6
Maria Dermoût
The Sirens
De sirenen
It was not a man but a woman who bought the proa, a beautiful proa, carved, gaily painted, on the stem the single, wide-open, ‘all-seeing’ eye, tall masts of bamboo, which could be lowered when the wind would not come, triangular sails of plaited leaves, brown and red, which could also be lowered, or could serve as an awning in storm or shower, or when there was too much sunlight or too much moonlight.
A proa with a broad bamboo wing on one side, and of shallow draught to get through the straits between the drowned lands, with here, there and everywhere small islands, one large island far away on the one side, and a great continent far away on the other. Where?
Once everything had formed part of that continent: the single large island, all the little islands, the drowned land in between, all one land. The Land of the Tiger had been its name, long ago.
The Land of the Tiger was there no more.
The sea was still there, as of old.
The woman did not buy the proa because she loved the sea. She did not love the sea. She was afraid of the sea.
She loved the great continent she had never seen but where she longed to go; she must! She should! That was the reason she had bought the proa. That was the reason she had left the one large island, her home.
Where along the river, on the edge of the woods, under the trees, stood the ‘longhouses’ (which belonged to the women), built on high stilts, with beautiful carved beams, with beautiful carved flights of steps leading upward.
Where every night torches were lit, exactly half an hour after midnight, and the men had to leave the women, going down the steps of the longhouses, down a dark path to their own quarters, some distance into the woods.
Where she, too, lived in a longhouse with her mother, who was the head of the family, of all the families in the longhouse. The women and children in the houses, the men on their own in the woods.
And she the eldest daughter!
Where life could have been good, waiting for her turn to buy, for so many sarongs and headcloths woven with gold or silver thread and weighed on the scales, a man she liked; waiting to bear children, preferably female children! Listening to the roaring waters, the tall rustling trees, and at half an hour after midnight the crackle of blazing torches, and the sound of the men’s voices coming through the dark, as they climbed down the stairs of the longhouses, complaining as they went. Waiting for her turn to become the head of the family, of all the families in the longhouse, after her mother had died.
But this woman had not awaited her turn, she had bought a proa with everything that went with it, and a young man for her shipmate; and a cat, a striped cat, yellow and black, for the mice. She was afraid of mice. And she had put to sea on the proa, with the man, with the cat, sailing through the straits between the drowned land and the myriad small islands, which she visited one after the other – with the one large island where she would never return to one side – to search for the great continent on the other. For days, for months, for years.
She never found the continent, the story goes.
In the marketplaces on the little islands the villagers drew in their breaths, and stared at one another.
The woman! A heavy, full sarong woven of real gold and silver threads, a black girdle around her waist, a cloth of black silk swathed about her breasts, her black hair combed tightly back and oiled; moving easily, her shoulders pulled back, looking straight ahead of her, and always in front.
Behind her came the man, beautifully dressed like herself, a straight sarong tied high up under the armpits, a headcloth, both rich with gold and silver, a present from the woman in all probability, a flower tucked behind his ear. He kept his distance, and carried a basket containing their provisions. He was a young man, younger than the woman, but not young enough to be her son. Too old for a son? Too young for a husband?
Who was he? What was he?
Relation? Shipmate? Lover? No one could tell from his appearance.
Beside the woman walked a large yellow and black striped cat, who would meow from time to time and stroke his flanks against her sarong until the woman said ‘Pssh!’ to him and he returned to his place at her side.
At the markets on those little islands the woman bought provisions. Fresh, clean water for the earthenware bowls on the proa; charcoal for cooking when at sea; oil for a lamp at night and food for herself, the man and the cat, rice and tubers, red peppers, coconuts and lots of lemons, dried meat and fish which would keep a long time, and sweetmeats, tobacco and perfume. She was fond, too, of buying flowers, flowering shrubs in pots, which lasted well, even on a boat. Most of all she liked the hibiscus, with its red flowers. The man wore a red hibiscus flower behind his ear.
He must be the woman’s lover!
For the cat she bought raw meat, still red with blood. Cats like blood. The woman paid in cloths of gold or silver thread, large and small.
Afterward she dealt out some sweetmeats and tobacco and stood talking with the villagers in the marketplaces on the little islands; about the weather and the wind and the straits and about the drowned land – she stared straight ahead of her – and … about the continent.
The villagers would nod; they had heard about it.
Some said they knew where it was. One man said he had been there.
But when the woman asked, ‘Where? Where?’ they pointed north and south and east and west, to the four silent Sheikhs at the corners of the earth, to all four at once.
‘Ah, bah,’ said the woman and shrugged her shoulders.
The young man and the cat stood there silent, the one behind her, the other at her side. They took no part in the conversation. They listened.
Was the young man the woman’s lover?
The young man was the woman’s lover.
It had come about like this.
Not all at once, not in the beginning. In the beginning the woman slept on her beautiful, painted wooden couch behind a matted sail, while the mate slept here and there in the proa, on a little mat.
The cat tried to find a place to sleep on the woman’s couch; sometimes she would allow it, not every night.
One day, when they had been sailing for a long time around the little islands, around the drowned land, without finding the continent, the woman called the shipmate and told him that he should share her couch at night. Then she would give him the trunk full of beautiful men’s clothes, the gold and silver sarongs and the headcloths; not only for him to wear on special occasions, for the market, but for keeps. He could weigh the clothes on the scales if he liked, to see their worth. And she would give him the flowerpots on the stern with the red-flowered hibiscus, for him to keep as his own. The man gazed at the woman as she spoke.
He had often gazed at her; the way she would squat on a mat, the way she would lie on the couch, the way she rose and walked away, the way she halted, paused; he had often gazed at the way she held her head and looked straight ahead of her as she was speaking.
He, too, had come from the one large island, but in his part there were no longhouses. There a woman walked and stood and held her head in quite a different way. There a woman did not look straight ahead of her and say what she pleased: that a man may come and share her couch at night. There a man said such things to a woman. Like that. And walked and stood and held his head, like that, and looked straight ahead of him.
The mate thought the woman beautiful, in her golden sarong, black girdle, black breastcloth, with black knotted hair, looking straight ahead of her, as she stood by the rail of the proa, the sky a nocturnal blue, the moon and stars behind her. And the sea under the white moonlight, he thought beautiful, too; and the horizon silvery, hazy, far away – was there land over there? Or was there no land over there? And the proa, too, he thought beautiful: the masts, the purple sails, all its carved woodwork; and the gold and silver clothes in the trunk as well, the sarongs and headcloths, and on the stern the flowerpots with the hibiscus and its red flowers. He was fond of red flowers. He was fond of all these things.
‘All right,’ he said to the woman, ‘as you wish.’
It was not the first time he had shared a woman’s couch. He liked doing so.
The mate, the young man, Tuangku So-and-So, or whatever his name might be, liked quite a number of things.
The only thing he did not like was the cat.
It was as though the woman noticed it.
During the day the cat would be lying somewhere on the proa in the sun, licking itself clean with a curly pink tongue, blinking its yellow eyes against the light, yawning, and dozing a little. But at night when the man and the woman were lying on the couch, the cat would be gone. Sometimes, absent-minded, the young man would ask: ‘Where is that cat?’ not because he cared; he did not. And the woman would say she had put the cat down in the hold where there were mice. He would catch them in the dark.
Sometimes, when it was a still, windless night, and the proa was quiet on its anchor stones, and the man and the woman quiet on their couch, they could hear the cat.
A dull thud like a cat jumping, peep, peep, and then nothing more but the sound of crunching, for a second, a second, no more.
The young man drew in his breath between his lips. ‘Ugh, cats love blood!’ he said and shuddered. ‘Yes,’ said the woman at his side, ‘cats love blood.’
Every day, in the late afternoon when work was finished, when the proa was washed down and scrubbed for the night, they would throw out their anchor somewhere on the lee side, near the drowned land, not so near that the proa could run aground, still out in the deep water. Then they washed and scrubbed themselves down to be clean for the night. They liked to be clean, all three of them. The cat washed and licked itself almost every moment of the day and night. He was always clean.
The woman hung up a sail to act as a screen and washed herself behind it with fresh water from a bowl; she always used oils and perfume and lemons, then she was clean, and fragrant too.
The young man took a daily plunge in the sea. He was a good swimmer. Every day the woman tried to restrain him, but he would not listen to her.
He laid aside his flower, his headcloth and his sarong, and dived into the sea over the railing of the proa.
With a few short, powerful strokes, he put the deep water, full of sharks who like blood – he knew that well enough! – behind him. He always said he swam faster and better than the sharks.
And then he was above the drowned land, it was not deep there. Vast plains under the water, covered with algae like grass, green and brown and very wet. And in these meadows cattle were grazing, as they should be.
In the meadows of the sea, the sea-cattle were grazing. They grazed in herds on the floor of the shallows, large and black, with tails like fishes, with round black heads, round black glimmering eyes, round mouths with protruding white teeth, with which they nibbled at the algae. They were mammals, with breasts like a woman’s with two long fins to the right and left, on which they would lean, as though they were arms, whenever they lifted themselves up. And this they often had to do, to breathe in air above the surface and to gaze out over the sea.
Not in the fierce sunlight. In the dusk, in mist, or at night. They looked like women, these sea-cattle. And they lowed.
Accompanied, muted, sometimes drowned by the noise of sea, waves and wind, they seemed to sing, these black women under the water – the Sirens, as they have been called from ancient days.
The young man went up to them, wading through the shallows, and stood at their sides, sat down among them. Or, if the water was very shallow, he would lie down on his back, in their midst.
They came nearer, forming a circle around him. They did not harm him, they were only curious. They lifted their bodies, their heads; they looked at him, and they sang to him.
After a while he came back, wading through the shallows, swimming very powerfully through the deep sea where the sharks lay in wait, and climbed back into the proa. He felt clean after his swim. He took a fresh sarong and headcloth, plucked himself a new, red flower.
And then the woman said: ‘Why do you swim in the sea every day? What is the point of it? Those sea-cattle will do you harm. One day they will kill you and drink your blood!’
The man laughed. ‘Since when did cattle drink blood? Cats like blood, and sharks.’ And drawing away from the woman, he gazed back upon the drowned meadows, green and brown under the water, and at the black, recumbent forms there, and pointing to them, he said: ‘Those creatures over there aren’t cows. They’re women.’
The woman stood there in that way of hers, her shoulders pulled back, her head held high, and looking straight ahead of her.
‘Ah bah! What beautiful women!’ she said scornfully.
‘I did not say they are beautiful,’ said the man, ‘no one could say that the black women under the water are beautiful.’ After a pause he added: ‘They can sing. Didn’t you ever hear it? If you were to listen carefully, you could hear it, too.’
‘Ah bah!’ said the woman. ‘Cows are cows, on land and under the sea. Cows do not sing, they low!’
The young man did not answer. He stood beside her in his gold and silver garments, the red flower behind his ear, looking beyond her and smiling.
He liked the green and brown meadows. And the black women. And their singing.
Every day, at dusk, as night began to fall, this scene would be repeated. The woman said this, the man said that, and at night they lay side by side on the couch.
The woman always wore – all the women of the longhouses did – a pin, as thin as a gold thread from her sarong. Nobody could see she was wearing it.
Not at once, gradually, the woman got into the habit of rising in the night from the man’s side, carefully!
He lay, as he always lay when asleep, flat on his back, his arms at his side to left and right, one hand hanging over the edge of the couch. He slept, sound and deep, and dreamed.
The woman walked, as she always walked, but very cautiously now, along the one plank that did not creak, to the trapdoor covering the hatch and opened it – the hinges were well-oiled – whispered, ‘Puss,’ and the cat – very cautiously too – came up from the hold and together they walked back, the woman on bare feet, the cat on velvet paws, along the plank that did not creak. The woman bent down, took the sleeper’s hand – he did not notice it – and pricked the tip of his finger with the little gold pin, so quickly, so carefully, he did not feel anything. She kept hold of the hand, as slowly, drop by drop, the blood started to flow from it.
‘Puss,’ she said, without moving her lips; and the cat opened his mouth and the drops of blood fell onto his tongue, not a drop was spilled, and the man did not feel a thing. After a time the blood stopped flowing. The woman dried the man’s hand gently and laid it on the couch at his side. He slept on; he had felt nothing.
The cat licked his mouth clean and the woman conducted him back to the hatchway, fastened down the trapdoor after him and went back to lie down beside the man on the couch again, so quietly that he did not notice a thing.
The same scene was repeated every day, in the evening twilight … during the night …
One day when the young man woke in the early morning and lifted himself up on the couch, he saw that the sun had coloured everything a rosy red: the woman and himself and the proa and the drowned land and the sea-cattle and a little island somewhere and the far horizon, and he stroked his hand over his eyes, his head.
‘I sometimes have very queer dreams,’ he said to the woman. ‘Not at all pleasant. Always the same dream, but I can’t remember what.’ He looked pale in the morning light. And the woman said, ‘What is the use of all this swimming in the sea? It’s making you ill, and one day …’ And the man said …
So now they said these things twice a day, at early dawn and late in the evening.
The young man loved both – the morning and the evening; the day, the long and lovely day … and the night? He no longer knew whether he loved the night.
In the past he had loved the night as well. And his dreams.
Her shipmate did not rise from the couch that morning; the woman had left it long before he woke. He pulled himself up again, stroked his hand once more across his eyes, his head, and said: ‘I remember now! I dreamed of the cat. All these nights I have been dreaming of the cat!’ He cursed savagely. ‘I don’t like dreaming of that wretched cat!’
He seemed to be talking to himself, not to the woman, who made no reply. He fell back on the couch; he looked pale and kept falling asleep. That day the woman left the proa riding at anchor. She managed to do all the work. She hauled up a sail to prevent the sun from annoying the man. She cooked and brought him food and drink. But he cared for neither food nor drink.
She asked if he would like her to wash him down? ‘No,’ he said. What he wanted was a clean sarong and headcloth. She fetched them and plucked a fresh, red hibiscus flower for him.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He looked at the flower, sniffed at it – hibiscus flowers have no scent – put it in his hair and fell asleep again. At sunset, in the dusk, he got up and leaned against the rail. He could still have managed, he thought, to walk in the meadows, under the water, in the vicinity of the sea-cattle, but he knew for sure that he could no longer swim faster and more powerfully than the sharks.
And so the woman no longer said this, the man that. Why should they? The man lay down again on the couch, closed his eyes, slept, dreamed.
In the evening, at night, he no longer dreamed of the cat. The woman no longer lay down at his side – why should she? She slept somewhere, anywhere, in the proa, on a mat; she did not get up in the night, she did not use her pin, she did not open the trapdoor for the cat. Why should she? The cat meowed a little, down there in the hold. The man did not hear it. The woman feigned not to hear it.
Never before had it been so dark – no moon, no stars and no oil left for the little lamp. The proa lay at anchor, the man lay silent on the couch, the woman silent on her mat, even the cat fell silent down in the hold, when late at night the wind rose, not a strong wind, not a storm or a typhoon or anything of that sort – just the wind – and the proa swayed a little, as if a strong current was drawing it through deep waters, so deep that the anchor stones could no longer reach the bottom. The woman squatted on her mat. What if they ran onto the submerged land and capsized and were drowned? What if they were thrown up on a high shore or on the rocks? But none of these things happened –
Slowly the proa was propelled forward towards some destination; its anchors afloat, all through the night. A slight shock. The proa lay still.
The woman got up. She walked, groping through the dark, to the couch to rouse the mate. She could not rouse him. She caught hold of the hand that lay at his side on the couch. The hand felt chill in her own hand. She placed it back where it had lain.
Suddenly the cat growled, again and again, down in the hold. ‘Be quiet!’ the woman whispered to herself and propped herself up against the couch to wait for the daylight. She waited for a long time. Why did it have to be so long? The mate did not move. Now and then the cat meowed, and every time the woman caught her breath.
At last, in the first murky grey light long before the dawn, the woman saw that the proa was near land, that on one side it was touching it, the broad bamboo wing on the other side lying on the water.
A steep shore, rocky and dark, and behind the rocks a forest – never before had she seen so dark a forest – and, in the distance, hills and further forest. A land! Dark. A dark continent.
The woman looked at the ship’s mate in the grey light. He was deathly pale. He was, in fact, dead. Down in the hold the cat meowed and growled so loud it was as if every now and then he screamed, and he kept jumping up against the trapdoor.
‘Quiet!’ the woman cried.
First of all, she washed herself; she combed her hair, brushed her teeth, powdered her body; she opened a trunk and got out her most beautiful golden sarong, her most beautiful breastcloth; she pulled sarong and breastcloth tight about her and put on a broad girdle. Then she walked to the couch, bent down and took her shipmate up in her arms – he was not very heavy – walked with him to the railing of the proa, not on the side of the continent, on the other side, near the drowned land. She drew herself up and, arching her body she threw him over the side, beyond the bamboo wing, into the meadows under the waters, the fields where the sea-cattle graze. Then she turned away.
The cat was now growling incessantly and jumping up incessantly at the trapdoor. The proa seemed to be creaking in all its joints.
‘Yes, yes, all right!’ said the woman. ‘I’m coming.’ And she opened the trapdoor; the cat came up out of the hold, lashing his tail to and fro. His burning yellow eyes took everything in at one glance: the woman, the proa, the drowned land on the one side, the sea-cattle – where the man was lying – the continent on the other side, the woods, the hills, the mountains, the forest all around, and again the woman – he growled and in one spring he leaped out of the proa and stood on the high rocky shore, a full-grown tiger, golden yellow with black stripes, terrible to behold.
The woman climbed, awkwardly, hampered by her golden sarong, first over the railing of the proa and then up the steep rocks, to join the animal, which was waiting for her there. Then they walked on together, the tiger first, the woman following, to the forests on the hills, to the mountains of the great continent, their destination …
The beautiful proa was left abandoned (even the mice deserted it) on the shore of the continent, until the storm wind should come and dash it to pieces.
Every night, in the light of the moon, in the light of the stars, perhaps even in the dark – but then no one can see – a young man, Tuangku So-and-So, or whatever his name may be, lies in a drowned meadow somewhere near Malaya.
In a gold and silver sarong, strung up high under the armpits like a taut sleeve around his body, a narrow gold and silver cloth wound tightly around his head, a red flower, a hibiscus flower, behind one ear.
He lies straight and quiet among the moist brown and green algae. Yet he is not drowned. Neither is he asleep. He lies quietly on his back, his arms at his sides.
He keeps his eyes closed, like one who is listening. He keeps his eyes open – then he is looking through the water. Around him, in a circle, are the black women, the Sirens, singing to him.
They are singing about something, about anything, about everything.
They are singing about a proa and a woman and a ship’s mate and a cat. They are singing about a great continent, somewhere, and about a tiger. But it is all an old story to him.
Sometimes he cannot help but laugh at what they are singing; but not always.
He lies very quiet, listening –
He is a lucky man, that Tuangku So-and-So, or whatever his name may be.
He will never grow old; he will never have to die again.
Not only does he like the songs of the Sirens, he understands the songs of the Sirens –
So the story goes.
Translated by Etty Kist and James Brockway