Senandung Maaf
I want to describe him the way I-don’t-know-who, a man from Petersburg whom Nastenka forgot to ask the name of, described his life to her for almost forever, and somehow got me like…. udah yappingnya?
I dare not to mention his name, yet ridiculously proud to describe him here.
On a random day, when the weather was right, when the air was still cool from the rain that had just passed, brushing against my skin which felt much warmer because of my heartbeat, when the leaves were still dripping with the remnants of the rain, when the cagur — NO, when there was just enough sunlight breaking through to fall directly upon his smiley eyes, when dah? besok kalau gak ujan, and when the wind was friendly enough to cover my embarassing blushing face, it was Senandung Maaf by The White Shoes and The Couples Company.
He opened his Walkman, and with it came a new set of questions and expectations quietly taking shape in my mind. His head was slightly bowed, his eyes looked unusually gentle, and his fingers moved hither and thither with such deliberate care as he opened it that I found myself murmuring, I wonder what it would feel like to be treated with that kind of tenderness by him too. I MEAN…….. Whatever! HOCUS FOCUS TRULALA!!
I watched him closely while he remained blissfully unaware of my gaze, studying the quiet movements of his hands more intently than I probably should have. But the moment he lifted his head and caught me looking, I immediately turned my face away. He seemed to take that moment as a signal that the assembly of the musical instrument I had once called “traditional” was complete. He had been offended by that, but I really meant it.
He slipped a cassette by that band into his Walkman, the sort of cassette whose price could probably have bought five Walkmans and two additional tapes from his favourite store, the little cassette shop tucked away in a narrow alley at the corner of town, inside a small shophouse with dim lighting, vintage decorations, and a few ornamental plants. He had always told me that I should go there with him someday, which I eventually did, except that I went there by myself and did not tell him. The shop was exactly the sort of place I imagined he would love. Cassettes from so many different generations lined the shelves, featuring musicians I had never even heard of, though I was almost certain he would recognise every single one of them. I did recognise a few names there, Sheila on 7, Dewa 19, Radiohead, and several others, but most of the names meant absolutely nothing to me. Perhaps, without even realising it, I had heard some of their work before, without ever knowing who the singer or musician behind it was. I wandered between the shelves feeling as though I had accidentally walked into someone’s private musical history, surrounded by decades of songs I could barely identify, quietly wondering how he seemed to know so much about all of it. And somehow, that made the cassette in his hand seem even more expensive, not merely because of its price, but because I knew there was an entire little world of music behind it that I had only just begun to glimpse.
He chuckled briefly, which made me slightly apprehensive, although curiosity got the better of me, so I listened. During the intro, which was long enough to accommodate several conversations, he had already filled the silence with little chuckles, rubbed the tip of his nose, and said, “You will like it.”
A third of the song had barely passed when I was still trying to acquaint myself with this unfamiliar melody and its equally unfamiliar soundscape. Then he pressed stop. The music ceased, and somehow I felt as though I had been assigned the responsibility of asking why. So I did.
He smiled. Again.
At this point, I began to wonder why, whenever he smiled, I seemed to lose the ability to remain entirely unaffected.. It was almost as though the mere act of his smiling could command my own lips into answering for me. It is a curious thing, to discover that another person can alter your expression without ever touching your face.
He answered as though he had known me since the very beginning of my life, had personally overseen the development of my musical taste, and had somehow listened to my entire Spotify library, which contains enough songs to outlive several phases of my life. Apparently, he was worried that I would not like this particular version, so he played it on his phone instead.
Same song, different version. Remastered, 2023.
At first, I thought he was merely flaunting his expensive cassette. It would have been a reasonable conclusion. But no. He genuinely seemed to understand me, or at least to possess an oddly precise intuition about what I might like. He wanted the song to make a good first impression. And it did!
The tempo was slower, the arrangement gentler, more restrained, almost contemplative. And, to my own mild inconvenience, I liked this version better. I smiled and complimented his taste in music, his taste in musicians, and, naturally, the song itself.
jreeenggg jreeenggg jreeengg.
I rocked gently from side to side in time with the music. (✿◡‿◡)♪
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He smiled again and again.
Sometimes I genuinely wonder what that smile means. It is always the same, sweet, but inscrutable. Is it forced? Satisfaction? Happiness? Relief? Mere politeness? The corners of his lips always rise at precisely the same angle, while his eyes curve into little crescents. There was something almost infuriating about how impossible it was to read.
And then, near the end of the song, came the lyrics, menghapus kelabu langit jingga, meniti lagu, menyemat suka. AND I WAS LIKE…😳😳😳😳😳 The sky had literally just been grey from the rain, and now it was turning orange because the sun was setting. THE TIMING WAS INSANE! I pointed at the sky, laughing quietly to myself, trying very hard to look like a perfectly sane person. Then he asked, “Why are you laughing?” SENDIRINYA JUGA SUKA KETAWA-KETAWA SENDIRI!!! I looked at him, and somehow we ended up looking straight at each other. My eyes wandered from his curly hair to his forehead, his puppy eyes, the mole under his eye, his curly (?) lips that forms waves when he smiles, his dimples that SUITS him perfectly, and I was almost certain I was staring at him in complete fascination. but…. look at him…. OHHH WOWW WOWW CALM DOWN! TAPI……….. SIAPA. YANG. GAK. TERPESONA. MAS-MAS GANTENG. MANIS. DI. MOMEN. ITU?! But I was terrified he would notice (he did) so I quickly shook my head and said, “Aku mau berak.”
That was it. That was my emergency response to being completely enchanted by a sunset, a song, and a man standing right in front of me.
He laughed, clearly amused by my answer. Then, still laughing, that smile… imagine having the privilege of being the reason behind it. I could almost picture it in my head, completely mesmerised by the thought…. ohh…. PLIS SADARRRRRRR!!
But then he said that if I could hold it for a little while, he would take me home. He knew I did not like using the toilet anywhere but home. And somehow, that was the thing that finally made me feel a little more normal again, because apparently nothing brings a person back to reality quite like someone offering to take you home because you have announced, with absolutely no dignity, that you need to poop.
While we were getting ready to leave, I hummed a little of the melody I could remember as I watched him continue his commentary about the song. According to him, listening to bad music was practically a moral failure, and therefore one should simply listen to good music instead. A compelling philosophy, if nothing else. Once his little sermon came to an end, he joined me in humming the song.
I laughed and said, “It’s funny that we’re humming a song whose title literally means A Humming.”
He chuckled, just as I had come to expect. Then, quite suddenly, he jolted.
“Oh! Humming! There’s a song called Humming by Turnover!”
I knew that one. He called the vocalist Mas Gondrong, and I agreed with him at this point.
And then he began humming the very song he had just mentioned, before laughing at himself. “Humming Humming! hahahaha”
I stared at him.
For a brief moment, I wondered whether I had just spent the afternoon with a perfectly functioning human being. I concluded that perhaps I had not.
And that was how I came to call him “Mas-Mas Senandung Maaf.”
But perhaps that was precisely the point. Some people remain in our memory because they were extraordinary. Others remain because, for a brief and inexplicable moment, they made an ordinary afternoon feel like something worth remembering.
And perhaps I remember him not because Senandung Maaf was the most beautiful song I had ever heard, nor because he played me the better version, but because of everything that came with it, his smiley face, the cassette that cost a small fortune, the song that somehow matched the sky at exactly the right moment, and, of course, a man who could turn from talking seriously about music to laughing at himself for humming a song called Humming. Somehow, that was enough. Enough to make me remember one rainy afternoon far more fondly than it probably deserved.
with ❤
