Kitchen Curse

by Eka Kurniawan

  Whatever the reason, Sasha was happy her new strategy had been a success. Now that it was so faint, the smell of urine would fade away with a splash of water or the morning rain.

  But a few days later, the stench was once again sharp and stinging, and it was especially bad on Monday morning, after the shop had been closed for the weekend. Apparently the appeal to faith was no longer effective—or maybe it was just that the smell of paint had worn off.

  Sasha was furious. Her shop was a boutique, her customers were successful young career women; what would they think if they could smell piss in the parking lot?

  This time Marjan gave her some crazy new advice: write something on the parking lot wall in Arabic. “People wouldn’t dare piss on Arabic, they’d be too afraid it was a verse from the holy book.”

  Sasha didn’t want to do that—she didn’t want some hired thugs dressed in religious garb to come rough up her little boutique just because of some Arabic script on her parking lot wall.

  She decided to wait in her car, all night long, to find out who in fact had been pissing in her parking lot. Having slept all day so she could stay up all night, she packed snacks as well as a blanket to keep her warm.

  By midnight she hadn’t seen anyone, but she hadn’t expected them to show up by then anyway. She wasn’t bored, though—she could still get out of the car and walk around a bit. Bajaj drivers were still hanging around looking for fares, now and then a taxi would stop, and a nearby kiosk was still open, selling cigarettes. But after midnight, the place was deserted. She hunkered down inside her car. She locked the doors and waited. Sitting inside the car—with only the songs on the radio, the dim lights from the car dashboard, and the humming of the engine and the air conditioning to keep her company—Sasha had to hold in her pee. This was something she hadn’t anticipated. She had completely forgotten to bring the keys to the shop with her, and Marjan had taken them home. She began to rue the fact that she wasn’t a man and couldn’t easily take a piss wherever she wanted. A man could pee into an empty bottle or on the wall of a random parking lot by the side of the road.

  No one had arrived to pee on her wall yet—but of course they hadn’t, because there was a car there, with the shadow of someone inside, so they wouldn’t be so eager to just go for it. But Sasha was sure someone would appear eventually. She just had to wait patiently.

  As dawn was approaching, she truly couldn’t hold it in anymore—she had never even tried to hold her pee in for this long, because she was afraid of getting a urinary tract infection. She grimaced. She knew there was no public toilet nearby, and that was probably why people pissed wherever they could. She thought that maybe she should leave the parking lot and drive to the nearest gas station, but what if whoever was peeing in her parking lot was doing it at dawn? Still, the longer she held it, the more she felt like she was going to lose control—she could feel the muscles in her crotch tightening, clutching. She squeezed her eyes shut and murmured, “For God’s sake Sasha, don’t piss here!”

  That day she didn’t go to the shop, because it was the weekend. And, happily, Matta had gone out with the children so she had some time to herself. The whole business of people peeing in front of her boutique was stressing her out. She had to relax, clear her thoughts. Maybe she could even have a little fun.

  She hadn’t gone to the bathroom yet—she hadn’t even bothered getting up earlier that morning when her husband and children were leaving but had just waved at them from the bed. And all that time, she had been holding in her pee.

  She used to forbid herself to hold it in. Whenever she got the urge to pee, she would dutifully go straight to the bathroom. Even if she didn’t even have to go that badly, she would tell herself to sit on the toilet and pee. But ever since that night in the car, waiting for someone to piss in her parking lot, she had started to enjoy holding it in. She liked the feeling of toying with the pressure, the muscles around her vagina tightening. And the longer she held it in, the more she played with the muscles down there, the better she felt. It was like the morning breaking into day.

  Sasha got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Locked the door. Took off her clothes and sat on the toilet. But she didn’t pee—she still held it in. The intricate muscles of her vagina moved, tightening and releasing. She felt like she was flying, and the longer she flew the higher she soared. Her breath quickened. She mumbled something indistinct. Then, she heard herself give a little grunt. She was spent. She leaned back against the water tank. Her body felt purged. Her urine spilled out into the toilet and tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Sasha smiled faintly. Now she felt refreshed.

  If only I had known about this before, she thought.

  And at that moment she thought that maybe her sign “Don’t Piss Here!” was totally wrongheaded. Maybe some people took their pleasure by peeing wherever they wanted, and she had no right to prevent them.

  “Why are you holding in your urine?” the doctor asked. It had given her a urinary tract infection.

  “I don’t know, Doc,” Sasha replied. “Wherever I go, it’s like I see a sign that says, ‘Don’t Piss Here!’ So I don’t.”

  “Would you like to be referred to a psychiatrist?”

  “Whatever you think is best, Doc.”

  They want to rob me of my pleasure, she thought. She closed her eyes. Drew a few slow deep breaths. Felt the urge to pee growing more insistent. In just a few moments, she would climax right in front of the doctor. The thought made her smile—and made her happy, of course.

  EASING INTO A LONG SLEEP

  I showed up at the house just before dawn prayers. Not long after, my little sister showed up, too. She opened the door, weeping.

  “Is Father dead?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “The doctor said he was.”

  After seeing that Father was still alive, even though he was lying there unable to move, her sobs subsided. My sister said she’d received a phone call from my mother, and Mother had told her the same thing she told me: Come home if you can, the nurse taking care of your father says his kidneys are failing. Before leaving, my sister had stopped by the campus health center because her eye had been itching.

  After the exam was done, my sister asked the doctor, “By the way, what happens when someone’s kidneys fail?”

  Without looking up from writing her prescription the doctor replied, “They die.”

  “Oh my God!” my sister shrieked. She burst into tears, startling the doctor. The whole way home she wept, thinking Father was already gone.

  I’m sure that if Father could have heard our conversation, he would have laughed. He loved to laugh. Or maybe he did hear it, but he just couldn’t move, not even to part his lips for a chuckle. If he did hear it, I’m sure he laughed to himself silently. Laughed himself to sleep.

  We gathered around Father. My mother and my oldest younger sister read Surah Ya Sin. I didn’t join in. I can read the Koran, but not as fluently as they can, and so I chose to simply listen. My other younger siblings are just as bad as me.

  It was Father himself who had taught us to pray. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve read through the entire Koran three times. Father opened a small surau behind our house where he taught the neighborhood kids prayer recitation. He also gave Friday sermons at the mosque. Every Friday morning, I would see him writing out what he would say. When the muezzin at that mosque died, Father took his place.

  Because the mosque belonged to Muhammadiyah, a lot of people thought Father was a member. He didn’t have a problem with that and even followed the Muhammadiyah calendar for fasting and Eid, and, in accordance with the organization strictures, recited the Tarawih prayers eleven times. But if he had to, he would recite the Tarawih prayers with Nahdlatul Ulama folks too—for example, with my grandfather, who always insisted on reciting them twenty-three times.

  Sitting there looking at Father, I wondered whether he had ever wished one of his children would take his place at the pulpit.

&nbs
p; “How could you attempt a sermon, you can’t even pray properly!” my mother would have said.

  And she would have been right. If Father had wanted that, then he would have sent me to a religious boarding school—but in fact he let me go to college and major in philosophy, knowing it was quite possible his son would stop praying or fasting. When I came home after my third semester wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Lenin on it, it was my mother who complained.

  “Look, your son has become a cummunist!” (She didn’t say communist but pronounced it cummunist.)

  Father, like always, just laughed.

  He also let my younger brother major in animal husbandry, and after conducting some experiments with different breeds of chicken, my younger brother decided he agreed with Charles Darwin: humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor, there were no Adam and Eve. Father didn’t care and gave him some startup money for a poultry farm.

  During the 1999 elections, Mother voted for the Crescent Star Party (Father did too, after voting Masyumi for years, and then the United Development Party), and recommenced her lamentations. This was because there was only one person in the entire village who had voted for the People’s Democratic Party and everyone knew it was my younger brother, the chicken farmer, because he was the only person in the whole village who had put their campaign sign up in his front yard.

  “Another one of your sons is a cummunist!”

  Once again, Father just laughed. I knew he would be more upset to see one of his children steal a fish from a neighbor’s pond than to see one of us wear a Lenin T-shirt and the other vote PDP.

  Even so, one of my younger sisters—the one who was now reading Ya Sin with Mother—decided to study at the State Islamic University in Yogyakarta. But Father didn’t seem to be hoping that she’d teach religion. All he said to me was, “It’s time for her to leave home and find a husband.”

  My third younger sister, the one who cried after seeing the eye doctor, was majoring in Indonesian literature. The fourth younger sister was getting her degree in management. It was only the youngest of us, my brother, who hadn’t gone to college yet. He was sitting with us, cross-legged and restless. I could tell he wanted to leave, to go to his room and get on the Play-Station. Finally, since as the oldest sibling I had some right to give orders, I gave him permission to leave.

  “He’s in love,” my sister said after she finished reading Ya Sin. “Two days ago, he met a girl on the bus.”

  “A girl?”

  “Uh-huh. He said she winked at him.”

  “And then?”

  My sister chuckled. “And then, he said, he felt like he was having a heart attack. He couldn’t look at her for the rest of the ride. He wanted to approach her and introduce himself, but he didn’t dare.” She laughed again.

  “And then?”

  “This is the funny part. Finally, he arrived at his stop. He was afraid he’d never see her again, so he mustered the courage to look at her and, what do you know, she was still looking at him. So, while he was getting off the bus, he winked at her. And then because he wasn’t watching where he was going, he fell headlong into the ditch by the side of the road.”

  Now I laughed, too.

  If Father regretted anything about dying, maybe it was that he wouldn’t get the chance to see his youngest grow up and leave home like the rest of us. But maybe he heard the story about my younger brother. And if he did hear it, I am certain that he smiled. And maybe that little smile, deep in his heart, gently eased him into his long sleep.

  His youngest child was all grown up. He was already winking at a girl on the bus.

  When I was still in my early teens, I didn’t enjoy the kind of Saturday nights my friends had. There was no girlfriend, there was no strumming the guitar playing “Party Doll” (but that was no problem, since I didn’t like the Rolling Stones or Mick Jagger until years later), and there was no watching television. Instead, Father took me to prayer recitation.

  It wasn’t a bad thing, actually. The prayers were held at the house of our local butcher. At the end of the event (which was what I most looked forward to), there was a special dinner with all kinds of beef dishes. I don’t remember where the teacher who led the prayers was from, but I do remember that he had learned all the verses of the Koran in Arabic and what they meant by heart. If someone came to him with a problem, he could quickly point to a few specific chapters and verses as the solution. Everyone brought their own Koran in Indonesian translation to double-check and confirm. The most popular words of all were, “All answers can be found in this Book.”

  Then the teacher began talking about “our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan.” I forget how long this issue was discussed, probably for weeks.

  One night, I said to Father, “I want to go to Afghanistan.”

  He didn’t answer me then, but he didn’t take me with him to prayer recitation the following week or the week after that. I can’t remember whether he himself stopped going—and then the whole household came down with chicken pox, except me, and Father told me to go spend some time at my uncle’s house.

  There, my uncle lent me a radio, and from then on I spent most of my Saturday nights hunched over it. I had just met a girl in the grade below me. I sent her messages and song dedications through a call-in show. She never sent anything in return, but I kept pursuing her. That whole quest, which lasted for months and months, made me forget all about my notion of going to Afghanistan.

  Looking down at Father lying in his bed, I thought back to those times. I wasn’t sure whether I should be thankful. If Father had let me to go to Afghanistan, maybe now I wouldn’t be by his side. Maybe I’d be on a most-wanted list for blowing up a church or a hotel. Or maybe it would be worse than that. Since I think I’m smarter than most people, maybe my story would have been grander and my fate even worse—maybe I’d have ended up in Guantánamo. Who knows?

  I looked at Father. If he had still been healthy, he would have easily read my mind and he would certainly have laughed, until tears rolled down his cheeks. “That would never have happened!” That’s what he would say. “You’re smart, but you don’t have the guts. You’re a scaredy-cat, and that’s why you didn’t go to Afghanistan. You’re intimidated by soldiers and police, although you like to act like you’re not even afraid of Hell.”

  Finally, Father died. On the second night after I came home, just before dawn prayers. He was sixty-three years old, almost sixty-four. He must have been quite pleased, since that was the same age as the Prophet reached. My mother was also pleased, because the last word she heard Father utter before he died was “Allah.”

  Mother said Father hadn’t made any sound at all for days nor had he moved. But, half an hour before he died, he began to moan again. He took short, gasping breaths. Mother, who had been with my grandfather and grandmother when they passed, knew that he had only a few minutes left. “You can smell it!” That’s what Mother said. I smelled it too—it was like baby being born. Mother placed a plate of ground coffee next to Father, I sprayed air freshener.

  Along with one of my uncles, we whispered the name of Allah into my Father’s ear. Finally, Father was able to say, “Allah … Allah … Allah.” After that, he died. My mother shed tears. My uncle closed Father’s eyes. My younger brother and sisters were with us. I called my wife, who had stayed behind in Jakarta.

  Believe it or not, I always thought of Father’s destiny as being linked to the fate of the Indonesian Nation. He was born one month after the Independence Proclamation and according to Chinese astrology, Father and the Republic of Indonesia had the same sign: the Rooster with the Fixed Element of Wood. Their fates would not be all that different.

  For example: on November 28, 1975, I was born. At the same time, Fretilin freed East Timor, and it was annexed by the Republic of Indonesia. Both of them—my father and Indonesia—had a new member of the family. After that, Father’s business efforts (and there were all different kinds) achieved success. Then, at the height of his prosper
ity, in 1998 Father suddenly went bankrupt. And Indonesia did too, didn’t it? Father had a stroke and his health never fully recovered. In 1999, he began to walk with a crutch. And that year Indonesia was led by Gus Dur, the president who walked with a cane.

  Now that father had died, would the Republic of Indonesia also meet its end? Truly, I was worried. But rather than thinking about that kind of thing, it was better for me to take care of Father’s funeral. He would be buried right next to his mother-in-law, my grandmother.

  From dust to dust. There were four gravediggers who needed to be paid. There were guests who needed to be greeted. There were relatives who needed to be informed. That’s how it was.

  Four days later, I headed back to Jakarta on a night bus. After a seven-hour journey I would arrive in Kampung Rambutan. I sat there, the AC humming above me. I reclined my seat. I was lost in thought for more than an hour.

  Then, the conductor approached. I fished around in my pants pocket for my wallet. The conductor stopped next to me and glanced in my direction. I looked up at him. He seemed startled, and after a moment greeted me, “How are you?”

  But, honestly, I didn’t recognize him.

  Before I had the chance to open my mouth, he continued, “My condolences for the loss of your father.”

  I nodded and said thank you. I went to pull some money out of my wallet, but he quickly waved it away. “There’s no need,” he said. Then he told me how a number of years ago he had a toothache. Medication hadn’t helped but the dentist didn’t want to pull his tooth until the pain had subsided. Finally, someone recommended that he go see this one kyai, and he went. The kyai gave him a drink: just plain water from the kitchen tap. Suddenly, his pain went away, and the doctor pulled his tooth.

  “That kyai was your father,” the conductor said.