We stood dead still, as if everything was closing in around us. We were
staring at each other and everything stopped, caught between the sea, the rain,
the river and unusual silence of the water. At that very moment, I thought
about giving the knife back to Iskra but
suddenly, the Indos inched away along the wall and scuttled away from us. They
hid behind the outcrop.
When I went closer, I saw that one of them had left the scene. The one
in the flowered shirt was alone stretched out on his back, his hands under his
neck, his forehead hidden by the shadows, his whole body loosened by the clouds
that sucked in the heat. His clothes were steaming. I was a little surprised.
As far as I was concerned, the matter was closed and it was just by chance I`d
ended up here.
As soon as he saw me, he
raised himself up a bit and put his hands in his pocket. I instinctively felt
for Iskra`s knife. Then he leaned away again, but he kept his hand in his
pocket. I was quite far away from him, about ten metres or so but I could see him looking at me. Every now and
then, his eyes closed. But most of the time his face seemed to flicker before
me like a charred light in a stack of embers, a curtain rising and falling
before me.
The sound of waves was more restless
than the languorous calm of midday. It was the same relentless heat but without
sun, a heat that chills you; a watery yellow light fighting periodically across
the sand.
I never stopped watching the
Kalimantan but something broke inside me. Suddenly I was lessened. I don’t like
to talk about these things. I thought about the rivers and seas that connect
our island and the sound of the rattan lash within our house. I heard my own cries
and my father’s bitter sentiments.
No comments:
Post a Comment