding heart. The circus crew worked quickly and carefully, and soon a magnificent twenty-foot-tall cage was ready, and Margio heard the roar of a beast that made his blood surge and his heart race even faster. He was no longer propping up his chin. His hands fell onto his knees, and sweat soaked his shirt. He waited very patiently, watching the cage door being attached to the rear of a truck, while an animal tamer stood by in his sparkling silver costume, his forbidding whip uncoiled. Then the truck door opened and reluctantly the graceful beast walked toward the cage, every now and then turning back to the truck, until the tamer forced it forward, lashing the floor menacingly, and the tiger, looking bored, jumped to the center of the cage.

Nostalgia overwhelmed him, dragging back old memories as he watched the striped body ascend and sit on a tall, round wooden stool. There it squatted and scratched its nose. To be exact, it was licking its paw, and using the wet paw to wash its face. Perhaps it had just woken up, or was primping itself for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen of the audience. Before long, out came its mate, along with a pair of Indian lions. The tigers were not a swan-like white, but brown, like old sepia-toned photographs. But despite this and not being as large as a cow, they lacked nothing in grandeur. Margio felt a kinship with them, moved by the unexpected sight, as if fate was guiding events and all he had to do was keep moving.

Long after Grandpa's death, he would while away the days waiting for his white tiger. He began to suspect it had become his father's property. This was probably what made him wary of Komar bin Syueb, keeping a cautious eye on him in case some telltale sign gave away the tiger's presence. In all those years, he never saw any hint that it was there, although there was nothing to suggest the contrary either. Throughout those rage-filled months, he burned with an uncontrollable jealousy. Like a genie, Margio watched Komar bin Syueb invisibly, from near and far, to see if he ever communicated with the animal. Eventually, he tired of the exertion. Margio grew reconciled to the idea that it was either Komar bin Syueb's or it would never belong to him or his son.

The night at the circus changed that. When the show ended and he was jostling his way through the crowd, his hands in his pockets again, his mind was filled with pictures of untamed bodies. He couldn't shake off what he had seen, and when he saw the painting of a tiger on the tent's canvas wall, it drove him wild with longing, like the sight of an alluring woman. Under a spotlight, and close to the humming diesel engine by the box office, Margio leaned against the fence and was almost back inside, eager for another date with the tiger couple, when he realized he didn't have the money for a second ticket. He walked along the circus fence, hoping to catch sight of the caged animals in the middle of the soccer field, but the crew seemed to have locked them away securely. His blood was hot, and he thought that perhaps Grandpa's tiger was already inside him. What was needed was a way to bring it out.

That night he didn't go home. He wanted to be alone with the tigers in his head. He went to the surau close to midnight and lay there, seeing tigers on the ceiling, in the imam's niche, under the drum stand—everywhere. Since he was a little boy he had been sleeping in the surau or at the night-watch post, possibly spending more time in these places than at his own home. That night he dreamt about a genie princess emerging from a spring, asking him to marry her, and the princess looked like Maharani. When he woke up the next morning, a white tiger lay beside him. That was how it began.

Margio himself could never explain why he was so angry with Komar bin Syueb. To him it was like a debt that he needed to collect. The debt had grown over time until it weighed painfully upon him. Perhaps the only thing that prevented his rage boiling over into violence was his immeasurable love for his mother and sister. Komar was their pillar, no matter how rotten and unsteady that pillar might be, however skewed it was. Margio wanted to finish him off, and he thought the day would come eventually, it was simply a matter of time, but it never happened. Throughout his life, he suffered most from suppressing his yearnings, hoping like a typical villager that everything would simply get better without his needing to do a thing, and reminding himself that the method he wanted to use could only lead to disaster.

He always likened himself to the demigod Kresna, who at the height of his merciless rage could turn into the giant Brahala, with his thousand heads, thousand hands, and immeasurable fury. No one could stop him, not even the gods. The great praiseworthy thing about Kresna, the King—for that was what Margio called him—was that only once in a while, and only briefly, did he let the monster out. Later on, Margio would think there was something inside of him that wanted to get out when his rage began to smolder, and his job was to restrain it, to keep it inside, because everything that happens has already been written down in the stories of the gods. No matter how great his anger, he had to suffer it, just as Kresna did before him.

For years, he was able to contain himself. He was a model of restraint until the night his little sister Marian died. Then he lost control and told Mameh that he wanted to kill Komar bin Syueb. For him, Marian's death was the greatest tragedy imaginable in their household, and he no longer wanted to suppress his brutal rage, a rage that he had often released on the rumps of boars during hunting season. Every time he goaded a boar with his spear, piercing it just enough to make the animal fear for its life, he thought of Komar bin Syueb beneath the spearpoint. Now he wanted to impale the old man for real and he couldn't keep it to himself; he had to vent his anger somehow and he did it in words, talking to Mameh.

Marian died a week before the circus tent went up in the village. A scrawny newborn lacking milk, she spent her short life half-dead. She didn't have a fever, but was clearly about to die. Death swarmed around her like flies over a carcass, and everyone understood what was happening. They could see it in her eyes. Every time Margio looked at her, his grief was compounded by the sorrow in his mother's face. Komar seemed to be the only one who didn't care. He looked at the baby as if she were dirt, and people swore he never touched her. There were no playful games of peek-a-boo between this man and his daughter. The day came when Komar was supposed to shave her head, arrange a small ritual feast to assure her good luck, and of course give her a beautiful name, but he did no such thing.

Margio himself slaughtered Komar's fowl, without asking for permission, and joined a small ritual feast with Mameh and their mother. He grabbed his father's shaving equipment, cursing the old barber, while the baby, who couldn't cry, lay crumpled on its mother's lap. As for a name, Komar didn't make any suggestions. He chose to disappear, and their mother eventually proffered a single name—with no middle or family name attached.

“Marian.”

When the end came, there was one source of comfort: the girl died with a name and with her head shaved. Margio managed to carve the name on her tiny tombstone, which stood under a frangipani tree that Mameh planted, where the aroma of ylang-ylang petals lingered. The baby's death fired Margio's hatred for his father; he thought that if he were ever to kill Komar, now was the time.

Komar bin Syueb came home just before dawn, not long after Marian's burial, neither guilt nor surliness evident in his face. He might have slept at the brothel or the garbage dump; no one cared. No one greeted him, neither his family nor the neighbors. He was a half-dead, senile old man with no control over himself, entering the house without thinking to ask why everyone was sad. Yet he must have been aware of Marian's death, for it was the ritual meal that brought him home. He sat in the kitchen and shamelessly ate the leftover chicken, and then went to sleep, snoring horribly. Eventually Margio couldn't stand it any more. He snatched up a pan, the only pan they had, and slammed it on the floor, waking Komar with a great explosive crash.

With this action, the truce they had maintained for so many years came to an end. Komar understood that the boy had reached the limit of his patience. After that, the old man withdrew into his shell, spending long hours stock-still in bed, pretending to be oblivious to everything. It was the first time Margio had let out his anger—he had never dared before— and now his father understood what a furious cobra his son kept in his belly. Actually, Margio was as surprised as anyone by his outburst, which had set everything in motion; he had to ready himself. He was twenty, and he had absolutely nothing to fear from his fifty-year-old father. The old man, perpetually in bed, understood the limits age had set, grasping with a melancholy resignation the fact that Margio was no longer a young boy, but a man, against whom he had no means of defense.

In the days that followed, they kept their distance, preparing for battle and at the same time evading it. Komar bin Syueb was now so feeble and abstracted that Margio, seeing his father's helplessness, willed himself not to act too soon, holding his hatred in check, though it boiled white-hot right up until the morning he met his white tiger. His Brahala.

Mameh saw the tigress briefly, slipping out of Margio as easily as the boy might slip out of a shirt and pants. She recoiled, convinced the beast would pounce, and couldn't move for fear until it returned to its lair, deep inside Margio's chest. That was the evening when Margio came home to find their father slaughtering chickens. Komar asked no one for help, but clamped their feet and wings with his sandals, one hand gripping the poor chicken's head, the other swinging the kitchen knife. Slash, slash, he cut off their heads one by one, and threw the remains into the cage, their wings flapping to hold off the clutch of death.