Bagaimana Saya Selesai Membaca Orlando dalam Ribut Hujan

Saya terperangkap dalam ribut kencang semalam ketika membaca halaman-halaman terakhir novel Virginia Woolf Orlando. Pejabat saya terletak di tengah-tengah Jalan Raja Chulan. Kalau nak pandu ke arah Pudu, katanya ada pokok tumbang; sementara Jalan Sultan Ismail ditutup kerana air sudah naik. Maka saya tunggu membaca Orlando ketika rakan-rakan sepejabat masih sibuk membuat kerja, padahal sudah jam tujuh malam. Bersungguh-sunggguh mereka bekerja. Keletihan dan kelelahan tergantung pada wajah mereka. Hari demi hari, dan minggu demi minggu, itulah wajah yang saya lihat. Pekerjaan menyerap emosi daripada wajah seseorang, dan ia membuat kita lupa pada kesementaraan hidup, walaupun ketika bencana sedang mengamuk di tengah kota.  

Seperti protagonis novel ini, Orlando, kita boleh membaca novel Virginia Woolf dari pelbagai sudut. Adakah ia novel tentang seni mengarang biografi? Adakah ia novel proto-feminis-queer? Adakah ia novel fantasi yang bersembunyi di balik jubah sejarah? Adakah ia novel tentang London? Setiap sudut novel ini ada cerita yang tersendiri; ibarat bangku, kolam, dan pancuran yang menghiasi bahagian berbeza dalam sebuah taman. Saya memilih untuk berjalan di ruang yang kaya dengan nafas dan hangat kehidupan. Hampir semua karya Woolf kaya dengan nafas kehidupan (sama ada esei, cerpen, atau catatan ringkas dalam jurnalnya), namun dalam Orlando ia menjadi rumput di mana watak utama Woolf berjalan. 

Pada bahagian awal novel ini, Orlando mengejar (dan merana) dua benda penting: cinta dan nama. Dia jatuh cinta pada seorang wanita bangsawan asing, namun dikecewakan tanpa sebab jelas. Dia kemudian cuba bergaul dengan golongan sasterawan ternama di England pada masa itu, namun dia ditikam dari belakang serta menjadi bahan kutukan dan jenaka. Maka setelah gagal mengejar segala yang hatinya dambakan, Orlando sedar selama ini dia terlepas pandang keindahan yang tersembunyi dalam benda-benda kecil di tengah alam dan persekitaran tempat tinggalnya. 

"Thus, at the age of thirty, or thereabouts, this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthless of them all. Love and ambition, women and poets were all equally vain. Literature was a farce. The night after reading Green's Visit to a Nobleman in the Country, he burnt in a great conflagration fifty-seven poetical works, only retaining 'The Oak Tree', which was his boyish dream and very short. Two things alone remained to him which he now put any trust: dogs and nature; an elk-hound and rose bush. The world, in all its variety, life in all its complexity, had shrunk to that. Dogs and bush were the whole of it. So feeling quit of a vast mountain of illusion, and very naked in consequence, he called his hounds to him and strode through the Park. 

So long had he been secluded, writing and reading, that had half forgotten the amenities of nature, which in June can be great. When he reached that high mound whence on fine days half of England with a slice of Wales and Scotland thrown in can be seen, he flung himself under his favourite oak tree and felt that if he need never speak to another man or woman so long as he lived; if his dogs did not develop the faculty of speech; if he never met a poet or a Princess again, he might make out what years remained to him in a tolerable content."

Kemudian datang sentuhan genius Woolf - yang ada hanya pada novelis paling berwawasan - dalam melakar perubahan waktu melalui imej dan rasa. Dalam To the Lighthouse, ia berlaku pada skala lebih besar, namun di sini kita melihat melalui sudut pandang Orlando; malah sebenarnya kita melihat bagaimana minda Orlando mengusia bersama waktu. 

"Here he came then, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. He saw the beech tress turn golden and the young unfurl; he saw the moon sickle and the circular; he saw - but probably the reader can imagine the passage which should follow and how every tree and plant in the neighborhood is described first green, then golden; how moons rise and suns set; how spring follows winter and autumn summer; how night succeeds day and day night; how there is first a storm and then fine weather; how things remain much as they are for two or three hundred years or so, except for a little dust and a few cobwebs which one old woman can sweep up in half and hour; a conclusion which, one cannot feel help feeling, might have been reached more quickly by the simple statement that 'Time passed' (here the exact amount could be indicated in the brackets) and nothing whatever happened." 

Ketika saya memandu keluar dari Jalan Raja Chulan, hujan masih lebat, dan jalan masih sesak. Perjalanan saya ke Shah Alam akan mengambil masa sejam. Saya pasang podcast Huberman Lab di Spotify untuk mengisi waktu. Kuala Lumpur tidak pernah belajar daripada sejarah dan penderitaan emosi warganya. Esok Kuala Lumpur akan bangkit, membasuh sisa pokok dan lumpur pada tubuhnya, dan meneruskan kehidupan seperti biasa.