The house was rented.
A single-storey bungalow in Setapak, on the northern edge of Kuala Lumpur, with an iron gate that had to be lifted slightly before it would swing. The garden was small. In the living room there was an old three-piece suite, a reel-to-reel tape player, and an ashtray that was rarely emptied in time. Nothing on the walls told you who lived there. He had been in that house for a few years, and it belonged to somebody else, and this will matter later.
The night before — Monday, the twenty-eighth of May, 1973 — he sat up late. Rain had come through in the afternoon, the way it does in Kuala Lumpur in May, and the air had stayed heavy afterwards. He played old tapes, one after another. Some were his own recordings. Some were other people’s. Some he had probably not listened to in years. He smoked, the way he had smoked since he was a teenager. Every so often he stopped, wound a tape back, and listened to the same passage again. Nobody wrote down which passage, and nobody thought to ask, because there was no reason on that particular Monday to think it would ever be a question.
The children had gone to bed. His wife sat with him for a while, then went in ahead of him. He mentioned that his chest was troubling him. It had been troubling him for several days. He said it was wind — angin — the thing people say in this part of the world when something aches and they would rather not think about it. He had said the same thing before, more than once.
At about half past four in the morning, the bed moved.
Saloma woke because there was a hand searching across the sheet beside her. She opened her eyes. In the dark her husband was lying on his side, his body curled slightly inward.
“Sally, badan I rasa sejuk betul. Tutuplah air condition.”
Sally, my body feels really cold. Turn off the air conditioning.
I have left the line as he said it, because of how he said it. English and Malay in the same breath, I for himself, his wife’s name shortened the English way — the private register of two people who had spent twelve years together in an industry where three languages were spoken before breakfast. It was not the sentence that frightened her. It was the voice carrying it. Thin. Dry. Not the voice she had known for twelve years, and not the voice that an entire country would have recognised within two syllables. She got up and pressed the switch, and the unit shuddered and stopped, and the room went very quiet. She came back to the edge of the bed and put her palm on his forehead, then on his chest.
Cold. And wet. The kind of sweat that has no business being on a man who has just complained of being cold.
“Nampaknya you sakit, daddy. I panggilkan doktor.”
You seem ill. Let me call a doctor.
He shook his head. Barely — only just enough to be a refusal, because even that had become expensive.
Here is a thing worth pausing on, before the rest of it happens. He was forty-four years old. He had made sixty-five films and written more than three hundred songs. He had won Best Actor in Tokyo in 1957, beating the finest actors Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines could send, and in 1963 a jury in that same city had been unable to place him in any existing category and had invented one for him. His voice had come out of every coffee-shop radio between Singapore and Alor Setar for a quarter of a century. And at half past four in the morning, in a rented house in Setapak, with something going badly wrong inside his chest, his instinct was not to call for help.
It was not to be a nuisance.
She asked again. He said no again.
The refusals in that room were not modesty and they were not stubbornness, or not only those things. By 1973 he had spent the better part of a decade being carefully, quietly, unfailingly polite about how little he had left — putting on a clean shirt before answering the gate, keeping his voice warm on the telephone, making sure that nobody who came to the house went away thinking anything was wrong. That habit does not switch off because it is four in the morning and you are the one who is dying. Then something changed in his breathing, and it was no longer a discussion.
She got up and woke the house.
What follows over the next hour is the end of the story, and it does not belong here. It belongs in the forty-first chapter of this book, after you have met the boy who bought his first ukulele with saved-up pocket money in a lane in Penang, and the nineteen-year-old who carried lighting cables across a studio yard in Singapore because it put him within arm’s reach of a camera, and the twenty-six-year-old who was handed a director’s chair by a company that expected him to fail with it. It belongs after you know what he built, so that when it stops you understand the size of what stopped.
So let me leave him there, in the dark, for now.
The first call to prayer is beginning at the surau, the neighbourhood prayer house, down the road. In the houses on either side people are getting up to wash and pray, and not one of them knows. His wife is holding him. He is telling her what is about to happen, in a voice that has gone thin, and she is telling him to hold on a little longer.
The ambulance has not arrived yet.
There is a piano against the living-room wall, four steps away, with cigarette burns along the top of the casing — a row of them, dozens, laid down over years by a man who needed both hands and had nowhere to put the cigarette. On the music stand there is a sheet of score in his handwriting. A song he finished not long ago, for a film he was still planning, about the city he had come to nine years earlier believing it would give him everything. It is called Air Mata di Kuala Lumpur. Tears in Kuala Lumpur.
He is forty-four.
Forty-four years earlier, on a morning his family always insisted was the first day of Hari Raya, in a wooden house on stilts on the island of Penang, a midwife who was also his grandmother washed a newborn boy and wrapped him in batik while the takbir, the festival call of praise, was being called outside.
That is where this begins.
Rumah itu disewa.
Sebuah banglo setingkat di Setapak, di pinggir utara Kuala Lumpur, dengan pagar besi yang perlu diangkat sedikit sebelum boleh ditolak. Halamannya kecil. Di ruang tamu ada sebuah set kerusi yang sudah lama, sebuah pemain pita, dan bekas abu rokok yang jarang sempat dikosongkan. Tidak ada apa-apa di dinding yang memberitahu sesiapa siapa yang tinggal di situ. Dia sudah beberapa tahun di rumah itu, dan rumah itu milik orang lain, dan perkara ini akan bermakna kemudian.
Malam sebelumnya — Isnin, dua puluh lapan Mei 1973 — dia duduk sampai lewat. Hujan turun petang tadi, seperti biasanya hujan turun di Kuala Lumpur pada bulan Mei, dan udara kekal berat selepas itu. Dia memasang pita lama, satu demi satu. Ada rakamannya sendiri. Ada rakaman orang lain. Ada yang mungkin sudah bertahun tidak didengarnya. Dia merokok, seperti dia merokok sejak umur belasan tahun. Sekali-sekala dia berhenti, mengundurkan pita, dan mendengar semula bahagian yang sama. Tidak ada sesiapa yang mencatatkan bahagian yang mana, dan tidak ada sesiapa yang terfikir untuk bertanya, sebab pada hari Isnin itu tidak ada sebab untuk menyangka ia akan menjadi satu persoalan.
Anak-anak sudah masuk tidur. Isterinya menemaninya seketika, kemudian masuk dahulu. Dia mengadu dadanya sakit. Sudah beberapa hari. Dia kata angin — perkataan yang orang di rantau ini gunakan bila sesuatu terasa sakit dan mereka lebih suka tidak memikirkannya. Dia pernah berkata begitu sebelum ini, lebih daripada sekali.
Pukul empat setengah pagi, katil bergerak.
Saloma terjaga sebab ada tangan meraba di atas cadar di sebelahnya. Dia membuka mata. Dalam gelap, suaminya terbaring mengiring, badannya sedikit melengkung ke dalam.
“Sally, badan I rasa sejuk betul. Tutuplah air condition.”
Saya biarkan ayat itu seperti yang diucapkannya, kerana cara dia mengucapkannya. Inggeris dan Melayu dalam satu nafas, I untuk dirinya sendiri, nama isterinya dipendekkan cara Inggeris — laras peribadi dua orang yang sudah dua belas tahun bersama dalam sebuah industri yang bercakap tiga bahasa sebelum sarapan. Bukan ayat itu yang mengejutkannya. Suaranya. Nipis. Kering. Bukan suara yang dia kenal selama dua belas tahun, dan bukan suara yang seluruh negara boleh cam dalam dua suku kata.
Dia bangun, menekan suis, dan mesin itu berhenti berdengung. Bilik terus menjadi senyap. Dia kembali ke tepi katil dan meletakkan tapak tangan ke dahi suaminya, kemudian ke dadanya.
Sejuk. Dan basah. Peluh yang tidak sepatutnya ada pada orang yang baru sahaja mengadu kesejukan.
“Nampaknya you sakit, daddy. I panggilkan doktor.”
Dia menggeleng. Perlahan sahaja — cukup untuk menjadi penolakan, sebab gerak sebanyak itu pun sudah mahal harganya.
Ada satu perkara yang patut diberhentikan sekejap di sini, sebelum yang lain berlaku.
Umurnya empat puluh empat tahun. Dia sudah membuat enam puluh lima buah filem dan menulis lebih tiga ratus lagu. Dia menang Pelakon Terbaik di Tokyo pada tahun 1957, menewaskan pelakon terbaik yang boleh dihantar oleh Jepun, Hong Kong dan Filipina, dan pada tahun 1963 juri di bandar yang sama tidak dapat meletakkannya dalam mana-mana kategori sedia ada lalu mencipta satu kategori khas untuknya. Suaranya keluar dari setiap radio kedai kopi antara Singapura dan Alor Setar selama suku abad.
Dan pada pukul empat setengah pagi, di sebuah rumah sewa di Setapak, dengan sesuatu yang sedang rosak teruk di dalam dadanya, naluri pertamanya bukan memanggil pertolongan.
Naluri pertamanya adalah untuk tidak menyusahkan sesiapa.
Isterinya bertanya sekali lagi. Dia menolak sekali lagi.
Penolakan di dalam bilik itu bukan sifat merendah diri dan bukan degil, atau bukan itu sahaja. Menjelang 1973 dia sudah menghabiskan hampir sedekad bersikap sopan dengan berhati-hati, dengan senyap, dan tanpa pernah gagal, tentang betapa sedikitnya yang tinggal padanya — memakai baju bersih sebelum membuka pintu pagar, mengekalkan suaranya mesra di telefon, memastikan tidak ada sesiapa yang datang ke rumah itu pulang dengan sangkaan ada sesuatu yang tidak kena. Tabiat begitu tidak berhenti hanya kerana pukul empat pagi dan kerana kali ini orang yang sedang nazak itu dirinya sendiri.
Kemudian sesuatu berubah pada nafasnya, dan ia bukan lagi satu perbincangan.
Dia bangun dan mengejutkan seisi rumah.
Apa yang berlaku sepanjang sejam berikutnya ialah penghujung cerita ini, dan tempatnya bukan di sini. Tempatnya di dalam bab keempat puluh satu buku ini, selepas anda bertemu budak yang membeli ukulele pertamanya dengan duit belanja yang dikumpul di sebuah lorong di Pulau Pinang, dan pemuda sembilan belas tahun yang memikul kabel lampu merentasi halaman studio di Singapura kerana kerja itu meletakkannya sejengkal daripada kamera, dan lelaki dua puluh enam tahun yang diserahkan kerusi pengarah oleh sebuah syarikat yang menjangkakan dia akan gagal dengannya.
Tempatnya selepas anda tahu apa yang dibinanya, supaya apabila ia berhenti anda faham betapa besarnya benda yang berhenti itu.
Jadi biar saya tinggalkan dia di situ, dalam gelap, buat masa ini.
Azan Subuh mula berkumandang di surau hujung jalan. Di rumah-rumah sebelah menyebelah orang sedang bangun untuk mengambil wuduk dan bersembahyang, dan tidak seorang pun daripada mereka tahu. Isterinya sedang memeluknya. Dia sedang memberitahu isterinya apa yang bakal berlaku, dengan suara yang sudah menjadi nipis, dan isterinya sedang menyuruhnya bertahan sedikit lagi.
Ambulans belum sampai.
Di dinding ruang tamu itu ada sebuah piano, empat langkah dari situ, dengan kesan bakar rokok di sepanjang bahagian atas kotaknya — berbaris, berpuluh-puluh, ditinggalkan bertahun-tahun oleh seorang lelaki yang memerlukan kedua-dua belah tangannya dan tidak ada tempat untuk meletakkan rokoknya. Di atas rehal not ada sehelai skor dengan tulisan tangannya sendiri. Sebuah lagu yang baru sahaja disiapkannya, untuk sebuah filem yang masih dalam rancangan, tentang bandar yang didatanginya sembilan tahun sebelum itu dengan kepercayaan bahawa bandar itu akan memberikan segalanya kepadanya.
Tajuknya Air Mata di Kuala Lumpur.
Umurnya empat puluh empat tahun.
Empat puluh empat tahun sebelum itu, pada suatu pagi yang keluarganya sentiasa berkeras adalah hari pertama Hari Raya, di dalam sebuah rumah kayu bertiang di Pulau Pinang, seorang bidan yang juga neneknya sendiri memandikan seorang bayi lelaki dan membalutnya dengan kain batik sementara takbir berkumandang di luar.
Di situlah cerita ini bermula.