Free Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan

him. What was needed was a way to bring it out.
    That night he didn’t go home. He wanted to be alone with the tigers in his head. He went to the surau close to midnight and lay there, seeing tigers on the ceiling, in the imam’s niche, under the drum stand—everywhere. Since he was a little boy he had been sleeping in the surau or at the night-watch post, possibly spending more time in these places than at his own home. That night he dreamt about a genie princess emerging from a spring, asking him to marry her, and the princess looked like Maharani. When he woke up the next morning, a white tiger lay beside him. That was how it began.
    Margio himself could never explain why he was so angry with Komar bin Syueb. To him it was like a debt that he needed to collect. The debt had grown over time until it weighed painfully upon him. Perhaps the only thing that prevented his rage boiling over into violence was his immeasurable love for his mother and sister. Komar was their pillar, no matter how rotten and unsteady that pillar might be, however skewed it was. Margio wanted to finish him off, and he thought the day would come eventually, it was simply a matter of time, but it never happened. Throughout his life, he suffered most from suppressing his yearnings, hoping like a typical villager that everything would simply get better without his needing to do a thing, and reminding himself that the method he wanted to use could only lead to disaster.
    He always likened himself to the demigod Kresna, who at the height of his merciless rage could turn into the giant Brahala, with his thousand heads, thousand hands, and immeasurable fury. No one could stop him, not even the gods. The great praiseworthy thing about Kresna, the King—for that was what Margio called him—was that only once in a while, and only briefly, did he let the monster out. Later on, Margio would think there was something inside of him that wanted to get out when his rage began to smolder, and his job was to restrain it, to keep it inside, because everything that happens has already been written down in the stories of the gods. No matter how great his anger, he had to suffer it, just as Kresna did before him.
    For years, he was able to contain himself. He was a model of restraint until the night his little sister Marian died. Then he lost control and told Mameh that he wanted to kill Komar bin Syueb. For him, Marian’s death was the greatest tragedy imaginable in their household, and he no longer wanted to suppress his brutal rage, a rage that he had often released on the rumps of boars during hunting season. Every time he goaded a boar with his spear, piercing it just enough to make the animal fear for its life, he thought of Komar bin Syueb beneath the spearpoint. Now he wanted to impale the old man for real and he couldn’t keep it to himself; he had to vent his anger somehow and he did it in words, talking to Mameh.
    Marian died a week before the circus tent went up in the village. A scrawny newborn lacking milk, she spent her short life half-dead. She didn’t have a fever, but was clearly about to die. Death swarmed around her like flies over a carcass, and everyone understood what was happening. They could see it in her eyes. Every time Margio looked at her, his grief was compounded by the sorrow in his mother’s face. Komar seemed to be the only one who didn’t care. He looked at the baby as if she were dirt, and people swore he never touched her. There were no playful games of peek-a-boo between this man and his daughter. The day came when Komar was supposed to shave her head, arrange a small ritual feast to assure her good luck, and of course give her a beautiful name, but he did no such thing.
    Margio himself slaughtered Komar’s fowl, without asking for permission, and joined a small ritual feast with Mameh and their mother. He grabbed his father’s shaving equipment, cursing the old barber, while the baby, who