Honesty

1

A couple of years ago, I, my brother B., and my girlfriend R. were working on a dance-drama together. We adapted a play by Pramoedya Ananta Toer into a three acts dance-drama. The title was Mangir. One scene in the second act was for me memorable.

The young leader of the city-state Mangir just realized that her beloved wife was actually the daughter of his arch-enemy, the king of the Mataram kingdom. Putri Pambayun, so was the name of the princess, was sent by her father to go to Mangir —disguised as a traveling dancer— to find the weakness of the undefeatable city-state. The king of Mataram, Panembahan Senopati, demanded a total power all over Java, and a small city-state (or is a village more adequate for it?) stood on his way. So fell the leader of Mangir to a traveling dancer in love, and they were married happily. Until the day Putri Pambayun confessed to her husband.

Baru Klinting, the second in the command chain, was suspicious from the beginning. Knowing this, he wanted to kill the princess and asked Wanabaya for his permission. The young leader confused, unable to decide. The princess begged for forgiveness and explained the reason why she confessed after some time. It was love, she said, a love of a wife to her husband. However, there was another love: love of a daughter for her father. She received a spy from Mataram recently that told her, the king of Mataram wanted to see his son in law and would like to bless the marriage. It was an invitation to the capital of the Mataram kingdom. Putri Pambayun wished to see the war ended, became a grateful daughter, and an honest wife. However, the honest truth is a beautiful flower with thorns. We long for it, but the thorns hurt as we grasp it.

One line was sung by the vocal ensemble: “To be one both in life and also in death.” What the princess decided was to follow her husband as proof of her loyalty to him. If the invitation were evidenced to be true, she would fulfill her duty to his father. This is done by bringing the leader of Mangir to the throne of Mataram. At the same time, she will be dutiful to her husband in honesty. Shall it was proved the other way, Wanabaya and Baru Klinting would lead the soldier of Mangir to war the kingdom in the capital to the dead. Perhaps so, she considered being a fulfillment of duty. She brought his husband to the capital, nevertheless, and she would follow her husband to the front line of the battle.

Mangir was a tragedy. An honest daughter was, in the end, banished by her own father, left to cry over the dead body of her beloved one among piles of bloody corpses around her. Would things be different if she chooses to remain silent instead? To live under a false name, far from her duty.

2

Sometimes I wish my body and mind are made of a crystal clear glass. I also want to have no secrets and nothing to be buried in the layers of my mind. I want to spare the explanations I have to give to my partner, and I want to live a life, which is haunted less by fear, guilt, or regrets. A crystal clear life. But is it a viable life?

3

There is one story I remember about a husband and a wife. I can neither recall the author of this story nor where I hear/read this story. The story goes like this. Once upon a time, live a husband and a wife. They have married for some years, and so far, they had a harmonious marriage life. Nothing was extreme in their relationship. Everything was going smoothly, and they were even never arguing with each other. After thirty years of living together, the husband realized something: his wife always locks something in a small box she placed beneath her clothes in the bottom drawer. The day he realized this, the little box kept coming and disturbing him.

“We have no secret,” he thought. “I know this lady for almost all my life. I have nothing to hide from her. I always believe that she has nothing to hide from me too. I know all of her friends, colleagues, and relatives; so does her mine. So what is it about this small box she locked with a key?”

The box with the key crept into his mind more often. He tried to guess what would be the thing his wife was keeping there. Jewelry that his wife bought secretly? “There is no point in hiding it since I never forbid her to buy some luxuries for her,” he thought. “Or letters? Secret letters?” at this moment, he stopped for some time. A lover?

He continued his observation and found something else. His wife would wake up early in the morning before the sun rises, went to the drawer, took the small box, and went outside of the room to the library. He found this out accidentally, as one day, he woke up because he wanted to go to the toilet, only to find that his wife was lying beside him. He saw a glimpse ray of light from the library in their house. He walked while trying not to make any noise, slowly approaching the opening of the door the library, and took a peek from there.

There she was, sitting with her back facing the door, doing something on the study desk they have in the library. The man could not get a clear view of what she was doing. But he found that to be odd for her. “Is she always wakes up at this hour?” He left for the toilet, but his eyes caught something on the desk: the small box. It was opened.

After that night, he tried to observe the behavior of his wife. He found out that his wife woke up precisely at a particular time, took the small box with her, and went to the library. One day he just could not take it anymore. During breakfast, he confronted his wife and asked her directly, “I want to know what you are doing early in the morning!” Her wife was surprised for a moment, looking at him with a confused face. After some time, she understood what her husband meant. She answered, “I went to the library.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Nothing much. I wrote my journal, and that was it.”

“What about the box?”

The wife looked at her husband with a questioning look. The man across the table just became a stranger that keeps asking her with a certain skepticism. “Which box do you mean?” she asked. “The box with the key and lock. The one you hide in the bottom drawer beneath your clothes,” he said. After he said that, he could see the face of her wife changed. He thought, “That's it. You can't hide it anymore. Don't think that I am a fool.”

“That box,” she answered slowly, “is nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?” her husband asked.

“It contains nothing. It is empty,” the wife answered again, regaining her composure.

“If it is empty, why then do you lock it? Don't think that you can hide something from me. I would be happy if you just say something to me if you're having a problem with me,” his voice rose.

“But, dear, I don't hide anything from you. The box is empty. It has a lock, and it can be locked, but that's it,” the wife answered. That woman came to her husband. She put her hands on the palm of her husband, and continued, “What is this? What is going on?”

The man started to confuse because of the situation. He could feel that his chest was about to burst. “Show me,” he said.

“What?”

“Show me the small box!”

“But...”

“Show me, I said!”

The wife was trembling. For years they have been married and never once that woman saw her husband so angry like this. “I will get it for you,” she said while going to the bedroom. Her husband could see her eyes. That man knew she almost cried. He made a fist and grasped it with the other hand.

Not long after came the wife. “Here,” that woman said. “Open it,” the woman put the small box on the table along with a key, “I promise you it is empty.” The husband did not say anything. He just took the key, put in the keyhole, turned the key. A clicking sound was heard. The man saw his wife's face for a moment, staring into her eyes. He opened the small box.

It was empty. The husband was confused. “But why...” that man could not continue. He saw the woman he loves was about to cry. He hugged his wife, and the woman moaned softly. “I told you it was empty, I am telling you the truth,” she said, trying to suppress her sobbing.

The husband looked on the table, on the opened small box. The wife was honest. That man wanted to ask more, why his wife keeps the little box and why did she went to the library with it, as the wife suddenly said, “I like that small box. I used to have one like that when I was a child, but I lost it. I went to the library, just write my journal because I could not sleep that good recently.” She continued crying.

The man hugged his wife tighter and kissed her forehead. He did not want to ask anything anymore.

4

One traveler took a rest on his journey. There he sat under a tree and prayed:

My Path Giver please give me an honest thought, so I can think clearly and solve every challenge I met on this journey and let the words I speak a reflection of my honest thought make my tongue speaks the right words at the right time and let my action works on what my tongue has spoken and let it be louder than what my mouth utters let my hands and feet took me to the direction You gave and it shall build what has been dreamed and thought let the three of them honest to each other true to each other: my thought, my words, and my action

You The Face of the Winds, bless me with a good life one that I find during the steps, I take on this road Bestow me eyes that can see through the veil of Maya Let me see the path of light not of the shadows The road that takes me to my destination The one that is filled with fellow travelers and helpful merchants not the one filled with robbers, killers, and swindlers

Dear Master of the Sun and the Moon Let me learn from Nature you laid on your Universe Let me learn from the patient trees waiting for the drop of water on a dry season How Nature operates on an absolute Law then grant me the wisdom to understand this Law and the ability to use it in modesty so I can learn how to keep myself warm during the winter and not to die of hunger and sickness when I cross a badland Taught me the knowledge of a hunting tiger which hunts no more than what is enough which cause neither destruction nor disharmonies

You Who Blows the Waves of the Seas and the Rivers Do strengthen my faith So I when your flood washes all who are standing I can surrender myself faithfully to the water and, in its embrace, flows along to where it ends.


Bremen, 17 August 2016 #essay #poetry #memoir #shortstory