Hiu Berkaki

Selasa

Tuesday

Hiu itu memiliki kaki. Itulah kabar pertama pekan ini, dan Kwabena Asare, yang telah melukis poster film selama tiga puluh satu tahun, menerimanya bagai seorang tukang kayu yang mengukur sebilah papan: tanpa rasa heran, dengan sebuah anggukan, pensil sudah terselip di balik telinganya. “Dua kaki,” ulangnya. “Bukan empat?”

The shark had legs. That was the first piece of news this week, and Kwabena Asare, who had been painting film posters for thirty-one years, took it in the way a carpenter takes the measure of a board: without surprise, with a nod, the pencil already behind his ear. “Two legs,” he repeated. “Not four?”

“Dua,” kata Grace Tetteh. “Hiu berkaki empat hanyalah seekor binatang. Dengan dua kaki, ia adalah seorang pria yang punya rencana.” Seperti biasa setiap hari Selasa, ia duduk di atas ember cat terbalik di sebelah kuda-kuda lukis Kwabena, tas tangan bertengger di pangkuan, lalu menceritakan film untuk pekan depan sebagaimana biasa: tak hanya dengan kata-kata, melainkan dengan kedua belah tangan, dengan bahu, dengan suara yang merendah untuk sang kapten dan melengking untuk sang istri, serta dengan jeda-jeda hening yang membuat deburan ombak seolah terdengar. Film itu berjudul Deep Water Terror . DVD-nya tergeletak di meja di antara mereka, di samping tabung-tabung cat, dan tak seorang pun dari mereka sudi melihatnya.

“Two,” said Grace Tetteh. “A shark with four legs would be an animal. With two he is a man who has something in mind.” She sat, as she did every Tuesday, on the upturned paint bucket beside his easel, her handbag on her knees, and told the film for the coming week the way she always told it: not with words alone but with both hands, with her shoulders, with a voice that went deep for the captain and high for his wife, and with pauses in which you could hear the surf. The film was called Deep Water Terror . The DVD lay between them on the table, next to the tubes, and neither of them looked at it.

Bangsanya berdiri di belakang gedung bioskop milik Tuan Boateng di Bantama, sebuah kawasan di Kumasi yang berbau arang, solar, dan minyak pisang tanduk goreng. Atap sengnya berdenting setiap kali diembus angin, dan di dinding-dinding tergantung poster-poster dari pekan-pekan silam, entah untuk dikeringkan atau sekadar kebiasaan: dilukis di atas karung terigu yang dibelah, berukuran sembilan puluh kali seratus empat puluh sentimeter, menggunakan cat minyak dari kaleng timah, dengan warna-warna yang tak pernah ada di film mana pun. Seekor singa bermahkota lidah api. Seorang perempuan yang menuntun helikopter dengan tali kekang layaknya anjing. Jumlahnya lebih dari seribu lima ratus lembar, dan masing-masing pernah tergantung di atas pintu gedung bioskop pada suatu hari Jumat.

His shed stood behind Boateng’s video hall in Bantama, a district of Kumasi that smelled of charcoal, diesel and frying plantain. The corrugated roof sang at every gust of wind, and on the walls hung the posters of past weeks, to dry or out of habit: painted on flour sacks cut open, ninety by one hundred and forty centimetres, in oil from tin cans, in colours that existed in no film. A lion with a crown of flames. A woman leading a helicopter on a lead like a dog. More than fifteen hundred of them, and every one had hung over the door of the hall on a Friday.

Ia belum pernah menonton satu pun dari film-film tersebut. Pada tahun pertama memang pernah; waktu itu ia masih duduk di barisan paling belakang, lalu dengan patuh melukis apa yang terpampang di layar kaca, seorang pria di dalam mobil di depan rumah, dan poster itu berakhir tergantung kaku bagai jemuran basah: tak ada seorang pun yang berhenti meliriknya. Grace menatap lukisan itu lama-lama. “Kamu melukis apa yang ada,” katanya kala itu. “Orang-orang membayar untuk apa yang mereka rasakan.” Pada hari Selasa berikutnya, untuk kali pertama Grace menceritakan sebuah film kepadanya, dan sejak saat itu, pada malam pemutaran film ia tak lagi duduk di dalam ruangan, melainkan di atas bangku kecil di balik dinding, menyandarkan punggung ke atap seng, hanya mendengarkan filmnya: suara tembakan, musik, dan di atas segalanya suara Grace.

He had never seen any of these films. In the first year he had, back then he still sat in the last row and afterwards faithfully painted what had been on the screen, a man in a car in front of a house, and the poster had hung there like wet washing: nobody had stopped in front of it. Grace had looked at it for a long time. “You paint what is there,” she had said. “People pay for what they feel.” The following Tuesday she had told him a film for the first time, and ever since, on the evening of the screening he had not sat in the hall but on a stool behind the wall, his back against the corrugated iron, and only listened to the film: the shots, the music and, above them, Grace.

Grace adalah narator gedung bioskop tersebut. Ia berdiri di sebelah kiri televisi, dalam kegelapan, menggenggam mikrofon, membawakan seluruh narasi film dalam bahasa Twi, memerankan semua tokoh, bahkan suara teriakan. Orang-orang datang demi dirinya; film-film itu sendiri dapat dibeli di pasar mana pun seharga beberapa cedi. Tak seorang pun pernah benar-benar melihat sosoknya saat bercerita, dan ia menyukainya, begitu tuturnya. Wajah bisa memudar daya tariknya, sedangkan suara tidak.

Grace was the hall’s narrator. She stood to the left of the television, in the dark, a microphone in her hand, and spoke the whole film over it in Twi, all the parts, the screams as well. People came for her sake; the films themselves were on sale at every market for a few cedis. Nobody had ever really seen her there, and that suited her, she said. A face wore out, a voice did not.