Apple and Knife

by Intan Paramaditha

  ‘From this moment your sins are tallied, Mara,’ said Teacher. ‘Your mistakes are no longer your parents’ responsibility but your own. So, bow your head at the sight of men. Have a sense of modesty. Don’t speak loudly. You know, a woman should never become a singer.’

  Wow. Mum liked to sing while she bathed. She fantasised about wearing a tight kebaya and performing with a gamelan orchestra, her hair tied in a knot.

  ‘A woman’s voice can tempt. It can invite fornication.’

  ‘What’s fornication?’

  ‘What’s between your thighs is a treasure. Don’t sit with your legs open.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Many desire it. It is a source of disaster.’

  ‘Why?’

  Teacher never explained. I decided I wasn’t allowed to know because each prohibition invited danger. If I understood, I would crave the forbidden. Menstruation led me to know of a treasure chest sealed tight. It needed to be buried away, hidden beneath the sea, because it was bloody.

  ‘From now on you must rinse your pads and underwear,’ said Teacher. ‘Wash them so that they’re spick and span, and then wrap them in newspaper.’

  Why? Why? Why? Whywhywhy?

  My teacher was getting exasperated at how I responded to each of her admonitions. She told me a strange story from her village about something that happened near the pesantren. One day, a girl was changing her napkin in a public restroom. She was in such a hurry that she forgot to rinse the pad and tossed it straight into the trash. When the girl got outside, it dawned on her that she’d left her ring behind. She ran back and opened the door to the toilet. Imagine her shock when she came upon a long-haired woman squatting, her back to her. When the woman turned, the girl saw her pale face and red lips and screamed. Even more horrifying, the woman was licking her blood-soaked pad.

  Blood and ghosts, I nodded. It made sense. They always showed up together in stories. I stopped with my whys.

  I need the right conditions.

  I should be able to manage everything in the office, but I can’t. In front of my computer, from nine to five, my job is to think up ideas. Yet not a single word or image comes to mind, not in the middle of all these computers constantly chirping out message alerts, not in my cramped rolling chair, with a limited set of positions to sit in, surrounded by colleagues in work shirts, sometimes joking, sometimes muttering who knows what. Ideas don’t come to me here. They come in places that let my thoughts ramble and dance.

  ‘You’re a copywriter, you know, not a poet,’ a friend said once.

  ‘A copywriter isn’t a photocopier.’

  ‘What you are is a troublemaker. Don’t tell me you have to get stoned each time you’re after inspiration.’

  No, I don’t have to. Maybe what I need is to take a walk in the park, to feed the birds. Maybe I have to sit by a waterfall and watch water droplets flit about like flies. Maybe I have to get on a bus and make a survey of the city’s smog through the window. Or become a fish – silent, motionless, mummified by time. And then when inspiration comes, I will dart at it.

  But I’m a fish trapped in an aquarium. My gaze penetrates the glass, but keeps getting refracted in the process.

  I need the right conditions. So, after work, I make an altar in my room. Laptop on a soft mattress. Dim reading lamp. Chill-out music. Strong black coffee, no sugar. A couple of slim joints. My holy shrine to the goddess of capitalism. I begin my quest for inspiration while chanting a mantra.

  Oh, menstruation. Oh, menstruation. Ommm…

  I always wear black trousers when I have my period. I was traumatised by the spots of blood that a friend noticed on the white skirt of my school uniform one Monday. I felt so ashamed. I was like Stephen King’s Carrie at the senior prom, splattered and sticky with blood all over her face, chest, arms, legs. Hmm. How about borrowing that scene for my ad?

  No, no. That would be repulsive.

  Blood is fear. Madness. Women having periods can spread terror. But no one dependent on painkillers can be totally sane. And some of us are addicts.

  My frustration grows. Has women’s bleeding ever been the subject of poetry?

  I think about tales of women in the harems of Istanbul. They were the most beautiful of women, handpicked by the sultan for his collection. Some were far more valuable than gold. After the first night, bloodstained sheets draped in the window would signal the sultan’s pride at having lain with a pure maiden.

  I twirl my pen round and round. My gaze wanders, follows the vertical and horizontal stripes on the ceiling.

  I remember how my heart pounded when I was about to sleep with my first boyfriend. He and I were looking forward to it, including the blood. We were like little kids running around in anticipation of a rainbow after showering in the rain.

  There was no blood.

  ‘This isn’t your first time.’ His voice was soft but his words carried a rebuke. He turned around, his back to me.

  It wasn’t a question, so there was no need for me to respond.

  Three days later, I seduced him in his car. He seemed to have developed amnesia about our recent Cold War skirmish. We parked on campus, behind a building that was rarely visited. He kissed me, his lips parched. This time he witnessed his coveted rainbow.

  He jerked away, his fingers coated in blood.

  I laugh. Uproariously. I, an adolescent. I, now alone in bed. I begin to drift, transported by the wild smoke. Anise, nutmeg, pepper and eucalyptus oil tickle my nose. Adolescent me and adult me are giggling, side by side.

  ‘That’s what you want, right?’

  My beloved released me from his embrace, gaping. He stared at his palms, then looked at me in disgust. Blood soaked the back seat of his car, oozing into a pool of crimson. Menstrual blood.

  After that act of revenge I promised myself not to shower in the rain with little boys.

  And now I lose a lot of blood each month. My body smells of copper. Dogs sniff after me, follow along, their tongues hanging out.

  Three years ago, being responsible about my sexual health, I asked a doctor what contraception suited me best.

  An interrogation followed: ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  Suddenly, he lost all interest in helping me. He began to lecture me while stealing glances at my breasts. The sight of his slick, bald pate made me feel strange. I had the urge to spew cockroaches all over him. I decided to go to another doctor, a woman with hair dyed auburn. She suggested an IUD.

  She asked me to spread my legs wide. The chair I was in made me think of a seat in a rocket ship.

  ‘The IUD is safe, but it’ll mean more blood,’ she cautioned. ‘One pad may become two.’ Two pads may become three. Three may become four. Four may become five. Etc., etc., etc., like the whining of pesky mosquitoes. The ceiling has begun to resemble a chequered tablecloth.

  Shhh… Come on, focus.

  Yes. Now I go through a pack of sanitary napkins in a day and a half. My body feels wrung out. What remains is my hollow womb, like a sponge that has been squeezed dry and then stabbed with a needle.

  After the IUD was implanted my blood pressure fell dramatically. My head took a disliking to the rest of me. Every time I got up from a chair, it felt like rats were crawling over it, tugging my hair and nibbling my scalp. My body was shaky from carrying chubby little rats in my skull. I came to rely on tiny pills to boost the iron count in my blood. Red pills with a metallic smell. Deep red. Redder than the scar I’d seen on my mother’s wrist.

  (Mum, where are you? I’m lonely, I want to sleep next to you… I don’t hear your voice anywhere, why did you come back after so many days with a scar on your wrist? Mum, Mum, don’t be so quiet, talk to me – were you bitten by a wild animal, Mum? Have you become one of those who wander in the jungle?)

  Hold on. Where did the rats go?

  Weed always makes me drowsy.

  —

  I wake in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroo
m. Eyes half-closed, I get out of bed. I open the door and walk through the living room. Things feel different. The television, the wardrobe, the desk, the chair and its cushions are gone. My house has narrowed to a hallway; both sides are lined by long, white benches. A hospital corridor.

  I reach the end of the corridor. A door is ajar and I peek inside. There is a small table. Scissors. Cotton. Gloves. A light becomes ever brighter and more blinding. I spy a nurse holding my mother down, immobilising her. A man – a doctor, I think – is standing beside her open legs, straining. I can’t see what is between those legs. Red. Blue. Watercolours blending into a thick clot. Blood of different colours and consistencies, strong tea, strawberry syrup, jelly. Mum is crying out. Her howls carry the pain of a lonely wolf.

  A child stands by the edge of the door. She is in school uniform; her hair is short and she shoulders a small backpack.

  (I’m here, Mum

  here

  HERE)

  The girl is shouting in a vacuum.

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask stupidly.

  Ah, no need. No need.

  The girl is shocked to see the blood between her mother’s legs. Blood flowing without cease, too powerful, too intense, murdering Mum. Is her sister emerging from the open rose petals?

  A sister who doesn’t cry. A sister who doesn’t exist.

  (Lucky you are, Sister, frozen for ever, inseparable from Mum, while I wander, my home lost)

  My mother dies, making no effort to hold on.

  (Mum Mum my tiny hand wipes my tears Mum I know you want to die you want to go but first tell me your secrets)

  ‘Do you want to know about the red line on my wrist?’ Suddenly, sweat on her forehead, Mum struggles into a sitting position and looks towards the girl.

  The nurse and doctor also see her.

  ‘It’s blood,’ the child says.

  Mum shakes her head firmly.

  ‘Blood is life,’ she demurs. ‘That line was my first death. I’m not dying here.’

  The girl lurches like a startled horse.

  I awake in my pitch-black room.

  ‘Why?’ My boss gapes like a goldfish, but her eyes smoulder like a hawk’s. She wants to know the reason behind my resignation.

  I say I’ve received another offer. That makes much more sense than saying that I can’t be part of all this, sometimes present and sometimes not.

  And it makes much more sense than to confess that I don’t want to treat blood as an enemy.

  I want drops of blood to be ink on my book, encrusted in the lines of destiny that twist and spin history on my palm. I want to make sacrifices like blood does, play with puddles, ooze sores, flare in anger.

  My boss doesn’t persuade me to stay, nor does she offer me a raise or promotion. She just nods and congratulates me. I don’t know if I should be happy without the burden or take it as a slap in the face. I’m just a cog that can be replaced if it comes loose. They aren’t losing me, and I’m not losing anything.

  Once out of my boss’s office, I head for the company toilet. Stress always makes me need to pee. Three doors, all marked blue instead of red. Blue means a stall is empty and red means it’s not to be opened. Forbidden. I open the door at the end out of habit. I’m surprised, embarrassed: the stall is occupied.

  ‘Sorry! I thought—’

  I’m about to close the door again when something holds me back.

  It’s you.

  You are that woman, hunched over, rummaging through the trash. Your hair is thick and stiff, dull, black broom bristles covering your face and shoulders. You’re so comfortable there, like the guardian of a shrine, keeping it as clean as can be, unclogging drains or groping to sweep dust and insects from under the bed.

  I’m shocked.

  You are the woman my recitation teacher told me about.

  You turn around. I should be terrified, but I want to look at you. Your face is like paper in an old book, crumpled and pale. Dark circles frame eyes that protrude like marbles sprinkled with ash but, oddly enough, your lips are moist red, fresh. Beautiful.

  ‘Why do you like blood so much?’ I ask.

  Your voice is hoarse and soft, so far away, so ancient. You whisper, ‘Because it’s life.’

  Doors

  Bambang was found asphyxiated in his favourite car, a red 1982 Mercedes Tiger. As if the fact of his death wasn’t tragic enough, the state of his corpse was pitiful: he was reclining in his seat, naked, his safari suit crumpled beside him. Every part of his body lay exposed, subject to gravity’s spite. The folds on his chin, his belly, his genitalia – everything appeared to sag, on the verge of collapse. Everything, that is, except his eyes. They gaped open, staring upwards in terror.

  The condition of his body gave rise to several theories. Some doctors suspected he had masturbated himself into oblivion, not knowing that he had become trapped inside his car. The reddish marks on his neck were a puzzle, though. They seemed to indicate bites. Or, perhaps they came from a noose. Maybe Bambang had been seeing someone and that person had left him for dead in the car. But no fingerprints were found on the vehicle except his own. Then again, if this was a premeditated murder, the criminal wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave fingerprints.

  Ratri, his wife, didn’t cry. At the funeral, her face as she accepted the condolences of colleagues and relatives was so calm that it invited both sympathy and suspicion: what kind of woman could be so cool in the face of her husband’s death? The unnatural demise made Bambang’s corpse a spectacle, a mystery to be pursued in forensic labs, newspapers, and on television.

  Inevitably, allegations emerged about Bambang’s private life. Everyone knew that Bambang and Ratri had been sleeping in separate rooms. Surely a third party was involved. Perhaps Bambang had been finished off by a prostitute trying unsuccessfully to blackmail him, or a mistress fed up with his broken promises to marry her. Or perhaps his wife, who hadn’t shed a tear, had hired a hitman.

  Ratri made no attempt to stem the flow of gossip. After all, her husband was the director of a government agency. His case would be followed by a series of disclosures that would come one after the other, like toppling dominoes. Invisible hands, Ratri was sure, would turn off the tap. Which is exactly how it transpired. There was a national sense of crisis. But lurid fascination over the mingling of sex and politics was soon diverted to a parade of the usual problems. Ratri felt no need to share her secrets with anyone. She had predicted the tragic end would arrive soon enough. The Mercedes Tiger was cursed.

  —

  Several luxury cars were stored in Bambang’s garage. For official occasions – trips to the office, inaugurations, weddings – Bambang drove his latest model Mercedes Benz. There was also a black Volvo. Its sleek elegance proclaimed Bambang’s rank among high officials, ministers and even summit participants. But the 1982 Mercedes Tiger had a special status: it was Bambang’s first car and was therefore historic. He treated it lovingly, only using it on special occasions. A toy imbued with nostalgia for youth. Bambang didn’t let anyone else touch it, not even his chauffeur.

  Six months earlier, a series of events had made Ratri think the car would no longer leave the garage. Bambang came home drenched in sweat after a drive. Their maid, Milah, discovered bloodstains on a tyre. Bambang had apparently hit a cat, something that had never happened in all the time Ratri had known her husband. Bambang always drove smoothly, was always in full control. Ratri didn’t ask any questions because Bambang never explained anything to her.

  After a while, Ratri started to have a bad feeling about the car. And, a few months before Bambang’s death, she found her proof. She surreptitiously took the key from her husband’s room when he was at the office and drove the vehicle to her boutique. Everything was fine until she pulled over and turned the motor off. She pressed the button on the key for the automatic lock. Click. The door was ready to be opened. However, unbidden, the four buttons dropped back down. Click. Click. Click. Click. It was as if a gang of invisible, rasca
lly kids was teasing her. The doors locked again. Ratri pushed the button several times in vain. Panic set in. She looked out, hoping for a passing security guard. She looked to the right. To the left. In the rear-view mirror. She gasped. Someone was in the back seat.

  —

  Ratri and Bambang lived in a lavish, multi-storey residence with a spacious yard and high walls. A suburban castle. They moved there for a simple reason: such a palace was impossible in the city. A single road connected their neighbourhood to downtown. Jalan Baru, the new road and only access to the highway, was now being paved.

  Behind one vacant parcel of land was a kampung. Rumours circulated that its residents would be evicted as mansions continued to be built. As far as tourist and development maps of Jakarta were concerned, the squatter settlement didn’t exist. But the kampung had survived until now. Those within it bred, bartered and partied to the sounds of dangdut. Fearful of theft, the castle owners constructed imposing walls around their homes and installed barbed wire along them.

  Since the death of their son, Anton, a few years before, Ratri spent more time at home. Anton had died in Los Angeles at the age of nineteen after crashing a motorcycle that had been a gift from his father. He was a sophomore at UCLA and had set out to explore Southern California. Once their son’s body was brought home and buried Bambang and Ratri never discussed his death again.

  After entering her forties, Ratri filled out a bit but remained attractive. She knew her husband’s colleagues cast admiring glances at her, even tried to tempt her. But she had no interest in those pudgy men. She preferred to look after her home and over-see the running of her boutique a few times a week. She stayed faithful to her husband, who took to sleeping in a separate room after their son’s death.

  Bambang’s vehicles conveyed a great deal about their relationship. Fifteen years earlier, Bambang would invite Ratri on drives out of the city in the Mercedes Tiger. Now he always left her behind. When the car left the garage, Ratri knew that Bambang wouldn’t be home for several days.