Zero-Point

By B.Y. Tand

He gazes at the sun and sees it spinning. He gazes at the moon and sees it spinning. He gazes at a stand of trees and sees them spinning. Looking inward, he sees himself spinning like a top. At zero-point the top topples. He examines the top. He examines its string but finds it tangled and knotted. He looks for the end of the string, searching carefully until he locates it, wound around and around a zero-point. Its strands, overlaid in multiple layers, from an oval and the oval surrounds a zero-point.

He gazes at Marni lying there, with her eyes shut. Beads of sweat stand on her brow, suggesting that she had just completed a difficult and exhausting task. He feels his own chest, also damp with sweat. Together they mounted a peak to sip from a spring of water as cool as a mountain lake. They bathed in sweat, swam and cavorted in a sea of their own perspiration. Now he watches Marni sleep, lost in her dreams. He gathers her wrap of batik cloth that had been cast to the side of the bed when they began their ascent, then slowly drapes it over her body. For a moment his hand pauses in mid-air before he finally draws back to the cloth again. Her studies her body's entirety. Such exquisitely smooth skin. Her waist-length hair makes her appear so feminine.

He hastens to kill the doubt that flares suddenly in his mind, fearing that doubt, like the string of a top, might bind him even tighter. He could then be spun and would spin until he arrived back at the zero-point. It is the zero-point that precipitated this conflict, he says to himself. He kisses Marni's brow deeply, so deeply that he founders in the depths of his soul. He then covers Marni again, drawing the cloth upward as far as her breasts. At that moment she begins to stir. She stretches. Her eyes open to seek his eyes. Their eyes meet, a spark kindles. And Marni cuddles up to him, a coy embrace.

"Was it good?"

"Yes, and you?"

"Hmmm, yes. You're were like a wild stallion trampling the Sumbawa plains".

"Marni..."

"Yes?"

The man doesn't continue his thought. He feels like a top spinning inside a circle. He looks into the woman's eyes, deeply, as if searching for something there. Her eyes, with a light as cool as the mountain lake from which they have just drunk, are colored with tenderness and love. The eyes of a woman no different from the eyes of other women. Eyes that seek in a man, protection.

"Why are you so quiet? Say what's on your mind. Are you hungry?"

Marni presses her breasts to his chest. She strokes his chest, so very softly that he is almost consumed again. But he climbs up from the zero-point, breaking through the dense jungle. Hurriedly he pours the remnants of his love onto the ground to let it crawl off in search of a new vessel.

He searches his heart to see if it is truly empty now. His eyes squeezed shut, his lips move as if to say something to Marni. But before any words can escape his mouth, Marni bends and kisses his breast. A coolness penetrates him to his marrow. Her hand massages the nape of his neck as she whispers something that she has often whispered in his ear in moments preceding their ascents. The man looks into the gentleness there. His quarrying ceases when Marni suddenly shuts her eyes and simultaneously parts her moist lips. He is at once flung into an ancient well of crystal water. Looking at his reflection in the water he sees that he is a whole man again, that the vessel is full once more.

He gazes at the sun and sees it spinning. He gazes at the moon and sees it spinning. Looking inward he sees himself spinning like a top. At zero-point the top topples. He examines the top. He looks at his wife and sees her spinning. He looks at his children and finds them spinning, too. But, finally everything stops at the zero-point. It is intolerable to think of leaving again, to roll, to spin, to return to the zero-point. Stars hang before his eyes, a swarm around his pupils, dancing, singing, turning this way and that. As if something has caused his chest to constrict, his breath grows labored.

His voices is horse, his eyes are shut tight. "Do you agree?" he asks.

Marni doesn't answer. A damn has burst to inundate the flowers in the garden. She had long suspected that one day this man would say these words for he, this man, her husband, has another woman, his first wife. As the flood waters recede, only flower stems and sopping leaves remain. The flower pots are broken. The soil has been washed away, perhaps to a nameless sea.

Marni composes herself. Although she is screaming inside, she knows that she must face the inevitable. She kisses the man's forehead, a long and slow kiss. He presses shut his eyelids to stave off the movement of a point that has begun to move slowly away from the zero-point.

"Do you need my assent? Isn't it you who must decide? As the man, don't you hold the key to the marriage? I've always thought that you might come to that decision. I am powerless."

"Even if it is a right that has been conferred on me, and one to which I have given my assent, on the basis of a social contract, I do not want to decide alone. I want this to be a joint decision. You too have just as much right as I to argue why we must part."

The woman feels as if she is about to choke. Suddenly she feels that she is hanging from the sky with no rope, but is too dizzy and too frightened to jump down. Were she to try to climb up, her hands would never reach the firmament's base. Her head begins to spin when she sees the sharp rocks waiting to greet her fall.

"I know you love me with all your heart. But I know you love your wife and children, too. You can't decide your love evenly, can you?"

"No..."

"Who do you love more?"

"You!"

"And her?"

"The same as you."

Marni laughs. The man laughs too. The walls of the room laugh. The gecko lizards, too. The entire scene dissolves in a fit of laughter.

"Are you saying that you can divide your love into three equal parts?"

"Yes."

"With one of the thirds for me?"

"Yes."

"And one third for your first wife?"

"Yes."

"And one third for your children?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever asked your first wife's permission to leave her? Have you ever heard her arguments?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Have you?"

"No."

"Why?"

The woman shakes her head. Her eyes fill with tears, glimmering crystalline. Like jewels, a million sparks glittering on their facets. The man shook his head. His eyes filled with tears, they too glimmering crystalline. Like jewels, a million sparks glittering on their facets. The zero-point falls on their chests. To mingle with his male sweat. To mingle with her female sweat. The zero-point falls into his wife's womb, issued from a pistol fired a previous night. The zero-point falls into Marni's womb, issued from a pistol fired this afternoon.

Translated by T.E. Behrend

B.Y. Tand was born in Indrapura, Asahan, North Sumatra in 1942, is an employee of the Ministry of Education and Culture. His short story Zero-Point (Titik Nol) was published in Horison, Vol.XVII, No. 9, 1982. Its English translation appears in Menagerie I and is printed here by courtesy of The Lontar Foundation.