After the episode with the pan, Komar incarcerated himself in his bedroom, went out only to go to his barbershop, and returned to nestle in bed. Those were the moments when he thought Margio would attack, if not actually kill him. The boy had suddenly grown terrifying. Komar found himself weighing up his son’s statistics, his present age, height, weight, as if Margio were a prizefighter, and worst of all was the possibility that he had inherited that damned tiger. The old man was wise enough not to worsen the friction between them. Margio was no longer the meek and submissive lad, sitting quietly in a corner of the house or leaving without a word. He could handle himself, and Komar bin Syueb knew better than to test those young muscles.
Later, Mameh saw her father leave his room, looking sweet as pie. No longer his old talkative self, Komar addressed himself to the chores he had often neglected. He took the palm leaf broom and began sweeping the floor, over and over, even though it was clean, and in the morning and afternoon he filled up the tub for them to wash. The next day, Mameh lost more of her regular tasks as, out of the blue, he deigned to wash their clothes. Mameh wanted to stop all this sweetness, annoyed that her father should have any energy left after his stint at the barbershop. He should have been tired out on his return, but he didn’t seem to care. He ignored Mameh and left her with almost nothing to do.
She came to understand his intentions when she noticed the man himself slaughtering the chickens for Marian’s seventh-day ritual. She only had to look at him to grasp the truth, as if a certain fate were written on his forehead. He was trying in vain to make peace with them, to erase the rancid traces that went a long way back. It was a vain effort. No one was moved by this overflow of questionable kindness. It was sad, too, because everybody felt it was too late for him to start again.
Margio was the least forgiving. His father’s meekness was fuel to his son’s hatred, which burned brighter than ever the minute the old man’s intentions became clear. Don’t think I’ll forgive you, Margio thought. He left the house, unwilling to help with whatever Komar was doing, and wandered around various places, kicking the walls of the nightwatch post, drinking at Agus Sofyan’s stall, or hurling coconuts in the abandoned plantation, while his father cleaned the chickens by himself, plucking their feathers, carrying the bodies to the kitchen, boiling and frying them, and cooking rice as well. Before dusk he visited the neighbors, inviting them to come after the Isha prayer, to gather together and read the Yassin, for the comfort of Marian’s soul.
Margio returned after the neighbors had left, and the mats were still spread out. Up till then everything had been handled by Komar bin Syueb alone. Neither Mameh nor her mother had lifted a finger. Komar told Margio to eat — there was fried chicken and rice and potato stew — but Margio didn’t want to touch it. He passed through the kitchen and went into his bedroom, came out again, went to the bathroom to piss and then stepped onto the terrace and stood under a lantern. Mameh came out to coax him to eat, but Margio’s only response was to light a cigarette.
In the dim light, Mameh saw the increasingly luminous sheen and the yellow glint in his eyes. She still remembered how Margio had wanted to kill Komar. His eyes shone brilliantly with sharp, piercing rays, and Mameh thought that his stare alone could kill Komar bin Syueb. But she could see the boy’s suffering, too. Sweet Margio was at war with evil Margio, and it wouldn’t end until his father’s life was over. Mameh could see he was exhausted from fighting himself. But Komar bin Syueb would not die at Margio’s hands or from the fangs of his pet tiger. That night, after flicking his cigarette butt into the yard, Margio said to Mameh, “I’m leaving” He added, “Otherwise I’ll end up killing that man.”
Mameh didn’t take his words seriously. To her, he seemed to be saying, “I want to leave.” In truth, he had gone long ago. These last few years, Margio had clearly grown unhappy at home, and his true permanent residence had become the nightwatch hut and the surau. He might not come back again to the family house, but he would still be found at his usual places. Mameh later saw how wrong she had been.
One day, on a morning like any other, they suddenly lost Margio. His friends were the first to realize he had gone. They hadn’t seen him all day. Someone said he’d been at the circus, but that was its last night in the village, and the whole crew had packed up and left, and no one knew where they were heading. The entire village was certain that one of the circus girls had lured Margio into joining them. Everyone was sure he would return to his birthplace and his true love, who they felt confident was Anwar Sadat’s daughter Maharani. Eventually, when some of his friends dropped by the house to ask after him, Mameh realized Margio really had run away.
His disappearance made a lot of people sad, particularly Major Sadrah, who was all set to kill some boars; and also Komar bin Syueb, it seemed. For a week he tried to ignore his eldest child’s absence, returning to a familiar routine, feeding the remaining chickens and the three pairs of rabbits. Every morning Komar took out his old bicycle, worn thin with rust, its chain creaking, and like most bikes in the village without brakes or lights. Komar went to the market to gather rotten carrots and cabbages from the vegetable vendors’ garbage, and returned home after stopping by the rice mill to get some bran. All this went to his animals. The bran had to be mixed with warm water, stirred and served in several coconut leaves to prevent the chickens from getting in each other’s way, while the rotten cabbages and carrots would simply be thrown into the rabbit hutch. Komar busied himself, especially with his extra chores, to make it seem as if he didn’t care about Margio’s disappearance. But Mameh knew how he really felt.
One morning Komar asked, “Is Margio back yet?”
“Not yet,” Mameh said quietly. “Believe me, he’ll be back when it’s time for him to get married.”
This was no comfort to Komar, and soon his health declined with the onslaught of various illnesses. The sense of loss he felt was severe; he was back to spending whole days in bed, became dreadfully thin, and muttered in delirium. He gave up on cutting hair, and instead trimmed away at his own soul, snip by snip. Komar complained about a nail inside his stomach, later verified when he vomited blood. His skin turned blue and his body swelled. Mameh went to fetch a hospital orderly, who told her to drag him to the hospital. Mameh called on her mother’s two younger brothers, who carried Komar on a stretcher. He had more diseases than the doctors had time to discuss, and was left to sleep in a cold and haunted ward.
His wife didn’t want to take care of him in his final decline, and Mameh had to shoulder the burden. She could see the final moment was near. As the ylang-ylang rapidly blossomed, so did the champak, and ravens cawed in the distance. After two days in the hospital, Komar asked to be taken home and said firmly to Mameh, “Don’t call for any more doctors. I’m healthy enough to wait for my grave to be dug.”
That was when Komar could still talk. A morning came when he couldn’t open his mouth anymore. It shut in defiance of its master, his jaws unbelievably stiff. This had happened before, healing only after a long series of massages from a shaman who rubbed his neck and toes with onion juice. This time Mameh didn’t know whether Komar would ever open his mouth again. Three shamans tried unsuccessfully to knead his jaws back to life. It was an all-too-obvious omen of his approaching death. Komar suffered greatly, rolled about on his mattress, smacked his cheeks, clawed at his mouth, adding his own tortures to the pains that wracked his body. He couldn’t eat unless the food was turned to pulp. Mameh had to feed him vegetable gruel, which Komar would push in with his index finger, making himself cough, slobbering on his mattress. Soon his hands couldn’t move either, as if the nerves had been cut. Mameh had to feed him sweet tea, as there wasn’t much that Komar could eat. Within a few days his shrunken frame resembled a quivering house lizard.