THE KING OF TOBONG

The stage was dark and empty. All the ketoprak players were already back in their rooms hours ago. Diman could not catch a single murmur. Just silence.

Usually after the show was over, they spent time chatting or joking with each other. Maybe they’re already asleep, thought Diman. Sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor, he still wore his stage costume, a king’s outfit. Tonight they had performed Setyawati Obong, and, as usual in that drama, he had played King Jogorojo.

He took off his crown and set it on the floor beside him. Under the spotlights, that crown always glittered with golden sparks. But now it was hard to imagine it as a king’s crown.

He started to feel a bit sad. Maybe they are tired of chatting and joking tonight because they have all gotten tired of this life, Diman thought again. He lifted his eyes and gazed out, but could see nothing but darkness.

The show tonight was much like all the previous nights. Only a few people came to see their performance. Maybe fifteen, seventeen. They didn’t even fill a quarter of the hall. If just 50 people would come to the show, I’d be damn satisfied, Diman said to himself.

Diman let himself reminisce about the heyday of his lifetime career as an actor and singer performing ketoprak, as he took a deep drag off his kretek. What tremendous years those were, he thought. As he stared dreamily off somewhere in the distance, scene after scene of his glory days in the 1970s played out before his eyes. Though almost three decades had passed, his remembrances were always as fresh as if he had staged them yesterday.

In those years Diman and his itinerant ketoprak troupe, Sekar Budaya — he was a member for more than 25 years — traveled from city to city around East and Central Java performing. Wherever they stopped, people enthusiastically welcomed them and flocked to see their show.

Diman remembered, feeling very once-upon-a-time-ish, in 1978 Sekar Budaya staged live performances 30 days in a row on the outskirts of the city of Surabaya. Every night almost a thousand ardent followers came to the stage, the tobong, to see them.

And it wasn’t just the public performances. Sekar Budaya was often invited to perform their shows for private patrons. One day a wealthy merchant from Tuban hired them to stage a drama, the love story of Arjuna and Dewi Subadra, for his daughter’s wedding. The merchant was so pleased he paid the troupe 15 million rupiah, a splendid sum, a king’s ransom, for a single performance in those days.

Those successes made Diman famous. Because of his handsome figure and his charisma, Sekar Budaya’s manager almost always gave him the role of king, or knight or even a god. And Diman always performed perfectly, beautifully. enchanting people to forget it was only a role, only a play.

Money was incredibly easy to come by then and women lined up for his attentions.

Just yesterday he and Tarno were thinking back on the women of their yesterdays. “You had a damn good-looking face, Diman. That’s why they wanted you so badly,” Tarno said.

Diman grinned. “Yeah, I was once a good-looking guy. But now I’m nothing but old, poor and pathetically lonely. No woman wants me anymore. Those women kept me so crazy busy, I forgot to get serious and marry one of them, eh?” Diman said lightly, the ghost of a leering smile playing on his wrinkled lips.

Tarno blinked and smiled back. “Look at the bright side. At least you still have Wulan around, haven’t you?” he teased.

Diman grinned again but said nothing. Tarno was right. At least he had Wulan. Wulan was a kind person who always paid him great attention and showed him how much she cared. Some said she had dedicated her life to Sekar Budaya because of her love for Diman. And Diman knew it to be true.

He knew it because he could see it sometimes when he looked her in the eyes. He thanked her for that. He always wanted to be good and gentle toward her and to his credit he was. But that was all he could do. He definitely could not marry her, seeing as Wulan was a transsexual.

***

Diman watched the dangdut show. One female singer wearing a second-skin metallic outfit swayed her hips back and forth provocatively as she sang. The crowd applauded madly. A man clambered up to the stage.

Waving a wad of money in his right hand, he approached the singer and started to dance with her. In the middle of the song he started peeling off the bills one by one and handing them over.

Diman fixed his eyes on them. He knew well those blue bills the man was flicking through. He counted twenty times fifty thousand.

“Look,” he said hoarsely to Tarno, “he’s already handed her a million and he’s still giving her more. I bet he’s got two million in his hand. It’s crazy!”

Tarno kept staring. The song was now over. The singer thanked her benefactor with a lusty sweet smile crossing her red sparkling lips. The man turn to step down from the stage, his face lit with pride. Another female singer came forward and started to sing. Diman licked his dry lips as he watched another man jump to the stage, another hand full of money.

“How lucky they are, those singers. They’re sure to get millions tonight,” Tarno sighed recalling their pay for the show two days before. Only five thousand rupiah!

“Well, now people love dangdut. This is their time,” murmured Diman.

“Yes. Look at this crowd — like our golden days, isn’t it?” Tarno said. Over the past eight years the number of people coming to see their show was decreasingly drastically. Yesterday less than thirty people came to watch. “Our time has already long gone. People don’t want us anymore,” added Tarno bitterly.

The two old men shared some silence on the wooden bench under the spreading Poinciana tree. From that high ground they had a better view of the stage and the crowd below. The night crawled toward midnight and the dangdut show continued to allure.

“I wonder if one day we might get the chance to go abroad,” Tarno said out of the blue.

“Abroad?”

“Yes. To the white people’s countries. I know they love our traditions. So I’m sure they would welcome our show. And the pay wouldn’t be bad either.”

“Really? It sounds terrific.”

“Sure it does.”

“If only I could go there before I die. I wish I could capture the feeling of those glory days before my last breath. But if we go there, would we build the tobong?” Diman asked.

“I doubt it. We’ll play inside in a theater building, and sleep in a hotel, I bet.”

They fell silent again. Their minds filled with rhapsodies about putting on their show abroad.

Diman rose. “I’m heading home. I’m tired,” he said.

“Yeah, me too,” answered his friend.

***

Diman stood on a stage, has back straight with pride, as the show ended. That night he had played his role perfectly once more, this time as King Jayabaya. He looked down at the crowd. Everyone was rising from their seats and giving a long, clamorous applause.

They were all white people with blond hair and blue eyes. Diman felt tremendously pleased. At last, he was once more reborn as a famous player. It was he, the one who played the role of king so well, just like he had long ago.

Deep in sleep, Diman smiled happily. It was the best dream he had ever had.

Note :
Tobong: a temporary wooden stage built for ketoprak or similar popular outdoor performances. Usually below the stage there are several tiny cabins, about 2 meters square and only 1.5 meters high, where the actors await their turn on the stage above.
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Penulis :  Octaviana Dina
dimuat dalam The Jakarta Post edisi Minggu, 21 September 2008

GRANDPA’S THINGS

The bell rang. Grandpa rose from his favorite chair and walked hurriedly out to the gate.

“”Be careful, Father. Just slow down, there’s no need to hurry,”” my mother warned him.

Sometimes it felt funny to see how she treated my grandfather. She acted like a protective mother to her 5-year-old son. She always kept an eye on him: on what he could eat and he could not, and his medication.

Grandpa suffered severe high blood pressure since the age of 38. Over four decades he had to take medicine every day. One pill per day.

To prevent further effects of high-blood-pressure syndrome, my late grandmother then put a strict diet into effect for him. It was almost like vegetarian diet; a lot of vegetables and very little meat, especially red meat.

I knew Grandpa disliked the diet. He once told me that he could hardly stand the diet because he was a meat lover. So one day he furtively went to a restaurant and ordered a double portion of satay kambing for himself.

“”It was the most delicious satay kambing I ever had in my life,”” he said one day with a boyish grin in his face. But it was also the last he ever had.

He was sick for three days; since then, Grandpa decided to overcome his passion for red meat.

“”Your grandma did this because she cared about me. That was a sign of love, wasn’t it? I’m respecting her by sticking to the diet she wants me to follow,”” he continued. I saw his eyes sparkle. At that moment I knew that that was the sparkle of his love for my grandmother.

After Grandma passed away 10 years ago, my mother took on her role for him.

*****

Grandpa, 83 years old now, opened the wooden gate. And there he was, my grandfather’s regular visitor. He was a solderer. Here we called him tukang patri.

He carried a bamboo pole on his shoulder. The two ends of the pole each supported a sort of wooden box that hung from a rope. On those wooden boxes he placed his working apparatus: things that were weird to my eyes.

As usual, he placed himself near the gate. He pulled out his small wooden stool and sat on it. Siti, our maid, came out with pans in her hands. We used to call them “”Grandpa’s things””.

They were old, ugly pans that should have been dumped. But Grandpa bought them from a tukang loak — a vendor of used articles.

At first I couldn’t understand why he wanted to buy those old, ugly things. I thought it might be caused by his age. I heard that people who had reach their 70s and above often acted weirdly: It was a natural process of aging.

Those ancient, old-fashioned, ugly pans absolutely could not be used for cooking. They had holes in the bottom. Then I finally understood the reason he bought and kept all those things.

“”You know, nowadays tukang patri is a rare profession. It’s an old, traditional profession that is more and more being left by people who liked to think of themselves as modern,”” said Grandpa one day when I asked why he kept buying those used articles.

“”In the past two decades, I’ve only seen two tukang patri here. They were both old. It seems that young people don’t need this profession anymore.

“”I haven’t seen one since the first, 10 years ago. Maybe, he’s dead already. And him, he’s the second. One day he’ll be gone too. So, I think it’s nice if we could do something simple to support people within this profession,”” he explained.

I glanced at the tukang patri. He looked fragile: short and very skinny. He wore a straw hat. Wrinkles lined his sunburned face. Grandpa once told me the man was 60 years old, but he looked the same age as my grandfather. “”Maybe it’s because of his hard life. It’s not easy to become a tukang patri today. How many people still need his services?”” added Grandpa.

The tukang patri checked the pans; the holes to be patched. Then he started to work. He added some small pieces of wood to a sort of charcoal stove.

The stove was connected to a wheel with a crank. As he begun to crank the wheel, air blew through a tube and lit the fire up.

He put an iron bar with a wooden handle in the stove and waited until the stick was glowing. Then he prepared tiny pieces of alloy and melted them with a drop of quicksilver.

He took the mixture with the tip of the stick and started to solder the holes. He used another iron stick with rubber on the tip to smoothen the patches. Finally he applied a file to perfect his work.

I saw Grandpa enjoying that moment. Sitting on his wooden bench, Grandpa accompanied the tukang patri while he was working.

The two elderly men chatted; sometimes they both laughed. They seemed like a couple of old friends. The tukang patri apparently was not bothered at all, soldering and talking at the same time. He worked with great skill.

I was glad to see Grandpa having a good time like that. I thought he was lonely since Grandma passed away. His children and grandchildren were mostly busy with their own day-to-day activities.

So was I. Often I saw Grandpa talking to Goldy, our dog. I admitted that somehow there was a gap in our communication. Grandpa loved to talk about past times while me and my two brothers focused on modern-day thoughts.

The tukang patri finally finished his job. Grandpa gave him Rp 50,000 rupiah — Rp 30,000 rupiah for the job done on three pans, and Rp 20,000 extra for the tukang patri himself.

The skinny man thanked Grandpa over and over before he left. He looked so happy, and so did Grandpa. They said goodbye with smiles on their faces. Looking at them, I felt happy too.

*****

It was almost six months since the tukang patri‘s last visit. Usually he came every month or so. Grandpa became rather worried about him and awaited his next visit.

“”Don’t worry, Grandpa. Maybe he is trying to sell his services in new areas now. He’ll return here,”” I said, trying to ease his worry.

Deep down, though, I wasn’t sure of what I’d said to Grandpa. I was afraid the man indeed had already gone forever. He looked so fragile; maybe his health was not that good. I felt a slight sadness slipping into my heart.

“”Maybe. I hope he’s just alright,”” he murmured. His eyes gazed somewhere into the distance. Was Grandpa now feeling that he might already have lost one of his friends?

But the skinny man never showed up again. One year had gone. My grandfather had also gone too. He passed away a month ago.

Now I was staring at Grandpa things: those old, ugly pans that should definitely have been dumped.

Several still had holes on the bottom. Maybe I should keep those things here for a while. Maybe I should wait for another tukang patri to patch those holes.

Maybe.

Note :

Satay kambing: small pieces of goat meat roasted on skewers. One portion of satay usually consists of 10 skewers of roasted meat.

Penulis : Octaviana Dina

dimuat dalam The Jakarta Post edisi Minggu, 22 Juli 2007