The body was still hanging when the shadows began to lengthen.
The people had already left. The town square, which had been packed moments ago, now held only trampled dust and a few stray dogs sniffing at the edge of the cloth. The smell of sweat and mud still hung in the air. The heat had not yet left the ground.
Raka Wulung still stood in the same place.
Karno's silver bracelet was still on the ground. The broken ivory kris scabbard of his father’s kris was still on the ground. Both gleamed in the afternoon sun.
He stared at the wooden post in the center. His legs wanted to carry him there, to lower his father down. His hands trembled. Not from fear. For the first time, he simply did not know what to command his own body to do.
An old market guard approached. Not to help. To drive away the dogs.
“Don’t stay here too long, Lord,” the guard said. The title Lord still came out, but with a different kind of fear behind it. Fear of being cursed along with him. “An embezzler has to wait for an envoy from Trowulan to bury him outside the village. He can’t be buried inside.”
The word embezzler (corrupt official) was new to him today. He had heard it from the palm-leaf manuscript. Now everyone spoke it as if they had known it all along.
“I’m taking my father home,” Raka said. His voice was hoarse. Market dust had gotten into his throat.
“Your house isn’t your house anymore,” the guard replied quickly. He glanced toward the end of the road, toward Kala Dipa’s great house atop the small hill. “It’s been barricaded. Orders.”
Raka didn’t believe him. He turned and ran. His fine leather shoes, which he had been so proud of earlier, now felt heavy with mud. His blue silk cloth, which usually billowed behind him, lay limp against his sweaty back. He ran like a little boy who had lost his mother, not like a Lord.
The house came into view from a distance. Its tall wooden gate was still standing. But a crossed bamboo barricade had been set up in front of it. Two village youths who usually carried his father’s rice grain now stood there with pointed bamboo spears. Red state-seizure banners hung over their shoulders.
“Move,” Raka said, his breath coming in gasps. “This is my house. Move aside.”
The two youths exchanged glances. One of them was Wira, whom Raka had once ordered to climb a coconut tree in the rain simply because he wanted a young coconut.
“I can’t, Raka,” Wira said. There was no Lord anymore. “The District Chief ordered it. Everything inside has been seized. You can’t go in.”
“I only want to get some cloth to cover my father!”
“You can’t.”
Raka tried to force his way through. Wira shoved him. It wasn’t a hard push, but it was enough to send Raka sprawling onto the ground. His backside struck a small stone. A sharp pain shot up into his lower back. He had never fallen like that in front of anyone before.
He looked inside through a gap in the bamboo. The courtyard, usually swept clean by the servants, was now a mess. Wooden chests had been opened. His late mother’s silk cloths had been spread out and trampled. Copper pots were being carried away. His beloved white buffalo, Bima, was being dragged away by Karno.
“Karno!” Raka shouted from outside the fence. “Where are you taking my buffalo?”
Karno turned. His face was hard.
“To compensate the villagers for the rice paddies you and your father dried up last year, Raka. Kertra’s rice paddy failed because you dammed the water.”
Raka wanted to argue. He wanted to say that it was his father’s doing, not his. But his throat locked up. For the first time, he could not use his father’s words as a shield.
A woman came out of the house. Auntie Nah, the servant who had raised him since he was a baby. Her face was swollen from crying.
Auntie Nah saw Raka behind the bamboo barricade. She wanted to approach him, but Wira held out his spear to stop her.
“Auntie…” Raka said. His voice grew small. Like a little boy again. “Auntie…”
Auntie Nah could only throw something out from inside. A small bundle of cloth. It fell to the ground near Raka’s feet.
“I’m sorry, little Lord… I’m sorry… This is all I could save…”
Raka opened the bundle. It held no food. Only Auntie Nah’s own worn jarik cloth and a faded cloth headband.
His blue Lord’s clothing had become a mockery. The silk was too fine for a cursed man. Passersby stared at him with hatred brighter than it had been that morning.
He walked down from the hill. With every step, his leather shoes felt as if they were betraying him. They had been made for stirrups, not rocky ground.
On the road down, he encountered a group of women returning from the river. One of them was Auntie Darmi, whose son Raka had once lightly whipped for spilling the water he had used to wash his feet in the courtyard.
Auntie Darmi looked at Raka’s shoes. Her eyes lit up.
“Nice shoes,” she said loudly. “Shoes bought with our tax money. Take them off.”
“What?”
“I said take them off! You have no right to wear those. A thief’s son has no right to wear leather.”
Two other women joined in. Raka stepped back. The instinct for reading body language that he had possessed since childhood, the same instinct that had made him skilled in cockfighting arenas, caught their raised shoulders and thrust-forward chins. They really were going to take them.
“Don’t touch me! I’m Raka Wulung!”
“You’re a ragged vagrant now!” a child shouted.
They pulled at him. Raka fought back. He had the reckless courage inherited from his little palace. He swung at them, but his punches were those of a nobleman’s son who had never truly fought in the mud. He fell again. They yanked the leather shoes from his feet. They also pulled off his silk sash, the one threaded with gold.
They did not beat him any further. They simply left him sitting on the ground, his bare feet pressing into earth whose heat now felt like real embers.
The soft soles of his feet blistered at once. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Tears that had not come even when he watched his father die now spilled because the soles of his feet were blistering.
He kept walking. Barefoot. He wore only the blue silk shirt torn at the sleeve and dirty trousers, along with the faded headband from Auntie Nah, tied on haphazardly.
Afternoon turned to night. The market had closed. The wooden stalls stood empty. The smells of salted fish and garbage mingled together. Raka’s stomach growled. He had not eaten since morning. At home, he usually ate three meals a day with chicken and expensive vegetables. Now even his saliva tasted bitter.
He saw Kertra and his father pass by carrying torches. Kertra saw him. His father pulled Kertra’s hand.
“Don’t get close. You’ll have bad luck.”
Kertra stared at Raka for a long time. There was hatred in his eyes. But there was something else, too. Pity held back. He tossed something small toward the stall where Raka was leaning. Half a boiled cassava, already cold.
Raka stared at the cassava. His pride wanted to kick it away. His stomach growled louder.
He picked it up. His hands trembled. He ate it quickly, like a dog. Dust clung to the cassava. He swallowed that, too.
From the darkness of the neighboring stall, an old man emerged. A porter whom Raka had once ordered to carry him during a minor flood because he didn’t want his feet to get wet.
The porter did not pity him. He looked at Raka’s silk shirt.
“Fine shirt,” he said. “Trade it for a mat. You’ll sleep on the ground and catch a chill. Poor thing.”
Raka shook his head. It was the only thing he had left.
The porter laughed. “A ragged vagrant in silk. It’ll be rotten by tomorrow anyway.”
The night deepened. Wind from the rice paddies blew into the market stalls. It was cold. Raka shivered. He tried to sleep on the hard ground. The ground that had burned his feet during the day now sucked the warmth from his body. He curled up. The smell of his own sweat, which had once carried the fragrance of oil, now mingled with mud and the smell of stale cassava.
He could not sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the sound of a rope being pulled in the town square. And the clink of Karno’s silver bracelet hitting the ground.
Footsteps approached. Slowly.
A middle-aged woman stood in front of his stall. Auntie Darmi. The woman who had taken his shoes earlier. Whose son he had once whipped for spilling the water he had used to wash his feet.
Raka thought she had come to spit on him again. He turned his face away and waited.
Auntie Darmi did not spit. She carried a coconut shell filled with leftover rice and a little salt. Rice that was almost spoiled. The remains of her family’s dinner.
She did not hand it to him. She threw it onto the ground, right in front of Raka’s blistered, dust-covered feet.
“Take it,” she said. Her voice trembled as anger and pity battled inside her. “My son told me not to. He said to let you starve to death. But I… I still remember how your mother once gave me medicine when I was sick.”
She looked at Raka as he stared at the rice on the ground.
“Eat, Lord. If you still dare call yourself a Lord.”