That night he didn’t go home. He wanted to be alone with the tigers in his head. He went to the surau close to midnight and lay there, seeing tigers on the ceiling, in the imam’s niche, under the drum stand — everywhere. Since he was a little boy he had been sleeping in the surau or at the night-watch post, possibly spending more time in these places than at his own home. That night he dreamt about a genie princess emerging from a spring, asking him to marry her, and the princess looked like Maharani. When he woke up the next morning, a white tiger lay beside him. That was how it began.
Margio himself could never explain why he was so angry with Komar bin Syueb. To him it was like a debt that he needed to collect. The debt had grown over time until it weighed painfully upon him. Perhaps the only thing that prevented his rage boiling over into violence was his immeasurable love for his mother and sister. Komar was their pillar, no matter how rotten and unsteady that pillar might be, however skewed it was. Margio wanted to finish him off, and he thought the day would come eventually, it was simply a matter of time, but it never happened. Throughout his life, he suffered most from suppressing his yearnings, hoping like a typical villager that everything would simply get better without his needing to do a thing, and reminding himself that the method he wanted to use could only lead to disaster.
He always likened himself to the demigod Kresna, who at the height of his merciless rage could turn into the giant Brahala, with his thousand heads, thousand hands, and immeasurable fury. No one could stop him, not even the gods. The great praiseworthy thing about Kresna, the King — for that was what Margio called him — was that only once in a while, and only briefly, did he let the monster out. Later on, Margio would think there was something inside of him that wanted to get out when his rage began to smolder, and his job was to restrain it, to keep it inside, because everything that happens has already been written down in the stories of the gods. No matter how great his anger, he had to suffer it, just as Kresna did before him.
For years, he was able to contain himself. He was a model of restraint until the night his little sister Marian died. Then he lost control and told Mameh that he wanted to kill Komar bin Syueb. For him, Marian’s death was the greatest tragedy imaginable in their household, and he no longer wanted to suppress his brutal rage, a rage that he had often released on the rumps of boars during hunting season. Every time he goaded a boar with his spear, piercing it just enough to make the animal fear for its life, he thought of Komar bin Syueb beneath the spearpoint. Now he wanted to impale the old man for real and he couldn’t keep it to himself; he had to vent his anger somehow and he did it in words, talking to Mameh.
Marian died a week before the circus tent went up in the village. A scrawny newborn lacking milk, she spent her short life half-dead. She didn’t have a fever, but was clearly about to die. Death swarmed around her like flies over a carcass, and everyone understood what was happening. They could see it in her eyes. Every time Margio looked at her, his grief was compounded by the sorrow in his mother’s face. Komar seemed to be the only one who didn’t care. He looked at the baby as if she were dirt, and people swore he never touched her. There were no playful games of peek-a-boo between this man and his daughter. The day came when Komar was supposed to shave her head, arrange a small ritual feast to assure her good luck, and of course give her a beautiful name, but he did no such thing.
Margio himself slaughtered Komar’s fowl, without asking for permission, and joined a small ritual feast with Mameh and their mother. He grabbed his father’s shaving equipment, cursing the old barber, while the baby, who couldn’t cry, lay crumpled on its mother’s lap. As for a name, Komar didn’t make any suggestions. He chose to disappear, and their mother eventually proffered a single name — with no middle or family name attached.
“Marian.”
When the end came, there was one source of comfort: the girl died with a name and with her head shaved. Margio managed to carve the name on her tiny tombstone, which stood under a frangipani tree that Mameh planted, where the aroma of ylang-ylang petals lingered. The baby’s death fired Margio’s hatred for his father; he thought that if he were ever to kill Komar, now was the time.
Komar bin Syueb came home just before dawn, not long after Marian’s burial, neither guilt nor surliness evident in his face. He might have slept at the brothel or the garbage dump; no one cared. No one greeted him, neither his family nor the neighbors. He was a half-dead, senile old man with no control over himself, entering the house without thinking to ask why everyone was sad. Yet he must have been aware of Marian’s death, for it was the ritual meal that brought him home. He sat in the kitchen and shamelessly ate the leftover chicken, and then went to sleep, snoring horribly. Eventually Margio couldn’t stand it any more. He snatched up a pan, the only pan they had, and slammed it on the floor, waking Komar with a great explosive crash.
With this action, the truce they had maintained for so many years came to an end. Komar understood that the boy had reached the limit of his patience. After that, the old man withdrew into his shell, spending long hours stock-still in bed, pretending to be oblivious to everything. It was the first time Margio had let out his anger — he had never dared before— and now his father understood what a furious cobra his son kept in his belly. Actually, Margio was as surprised as anyone by his outburst, which had set everything in motion; he had to ready himself. He was twenty, and he had absolutely nothing to fear from his fifty-year-old father. The old man, perpetually in bed, understood the limits age had set, grasping with a melancholy resignation the fact that Margio was no longer a young boy, but a man, against whom he had no means of defense.
In the days that followed, they kept their distance, preparing for battle and at the same time evading it. Komar bin Syueb was now so feeble and abstracted that Margio, seeing his father’s helplessness, willed himself not to act too soon, holding his hatred in check, though it boiled white-hot right up until the morning he met his white tiger. His Brahala.
Mameh saw the tigress briefly, slipping out of Margio as easily as the boy might slip out of a shirt and pants. She recoiled, convinced the beast would pounce, and couldn’t move for fear until it returned to its lair, deep inside Margio’s chest. That was the evening when Margio came home to find their father slaughtering chickens. Komar asked no one for help, but clamped their feet and wings with his sandals, one hand gripping the poor chicken’s head, the other swinging the kitchen knife. Slash, slash, he cut off their heads one by one, and threw the remains into the cage, their wings flapping to hold off the clutch of death.
“What’s he up to?” Margio asked Mameh, without Komar hearing.
“He’s planning a ceremonial meal for Marian’s seventh day.”
Perhaps it was this that drove the tiger out into the open. Margio could not tolerate the damned old man doing anything nice for the dead girl, whom he had completely ignored while she was alive. Margio had come to believe that Komar had killed his youngest, or had at least intentionally let her die. And now the accursed Komar was planning to arrange a seventh-day ceremony. Rot in hell, Margio thought, sure the baby’s soul would accept nothing from this man. That was when Mameh caught sight of a reddish, spectral face, apparently covered in fur, a yellowish glint in its eyes. She heard an echoing roar and saw a white shadow dance in its pupils. She almost screamed before it disappeared again, settled behind a cage door that seemed to be shut tight. Margio had confined it, suppressed its savagery.