Teroka Cerpen

Jalan-jalan (dan belanja-belanja) ke Goedang Boekoe di Pasar Festival membuatku menemukan “The Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald vol.2: The Crack-up with Other Pieces and Stories“. Ada lima cerita pendek dan lima prosa otobiografis yang dimasukkan ke edisi buku itu. Yang baru selesai aku baca, ya lima cerpennya itu.

Ada Gretchen’s Forty Winks, The Last of the Belles, Babylon Revisited, Pat Hobby Himself (ada satu, dua kisah pendek) dan Financing Finnegan. Dari lima cerpen itu, cuma Pat Hobby Himself yang nggak membuatku langsung terpikir bahwa sebenarnya Fitzgerald-lah yang diceritakan dalam cerpen itu.

Gretchen’s dan Belles otomatis membuatku teringat sama sosok Zelda Sayre, istri Fitzgerald. Menurutku sosok Gretchen yang diceritakan di situ dan Ailie Calhoun, dua-duanya, pada awalnya, berasal dari Zelda.

Pada Gretchen, karakter sang suami bilang seperti ini:

Boredom replaced alarm in Gretchen’s black eyes. She was a Southern girl, and any question that had to do with getting ahead in the world always tended to give her a headache.

Di Belles, Ailie Calhoun, digambarkan:

There she was–the Southern type in all its purity. I would have recognized Ailie Calhoun if I’d never heard Ruth Draper or read Marse Chan. She had the adroitness sugar-coated with sweet, voluble simplicity, the suggested background of devoted fathers, brothers and admirers stretching back into the South’s heroic age, the unfailing coolness acquired in the endless struggle with the heat. There were notes in her voice that order slaves around, that withered up Yankee captains, and then soft, wheedling notes that mingled in unfamiliar loveliness with the night.

Cerita pertemuan Zelda dan Scott yang diceritakan di Wikipedia pun mirip seperti kisah pertemuan awal karakter Andy dan Ailie. Cerita pasangan suami istri di Gretchen juga membuatku membayangkan bahwa sang suami, dengan ambisinya untuk maju di bidang periklanan, adalah penggambaran sosok F Scott Fitzgerald sendiri. Dan sang istri…aku tidak pernah ketemu atau membaca banyak literatur tentang Zelda, tapi dia benar-benar terasa seperti Zelda. Sama juga dengan karakter Sally Carrol Happer di The Ice Palace (hey, lokasi tempatnya pun sama-sama di Tarleton, setting buat Belles)

Nggak heran, Zelda pernah nulis seperti ini di New York Tribune:

“[i]t seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald—I believe that is how he spells his name—seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home”

Tapi Wikipedia juga menambahkan,

But the impact Zelda’s personality might have had on his life may be overstated, as much of his earliest writings reflect the personality of his first love, Ginevra King. In fact, the character of Daisy as much represents his inability to cultivate his relationship with King as it does Zelda’s personality.

Hmm, Daisy sih bukan karakter Fitzgerald yang aku bilang membuatku merasa bertemu Zelda ya. ‘Zelda-zelda’ itu lebih sering muncul di cerpen-cerpen Fitzgerald, yang lebih sering ditulisnya saat pasangan ini sudah di ambang kebangkrutan dan butuh uang cepat. Dan mungkin, saat tagihan-tagihan kesehatan Zelda akibat skizofreniknya juga makin menumpuk.

Oh ya, sama seperti karakter Andy yang harus bolak-balik di tempat tidur, gelisah sampai akhirnya mengenali perasaannya pada Ailie, aku juga jadi mengenali perasaanku pada Fitzgerald. Saat naik metromini, kena macet di kawasan Salemba, aku langsung menghela nafas dan harus istirahat dulu karena harus mencerna, saking cantiknya paragraf ini:

On Saturday night she and Bill Knowles came to the country club. They were very handsome together and once more I felt envious and sad. As they danced out on the floor the three-piece orchestra was playing After You’ve Gone, in a poignant incomplete way that I can hear yet, as if each bar were trickling off a precious minute of that time. I knew then that I had grown to love Tarleton, and I glanced about half in panic to see if some face wouldn’t come in for me out of that warm, singing, outer darkness that yielded up couple after couple in organdie and olive drab. It was a time of youth and war, and there was never so much love around.

Sama seperti Andy, baru sekarang aku menyadari apa yang terjadi. Aku (menggunakan kata-kata Fitzgerald sendiri) “was deeply and incurably in love…” dengan cerpen-cerpen Fitzgerald.

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