Let me tell you about something that happened in Bandung
back in ‘35. Not 1835—though God knows it might as well have been, the way
folks tell it—but 1935, when the world was younger and stranger, and people
still believed in the kind of shows that rolled into town on rickety wheels and
left with more than just your pocket money.
The people of Bandung, they were used to their
entertainments. Horse racing at Tegallega, sure. Been happening since before
most folks’ grandpappies were in short pants. But what came to town in October
of ‘35, well… that was different. The kind of different that makes old-timers
cross themselves when they talk about it, even now.
It started with an advertisement in Sinar Pasoendan.
Simple enough, you’d think. Just another show coming to town. But there was
something about the way they wrote it—something that made the hairs on the back
of your neck stand up when you read it: “KERAPANS,” it screamed in bold
letters that seemed to writhe on the page. “Twelve specially selected cattle,
brought all the way from Bangkalan, Madura.”
(Funny thing about cattle from Madura—they say those beasts
have eyes that shine red in the moonlight. Old wives’ tale, probably. Probably.)
The ad went on: “This is the first-ever Kerapans! Such an
event may not happen again for another 300 years.” Three hundred years. Why not
two hundred? Why not four? There was something about that number that made
folks uneasy, like it wasn’t pulled out of thin air but calculated with some
dark arithmetic nobody wanted to think too hard about.
The whole thing was set to happen at Nieuw Houtrust field—gone
now, buried under an apartment complex where people sleep uneasily on October
nights, though they can’t say why. But back then, it was just a football
ground, sitting at the corner of Lengkong Kecil and Karapitan like a stage
waiting for its players.
The cattle arrived at night—of course they did. 8:30 PM,
rolling into town like a nightmare carnival. The next morning, they paraded
those beasts through the streets of Bandung. The Madurese handlers walked
alongside them, their faces set in expressions that might have been pride or
might have been fear. The route they took—Oosteinde, Kaca-kaca Wetan, Tamblong,
and on and on—formed a pattern that looked almost like a sigil when drawn on a
map. Almost like they were marking something. Or waking something up.
The races themselves? That’s where things got strange. Six
pairs of cattle, running faster than cattle should run. “Faster than cattle
could run,” some would say. The winners raced winners, the losers raced losers,
and with each race, the crowd grew quieter, more focused, more… hungry.
Nine seconds. That’s how long it took the fastest cow to
cover a hundred meters. Nine seconds flat. And if you’ve ever seen a normal cow
move, you know that ain’t right. But there they were, these beasts with their
neck harnesses, thundering down the track like they had hell’s own jockeys on
their backs.
The prize money was decent enough—100 guilders for first
place, trickling down to 15 for the losers. But nobody talked about what else
might have been wagered during those three days in October. Nobody talked about
the dreams that came afterward, about the sound of hooves in the night, about
the way the grass never grew quite right on that field again.
The newspapers—Sinar Pasoendan and Sipatahoenan,
rival papers that suddenly found themselves agreeing on every detail, as if
they were afraid to contradict each other—reported that the crowds were smaller
than expected. But ask the old-timers (the few that’ll talk about it), and they’ll
tell you different. They’ll tell you the stands were packed, but not just with
people. They’ll tell you about the shadows that seemed to move against the
light, about the eyes that watched from empty seats.
See, this wasn’t the first time cattle racing had ventured
far from Madura. They’d had shows in Surabaya, in Solo, even at the Armenzorg
Night Market in Probolinggo. But those were different. Normal. This… this was
something else.
Twenty-three years later, when they tried something similar
in Jakarta, the Pemandangan newspaper called it the “first” cattle race
in the capital. As if what happened in Bandung had been wiped from memory. Or
as if folks had decided it was better not to remember.
That advertisement wasn’t wrong, you know. About the three
hundred years. Because here we are, coming up on ninety years later, and nobody’s
tried to hold another cattle race in Bandung since. Nobody’s dared.
Sometimes, on quiet nights, when the wind blows just right
through the apartments that stand where Nieuw Houtrust used to be, people say
they can hear it: the thunder of hooves, the creaking of harnesses, and
underneath it all, a sound like laughter. Not human laughter. Something else.
But that’s just a story, right? The kind of tale people tell
when they don’t want to remember what really happened on those three days in
October, when twelve cattle from Madura ran circles around a field in Bandung,
and something old and hungry watched from the shadows of the grandstand.
(And if you’re ever in Bandung, and someone offers to show
you old photos from those races? Don’t look too closely at the shadows in the
background. Some things are better left unseen.)
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