You never call back a beggar of course. It was absurd, the people must have laughed to themselves. This was not the first time; but in this instance there was an audience and with the traffic noise it had needed a shout. In the dark it remained uncertain whether the man had any foot cover. Possibly he had been shod with flip-flops. During the performance while he had stopped briefly there had only been the single glance in his direction. Nothing that showed in particular. The smile the man gave with his look came from a certain kind of beggar in these parts. In childhood churchy people offered something similar. It was the man’s hand-clapping accompaniment to the song he sang that got you here, only really that. It was too much. It made you cringe and wince inside. How many similar did one pass on those streets each day and get by unscathed? There were so many of your own who had been missed too, kampung ghosts very much like this man standing there in the night before you, approachable only in hints and fragments of stories heard over the years. In the ancestral village and along the coast on the first visit the folk had smiled indulgently like that too, offering the kind of regard that had been common in those earlier times, and not just from kin. But it had been the hand-clapping with the song here that had struck most strongly. This man had risen up out of that frozen sea inside only because of his artless manner.
Tanah Abang, Jakarta
NB. The passage in Kafka bears regular reminder.
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
150 word version
You never call back a beggar of course. It was just absurd, the people must have laughed to themselves. This was not the first time; but in this instance there was an audience and with the traffic noise it had needed a shout. The barefoot wasn’t even noticed; in the dark it remained uncertain. Possibly the man had been shod with flip-flops. During the performance there had only been the single glance in the fellow’s direction that showed nothing in particular. It was his hand-clapping accompaniment to the song he sang that got you, only that. It was too much. How many similar did one pass on those streets each day and getting by unscathed. There were too many of your own who had been missed, kampung folk very much like this, approachable only in hints and fragments of stories. The man had risen up outta that frozen sea inside only because of his artless manner.
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