‘The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.’
– F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940). Fitzgerald was a novelist widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his 1925 novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ that explores themes of wealth, love, and the American Dream through the life of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby.
BIYA was not by his wife’s side when she died of malaria sometime in the first half of the 1960s. I had just started in primary school then and to this day I still remember the frantic goings-on as ours was not too big of a community where major or unusual events could take place without being noticed by anybody.
What happened to Biya did not come to me as one complete story. First of all, I did not spend my life obsessively paying attention to him. It took me years to pick the bits and pieces of first, second, and third-hand accounts, and many more years to stitch them up to form a coherent whole.
Biya was away on a job when his wife died. People said he was working as a lumberjack in a logging camp in Sibu Division’s hinterland. It was weeks before the news reached him and it took weeks for him to reach home.
Keep in mind that in those days there was no air and land link between Sibu and Kuching. Even if he had reached Kuching quickly, he would still have to take a bus to Mile 27, Old Kuching-Serian Road (now Pan Borneo Highway) and then walk for a few hours to reach our village.
By the time he arrived home, his wife had been weeks in the ground. He went straight to the cemetery, placed a bunch of flowers on her grave and wept bitterly till he became too exhausted to shed tears anymore.
Later, at his humble wooden house situated just beyond the outskirts of the village, Biya secluded himself by locking the door and requesting that all visitors, including his own family and in-laws, refrain from disturbing him.
He sought solace in his solitude, embracing his pain and sorrow. Gradually, everyone respected his wishes, allowing him to spend his days lost in contemplation, gazing into space, occasionally dozing off, or aimlessly wandering around the house, guided by his fluctuating moods.
As Biya mourned, his thoughts incessantly circled back to the promise he had made to return home as soon as he had accumulated a sufficient amount of money from his wages.
Though he possessed nearly five thousand dollars in his wallet (a considerable sum in those days), he would have readily relinquished every cent for the chance to bring his beloved wife back to life. He would have forsaken a million dollars or more. Oh, how he yearned for her and longed to have her by his side!
Each time that recollection of his promise emerged in his mind, a searing pain coursed through his body as if a knife had pierced his heart.
Writhing in agony, memories of his wife inundated his thoughts, intensifying his anguish and prompting him to groan repeatedly until exhaustion overcame him, forcing him into fitful slumber.
Nearly a month after his return, Biya finally summoned the willpower and strength to venture outside his dwelling. Appearing pale and numb, he sat upon a severed log, fixating his gaze on the void before him.
It was then that a friend, an elderly man, noticed him and called out, instantly rekindling Biya’s awareness. Recalling that he owed this acquaintance fifty dollars, which he had borrowed before departing the village in search of work, Biya invited him inside.
He prepared a pot of homemade coffee and shared some delicacies he had brought back from town but had forgotten amidst his mourning.
In addition to repaying the long-overdue fifty dollars, he handed his friend an extra hundred dollars as a gesture of gratitude for his kindness.
During their conversation, Biya disclosed his contemplation of leaving the village and residing on his land, located several miles deep within the jungle.
The constant reminders of his late wife made it unbearable for him to remain in the village, and he could no longer endure the incessant social chatter among the villagers. He yearned for a fresh start, even if it entailed uncertainty.
Approximately a week later, when the elderly friend revisited, he discovered that Biya had vanished along with most of his possessions, including the iron bars used to support cooking pots on the hearth. The door was not even locked, merely wedged shut with a piece of wood.
It was sometime in 1963 when I was ten years old and in Primary 4 that I chanced upon Biya. This was a few years after the death of his wife.
My little brother (Little B) and I, under the care of two older cousins, were on the way to set up mousedeer traps when we saw from a distance a dilapidated hut that we thought was abandoned.
We headed for it thinking it would be a convenient place to rest before going on. It turned out that Biya had been living in it for quite a while, preferring solitude to the bustling village several miles away.
Several months later, in December of that year, I met Biya again while on a fishing escapade with Little B. We were quite shocked by his appearance. He was undernourished, his muscles flabby and his skin dull.
He had a shifty gaze, looking everywhere except at us. I had heard about his trials and tribulations, but at my age, I could not fathom what he was going through.
I could instantly relate to physical hardships and suffering but did not know the existence of extreme emotional and psychological suffering.
I looked at his face without understanding that his once vibrant spirit had been dulled by the weight of years of suffering, leaving him a mere shell of the person he once was.
Biya’s physical appearance bore the scars of his torment. His unkempt hair hung in disarray over his haggard face which was etched with a mixture of worry, sorrow, and resignation.
For some unknown reason, he could not look us straight in the face, but from the few glances that he gave us, I saw eyes that were dull and haunted, reflecting whatever pain was gnawing at his soul.
His small hut in the middle of an unkempt vegetable garden reflected the desolation that consumed him. Its neglected walls were weathered and faded, with some timber boards missing or rotting. Inside was dark because the windows were rarely fully opened.
Our brief interactions with him when we stopped at his place revealed to us that Biya’s days were mostly spent in solitude. We also deduced that his nights were filled with fitful sleep, haunted by nightmares that offered no respite from his waking anguish.
Our father once told us that he and a friend passed by his hut on the way back from a nighttime fishing trip, and they heard the poor man moaning and screaming in his sleep.
Occasionally, passersby would catch glimpses of Biya as he shuffled around his hut, a solitary figure lost in his private hell.
Some would offer sympathetic nods or murmured words of condolence, but most simply averted their eyes, unwilling to confront the uncomfortable reality of his suffering.
I used to imagine that within Biya’s heart, a storm raged ceaselessly. Memories of past traumas resurfaced with a vengeance, tearing at his fragile psyche like ravenous beasts. His thoughts were consumed by regrets and what-ifs, each one a dagger plunging deeper into his already wounded soul.
In the depths of his despair, Biya found solace in the only thing that offered him even the slightest reprieve from his torment: alcohol.
I wondered how he managed to have a steady supply of ‘tuak’ (rice wine made by fermenting sticky rice) and cheap hard liquor, but each night, he would drown his sorrows in the numbing embrace of liquor, the burning liquid a poor substitute for the warmth of human connection he so desperately craved.
How did I know this? Well, I could detect the pungent smell of alcohol and old vomit whenever we visited him.
Nevertheless, even with alcohol in his system, his pain persisted. As Biya plummeted deeper into the clutches of addiction, his physical well-being deteriorated, his once sturdy physique wasting away to a mere semblance of skin and bones. The bruises that disfigured his skin stood as silent witnesses to the violence he unleashed upon himself during bouts of despair, a hopeless endeavour to rid himself of the relentless inner demons that tormented him.
And so, Biya lived out his days in a haze of pain and misery, a prisoner of his mind. In the end, the only comfort he found was in the knowledge that one day, his suffering would finally come to an end. But until that day arrived, he continued to bear the heavy burden of his existence, alone and forgotten by those around him.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Sarawak Tribune.
