Frangipani
Reading time approx. 6 min.

Auntie loved frangipani the most. She made a whole ritual of lighting the incense stick. She preferred to do this in her conservatory – she called it her 'little lofty kampong' – don't ask me where she got that name from, I had already learned then that you should never want to know the origin of strange names and expressions, because it is often disappointingly boring. Moreover, there are no kampongs at all on the Moluccas, there they speak of 'negorijen', so why she called her conservatory that was one of the mysteries that shrouded auntie.
On the coffee table of that outside room stood a black lacquered saucer with a silver incense holder. Lighting a new stick was always a solemn moment. Auntie was such a fragile woman, with such small elegant hands. She poked the incense stick into the elephant’s back, a beautiful ornament of fine filigree that adorned her incense holder. Then she struck a match and held it to the tip of the stick until it caught fire. For a moment she let the orange flame flicker and then blew it out. Sometimes the stick didn’t glow well enough to smoke, then she blew on the pointed end and I saw a tiny speck of fire glow. That was enough. With a smile of satisfaction she looked at the spiral of smoke and then closed her eyes to inhale the released scent with bliss.
In the long run I came to love that scent as much as my aunt did. Frangipani.
We never spoke much during those moments. My aunt wasn’t a talkative type and neither was I. But I imagined I knew what was hidden behind those soft brown eyes and I followed her thoughts to a world I only knew from photo albums.
"Come, sit with me in my little lofty kampong," she would sometimes beg as I whizzed along the tiled path on my roller skates, competing with my imaginary friend. She could look so adorable then that, no matter how young I was, I never had the heart to refuse her. To be honest, I always hoped that she would finally tell me something about her life on Seram. But she just looked dreamily at the smoke spiral.
"Do you smell that?" she would ask sometimes. And then I would just nod, because my imagination had long since run away with me. My roller skates lay forgotten in a corner. My imaginary friend had vanished into thin air. I tried to figure out my aunt. I tried to see inside her head. Where had she gone when she sat there so quietly staring into space? If only I could follow her. And yes, sometimes I had the feeling that I could. That the incense was taking us both to the same place. Then I would see her standing at daybreak on the porch of a house on stilts with her hands on the balustrade, her gaze fixed on the glitter of the clear water that lapped between the stilts under the house. Then I would see the coral she was looking at and the starfish and the fish swimming lazily past in fluorescent colours, and also the fast, glittering fish that darted through the water in schools. Aunt Frangipani would turn her gaze a little further into the distance when she heard the cheerful chatter of children being taken to school in a prauw. And then the fishing boats would come home with baskets full of fresh fish and she would pick out the prettiest ones to prepare for the uncle I never knew.
I always felt a pang of jealousy when I pictured her in her negorij on Seram, in the Moluccas, because she had really lived there. I would have loved to put my legs between the bars of that balustrade, to sit with my feet in the water, to hear the sounds she heard – the spluttering of a motorboat, the cry of a flight of wild birds over the water – and to smell the scents she smelled. But the only scent I was allowed was that of the frangipani incense sticks. And then I was back here in her 'little lofty kampong', the sanctuary in her Haarlem backyard, her conservatory, which unfortunately did not stand on stilts and where she did not see the waves glistening between the cracks in the floorboards.
'But in your imagination anything is possible, yes,' I said and she just nodded.
Sometimes I told her out loud what I saw in my thoughts. I told her the story that I always and always wanted her to tell me. The world turned upside down. Usually she listened quietly with that unchanging soft look in her eyes, her face so serene that I could not help but lure her out of her shell. I told her an exciting story about a tiger and her eyes started to shine brightly.
Yes! I thought then, I have her attention. In a moment she will interrupt me and say that I have it all wrong. That the story is different. In this way I threw upon her the wildest fantasies, but she never really gave in.
When the incense stick had burned down, the cones of ash fell onto the black lacquered dish. There was usually a whole pile of them, also from previous incense sticks. I was still a child, yes, I would have liked to blow through that pile of cones of ash, but that was strictly forbidden. Auntie saved the ash. Why yes? I have often wondered that. She could sit for hours looking at that pile of ash. Did she see the past in those cones? Or was she trying to predict the future based on how they fell? The ash had a meaning, but I never found out what it was. Or was it me, with my unbridled imagination, who was looking for a meaning where there was none at all? Auntie had a glass jar where she would throw the cones when the pile on the dish got too big. Then they all fell apart and I always felt a bit sad about those pulverized cones of ash. Auntie too, I could see it in her eyes. But I knew how to comfort her.
'Adoeh, auntie,' I would say. 'Tell me again about that tiger, yes.'
That always made her smile. Then she would sit up for a moment, as if she was preparing for a long story.
'Sayang,' she would say, 'my darling, there are no tigers on the Moluccas...'
And that is the longest story she has ever told me.
                                                                                                      © marian puijk