The dream first came to him when he was twelve, and it would often return at unexpected times. In that dream he was in a small skiff, all alone, in the middle of the ocean. Wherever he looked, he could see nothing but the horizon, a huge circle around him. There were no islands, no ships. There were no large waves, nothing disturbed the surface of the water except a few small ripples gently rocking his boat. He was holding an oar, and was slowly paddling.
It seemed peaceful, but the dream left him with a feeling of impending, overwhelming dread. The ocean revealed nothing, a perpetual mystery, but what if something sucked his boat down into the depths? What if a sea monster appeared before him, a kind he’d never even heard of, and ferociously attacked? What if the boat carried him into a whirlpool? What if he never saw anything or anyone ever again, and spent the rest of his life in loneliness and silence?
Would he find a place to land, or would he be drifting in uncertainty forever? In his dream, even the rippling water made no sound.
Dokkk-dokkk! Dokkk-dokkk! His father is banging on his door. It’s four in the morning, he’s never late.
The pounding assails his ears, and Sato Reang tries to get up, but he can’t. His eyelids feel too heavy to open, his head is sunken down into the pillow, his back glued to the mattress. He tries to roll his body over onto its side but it’s too heavy.
His pillows and mattress are made of thick cotton batting. It’s not exactly hard, but it’s not soft either. Every few weeks, Mother tells him to drag it out into the sun, so it won’t get damp and moldy. It takes two or more people to lug it out into the yard, and spread it out flat atop a row of wooden planks. Under the hot sun, he beats it with a rattan stick, every blow sending a poof of fine dust flying, like a white mist. The sun warms it and chases out all the little bugs nesting in its folds.
The dream didn’t just give him an anxious feeling that danger was lurking, it also gave him a strange pleasure. Nudging and nuzzling, that feeling was also there, in his heart, poking out, as if asking him to get acquainted.
Long after, I realized that that happiness came from the wide expanse of the ocean, from the feeling that I could go wherever I wanted, not caring that I had no destination, nothing to move toward. I paddled as hard as I could. Nothing was tethering the boat and no one was blocking its way. The ocean was a vast expanse, and it was all mine. I could explore every bit of it, for the rest of my life. I could move fast, or slow, whatever I felt like, it was all up to me. I could hoot and holler without bothering anyone, just as I could sing without following a tune. Aeooo, aeooo….
Is there anything more joyful than for a fish to swim free in the sea, even if danger might be lurking? Wouldn’t people be happy living without the burdens of having to do this or that? Having to bow down to The Great Creator and do good unto others? In the sea, alone, I didn’t need to worry about all that. Aeooo, aeooo….
Dokkk-dokkk! Dokkk-dokkk! Dokkk-dokkk! Now father’s pounding on the door sounded louder. He was doing it with the knuckles of his clenched fist. His father would never leave, would never stop until he was sure the boy was awake. Now he called out, “Get up, Sato! Get up! Time to pray!”
Prayers weren’t something they could ignore. If they were sleeping, they had to get up. If they were working, they had to stop. If they were on a journey, they would pray along the way. Even if they were sick, they still had to pray—they’d be praying on their deathbed. Father had hammered that into Sato Reang’s head, ever since he’d had his foreskin cut off, and it had been hammered in by his prayer recitation teachers, and after that by the preacher, and so Father didn’t have to say anything else, just call him and bang on the door.
His father tended to wake up quite early. Usually he fell asleep just before midnight, and then only briefly. After a few hours he was awake again but, trying not to awaken anyone else, including his wife and his daughter who was now part of their family, he would go to the washroom to splash water on his face, do his ablutions, and then say his Isha prayers.
Their house had a small prayer room, and there he would spend some time, in almost complete silence, with only the faint sounds of a passing car in the distance mingling with the equally faint crashing of waves on the beach. Or the humming of the insects in the trees in their yard, the occasional chirping of a bird.
But that peace would end when his knuckles pounded on his son’s bedroom door.
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From The Dog Meows, the Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker. Copyright © 2020 by Eka Kurniawan, translation copyright © 2025 by Annie Tucker. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
