Wednesday, March 29, 2017

A Game of Thrones (1996), Fantasy Novel by George R.R. Martin: summary

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.” (p.126, Tyrion Lannister said to Jon Snow)

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." (p.488, Cersei Lannister warned Ned Stark)

A Game of Thrones is book one of five books in fantasy sequence The Song of Ice and Fire that originally published in 1996.This edition was printed by Bantam Books New York in 2016 with the 834-page long. The TV serial adaptation is good, but I prefer the book.

George R.R. Martin is an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction writer. Though the author claimed himself as a slow writer, but the book is a fast-paced one to me. Hundred of characters has brought me into confused corner. I am not a huge fan of too many characters and settings, but since the characters named frequently and related one to another character helping me to comprehend the tale.

The writing technique is superb, mostly each chapter leaves cliffhanger endings that make me hardly to put down the book. Numerous questions appeared in my mind when I left one chapter, such as: What’s going on to Arya and Bran?   

The tale follows the Seven Kingdoms that was united by Aegon the Dragon of Targaryens (the blood of the dragon). Seven houses has been married in one empire called Seven Kingdoms, it was the dragon that they married for three hundred years until the day a Baratheon's queen broke it into a ruin. The kingdom’s ruled by King Robert Baratheon after banishing the dragon’s blood, the Mad King Aerys Targaryen, that has slew Ned’s Stark's family and Robert's lover (Lyanna Stark, Ned's sister). Robert's queen, a Lannister,  was driven by greediness, jealousy, and incestuous madness with her own twin brother, had killed numerous  powerful people in the empire including Ned Stark (a warrior, a Hand and a friend of King Robert), and others warriors.  After the death of King Robert, Eddard Stark was accused of a treason and put him to death. 

There is no such specific main character, the Starks’s persecution has drawn reader on their side, though we mostly know that in kingdom's tale there is no throne without blood and conspiracy. The book is a fantasy one, but the characters act more like human does (except for the direwolf): kingdom, love, betrayal, power, politics, greediness, sex, romance, battle, family, brotherhood, loyalty, and patriotism. I am not sure the book can be easy for novice reader. All in all, it’s a great and enjoyable book. If the Lords of the Ring is your genre, then you might enjoy the book. It’s worthy to invest your time on the epic with strong writing style, sharp story line, and rich character.



The list of the seven kingdoms and two houses:

1. House Baratheon
The youngest of Great House, born during the Wars of Conquest. The founder, Orys Baratheon, was rumored to be Aegon the Dragon’s bastard brother. Baratheon was one of the Aegon’s fiercest commanders, after defeated Argilac the Arrogant, the last Storm King, Aegon rewarded him Argilac’s castle. Their words: Ours is the Fury.
Ruler king is Robert, his wife, Queen Cersei, of House Lanisster; their children: Prince Joffrey, heir to Iron Throne, twelve – Princess Myrcella, a girl of eight – Prince Tommen, a boy of seven.

2. House Stark -- descent of Brandon the Builder and the ancient Kings of Winter. Their words: Winter is Coming.
Eddard (Ned) Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, his wife Lady Catelyn, of House Tully; their children: Robb (14), the heir to Winterfell-- Sansa (11), the eldest daughter, -- Arya (9), the younger daughter --Brandon (Bran, 7) -- Rick (3) – and his bastard son, Jon Snow (14).

3. House Lannister – The blood of Andal adventures. Their words: Hear Me Roar!
4. House Arryn – Descent of King of Mountain and Vale and their words: As High As Honor.
5. House Tully -- Never reigned as kings, descent of the riverlands conqueror. Their words: Family, Duty, Honor.
6. House Tyrell -- Descent of gardener king. Their words: Growing Strong.
7. House Greyjoy-- Descent of mermaid. Their words: We Do Not Sow.
8. House Martell -- Descent of warrior queen. Their words: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.
9. The Old Dynasty House Targaryen -- The blood of dragon, with striking beauty. Their words: Fire and Blood.



A Game of Thrones (1996), Fantasy Novel by George R.R. Martin: summary

Bran and his mother, Catelyn Tully,  in Winterfell
The tale began with Bran, the Starks’s boy, in the woods with his brothers and father. They set forth daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. The man were oathbreakers, the deserters from Night’s Watch. It was the first time he had deemed old enough to go to with his lord father and brothers to see the king’s justice one. It was the ninth year of summer and the seventh of Bran’s life.

His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke, Bran looked at his bastard brother, Jon Snow. He was fourteen, an old hand at justice. He was of an age with Robb, but they didn’t look alike. Robb was big and broad and growing everyday, with his mother’s coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, blue eyes of Tullys of Riverrun. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.

Catelyn had born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of Trident. The godswood, there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. The place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived there had no names.

Daenerys and her brother, Viserys (the last Targaryens)
Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbones, and other, less savory things’ Kahl Drogo had a thousand horses, tonight he looked for a different sort of mount. The Dorthaki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of Andal. Her brother Rhaegar had killed in the battle. Viserys had been a boy of eight they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb.

The sack of King’s Landing, by the ones Visery called the Usupers’s dogs, the Lannisters and Starks. She had born on Dragonstore nine moons after the fleeing, her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her. The ancient seat of their House, the Targaryens’s throne, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that once been theirs. Grogo was rich even his slaves wore golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride his khalasar (horses), and his palace in Vaes Dothrak had two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.

For centuries the Targaryens had married brother and sister, since Aegon the conqueror had taken sister to bride. The line must be kept pure. The kingsblood, the blood of old Valyria, the blood of dragon. Yet now Vaserys schemed to sell her sister to a stranger, a barbarian, Khal (King) Drogo. Viserys didn’t want his whole khalasar, ten thousand would be enough to sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. Drogo had three bloodriders (knights): Khal Moro with his son Rhogoro, and Ser Jorah Mormont. The knight was an older man, past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. The Usupers wanted Jorah’s head.

She was too young, only thirteen years old. Kahl Dorgo was a head taller than the tallest man. He was no more thirty. His skin was color of polished cooper, heavy black braid with scented oil, his thick mustachios bound with gold and bronze rings. When Dorthaki were defeated in combat, they cut off their braids in disgrace. Kahl Drogo had never lost a fight. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. She had no choice, her brother convinced Dany that it was only Khal Drogo’s army could bring them home.

Eddard (Ned) Stark
Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as bright as beaten gold. The tall boy beside him could only be the crown prince, the stunted little man behind them was surely the Imp, Tyrion Lannister. Robert was not just a friend and yet Ned Stark’s king now. Ned was Lord of Winterfell in north, kings were a rare sight in the north. The winters were hard. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father. Ned’s brother, Brandon, had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him die. Ned was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule. Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman or surpassing loveliness. Ned had love her with all his heart, he was with her when she died. Robert loved her even more, she was to have been his bride. Robert vowed to kill Rhaegar Targaryen for what he did to her.

Robert anointed his friend Ned as the Hand of the King. The Hand of the king was second-most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He spoke with the king’s voice, commanded the king’s armies, drafted the king’s laws. At times he even sat upon the Iron Throne to dispense king’s justice, when the king was absent, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was offering him a responsibility as large the realm itself. King wanted his son Joff wedded Ned’s daughter, Sansa, to join his house, as Lyanna and him might once had done.

Lord and Lady Stark of Winterfell hosted King Robert and his queen, Cersei Lannister
The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh-baked bread. Its grey stone walls were draped with banners. White, gold, crimson: the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon’s crowned stag and the lion of Lannister. His lord father had come first, escorting Queen Cersei. She was as beautiful as men said. Even at fourteen, Jon could see through smile.
There were a few time times when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard. Jon’s brothers and sisters had been seated with the royal children, beneath the raised platform where Lord and Lady Stark hosted the king and queen.

Next had come King Robert himself, with Lady Stark, Catelyn on his arm. The king was a great disappointment to Jon. His father had talked to him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among princess. Jon only saw a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups.

After them came the children. Little Rickon first, managing the long walk with all the dignity a three-year-old could muster. His half brother Robb came with Princess Myrcella on his arm. She was a wisp of a girl, not quite eight. His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose white-blond hair was longer than her. Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon and Robb, but taller than either. Joff had his sister’s hair and his mother’s deep green eyes.

Jon was more interested in the pair that came behind the crown prince: the queen’s brothers, the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. The Lion and the Imp. Ser Jaime was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. Then the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother’s side. Tyron Lannister, the youngest of Lord Tywin’s brood and by far his ugliest. All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his brother’s height. His head was too large for his body, with a brute’s squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf brow. The last of the high lords to enter was his uncle, Benjen Stark of the Night’s Watch, and his father’s ward, young Theon Greyjoy.

Jon Snow
Jon never knew his mother, he had only Ghost, a direwolf. Ned and Robert were closer than brothers. Robert offered his own son marriage to his daughter, Sansa. Sansa might someday be queen. Sansa was only eleven.

Master Luwin was the couselor, healer and tutor in Winterfell. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much. His hair was grey, what little years had left him. Luwin just got a message in a wooden box. Catelyn read a rolled paper, a message from his sister. Lysa just lost her husband. Lord Arryn was murdered. Ned would investigate and used his power to find the killers. He left Winterfell with his two daughters, but there must be always be a Stark in Winterfell. Robb was fourteen, soon enough he would be a man grown.

Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. In the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned had fathered a child on some girl chance met on campaign. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him son for all the north to see. Catelyn heard her maids repeating repeating tales they heard from lips of her husband’s soldiers. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of Morning, deadlist of Aerys’ Kingsguard, and how the young lord had slain him in single combat. Ned had carried ser Arthur’s sword back to the beautiful sister awaited him in a castle called Starfall on the shores of the Summers Sea. The lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting violet eyes. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally in bed one night.

Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it. It was the only time in all years that Ned had frightenend her. Ned gave certain answer, Jon was his blood, and never asked about him. Whoever Jon’s mother  had been, her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would persuade him to send the boy away. She loved her husband, but she had never found it in her love to Jon. Robb and Jon were close. Luwin said Jon was too young to join  the Night’s Watch with Uncle Benjen in service on the Wall. Benjen Stark was a Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son to him, the child he would never have.

Arya
Septa Mordane and everyone said Sansa’s needle was exquisite, but the septa desribed Arya had the hands of blacksmith. Sansa was already in love with  Joffery, but Jon said the pince looked like a girl. Sansa had everything, she was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there been nothing left. Sansa could sew, dance, and sing. She wrote poetry, knew how to dress. She was beautiful. She got her mother’s fine high cheekbone and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn- horseface. Nymeria was always with her. They went everywhere together, and the wolf slept in her room. She name her after the the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led the people across the narrow sea.

Bran
Jon was going with Uncle Benjen to the wall, to join the Night’s Watch. His father was the Hand of the King, and they were going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle the dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there. Bran had left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to ride the kingsroad on horse of his own, not a pony but real horse. Winterfell had been only home he had ever known.

He was with his wolf named Grey Wind. The rooftop of Winterfell were Bran’s second home. His mother often said that Bran could climb before he could walk. To a boy, Winterfell was grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. Most of all, Bran like going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfel in a way that no one else ever saw it. His favorite hunt was the broken tower.

He was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long practice when he heard the voices. They were talking about his father. Inside the room, a man and a woman wrestling, he recognized the queen. The woman caught him. There was nothing to grab on to, the courtyard rushed up to meet him. Bran was lingering in the shadow of death. Like others, Tyron, little imp, had predicted that even Bran did live, he would be cripple. When Jon left him for Night’s Watch, Bran still laid on bed, he didn’t wake. Robb embraced Jon for farewell. Before leaving, Jon gave Arya a blade, and they named it Needle. Arya run to her half brother for a last hug.

Daenerys
Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendors in a field beyond the walls of Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. Drogo had called his khalasar (people) to attend him and they had come, forty thousand Dothraki warriors and uncounted numbers of women, children, and slaves. The exile had offered her brother his sword the night Dany had been sold to Kahl Drogo; Viserys had accepted eagerly.

Ser Jorah Mormont had been their constant companion ever since. The knight had traveled as far east as Vaes Dothrak, nodded in agreement. Magister Illyrio had warned Dany earlier that a Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths was deemed a dull affair. She was afraid of her brother, of what he might do if she failed him. Most of all, she was afraid what would happening, she sat beside the hulking giant with a face as still and cruel as a bronze mask. Her brother Viserys gifted her with three handmaids. Irri would teach her riding, Jhique the Dothraki tongue and Doreah would instruct her in the womanly arts of love. Magister Illyrio gave her three huge eggs. It was truly magnificent gift, three dragon’s eggs.

Ned
Jon Snow never knew who his mother was, but Ned admitted to Robert, it was Wylla. Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He served Robert now as he had served Aerys Targaryen. As the Mormonts were bannerman to the Starks, his crime had dishonored to the north. Ser Jorah Mormont sent a message that informed Daenerys Targayen had wed Khal Drogo, the horse lords. Ned and Robert still remembered Rhaegar Targaryen who killed Lyanna. Robert acclaimed drogo had a hundred thousand men in his horde. To Ned the barbarians had no ships, they hated and feared the open sea.

Tryrion
Three days rode from Winterfell, the farmland gave way to dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. Tyrion Lannister traveled with two of his own men, as befit as a Lannister. Benjen Stark had only his bastard nephew and some fresh mounts for the Night’s Watch, but the edge of the wolfswood they joined up with another of the black brother, one Yoren. They recruited them. Yoren had a twisted shoulder and sour smell, his hair and beard were matted and greasy and full of lice, his clothing old, patched, and seldom washed.

Though Jon was only fourteen but he was taller than Tyrion. He was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock. His father was the hand of the King for twenty years. His brother later killed that very same king, as it turned out. His sister, Cersei, married the new king and his repulsive nephew will be king after him. The little man love reading, he was reading about the dragon.

Catelyn
The girls and Ned were eights days gone but Bran still lied broken and dying. Catelyn wasn’t in the mood when Maester Luwin discussed a new master of horses, but Robb offered himself to manage it. Robb yelled on the library tower’s on fire. When Catelyn turned away the window off seing the fire, the man was in the room with her. He tried to kill her son, Bran. Catelyn almost killed, but Bran’s wolf had the attacker under the jaw. The man died instantly. Rodrik Cassel, Robb, her husband ward, Theon Greyjoy, and lastly Hallis Mollen, the new captain of the guard (Robb chosen), arrived later. Someone was afraid Bran might wake up.

Sansa
Sansa didn’t really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. It was a day of adventures, they explored the caves, the riverbank. They dined out the fresh from the river and Sansa drank more wine than she ever drunk before.They found Arya and a boy playing at the knights. Their swords were wooden sticks. Mycah, the butcher’s boy was taller, older, and stronger. Prince tried to defense Sansa’s sister put his real sword pressed to the butcher’s boy. A red line trickled down the boy’s cheek. Arya tried to help Mycah, but off slashed the sword at Arya with his sword. Nymeria bit the prince and left the scar on his arm. 

Eddard
Arya was founded after four days in searching. She had been taking before the king. Robert heard two different version of events. Cersei asked punishment to Arya and the wolf, but king was no mood for argument. It was just kids fighting. Queen Cersei ordered Nymeria to be killed.
 
His father died several year ago, before he was Lord Baelish now, yet still they called him Littlefinger. His father, Lord Baelish once was Catelyn’s father’s ward. Catelyn and Littlefinger grew up together in Riverrun. She thought him as a brother. When it was announced that Catelyn  was to wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to Catelyn. Brandon was twenty and Petry was scarecely was fifteen. The men pushed Catelyn and her men to a place, a brothel. It was Littlefinger. Catelyn showed him the knife she found with Bran’s attackers. Littlefinger identified it as Tyrion Lannister’s knife.

Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, was a gruff old man with an immense bald head and shaggy grey beard. He just got the letter. It’s said Bran was alive but cripple. Littlefinger was hiding Catelyn in a brothel. Catelyn told him everything about the attack and the dagger was sent to kill Bran. The boy has never done  him harm, why should the dwarf want Bran’s death.

Ned was thinking of the boy Mycah, of Jon Arryn’s sudden death, of Bran’s fall, of old mad Aerys Targaryen dying on the floor on the floor of his throne room while his life’s blood dried on glided blade. The dwarf, his sister sat beside the king. His brother was a great knight, his father the most powerful lord in Seven Kingdoms. The Night’s Watch was dying the strength was less than a thousand. Tyrion was the first he had had to friend.

She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost blind and almost blind, too weak to climb stairs. No one really knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been called Old Nan when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms. She had lost her sons to the war when King Robert won the war. Her daughters had long ago married and moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables. Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories. It was only Robb, and baby Rickon was still there. Robb was Lord now, to have more more time for Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy.

Robb was seated in Father’s high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern face, Hallis dan Theon Greyjoy stood behind him. Tyrion Lannister arrived with a  paper and horse. It was Tyron’s idea. The dwarf was the first friend of Jon. He sent Bran a letter and a phony, Tryon himself brought the message.

Grand Maester Pycelle was Grand master of Seven Kingdoms for forty years. He stated the death of Lord Jon Arryn was stranger than any other. His thought was like his wife had. It wasn’t an illness but poison. It was said that poison was the weapon of women, craven, and eunuchs. Petyr Baelish found the Red Keep and other the queen’s men spied Ned Stark and told about Catelyn.

The Lannisters were an old family, tracing their descent back to Lann the Clever. Lord Petyr Baelish, of the king’s small council. Joffrey his hair was as bright the metal. King Robert apologized to Ned about Arya and her wolf. He found his son was lying. He had small liking for Prince Joffrey. Robert was the boy he had grown up with, Robert Baratheon he’d known and and loved.

If Ned could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack of Bran, prove that they had murdered Lord Arryn, Robert would listen. Cersei would fall, and Jaime the kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin (Cersei’s father) dared to rouse west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident.

The king had other baseborn children scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms. He openly acknowledge on of his bastards, a boy of Bran’s age whose mother was highborn. Ned remembered Robert’s first child as well, a daugther. The girl would be seventeen or eighteen.

Lord Arryn had been Hand for fourteen years. He was a kindly and trusting man. He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney. Lord Arryn was dutiful husband, but their marriage was made from politics, not passion. They began the same, but Catelyn ending has been happier than her sister, Lysa. Her sister was two years the younger, yet she looked older now. Lysa wrote her a letter that Lannisters had murdered her husband.

Arya found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where I emptied to the river. She was miles from the castle. She stank so badly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the riverbank. The guard laughed when she said she was looking for her father, Eddard Strak. She was down in the dungeons, she heard men were talking. She heard people were talking about to kill her father. They thought she was a boy.

Bran was awake, He didn’t remember anything on the day he fell. He just recalled he had fallen. His brother Robb trained him to ride Dancer, a two years old horse. The woods seemed to close in around Bran. The snow was falling more heavy. Six mean and a tall woman wanted to rob his pin and horse.  Robb and Grey Wind helped Bran to kill the robbers. There was no one left, but Osha the tall girl was on her knees. She asked Robb’s mercy for her life. Tyrion was accused of sending a hired knife to slay Bran in his bed, and conspiring to murder Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King. The dwarf denied them.

Jaime Lannister had killed three guards and include Mycah. Sansa dan Arya querelled all the time. Arya was honest girl and Sansa looked the world like a lady. Arya hated Joffrey and hated Sansa married him. Ned wanted to send both of his daughters back to Winterfell for their own safety. Sansa didn’t want to go home, she obsessed to be Joffrey’s wife, to be a queen. She loved Kingdom Landing; the pageantry of the court; the high lady and lords in their silks and gemstones, the tournaments, harvest feast, the masked balls, and mummer shows. She insisted to stay.

Cersei told everything to her husband - all about Bran. Ned was shocked when Cersei admitted her secrets. Jaime wasn’t only twin or brother to her. They were her were more, and Joffrey wasn’t a Baratheon. Queen warned Stark’s step. When you play the game of thrones, you win or die. There is no middle ground.

Dany was conceiving Drogo’s seed in her belly, and she proclaimed in her best Dothraki, “Khalaka dothrae mr’anha!’ (A prince rides inside me!) …“Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!” (a boy, a boy, a strong boy). Viserys planned to take the dragon’s eggs. Magister Illyrio gave them to her as a bride gift. Dany name his boy Rhaego, the stallion who mounts the world. The stallion was the kahl of khals promised in ancient prophecy, child. He would unite Dorthaki into a single khalasar and ride to the ends of the earth. All the people of the world would be his herd.

King loved to hunt boar (a tusked wild pig). Robert was savaged by a boar while hunting in kingswood, he knew he was too old and weak with the boar’s attack. He only wanted to speak to Ned alone. He asked his friend, Ned,  to write his will. The king commanded Eddard Stark to serve a Regent and Protector of Realm to rule Seven Kingdoms upon his death until Joffery came of age.

The agony was written too plainly across king’s face, he didn’t want to hurt him more. Ned wanted to say that Joffrey wasn’t his son, but the words would not come. Robert also asked him to protect his children, to let Daenarys lived. The word twisted like a knife. Robert was not dead yet, but his youngest brother, Renly, wanted to get Joffrey got away from Cersei. They suspected the poison. The wine was from king’s own skin. Ser Kevan Lannister’s son, nephew to Lord Twyn and cousin to Cersei.

Robert would leave no trueborn son behind him. Joffrey and Tommen were Jaime Lannister’s bastards, born of his incestuous union with the queen. Littlefinger was shocking to hear Ned. Throne by rights passed to Lord Stannis, the elder of Robert’s two brothers. Jon Arryn was murdered to protect. Stannis wasn’t friend of Ned and Petyr. He was an iron and unyielding. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard examined the seal. Lord Eddard was herein named Protector of the Realm, to rule  as regent until heir came age. Soon the queen found Robert was death, Ned was arrested. The boy commanded the council to make arrangement for his coronation. Ned argued to Cersei, the true heir was Stannis Baratheon. The boy, Joff, screamed and commanded to kill Ned.

Arya was practicing dance with instructor Syrio Forel when the guard look for him. The dancing master was killed by them, Arya ran away. Lannister guardsmen were killing everyone. They came to Sansa on the third day. Her fathers was locked in the dungeon for treason. She had even dreamed to wed be a queen. Maester Pycelle, Varys and convinced Cersei that the child born of traitor’s seed would find that betrayal came naturally to her. Lord Peytr Baelish only acclaimed she was the very image of her mother, Catelyn, at the same age. Sansa really loved Joffrey. In the end, she betrayed her own father. Cersei had asked her to write letter that said his father betrayed his king. She wrote four letters. To her mother, to her brothers at Winterfell, to her aunt Lady Lysa Arryn, and her grandfather, Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun. She didn’t know where Arya was, and she also didn’t  mention her in her letter.

Lord Eddard had been locked in a dungeon, he was charged with treason. It’s said plotted with Robert’s brothers to deny the throne of Prince Joffrey. The council’s letter about arrived to the Night’s Watch commander, Jon Snow hardly believed it. When a craven came, bearing a letter marked with Ned’s own seal, and written with Sansa’s hand, the cruel truth semed no less incredible. King was dead, his father conspired a treason with king’s brother. Mother and Robb were summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. Robb left Winterfell to bring back his father. Bran was the lord of Winterfell now.

The kahl had never seen Seven Kingdoms, they were nothing to him. Kahl talked of leading east after Rhaego was born, to avoid crossing the poison water. But Dany want to ride west. Kahl had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she knew them from all the tales her brother had told her. 

Rhaegar was the last dragon. Thousand year ago the dargons had been alive, but now they were only pretty rocks. The eggs couldn’t make a dragon. A dragon was air and fire. Living flesh, not dead stone.

Robb was leading a host to battle, then he met his mother and Tully’s armies in the field. Catelyn said it was Cersei’s letter not Sansa’s. If Stark marched even they won, the Lannisters hold Sansa and his father. They would kill both of them. If he lose, there was no hope for the Starks. His uncle Edmure joined his nephew in marching to defeate the Lannisters.  

Tywn Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, was in his middle fifties, yet hard as a man of twenty. His eyes were pale a green, freckled with gold. The sooner he the Straks were broken, the sooner he should be free to deal with Stannis Baratheon. Tywn Lannister was marching against Robb Stark and Edmure Tully.

Cersei had given her freedom ot the castle as a reward for being good, yet even so she was escorted everywhere she went. It was the first court session of  Joffrey’s reign, Sansa was among the guests. Not one of them would meet her eyes as if she had become a ghost. She recognized only few of them. She wondered many others were missing. A herald’s voice rang out. “All hail His Grace Joffrey of the House Baratheon and Lannister… and Lord of Seven Kingdoms. All hail his lady mother, Cersei of Lannister, Queen Regent, Light of the West, and Protector of the Realm. Joffrey commanded Grand Maester Pycelle to read all the name of the traitors. Sansa stiffed when she heard the name of her parents, brothers and sister, aunt, uncle, and grandfather called as traitors. Sansa knelt on the cloack, asked mercy for her father.

The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than Ned dared imagine. He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt, the queen, Jaime Lannister, Pycelle, Varys, Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood, who had run when he was needed most. Cetelyn, with his brother Edmure, and Robb led battle against Lannister. They caught the Kingslayer, Jamie Lannister.

The bloodflies landed on bare skin of Drogo’s shoulder, crawled up under his dropping musthace and sttled on his cheek. Kahl reeled in the sadle, fell heavily from his horse. Talks went from mouth to ear, all over the khalasar. It’s said Drogo fell from his horse. Khal Drogo died. The Dorthaki were shouting, nothing was human inside the tent. Dany cried out for help, but no one heard. Someone threw a stone, when she looked her shoulder was torn and bloody. Fires burned throughout the khalasar.

Arya had been staying as far as from the castle as she could get. She also had heard about her father. There were many version of king’s death. All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King’s Landing was not as easy she had hoped. She had been sleeping on the rooftops and in the stables, wherever she could find place to lie down. She learned knocked down the birds with her stick sword, she traded half bird for a heel of yesterday’s bread. Once she outside the city, she would found berries to pick. An old man drew her from the crowd. She recognized him, he was Yoren.

Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys Targaryen. Robert was bethrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her. Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna died. 

Sansa wanted to go home and wouldn’t marry Joffrey, but Cersei commanded her son to marry her. She was treated like a prisoner, even worse every day, moreover they knew that Jaime was killed by Robb.    

Dany’s baby never lived. Her handmaid drew a monstrous creature. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with a stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of bat. He had been dead for years. Ser Jorah had killed her son. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. Drogo’s khalasar was gone. Dothraki only followed the strong. Viserys was dead, now ser Jorah Mormont called her Princess.

Jaime’s life traded for Eddard Stark and his two daughters. Robb traded three-for-one. Not only lose his father, he also lose Uncle Benjen. After winning the battle against the Lannisters, Catelyn Stark carried her infant son out of Riverrun, crossing the Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to Winterfell.

Renly had claimed his brother’s crown, he was crowned. The council urged Winterfell needed to wait they played their game of thrones. When they were done fighting, they would bent their knees to the victor, or opposed him, as they chose. Catelyn wanted peace, wanted the safety - Robb rulling at Winterfell from his father’s sea - a woman's thought. If they made a peace to Joffrey, they were a traitor to his uncle. King Renley was nothing to them, nor Stannis neither. The council agreed to rule their own. It was the dragon they married and the dragons were dead. All the men at the court knelt to Robb Stark, their own king, King of Winter. The King in the  North. The old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven Kingdoms.

******
March 28, 2017 






Sekapur Sirih

Fiksi fantasi setebal 834 halaman diterbitkan oleh Bantam Book New York, hak ciptanya dikeluarkan tahun 1996. Ini adalah edisi tahun 2016. Judulnya telah kerap dibaca dan didengar, tentu saja karya dipenuhi pujian. Setelah selesai membaca buku ini, cukup penasaran dengan versi adaptasi serialnya - disebut pula para pemainnya meraih penghargaan dan dinobatkan tontonan TV terbaik, saya pun menonton adaptasinya. Memang benar, serialnya  bagus,  namun rangkaian kata dan imajinasi dalam buku lebih dalam dan luas. Penulis George R.R. Martin berkebangsaan Amerika, tinggal di New Mexico, buku ini adalah buku pertama dari sekuel A song of Ice and Fire. Alasan kuat memiliki buku ini: setelah gaya tulisan kuat, plot jenius, dan penokohan kuat.

Pada halaman awal memang sempat bingung, banyaknya tokoh dan latar yang bermunculan. Nama-nama tokoh sering disebut, mereka memiliki keterkaitan kuat satu sama lain, membuat semakin lama karya ini semakin menarik dan mudah dinikmati. Paparan karya ini mampu membawa pembacanya pada imajinasi dan fantasi ke masa lalu, dimana seorang bangsawan atau kesatria memiliki srigala pelindung, kisah pengkhiantan, kesetiaan, pengabdian, perang, persahabatan, persaudaraan, kekeluargaan, cinta, nafsu, kepahlawanan, politik kerajaan, dan keberanian.

Kehadiran banyak karakter sangat pesat, sehingga kisah ini kurang tepat bagi pembaca pemula novel berbahasa Inggris, plus, masuk ke masa lalu kaya dengan istilah dan kata benda kerajaan. Namun bagi peminat genre kisah kerajaan kolosal, epik, atau pencinta kisah Lord of the Rings tentu saja akan melahap fiksi fantasi ini.


Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia; Game of Thrones, (Perebutan Tahta) karya George R.R Martin

Sekelompok kesatria baru saja menyeret para pengkhianat sumpah. Ned Stark sebagai tangan kanan kepercayaan Raja Robert, hari itu bergabung dengan Night’s Watch. Mereka menghukum para pelanggar sumpah, pengkhianat, dihukum mati, disaksikan putranya Robb, anak haramnya Jon Snow, dan Bran yang masih berusia tujuh tahun. Ia sengaja mengajak ketiga putranya menyaksikannya, memberi pelajaran menjadi kesatria.

Night’s Watch beranggotakan kesatria elit, terpilih, terlatih, kuat, penjaga keamanan perbatasan kerajaan dari serangan musuh. Mereka berseragam hitam, disumpah untuk mengabdi utuh pada pekerjaannya. Jon Snow kini berusia empat belas tahun, disuruh ayahnya bergabung dengan Night’s Watch, mengikuti pamannya seorang kesatria senior di Night’s Watch. Benjen Stark telah mengambil sumpah untuk tidak menikah dan baginya Jon sudah seperti anaknya.

Jon Snow
Terkadang Jon Snow tidak percaya diri dengan keberadaannya sebagai anak haram Lord Eddard Stark, tapi sisi lain, ia juga bersyukur menjadi putra kesatria hebat. Tidak memiliki kekuatan apapun baik di mata kerajaan. Ia merasa masih beruntung tidak dilahirkan sebagai anak petani, yang diperlakukan semena-mena, nyawa tidak berharga, bisa dibunuh kapan saja. Jon dibesarkan di lingkungan istana Winterfell bersama empat saudaranya yang lain. Tentu saja hal ini telah mengoyak perasaan Putri Catelyn Tully, istri Eddard. Suaminya berangkat berperang selama setahun bersama Robert Baratheon, pulangnya ia membawa bayi laki-laki, dalam waktu berdekatan pula Catelyn melahirkan putra pertama mereka Robb, pewaris tahta Winterfell, yang bersemboyan Winter is Coming (Musim Salju Tiba).

Rumor beredar di kalangan pembantu, ibu Jon adalah adik perempuan dari kesatria musuh yang dibunuhnya. Oleh prajurit disebut-sebut, ibu Jon sebagai gadis tinggi dan rupawan. Jon sama sekali tidak memiliki kemiripan dengan Robb, Sansa dan si bungsu Rickon, wajahnya lebih mirip kepada ayahnya dan adik perempuannya Arya. Bahkan Arya sempat bertanya apakah ia juga anak haram, sama seperti Jon. Ketiga saudaranya tidak mirip dengannya mereka semua mewarisi garis citra kecantikan Tully ibunya.

Terlebih lagi Sansa, sangat rupawan, hanya berusia dua tahun lebih tua dari Arya. Sansa lembut, pandai berpakaian, feminim, pandai menulis puisi, tangannya lihai dengan jarum, bahasa tubuhnya elegan, bertolak belakang dengan Arya yang lebih menyukai pedang. Pengasuh mereka Mordane mengakui Arya sangat berbeda degan Sansa. Ned dan Catelyn sudah sepakat Sansa akan menjadi permaisuri bagi Joffrey Baratheon, putra mahkota pewaris tahta Robert yang hampir seusia dengan Sansa. Gadis itu masih sangat belia, berusia sebelas tahun.

Kunjungan Raja Robert bersama keluarganya adalah hal jarang dilakukan Raja Tujuh Kerajaan (Seven Kingdoms). Lokasi Winterfell yang sangat jauh dari pusat kerajaan dan diselimuti salju di utara, baru kali ini jua raja akrab berteman dengan penguasa Winterfell dan berkenan mengunjunginya. Lima belas tahun sebelumnya, Ned dan Robert menaklukkan berbagai kerajaan termasuk kerajaan kuno Targaryen dan berhasil menyatukan tujuh kerajaan dan dua rumah keluarga terpandang.

Winterfell adalah keturunan Brandon the Builder, dikenal kesatria dan pemberani dan telah mengambil sumpah untuk setia pada Baratheon. Wilayah kekuasaan Winterfell berada di utara yang dingin, bisa melewati jalur laut untuk mencapainya dan mengikuti jalan kerajaan melalui darat. Kawasan ibukota kerajaan sendiri berada di tanah yang hijau dan subur. Istana kuno milik keluarga Targaryen yang merupakan keturunan naga.

Daenarys (Dany) dan kakaknya Viserys (Keturunan terakhir Targaryen, berdarah naga)
Putri Daenarys adalah keturunan terakhir Targaryen, keturunan naga. Raja Targaryen telah tewas dibunuh, permaisurinya memohon hidup, berhasil melarikan diri, dan meninggal ketika melahirkan Dany. Kakak satu-satunya Viserys membenci adiknya karena harus kehilangan ibu mereka ketika melahirkan Dany dalam pelarian. Ayah dan kakak tertua mereka telah tewas dibunuh Ned Stark dalam perebutan kekuasaan.

Robert dan Ned juga menyimpan kemarahan dan dendam pada keturunan Targaryen karena telah membunuh ayahnya dan adik perempuan Ned, bernama Lyanna. Raja Gila Aerys Targaryen telah bertindak sesuka hatinya, memenggal ayah Ned, dan membunuhnya dengan sadis. Robert susah melupakan Lyanna  kekasih dan calon istrinya yang sangat dicintainya. Adik perempuan Ned itu dibunuh oleh Pangeran Rhaeger Targaryen. Sejak itu pula hati Robert mendidih bersumpah menghabisi Targaryen.

Kabar pernikahan Daenarys sampai juga pada raja dan Ned. Dany menikahi Kahl Drogo, pria barbar yang terkenal kaya dengan 100.000 kesatria berkudanya. Setelah tiga belas tahun menjadi babu, nasib Dany berubah khaleesi (seorang putri). Viserys telah menjual adiknya Dany yang berusia empat belas tahun menikahi Kahl Drogo. Upaya untuk membalaskan dendamnya pada Robert dan Ned, demi merebut kembali istana ayahnya.

Bran Stark
Pada masa rangkaian kunjungan Raja Robert Baratheon, putra Ned, bernama Bran terjatuh dari menara. Catelyn sendiri sulit memercayainya. Anak berusia tujuh tahun itu terjatuh, padahal ia dikenal sangat lihai memanjat gedung. Catelyn Stark sempat berujar putranya Bran lebih dulu bisa memanjat ketimbang berjalan. Bran anak yang tampan, cerdas, dan mewarisi wajah Tully. Anak itu lebih menyukai cerita seram daripada dongeng dan kisah petualangan kesatria. Pengasuh tua Nan kerap mendongeng kisah kerajaan. Pengasuh yang sama juga mendongeng pada ayah, paman, dan kakak-kakaknya. Mungkin si tua Nan adalah orang paling tua di Winterfell bahkan seantero Seven Kingdoms. Sebelumnya Bran adalah anak yang cedas dan ceria namun, kini harus terbaring lemah di tempat tidur. Menurut si cebol Tryrion Lannister, adik ipar raja Robert, anak itu tidak ada potensi hidup, kalaupun tetap hidup pastilah Bran akan cacat seumur hidup.

Jon sangat sedih meninggalkan adiknya Bran dalam keadaan tidak sadar. Ia mengucapkan selamat tinggal pada adik yang tidak siuman. Arya, adik perempuannya juga sangat akrab dengannya, gadis itu ia hadiahi pedang kecil, Robb saudaranya memberi pelukan erat pada saudara haramnya. Kedua pria muda seumuran itu sangat akur dan akrab, membuat hati Putri Catelyn masam.

Ned dan kedua putrinya sudah tiba di pusat kerajaan. Lord Winterfell ingin menyelidiki kematian Jon Arryn, suami dari Lysa Tully. Putri Catelyn juga sangat terpukul dengan kematian suami adiknya. Lysa menduga suaminya dibunuh, menurut tabib Jon Arryn telah racun. Hanya berselang beberapa hari meninggalkan istananya, Bran diserang seorang lelaki, dan pisaunya tertinggal. Catelyn sempat melawan penjahat yang ingin membunuh Bran yang masih terbaring di tempat tidur. Srigala peliharaan Bran menyelamatkan nyawa Catelyn dan Bran. Leher penyerang berhasil dicabik sang srigala.

Catelyn tidak percaya dengan burung, ia sendiri dan pengawalnya ingin menyampaikan secara langsung pada suaminya akan upaya pembunuhan anak mereka. Sebelum memasuki kediaman suaminya di pusat kerajaan, seorang lelaki memaksa, menggiring Catelyn dan orang-orangnya ke sebuah tempat. Rupanya Littlefinger teman masa kecilnya sudah menunggu. Demi keamanan nyawanya, ia disembunyikan di rumah pelacuran. Mata-mata Cersei Lannister ada di mana-mana.

Petyr adalah putra pengawal elit ayah Catelyn di Riverrun. Puluhan tahun silam, lelaki itu kecewa atas pengumunan pernikahan Catelyn dengan Brandon Stark (kakak Ned). Petyr Baelish alias Littlefinger sangat menyukai Catelyn. Semula ia dijodohkan dengan Brandon, tetapi anak muda itu tewas dibunuh oleh Raja Gila Aerys Targaryen. Lord Rickard Stark, ayah Ned, juga turut dipenggal, dan yang paling menyedihkan kematian adik perempuannya. Pangeran Rhaegar Targaryen telah memerkosa Lyanna dan membunuhnya. Kekasih Robert dan calon istrinya. Dendam Raja Robert terhadap garis keturunan Targaryen tidak terbendung, ingin membunuh semua Targaryen.

Belati yang dibawa Catelyn sebagai bukti upaya pembunuhan putranya Bran dikenali Petyr sebagai pisau milik Tyron Lannister. Kenapa seorang kurcaci ingin membunuh Bran muda, apa salah anak seusia Bran, apa hubunganya dengan kematian Lord Arryn, pertanyaan-pertanyaan itu memenuhi pikiran Ned.

Arya dengan petualangannya mendengar percakapan akan rencana pembunuhan ayahnya. Ned telah mencium rencana busuk dari keluarga Lannister, ia menyuruh kedua putrinya kembali ke Winterfell demi keselamatan mereka. Sansa terang menolak permintaan ayahnya, sebaliknya Arya malah senang pulang. Gadis tomboi Arya sangat benci dengan kebohongan Joffrey yang memutarbalikkan fakta, membuat temannya Mycah, putra penjagal, tewas dibunuh Jaime Lannister.

Sansa sangat menikmati kehidupan kerajaan, kemewahan, pesta-pesta dengan gaun yang indah, batu-batu mulia dan indah. Setelah menjelaskan kejadian Bran pada suaminya, ibunya melanjutkan perjalanan mengunjungi adiknya Lisa Arryn yang tengah berduka.

Cersei mengajak Ned bicara, mengancam tangan kanan Raja Robert itu. Jamie dan dirinya tidak sekedar kembar, datang bersamaan dari rahim yang sama, hubungan mereka lebih dari itu. Mereka saling mencintai dan sulit dipisahkan. Tidak hanya Targaryen yang kawin inces, Cersei dan Jaime, si pembantai raja, ingin melestarikan kemurnian darah Lannister. Cersei sempat mengandung bayi Robert, tapi ia menggugurkannya tanpa sepengetahuan raja. Joffrey bukanlah darah Baratheon.  Permaisuri juga mengakui bahwa Bran melihat ia dan Jaime.

Robert Baratheon sangat gemar berburu di hutan. Seekor babi hutan bercula menyerangnya. Luka parah bagi pria setua dia, waktunya tidak lama lagi. Dia hanya ingin bicara dengan teman kepercayaanya, menyuruhnya menuliskan surat. Dalam wasiatnya, Ned diperintahkan memimpin kerajaan untuk sementara, sebelum Joffrey tepat usia dinobatkan jadi raja. Pesan raja sangat menyayat hati Ned, ketika diminta menjaga ketiga anaknya setelah kematiannya. Kondisi Robert yang sangat malang, membuat Ned tidak sanggup mengatakan Joffrey bukanlah putranya.

Berita kematian raja pun tersebar. Surat wasiat diabaikan, Ned dituduh telah bersekongkol dengan dua adik raja yakni Stannis dan Renly membunuh raja dan menolak pengangkatan Joffrey sebagai pewaris tahta. Ned sangat menentang, Joffrey manmade raja. Cersei sendiri yang mengakui bahwa Joffrey dan Tommen adalah putra Jaime Lannister. Ned dimasukkan dalam penjara atas tuduhan pengkhianatan. Cersei mengangkat dirinya sendiri jadi pemimpin sementara yang seharusnya hak dari Ned.

Cersei telah menyuruh gadis lugu yang sedang kasmaran dengan Raja Joffrey menuliskan surat pada kakeknya penguasa Tully, ibunya, kakaknya Robb, dan bibinya Lysa Arryn. Kabar kematian Raja pun menyebar hingga Night’s Watch. Jon sangat terpukul dengan pemberitaan tentang ayahnya dituduh berkonspirasi membunuh raja. Robb juga tidak percaya, ia bersama pasukannya meninggalkan Winterfell dan menyerahkan tahta pada Bran. Ia ingin membawa pulang ayahnya.

Arya dan pelatih tarinya tengah berlatih ketika prajurit ingin menangkap Arya. Master tari Syrio menyelamatkan Arya, menyuruh gadis muda itu melarikan diri. Syrio sempat melumpuhkan beberapa prajurit, sebelum ia dibunuh pasukan Lannister. Pejabat kerajaan banyak yang ditangkap dan dibunuh. Prajurit mendatangi Sansa pada hari ketiga, namun karen ia patuh pada perintah Cersei ia diberikan ruangan nyaman, walau kemana-mana sekarang ia harus dikawal.

Arya melarikan diri sejauh mungkin dari istana. Saban hari mengelilngi kota, ia mampu bertahan hidup tanpa mencuri, seperti ajaran ayahnya. Kepandaian memakai pedang berhasil mendapat burung. Awalnya ia memakan burung tangkapannya, kemudian ia menukarkan burung dengan roti sisa dari toko. Terkadang ia keluar kota, memetik buah cherri, apel, dan berri. Kabar tentang kematian raja ia dengar, dan paling menyakitkan tuduhan ayahnya seorang pengkhianat dan telah dibunuh. Ia sangat ingin pulang ke Winterfell, namun harapan yang tidak mudah. Seorang lelaki tua mendekati dan mengejarnya, gadis tomboi itu mengenalnya: seorang Yoren.

Catelyn mendengar kabar kematian suaminya dan tuduhan pengkhianatan ketika ia dan adiknya Lysa Arryn berada di istana ayah mereka di Rivevrrun. Tully tidak tinggal diam, mereka juga ingin menghabisi Lannister yang telah membunuh Arryn dan Ned. Jaime Lannister dibantu ayahnya Twyn Lannister memerangi Tully dan Winterfell. Robb dan pamannya Edmure Tully memenangkan peperangan. Lannister dibunuh untuk memberi keadilan pada Ned, Sansa dan Arya.

Catelyn sangat bangga dengan keberanian dan kehebatan Robb walau usia masih empat belas tahun. Wanita itu juga tersayat duka kehilangan suaminya dan dua putrinya kini masih ditahan oleh Cersei. Catelyn dengan membawa bayi Rickon akhirnya pulang ke Winterfell. Terjadilah perdebatan tentang apa yang harus dilakukan. Cersei sendiri tidak ingin perang. Pertumpahan darah tidak akan pernah membawa suaminya hidup kembali, ia ingin kedamaian. Menginginkan putranya Robb bisa memerintah dengan tenang. Dengan keras anggota council tidak senang dengan putusan wanita, mereka mempertimbangkan harga diri Winterfell.

Di tempat lain, Renly telah dinobatkan jadi raja. Kini ada dua raja dari Seven Kingdoms (Tujuh Kerajaan): Joffrey dan Renly Baratheon. Jika Winterfell mendukung Renly, maka semakin pastilah pengkhianatan Ned dari Winterfell semakin nyata. Jika mereka memihak Joffrey, maka Renley akan merasa dikhianati. Renly, Joffrey, apalagi Stannis  bukanlah siapa-siapa bagi Winterfell. Naga juga sudah lama mati, mereka dulu disatukan oleh naga. Mereka akhirnya sepakat kembali dipimpin oleh raja mereka sendiri. Kerajaan Winter (Musim Dingin), Kerajaan dari Utara. Tiga ratus tahun lamanya nama itu terkubur, sejak Aegon Targaryen yang menyatukan Seven Kingdoms.

*****

28 Maret 2017






Monday, March 13, 2017

All The Light We Cannot See (2014), Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Anthony Doerr: summary

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decide the history.” (page 84)

Anthony Doerr is an American novelist, the historical fiction is winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015. The book richly deserves to keep the title. The 530-page bestseller was printed by Fourth Estate London in 2015. The WWII set in France and Germany. A German boy who loves the Principles Mechanics's Hertz met a Parisian girl who loves Darwin’s theory.  A symmetrical tale, it's told from both sides - German and Frenchman. This fiction encourages young reader to study math and technical sciences. 

With short chapter and told in the third person perspective, the book is a touching, and moving about war story linked to children’s perspective, occupier, and victim, high rank officer, pure math, mechanical sciences, family, patriotism, biology, orphanage, blindness, hope, valor, trigonometry, thermodynamics law, radio, mollusk, snail, key, riffle, family, and love. 

Mr. Doerr creates a set of well-developed and unforgettable character. The word and sentence flow together and the author also provided detailed descriptions enough to make me feel I am right there watching the events. Definitely recommended for fans any genre who love beautifully constructed story, but don’t expect a fast-paced historical drama. The book is very well-written in lyrical words. First time to read a novel in present tense, it's a little bit weird to me, I have rather more enjoyable in the past tense. Despite of it, I really thoroughly enjoyed my time with this fiction.




All The Light We Cannot See (2014), Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Anthony Doerr: summary

Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (1934)

Marie-Laure LeBlanc was a tall and freckled six-year-old in Paris with rapidly deteriorating eyesight when her father sent her on a children’s tour of the museum where he worked. Later the doctors examined she suffered from congenital cataracts, bilateral, and irreparable. Marie-Laure would not see anything for the rest of her life. Her father, Monsieur LeBlanc, hadn’t had easy road. His father died in the war, his wife dead in childbirth, and his only little girl lived with blindness.

Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith for the National Museum of Natural History. All morning he stood at the front of the key pound and distributed keys to employees: zookeepers coming first, office staff arriving in a rush around eight, technician and librarians and scientific assistants trooping in next, scientists trickling in last. Everything was numbered and color-coded. Every employee from custodians to the director must carry his or her keys at all the times. No one was allowed to leave the keys on a desk. The museum possessed priceless jade from the thirteenth century, after all, and cavansite from India and rhodochrosite from Colorado.

For an hour each morning-even Sundays-he made her sit over a Braille workbook. In the afternoon he took her on his rounds. He led her down hallway into gallery after gallery. Some afternoons he left Marie-Laurie in the laboratory of Dr. Geffard, an aging mollusk expert whose beard smelly permanently of damp wool. On the back wall of Dr. Geffard’s lab cabinets that contained more drawers than she could count, he let her opened them one after another and held seashells in her hands- whelks, olives, imperial volutes from Thailand, spider conchs from Polynesia-the museum possessed more than thousand specimens, over known species in the world, and Marie-Laure got to handle most of them.

At home in the evening, her father stowed their shoes in the same cubby, hanged their coats on the same hooks. He served dinner on a round plate and described the locations of different foods by the hands of a clock. Potatoes at six o’clock, mushrooms at three.
Werner Pfennig grew up there three hundred miles northeast of Paris in a place called Zollaverin; a four-thousand-acre coal mining complex outside Essen, Germany. It’s steel country, anthracite country, a place full of hole.

Seven-year-old Werner and his younger sister, Jutta, were raised at Children’s House, a clinker-brick two-story orphanage on Vicktoriastrasse whose rooms were populated with the coughs of sick children and the crying of newborns and battered trunks inside which drowsed the last possessions of deceased parents: patchwork dresses, tarnished wedding cutlery, faded ambrotypes of fathers swallowed by the mines. There were no butter or meat. Fruit was a memory. The two snowy-haired children visited the mine complex where their father died. The coal mining was not far from the orphan house.

Frau Elena was a Protestant nun who was more fond of children than of supervision. She sang French folk songs in a screechy falsetto, harbors a weakness for sherry, and regularly fell asleep standing up. Some nights she let the children stay up late up while she told them stories in French about her girlhood cozied up against mountains, snow six feet deep on rooftops, town criers, and creeks smoking in the cold and frosted-dusted vineyards: a Christmas-Carol world.

Werner was eight years old and ferreting about the in the refuse behind the storage shed when he discovered what looked like a large spool of thread. It consisted of a wire-wrapped cylinder sandwiched between two discs of pinewoods. Three frayed electrical led sprouted from the top. One had a small earphone dangling from its end. When he found it, Jutta was six years old. Werner fixed it, later he and Jutta could listen music. The signal was weak enough that, though the earphone was six inches away, he couldn’t any trace of the song.

While the other children played hopscotch in the alley or swam in the canal, Werner sat alone in his upstairs dormer, experimenting with the radio receiver. Capacitor, inductor, turning coil, earpiece. Within a month he managed a broken earphone and a discarded doorbell soldered to a resistor, and made a loudspeaker. He redesigned the receiver entirely, adding new parts here and there and connecting it to a power source. Every evening he carried the radio and Frau Elena let her wards listened for an hour. They tuned in to newscasts, concerts, operas, national choirs, folk shows, a dozen children in a semicircle on the furniture, Frau Elena among them, hardly more substantial than a child herself.

As the weeks went by something new was rising. Mine production increased; unemployment dropped. Meat appeared at Sunday supper. Frau Elena bought a new couch, three new Bibles arrived from the consistory in Berlin; a laundry boiler was delivered to the back door. Werner got new trousers; Jutta got her new pair of shoes. Working telephones rang in the house of neighbors.

In the spring of Werner’s tenth year, the two oldest boys at Children’s House came back home from war- thirteen-year-old Hans Schilzer and fourteen-year-old Herribert Pomsel They were now members of the Hitler Youth. They chided younger children for admiring anything foreign: a British car, a French picture book. Their salutes were comical; their outfits verged on ridiculous. But Frau Elena watched the boys with wary eyes: not so long ago there were feral toddlers skulking in their cots and crying for their mothers. Now they had become adolescent thugs with split knuckles and postcards of the Fuhrer folded into their shirts pockets. Frau Elena spoke French less and less frequently whenever the two boys were present.

Forty two paces to the stairwell, forty two back. Marie-Laurie drew maps in her head. Botany smelled like glue and blotter paper and pressed flower. Paleontology smelled like rock dust, bone dust. Biology smelled formalin and old fruit; it was loaded with heavy cool jars in which floated things she had only had described for her: the pale coiled ropes of rattlesnakes, the served hands of gorillas. Entomology smelled like mothballs and oil: a preservative that, Dr. Geffard explained, was called naphthalene. Offices smelled of carbon paper, or cigar smoke, or brandy, or perfume. Or all four. In her imaginations, in her dreams, everything had colors. She had memories of her mother but imagined her as white, a soundless brilliance.

On night Werner and Jutta tuned in to a scratchy broadcast which a young man was talking in feathery, accented French about light. His voice was so ardent, so hypnotizing, that Werner found he understood every word. The Frenchman talked about optical illusions, electromagnetism; there was a pause and a peal static, as though a record was being flipped, and then he enthused about coal.

Rumors circulated through the Paris museum, moving fast, as quick and brightly colored as scarves. The museum was considering displaying a certain gemstone, a jewel more valuable than anything else in all the collection. The stone was from Japan, it’s very ancient, it belonged to a shogun in the eleventh century. A diamond, some people called it the Sheperd’s Stone, others call it the Kho-Ma, but soon enough everyone was calling it the Sea of Flames. The stone brought sorrow on anyone who carried it. Nine previous owners had committed suicide. Another rumors said the owner couldn’t die, but the people around him. Geffard explained to Marie-Laure how diamond or crystal grew. By adding microscopic layers, a few thousand atoms every month, each atop the next. Millenia after millenia.

Werner and Jutta found the Frenchman’s broadcasts again and again. They heard a program about sea creatures, another about North Pole. Jutta liked one on magnets, Werner’s favorite was about light: eclipses and sundials, auroras, and wavelengths. The Frenchman didn’t say where he was. Werner guessed he did broadcast from a huge mansion. He sounded rich. The voice and the piano again. All day Marie-Laurie lied on her stomach and read. Logic, reason, pure science. No fables and fairy tales. Her fingers walked the tightropes of sentences; in her imagination, she walked the decks of the speedy two-funneled frigate called the Abraham Lincoln.

A vice minister and his wife visited Children’s House. Everyone washed; everyone behaved. The children whispered, they were considering adopting. When the supper was ready, Werner sat at the boys‘ end of the table with a book in his lap. The children were nervous, Werner’s mind drifted; he was thinking about the book in his lap, the Principles of Mechanics by Heinrich Hertz. He discovered it in the church basement, water-stained and forgotten, decades old, and the rector let him brought it home, and Frau Elena let him keep it, and for several weeks Werner had been fighting through the thorny mathematics. Electricity, Werner was learning, could be static by itself.

One of the Hitler Youths, Herribert Pomsel, told him if it was a Jew book, but Werner defensed his favorite scientist was born in Hamburg. Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) was a German physicist who applied Maxwell’s theory to production and reception radio wave – and the unit of radio frequency wave - one cycle per second - is named the hertz, in honor of Heinrich Hertz. The vice minister pushed the book away, then glanced at his palms as though it had made them dirty. He declared to Jutta; the only place for Werner was going was into the mines. As soon as he turned fifteen. Same as every boy in the house.

The Germans were coming. The Germans, a gardener claimed, had sixty thousand troop glider; they could march for days without eating; they impregnated every school girl they met. A woman behind the ticket counter said Germans carried fog pills and wore rocket belts; their uniforms, were made of special cloth stronger than steel. They locked up the cripples and morons everywhere they went.

Hertz’s theory were interesting but he loved most was building things, working with hands, connecting his fingers to the engine of his mind. Werner repaired a neighbor’s sewing machine, the Children’s House grandfather clock. He built a pulley system to wind laundry from sunshine back indoors, and a simple alarm made from battery, a bell, wired so Frau Elena would know if a toddler had wandered outside.

Sometimes they paid him a few marks. Sometimes a coal mother cooked him sausages or wrapped biscuits in a napkin to take home to his sister. Even the poorest pit houses usually possessed a state-sponsored Volksempfanger VE301, a mass-produced radio stamped with an eagle and a swastika, incapable of shortwave, marked only for German frequencies. Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth.

Marie-Laure heard the voice of a boy said Germans would take blind girls before they took the gimps. The war dropped its question mark. Memo were distributed. The collection must be protected. Locks and keys were in greater demand than ever. Marie-Laure’s father worked until midnight, until one. There were fossils to be safeguarded, ancient manuscripts; there were pearls, gold nuggets, a sapphire as big as a mouse. There might be, thought Marie-Laure, the Sea of Flames.

All across Paris, people packed china into cellars, sewed pearls into hems, concealed gold rings inside book bindings. The whole city was dark. No streetlight, no light in windows. Marie-Laurie and her father left Paris. They headed to Saint-Malo.

A lance corporal with a pistol on his belt and a swastika band on his left arm stepped in from the rain. He looked for Werner as he said as the famous radio repairman. Herr Siedler wasn’t arresting him, he merely wanted him to fix his radio. The corporal told him about General Heissmeyer’s school, best school for smart boy like Werner. The school for mechanical science, code breaking, rocket propulsion. They wanted the working class, laborers. There was recruiting board in Essen, Herr Siedler gave his recommendation.

As soon as her father said his name, a woman opened the gate with warm welcoming. Madame Manec saw him as boy, she still recalled Marie-Laure’s father.
Everyone wanted to hear Werner’s stories; what were the exams like. Werner was to report to the National Political Institute of education at Schulpforta. 

The house was big, the great-uncle inherited the house from his father, who was her great-grandfather. He was a very successful man with plenty money. Mane had worked in the house since Uncle Etienne. He was in the war with Marie-Laurie’s grandfather. He wasn’t the same as he left. Etienne didn’t go outdoors. He was in his room on the fifth floor. Marie-Laure and her father occupied the sixth floor. Jutta worried her brother would become just like Hans and Herribet (Hitler’s Youth). If he stayed his life would end up in the mines. Jutta was barely twelve years old, still a child. Werner promised her to write letters every week. She reminded her about the broadcast from Paris called them devils who were committing atrocities.

After three days, she met his great-uncle. The pianos plinked along softly, it sounded as if a dozen were playing all at once, as if the sound came from every point of the compass. His voice was low and soft, a piece of silk you might keep in the drawer and pull out only on rare occasion, just to feel it between your fingers. He placed her hands on the big cabinet radio, then on a third no bigger than a toaster. He could hear Madrid, Brazil, London, and India once. He had the entire fifth floor-one big room, except for the landing –to himself. Her great-uncle seemed kind, curious, and entirely sane. 

Each boy was to carry a knife in a scabbard on the right side of the belt. They got parade uniform, field uniform, and gym uniform. There were four hundred of them, plus thirty instructors, and fifty more on the staff, cooks, groomsmen, and groundskeepers. Some cadets were as young as nine. The oldest were seventeen. Gothic faces, sharp noses, pointed chins. Blue eyes, all of them. Werner slept in a tiny dormitory with seven other fourteen-year-olds. The bunk above belonged to Frederick: a reedy boy, thin as a blade of grass, skin as pale as cream. Frederick was new too, he was from Berlin. His father was assistant to an ambassador.

On the second day, a withered phrenologist gave a presentation to the entire student body. On the projector white circles represented pure German blood, black circles indicated the proportion of foreign blood. He stated marriage between a pure German and one-quarter Jew was still permissible. The bunk master announced schedules of byzantine complication: studying mechanics, stating history, learning racial science, studying military history, orienteering, running with carrying the riffle above head, crawling, swimming, and then more running.

A sergeant major named Reinhold von Rumpel was forty-one years-old, not so old that he couldn’t be promoted, now his post in Vienna. He had a wife with who suffered his absences without complaint in Stuttgart. He also had two daughters whom he hadn’t seen in nine months. The eldest was deeply earnest. Her letter to him included phrases. Von Rumpel’s particular gift was for diamonds: he could facet and polish stones as well as any Aryans jeweler in Europe, and he often spotted fakes at a glance.

He studied crystallography in Munich. Before the war, the life of Reinhold von Rumpel was pleasant enough: he was a gemologist (the science dealing with natural and artificial gemstone materials) who ran an appraisal business out of a second-story shop. If occasionally he cheated a customer, he told himself that was part of the game. He found the story of a prince who could not be killed, a priest who warned of a goddess’s warth, a French prelate who believed he’d bought the same stone centuries later. Sea of Flames, grayish blue with a red hue at its center; recorded at one hundred and thirty-three carats.

A diminutive instructor of technical sciences named Dr. Hauptmann. Werner felt Dr. Hauptmann’s attention on him like a floodlight. Soon Werner was summoned to the office of the technical sciences professor. There he found Frank Volkheimer, an upperclassman, seventeen years old, a colossal boy from boreal village, a legend among the younger cadets. There were a rumor he crushed a communist’s windpipe with his hands. Dr. Hauptmann asked Werner to do trigonometry and he passed the exam. Since he was only an orphan, he would work in the laboratory after dinner every night. Volkheimer was assigned to keep an eye out of him.

As a boy, his brother Henri, Marie-Laure’s grandfather was good at everything, but his voice was what people commented on most. Henri and Etienne made recording and sold them. Etienne wrote ten different scripts about science. Then there was the war, the two brothers were signal men. Henri died. Etienne built the radio transmitter after the war. It could transmit to England.
 
His name was Claude Levitte but everyone called him Big Claude. For a decade he had run a parfumerie on the rue Vauborel: a strangling business that prospered only when cod were being salted and the stones of the town itself began to stink. New opportunities had arrived, Big Claude wasn’t one to miss the opportunity. He was paying farmers to butcher lambs and rabbits; Claude and his wife’s matching vinyl suitcases and carried them himself by train to Paris. He was nearly asleep when he saw the Parisians who had been living three doors down exit the house of Etienne LeBlanc. He went to the window, this could be an opportunity.

Rumpel visited the museum and took the blue stone as a big as pigeon’s egg. Volkheimer, like Hauptmann, seemed full of contradictions. To the other boys, the Giant was a brute, an instrument of pure strength, yet sometimes, when Hauptmann was away to Berlin, Volkheimer would disappear into the doctor’s office with a tube radio filled the lab with classical music. Mozart, Bach, even Italian Vivaldi. The more sentimental, the better.

The stone the museum had asked him to protect was not real. He found himself entertaining the brainless notion that stone he carried in the linen sachet in his pocket has brought him misfortune, had put Marie-Laurie in danger, may indeed had participated the whole invasion in France. Tried folding between pieces of felt and striking it with a hammer--it didn’t scatter. Tried holding it to candle flame, drowning it, boiling it. M. Daniel LeBlanc left his daughter and Uncle Etienne for Paris, he promised to her it was only ten days. He never spent a night a part from his daughter. The stone was in his pocket.

Every afternoon, no matter the weather, the commandant blew his whistle, he said that there are two kinds of death. You can fight like a lion. Or you can go as easy as lifting a hair from a cup of milk. The nothings, the bodies-they die easy.

They seized Daniel LeBlanc outside of Vitre, hours from Paris. First interrogators were French and hour later they became German. They seemed accusing him of plotting to destroy the Chateau de Saint-Malo, though why they might believe this was not clear. On fourth day, all the prisoners were piled onto a cattle truck and driven east.

For two weeks Frederick has limped around the bruised and slow footed and puffy, and not once had he spoken to Werner with anything more than his gentle brand of distracted kindness. Not once he accused Werner of betrayal, even though Werner did nothing while Frederick was beaten. He wrote his mother told about Werner and his mother paid his ticket. They disembarked at a dim charcoal colored station in Berlin. The largest city Werner had ever seen. Capital of science, seat of the fuhrer, nursery to Bohr, Einstein, Staudinger, Bayer. Somewhere in the streets, plastic was invented, X-rays were discovered, continental drift was identified. Frederick’s mother set table in a fancy restaurant. Werner enjoyed his time in Berlin.
A prisoner escaped from a work camp. He looked Polish or Russian. The prisoner’s ankles were cuffed and his arms bound wrists to forearms. Since the visit to Berlin, a great dread had been blooming inside Werner’s chest. It came gradually, as slow-moving as the sun passage across the sky, but now he found himself writing letters to Jutta in which he must skirt the truth, must contend that everything was fine when things didn’t feel fine. Every cadet accepted his bucket and threw a sheet of water and didn’t linger to watch it landed. The water kept coming. When his turn arrived, Werner threw the water like all the others. It’s Frederick’s turn, he poured the water onto the ground. For a week the dead prisoner remained strapped to the stake in the courtyard, his flesh frozen gray. Three times in nine days, Frederick was chosen as the weakest in field exercise.

The museum replied to Etienne’s appeals; they reported Marie-Laurie’s father never arrived. Marie-Laure’s father had been missing without word for twenty nine days. In three months, Sergeant Major von Rumpel had traveled to Berlin and Stuttgart; he had assessed the value of a hundred confiscated rings, dozen diamond bracelets, a Latvian cigarette case; now back in Paris, he had slept at the Grand Hotel. He believed he held the one-hundred-and- thirty three-carat Sea of Flames.

In technical sciences, Dr. Hauptmann introduced the law of thermodynamics. The cadets studied entropy, the degree of randomness of disorder in a system. Life was in chaos, there must be order. German would represent an ordering to the chaos – even down to the genes- an ordering the evolution of the species. Winnowing out the inferior, the unruly, and the chaff. The great project of the Reich, the great project of human being had ever embarked upon. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. Every process must be by law decay.

A group of boys took Frederick out and set up torches in the snow and told him to shoot the torches with his riffle—to prove he had adequate eyesight. Twenty boys closed over Frederick’s body like a rats. His bed with blood in it. They took him to Leipzig for surgery. Werner was fifteen, when a new boy slept in Frederick’s bed.

Volksheimer was gone; there were stories that he had become a fearsome sergeant in the Wehrmacht. He led a platoon into the last town the road to Moscow. It seemed to Werner all the boys around him were intoxicated. They studied Werner with suspicion when he returned from Hauptmann’s lab. They didn’t trust him as an orphan, he was often alone, his accent carried a whisper of French he learned as a child.

Jutta sent him a letter, she now worked at the laundry. Madam Manec warned Etienne about the maps, tides, and radios. A woman in Rennes was given nine month in prison for naming one of her hogs, Goebbels, a palm reader in Cancale was shot for predicting the Gaulle would return in the spring. It’s already too dangerous, people had eyes, the perfumer.

For Werner, doubts turned regularly. Racial purity, political purity. Dr. Hauptmann was moved to Berlin. Werner was summoned by a young cadet to the commandant’s office. The commandant urged disciplinary action, but Dr. Hauptmann recommended Werner would be eager to offer his skills to the Reich. The former technical sciences professor, Dr. Hauptmann had called their attention to the discrepancy. He had arranged Werner would be sent to special technology division of the Wehrmacht. Werner was still seventeen but they were changing his age into eighteen. He left Schulpforta, sent him to the front.

The museum has written to wardens and prison directors all over Germany. Marie-Laure’s father was believed in Breitenau, Germany. Their French was good, very Parisian. They looked after for the museum’s keys. They searched every room and they asked about three French flags rolled up in a second-floor closet. They found nothing. Madame Manec got sick. Etienne summoned a doctor who prescribed rest, aspirin, and aromatic violet comfits. For the first time since fever, Madame Manec wasn’t in the kitchen when Marie-Laure woke. Over the next hour the kitchen filled with the women including Madame Ruelle, the woman from the bakery. Madame Manec was dead.

Boots in the hall. The footfalls traveled toward Madame Manec’s room. She had her cane, Etienne’s coat, the two cans, the knife, and the brick. Model house in her pocket and the stone inside that. If the German opened his grandfather’s wardrobe again and yanked aside the hanging clothes, Marie-Laurie didn’t know what to do. 

Von Rumpel’s doctor said the anti-tumor properties of any number of chemicals were being explored. Lymphoid tumors had been reduced in size, but the injection made Von Rumpel dizzy and weak. In the days following, he could hardly manage to comb his hair or convince his fingers to button his coat. The librarian had sent him copies of anything concerning the Sea of Flames.

Werner spent the last of his money on the train fare. He visited Frederick in Berlin. Frederick’s mother has warned him, her son wouldn’t recognized Werner. He lost his memories. Frederick thought Werner was his mama. Soon Werner joined Volkheimer in the front. He was an expert in electromagnetic wave. He scanned frequencies by feel. No squelch, no snap of Morse code, no voices.

In the days following the death Madame Manec, the neighbors cook enough potato soup to a last week. After four days, Etienne asked everyone to please leave. As soon as the kitchen door had closed, he turned the dead bolts and took Marie-Laurie’s hand. All the lights were off now.

The engineer was a taciturn, pungent man, named Walter Bernd whose pupil were misaligned. Partisans hit the trains. They’re organized, and the captain believed they were coordinating their attacks with radios. The last technician didn’t find anything. Werner did it.

Storms rinsed the sky, the beaches, the streets, and a red sun dipped into the sea, setting all the west-facing granite in Saint-Malo on fire, and three limousines, and a dozen or so Germans officer, accompanied by men carrying stage light and movie cameras. 

From his fifth-floor window, Etienne watched them through a brass telescope, nearly twenty in all: captains, majors, and even a lieutenant colonel holding his coat at the collar and gesturing at forts on the outer islands. Etienne lightened a candle and climbed to the sixth floor. He had already given up trying to crack the code: he has written out the numbers, gridded them, added, multiplied, nothing has come of it. He broadcasted again, the songs played on.

Werner found a second illegal transmission coming from an orchard on which a shell has fallen, cracking most of half the trees in half. Two weeks later, he found a third, then a fourth. Creaking ice, villages burning in forests. Nights where it became too cold too snow-that winter presented a strange and haunted season during which Werner prowled the static like he used to prowl the alleys with Jutta, pulling her in the wagon through the colonies of Zollverein.

That was cleaner, more mechanical, a war waged through the air, invisibly, and the front lines were everywhere. Mail didn’t reach them. Months passed and he didn’t write to his sister. Werner had not written Jutta almost a year. Still he managed to find the illegal transmission, one every two weeks or so. He salvaged the inferior Soviet equipment, milled from marginal steel, clumsily soldered; it was all so unsystematic. Werner thought they were all insurgents, all partisans, every single person they saw. Anyone who was not a German wanted Germans dead, even the most sycophantic of them.

What he felt on the worst days of that relentless winter-while rust colonized the truck and riffles and radios, while German divisions retreated all around them. The smoking, ruined villages, the broken pieces of brick in the street, the frozen corpses, the shattered walls, the upturned cars, the barking dogs, the scurrying rats and lice.
The total entropy any system will decrease only if the entropy of another system will increase. Nature demands symmetry.

Werner shivered in the back of the truck. His blood sloshed back and forth inside him like mercury. He felt he was gazing down into the circuitry of enormous radio.
In French village far to the south of Saint-Malo, a German truck crossing a bridge was blown up. Six German soldiers died. Terrorists were blamed. The occupation authorities were blaming the attack on an elaborate network of anti-occupation radio broadcast.

The war that killed Marie-Laure’s grandfather killed sixteen million others. One and half million French boys alone, most of them younger than Etienne was. Two million on German side. March the dead in a single-file line, and for eleven days and eleven nights, they’d walk past the door.

On her sixteenth, for all of Marie-Laure’s four years in Saint-Malo, the bells at church had marked the hours. But now the bells had ceased. She didn’t know how long she had been trapped in the attic or even if it was day or night. The Germans in their underground forts.

Werner was listening to the repaired transceiver, feathering the tuning knob back and forth, when a girl’s voice and the music. The encoded numbered were followed by announcements, births, and baptisms and engagements, and deaths.

Von Rumpel had a call from Paris. They found information about Daniel LeBlanc. He was accused conspiracy. They found drawings and skeleton keys, they also gave him the name of informer, Claude.   

The last days of May 1944 in Saint-Malo felt to Marie-Laure like the last days of May 1940 in Paris: huge and swollen and redolent. They searched day and night. A high house on the edge of the sea. A spectacularly good location from which to broadcast. From street level, the antenna was all but invisible. The house was tall and narrow. Claude Levitte, the perfumer, squinted, calculating. He just made a deal with Von Rumpel and pointed Etienne’s house.

Marie-Laure got caught by the Germans while she collected snails on the beach. It should take her twenty-one, Etienne had counted many times. It had been thirty minutes. She could be lost. Etienne made it to the bakery in an icy sweat and cut to the front of the queue. Sometimes she visited sea, before coming home. Her great uncle found her in the grotto, shivering, wet to her thighs wholly intact, crouched Marie-Laure with the ruins of a loaf of the bread in her lap. 

Werner thought of her, whether he wished or not. Girl with the cane, the granddaughter or daughter of the broadcasting Frenchman. Etienne felt strangely good as he stepped outside; he felt strong. He was glad Madame Ruelle has assigned him final task. He had already transmitted the location of one air-defense battery. He needed only to take the bearings of two more. She was reading again on the broadcast. Werner listened. She kept saying, “help me, she begged her father, her great-uncle, he was here, he would kill me.”

Etienne begged his jailers, the guardian of the fort. His great-niece was blind, alone. He told them he was sixty-three, not sixty as they claimed. Then the stray American shell struck the fort, and Etienne stooped talking. Marie-Laure had read seven of the last nine chapters into the microphone. Downstairs the German has shouted twice in frustration, then fallen silent.

The sixth floor, the stairs appeared to the end. He rifled up, he expected the flash of gun barrels. In front of him tottered a German officer in field dress. The five bars and three diamonds of a sergeant major. Von Rumpel aimed his pistol at Werner’s chest. Marie-Laure slid open the wardrobe and Werner took her hands and helped her out. He examined his trousers, his dusty coat. The uniform made him in accomplice in everything the girl hated. He crossed to the bed and didn’t look at von Rumpel’s body in her bed.

Werner told her about the broadcast that he heard when he was a boy. Marie-Laure explained that was her grandfather’s voice. She showed him the transmitter in the attic. Even a phonograph record that contained her grandfather’s voice, lessons in science for children, and the books.

Over his uniform he pulled on some of Etienne’s tweed trousers, along with a shirt whose sleeves were too long. If they run into Germans, he would speak only French, said he was helping her leave the city. If they run into American, he would say he was deserting. There must be a collection point, somewhere they were gathering refugees. He found a white pillowcase and fold it into her coat. Werner convinced her they wouldn’t shoot the girl whit white flag. After giving her direction, he went in the other direction and that’s the last time he saw her. He didn’t looked away until she was out of his sight. When he opened his hand, there was a little iron key in his palm.

Madame Ruelle, the bakery owner, found Marie-Laure that evening in a requisitioned school. In the morning, the Americans took the chateau and the last anti-air battery and freed the prisoners held at Fort National. Madame Ruelle pulled Etienne out of the processing queue, and he wrapped Marie-Laure in his arms. Madame Ruelle was allowed back into the city to check on the condition of the bakery but Etienne and Marie-Laure traveled in the other direction, toward Rennes. They would head to Paris.

Werner was captured a mile south of Saint-Malo by three French resistance fighters in streetclothes roving the streets in a lorry. First they believed they rescued a little white-haired old man, then they heard his accent. A day after his arrest, he was marched east in a group of twenty to join larger group. Twice medics tried giving him bowls of gruel, but it wouldn’t stay down. His fever was returning; the sludge they drank in the cellar had poisoned him. American watched a boy left the sick tent and moved against the background of the tree. He has warned to stop but Werner had crossed the edge of the field, where he stepped on a trigger land mine set there by his own army three months before, and disappeared in a fountain of earth.  

In January 1945, Frau Elena, and the last girls living at Children’s House including Jutta Pfening were transported from Essen to Berlin to work in a machine parts factory. At least half of the girls working in the factory couldn’t read or write, so Jutta read them letters that came from boyfriends or brothers or fathers at the front. All spring the bombers came, every single night, their only goal seemingly to burn the city to its root. In the fall, at Zollverin, she received two letters announcing his brother’s death. Each mentioned a different place of burial.

In 1974 Frank Volkheimer was fifty-one years old. The war has haunted his brain. He was just a boy. They all were. The eyes of men who were about to die haunted him, he killed them all over again.

Jutta Wette thought sixth-form algebra in Essen: integers, probability, parabolas. Her husband, Albert, was a kind, slow-moving, and balding accountant. Their son, Max, was six, fond of mud, dogs, and questions no one answer. Volkheimer delivered Werner’s duffel bag by himself to Werner’s sister. For something so old, the zipper on the duffel opened smoothly. Inside was a thick envelope, a package covered in newspaper, the notebook, a model house, an old sealed envelope for Frederick, the bunkmate. He also told about Werner’s girl. Jutta visited LeBlanc house in Saint-Malo and brought the locked model house with her to trace Marie-Laurie. A neighbor gave her LeBlanc’s address in Paris.

Marie-Laure managed a small laboratory at the museum of Natural History in Paris and has contributed in significant ways to study and literature of mollusks. She has named two new subspecies. As a doctoral student, she traveled to three continents for harvesting snails.

Despite hiring an investigator, spending thousands of francs, and poring through reams German documentation, Marie and Etienne were never able to determine what exactly happened to her father. They confirmed he had been a prisoner at a labor camp called Breitenau in 1942. There was also a record made by a camp doctor at a subcamp in Kassel, Germany, that a Daniel LeBlanc contracted influenza in 1943. Jutta visited her and they shared the war story. Marie-Laure shared her story - a day with Werner- the smaller hand - the broadcast. She shook the model house, the iron key dropped into her palms.

Frederick lived with his mother outside west Berlin. He got a letter from a woman in Essen. The doctors claimed Frederick retains no memories. Marie-Laure lived to see the century turn and spent beautiful morning with her grandson in early March 2014.


******
March 13, 2017




Sekapur Sirih

Dua dunia remaja diangkat sejak usia enam tahun. Satu sisi, remaja seperti Werner warga Jerman dibesarkan di sebuah panti asuhan di daerah Essen. Walau kehidupan  terbatas, tidak membekukan ketertarikan dan keahlian bidang mekanika, ilmu fisika dan matematika. Kelihaian memperbaiki radio dan alat elektronik di desanya mengenalkan pada pejabat Hitler yang membawanya bertemu dengan profesor sains tentu dengan tes ketat. Sementara kehidupan Marie–Laure, gadis kecil dari kota Paris yang menjadi korban Hitler harus pindah ke kota kecil ke rumah paman ayahnya dan menjalani hidup ketakutan, dan bersembunyi dari pengejaran Jerman. Paman ayahnya adalah keluarga kaya sehinga mereka masih bisa tidur nyenyak dan makan enak dilayani seorang pelayan. Gadis buta dan cantik itu sangat tertarik pada teori Darwin.

Novel bestseller ini dicetak pada tahun 2015 oleh Fourth Estate London, sementara cetakan originalnya tahun 2014. Fiksi ini adalah pemenang Pulitzer tahun 2015. Penulis berkebangsaan Amerika. Disampaikan dengan perlahan dalam rangkaian bahasa indah. Tokoh Marie-Laure meminati ilmu alam termasuk teori Darwin, sempat menyinggung Borneo (Kalimantan). Fiksi brilian ini memacu semangat generasi muda untuk belajar ilmu alam dan matematika, fisika, dan sains. Dibuktikan pada fiksi ini, peranan penting ilmu fisika, matematika murni, dan gelombang elektromagnetik bagi kehidupan, terlebih lagi  ketika itu masa perang. Orang yang memiliki keahlian sains mendapat perhatian lebih.


Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: Cahaya yang Tidak Dapat Kita Lihat (2014) karya Anthony Doerr

Gadis kecil cantik berusia enam tahun, baru saja meninggalkan ruang dokter. Ia akan kehilangan penglihatan selamanya. Seperti tetangganya bilang, LeBlanc seperti mendapat kutukan. Ayahnya sendiri tewas dalam perang, istrinya meninggal saat melahirkan, dan kini gadis kecilnya Marie-Laure hidup dalam kebutaan. Daniel LeBlanc bekerja pada museum sejarah di kota Paris sebagai kepala kunci. Setiap pagi ia membagikan kunci-kunci pada para karyawan. Pengamanan kunci sangat ketat dan tertib. Banyak benda-benda berharga disimpan di museum termasuk lukisan maestro Rembrandt, batu-batu berharga termasuk rumor legenda berlian yang tersohor dan besar bernama Sea of Flames.

Werner berumur tujuh tahun ketika ia dan adiknya Jutta terpaksa dikirim ke sebuah panti asuhan di Zollaverein. Ayahnya meninggal saat kecelakaan kerja di tambang batu bara yang tidak jauh dari panti asuhan di mana mereka tinggal. Essen adalah daerah yang dipadati industri. Panti asuhan yang dipadati bayi hingga berusia belasan tahun dengan makanan yang terbatas. Saat berusia delapan tahun Werner Pfening menemukan kumparan alat elektronik seperti dan dengan buku Prinsip-prinsip Mekanika karya Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, fisikawan Jerman (berdarah Jahudi) yang mengaplikasikan teori gelombang elektromagnetik Maxwell pada produk masal radio, dan satuan gelombang pun diabadikan dari namanya yakni Hertz.

Berbulan-bulan kumparan tadi ditambah dan dirangkai oleh tangan kreatif Werner menjadi radio. Pengasuh panti Nona Elena juga menikmati berita dan alunan musik dari radio itu. Werner dan utta sama menikamati kisah anak, ilmu alam dan sains, musik dan piano yang diperdengarkan. Di dalam panti Nona Elena mengajari mereka lagu-lagu Perancis dan bahasanya. Keduanya sangat tertarik dengan siaran seorang lelaki tua yang menyiarkan berita tentang ilmu matematika, fisika, mekanika dan memainkan piano. Walau berbahasa Perancis tetapi keduanya mampu mengerti yang disampaikan oleh pria Perancis itu. Jutta menduga lelaki itu pastilah orang kaya, yang tinggal di rumah besar, memiliki piano besar. Suara lelaki itu bagus dan frekuensinya statis.

Tidak lama Werner menjadi terkenal sebagai tukang perbaiki radio dan elektronika. Ada yang membawa radio rusak, bel rusak, perabotan elektronik rusak, Werner diberi sedikit uang dan bahkan diupah dengan makanan. Seorang pejabat Nazi memperbaiki radionya pada Werner, lelaki kecil itu pun mendapat makanan dan uang banyak. Herr Siedler merekomendasikan Werner mendaftar di sekolah teknik. Setelah melewati tes trigonometri, ia pun diterima.

Dr. Hauptmann seorang profesor yang memberikan pelajaran teknik sains, pria bertubuh kecil itu memberi pandangan tajam pada Werner. Apalagi setelah mendapati Werner hanyalah anak yatim piatu, meminta anak itu bekerja setiap malam sehabis makan di laboratorium yang diawasi seorang senior bernama Frank Volkeimer.

Bukan rumor lagi, tentara Jerman pun tiba di kota Paris. Penduduk kota itu banyak yang lari, termasuk Marie-Laure dan ayahnya. Menuju kota Saint-Malo, kota ynag terleatak menghadap pantai. Di sana mereka mendatangi rumah paman ayahnya dan rumah warisan kakek buyut Marie-Laure. Rumah yang sangat besar berlantai enam. Paman Etienne adalah paman dari Daniel LeBlanc. Ayah Daniel telah meninggal dalam perang, kini rumah kakeknya ditinggali saudara ayahnya Etienne. Henri dan Etienne adalah bersaudara yang meminati sains dan musik.

Suara Hendri, kakek Marie-Laure sangat bagus, sehingga kedua bersaudara itu merekam dan menjualnya. Tetapi perang mengubah paman Etienne, ia sangat terpukul dengan kematian saudaranya Henri. Ia lebih banyak di lantai enam dan dilayani pelayan bernama Ibu Manec, wanita yang sudah mengasuhnya sejak kecil. Setelah tiga hari tinggal di rumah itu, akhirnya ia ketemu dengan Paman Etienne. Keduanya pun berteman. Ayah Marie-Laure pergi menuju Paris tetapi semanjak itu tiada kabar darinya. Ia telah diinterogasi oleh Jerman, dituduh konspirasi. Ia dikirim dan penjarakan di Jerman.

Sain-Malo pun dibanjiri tentara Jerman, dan mengumpulkan semua radio. Seorang pejabat Jerman bertugas di Vienna bernama von Rumple sangat ahli dalam benda-benda berharga. Sebelum perang ia pernah belajar benda-benda berharga termasuk batu mulia. Ia dengan mudah mampu menafsir keaslian permata dan berlian. Ia pun mendengar rumor tentang berlian Sea of Flames yang melegenda itu. Petugas museum Paris sempat mengelak akan batu itu, dan ia diberi berlian yang diyakininya asli.

Werner pun menjalani masa studi kemiliteran, matematika dan teknik sains. Ia mendapat teman. Frederick tidur tepat di atas dipannya. Lelaki itu adalah putra asisten duta besar. Ia anak Berlin, tidak banyak bicara, dan termasuk kader lemah. Werner mengenangnya sebagai anak yang baik, ketika libur tiba, ia pun mengajak Werner ke rumahnya. Sebuah apartemen besar dengan lift-nya di kota Berlin. Werner sangat menyukai kota Berlin. Kota yang melahirkan banyak penemu,  sudut-sudut jalan tempat dilahirkan temuan plastik dan X-ray. Werner sangat menyukai ibu Frederick yang ramah dan baik. Ia menyaksikan kasih sayang keluarga selama di Berlin. Ibu Frederick mengajaknya makan malam ke tempat mewah.

Kader dikejutkan dengan suara, seorang tahanan yang lari dari kamp. Wajahnya seperti Polandia atau Rusia, tubuh berbalut baju lusuh diikatkan pada tiang dipertontonkan di tengah lapangan bersalju. Setiap anak menambah kedingannya, dengan melemparkan seember air ke tubuhnya. Ketika giliran Frederick tiba, remaja itu menokak, dan menjatuhkan airnya di tanah. Suatu malam Frederick tidak berada pada dipannya. Ia telah tersungkur penuh darah. Dua puluh anak telah menyiksanya dan dia dibawa ke rumah sakit untuk operasi. Tempat tidurnya telah ditempati kader baru.

Walau umur sebenarnya masih tujuh belas, umurnya sengaja ditambahkan agar dapat dikirim ke garda terdepan, daerah paling berbahaya, sebagai pelacak transmisi. Ia pun akhirnya tergabung dengan ilmuwan dan teknisi lain, termasuk seniornya Volkheimer. Keahlian Werner tidak diragukan lagi, berhasil melacak gelombang radio musuh. Orang seperti Werner sangat dibutuhkan, terlebih banyaknya tentara Jerman yang terbunuh. Dan diduga oleh pemberontak lokal yang dikordinir jaringan gelombang radio. Dengan mengendarai truk Opel, regu Werner menyusuri berbagai daerah dari Rusia, Polandia hingga Perancis. Mereka membunuh siapa saja yang bukan Jerman, yang mereka anggap sebagai musuh. Werner telah terbiasa melintasi mayat-mayat lelaki perempuan, rumah, jembatan terbakar.

Sebuah gelombang radio statis mengudara dengan suara gadis muda merdu dalam bahasa Perancis, terkadang memutarkan musik klasik Mozart, terkadang juga membacakan cerita dari novel. Tetapi Werner juga mencium ada kode sandi yang disisipkan dalam pemberitaan. Gadis itu selalu meminta pertolongan: ayahku hilang, pamanku dipenjara, tolong selamatkan aku, mereka akan membunuhku, mereka ada di sini.

Ia jatuh cinta dengan pemilik suara itu, selalu ingin mendengar suaranya. Ia mampu mengerti bahasa Perancis. Pemuda itu ingin menyelamatkan gadisnya. Setelah berbulan-bulan akhirnya mereka menuju Saint-Malo. Rupanya von Rumpel juga telah di sana untuk mencari berlian, ia telah mengetahui apa yang dipegangnya bukanlah Sea of Flame. Salah satu tetangga Etienne, seorang penjual parfum bernama Claude telah melaporkan operasi Etienne dan menunjukkan rumah di mana LeBlanc tinggal.

Dua misi dengan dua tujuan bertolak belakang: Sersan Mayor Rumpel ingin mendapatkan batu dan ingin membunuh Marie-Laure, Werner ingin menemui gadis pujaannya, Marie-Laure, hendak menyelamatkan gadis itu. Rumpel ingin membunuh Werner, tetapi sersan mayor itu terbunuh duluan. Marie-Laure pun selamat dibawa keluar dari rumah itu oleh Werner. Tidak berselang lama, tentara Amerika telah menguasi kota itu, Paman Etienne dibebaskan dan kembali bersama keponakannya. Mereka menuju Paris.

Werner dan regunya tertangkap dan menjadi tawanan perang, tetapi dia sakit keras, keracunan makanan. Ia melarikan diri dari tenda medis, dan menginjak ranjau yang dipasang oleh Jerman beberapa bulan sebelumnya. Werner pun tewas dalam ledakan. Jutta mendapat surat tentang kematian saudaranya. Dua surat berbeda dan tempat penguburan berbeda.

Dalam usianya yang ke lima puluh Volkheimer selalu dihantui kesadisan perang, ia sering didatangi oleh wajah-wajah yang dibunuhnya. Ia kembali mengingat kawannya Werner. Hatinya tergerak mencari saudari Werner ke kota Essen, membagi kisahnya  serta menyerahkan ransel milik Werner yang sudah menahun berdiam di apartemennya.

Jutta telah menikah dengan seorang akuntan, dan memiliki seorang anak lelaki. Ia sendiri mengajar ilmu pasti di sebuah sekolah. Dalam tas itu, Jutta mendapati sebendel surat, buku harian, dan model rumah kecil. Ia mengunjungi rumah keluarga LeBlanc di Saint-Malo, beruntungnya seorang tetangga memberinya alamat keluarga LeBlanc di Paris.

Dr. Marie-Laure LeBlanc mengepalai sebuah laboratorium kecil pada Musem Sejarah Nasional di Paris, ia menjadi salah satu ilmuwan yang berkontribusi signifikan dalam penelitian moluska. Tidak jarang ia terbang ke tiga benua untuk penelitiannya. Ia memberi dua nama spesis baru. Ia dan pamannya telah menyewa investigator dan menghabiskan banyak uang mencari keberadaan ayahnya, tetapi tidak ada berita pasti tentang ayahnya. 

Jutta mengunjungi Marie-Laure, kedua wanita itu bertukar cerita tentang Werner dan perang. Rumah mini memodelkan rumah Etienne diberikan padanya, tempat batu mulia disimpan.

Jutta juga menyurati Frederick. Lelaki itu kehilangan memori, ia tidak mampu mengingat apapun, ia tetap disuapi ibunya seperti anak kecil. Marie-Laurie pun baru tersadar bila batu berharga itu tidak hilang, sesaat setelah sebuah kunci terjatuh ditangannya. Marie-Laure berumur panjang dan menikmati pagi indah bersama cucunya awal Maret 2014.

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13 Maret 2017