The Colour Of Things Unseen

Annee lawrence Annee lives in Australia and has an interest in exploring cross-cultural connection and the way identity shape-shifts in an unfamiliar place and culture. She has close friendship and family ties in Indonesia and was the recipient of an Asialink Arts’ inaugural Tulis Australian-Indonesian Writing Exchange in 2018. As a result, she had a six-week residency at Kommunitas Salihara in Jakarta and was invited to the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Prior to becoming a tutor in literary and cultural studies at Western Sydney University in 2014, Annee worked as a writer, editor and community development worker in the areas of women’s health, human rights and social justice. Two of her publications include: I Always Wanted To Be A Tap Dancer: Women With Disabilities and (with Nola Colefax on her memoir) Signs of Change: My Autobiography and History of Australian Theatre of the Deaf 1973–1983. In 1981 she was founding editor of Healthright: A Journal of Women’s Health, Family Planning and Sexuality. Annee has published articles in New Writing, Griffith Review, Hecate and Cultural Studies Review. The Colour of Things Unseen is her debut novel. First published in the UK in 2019 by Aurora Metro Publications Ltd. 67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, TW1 4HX www.aurorametro.com info@aurorametro.com The Colour of Things Unseen copyright © 2019 Annee Lawrence Cover image: © 2016 Pranoto Ahmad Rahji, Pranoto’s Art Gallery, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia w**************m/Pranotos-Art-Gallery Cover design: © 2019 Aurora Metro Publications Ltd. Editor: Cheryl Robson All rights are strictly reserved. For rights enquiries please contact the publisher: info@aurorametro.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Annee Lawrence asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of the above work. This paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. ISBNs: 978-1-912430-17-8 (print) 978-1-912430-18-5 (ebook) The Colour Of Things Unseen by Annee Lawrence For Ida, Emil and Tahlia Part One A village, Central Java 1980s–1990s Mama is making batik. She is drawing lines of wax on the creamy coloured cloth. I like the smell of it. Like the way the wispy grey smoke rises from the melted wax in the blackened dish. I even like the wash of heat on my face when I draw close to the hot coals. The batik stand is at the front of our house, and when the doors are open you can see it from the street. My big sister Yanti says only girls make batik but I want to make batik too. I know I can. Our village has only a few streets and our house is like all the other houses, wooden and with large doors at the front. In the daytime we open the doors and shutters so the light streams across the smooth, chocolate brown, earth floor where our family sits on a mat to eat, or drink tea with visitors. There are three bedrooms at the back and we have one black and white goat. I wish we had more goats, and a cow as well. I like cows. Mama’s eyes are soft and kind like a happy cow’s. Yanti says there are no stars in Mama’s eyes, but when she smiles I can see stars sparkling. Mama is called Suriani. She is beautiful, even more beautiful than Princess Sita. Her hair is black as the darkest night and she has a thick plait with a curly pointy end that brushes the top of her sarong when she walks. Sometimes when Mama bends over, the plait leaps up and over her shoulder and she has to catch hold of it. She scolds it as she tosses it back. “Very naughty to run away. Now home you must go,” she says, and this makes me laugh. Mama has pale half-moons at the top of her nails and I can see them when she holds the bamboo cane handle of the canting in her long fingers. The brass cup on the canting is no bigger than a rambutan seed and a minute spout bends over at the front of it. Mama dips the canting in the dish and fills it with the hot brown wax. She blows gently into the spout to clear the bubbles, and when she draws on the cloth with the wax, it sets in a creamy gold line on the fabric. “Mama, please … I want to make batik too.” Mama looks up and I see the stars sparkling in her eyes. “Alright Adi, she says. Now you are five, perhaps it is time for you to make batik too. Yes?” “Yes, yes.” “Perhaps you would like to make a butterfly batik?” Mama says. “Yes, yes,” I say, and Mama finds a piece of cloth and draws a large butterfly on it with a pencil. “Now you will learn to use the canting, but you must be very careful of the fire and the hot wax. Are you watching?” So many times I have seen my mother, grandmother and aunts all making batik. “I know, I know already,” I yell. “Pay attention, sweetheart. See, this is how you trace the outline of the butterfly with the wax.” I like the sound Mama makes when she blows into the tiny spout. I purse my lips and practise: Phew, phew. It tickles and I start to laugh. Phew, phew. Mama lowers the canting to the cloth and begins tracing a fine even line of wax around the butterfly’s wing. “Let me,” I yell again. “I can do it.” “Very well,” Mama says and spreads out a scrap of cloth. “Have a try first on this until you get the hang of it, yes?” I seize the canting and dip it into the hot wax, filling the little cup. Phew, phew, I blow into the spout just like Mama. I can do it. Mama smiles and leans over me while I practise. She puts her face close to the top of my head and inhales. “Very sweet,” she says. “I think you are ready to begin now.” So I dip, blow, and tense my hand to keep it steady, but when I start to trace along the butterfly’s wing, an ugly blob of wax goes plop! Right in the middle of it. “Aduh!” I scream. It’s ruined. Tears sting my eyes and cheeks, but Mama ignores them. “It’s nothing,” she says, and picks off the honey-coloured scab with her fingernail. The brown, cream and indigo patterns of our family’s sarongs, kebayas and selendangs are as familiar as my own skin and I can see them always in my mind. Ever since I was baby, I have gone with my mother and aunts to the markets in Solo to sell batik, and even all the way on the train to the big market in Yogyakarta. Back then, Mama carried me in a selendang on her back or against her breast, and Yanti carried me in a selendang on her hip too. When we hear the faint sound of the gamelan drifting across the rice fields, Mama and I look at one another and begin packing up. “Quick Adi,” Mama says. “It’s time for the shadow puppet show. Where’s Papa and the others?” As Mama clears away the fire, wax and canting, Yanti and our two brothers, Budi and Ismoyo, arrive. Then Papa rushes in and says, “Hurry, hurry. It’s time to go.” Chapter 1 Adi was just six when his mother Suriani died, but no one told him she had died or, if they did, he didn’t hear, or perhaps he just couldn’t bear it. She was just thirty-two. One day she was filling up his day, and then she was gone. First there was sunlight and laughter, and then thick clouds of ash crept into the house and layered the surface of family life, made everything grey, pressed down on them while they slept, and caused them to feel tired and cross when they awoke. Adi looked for traces of her, but there were none. Her sarongs, kebayas, hair bands, and even her scent, had all gone. When he asked where she was, his big sister Yanti said, “Mama has gone away.” And when he begged her to help him find her, she just said, “That’s not possible.” He waited and waited for her return and, when his sense of abandonment formed itself into a fist of pain where his heart’s joy had been, he began thinking in colours. And then he found a little door to a place where flashes of memory were stored – fragments, moments of their shared times together – in vivid colours or sepia tones, and sometimes sharp-focused and sometimes blurred, and these slid across the events of his day, or into his dreams at night. Slivers of memory lit up the things and people around him and connected him to his mother’s presence as well as her absence. The press of her body, the softness of her voice, the ring of her laugh, and even the feeling of the weight of her plait could be triggered any time by scents, sounds, colours, and especially by patterns: the garuda wings on a sarong drying on a neighbour’s clothesline, the jerking pointy end of a girl’s long plait as she walked down the road, the cloud of yellow butterflies that rose unbidden from the rice field, the splash of a leaping frog. Mostly these things reassured him and made him feel calm, but it seemed more and more that, as time passed, they were from another time, perhaps even from before he was born – and they were not just his own memories, but those of everyone he knew. When their mother died, thirteen-year-old Yanti left school to take care of the family, all four of them – their father Totot, and Adi, Budi and Ismoyo who were six, eleven and eight. In the weeks and months that followed her death, Adi shadowed his big sister’s every move, inserting himself onto her lap when she sat, squatting beside her at the fire when she cooked, sleeping alongside her at night. But if the family burned with small sudden fires of grief, he and his father were like volcanoes that seethed and rumbled and threatened to erupt without warning. And no matter what Yanti did, no matter how loving and kind she was, it was clear that there was only so much a young girl could do to tend to a loss like that. As the years passed, a series of events swept into their lives like the floodwaters that flowed up and over the river bank, burst through the levee banks, and cast tree branches and trunks, fences, and the broken parts of bridges headlong before it. The first shock wave was Totot’s decision to remarry which meant a new mother arrived to live with them. As if adjustment to this new configuration was not hard enough, less than a year later a squalling baby brother was born, and then six months after that the rock that was Suriani’s parents, and the children’s grandparents who lived next door, shattered when they both died within three months of one another. The marriage, birth and unforeseen deaths stretched the emotional fabric of the family to its limit, but then there came another marriage announcement and it was this that tore Adi’s heart apart once again. For in the year he turned ten, his touchstone and great love, Yanti, got married to Goenawan, who also moved into the family compound. Banned from sleeping in his big sister’s bed, Adi’s old pain and sense of abandonment were reignited; the colour drained from his life and he became inconsolable. No one knew what to do about Adi’s burning rage. When accounts of his naughtiness began circulating in the village and beyond, the neighbours were forgiving, he was a child still grieving for his mama they said. But when the ten-year-old threw a bowl of rice at his sister Yanti, it became the talk of the village. After that he ran away and no one could catch him, for he did not stop running until he was vomiting so hard he could run no further. He became estranged from everyone and some days he disappeared and couldn’t be found. Other days he refused to get out of bed and wouldn’t eat. He even stopped going to school.