The Astronomer Under Another Name

Her father had spoken, by Lorna's rough estimate, about four hundred words a month, and rarely had any of them been about himself. Clearing his loft a fortnight after the funeral, she expected tax papers, spare radiator parts, the plain residue of a plain man. What she found instead, behind the water tank, were forty years of notebooks in a tidy slanting hand, each page ruled into columns of dates, times and numbers. Beneath them lay a shoebox of printed bulletins from a society of amateur astronomers.

Ayahnya berbicara, menurut perkiraan kasar Lorna, sekitar empat ratus kata sebulan, dan jarang sekali ada satu pun di antaranya tentang dirinya sendiri. Saat membersihkan loteng ayahnya dua pekan setelah pemakaman, ia mengira akan menemukan berkas pajak, suku cadang radiator, sisa-sisa sederhana dari seorang pria sederhana. Yang ia temukan justru, di belakang tangki air, empat puluh tahun buku catatan dengan tulisan tangan miring yang rapi, setiap halamannya digaris menjadi kolom tanggal, waktu, dan angka. Di bawahnya ada sebuah kotak sepatu berisi buletin cetak dari sebuah perkumpulan astronom amatir.

The bulletins carried a regular column of observations on variable stars, signed with the pen name Meridian. It took her an evening, comparing the handwriting in the margins, to be certain that Meridian was her father. He had stood in a cold garden on some thousand nights, she calculated, timing the dimming and brightening of lights she had never once seen him look at. He had told nobody: not her, and not her mother while she was alive. "Why would a man hide that?" she asked the empty loft, and found it had no more to say than he had.

Buletin-buletin itu memuat kolom tetap berisi pengamatan bintang variabel, ditandatangani dengan nama pena Meridian. Butuh satu malam baginya, membandingkan tulisan tangan di pinggir halaman, untuk memastikan bahwa Meridian adalah ayahnya. Dia telah berdiri di taman yang dingin pada sekitar seribu malam, ia menghitung, mencatat waktu meredup dan menyalanya cahaya-cahaya yang tak pernah sekali pun ia lihat ayahnya tatap. Dia tidak memberi tahu siapa pun: tidak dirinya, dan tidak ibunya selama ibunya masih hidup. "Kenapa seorang pria menyembunyikan itu?" tanyanya pada loteng kosong, dan mendapati loteng itu tak punya lebih banyak jawaban daripada ayahnya.

One bulletin mentioned a reader who wrote to Meridian so often that the editor had started printing the replies. His name was Vidar, and he lived two hours up the coast. Lorna wrote to him without any real plan, and he answered by return, in a note that began, "I have wondered for years what he looked like."

Satu buletin menyebut seorang pembaca yang begitu sering menulis kepada Meridian sehingga sang editor mulai mencetak balasan-balasannya. Namanya Vidar, dan dia tinggal dua jam perjalanan di sepanjang pesisir. Lorna menulis kepadanya tanpa rencana yang jelas, dan dia membalas hari itu juga, dalam catatan yang dibuka dengan, "Bertahun-tahun saya bertanya-tanya seperti apa rupanya."

Vidar turned out to be a small, careful man in his seventies who kept a telescope under a tarpaulin in his orchard, and he received her as though she were a rumour finally confirmed. He had a drawer of letters, he said, and brought them out. Reading them at his kitchen table, Lorna met someone she did not know. The Meridian of these pages teased and complained about the weather. Once he gave an entire page to a feud with a neighbour's floodlight, and he closed each letter with some version of "Clear skies, and say hello to the family."

Vidar ternyata pria kecil yang teliti berusia tujuh puluhan, yang menyimpan teleskop di bawah terpal di kebun apelnya, dan dia menyambutnya seolah ia sebuah desas-desus yang akhirnya terbukti. Dia punya satu laci penuh surat, katanya, dan mengeluarkannya. Membacanya di meja dapur pria itu, Lorna bertemu seseorang yang tidak ia kenal. Meridian dalam halaman-halaman ini suka menggoda dan mengeluhkan cuaca. Pernah dia mengabdikan satu halaman penuh untuk perseteruan dengan lampu sorot tetangganya, dan dia menutup setiap surat dengan semacam, "Semoga langit cerah, dan sampaikan salamku pada keluargamu."

What unsettled her was not that her father had been different on paper. It was that she recognised the jokes. Had anyone told her, as a girl, that the long silences at the dinner table were his way of saving the words for later, she would have taken it for an excuse. Now, with the letters in front of her, she thought it might simply have been true. He had spent his talk in a place where nobody could answer back, and she could not decide whether that was a kind of generosity or a kind of absence.

Yang mengusiknya bukan bahwa ayahnya berbeda di atas kertas. Melainkan bahwa ia mengenali lelucon-leluconnya. Seandainya ada yang mengatakan kepadanya, ketika ia masih gadis, bahwa keheningan panjang di meja makan adalah cara ayahnya menyimpan kata-kata untuk nanti, ia pasti menganggapnya sekadar dalih. Kini, dengan surat-surat itu di hadapannya, ia berpikir itu mungkin memang benar. Ayahnya telah menghabiskan ucapannya di tempat yang tak seorang pun bisa menjawab balik, dan ia tak bisa memutuskan apakah itu semacam kemurahan hati atau semacam ketidakhadiran.

Vidar asked whether she would like to look through the telescope. It was not yet dark, but a few stars had come out above the apple trees, and he aimed at one of them with the patience of a man who had done it many times. "Your father measured this one every clear night since before you were born," he said. "It fades for a day or so, then recovers. He never missed a minimum."

Vidar bertanya apakah ia mau melihat melalui teleskop. Hari belum gelap, tetapi beberapa bintang sudah muncul di atas pohon-pohon apel, dan dia mengarahkannya ke salah satunya dengan kesabaran seorang pria yang sudah sering melakukannya. "Ayahmu mengukur yang ini setiap malam cerah sejak sebelum kamu lahir," katanya. "Cahayanya meredup selama sehari atau lebih, lalu pulih. Dia tidak pernah melewatkan satu titik minimum pun."

Lorna bent to the eyepiece. The star was small, steady and entirely ordinary, and she realised, looking at it, that she was holding her breath. It was not reverence. It was the particular stillness she had watched from the kitchen window as a child, on nights when he would not come in for supper. She did not breathe out until Vidar cleared his throat behind her and asked, very gently, whether she could see it.

Lorna membungkuk ke lensa okuler. Bintang itu kecil, mantap, dan sama sekali biasa, dan ia sadar, sambil memandanginya, bahwa ia menahan napas. Itu bukan karena rasa hormat. Itu adalah keheningan khusus yang dulu ia saksikan dari jendela dapur ketika kecil, pada malam-malam saat ayahnya tak mau masuk untuk makan malam. Ia tidak mengembuskan napas sampai Vidar berdeham di belakangnya dan bertanya, dengan sangat lembut, apakah ia bisa melihatnya.

"Yes," she said, and stayed where she was.

"Ya," katanya, dan tetap di tempatnya.