Chronicle of the Old Warship by Kaisar Deem
Ita disappears after becoming obsessed with an unusual shipwreck in her hometown in the Turatea district of Sulawesi.
On the seventh day of my wife's disappearance, I spent my time sitting at the table near the café window, reading the local news section of the newspaper. For a week now, they had been running stories about the landslide and flash flood in Turatea District, which had unearthed the wreckage of a 17th-century warship. According to the reports, the vessel had been buried for centuries in the belly of a hill.
Now the ship's remains had been recovered from the river, and a team of researchers from the University of Indonesia had arrived on site. The river was flowing again. The newspaper, previously preoccupied with updates from the search and rescue team and the police, had shifted its focus - interviewing environmental NGO figures and student activist groups, who now seemed intent on dragging a few local politicians into the spotlight for their backroom deals with businessmen over mining permits in the Sampuloa hills.
Sipping my coffee, I read the article once more and quietly pieced together my own hypothesis about how these events might be connected. I'm not trying to cover anything up, nor am I lying to you when I say: my wife's disappearance is, in some way, linked to the flood.
Yes, you might think I'm reaching. But allow me to explain.
That night, I came home rather late. When I opened the door, the living room was completely dark, save for the pale glow of the television screen. I saw the silhouette of my wife sitting upright, her posture rigid as she watched the news intently. Breaking News, blaring at full volume. I stood still for a moment, drawn into the broadcast, before something hit me. God... it was a place I knew. A roadside kiosk. A gas station. A mosque half-submerged. It was my wife's hometown.
Without taking off my jacket or lowering my bag, I made a phone call.
"What's going on?" I said to my wife, while the phone rang. "How's your mother's house?"
But there was no answer.
She didn't even turn to look at me.
"Hey," I shouted into the darkness. "What's happening?"
Meanwhile, the phone at my ear kept ringing, but no one picked up on the other end. I called my brother-in-law, Kasmin. No answer either.
I turned on the lights and sat beside my wife. "Hey," I said, shaking her shoulder.
But her eyes remained locked on the news broadcast, expressionless. Calm and vacant.
It took a while before she finally responded. Without turning to me, she pointed at the television. "Look."
The report was broadcasting live from the scene, but the screen showed nothing but darkness. I had to lean in closer to see what she meant. This time there was no reporter's voice, only the roar of floodwater. A dark, swollen river and people gathering along its banks. Rain was falling steadily, and voices cried out in a local dialect. The beams of flashlights cut through the rain, converging on one large object caught beneath the bridge.
I squinted, trying to focus. In the dim screen glow, it took me several seconds to make out the shape.
"A ship?" I muttered to myself. "A ship? Since when has that been there?" I turned to my wife.
A large wooden ship, the size of a village house. No mistake about it. Sturdy brown timber, tall masts, and a giant sail torn in places, half-tilted, as if trying to slide under the bridge. It looked like something out of a Jack Sparrow film - a warship from a forgotten time. It was massive, and the river's level had risen so high, the vessel was pinned beneath the bridge. The current was too fierce for anyone to get close.
"Where did that ship come from?" I sat back, still in disbelief.
"I've told you about it before," my wife said. "You remember?"
I wasn't sure when, exactly, she had told me about the ship. My faintest recollection placed it on a night we'd been fighting. I don't recall the reason, maybe I hadn't bought her something she wanted, or something trivial like that. She was crying, and I was stroking her hair to soothe her. Leaning on my shoulder, she began telling me about the wreck of a warship said to be buried on the hill behind her old school.
It was her ex-boyfriend from high school who told her the story. Mansur, the top-ranked student, who dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, had once boasted that deep within the belly of Sampuloa Hill (the tenth hill), a warship from the 17th century lay entombed. Compared to the other nine hills, this one did look unusual. A protrusion on its eastern side resembled the stern of a ship, and the hill itself bulged upward like a wind-filled sail. It looked more like a scrap of cloud than a proper hill, something out of a child's drawing, if you allowed yourself a little imagination. And yes, it did resemble a ship. My wife had even shown me a photo once: like a porcelain urn draped in white cloth, the kind you'd see in a European museum.
But no one ever believed Mansur's story. Not even their history teacher bothered to entertain it.
The only one who cared was my wife. One Sunday morning, Mansur took her on his motorbike all the way to the foot of the hill. There, he dug into the earth with his bare hands, digging deep enough until he unearthed something. From the damp soil beneath their feet, Mansur pulled out various shells and sea stones. He claimed those objects had been buried for centuries, left there when, long ago, people had built an artificial hill to hide a warship during the final clash with the Dutch East India Company in 1666.
At the time, the Gowa-Tallo Sultanate had been cornered from all directions. Along the southern coast, colonial warships and their allies, returning from the Buton campaign, stopped in towns like Bantaeng and Binamu, burning houses and torching food granaries. Then, one of the local kings came up with a mad idea. He ordered his people to load all their belongings onto a ship - rice, gold, cattle - and push it uphill. Racing against the enemy's approach, they dragged the loaded vessel against the low current of the river, using coconut logs as rails to haul it up the hill.
What they failed to realize in time was that no one in the history of their ancestors - or in any tale told by sages or saints - had ever pushed a ship up a mountain. Even Noah, after all, had built his ark on a mountain; he didn't push it there. Unfazed, the king commanded his people to bury the ship, cover it with sand from the shore and earth from the riverbank. The work was imperfect, but somehow it succeeded. They created a new hill and confused Admiral Cornelis Speelman so thoroughly that he shot the local guide, believing he'd been led astray.
When my wife told me that story, a pair of tears traced her cheeks. I asked her why. She didn't answer. Her gaze was distant, as if drifting backward in time. I held her in my arms, and a strange feeling crept over me. Was it jealousy, over her former lover? Or was I unsettled by the story itself?
I don't know. For a time, the story lingered between us, then slowly dissolved into the air. When I tried to verify it later, spending hours in the provincial library, I found only contradictory reports that read more like local legends than history. If there was one detail I could trust, it was this: her village had been the only one left untouched by the colonial troops.
Mansur died in a motorbike accident during their third year of school. After that, no one spoke of the old warship again. Not in the school. Not even my wife.
Until one night, when the news of the flood reached us, I went to bed with the same lingering confusion. I had cleared all my meetings and work for the next day to accompany my wife back to her hometown, to check on her mother's house. But when morning came, the house was already empty, and a short message had arrived on my phone:
"Don't look for me."
My phone rang. It was my father-in-law.
"Hello, son, how are you?" he asked, carefully choosing his words. I could hear my mother-in-law whispering in the background. So I answered truthfully. I told him I was well, healthy.
"It's about Ita..." There was a short pause on the other end. "It seems the situation is getting more complicated. We're struggling to figure out what to do..." Another pause, longer this time.
"It's alright," I said. "If she doesn't want to come home for a while, let her be. I understand."
"But, son... your wife's gotten too involved. You know the wreckage, the old ship the government's dealing with? She volunteered to join the relief team. We don't know what's gotten into her. She spends all day staring at the wreck like she's possessed. Every morning she's there, digging through the debris. The neighbors have started saying strange things about her. We can't... we just can't anymore..." Then I heard my mother-in-law begin to cry.
I took another sip of coffee, not realizing the cup was already empty. While my father-in-law kept talking, I stared out at the midday street. A dark cloud was moving across the sky. People on the sidewalk began to hurry. Shadows from the cloud blotted out the sunlight, slipping through the window, crawling across the tiled floor, blackening the legs of the tables. Thunder rolled.
I ended the call.
Don't look for me, she'd said.
What went wrong in our marriage? Five years without serious trouble. Financially, we were stable, not wealthy, but comfortable enough for a young couple trying to build a life in a city like Makassar. I worked hard. By our third year, we had bought a house. We owned our own vehicle. My career was promising. We didn't have children yet - Ita was undergoing treatment for her womb, but I never once complained, and she never seemed sorrowful about it. There was never anyone else, never any betrayal between us.
The only thing that unsettled me was this strange thread connecting the shipwreck and everything unraveling now. Since Ita disappeared, not once did I behave like a husband should. I didn't go after her, didn't rush back to her hometown to bring her home. It was as if something had chained my feet in place. I waited. And waited. For something, I didn't even know what.
Quietly, I began to feel that things had shifted, irreversibly. That some empty space had opened between us, and with each day it widened. I stood here, and she there. Drifting further, and further away.
The rain came down hard after that.
I needed another cup of coffee. Something rough was stuck in my throat, choking me. But instead of calling the waiter, I rose, paid my bill, and walked straight out.
I threw myself into the rain and began to cry.
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
Now the ship's remains had been recovered from the river, and a team of researchers from the University of Indonesia had arrived on site. The river was flowing again. The newspaper, previously preoccupied with updates from the search and rescue team and the police, had shifted its focus - interviewing environmental NGO figures and student activist groups, who now seemed intent on dragging a few local politicians into the spotlight for their backroom deals with businessmen over mining permits in the Sampuloa hills.
Sipping my coffee, I read the article once more and quietly pieced together my own hypothesis about how these events might be connected. I'm not trying to cover anything up, nor am I lying to you when I say: my wife's disappearance is, in some way, linked to the flood.
Yes, you might think I'm reaching. But allow me to explain.
That night, I came home rather late. When I opened the door, the living room was completely dark, save for the pale glow of the television screen. I saw the silhouette of my wife sitting upright, her posture rigid as she watched the news intently. Breaking News, blaring at full volume. I stood still for a moment, drawn into the broadcast, before something hit me. God... it was a place I knew. A roadside kiosk. A gas station. A mosque half-submerged. It was my wife's hometown.
Without taking off my jacket or lowering my bag, I made a phone call.
"What's going on?" I said to my wife, while the phone rang. "How's your mother's house?"
But there was no answer.
She didn't even turn to look at me.
"Hey," I shouted into the darkness. "What's happening?"
Meanwhile, the phone at my ear kept ringing, but no one picked up on the other end. I called my brother-in-law, Kasmin. No answer either.
I turned on the lights and sat beside my wife. "Hey," I said, shaking her shoulder.
But her eyes remained locked on the news broadcast, expressionless. Calm and vacant.
It took a while before she finally responded. Without turning to me, she pointed at the television. "Look."
The report was broadcasting live from the scene, but the screen showed nothing but darkness. I had to lean in closer to see what she meant. This time there was no reporter's voice, only the roar of floodwater. A dark, swollen river and people gathering along its banks. Rain was falling steadily, and voices cried out in a local dialect. The beams of flashlights cut through the rain, converging on one large object caught beneath the bridge.
I squinted, trying to focus. In the dim screen glow, it took me several seconds to make out the shape.
"A ship?" I muttered to myself. "A ship? Since when has that been there?" I turned to my wife.
A large wooden ship, the size of a village house. No mistake about it. Sturdy brown timber, tall masts, and a giant sail torn in places, half-tilted, as if trying to slide under the bridge. It looked like something out of a Jack Sparrow film - a warship from a forgotten time. It was massive, and the river's level had risen so high, the vessel was pinned beneath the bridge. The current was too fierce for anyone to get close.
"Where did that ship come from?" I sat back, still in disbelief.
"I've told you about it before," my wife said. "You remember?"
I wasn't sure when, exactly, she had told me about the ship. My faintest recollection placed it on a night we'd been fighting. I don't recall the reason, maybe I hadn't bought her something she wanted, or something trivial like that. She was crying, and I was stroking her hair to soothe her. Leaning on my shoulder, she began telling me about the wreck of a warship said to be buried on the hill behind her old school.
It was her ex-boyfriend from high school who told her the story. Mansur, the top-ranked student, who dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, had once boasted that deep within the belly of Sampuloa Hill (the tenth hill), a warship from the 17th century lay entombed. Compared to the other nine hills, this one did look unusual. A protrusion on its eastern side resembled the stern of a ship, and the hill itself bulged upward like a wind-filled sail. It looked more like a scrap of cloud than a proper hill, something out of a child's drawing, if you allowed yourself a little imagination. And yes, it did resemble a ship. My wife had even shown me a photo once: like a porcelain urn draped in white cloth, the kind you'd see in a European museum.
But no one ever believed Mansur's story. Not even their history teacher bothered to entertain it.
The only one who cared was my wife. One Sunday morning, Mansur took her on his motorbike all the way to the foot of the hill. There, he dug into the earth with his bare hands, digging deep enough until he unearthed something. From the damp soil beneath their feet, Mansur pulled out various shells and sea stones. He claimed those objects had been buried for centuries, left there when, long ago, people had built an artificial hill to hide a warship during the final clash with the Dutch East India Company in 1666.
At the time, the Gowa-Tallo Sultanate had been cornered from all directions. Along the southern coast, colonial warships and their allies, returning from the Buton campaign, stopped in towns like Bantaeng and Binamu, burning houses and torching food granaries. Then, one of the local kings came up with a mad idea. He ordered his people to load all their belongings onto a ship - rice, gold, cattle - and push it uphill. Racing against the enemy's approach, they dragged the loaded vessel against the low current of the river, using coconut logs as rails to haul it up the hill.
What they failed to realize in time was that no one in the history of their ancestors - or in any tale told by sages or saints - had ever pushed a ship up a mountain. Even Noah, after all, had built his ark on a mountain; he didn't push it there. Unfazed, the king commanded his people to bury the ship, cover it with sand from the shore and earth from the riverbank. The work was imperfect, but somehow it succeeded. They created a new hill and confused Admiral Cornelis Speelman so thoroughly that he shot the local guide, believing he'd been led astray.
When my wife told me that story, a pair of tears traced her cheeks. I asked her why. She didn't answer. Her gaze was distant, as if drifting backward in time. I held her in my arms, and a strange feeling crept over me. Was it jealousy, over her former lover? Or was I unsettled by the story itself?
I don't know. For a time, the story lingered between us, then slowly dissolved into the air. When I tried to verify it later, spending hours in the provincial library, I found only contradictory reports that read more like local legends than history. If there was one detail I could trust, it was this: her village had been the only one left untouched by the colonial troops.
Mansur died in a motorbike accident during their third year of school. After that, no one spoke of the old warship again. Not in the school. Not even my wife.
Until one night, when the news of the flood reached us, I went to bed with the same lingering confusion. I had cleared all my meetings and work for the next day to accompany my wife back to her hometown, to check on her mother's house. But when morning came, the house was already empty, and a short message had arrived on my phone:
"Don't look for me."
My phone rang. It was my father-in-law.
"Hello, son, how are you?" he asked, carefully choosing his words. I could hear my mother-in-law whispering in the background. So I answered truthfully. I told him I was well, healthy.
"It's about Ita..." There was a short pause on the other end. "It seems the situation is getting more complicated. We're struggling to figure out what to do..." Another pause, longer this time.
"It's alright," I said. "If she doesn't want to come home for a while, let her be. I understand."
"But, son... your wife's gotten too involved. You know the wreckage, the old ship the government's dealing with? She volunteered to join the relief team. We don't know what's gotten into her. She spends all day staring at the wreck like she's possessed. Every morning she's there, digging through the debris. The neighbors have started saying strange things about her. We can't... we just can't anymore..." Then I heard my mother-in-law begin to cry.
I took another sip of coffee, not realizing the cup was already empty. While my father-in-law kept talking, I stared out at the midday street. A dark cloud was moving across the sky. People on the sidewalk began to hurry. Shadows from the cloud blotted out the sunlight, slipping through the window, crawling across the tiled floor, blackening the legs of the tables. Thunder rolled.
I ended the call.
Don't look for me, she'd said.
What went wrong in our marriage? Five years without serious trouble. Financially, we were stable, not wealthy, but comfortable enough for a young couple trying to build a life in a city like Makassar. I worked hard. By our third year, we had bought a house. We owned our own vehicle. My career was promising. We didn't have children yet - Ita was undergoing treatment for her womb, but I never once complained, and she never seemed sorrowful about it. There was never anyone else, never any betrayal between us.
The only thing that unsettled me was this strange thread connecting the shipwreck and everything unraveling now. Since Ita disappeared, not once did I behave like a husband should. I didn't go after her, didn't rush back to her hometown to bring her home. It was as if something had chained my feet in place. I waited. And waited. For something, I didn't even know what.
Quietly, I began to feel that things had shifted, irreversibly. That some empty space had opened between us, and with each day it widened. I stood here, and she there. Drifting further, and further away.
The rain came down hard after that.
I needed another cup of coffee. Something rough was stuck in my throat, choking me. But instead of calling the waiter, I rose, paid my bill, and walked straight out.
I threw myself into the rain and began to cry.
What a very interesting story. Understated, I believe, is an indelible rift between the MC and his wife Ita. One imagines that it is his wife's one-time infatuation with her former boyfriend which looms on their horizon. The MC came along only after the former lover had perished and one is led to believe that her attraction to her late beau never ended. Certainly her reaction to the unearthing of the ship is unspeakably severe. Perhaps sensing that he never had Ita's heart, the MC stands idly by while she is consumed by events as they unfold around them. So much is left unsaid, a sign of good fiction.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of my favorite short stories…that I’ve read. So much mystery and ancient lore combined with common sense and of-this-time thinking. It’s very, very sad…the ending especially. But there is a coarseness in the MC toward his wife that is also sad. Benign neglect more like. He just nudges her to ask about her home…not asks if he can help. The ancient story of hiding a ship in the “ belly of a hill” is old-world fascinating. It is as if she was called back to the old time of the ship and the old time of her lover from high school.
ReplyDeleteI was also intrigued by this story. Ita seems to live a life of quiet desperation with her husband. She still yearns for her lost lover and past. But the MC is stuck, unable to reach out to her. Benign neglect? Yes, but the wife is living in a fantasy world of "what ifs" and "sliding doors." Unfortunately, many marriages play out like this. Some end in divorce, some continue on life support with lowered expectations, and some miraculously get better over time. Well done, Kaisar.
ReplyDeleteRozanne, that’s the truth!
Delete