"The Dance, the Worship, and the Years of Silence," Part 3. (an unfinished story)
I was not prepared for their spite.
…And as I waited, I feared that my only answer would be: "the gods are too great; they could not care."
Thinking my only answer would be silence.
I had feared that the gods would be uninterested in my request:
I would be like a beggar tossed aside before he gains his audience with the king.
Or like a fly or a bee flicked away from the worktable of craftsman who has important efforts to attend to.
For this reason, I was not prepared for their spite.
For instead, it has been as though a craftsman laid aside his true work to capture the fly for torture (like an unruly boy!) and—as I am the fly—then to pluck off my wings and set me back down. Right now, I think all the eyes of the gods are upon me in fascination as I scramble about, wingless, on that table: My movement is now ineffectual and bounded by its four edges, lest I fall from that height.
Today, only my sister-in-law Kartika knows that I think these things, but she has surely kept me from falling off of that edge. As I was abed before childbearing—and in worse illness now—Kartika has been as much my prisoner as I have been hers. I remember the day she first told me that she knew the words that I was shouting in my heart:
“Sister, sister, in your fever-speak, you said strange things this night."
She was kneeling near my bed with the juice of a well-cooked fowl in a bowl. I had just come awake. She spooned the hot liquid into my thirsty mouth as she talked.
She went on like that, talking quickly:
“Sister, dear sister, I am afraid for the things you said. Afraid for others to hear them. This thing that has happened to you—and I am sorry for it: I could wish to take all your tears away from you—this thing is very grievous. But fighting the gods is full of danger."
I swallowed what I she gave me, and then asked, “What did I say?”
“You raved and cried out against the gods.”
“Against the gods?”
"Yes, yes.
It was like this:
‘They hate me, the gods, they hate me—they have swarmed over me to capture me. They are all little boys when the fathers turn their backs away.’ "
She looked down at the clear brown soup and added, “Little boys torturing a fowl in a snare, you said.”
“Oh.” I sank back down against the bedding.
“You know our people say that curses will come for the one who curses the gods. So I will not tell anyone you spoke these things. It was a fever-sleep, so of course, of course…"
She reached to me with a cool hand and brushed her fingers gently against my forehead.
“Thank you.” I said, raising my head to get another sip of soup.
“You have been the only one here, all this time?” I asked.
She paused and looked at me strangely, thought flickering behind her eyes in the lamplight.
So there was more, and worse.
Kartika went on, eyes lowered: “Auntie heard some.”
My mouth was dry: Kartika’s mother’s sister did not like me.
I squalked out, “What?”
“That the gods were less fit to be gods than your mother and father—that they should be torn down from their great seats—that your mother and father were greater, and they would have kept their word, if only the gods had not tricked you all."
“She heard me say this?” I asked.
“Yes!” said Kartika. Setting the bowl aside and sinking down to me, she grasped both my hands in hers. “This is very dangerous. Tell me what you meant! We will think together how to answer her when she speaks of it!"
I opened my mouth, then closed my mouth.
I looked at her and thought silently: “You have loved me as much as an elder sister, even in these five months, but I cannot possibly tell you this forbidden thing.”
Because if she knew what I meant, she would be in danger too.
Her eyes were dark and wet, I saw, filled with tears in the lamplight.
My gaze swooped downwards, away from hers.
Then my two eyes lit upon a pale blue silk cloth among my bed’s coverings. It was embellished with threads of orange and green, pink and gold and black, overlaid in an exquisite pattern of branches, flowers and a bird. The bird seemed about to take flight: it was wonderful. My thoughts were like the bird, too, paused as a small finch resting before lifting its wings to risk the currents of dangerous winds. I thought how an expert hand had crafted this scrap of beauty: The mind finds comfort strange in moments of pain.
Suddenly, I saw how to explain to Kartika without telling her:
“It were as though your mother-in-law handed you cloth and thread with which to embroider... but she tricked you. For when you show her your work after two sunsets, she turns the cloth over, and points to the messy, tangled back side, and said "This is the side I meant."
I flipped the bit of cloth over carelessly, pointed to it sharply, then flipped it back in place and looked up again.
Kartika was very still, and said, "I do not understand."
I looked down and fastened my eyes again to the embroidered bird, amid its delicate net of branches and leaves, stems and flowers. As my eyes were fastened, I now took my two hands and fastened them upon it also. With strength that defied my weakness of recent days, I grasped the weave, and tore it, hard.
In the quiet room, its sound was like a tree shattered by lightning in a forest, half of it falling away.
Kartika startled and spilled the soup.
I stared down as I grasped the two pieces of that needlecraft: Leaves and branches, twigs and thorns were shredded clean through.
But the path of the tear curved around the shape of the bird at the center.
The bird was preserved.
That the bird should not be destroyed was the most ordinary thing, indeed the likeliest thing to happen: The layers of thread there were thick upon one another.
But all I could could do was stare at the bird in my hand and think:
“Perhaps I also do not understand.”
The story began here: "...a husband who is kind / patient / does not fear a curse."
Previous installment here: With whom could I bargain…?
I’m getting inspiration from the story of a woman named Kartini who is something of a heroine to her native Indonesia.
(With her full titles, she was called “Raden Adjeng Kartini.”)
She once wrote, “Have I the right to break the hearts of those who have given me nothing but love and kindness my whole life long, and who have surrounded me with the tenderest care?” as she thought about how she yearned to diverge from the world of her parents and past traditions. (From “Letters of a Javanese Princess,” available free on gutenberg.org)
(That said, “Kartika" was not chosen to sound like “Kartini”… I wanted a word from Javanese or Sanskrit with a meaning that evoked radiance/light.
Also important: I still need to choose names for the men in the story! And that aunt!)