Dogs Raiding A Grave

By Kuntowijoyo

He had no reason to worry as nobody would notice his activities in the river tonight. And his steps in the water and his kicking of stones did not make noise.

Darkness and cool weather had forced local residents to stay at home wrapped up in their sarongs. Women crouchedaround their babies to protect them from the chilly night air, just like hens shielding their chicks from bad weather.

He was alone at the river. The last villager had long since left after placing his fishing trap. The bamboo poles, the logo of the trap, were still discernible in the darkness.

The night was so quiet that not even the wind was heard. The trees stooped low after a day of resisting the sun's heat. When the barefoot man reached the paddy field he saw only fireflies swirling around. Beyond the field was a pile of earth, the public cemetery.

He had to find the new grave where a woman was buried last Tuesday evening. He had not dressed up before leaving home. He wore the old military fatigues he had bought in the second-hand clothes market. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to expose his muscles.

When he left his house, he took only a piece of black plastic, which was hardly noticeable. He also carried an oil lamp glowing weakly in the darkness.

"Where are you going, Kang?" his wife had asked when he left just after midnight.

"I'm on patrol duty tonight."

"But it is not your turn."

"Hmmm."

The man knew some villagers would be on guard at the cemetery tonight.

They would position themselves near their pressure lanterns. They would set up a makeshift hut, with food and snacks brought from home, where they would kill their sleepiness by playing cards.

They had brought with them saffron rice in plastic bags provided by a fortune teller, their guru. What they had to do was to sprinkle the rice at four corners surrounding the site. After that they let the rice do its magic.

The lone man tiptoed in the dark as he approached the cemetery.

Suddenly he threw an Ace card on the plastic mat and shouted, "I'll trump you".

The man sprinkled the saffron rice, the symbol of victory, while murmuring the magic formula "Rem rem sidem premanem, rem rem sidem premanem, rem rem sidem premanem."

His guru called this mantra Begananda, the magic power of which had been passed down from generation to generation by Raden Indrajit, the prince of the kingdom of Alengkadiraja.

It was Begananda that had once made Rama's troops fall asleep in a Hindu epic. Now it would make the villagers doze. After sprinkling the rice in one corner he moved to another.

After he completed his job, and saw that all the villagers had started to sleep, it was time to put the rice in the center of the site. Then there was silence.

The man waited for a moment. "Be patient, don't work in hastiness," he reminded himself. It was as though people had just committed mass suicide by drinking poison.

He sprinkled the last handful of rice while reciting another mantra. The men would dream beautiful dreams which would last a long time.

A card player was asleep with the cards still perched his hand. An ant fell asleep while hauling grain of rice. The crickets had stopped chirping. The grass bowed down. Fireflies had found a resting place, and fallen asleep. There was no wind.

The man approached the pressure lanterns and turned them off.

He went nearer to the new grave and found it covered with soil mixed with sand. His task was to dig it up with his bare hands, exhume the dead body, bite the ears off and take the flesh to his guru.

His guru had told him he had to perform a seven-day meditation in a dark bush and rob a corpse of its ears on a day called Anggara Kasih, all in order to get rich. On the fourth day of his meditation he had to endure an ordeal in which he felt he was being attacked by thousands of ants.

On the sixth day he felt the area was inundated by a neck-high flood. On the final day he was visited by an old man with a white beard, who asked him what his wishes were.

After drinking water mixed with palm sugar, he felt he had regained his energy.

He had successfully passed all these ordeals. Now he faced the final test, to get the ears, but the grave of a person who died on Kliwon, Tuesday of the Javanese calendar, is always guarded for seven full days.

No, he would be possessed by satan if he could dig up the grave with his bare hands. With the mission accomplished he would be able to give his wife a pair of gold earrings set with jewels, and gold bracelets in the form of a snake.

Then his children would no longer go to school in their barefeet and they would be able to pay the school fees on time. He would buy a truck for his jobless nephew. His youngest brother, now working in Bahrain, would be able to call back home because there would be many jobs for him.

Above all, he would also present his only plot of land to the village chief to be used by the government. The plot was sought by many people from the town, who wanted to build a golf course there, for a low purchasing price.

The man also planned to open some shops in his home as a cover for the sources of income which would pour in after tonight's work was completed. He knew the shops would not make him richer nor affect his supply of money which he would keep under his pillow, the traditional way to deposit one's gains.

There would be no problem if one day he had to steal money from other people. He could always order the devils in his power to do the job as long as the victims were the greedy rich people. When he felt he had enough he would stop calling on them.

His fingers hurt after the burdens of digging up the grave. Although he had done manual work all his life, digging up the grave was a tough job. The suffocating heat inside the grave had sweat streaming down to the end of his fingers. It had also made him feel even more irritated, although he tried to forget these feelings.

Although the grave was deep the coffin was already visible. The deceased must have been rich, he thought.

He broke open the coffin and threw the wood away piece by piece, as soil started drizzling on the corpse. He found it very difficult to pull out the dead body because the hole was too narrow and dark. He could not stand firmly without putting one of his legs on the dead body.

At last he managed to tear the white shroud from the body. He smelled the foul odor of camphor mixed with soil and lime.

He did not care whether the cold, stiff corpse would be damaged when he raised it. He managed to pull up the upper part of it but he could not bite the ears because the grave was too small. He then shoved it above his head and threw it to the ground.

He tore away the white cloth from the head. But the woman's hair was so long that it completely covered her ears.

Suddenly he heard dogs barking. The howls were so loud and long that they broke the silence. But for him the echoes from the trees, the wells and walls of the houses added sanctity to the sacred night.

Lit by the stars he could see two dogs, one white but the other of an indistinct color. Both were watching him working. The beasts put out their tongues, drooled and bared their teeth.

They must be ghosts because he had made a serious mistake -- he had forgotten to ask permission from the ghosts who protected the cemetery.

He sat cross-legged on the ground. "Oh ghosts who guard this cemetery, please do not disturb your grandson and let me accomplish my mission," he prayed.

He repeated the prayer three times, but before he could see any sign that it had been answered by the ghosts, he saw another two dogs coming. They seemed to be coming for their share so he had to work faster.

As he tried to bite the woman's ears one of the dogs suddenly attacked him. He tried hard to push it away with his hands but the three other dogs started to rip off the white cloth.

He also kicked with one of his legs to try to make the dogs leave the scene, but more dogs were coming and barking. There were seven now. They all attacked the corpse.

He thought the beasts may be ready for a negotiable settlement; he would just get the ears and leave the rest for them.

He wanted to tell the dogs that the head was full of bones and the thighs were best if they wanted the fleshy parts.

The dogs set about tearing at the thighs so savagely that he forgot about his own goal of the ears.

His fingers, which were hurt during the digging, had started to bleed. He tried to forget the pain as he attempted to chase the dogs away.

He grabbed the two short poles planted at each end of the grave and began to whack the beasts, who started to back off.

This gave him a chance to return to the ears. But no sooner had he started to put his face near the woman's head than the dogs began another joint attack on him.

The man thought he needed to chase the dogs farther away. Chase them he did, but still they returned as he started to get closer to the most desired part of the woman's body.

The blood kept flowing from his fingers, soaking the wood in his hand. He was exhausted and his vision was blurred. The dogs were becoming wilder. They resisted increasingly weakened blows.

Their howls had also awakened the sleeping people. They saw the man's final assault by the dogs before he finally fainted.

The dogs left when a throng of villagers had come to the scene.

The cemetery guards peered quizzically at the unconscious man.

"A graverobber," one of them murmured.

"No, he's a savior," the others said.

Translated by TIS.

The author was born in Yogyakarta on September 18, 1943. He obtained his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University in 1980. He is a lecturer at the School of Letters and the School for Post-Graduate Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Anjing-Anjing Menyerbu Kuburan (Dogs Raiding A Grave) was honored as the best short story by the Kompas daily in 1996. Anjing- anjing Menyerbu Kuburan appears in Anjing-anjing Menyerbu Kuburan: Cerpen Pilihan Kompas 1997 (Dogs Raiding A Grave: An Anthology of Kompas Short Stories 1997). It is printed here courtesy of Kompas.

Glossary:

Kang: means older brother in Javanese and Sundanese, but is used by Javanese wives to address their husbands.