A cat on the moon

Anton Kurnia   |  Sun, 11/29/2009 5:34 PM  |  Lifestyle

Dusk is already in full bloom when I sit on the feeble old couch in my living room and eat breakfast.

I've been suffering this insomnia for weeks now - weeks of lying restless on the mattress, my eyes wide open, my mind refusing to be still. Then, desperate and exhausted, I fall asleep as morning breaks, only to awake for the last hour of sunlight, stiff and sore, my nerves garlanded by laziness.

Each day is the same. After going to the bathroom, I brew coffee and spread pineapple jam on bread, and then I just sit here, staring at the TV, or beyond it to the alley outside. The room has a large picture window, covered by a milky transparent curtain; I can see through it, but the people outside can't see me; all they can see is their own reflections in the glass.

So I rest my feet on the coffee table and stretch my underused muscles, yawning and scratching comfortably knowing no one can see me. I chew my bread, sip my coffee, light my cigarette, and just watch the street - the people passing, a woman breastfeeding her baby, the small blue house on the other side of the alley.

I rented this house about three months ago, when the rent got too high on my other place. It's quite a noisy area, densely packed with houses. But I quite like the house. It has two small rooms and a backyard out the back - enough room for one.

There's also a tiny terrace out the front where I put two pots of suflir plants. The terrace is lined with cool, clean, white tiles. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, when I've run out of TV programs and am too weary to stare at the computer, I mop this nice white terrace and water those two plants of mine.

One night some animal soiled the clean white tiles. The first time, I just cleaned it up without complaint, in the middle of the night when no one could see. But the creature came back and did it again, and worse - it damaged my beloved suflir plants.

I had no choice, really. So I killed it, secretly, one sleepless night in a string of sleepless nights. Then I threw the carcass into a bin down the street. It was a nasty business and I am not a violent person, but in this life, don't we sometimes have to do things we don't like?

But still, I didn't want any of the neighbors to see me do it.

I guess you could say I'm a rather unsociable person; I hardly ever chat to my neighbors. I suppose that gives people good reason to think of me as a weirdo. I wouldn't say I'm arrogant, but I can't be a phony either. I am just a loner. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not hurting anybody by being alone. All I'm doing wrong is just being different to everyone else.

So there's no hostility; it's just I don't know them, my neighbors. The only ones I know for a casual chat is the head of the Rukun Tetangga, or RT - the local neighborhood unit - and his wife; they live next door. We chat when they come round to collect the money for the electricity and water bills, because my rented house uses their account. I don't even know their names, I just call them Pak and Bu RT.

It's just I don't enjoy socializing. Not with humans anyway. I do enjoy socializing with plants, because they are much more patient than humans, and never annoying. That's why I put the two suflir plants on the terrace and planted white roses and jasmine in the small backyard.

I always get a thrill from the beauty of white rose buds. I read somewhere that the white rose is a symbol of a pure love. What "pure love" really means, well, I've never clearly understood it. All I know is that blooming white roses are truly a pleasure to behold. Especially when the buds have just been watered, when drops of water are trickling each petal. At such moments, I remember God. And I simply feel happy.

Jasmine is my favorite fragrance. The scent always reminds me of my late mother. When I was a child, she picked jasmine blossoms from our garden and strew them over her pillow. In secret I would sniff that delicate aroma sticking tenderly to my mother's bed sheets and pillows.

I have plenty of time to spend with my plants, since I work from home and don't need to go out much, except for necessities. So that's why I can sit here, as dusk colors the sky, smoking my cigarette and waiting for inspiration.

But as I stare at the green suflir leaves, I realize something is missing. My gaze slips past the plants, across the alley, to the little house painted the color of the midday sky and finally I realize it: Usually at this time the old lady sits on the wooden bench outside her house, staring at nothing with an intensity that frightens me, her old fingers absently stroking the fur of a two-toned cat. I try to remember, I count the evenings - I have not seen her there for three days.

Once when I was visiting Bu RT to pay my bills, she told me the old lady lives with her only daughter, a middle-aged woman who got divorced long ago. Apparently nobody knew she got divorced or where her ex-husband went, but they say she works in a textile factory. She leaves early every morning, and comes home late at night, leaving her mother all alone at home. And so she sits in the late afternoon, just her and her cat.

We've never so much as said hello, but I enjoy watching her secretly. I used to wonder about her: whether she felt lonely, whether she is satisfied with her life, or whether she is bored with the monotony, because there is nothing truly new in this world. But I've never even thought to ask her.

Darkness falls and I prepare for another sleepless night, finally falling asleep as dawn breaks. But I am jolted out of sleep by a nightmare, in which I met the animal I killed but it was huge, so huge. It chased me and I ran but got trapped in a dead end. Then, as I cowered beneath it, it transformed into the old lady. Her weary eyes pinned me down, her grimacing lips showing her loose teeth. It terrifies me. I wake to the sound of my screams, my body drenched in sweat.

I don't bother with breakfast but wash and hurry next door. Bu RT gives me the news about the old lady.

No, not that - she's still alive. But she just couldn't stand the boredom and loneliness anymore, so she went back to her village. Here, Bu RT tells me, the old woman had no friends or companions, just a two-toned cat to keep her company. But since the cat disappeared, she had been devastated by loneliness.

Guilt struck me, like a sharp thorn thrust into my heart. I know what happened to that old lady's only friend. I can remember every moment of that night I lured it to me with a piece of meat - meat liberally sprinkled with poison.

But let's be frank - I do feel guilty about killing that cat, but why should I regret it? After all, as I said, sometimes we have to do things we don't want to.

Sometime during the sleepless night, I leave my computer and carefully, tenderly, water my suflir plants. The tiled floor of the terrace is perfectly clean and white, not sullied by any creature's prints. Then I go into the backyard and slowly water the white rose bush and jasmine I planted there.

The yard is bright with moonlight. I enjoy the beauty of the water dripping and rolling down the rose petals, then snaking down through the thorny stalks and dropping gracefully onto the soil. The fragrance of the jasmine rises in the air, filling my nostrils with its scent, and filling my mind with the image of my beloved mother.

I stop watering the flowers and turn my face to the sky, where the moon hangs round and white. It's been so long since I really looked at the moon. I stare at it more closely and try to make out . Yes. My mother was right.

When I was a child, my mother told me that if anyone who has even a tiny drop of sincere love in their heart can see a woman and a cat joyfully playing together on the full moon.1 And tonight I can see them. For the very first time in my life, after all those years of looking, I can see them!

And as I stare, I see that the cat in that moon is just like the two-toned one I killed, but the woman is not the old lady. No, it is another woman smiling a marvelous, charming smile, bright and beautiful as a lovely white rose petal. What I see in the moon is my mother's wonderful smile.

1. Sundanese (West Java) folklore tells of an old woman called Nini Anteh who lives on the moon with her cat. The legend holds that both can be seen from the Earth when the moon is full.

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