'Rainmaker' spins indelible tale

Marianne Katoppo, Contributor, Jakarta

The Rainmaker's Daughter
Richard Oh
210 pp.
Metafor Publishing 2004

The Rainmaker's Daughter is a title die-hard feminists would strenuously object to. She is the heroine, so why is her character derived and not defined?

But as I started reading, I soon realized that names really are irrelevant here. Would "The Woman Who Swallowed the Whirlwind" be better?

The personality of the woman in this story is such that there is no name, no description that would do her justice. She is the only woman in the story -- or is she? -- and none of the male characters can vie with her in strength of character.

As she says herself: "Names are too definitive, ... too confining. As soon as we are given a name, we're immediately pegged to a certain character or trait. From then on you are a captured soul."

It is akin to apophatic theology, in that we can only say what God is not. To give God a name, any name, would be to confine God.

The Rainmaker's Daughter opens, almost in flashback, to a remote, unnamed village on the western shores of Kalimantan. A place and a people still shrouded by superstition, where the pawang's daughter is a young girl called on to help the fishermen in a time of crisis. She stands in the boiling sea, facing the howling whirlwind headed their way. And then, "Like a gigantic python being lured into a trap, the whirlwind leapt forward and in one swoop disappeared into the mouth of the Pawang's daughter."

The daughter of the village pawang, or rainmaker, actually saves her people, Buginese settlers, from catastrophe and ruin. She liberates them from the impending disaster so that they may continue to pursue their lives and livelihood -- fishing, and the villagers, in turn, ascribe her the great -- and terrible -- power to work miracles.

As with all icons, however, this awesome and fearful power can easily become the root of retribution and vengeance. The villagers suddenly lose faith in her and she flees -- or to be more accurate, disappears -- but love turned to hatred is a powerful driving force, and the village sends a man out to bring her back, unaware of the disastrous consequences they have set in motion.

While she might have captured the whirlwind to save her fishing village, she is one who cannot -- will not -- be captured: "I want to be whoever I want to be."

Against this headstrong strong woman is the male protagonist, Hadrian, a successful attorney who makes his living saving Indonesian tycoons "from legal intricacies that they should have known better than to get into in the first place". As he admits, he has learned only one thing really well during all those years: how to kiss somebody's behind. Hadrian meets the woman by chance at a bar he frequents, and from the first glance, he is hooked.

But she does not conform to the standards set by beauty cream manufacturers. Her face and skin are "hewn by the wind, shaped by the sun" -- which is probably an apt description for millions of Indonesian women and their natural beauty.

Men fall at her feet in droves, and so does Hadrian.

Hadrian is almost the mirror opposite of the rainmaker's daughter, who knows exactly who and where she is: he is looking for something. After all, he turned the junkyard behind his house into a greenhouse with the most beautiful and exotic of flowers.

In response to his yearning for attachment to this elusive woman, however, she throws out her belief that it is the tragedy of mankind to want to get connected: "Since the day they cut our umbilical cords, we've been trying to break free."

She actually eats Hadrian's prized flowers in a frenzy of oral symbolism that is a reflection of an earlier, more intimate moment. However, her adamant refusal to be named leaves her in a void of distance, and she never reveals her true feelings, although they are strongly implied.

Most of the story is actually set in that most modern of metropolises here, Indonesia's pride and joy of Jakarta, which some people -- such as Matalius the boat-maker -- perceive as "this damn city, this most corrupted metropolis, where the vilest and the most cunning constantly prey upon the helpless."

It is clear that Richard Oh is a very good storyteller. He weaves the complex strands of myth and tradition, love and passion, ecology and social criticism, and guilt and sacrifice, together into a fascinating tapestry. Oh also manages to include within his fiction an account of the ethnic conflict in West Kalimantan in a way that is profoundly moving without being sensational.

We are left to ponder what is the true jungle: the village in Kalimantan or the stockbrokers' metropolis.

What is the true horror: superstitious villagers turning on an innocent girl and making her the scapegoat, or the jaded lawyers having a philosophical discussion about the annual floods as they enjoy the best cigars and choicest wine?

Oh evokes the atmosphere, the feelings of the people in this novel and turns them into full-blooded characters -- whether named or not.

We feel the grief of the mother unable to feed her dying child; the despair of the village girl stranded in the stockbroker's jungle; the frustration and disgust of the men who know they are responsible for the uninterrupted opulence of the people who are bleeding the nation dry; the persistence and patience of the loyal boat-maker to save his beloved against the orders of the village chief.

Aside from his allegorical creativity and dynamic imagery, his English is a joy to read. In a day and age where the "f-word" is considered stylish and trendy, Oh's English is reminiscent of Conrad or Tagore. Like those two literary masters, Oh is not a native speaker, but his prose flows with elegance and generosity.

As an aside, let us remember that Tagore was the first person to win the Nobel Prize for English Literature.

Switching chapter to chapter from real time to flashback to Matalius' narrative, which speaks directly to the reader as a disconnected participant, if not neutral observer, Oh takes us on a journey following the rainmaker's daughter along her solitary path of self-imposed exile.

This is not a story you come across every day, and was conceived and written over the past four years for publication late last year.

The Rainmaker's Daughter and its multiple themes will haunt you for a long time to come.