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A White Crow at Tallo’s Tower
Purwanti Kusumaningtyas adalah pengajar di Jurusan S1 Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Bahasa dan Seni, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Salatiga, Jawa Tengah. Dia memperoleh gelar master dan doktor dari Jurusan Pengkajian Amerika, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta.
Dia tertarik pada banyak hal, termasuk naik gunung dan menjelajah, penulisan puisi dan cerita pendek. Dia telah menerbitkan puisi dan cerita pendek, antara lain dalam buku kumpulan puisi “Furtive Notions” (DeePublish 2022) dan kumpulan cerita pendek “They Are Here” (DeePublish 2023). Beberapa puisinya telah dibuat musik dan ditampilkan dalam berbagai acara nirlaba dan kemanusiaan, termasuk dalam acara LETSS Talk, lembaga pejuang kesetaraan perempuan yang terpercaya di Indonesia serta Festival Musik Rumah (FMR).
Dia sudah bekerja dengan Dalang Publishing sejak 2013, yaitu sejak dia mengenal penerbit yang memiliki semangat yang sama untuk melestarikan dan memperkenalkan keragaman Indonesia pada dunia.
Purwanti dapat dihubungi melalui: purwanti.kusumaningtyas@uksw.edu
****
A White Crow at Tallo’s Tower
I have breathed the pungent scent of incense, billowing from the golden tray, mixed with the dense, briny scent of the sea air, since the first Siang Kingdom rose on the shores of South Sulawesi. Still, I tremble whenever I remember the day lightning struck that golden tray with a mad, blinding fury. It was the day I was hurled from the stairway of the sky while escorting the great, sacred bissu, We Salenreng and We Apanglangi. From the moment those genderless, spiritual figures descended from the kingdom of heaven onto the dark earth, the golden tray has remained with me while I watched over mortal humans as their souls slowly disappeared within the grip of darkness.
Before me, on the palace floor, lay Antonio de Paiva. After four hundred years of watching the sun rise and set, he appeared to me as a useless heap of flesh, white as an albino bull. The nostrils of his hooked nose flared as he struggled to catch his fleeting breath. I should have pitied him, but I knew with certainty that this Portuguese merchant was a curse sent by the sea to destroy Siang. The year 1544 is only a split second in my long memory, yet, at this time, the whirlwind felt different. It seemed ready to tear the world apart.
Behind the palace pillars, people gathered and watched me in horror. Whispering my name, they referred to me as the witch who refused to die. Perhaps they are right. Even though they were unable to understand that in my veins flowed the white blood of Nasauleng, the sky goddess who charged me with guarding this land long before their ancestors were born.
I stepped forward and touched Antonio de Paiva’s cold forehead with my incense-scented fingers. Behind me stood Karaeng Kodingareng, the ruler of Siang, his eyes pleading. He did not know that I had seen that same desperate hope in the faces of kings before him.
The people gathered around us, staring at Antonio with terror and curiosity. They needed no words to ask their question. I could hear their frightened heartbeats as clearly as I could sense the wicked plans already swelling inside Antonio’s weakening heart.
“Heal him,” Karaeng Kodingareng told me.
I inhaled the smoke from my golden tray and felt it fill lungs that had breathed for four centuries. Healing Antonio would be easy. But if I blew the smoke into his face, I knew I would not merely save the merchant; I would also give life to calamities that would twist the course of our history.
I exhaled the incense smoke, and it curled over Antonio’s face like a veil of ash. He choked, then opened his eyes — cold, foreign eyes, like seawater under a winter sky. He did not wake with gratitude. He rose upright like a python stirring after swallowing a water buffalo. He stared at the bissu standing behind me. I felt his disgust as his gaze moved over their smooth skin and loose hair. To him, our sacredness was nothing but a sickness, a grotesque, genderless strangeness he could not bear to understand.
“Please stay,” Karaeng Kodingareng said to Antonio. “Rest for a while in Siang.” His pleading tone hurt me.
Antonio was yet too weak to speak. He smiled instead and fixed his gaze on the palace ceiling as if Karaeng Kodingareng, my honored ruler, was no more than an insect beneath his feet.
With that lifted chin, he challenged the dignity of our ancestors. His words, sweet as honey, were cloaked venom beneath the surface. Within days, he began to whisper the name of his god, evoking Karaeng Kodingareng’s fear and turning it into a weapon.
In less than two weeks, the foreigner could walk through the palace, striding across the wooden floors as if he owned every joist and plank, too proud to look down at the ground beneath him. He seemed to forget that if I had not breathed life back into his chest, his body would already be rotting in the earth.
Karaeng Kodingareng, my lord, listened to the Portuguese merchant, whose words worked like termites feasting on the inside of a black bamboo. Just as the dying bamboo would continue to appear strong and healthy on the outside, I knew that Karaeng Kodingareng’s outward steadfastness had crumbled into a weak structure that would collapse under even a simple sigh of the wind. His sharp eagle eyes were now dimmed by fear as he gazed at the silver cross hanging around Antonio’s neck as if it were a magical charm that could silence the echo of Islam-heralding trumpets from the Gowa-Tallo Sultanate. My lord had lost his great sensibility of reasoning. He believed that silver cross would secure his wobbly throne. I could only lament such ignorance in silence while witnessing Karaeng Kodingareng’s loyalty to Nasauleng’s white blood that had protected this ancestral land erode.
I watched Karaeng Kodingareng tremble. Standing behind his throne, I could hear his thudding heart, anxious about the rebellion and Antonio’s crippling power. Antonio used the news about the fall of Malaka Regency to whip Karaeng Kodingareng into his trap.
While viewing our port for all of its benefits, the disaster carrier whispered, “Portugal is the protector.”
Then calamity truly arrived by the river.
Karaeng Kodingareng stood waist-deep in the murky river water. I watched from the bank, clenching my fists until my nails sunk into my palms. Bowing like an ata before Antonio, my lord indeed looked like a slave begging for mercy. Antonio bent, scooped water with the same hands he used to count gold coins, and poured it over Karaeng Kodingareng’s head.
“Don Juan,” Antonio uttered, erasing Karaeng Kodingareng’s name I had guarded for more than 30 years.
Antonio’s pious behavior sickened me. I knew that the heart beneath his robe did not beat with faith, but with a merchant’s sly greed. He was not a priest; he was just a palm civet marking his hunting ground. Antonio named our land Celebes, a foreign name that blurred our origin. Karaeng Kodingareng had become an obedient lamb, while our great Siang port was now merely a note in the foreign merchant’s accounting book.
***
Sand crept over our land like a plague. It crunched beneath my feet every time I walked through the port, crackling like Antonio’s mocking laughter. The Siang River, once clear, now roiled sluggishly with mud and sand. Large ships no longer dared to dock in the choked harbor. I smelled the stench of brine and rotting fish in the shallow sludge while Malay merchants packed their goods in silence, leaving Siang to the scents of poverty and gray ash.
“The universe is revolting, Karaeng,” I said, staring at my lord’s back, now wrapped in a foreign robe. “Siang is having difficulties breathing because of the sand you summoned.”
Karaeng Kodingareng, who proudly used his new name, Don Juan, which I loathed to mention, didn’t even turn his head. Instead, he busily fondled the silver cross lying against his chest. “The sand is only a small problem, Pinati. You enjoy magnifying trifle problems. All we need to do is to instruct slaves to dig it out. Finished!”
Pain tightened my chest. Karaeng Kodingareng had truly forgotten his ancestors. He had forgotten that the white blood of Nasauleng — the sky goddess who descended to earth to guard this land — flowed through his veins. He had reduced himself to an ordinary man born of desire and thrown away his divinity for the sake of a merchant’s tale.
***
As the sea swallowed the sun, I stood by the river, trying to lift my spirits by enjoying the trees’ silhouettes standing tall against the growing darkness. But the quietness felt different this time. It was a strange pause — as if the universe held its breath, waiting for something important to happen.
The cold, foggy air of a new day crawled against my skin. I heard steps approaching. I stepped out of the fog, allowing my immortal form to be. In front of me, a line of faint fiery lights sputtered in stiff torches, trembling in the hands that held them.
The crowd in front of me became frozen statues, stunned by my appearance. I looked back at them. Their eyes reflected the dying fire that continued to dim as the misty wind blew.
“I love Siang more than you love your own lives,” I said, walking calmly in front of them. “My love is like that of the demon Asmodeus guarding his lovely Sarah from unclean hands. But Antonio? That man looks at this land only as a place where he can satisfy his own greed.”
I glanced at their arms, stretching to the ground, causing snake-hissing sounds as their fingers picked up gravel by the fistfull. I didn’t wait for them to stop screaming at me. I vanished into my own shadow as the crowd started flinging gravel at me. They no longer saw me as pinati, the shaman, but as a ghost born from Antonio’s poisonous words.
That evening, at the silent port, I pushed my wooden boat away from the bank. I needed no oar. The universe still knew my voice better than it knew the voice of the man newly baptized in the river. I commanded the wind to fill my sail. I ordered the sand clogging the downstream current to part to the banks. It obeyed, splitting wide so my boat could slide unimpeded toward the sea, leaving behind the Kingdom of Siang, now heavy with the smell of death.
I turned to the mouth of the Tallo River. I was no longer a pinati. I was now only a dry, drifting leaf.
The wind suddently stopped its whispering. My boat screeched as though it had struck a submerged blunt pole. In the middle of the river, where the water should have been deep, a white coral rock had risen like a giant maw ready to swallow my boat. My heart raced. Is this how We Nyilik Timoq punishes me for abandoning Siang while it is dying? If so, the goddess of the underworld had never been this furious.
The white coral rock broke into living pieces which surrounded the boat. Cold snouts poked up through the water’s smooth surface as pale eyes pierced mine. These were not ordinary beasts; they were river gods. I bowed until my forehead touched the boat’s damp wood.
No sharp teeth, nor crashing waves met me, and I raised my head. The river gods stared at me fiercely, yet calmly. “Follow the current, Pinati,” said one. “Do not fight it!”
They pushed my boat towards the riverbank. The white crocodiles disappeared in the dark river. I was alone. I knew that the age-old river’s current was too strong for me to tame. I was no longer a controller of fate; instead, I was only a bystander at an inevitable destruction.
I stood on the riverbank. The touch of sand beneath my feet felt like laughter mocking me. The river no longer flowed like a melody; it choked liked the dry land it would one day become. Nature had spoken its sentence. The river now spat sand, as if ejecting the sins of the Siang people who had betrayed me.
The river quieted. I tried to restore my shredded dignity in the tranquility. I was sick of the king and the Siang people, who thought themselves mightier than the river and forest, as if the water baptism had bestowed them such authority. But no: animals became wild beasts, and Siang’s golden land stank of smoldering ashes.
Yet despite my discontent, I could not cover the black hole of my amazement. Antonio had arrived at Siang, as helpless and pale as a dead man. Yet in a deceptive wink of history’s eyes, one mortal man uprooted the belief system we had practiced through the ages.
What kind of black magic did Antonio hide beneath his merchant’s robe? Why were my four centuries of devotion so easily erased by this Portuguese man’s mortality? I was an immortal pinati, yet before Antonio, I was but a shadow, fading fast beneath the rays of a foreign sun.
***
A thin layer of dust settled on my forever-young skin. I sat crosslegged at the quiet river edge and tried to block the cacophony from the distant port of Tallo. The masts of the merchant ships that carried pepper and silk creaked and clanged, which sounded to me like flies buzzing on the corpse of a dead kingdom.
I turned to meditation, seeking point zero at which time paused. But my thoughts kept circling around Antonio. He had arrived like a hunk of rotting meat. He knew nothing — nor cared — about Siang’s soul or our ancestors’ white blood. Yet with the weapon called religion, he had destroyed every fortress that had sheltered us for centuries from attack.
What hurt me most was Karaeng Kodingareng’s behavior. My mighty lord was now stunted. He had sold his soul and bared what had really been inside him all along: cowardism.
And look at me, only a disgraced shadow in my own land. How could a merchant’s mortality defeat my eternity?
Every time my mind saw Antonio, I choked on emptiness. How could his magic switch human orientation as easily as a flip of the hand? My power was no longer an honor to me; it was a prison for my regret.
Slowly, I allowed my memories of Siang to slide away, like mud swept by the rain. I released myself from the present and let my soul float across the thick fog of the future, when my name would probably mean nothing at all.
At the end of 1565, the silence that smothered Siang felt heavier than anything during my centuries of service. The dark mood rose from the king’s empty heart and his failed gamble in his final game. I remembered when Karaeng Kodingareng lost his sacred bearing in 1511, when he stared southwest at Malaka Sultanate’s collapse. I saw a subtle betrayal then: my lord started to doubt me and instead trust the foreign god and rifles Antonio had introduced to defy the Gowa-Tallo Sultanate.
Karaeng Kodingareng had believed that by embracing the cross from the nation that had crushed Islam in Malacca, he would gain protection and strength against Muslim power in his own land. But Fate had only laughed at him. The fall of Malacca to the Portuguese sent a new wave of strength toward Gowa-Tallo. Merchants driven from the north carried the black secrets of gunpowder, wealth, and vengeance to Makassar. They nourished our enemies, who grew into giants that Karaeng Kodingareng’s Catholic prayers could not conquer.
When the palace’s gate crumbled, I realized a colder truth than Antonio’s baptismal water. On this sulphur-smelling battlefield, victory was not determined by who was holding the most sacred book or who could recite the oldest mantra. Gowa-Tallo’s religion did not make it win the battle, and Antonio’s god did not turn away from Siang to make it lose the war.
No, victory was determined by gun muzzles and cannon barrels that sang louder than prayers. I realized that a kingdom was not dependent upon the heaven in the sky, but on those who owned the deadliest iron and fire on earth. Karaeng Kodingareng had traded his ancestors’ power for protection from the religion named rifles, only to be destroyed by the guns of his own brother. I witnessed that in this age, metal and fire — not spirituality — were this new world’s authorities.
I turned my spiritual vision away. I could not imagine Karaeng Kodingareng’s face when he was arrested and exiled from his ancestral land. For me, he had been an unshakeable power for centuries, but now the face that had only reflected royalty and rightousness had become the face of a naive child who shrank before the threat of guns.
***
As the sun set in the Tallo River, it cast a red reflection on the water’s surface that looked like a wound trying to heal. I lost my existence when Siang fell, and now I floated like mist rising from the riverbed. At the water’s edge, the shadows of trees stretched longer and longer, creeping like tentacles grasping the last scraps of light. I let myself dissolve into the darkness to become one with its silence.
In front of me, a pair of large wooden ships with black-brown hulls stood tall — boastful to be the authoritative entity in the mouth of a restless river. Their towering masts split the night sky, overwhelming the native vessels, which appeared like fragile, small chess pieces. Below the big ships’ cold, sharp bows, the fishermen’s outrigger boats skirted aside, helplessly rocking in the wake the large ships caused.
At the sight of such arrogance, my wrath swelled. In a rage, I thrust my arms into the air and summoned the storm. I wanted to see their rifles and coins sink to the muddy bottom of the river.
When the storm’s angry waves hurled against the hulls, the water disintegrated into white foam, as if colliding with a coral reef. But the fishermen’s small boats broke like dry twigs. Thin, tired people struggled to reach the shore. I could only bow my head. Why does my magic now only make poor people suffer?
I turned and left the river that no longer supported me. The damp forest softened my steps. The smell of dry leaves and soil untouched by the sun filled my lungs. Here, behind the wall of giant pillar-like trees, I found more magical serenity than during the reciting of any mantra. I vowed I would never again set foot on the banks of the Tallo River, muddied by the white people’s ships. I chose to blend with the moss rather than witness the fall of the land I worshipped.
Only my shadow and I were present in this quietness. Then, a sound of beating wings broke the silence.
Among the dim leaves appeared a white crow, its feathers reflecting a pale light like dried bone. It perched on a low branch. When it stared at me, I saw every vengeful beat of my heart in its clear eyes. I recognized the messenger of death for those who carried white blood.
Then, it whispered softly and coarsely about a life that was not yet blown into a mother’s womb, a white-blood baby would be born in the 17th century. While he would be well respected in Europe, he’d remain a foreigner in his homeland.
“His magic …” I whispered, as warmth rushed through my chest. If this man of the future would become more powerful than Antonio, then I wanted that power too. With such magic, I could uproot the white men from my land as easily as I pulled dead weeds from the soil.
The white crow suddenly spread its wings and croaked like a human choking on laughter. “You will never master it, Pinati,” it cawed. “Your eyes are so filled with the dust of the past, you won’t be able to see the light of this new knowledge.” Then the messenger of death flew away — white foam that dissolved into the greeness of the jungle.
I stood alone, clutching empty air.
***
The year: 1600. The percussion orchestra from the Tallo palace echoed through the trees as people celebrated the birth of Karaeng Pattingalloang. For me, human life — be it of white or red blood — is just a river flowing to the same end: nothingness. Considering him no more than other mortal authorities, I just watched his silhouette as he was crowned.
Until one day, he built the tower.
It was an imposing structure that penetrated the sky. Inside, he hid a foreign object he called a telescope. Its maker, Galileo, belonged to the same faith as Antonio. The name of the foreign object sounded to me like both a threat and a promise. When my trembling fingers touched the telescope, I felt that it was surely not just merely glass and metal, but a key —something that might carry me beyond Antonio’s cunning and heal my shattered dignity.
I had to have it.
I closed my eyes, slowing my breath until my heartbeat blended with that of the universe. Dissolved by the wind, I slowly faded into the invisible. I was no longer flesh. I was a moving nothingness that passed through the tower’s cold stone wall. Even Karaeng Pattingalloang, with all his wit, did not realize I stood right next to him.
I opened my eyes and inhaled the sharp odors of old paper and lamp oil. Karaeng Pattingalloang stood at the telescope, gazing through its glass lens as if the universe itself were whispering to him. That strange man refused to believe in spirits that gathered in the air, yet he admired an object that could capture the lights of heaven.
I glanced at the notes on his table. Complicated checkered patterns covered the pages, along with rows of numbers lined up like soldiers ready for battle. For four hundred years, I had regarded the sky only as a realm for flying spirits. I had never seen it as a formula that could be relayed with numbers. So this was it. This was why I lost my battle against Antonio. While my power was ancient magic, gathering dust, Antonio’s power possessed new and formidable knowledge able to scrutinize God’s secrets.
I clenched my jaws so hard, they stiffened, as I forced myself to swallow the vibration that crept up my larynx. In this chronic quietness, I waited for the right time to snatch the new magical tool and destroy the tracks of the white man’s footsteps from my ancestral land, forever.
Silence sneaked into the tower as Karaeng Pattingalloang’s and his servants’ steps faded behind the wooden door. I walked out of the darkness, shifting myself into a solid figure beside the strange tool. The telescope, as long as my arm, was covered with red leather and decorated with triangles and golden flowers that shone under the light of the oil lamp.
I stretched my hand, to touch its surface again. It felt cool and soft like the moist moss on a stone. I felt a strange vibration creeping along my fingers to my heart as I pulled its end to lengthen it. I carefully covered it with a white cloth.
I ordered the wind to take me to Bawakaraeng Mountain, then known as the highest point in this part of the universe. At its peak, I felt the world bow beneath my feet. There, under the black midnight sky, I made the telescope stand.
I positioned one of my eyes to the cold glass lens and looked. I staggered and fell backward, certain my immortal heart would stop. I steadied my ragged breath before gathering myself to look again. Through the magic glass lens, my world collapsed. Giant spheres — some dazzling white, others glowing red — spun and danced like tops in the hands of invisible gods. The moon was no longer a calm silver plate. Instead, I saw a wounded rock gouged with holes, hanging so close to me that I felt able to touch it.
I turned the telescope in all directions, searching for what I had seen on Pattingalloang’s notes. Where are the square patterns? Where are the magical numbers that he had written down so meticulously? I don’t see them.
The silent sky looked back at me with shiny balls that moved, following circled routes I didn’t understand.
I looked until dawn. As sunlight began to spill over the mountaintop, I still had not found a single number in the sky. No wonder I had lost the battle to Antonio. For four hundred years, I had seen the heavens only as a dwelling place for spirits. I had never known the sky held elements that could be counted.
I realized that without the knowledge Karaeng Pattingalloang possessed, the telescope was nothing more than an object, a means to an end that only Pattingalloang knew. I felt small. I, who professed to possess great magic, stood blind before this new knowledge. Reluctantly, I re-wrapped the instrument in the white cloth and returned it to the tower. I did not need the tool; I needed the knowledge to use the tool. I had to learn what mantra this ruler used to read God’s mind written across the sky.
*****