The Visitor

By Yunizar Nassyam

I was washing my father's bedclothes at the well when I heard a knock at the front door. And although I discontinued adding more detergent from the package on the wall to the wash water, I ignored the knock for some time before finally approaching the door, still drying my hands with the towel thrown over my shoulder.

When I passed Father's bedroom, I saw my mother sitting in a chair. She sat with her back to the door. She was tucking a sarong around Father's lower body. I could see how carefully she was putting the sarong over Father's legs.

I believe she also heard the knock at the front door. And I knew why she did not get up to see the visitor.

The front door was unlocked. It was only closed, but the person on the other side of the door did not push it open. When I came closer I knew for sure that the visitor was not one of our neighbors. Neighbors never knock when visiting each other in my village.

When I opened the door, I saw a gentleman of about 60 -- the same age as Father -- standing there. He wore a sebo (a piece of cloth used as a headdress by males in West Sumatra) and had a sarong at his waist. His thick moustache was gray. He was tall and slender, but gave the impression of being tough and healthy.

"Does Angku Beram live here?" he asked, clearly mentioning my father's name.

"That's right," I said. "And who are you, Sir? Do you want to see my father?"

He nodded. I directly opened the door for him. "Please, be seated, Sir," I said and moved to call Mother.

"Where is your father lying, kid?" he asked. I frowned and abandoned my initial intention to leave him. I carefully watched his old, but clean face. He must be a friend of my father since he knew Father had been sick for months.

"You know that Father is sick?"

"Well, a friend of mine told me a couple of days ago. He told me about Angku Beram's health. I haven't seen him for a long time. May I now see him in his room?"

I carefully gazed at the old gentleman. I tried to remember who he might be. I knew Father had never told us about this gentleman. Yet I showed him the way and he followed. "Come in please."

He entered Father's room. Mother stood with her back to the door, wiping the sweat from Father's chest. She was busy with the cloth rubbing Father's skin so that she was not aware of the visitor's presence.

"Mother, a visitor wants to see Father," I said.

Mother stopped her work and turned around. I saw her frown and appear rather confused when she saw the gentleman. Perhaps she did not know him either.

"A friend told me that Angku Beram is seriously ill," the visitor said. He held out his hand and Mother accepted it.

"I don't think I have ever met you. Excuse me, but who are you?" she asked in a friendly manner.

The gentleman smiled. He did not answer. He sat in a chair and took Father's hand. He then looked at me and Mother. The smile was still there.

"You might have forgotten me. It is unlikely that Angku Beram never told you about me. It's true that I was only one of his many friends during the independence war," he calmly explained.

"But, would you be so kind to remind us what your name is, Sir?" Mother asked in return.

He looked at Father again. He stretched out all five of his fingers and waved them in front of Father's eyes. "If Angku Beram had been able to see, he would have shouted my name. He used to call me Angku Sutan," he said.

I frowned in confusion, as did Mother. We were not able to remember a gentleman named Angku Sutan as being a friend of my father.

"Neither of you has never heard that name?" he asked. "Strange."

"Father has many friends, you know," I said. "Some are old friends whom we didn't know until their recent visits."

"And you must be one of them," Mother said promptly.

"Right. After many decades, I've just now had the time to see Angku Beram." His voice revealed some regret. "How long has he been in this poor condition?" he asked Mother.

"That he cannot talk or listen to us?" Mother asked.

He promptly nodded in affirmation.

"Six, seven months. But his skin has been moist for more than a year. It has been very depressing," she said, softly. And indeed she was right, I thought.

"Where have you taken him for medical help?"

"Well, to many places. There were also many who wanted to give a hand, and advised us where to go, but the illness does not get better. It seems that it is getting even worse."

The gentleman named Angku Sutan kept nodding. He stared at Father with a pitying look. Father really deserved compassion. I myself could not stand seeing his suffering anymore. I sometimes arrived at nonsensical thoughts. If I were him I would rather die than suffer such an illness. His body was too old to stand unbearable illnesses. And I thought that was the trouble with being old.

I could not remember for sure how Father got his illness. He complained that he suffered an itch in particular parts of his body. It was caused by inflammation of his skin. He couldn't stand not to scratch. Later on, the swollen spots spread over his whole body. Father complained more when the inflamed area burst open like earth which had not felt rain for months. His efforts to heal the wounds never succeeded.

Puss -- sometimes mixed with blood -- oozed from his irritated skin. His bedclothes had to be replaced every morning and washed. I pitied him and I almost couldn't stand it every time Mother and I had to remove the sheet sticking to Father's back. Sometimes we couldn't avoid removing skin with the bedclothes. It was really awful.

In the beginning, I thought Father got the disease from someone he had cured. He had told me that after curing people with skin disease, he always felt itchy in particular places. But he was always able to overcome it. He was not a medicine man, but he knew how to cure skin disease, and had cured many patients from nearby villages.

"Perhaps you got it from your patients," I once said to him.

He denied it. "How could a disease I have cured infect me?"

"But you have told me that every time you cure a patient you run the risk of getting a similar disease from him, haven't you?" I said again.

"But this is different," he replied. "It is terribly itchy, you know. I have never had it before."

"Then you must be able to cure yourself. You have given medicine to many people, and they apparently recovered, so..."

"I have tried it, believe me. But the itch becomes worse."'

"You cured somebody lately, didn't you, Father?"

"So, what?"

"Who knows, maybe what you have said is right, and somebody you cured gave the disease to you?"

He did not say anything. He continued rubbing various medicines on his irritated skin. I could see how he suffered.

Since Father couldn't do anything about his own disease, he asked Mother to look for help from others. She visited many clever men. It took her time to find the ingredients for his medicine, but Father still complained he was not getting any better. He didn't go out any more. Nothing was easy for him. Even sitting was difficult for him.

Finally, he preferred lying in bed all the time. He was desperate. None of the medicine Mother brought home could cure him. And during these six or seven months, his health got increasingly worse. Now, Father could not see nor hear people around him.

"I owe a lot to Angku Beram," said the old gentleman who had to be about the same age as Father. His words woke me up from my daydream. "Would you mind if I tried to help him?"

Mother and I looked at each other, because we never anticipated him as being a clever man, who might be able to cure Father.

"I'm not as clever as Angku Beram, concerning skin diseases. I used to learn from him. Who knows, maybe I could cure my friend."

"Thank you, Sir," Mother said. "We are grateful to you."

"But I'm also grateful for the opportunity to cure my friend. Could you both leave us alone for some minutes, please?" the visitor said. So Mother and I left them in the room.

The door was then closed. We waited, wondering whether the person who called himself Angku Sutan and a friend of Father's was really a clever man. Not much time had passed when the door opened and Angku Sutan came out and closed the door again.

For some time he just stood by the door. He removed and then corrected the position of the sebo on his head. He then walked toward us and took a chair. "You're lucky," he said.

"You mean...?" asked Mother.

"He could survive. We will just have to pray."

Mother and I looked at each other again. I did not expect Father to get well. I thought it would not be easy for Mother to believe Angku Sutan, especially because the other medicine men had said the very same words.

He then stood hurriedly and walked to the door, while we were still thinking over his words.

"Excuse me for now. I will come next week, bringing medicine to relieve the suffering of Angku Beram," he said. "Goodbye."

Only then did Mother and I realize that we had not offered him anything to drink.

After Angku Sutan left, Mother and I went into Father's room.

Amazing! When we opened the door, we saw Father turning his head. And his eyes, which he had not opened for six months, were shining as he looked at us.

"Father!"

Mother threw herself onto his bed and at the same time I realized we had not thanked Angku Sutan. I ran to the front door to look for him, but no one was there. He had disappeared so rapidly. Then I went back into Father's room. I saw him sitting on the bedside with Mother. The stiff skin of his face was rather wet and shiny.

Some days later his skin began drying. We were really amazed at how clever Angku Sutan was. I was certain he had not even given Father any medicine. He had promised to come with medicine a week after his first visit, that's all. But I felt Father did not need medicine anymore. His skin was smoother and no more transparent liquid or blood oozed out. Father was really recovering.

"Are you sure you don't know Angku Sutan?" I asked him, six days after that gentleman first visited us and cured Father.

Father shook his head. "None of my friends during the independence war were called Angku Sutan. Especially with the features you've mentioned. I'm quite sure of it."

"But he insisted that he was a friend of yours. During the war, against the Dutch."

"He's coming today, he promised?" Father asked.

"Yes. To bring your medicine."

Father scratched his wrinkled forehead with his index finger. It seemed he was trying to retrieve something from his memory. "Hopefully he will come. Who knows. He may really have been my friend, but I simply can't remember him anymore."

But the gentleman we were waiting for never showed up. We had waited and waited, but he did not come.

Four days later something unexpected happened. Mother and I had never imagined that Father, who seemed to be recovering, would have to take to his bed again.

The next day he passed away.

Mother wept, and so did I. My six sisters and brothers, who were all married, did not weep because they were prepared to accept his demise. They thought death was better than the unbearable suffering Father had faced.

That afternoon Father was buried. The mourners left. We were the last ones at the cemetery.

At the gate before entering my brother's car, I stopped and turned to take one more look at Father's final resting place.

A gentleman wearing a sebo on his head and a black Chinese- cut shirt and a sarong around his waist approached Father's grave. I recognized his face at a glance, and also the appearance of his skin. I remembered who he was, straight away: Angku Sutan!

Mother also stopped and stared at Father's grave. Then she took my arm and drew me toward her.

When I turned back once again, I saw no one there.

I did not question her as to whether she also had seen someone approaching Father's grave only to promptly disappear.

Translated by Wuri Soedjatmiko

Yunizar Nassyam was born in West Sumatra in the early 1960s. His short story The Visitor, which appears in Our Heritage, 16 Modern Indonesian Stories, was originally titled Tamu and was taken from Suara Pembaruan afternoon daily.