The sun was high in the sky and Kancil was wilting in the heat. Her head nodded forwards and she dozed. She was jerked back into wakefulness by a voice.
“Why did you come here?” Small Aunt was standing in front of her.
Kancil scrambled to bow before her as Kitchen Boy was doing.
“My dear, good Aunt. Your brother, the Bapak Thani, has sent us to beg that you be so kind as to spare a small portion of your highly esteemed jamu for the sake of the continued prosperity of the village and all its inhabitants,” she recited, allowing just enough of a whine to enter her voice to sound properly subservient.
She had practised her speech on the way from the village. Kitchen Boy had coached her with her local accent. The smattering of polite language was her own idea and she felt a little proud at how impressed he was. Now she raised her head ever so slightly to see what impression she had made on her aunt.
Small Aunt was wearing much the same expression as when they first met – the expression that made Kancil feel like a piece of inferior cloth. “I see you gave up on pretending to be mute,” Small Aunt said.
Kitchen Boy sat up and brushed the dirt off his knees. “Oh no,” he said. “With everyone else she’s as silent as a washing stone. I’m the only one who knows. It’s a pity really because she does a great impersonation of Citra and I’m the only one who gets to appreciate it.”
Kancil glared at Kitchen Boy. She had gone to all that trouble to win Small Aunt over with her polite language and he went and ruined it with his usual crassness. Her irritation turned to confusion when she saw that Small Aunt’s eyes were shining, then resentment as she realised that her own performance was part of the joke, that she was the only one taking this seriously. She swallowed her pride, reminding herself that she needed Small Aunt’s help to make Mother well again.
“Perhaps I misjudged you,” Small Aunt said to her. “At least you’ve chosen your friends wisely.” She nodded her head towards Kitchen Boy. “Does your mother know you’ve spoken to him?”
Kancil shook her head. “Mother is very sick,” she said. “She needs your jamu.”
Small Aunt was immediately serious, quizzing Kancil about Mother’s symptoms and Kitchen Boy about the treatment he had given her. “I’ll do what I can,” she said, “but I can’t imagine my oaf of a brother sent you to get jamu for my sister. What does he want?”
Kitchen Boy explained that because Kancil wanted to ask Small Aunt about the scoundrel he had come up with the idea of getting Big Uncle to send them for jamu for Citra.
“Why do you want to know about the scoundrel?” Small Aunt asked Kancil.
Kancil shrugged. “I don’t really know,” she said. “It seemed important for some reason but I don’t think it is now. I just need jamu to cure Mother.” She was feeling terribly tired all of a sudden. All she could think about was how lifeless Mother had looked propped up in their rickety shack that morning. The scoundrel, the temple treasure, they weren’t important. And Agus must wait, she told herself.
“Well,” said Small Aunt, “there’s no need for me to tell you about the scoundrel then. I’ll go and get your jamu and you can be on your way.”
“Actually,” said Kitchen Boy, “I’d quite like to know about him.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody who knows anything wants to talk about him and that’s made me curious,” he said.
“Bring four loads of firewood to the orchard gate and I will bring you jamu and the truth,” said Small Aunt. Then she stood up and walked briskly towards the orchard.
“Come on,” Kitchen Boy said to Kancil, “I know a place upstream where broken trees wash up after the big rains. She didn’t say it had to be dry firewood.”
Kancil and Kitchen Boy stacked the last of the logs against the fence as the rain started falling. They scurried under the shelter of the banyan tree, where they found Small Aunt waiting for them. As well as the promised jamu she had brought a pot of hot ginger tea, which she poured into small clay cups.
“Tell me what you know about the scoundrel,” said Small Aunt.
That didn’t seem very fair, Kancil thought. Her job was to collect firewood – it was Small Aunt who was supposed to be doing the storytelling. But she wasn’t in a position to argue. “I heard you mention him once,” she said slowly, “and Big Uncle said something about rebuilding after … well, I don’t know what, but it seemed to have something to do with the scoundrel. And then one of the girls at the washing pool said that Mother was supposed to marry someone. She didn’t say the scoundrel but I think that’s who she was talking about. She said Mother ran away from the village because she knew something. That’s all I know.”
“You have been listening carefully, haven’t you?” said Small Aunt, placing her empty cup on the ground and motioning for Kancil to refill it. Kitchen Boy gulped down the last of his tea and dived to place his cup under the teapot in Kancil’s hands.
“Manners, Tiger Boy,” said Small Aunt gently. Kancil bristled at how Kitchen Boy got away with behaviour that would earn her a slap at the very least. Up to a point it was to be expected – he was a boy after all – but Small Aunt treated him like a pet to be indulged, rather than a real boy, and at Big Uncle’s house he was able to come and go as he pleased. It almost felt as though people were a little afraid of him. Everyone except Bibi, of course. She was afraid of nobody.
Small Aunt took a sip of tea and cleared her throat. “There was a man – well, a boy really – whom your mother was promised to marry,” she said. “Nobody knew he was the scoundrel then of course, though I must say I never thought much of him. Your mother certainly didn’t run away because she knew something, though. She left because she met your father and he filled her head with all sorts of nonsense about the sea.”
Kancil glanced nervously at Kitchen Boy. Perhaps she should have let Small Aunt know that her Sunda origins were still a secret. Kitchen Boy was lying on his back with his eyes half-closed. He didn’t seem to be paying much attention.
“The scoundrel did a terrible thing. He brought a curse on the village and he was banished. That’s all there is to tell.”
Kitchen Boy was sitting up straight in an instant. “That was not four loads of firewood worth of truth,” he said. Kancil was glad now that he could get away with saying the things he did.
“All right,” Small Aunt sighed. She held out her cup for more tea. “It began with a rumour about a place in the forest that rang with laughter all night. The scoundrel and his friends had comfortable lives – they were the sons of important men in the village, so their duties were light. At night when everybody else fell asleep in exhaustion, they had energy to burn and curiosity about the forest laughter.
“One thing led to another,” she continued. “At first they dared each other to creep further and further into the forest. When they found the bandits’ gambling den, they kept their distance, watching and listening, learning the rules of the strange dice games they saw being played in the firelight. Soon they were playing their own games in a different part of the forest.
“The scoundrel was a clever dice player and eventually his friends grew tired of losing to him so they found other things to do. But the scoundrel wanted to keep playing. One night I saw him venture further into the forest and enter the bandits’ circle of firelight and laughter.”
Kancil couldn’t help herself. “You were in the forest at night?” she gasped.
“Yes,” Small Aunt snapped. “What of it? I was apprenticed to the jamu maker. Some jamu ingredients are more potent if they are gathered at night. Now do you want to know about the scoundrel or not?”
Kancil nodded meekly.
“The scoundrel was a good gambler but he wasn’t good enough to beat the Sunda bandits.” She shot Kancil a meaningful look. Out of the corner of her eye, Kancil saw Kitchen Boy stir. He was staring at her, his lips curling into a victorious grin.
Small Aunt continued, unaware of the secret she had just revealed. “Things started going missing, jewellery mostly. At first people blamed mischievous spirits but the spirits don’t keep what they steal – they might break things or put them back in a different place but they always return them. So people started blaming travellers. There were many of them in the village in those days; the pilgrims who came to visit the forest temples and the traders who followed them, selling them things they didn’t know they needed. Your father was one of those.
“So it wasn’t a good time to be a travelling merchant – nobody would ever accuse a pilgrim. Yet, even when the less trustworthy traders had been hounded out of the village and those remaining were being watched like snakes, the thefts continued.
“Finally, when there was no more gold or silver in the village, the unthinkable happened – the forest temples were plundered. It took the priests a while to realise what was happening because the precious talismans were kept hidden and only brought out for special ceremonies. The golden holy water bowl was the only one that was used regularly and one day, after a ceremony, it vanished. The priests checked the other treasures’ hiding places and discovered the awful truth.
“The ceremony had been to appease the mountain, Mbah Merapi, who had been rumbling and smoking for some time. As soon as the thefts were discovered, the juru kunci went straight to his secret place to meditate, hoping that he could placate Mbah Merapi. On his way back through the forest he saw the scoundrel handing the golden bowl over to the bandit gang. The juru kunci had more sense than to confront them. He ran all the way back to the village to alert the elders.
“The scoundrel was caught as he tried to sneak back into the village but it was too late to search the forest for the bandits and their stolen treasure. Mbah Merapi had warned the juru kunci that he would cleanse the forest of the bandit curse. So if we valued our lives, we should leave immediately in case he had to chase the curse through the village with his mountain fire.
“So that’s the truth about the scoundrel, the lost treasure and the Sunda bandits,” said Small Aunt, “and why is my tea cup empty?”
“What happened to the scoundrel?” Kancil asked as she filled Small Aunt’s cup with the last of the tea.
“He offered himself as a sacrifice to Mbah Merapi and was last seen walking towards the mountain as everybody else was running away. His poor father died of shame,” said Small Aunt.
“Did he have any other family?” asked Kitchen Boy. He had a look on his face like he was trying to work out the connections in a puzzle.
Small Aunt looked at him with a wry smile. “We’ve been better at washing away the past than I thought,” she said. “Do you really not know?”
Kitchen Boy shook his head.
“Bibi was his mother and Ida was his sister. She was only a baby at the time, she wouldn’t remember him at all. I wonder if she even knows.”
Kancil’s jaw dropped. Bibi was Ida’s mother?