The Ocean Tells A Story (#1)

By Leila S. Chudori

Prologue

“Die, you shall die
You shall be reborn again and again…¹

The Poet once wrote these lines on a tattered sheet of paper. Back then, he has long hair reaching to his shoulders, and a hoarse voice from speaking to the laborers. He tucks it into a black-covered notebook, and gives it to me on my 25th birthday. Exhaling swirls of cigarette smoke into the air, he says I have to always rise, even though I die.

But today, I will die.

I don’t know if I can rise again.

After nearly three months of captivity in darkness, they are taking me somewhere. Blackness. Gloom. For three months, my eyes have been blindfolded with a rough cloth, taken off only on occasions so I can deal with excrement and urine. 

I remember my conversation with The Poet. He said he wasn’t afraid of the dark. Because in life, there is light, and there is darkness. There are women, and there are men. ‘Darkness is part of nature,’ says The Poet. But we must not reach the point of darkness, because darkness is a sign of surrender. Darkness is a bitterness, a point where life feels unsustainable.

I don’t know if I am experiencing darkness right now. Or bleakness.

My eyes are blindfolded. My hands shackled. Is this darkness that will later turn into the slow unwinding of the morning sunlight, or darkness like a well that promises no bottom?

We go around and around for an hour. I can already tell there are four men accompanying me. After months of captivity in darkness, I have started to recognize the smells of their bodies. One man driving, seldom speaks. Someone next to him rarely comments, except when reprimanding the two men who flank me in the backseat. He’s the Red-Eyed one, the only one of them whose face I have seen, and recognize from the scent of his clove cigarettes issuing from his mouth. To my right and left, surely the two big men I call Tree Man and Giant, who emit the stench of stale sweat. That’s the trouble when you’ve been taught from childhood to sharpen your sense of smell because Mother is a wonderful cook. In an instant, I can distinguish one person’s body odor from another’s.

After over an hour in the car with my eyes still covered and hands tied, finally Tree Man pulls me from the car and, along with the others, leads me to an open space. I am  kicked to walk faster. The road becomes steeper, and I hear the crash of waves. I can smell the salty ocean in the wind that tousles my hair. Once again, the sound of the powerful waves break unevenly. Where am I?”

“Are we still in the Jakarta area?

Because I often pause to guess our location, a large hand pushes my back to walk faster. After walking quite some distance, one of them now yells at me to climb into a speedboat. The salty smell of the sea is again sharp to my nostrils. I hear someone start the speedboat  motor. Someone else again kicks me in the back to make me kneel. Damn! Slowly, I try to sit and it seems they do not object.

As soon as I am seated, the motorboat speeds off. Although my face is still covered with a sack, I can still feel splashes of seawater. The sea breeze slips through the pores of the course cloth that covers my bloodied and wounded face. The stinging pain of my split lips and broken nose sting intensely due to the saltiness of the seawater, but the wind feels like liberation. My heart pounds against my chest, as if it is about to burst, yet I try to face towards the sound of the ocean surface that is being cut by the motorboat.

Before too long the speedboat slows. Perhaps we have arrived at our destination, some unknown island, I do not know. I am forced to step out. Walking along the edge of a cliff with bare feet is challenging as I listen to the sound of waves from below. These two feet are only half functional, cracked. Smoker yells hoarsely for me to walk faster.

The journey becomes steeper. It feels like we are ascending a coral hill that is not very high. I can still hear the sounds of the waves running in and going out.

The first roar. The second roar. I hear the steps of heavy shoes crushing gravel. A large hand roughly removes the blindfold from my eyes. My vision still blurry, probably from staring too long into darkness, I realize suddenly that we are standing on a coral hill on the edge of a beach. 

It seems the sun hasn’t fully set. What time is it now? Has it been evening for a while? Four o’clock? Five? The island is so desolate, so quiet. I watch a flock of seagulls fly low, approach then touch the surface of the water. Now I understand. They have brought me to the shore, to the edge of death.

Die, you shall die…

Now they tie my hands with weighted irons. Left hand. Then  right. Sometimes I squirm, trying to find a gap or possibility, even though it will end in vain. I refuse to give my hand and purposely stiffen my head. One of them punches me in the face. Ah…

The saltiness of blood…

“You will die,” says Red Eyes, with a puff of cigarette smoke. “But you will die slowly.” They all burst into loud laughter. I hear the flapping wings of a flock of birds. As if they want to lift up my spirits.

Red Eyes pushes me forward. They clamp irons around both my legs, making it impossible for me to move. Finally, one of them kicks my shin and I fall to the ground. Once more, Smoker holds my shoulders from behind, forcing me to kneel.

“Lord, we draw closer. You seem ever more inclined to enfold me.”

At the ninth crash of the waves, I hear the explosion. Suddenly, I feel something sharp pierce my back. It hurts, stinging. Then, the back of my head. At once I still feel a spiked boot kick me in the back. My body is swiftly pulled down by the current, and the iron balls tied to my ankles.

I float down to the bottom of the ocean.

I always thought that when death arrived, there would be an earthquake or a volcanic eruption and falling leaves. I imagined the world would experience a partial apocalypse. Perhaps not as catastrophic as the stories told by the old people, but the seawater would rise and spread to cover the earth. Humans, animals, and every living creature would drown. Because of that I assumed that when I sank, my death would result in a massive upheaval. Or like the goddess Kali slowly pulling my soul from my body like a thread slowly drawn from a piece of woven cloth. Calm, but producing a sensation of imbalance.

It turns out to be just an illusion. My death is no more than when a poet puts a full stop at the end of a sentence in her poem. Or like the moment the electricity suddenly goes out.

Silence. So quiet. So secluded. I am no longer relevant.

Perhaps this was just imagination, but I hear the chirping of birds. Perhaps they were circling and patrolling the surface of the sea while I sink to the ocean floor following the downward plunge of the irons weighing down my legs. The birds dip their heads into the water, checking on me, bidding me farewell as they try to ensure I am able to reach the bottom of the ocean peacefully.”

“Just like that, thanks to the prayers of the birds, I find myself at the bottom of the ocean. And just like that, as I feel surrounded by hundreds of damselfish, and sergeant major fish, my head suddenly bangs roughly against one of the brain corals. The school of fish kiss me, perhaps feeling compassion for such a useless corpse.

This must be an illusion, because I can hear strains of music, catch the scent of Mother’s cooking. I can hear Kinan arguing with Daniel, Sunu’s voice trying to mediate. I can hear Anjani’s soft soothing voice, which in turn is overwhelmed by Asmara’s harsh voice. All of that slowly fades away, replaced by the sound of Dad’s steps slowly heading to the kitchen, asking what Mom is cooking.

Then the flickering visage of Kinan appears, gazing at me with her small eyes radiating light. Then comes the flickering faces of Sunu, Alex, Daniel, and Anjani. Somehow I can see them all at the Haunted House, in Seyegan, at the outskirts of Yogyakarta.

Everything merges, flickering into one another like a black-and-white film sped up.

I feel the undercurrent of the ocean swirling and embracing me. So tight, so warm, as if I am a part of this sea. 

Perhaps that is why Mom and Dad gave me the name “Blue Sea.”

Deeper and deeper, no one knows how many thousands of meters I fly down to the bottom.

And finally, my body thuds against the ocean floor, amidst the corals and seaweed, witnessed by a school of small fish who seem sorry for me. I realize: I am dead. My body is to rest at the bottom of this sea forever and ever, and my soul has flown away to some unknown place. While fish of blue, yellow, purple, and orange kiss my cheeks, a seahorse floats in front of me, and I hear a loud knocking sound, a knocking on a piece of wood…

Dad, Mom, Asmara, Anjani, and friends… listen to my story…

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• Laut Bercerita by Leila S Churdori at Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36393774-laut-bercerita
• Chudori LS. Laut Bercerita. Cetakan pertama ed. Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia; 2017. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1010505308
• A little about Laut Bercertita from Kompasiana, Bercerita tentang ‘Laut Bercerita’; Bagaimana Leila S. Chudori Mampu Membawa Saya Merasakan Ketidakpastian akan Hilangnya Biru Laut by Zakiyyah Rahmi Ayu, April 8, 2022.

1. Originally from the work of poet Soetardji Calzoum Bachri, according to Anne Rufaidah, Studium Generale KU 4078 Leila S. Chudori, The Story of the Lost in the Novel “Laut Bercerita”, Kemahasiswaan ITB, Oct 27, 2021. ↩︎