Tiger Woman

By Debra H. Yatim

She was the stuff of my dreams, the bad ones that is, the wake-you-up-with-a-start-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of dreams. Every day I'd see her, three times a day in fact, sailing down the street with her tiger cub in tow (or rather herself in the tow of the tiger cub) with a serious look on her face and her long caftan-like daster billowing around her.

The first time would be at 5 a.m. when the dew was still sticking heavily to the grass; she was off to Boplok Market to select the choicest cuts of fresh meat for her pet. The next time was after lunch, at around 2 p.m., when the sun was at its cruelest; she'd billow past again, this time trying to help the tiger digest his midday meal. And the last time was around magrib, in the evening when the call to prayer indicates that obedient children must be safe in the bosom of their homes so that the tuyul and other mischief-mongering spirits can't get at them.

The tiger cub was this woman's passion. That, and painting. Oh yes, her paintings: Huge, gloomy, frightening affairs, the kind to keep you in nightmares for years. And one that never failed to give me the shivers occupied a place of honor in the home of our mutual neighbor, my mother's aunt. Tante Liana, who lived only two doors away in the next house after the home of the tiger- woman.

Tante Liana's home was a large Indies-style bungalow. Whenever I had to go there on an errand, I'd clang the bell and wait anxiously outside the door, wishing against hope that she was not at home. But she was always in. Her ancient hag of a servant would shuffle to the front door, peer from behind the curtain to make sure that it was somebody she knew, then slowly creak the latch before allowing me to step inside.

Next would come the part I dreaded the most: "Sit here!" the old woman would command, while pointing to a pouf on the verandah, and then go off to seek our "Madam".

And so I'd sit, or fidget rather, wishing I could muster the gumption to nonchalantly move into another room. But I couldn't, and I would be forced to look at the painting hanging on the room's partition, Not that I wanted to look at it, but some perverse streak always made me turn my eyes towards it. Then, that would be it; I'd be mesmerized by the image of the woman in the painting, unable to turn away, even as I quaked in my rubber thongs, goose pimples rising on my scrawny arms.

To my eyes, the dark-skinned woman with parasol and the red kebaya, frozen mind-stride beneath a row of banana trees, was the she-devil herself. Her eyes, I swear, would follow me when Tante Liana appeared and I crossed the room to greet her. And then would follow me again when I hurriedly left her home, rushing towards the sunny outdoors to gulp in fresh air, as if the dark house had insufficient oxygen to keep my young lungs filled.

And that was just one of her paintings! Those awful things, with their depictions of other-world characters, were everywhere. They seemed to be in every house of our close-knit neighborhood. There was no getting away from them. There they'd be: Pictures of burning candles, flickering flames casting their light on darkened gnomes in straw huts who stared sullenly at the world outside.

But the place you found them in the largest number was at the home of the tiger-woman herself. A huge cavern-like place surpassing even Tante Liana's home in its gloominess.

Why was it then, if the woman was so spooky, did we children view her house and front yard as if it was our own private playground? Perversity, I suppose. But then, her yard provided, I suppose, the very material upon which adventures are founded.

In her yard were huge mounds of earth rimmed with slabs of cement which from afar made them look like graves. I really thought her garden was a graveyard until one day, long after I was older, somebody wizened me to the truth: They were compost heaps used by her in her horticultural experiments. This woman was, it seems, a person ahead of her time. In the very middle of the yard stood a large banyan tree which provided us with shade in the hottest of hours. But as we played hide-and-seek among its huge roots, we always kept one eye on her house, on the look out to see whether the tiger-woman was busy painting or tending to her cub.

I'd like to tell you more about the tiger cub, but I must first explain that the woman had no children. She was married to a large ebony-skinned man with piercing eyes and a truly amazing shock of hair that looked perpetually electrified. He came from a small island in the Moluccas, somewhere off the coast of Ambon. In fact we were told that he was the chieftain of that remote hideaway. That, I suppose, is why the adults referred to the woman as "The last Sultana of the Moluccas".

As children, however, we didn't give the husband much thought. It was the tiger cub we were interested in. The cub was both our major interest and our biggest challenge. We itched to play with it, to tickle its chin, nuzzle its neck, or cuddle it in our arms during our afternoon siesta. But no, for us, the cub was off- limits, and the minute she saw us hanging around her gate, she would shoo the cub into the house. I guess we should have been thankful that she left us alone and in peace, but it was the cub we were really after.

When the cub was dozing and the Tiger-woman was occupied with her painting, we could actually sneak into her house, that awesome cave of wonders. Every single nook of the front room was intriguing. It was possible to spend hours just staring at the walls, plastered as they were with a jungle motif. And in the room were huge boxes, that once opened you never wanted to shut. Inside were bolts of cloth, feather boas, old shoes, pots and pans, ancient trinkets and the inevitable old tubes of paint -- oily and musky smelling, one-squeeze things from which would ooze shimmering rainbows of color.

But the best thing about the front room wasn't actually in the front room at all: it was a huge western-style bathtub that stood in a covered courtyard at the side. This was no ordinary tub for it had legs in the shape of lions' paws, and was made out of a yellow-colored stone I have not seen the likes of since. The tub was so large that it could hold our entire group, all seven of us, with no problem whatsoever. We'd slide down its sides, play games of jacks in it, or use it as a base for hide-and-seek.

But what we anticipated most was for the rainy season to begin, a time when the tub would fill with rain to become our own private pool. Whenever there was a heavy rainstorm at night and the following day was hot, by mid morning we'd be sneaking into the yard and to rush headlong into the tub. Most often we'd be greeted by the yelp of the tiger-cub who, having beaten us to the tub, would usually be just as surprised as we were.

Those were the only times we were able to play with the tiger cub to our hearts' content. There was between us and that cub a special affinity that exists only between small children and animals.

Looking back, I'm certain the Tiger-woman knew that we used to sneak into her house. Surely our shrieks of laughter could be heard even down the length and breadth of Flamboyant Lane, the street on which we lived, but for some reason she let us be. Not so her boarders.

Her boarders were these giants who lived in the back part of the house, huge, hulking men from West Irian (Or Irian Jaya as it's now called) who would silently appear, suddenly and from out of nowhere, to scare the wits out of us all, and yell in chorus for us to stop making such a ruckus because they were trying to take their afternoon nap. They worked at nights, goodness knows doing what, and they liked their afternoon naps. Woe betide anybody who disrupted them.

When they yelled at us we'd run screaming out of the tub, stumbling over the gravestones in the front yard and careening through the high gates where we would fall laughing in a hysterical heap, relieved to have gotten out of that one alive.

One afternoon, when I was in my grandmother's room, my favorite place for curling up, I was rudely awoken from my siesta by a blood-curdling howl.

Outside, beneath the window, my brother Radab was playing with some of the neighborhood boys. "Come quickly," Basri, one of his friends told him. "Something terrible has happened."

Then I heard the crunch of gravel as five pairs of feet scrambled towards the house next door. I was on my feet like a shot. I slipped on my thongs and ran out, too, with my sisters and cousins emerging from other rooms to stream outside after me.

What we next saw was the most horrifying scene I have ever witnesses. The Tiger-woman was on the ground, her arms around her precious cub who was frighteningly still. Streaks of red spread rapidly from the cub's chest to her stomach and her breasts, spreading then to her underarms and changing her robe into a scarlet horror. She crouched in the dirt, howling for all she was worth, mourning her baby, her little tiger-cub. We could do nothing but stare at the sharp dagger on the ground nearby, still glistening with fresh blood, and listen to the ravings of the Irian giants and her huge husband somewhere in the background, who were arguing in languages unknown to us.

We stood there awkwardly, locked in terror, thinking of our own special friendship with the creature, not learning until later that the woman's husband, jealous of the little cub had, in a fit of rage, taken a dagger from one the boarders and stabbed the life out of the tiger cub.

All that was long ago, but then, a few days ago, when I was getting ready to go to the work the television was on. I half- listened as one of the morning news broadcasters announced an exhibition of rare paintings by one of Indonesia's most unique painters. While running to catch my little girl who was going to be late for school, I passed in front of the television and there was frozen in my path.

Looming on the screen was the horror of my childhood, the painting of my nightmares, the picture of the woman whose eyes that followed you wherever you went. It was the Tiger Woman's painting. I gave a little yelp, and sat down. The broadcaster droned on about the painter's life, her unique vision, and her struggle to develop a style of painting that did not become fashionable until many years later. The Tiger-woman was very much ahead of her time. She had not taken up painting until she was forty, but in a relatively brief period of time had become a force to be reckoned with, in an era when all the important artists were men.

My nightmares flitted across the screen: candles in the gloom and small sullen men, all the dark and frightening pictures of Flamboyant Lane. And then, a lingering photograph of the Tiger- woman in her prime. Surprisingly, she didn't look frightening at all but, rather like one of the jovial stall-keepers one might meet in a market-place. Hers was not a face befitting an eccentric, tiger-keeping pioneering woman at all.

And then it struck me. The woman's face was not strange at all. Her features were the same of those of the people in the large and rowdy household of my childhood. In a monotone the newscaster supplied me with the key to the puzzle.

The last Sultana of the Moluccas was in fact no Moluccan at all. She was the sister of Tante Liana and this my very own great aunt.