The Three Musketeers from Paradise Islands

By Kerkan

Once upon a time, there were beautiful islands united into one kingdom, The Kingdom of Paradise. Indeed, it was right that they were called The Kingdom of Paradise as everything was naturally provided. This was because its poet sang that a stick of bamboo could grow well and give the people life and gold could even be found by breaking any hard stone. People could grow fruit trees and just the next day harvest the fruits. It was paradise-like, living in the kingdom. This was why it aroused jealousy from so many other countries that wanted to own these islands. This natural advantage in fact was the cause of its disaster, as many of those jealous countries were encouraged to occupy this kingdom.

In fact, history noted that a number of countries had occupied this Paradise kingdom. However, with the strong and unceasing struggle and efforts, this peace minded nation could regain its sovereignty. Furthermore, it provided abundant glory and joy for the people to achieve this.

However, the series of disasters which this peace-minded nation had to face had not ended. They had to face another tragic period of being occupied by New Alengka, led by a fierce and cruel giant named Asuharta Dasa Muka Putra with his children.

These giants, with their armed and strongly united soldiers, had been proven to be unshakable for these last three decades. The people had ignited rebellion after rebellion which simply leads to a big failure and harms their own lives. Indeed every single rebellion ignited by the people had simply resulted in the loss of innocent life. The Asuharta regime was so powerful that the resistance of these people could not shake the position of the Asuharta regime. Alternately, the greater the rebellion, the stronger Asuharto's regime was as it was legal according to the law to kill anyone involved in the rebellion. This meant that he could drink as much people's blood as possible. According to what the people believed, the more blood he drank, the more magic power he would gain, as he was a follower of the Bathari Durga sect.

Decade after decade passed, and the people kept praying and praying, asking for Almighty God to send their savior. Whenever a brave person appeared, they thought that this was the person God had sent to them. However, this was never the case and they believed that God would never send any savior to them. Because of this, they became desperate and frustrated. They told one another that they might be destined to be ruled by the greedy Giants. Until one day there appeared the three musketeers.

Dewi Shinta Parwati or the Princes of Silence, the eldest daughter of the late founder of the kingdom was to be the most significant member of the three musketeers. Though she was still very young and her skill at fighting was not excellent, she possessed natural powers which could leave any enemy scared to fight with her. People said that if she called her magic "golden silence", she could make the enemy powerless even to stand up. Such a miracle was indeed a natural gift. However, many people believed that she was the reincarnation of her late powerful and charismatic father who also possessed supernatural powers.

Another musketeer, Panditha Durnadha Putra, was known as the blind one-eyed man. His real name was Raden Arya Pawesisan. Nobody really knows why he was popularly known as Pandhita Durnadha Putra instead. Many believed that it was because he was as wise a priest as Pandhita Dhurna, besides the physical defect of his eye always reminded the people of Dhurna's defect of his hand. And being a genius and powerful with magic, he was a wise priest, resulting in the first Musketeer (Princess of Silence) to take him as her great advisor. With his magic powers, people believed that this old priest could speak with any language of spirit. For this reason, besides having a number of "pious Cantrii" (fanatical followers) he was also supported by the soldiers of spirit.

The third musketeer was an ugly, but smart dwarf named Raden Harya Sangkuni Putra or the so-called Raden Pangengkelan. People called him this because he was a stubborn dwarf who listened to nobody. He was smart and powerful, both in strategy and politics. Moreover, he had the so-called Malik Rupa magic and with his most powerful strategy Esok Dele Sore Tempe 1) he always made his enemies confused and caused them terrible headache when he used his magic. Due to this, most of the people were either very reluctant or scared to fight with him.

The birth of these three musketeers appeared to be promising to the islanders. They found that the arrival of sunshine, which broke the long darkness covering the land for these last three decades, was possible. The people were getting more hopeful that their saviors would release them from the bondage of the Giants' tyrannical power.

Indeed, God had destined that these three musketeers were to be His messengers and would destroy the greedy Giant Asuharta. These three united musketeers could heroically destroy the Asuharta regime as noted in the golden history of the Kingdom of Paradise, which in the local calendar was Kemis Kliwon, in the Month of Shafar in year of 8991. Though, Asuharta's regime had been dethroned from power there were still a lot of Asuharta's loyalists who had survived by being undercover. Indeed, it was ironic that these ex-followers escaped from being sent to court. Yet they were received by Raden Pangengkelan to be his followers, disregarding the fact that he was the greatest enemy of Asuharta. This made people suspicious that Raden Pangengkelan had a secret plan to recruit followers from Asuharta's loyalists. No doubt, the harmony of the three musketeers had been diminishing since then.

Time passed just after one Warsa (Warsa is what the local people call a year which was 10 days shorter than our calendar). The disharmony among the members of three musketeers since the collapse of Asuharta's regime was growing stronger and stronger. Clearly everyone saw that there had been a sort of rivalry between the Princess of Silence's party and Raden Pangengkelan's party. Each of them was competing to gain popularity at grassroots level. In this rivalry, it seemed that Pandhita Dhurnada Putra took the Princess of Silence's side. People understood the reason for this as he quite disliked Raden Pangengkelan's arrogance and stubbornness. Besides, he found that being on the Princess of Silence's side meant that he would get more respect.

In the last minute of Asuharta's life, as Raden Pangengkelan's shimmering sword stabbed deeply into his stomach, Asuharta cursed Raden Pangengkelan, that his bad spirit and all of his greedy desire would posses him. Being a man strongly believing logic rather than superstition, he did not believe in Asuharta's curse. In fact he smiled bitterly seeing his greatest enemy about to die on his sword.

However, after a while he found it true that areas of his mouth (left and right teeth) were beginning to itch. He did not know why and his doctors were even unable to diagnose this strange phenomenon. In another month he found that two of his teeth, one on the front left side and another on the front right side were beginning to grow. At first he did not worry much. But later on he found it increasingly worrying. This was the reason that in every meeting with other statesmen he had to pretend that he had a toothache. In fact he just wanted to hide his shame.

It was not only physically that Raden Pangengkelan possessed the characteristics of Asuharta, but greed was also increasingly controlling his desire. Now he had become so ambitious to hold the position of the kingship in the kingdom. However, he was hampered by the fact that he was merely a son of a lower class citizen and according to the law of the kingdom it was impossible for him to be the king. Besides, it was an undeniable fact that he was an ugly dwarf. This physical defect would not have meant as much if people did not believe the myth that the natural cause of his condition was because his family used to engage in morally improper or bad acts as his mother was a prostitute when she was pregnant with him while his father committed adultery with his neighbors. However, he could claim himself as the greatest hero in destroying the Asuharta Regime.

Poor, as he was, he would not make a statement that he would rather become nobody but the king. Due to this he would not accept defeat. Using cunning tactics, he tried to develop a new way of changing the old system, saying that everybody was allowed to be the king of the kingdom, as long as the people approved it. He even said that if either he or his two friends gained the most votes for running the kingdom he would support them. He was optimistic that he would be the one who would get the most votes from the people because he killed the last King Asuharta. But he did not realize that at the bottom of the people's hearts, there was a sort of hatred toward him due to his arrogance and stubbornness.

In fact, when there was an election to choose the king, the Princess of Silence gained the most votes.

Of course Raden Pangengkelan was very disappointed with this result. He could not accept the result of the election. And he was disillusioned over the fact that despite his heroic fighting against Asuharta and his success in killing that powerful and titanic king, people did not credit him with this. He bitterly questioned why the Princess of Silence should be appointed Queen of these Paradise Islands. The strange thing here was that the more jealous he became, the faster the canine teeth on each side of his mouth grew.

He was very disappointed and mocked the people for being stupid. Deep in his heart, he wanted to rebel against the peoples' wishes. As a man big on tactics and strategy, he found a way to achieve his ambition. With his smart and cunning mind, he thought of another strategy to take him to the Paradise Palace. He realized that although Pandita Dhurnada Putra was very loyal and close to the Princess of Silence, the former also had an ambition to be king. Here was how he found the way. He would split his two friends. In other words, use the same tactic which his greatest enemy, the late Asuharto, used whenever dealing with strong rivals that was the so-called "divide et empire". He knew well that the relationship between the blind one-eyed Priest and the Princess of Silence was so close but there were a lot of sensitive matters that could be brought to the surface.

Despite the fact that everybody showed their consistent support in choosing the Princess of Silence as their ideal leader, Raden Pangengkelan urged the people not to accept the result of election. He said that there was a lot of unfairness in the election. He also argued that this country should be lead by a man instead of a woman. He claimed that Pandita Dhurnada Putra was the right person for this position. He was successful in assuring Pandita Dhurnada Putra that he really believed he was God's real messenger and was needed to bring this country into prosperity. Indeed, his strategy turned out to be so effective as to initiate a splitting conflict between Pandhita Dhurnada Putra's followers and the Princess of Silence's.

Then, unavoidably, another civil war broke out. The bloodshed was worse than that when the three united musketeers fought against the late King Asuharta. Millions of innocent lives were sacrificed in the unnecessary civil war in which the two musketeers were tragically killed.

When the two parties were weakened Raden Pangengkelan laughed and said to himself, stroking his canine teeth, "Here is the time for me to achieve my long-desired position."

A strange incident occurred while Raden Pangengkeian was laughing but it could only be heard by the holy priests. They heard faint cries from the Heavens -- those of the tragically killed Princess of Silence and Pandhita Dhurnada Putra who were saying "Why should we sacrifice the lives of millions of innocent people for the sake of our self ambition."

Furthermore, another phenomenon happened later on. Although Raden Pangengkelan took over the kingship after having his two fellows tragically killed, he was not satisfied because the late Asuharta's curse was increasingly shadowing his life. Everyday he asked a dentist to cut his canine teeth, but they kept on growing and growing. Now it did not take one month for his teeth to grow back, but less than a minute. Due to this, and without saying anything to the people, he secretly left the palace for Nusa Kambangan Island, where he lived undercover. He found the Island the right place to cover his shame. There he died mercilessly without anybody's knowledge, just the way an old tiger does; eaten by wild eagles. And his soul was flying to the Godly court where his two old fellows had been waiting to give testimony upon his trial.

Yogyakarta, October 1, 1999

Glossary:

Esok Dele Sore Tempe: In Javanese, in the morning it is beans, in the evening tempeh, meaning inconsistent.