Once Upon A Time, There Was Mother and Radian

2021/10/02

This is an English translation for “Pada Suatu Hari, Ada Ibu dan Radian”, an Indonesian short story that appeared in the newspaper Kompas and writtein in 2007. // Ini terjemahan bahasa Indonesia untuk “Pada Suatu Hari, Ada Ibu dan Radian” yang terbit di Kompas dan ditulis pada tahun 2007. // Original text: here.

Trigger warning for domestic abuse and intrusive thoughts.

The sky turns red. A dragon dives down, sweeping away the stars and the sun from the sky. The tips of his wings ignite in flames. The fire spreads. A cyclone swirls. Fear spreads out into the air like the jet of ink from a squid. The knights in their shining armour are strewn across the field. A shriek of despair fills the sky. The creature’s wrath is beyond control. The buildings, the trees, the cap of a mountain in the distance, all torn asunder. Flattened to the ground. Every single one. Save for a single boy who stands unyielding. In his hand he holds a bow, only recently drawn. His face is dark as stones, but his eyes shine as lightning. It was from his bow that the arrow now piercing the dragon’s chest was discharged.

That dragon will die, Mother, he whispers. His eyes close. Asleep, perhaps, or trying to be. The drawing on the large paper, he holds close to his chest. The drawing filled with scribbles and thick, disjointed lines, drawn in anger. The drawing made with only three colours: red, black, grey.

I glide. Asleep, perhaps. No dreams, only darkness — I wake because of the silence. Strange, for dawns are often rowdy. No call for prayers this morning. No crowing from the roosters, neither the shouts from the vegetable seller or the drone of the milkman’s radio. The spot where Radian has slept is empty, but warm. He hasn’t been awake for long. I pull myself out of the room and find the boy in front of the half-opened bathroom door. He stands, far too straight, like a movement held back in the air. A ray of light brushes his small face.

Suddenly, cold air crawls on my back. The face, too pale even for the still blue morning. I walk closer, and there, behind the door, halfway open, lies my husband’s corpse. A single blade juts out of his chest. Blood soaks down his leg. The floor, formerly white, now covered in red. My world, suddenly black.

The creature was once alive. Even now it looked quite alive. Only when you touched it that you realised its flesh had turned cold. The hamster’s death caused quite a scene in class. Radian killed it. In front of his friends, shrieking in fear, he strangled the creature to death. The boy now seems numb, refusing to sit. He stands with his back to the wall at the edge of the teacher’s office. There are only the three of us here: Ms. Tina — the principal — myself, and Radian. Slowly, he comes closer to me, hugs me, then returns to his spot with his back to the wall. He seems a bit calmer — not scared, only sad.

We stare at him, Ms. Tina and I, then back at the hamster’s corpse on the table. If fate says otherwise, this morning it would be me lying dead on a table. I can still feel my husband’s fingers wrapped tightly on my neck. Like the hamster, I struggled. I fought. But the man was stronger. His anger I can smell from his alcohol-stained breath. Death crawled slowly up my back. My neck shuddered. My head nearly burst. Right before my consciousness faded, he abandoned me — leaving me on the floor, gasping for air that wouldn’t give me the mercy of returning. Then he left, just like that. When my vision returned, my heart fell. Radian was watching me from a dark edge of the room, soundlessly. His face was thick with fear. Tears were streaming down his face. I look at him again. Maybe he only wanted to know, what it was like to be strangled. The hamster had explained it to him, how close death was to taking his mother.

That night we slept next to each other though we did not hold each other. To be close was always enough; we never needed more than that. The light on the ceiling was dim, but enough to see the drawing that Radian had made before he lay down for the night.

A tree. A mansion. All black. A man dressed in black is hung on the tree, a single thick rope wrapped round his neck. His head slumps, too sharply, as if broken. Two black nails jut out of what should be eyes. When I asked Radian who the man was, he only said: a villain. A little boy stands underneath, carrying a large container. Popcorn, he said, pointing to the cotton-like lumps bursting out of it. Amidst the falling leaves, the boy watches the body of the man sways in the wind. His cheeks looks stuffed, perhaps by the popcorn he might be happily munching on. The overhead light shone past the paper in Radian’s hand, creating a circle of light on the head of the boy in the picture, and on the head of the boy who is my son. He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

The night was heavy, but moonlight was enough to light up the room. The woman in the mirror was silent, but the years written on her face, on her body, spoke volumes. I don’t recognise her. That face is not my face. Those eyes are not mine. Her body is far too thin for me. Her face was bruised and blue. Exhaustion, perhaps. Or despair. But her anger was clear, shadowing her like the dark wings of a crow, striking and clawing at her face, leaving deep scars behind.

A small hand touched her back. The woman in the mirror tried to smile. She whispered softly, are you hungry? The boy nodded. They walked hand in hand to the kitchen. She opened the fridge, stared for a moment, then took its content out one by one: egg, mushroom, tofu, sausage, beef, garlic, cheese, chilli, cabbage, spaghetti, a carton of milk… She put them all neatly on the table. Wordlessly, he picked up a pot, filled it with water, put it on the stove, turned the heat up on high. Wordlessly, he broke open an egg, added the whole thing — shells and all — into the pot. She cut down the spaghetti’s dry sticks, added them into the stove. She opened the milk carton and poured the whole content into the pot. She picked up a knife, 25 centimetres long, and diced the garlic into tiny bits, the cabbage into tiny pieces, the sausage into tiny slices. Steam filled the kitchen. She cut down mushrooms, tofu, beef, chilli, faster and faster each time. Sweat fell down as drops from her brow. Tears fell down as drops from her eyes. Soon, everything was blended together. There was not a single thing left to be cut down. Not a single thing left to be recognised.

The woman stopped, her breathing hard and irregular. She gazed at the knife in her hand. She gazed at the boy who was standing silently next to her. The boy shuffled away from her. He grabbed a handful of the pieces on the table and ate it, slowly. His eyes, full of pain, never left his mother.

If we die, where do we go? I raise my shoulders. I don’t know. Radian returns to his drawing. Do you love Father? Again, I shrug. I don’t know. What I do know, is that I love you. Radian smiles without raising his head. Do I love him? I don’t remember.

What I do remember: we were happy and we were young. I was happy. He was happy. We were happy with each other’s presence. In our happiness, we went to an island where the blue of the sky meets the blue of the ocean. In our happiness, we explored each other’s bodies on the shore of that island. I no longer know why we did it — making love on the shore, all it it did was smearing us with the smell of the sea and of sin — the smell that would not leave for a long long time.

He never said he loved me. I never said I loved him. But I carried his seed, and so we have to be married no matter the cost. His parents wanted to save face. My parents wanted to save face. I wanted to run. He wanted to run. Our parents forbade us from parting. God forbade us from parting. But why didn’t God forbid him from hitting me whenever he pleases? I fought him once. I bashed his nose until it bled. But the creature attacked my son. I ran from home. A heart attack maimed my father and returned me to my husband. God wanted me to stay. This is my body, devour it and savour it. I am a lamb to be sacrificed, but I do not understand what for. Do I love him?

The afternoon’s light fell on the table. Radian had finished his drawing. He turned it around and showed me.

An island in the middle of the ocean, a small boat leaving it. Two people on the boat: a woman, and her son. They smile. There is a house on the island, a square shape with square windows. Behind it there is a man with his hand up in the air. Above the house, twelve black birds fly. The house is covered in red tongues. Flames, Radian said. The man is clearly trapped. He screams with a small word balloon filled with exclamation marks: help me!!! If he dies, the birds will take him away, he said. Why is he left behind? I asked. Because he is evil, he said.

I live as if in a drama made for television, the leading woman who cries and begs after an endless string of torture. A single difference: this woman does not cry.

The beginning was simple. A feast. Green sky. Butterflies as large an umbrellas flying in the air. Orange grass. A mansion on the clouds. Girls with wings on their back and flowers on their head. Boys with antlers in all the colours of a rainbow, crowding around a grill. Someone holds a plate, another holds forks, another holds a glass of purple lemonade. Everything is fine, except for the feast at the centre. Four eyeballs. A slice of an ear, three slices of noses. Hands and feet, all their fingers included. A lump of red flesh with an arrow pointing towards it: a heart. Then, the whole head of a creature with eyes wide open and tongue sticking out. Radian said: it’s a dragon’s head.

The woman showed the picture to her husband at dinner. The school’s principal showed it to her this morning. Radian’s drawing. The man said nothing. He banged the table, picked up a plate and threw it. Right at her face. She held her breath. Pain shot up her head. She swallowed it. Anger clutched at her. She swallowed it. The sound of the broken plate rang in her ears. Her son left his room and stopped at the door, no longer puzzled when his father left.

Glass windows reflected the grim images. A brittle woman, a fragile child. The boy went back inside the room and returned with clean towel. Slowly, he dragged a chair for his mother. Slowly, he wiped the wound on the woman’s face.

I sit in a dark corner, fermenting hate with anger. I can feel his seed taking roots. Its strong branches finding a way out through each vein under my skin. Stronger, stronger. No, I’m not strong enough to swallow it.

Mother, I’m hungry. The boy was terrified. But the woman still walked towards the kitchen. She did not open the fridge, did not put a pot on the fire. She only picked up a knife and stood in front of the counter. She stood still for a long long time. Her eyes gazed ahead. Hollow. Then her hands started moving, slow cutting movement on things unseen. Things that might only exist in her head. Slow at first, then faster and faster. Sweat fell down as drops on her brow. Tears fell down as drops from her eyes. The boy did not dare approach. He only watched his mother’s shuddering back. Something was broken inside that woman, pieces by pieces. He no longer recognised her. I no longer recognised her.

That morning, we lay down next to each other on the floor, in front of the bathroom now smeared in blood, enveloping that man who was once alive. Yellow sunlight streamed from the window. Bright. Too bright to see the image that Radian has drawn in the minutes when I — I do not know how long — stayed still in the darkness. I looked at his eyes, but he averted his gaze. He spread out his drawing in front of me. I narrowed my eyes.

Rain. The woman and the boy walk hand in hand. Their eyes shine. Their lips are smiles on greyed-out faces. There is no sun, only lumps of dark clouds. One cloud floats close to the boy. On his shoulder, a bird perches. Its wings are spread out, ready to fly. The woman holds a knife. Big. Its tip covered by something that drips red. They walk hand in hand on a road that stretches from a vanishing point and widens at the bottom of the paper. To the left and right, lines of enormous tree bow to the centre, a canopy that shades and soothes the path. Black birds perch on the branches. Crows, said Radian. At the bottom of the paper, he wrote in wiggly capital letters:

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS MOTHER AND RADIAN.

There are only the two of us, Mother.