EXORDIUM

Lights turned up to suggest time approaching sunset.
The scene is the front of the palace. Messenger enters from the left.

MESSENGER

I have been sent back ahead of the others

with news of the calamity that has overtaken

Raja Maniaka. The court and the royal household

must be told, before he is brought back by the men,

of this day’s deaths, of how he was stricken,

overcome by the terrible thought that he had caused

the deaths of his children by his very own hand.

Though in much confusion ourselves, we tried to calm him

as he covered his face with both his hands

and wailed, ‘I have killed them! I have killed them!.’

But he did not see or hear us, for to him

we must have seemed less than the shadow of smoke.

He is now himself a walking dead man.

His mind is no longer present in this world.

Bendahara with members who are not at to cave to witness
Anike’s entombment enter by way of the central door.

BENDAHARA

You are back early. It must be serious.

We can see bad news has written itself on your face.

MESSENGER

They are both dead, Nadim and Anike.

Tuanku is now beside himself with grief

and blames himself for being the cause of their deaths.

CHORUS (An elder)

Tuanku killed them?

MESSENGER

Nadim died by his own hand,

driven out of his mind at seeing Anike dead

when he and the men broke through into the cave.

BENDAHARA

How clearly Tok Seth had seen it all!

CHORUS (An elder)

Look, there is the Permaisuri. She must be told the news.

Wanang Seri enters with maids-in-attendance by way
of the central door.

WANANG SERI

I have already been forewarned of disaster.

I went to the temple to consult our mother Vati,

for I was anxious to know what was to unfold

out of the troubles that have come of Tuanku

having a light ear for malice voiced against those

close to him. As I was making my offering of flowers

at the altar, I heard a voice whisper such things

the horror of which made me faint at the feet of my maids.

I have heard it before, and I brace myself to hear

with fresh pain what I think you are about to tell me.

MESSENGER

Then I will speak plainly. There can be no comfort to you

if I blur the edges of the truth of what happened

when we went with Tuanku to free Anike from her tomb.

Sending the others on, Tuanku went first with the priests

to see to the dead man being released with care

from his hanging shame, and to the ravages

from the hand of Wira, and putrefaction being repaired

for the sister’s eyes when she comes to place him

with restored honour in the receiving earth.

When the prayers and sprinkling of holy water were done,

we – for I was with Tuanku – went on to the tomb

expecting to see the men chatting and laughing

as they attack and level the mound of boulders

that made a tomb out of a wide fissure in the precipice.

We found them standing in twos and threes

staring at the hole they had opened into the darkness

as if dumb struck by a spell. And from its depths

someone was howling inconsolably from pain and grief.

The elders and hanger-on murmur among themselves
and exchange uneasy glances.

When Maniaka heard it, he broke down and wept,

‘Am I a prophet too? I seem to have seen this coming

even as we were making our way up here.’

Then he turned to me, ‘Run. Quickly. Go in there.

See for me and tell me if it is only the gods playing

a cruel joke on me. Tell me that is not Nadim.’

Inside the cave I found Anike cradled in Nadim’s arms.

He was still weeping and howling, stopping only

to shout curses at his father for taking away his bride.

Anike was dead. She hanged herself with a shawl

she had twisted into a long rope and slung

across an overhanging spur of rock.

Some others who by then were also in the cave

stood helplessly by as they could do nothing to console him.

Then Maniaka appeared. His face turned whiter

than the limestone of those hills when he saw how his son

was mortally struck down by grief. He fell to his knees

crying out ‘My son! My son! What have I done to you?’

Nadim looked up, crawled to his father, and spat in his face.

He drew his keris, lunged at his father, but missed.

And wholly out of his mind with rage and grief,

he sank the blade into himself. He reached for Anike

but failed to touch her as he died. She eluded him

even in death, it seems.

Wanang Seri leaves by central door followed
by maids-in-attendance.

CHORUS (A hanger-on)

Permaisuri has left us without a word.

What does this mean?

MESSENGER

Her grief must have cut so deep

she would not wish to give way to it in the presence

of this gathering. She must have gone to her rooms

to mourn in private attended only by her maids.

BENDAHARA

She did not look right. I fear something is amiss

MESSENGER

I will go in and see.

As Messenger leaves by the central door Maniaka enters
from the left with his men behind him bearing Nadim’s body.

CHORUS (An elder)

Here comes Tuanku. He has brought home after him

as bitter fruit of his vindictiveness, pride and folly,

scion of the royal house, hope and future of our people, dead.

MANIAKA

Nothing you say can touch me anymore.

You see before you the truly blind man, one who stumbled

from one darkness into another and deeper darkness

where furies await fathers, like me, who kill their sons.

I have been the fool, not you, Nadim. Your only fault

was that you had a fool for a father

who killed you before he woke up to his foolishness.

BENDAHARA (Sighing)

Too late, Tuanku. You have awakened too late.

MANIAKA

Tok Seth clearly saw it all. And I the blind man

did not reach out for his hand to lead me to the light.

All that I saw in my blindness was gold – gold

that shone more brightly than the truth he offered me.

I would give up all the gold I have if it could ransom me

from this darkness where the gods, as Tok foretold,

would let loose furies to flay me for the murder of my son.

Messenger re-enters by the central door.

MESSENGER (Addressing Maniaka.)

Your present sorrow though hard to bear is but the first

of a double sorrow that has befallen your house.

MANIAKA

What more is there to add to sorrow for my son.

MESSENGER

The Permaisuri is dead.

MANIAKA

I had thought I had already died to the world

for the killing of my son. Yet I find am still of the world –

enough still of the world to suffer yet another death.

Tell me you are not Death’s messenger come to announce

more grief to our household. Tell me it is not true.

Tell me the Permaisuri lives.

MESSENGER

See where she lies.

Messenger swings the central door wide open to show the body
of Wanang Seri within.

MANIAKA

Oh horror! A son lies dead beside me. And now this!

Insatiable death, must you even take her too?

MESSENGER

She knelt before the household altar and cried out

for her sons, an elder one long dead and now Nadim.

Then she cursed you, their father and their murderer.

She slipped a small knife from her sleeve and, before her maids

could stop her, drove it into herself between the ribs.

Even as she was dying, she laid the full burden of guilt on you

for the death of her sons.

MANIAKA

I am guilty. I alone am guilty.

What else can I feel other than sorrow but guilt.

I am beginning to find even the sun hateful

for it draws out slowly the remaining hours of the day.

Lead me in. Let darkness deepen.

Let me contend with my furies in its depths

where the hours pass quickly without the wearying sun.

BENDAHARA

If there is a best in evil, it will be best

that it comes quickly and comes quickly to an end.

MANIAKA

Let these be my last hours and let them pass quickly.

and let there not be another day for me after this night.

BENDAHARA

Let your concern only be with this day. We do not decide

how many days we have to endure. That is in other hands.

MANIAKA

I ask only that I be spared another day. I ask no more.

BENDAHARA

Ask nothing. The gods will not hear.

They will change nothing.

MANIAKA

But I ask only for

easeful forgetfulness in death; even that is denied me.

Yet how easy it was for me to bring about

the deaths of my wife and sons. I have come to the point

where all that had mattered, matters nothing at all to me.

I am at the point of nothingness that is close to death.

What I have done is done. I can do no more

or even pray to the gods to have it changed.

Such days as will dawn for me after this night will dawn.

I do not know what more I can do but endure.

Lead me in then. I will smile the day I see death face to face.

Maniaka enters the central door led by the men and followed
by Bendahara with Chorus leaving one among their number
behind. The door closes after them.

CHORUS (An elder)

A king has cause to fear his people

when he has assassins at court to uphold the law.

The lights begin to dim but do not go completely out. Chorus comes
down the steps of the stage and goes up the middle aisle
that cuts through the audience area and continues to address
the audience as he heads towards the main auditorium door.
He goes at his own pace and pauses now and then as it suits him.

And by that law the people have to fear him,

and fear closes off the people.

His own law thus gives him cause to fear

as he then cannot see into the people’s hearts.

He cannot know if there are those

who are made so fearful they go beyond fear

and, being beyond fear, have lost the fear of death.

He may see them though he can still not know them,

when they, from being pushed beyond fear,

invoke the sanction of a higher law

and raise themselves into the open to flout the law.

If his people have lost the fear of death,

how then can a king threaten them with death?

And if he is thrown into the confusion of his fear,

how can he seize them and dare put them to death?

Even in their utter weakness, those whom a king would seize,

will bring him to ruin and upon him destruction

in many mysterious, many unexpected ways.

Chorus pauses. Surveys briefly the audience from mid-aisle.
Resumes speaking as he continues towards the auditorium
main door.

.

Wake now and rouse yourself from the past hour’s reverie.

After you have long gone out from here

into our common dream of the world,

may you never have to be driven beyond fear.

May the fear and death our players led you through

vanish for you in the common dream,

but let the redemptive spirit

you met among the shadows abide with you

to chasten any ambitious king

who would be the law, the state and more than king.

Good night, sharers in our common dream.

Go hence with the assurance

none of your kings will dare tempt you,

when the spirit is everywhere present and everywhere with you.

Chorus bows out through the auditorium door.

Lights down.

WONG PHUI NAM

Copyright © 2006 Mohammed Razali Wong Phui Nam