Radoe

The old man, a prominent chief in South Sumatra, thought so to be a hundred years old, and he could prove it: after all, he was already a father of a couple of big boys, when the Great Eruption occurred, when it was almost dark for days on end, the sky was all thunder and lightning seemed and the sea was full of pumice... and I did not it's hard for him to calculate that Krakatau was only 35 years ago spread deadly fear throughout South Sumatra and West Java. He was a recognized centenarian, and there was no reason to deprive him of this to dispel the illusion. The good, venerable man felt happy in the admittedly overestimated age, and he looked satisfied and happy back, without the perspective that is indispensable for us Westerners to submit a retrospective.

He was a good connoisseur of adat and he spoke with pride and relish about the old customs of his tribe.

To me he was a valuable friend because he still has good had influence over his people and by giving me precious traditions told, when on my business trips I passed that wild part of Visited South Sumatra and each time I was delighted to receive the faithful hand can print. In those quiet inland areas, traditions apply as irrefutable history, and certainly lacking in many the purely historical core, although Islam also has many ugly fringe woven into the legends of these “heathens,” who first appeared in the lately, indeed at the beginning of this century, to the Mohammedan have converted to religion.

On a previous occasion the old man had told me that in times past some evil robbers had the power to protect themselves by crocodiles. I told him I'd seen this before heard, and that was accepted by the Minangkabauers of Central Sumatra it is said that the landscape head of Loeboek Oelang Aling, a notorious robber chief, who finally had to be killed by the police, had a tracking crocodile that accompanied him everywhere on his river voyages. Then the old man promised me that he would bring his grandson next time to bring Radoe with him, to whom he would transfer all his knowledge, Radoe, who had learned fencing from a royal tiger.

“Radoe, you can tell this Dutchman anything. Or sir I don't know if he believes it, but the gentleman likes to write all kinds of things up, and he doesn't laugh at us, us stupid people!”

But now I did laugh a little. “We, stupid people,” this is so the usual expression of modesty, of caution above all. There are perhaps people who consider this to be the correct self-assessment, but not those who have come into close contact with those old, worthy men, who, without scholastic wisdom, have arrived at views in which the peace of centuries lies; a balance, established in the "adat", the customary law, which also forms the basis of family law and jurisprudence as to indicate good practices and forms, and that, with the traditions, as a heritage passed down from generation to generation, until... and here speak those same old wise men, until all the old by the wheels of trains and automobiles, by the advancing “civilization” will be persuaded.

So I smiled a little, and the wise man understood that smile and laughed pleased with it.

“I can't tell you much, sir,” said Radoe. “My grandfather of mother's side had many ilmoes and he taught me what to do, if I should ever meet a tiger of a kind like the one he showed me described. I hope you won't take it amiss, sir, but I can't explain that to you exactly, I'm sure you understand; but a tiger like that is more of a human being than an animal. One afternoon I met such a tiger at the edge of the forest. I immediately went to I went to the first house I could find and asked people to help me. help to make an offering for him, a “sedekah” consisting of raw eggs and sticky rice. The Old Man accepted that offering, because, just as grandfather had told me, the eggs were next day empty, but the shells were not broken. I knew now that the tiger was kind to me and that he would do me different things learn when I met him again.

“And that's how I learned fencing from him, silat and koentau. I assure you that I could only see a human being in him if he was with fenced me. He taught me well, they say I am the best am a fencer in these countries, and that is true; I have all that thanks to him.

“But you mustn't think that I'm the only one who is so friendly with a tiger. I've often heard from people in the Upper Kampar, that some are accustomed to going right among the tigers, that they almost become deaf from the screaming and roaring of the animals. And I know someone from the Upper Rokan, who rode on the back of his friend “travel makes”...

“You certainly know,” said the old man, “that we Malays, who live in the living in the wilderness, all believe that there are always tigers around and in our are kampungs, who do not harm us if they are not yet cannibals are. Only a few, like Radoe, receive it from their father or grandfather secret about how they can get in touch with them personally, and then they learn all kinds of clever things. Others see the animals during the day in the kampungs, between the houses, and they feed the animals food. I can't see them myself, but if I hear a tiger at night, then I know very well whether it is one of our common tigers or that it is a stranger, or a cannibal. We all believe that, What Radoe and other comrades tell us about tigers is true. We also see when searching for forest products, in the deepest forests, how those kinds of people are definitely protected against accidents.”

Radoe nodded to his grandfather, we were all silent; with a cough he broke off the old man the silence.

“It's already evening, sir, you might want to go to sleep. And If you like, I will tell you another time how the grandson of Bittertongue tiger became.”

There they went, into the black and silver moonlit night, along the shore with the eternal surf.

The elegant coconut crowns stood out sharply against the sky, and the hard leaf veins brushed against each other, murmuring in the night wind.

From the beach came the sound of the old man's cough. In the kampoeng closed the last door with a creaking sound, an awakening moaned softly child in the dark house.

After this hour all man is silent. But the coconut leaves murmur in the night wind, and the white turbulent strip in the dark sea hums, growls, through the ages.