by Nuril Basri
“I used to live in a shared rental, too,” I answer. “It’ll be good to have somebody look at the house. Make it look nice, ya?” And to myself, I think, “Because it’ll be your house soon, because I’ll be divorcing him after four months. Then you can marry your dear Inu.” Hehe.
“If Inu gets sick,” Nilam says, changing the subject, “just pinch him, feed him a little ginger water. No need for a doctor. He’s usually just exhausted or caught a cold.” Still trying to school me on the boy. “He only likes black or white clothes. Don’t buy him stuff in weird colours, and if you cook, don’t put too much salt. He doesn’t like that.”
Okay, I’m starting to feel like Nilam is my mother-in-law.
“You know? Inu’s pretty bad at lying,” Nilam gestures at me with her fork. “Also he used to drink a lot.”
Aha, I gathered as much, on our trip together.
“But not anymore. He’s changed. Inu’s a good person, he just doesn’t say much. Doesn’t have a lot of female friends, mostly colleagues,” she continues.
Huh? Colleagues? So there are female ojek drivers?
That’s interesting.
“He works late often, sometimes doesn’t sleep but since he married you, he makes sure he’s home early,” she says. “He likes mountain climbing, sports, snorkelling, rock-climbing, outdoorsy things like that. Oh, and you’ve got to remind him to trim his fingernails. He always forgets.”
I nod at this stream of information.
“You know, Inu’s work has appeared in all kinds of publications. Rolling Stone, FHM, HighEnd, National Geographic, so many! His photography work is becoming quite well known. Cool, right?”
“Photography work?” I ask, not understanding.
Ferlita says: “Eh, you don’t even know what your husband does?”
I really want to tell them that I know nothing about Inu. Hello? It was an arranged marriage! My parents paid him to get married to me.
“He’s a photographer. Also does web design,” Nilam explains.
“Really?” I say.
“So what did you think he did? Drive an ojek? Sell pots and pans? How do you think he can afford a house and credit cards?” Nilam laughs.
Well, ya. I did think he was an ojek driver. Or maybe a
hired actor.
“I thought his parents left him an inheritance.”
“Eh, his parents died a long time ago. I told you he’s an orphan. They were poor, didn’t leave him a thing. Inu’s worked so hard to get where he is. How come you don’t know?” She takes a reproachful tone.
I shake my head. Lost my appetite. An uncomfortable tension settles in. Ferlita and Nilam stare at me. No, I don’t know anything about Inu. So? So what? He doesn’t know anything about me, either.
“Actually, honestly, I was surprised when Inu said he was getting married, that came out of nowhere,” Ferlita suddenly says.
I have nothing to say.
After a long while, Nilam says: “Let’s go home. Here, save my phone number. If you need anything, text.”
*
With all our purchases unloaded into the house, Ferlita and Nilam leave. I watch celebrity divas Julia Perez and Dewi Persik claw each other’s eyes out on the tiny television, then fall asleep on the sofa. We should’ve bought a plasma flat screen.
Somebody shoves me awake. There is spit on my cheek (had my head tilted at an angle). I open my eyes to Inu standing over me.
“Get up. It’s maghrib,” he says.
I sit, and my head spins.
“The house is so cramped,” Inu says, looking around.
“Ya, Nilam came over, took me to the mall earlier, to shop, look at all the stuff she bought. All her fault.” I don’t want to take responsibility for this. It’s all Nilam’s doing, isn’t it? “She used your credit card.”
The washing machine is not properly installed. There are scraps of plastic wrapping about. Most things are still in their cardboard boxes. A massive mess.
“Well, get up. We’ll do maghrib prayers, then clean up.”
He doesn’t have to ask twice. I’m in no mood to resist. I’ve brought my prayer shroud and mat from the Jakarta rental—I couldn’t find the shroud that was part of my dowry. Inu asks me to pray with him. I almost never pray, so I’ve forgotten most of the verses; I just follow his motions. Obviously Inu’s never been an imam before. His voice quivers as he recites the verses from the Holy Quran. After we are done, he holds out his hand, as if expecting me to kiss it, like some dutiful wife would her pious husband. What do I do? I shake his hand, a formal, business-like handshake. Inu is taken aback, then bursts out laughing. I stick my tongue out at him, laughing too.
We tear open the cardboard packaging and try to place the bigger items around the house. This house, which seemed so empty and disused before? It’s finally feeling a little warmer. Livelier.
“You got a washing machine and everything?” Inu asks, stupidly, as we drag and heave it to a spot by the bathroom.
“Nilam forced me to, so it’s easier to deal with laundry,” I say.
I open the smaller wrappings: a set of eating utensils, assorted knives. I look for a place to put these. Inu flattens the cardboard. He rifles through a plastic bag and pulls out a comb, like he’s found pirate treasure. “Yay, a comb!” he cries, thrilled like a child.
Two hours later we have everything in its proper place. The spices, cooking oil, instant noodles, packets of bihun and everything else, all placed on racks in the kitchen. The water dispenser and blender sit on the counter. It makes me happy, too. Suddenly I feel so tired, so dirty and so hungry.
“Ratu, let’s go out,” Inu says, without prodding. “Find something to eat.” Then I remember something.
“Take the motorbike, ya?” I say.
“Why? It’s nice to walk,” he asks.
“We’re out of kitchen gas,” I tell him.
“Ah, leave it. I’ll get some gas tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay, get a gallon-bottle of mineral water too, ya?”
For the first time we are at ease with each other. For the first time, he’s called me by name, and doesn’t say “Ms”. And I do not mind.
My whole body hurts. There’s more and more work at the office, and the boss is more demanding. He keeps saying: “So, you finished yet?” as he gives me another assignment. The cases I have to handle are blurring into each other and I am overwhelmed. There are a number of similar incidents in Bali. I have to remember who is who, what is what, who the investigators are, who the Koreans are, all their names are a pain to remember. If I mess up it’ll all go wrong. That evening I head straight home—I mean, I head straight to Inu’s place. It is only 7pm and he’s not back yet. So you know what I do? I call Hans.
“Hi. Where are you?” I ask.
“At my counter,” he says, curtly.
“The pregnant girl there?”
“Her name’s Astrid. She’s not here. Why?”
“Why do you sound like that?”
“I’ve got lots of customers at the moment, it’s crowded, got to go, I’ll call you back,” he says all at one go, then ends the call.
Ah, damn it. I thought I heard girlish laughter on the other end. Have to stay positive. Those are just his customers.
In the kitchen I intend to cook up something. But when I try the stove—nothing. The gas hasn’t been filled up yet. No mineral water, either. I sigh, then look through the fridge. Nothing but butter, a stick of cheese, some eggs. I turn on the television in the living room. I hate total silence. I feel restless. What am I doing here? What kind of life is this? It doesn’t feel like a home. It just feels like I’ve moved from one rental to another. The difference here is that I’ve moved in with some boy. As a wife I should be doing more, I think, putting rice on to cook, getting dinner ready. So I find myself washing the dishes left in the sink. (There’s a sponge and dishwashing liquid, after all.)
But I think about it some more. This marriage is fake, right? Maybe this is how it should b
e. I cannot let Inu fall in love with me and vice versa. That’s dangerous! How would we get a divorce, afterwards? We’d have no justification for it.
When the judge goes: “You’ve been happily living together, why do you want a divorce?”—we won’t be able to answer.
I’ll only be able to admit the real reason to myself: “I want to marry my ex-boyfriend.” I can’t say something like that to the judge. They’d humiliate me. Maybe even kill me. Father would, I think.
The front door opens. Inu is back.
He takes off his jacket and helmet in the living room.
“Didn’t you say you were going to get gas and water?” I yell from the kitchen.
He appears next to me, tries to disconnect the gas cylinder. But he doesn’t even know how to detach it from the regulator. What an idiot. I have to help him. So, okay, he does get the gas and water, in the end. One gets plugged into the stove, the other into the water dispenser. So we have hot water and a stove to cook with. I decide to make dinner. Really.
At first I cook some rice. With a rice cooker, of course, the one Nilam picked out for us. Then I try to make a mixed omelette with lots of vegetables and cheese and sausages. I’m at the chopping board when Inu wanders in.
“Cooking?”
“No, fixing a car engine,” I say. I mean, he can see what
I’m doing.
“No wonder so noisy,” he teases.
“Hish,” I say.
And he grins. “Want me to accompany you?” He sits at the dining table.
“No need,” I say, chopping up some celery. “Thanks.”
“Okay then, I’ll just sit here. It’s my house, too. I’m free to sit where I want,” he says.
“Hish! In that case, why ask me at all? Just sit wherever,” I reply, irritated.
I chop up some sausages and add it to the egg. I heat the pan and add a big spoonful of butter. Put the egg in. Hissing, the egg blooms into something golden like a sunflower.
“How was work?” he asks.
“Why are you such a busybody?” I ask back.
“Just wondering,” he says. I don’t talk, concentrating on my omelette. Flipping it over carefully, so it doesn’t split or burn. Soon it is done. And it looks good. As big as a tampah tray. Even though I only used three eggs, a few cheese slices, two sausages and vegetables. But it’s as big as a pizza supreme! I’m pretty proud of myself. This could serve six. Laying the omelette out on a plate and slicing it pizza-style, I see the light on the rice cooker turn green. It’s done.
“Want to eat?” I ask, without turning around.
“Can,” he says, sounding a little reluctant. That’s annoying. Why act cool if you’re actually starving? I pile rice onto his plate. Dump it in front of his face, like I’m serving a prisoner. Prang. The rice spills all around.
Haha. Nah, I don’t do that. I don’t want to see him eat the grains off the floor, like a goat, and sobbing. I’m not that cruel, okay? I hand him a fork and spoon, so he can get some omelette for himself.
“Can you get the soya sauce and ketchup, please?” he asks. I grab them from the shelf, annoyed. We sit down to eat, the two of us, opposite each other.
“How’s the omelette?” I ask him. Here I am being a fool. Why the hell should I care whether he likes it or not? Hans has never given me his opinion of my cooking. Because I’ve never cooked for him. We always ate out and I always paid. Why do I suddenly care what Inu thinks?
“Not bad,” Inu replies. “A little too salty.”
So I taste some. What is he talking about? It’s not salty at all. Perfectly normal. But then I remember, he doesn’t like salt. Ah, good if he hates my cooking. He won’t ask me to cook for him ever again. I start to chew and realise that the rice is quite hard. Didn’t add enough water. Ah, this sucks. First time I cook for somebody and this happens. I don’t realise I’ve slammed my fork in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” Inu asks, shocked by my outburst.
I scramble for a cover story. “Stressed about work,” I say.
“What’s the problem?”
“It’s just work stress. Too many cases.” I think about the official letters I have to write to the Supreme Court because the embassy will be visiting. The bureaucracy of Indonesia’s formal institutions is terrible. The boss calls it “red tape”, wrapping us up like webbing, slowing us down. I hate hearing the officials say the same thing, over and over again: “We’ll get back to you, miss.”
“If you can’t stand it, why don’t you quit?” he says.
“Not easy to find a job these days. I was unemployed for a whole year. That feels worse,” I say, tearing off a piece of omelette and soaking it in sauce. Not bad!
“And I’m not young anymore,” I add.
Inu smiles, suddenly. “I noticed you’ve stopped calling me ‘Mr’.”
Huh? What about it?
“You’ve stopped calling me ‘Mr Inu’. Usually you make a point to call me that,” he explains.
“Oh, hah, I forgot,” I say, wanting to laugh.
“Why did you do that?” Inu asks.
“Because that’s what you do when you talk to somebody you don’t know,” I answer. “I don’t know anything about you, after all.”
He nods.
“So, in your eyes, I’m a stranger?”
“More or less.”
“Once we get to know each other, you’ll stop calling me ‘Mr’?”
“It’s all the same, isn’t it? Whether we know each other or not, it’s all just words.” Why is he fixating on this? Crazy person. I mean, I guess it’s important, since it’s a sign of intimacy. For example, Hans and I call each other ‘babe’, if we’re in the mood. A sign of how close we are.
So, anyway, this is how our get-to-know-you session starts. It’s very weird. Exchanging pockets of information about our personal lives—like an interview at one of those matchmaking agencies. Even though we’re married already.
“Favourite colour?” he asks.
“What a boring question,” I tell him, a little nervous. “Um, no favourite colour. Spots, polka dots, lines, rainbows, I like them all.” What? Why don’t I remember my own favourite colour? And those things I said, they’re shapes, not colours!
“And you?” I ask.
“Black. White,” he replies, still eating.
“So you like chess?”
“No. I mean. I just like those colours. Don’t like grey. If black, pure black. If white, pure white.”
What’s with this philosophising? Show-off.
He asks another one: “Favourite food?”
“Bakso,” I reply. “But you’ll eat anything, won’t you?”
He snorts.
“What part of your body would you most want to change?” I ask him.
He has to think a bit. “My big toenails. They always get ingrown.”
“Ouch, must hurt when you walk, then?” I nod, agreeing. I’ve had that problem too. “I think if I were to change something, I’d change my hair colour. Maybe change it to brown,” I play with the ends unconsciously.
“It looks fine as it is,” Inu says.
“Really? Thanks.” Hah! I’m pretty sure he’s lying. My hair’s straight only because of re-bonding; it isn’t like this naturally. What’s fine about it? “What if I shaved my head?” I ask, joking.
He laughs. “I’ll ask for a divorce right away,” he tells me. I laugh, too.
“When I was younger I wanted to be a teacher. Or an actress,” I say.
“I wanted to be an architect,” he says.
“That wouldn’t suit you. You look more like an ojek driver or gangster.”
He laughs again.
“So you’re a photographer?” I say, pointing at him with my fork.
“Ya. But most of my work is web design. Pays better than photography.” He is finished with his plate. He goes over to the fridge, takes out a carrot, rinses it and starts munching on it. Just like that.
“You’ve taken photos of po
p stars before?”
“A few. But they are really stingy, usually.”
“Next time you do, bring me along, okay? Though I keep seeing artists in Plaza Indonesia. Once I ate right across from the supermodel Manohara. I was trying out a new lunch place. That place was really expensive, I don’t go there anymore. One plate of nasi goreng cost me 80,000! Not even including drinks. Crazy. But, anyway, Manohara was so pretty! She was at the table in front of me.” I hear myself rambling. “I’ve also seen others there…”
Krauk, krauk, krauk, Inu’s carrot goes. I grab a pear from the fridge and start to peel the skin off with one of our new knives. I cut it into wedges and Inu holds out his hand, for a piece.
We end up talking about all kinds of different things: taste in music, in television shows; hobbies; funny stories. I tell him about the time I pooed in my pants in primary school. That makes him admit to me that he’s eaten his own snot before; he was curious about how it tastes. Haha, what an idiot! I tell him my poo-my-pants story was made-up, just bait to get him to admit something embarrassing. He grumbles and I laugh at him for being so easily duped.
It gets quite late before we realise it. “I really want a pony. I want to learn how to ride, like some English lady.” I sigh. The pony would probably die, crushed under my weight. It’s small and I’m big. I want to tell him I wish I could be a real princess, pretty, delicate, lithe, stylish. But here I am, a vain, fat thing.
“I don’t like animals,” Inu says, in reply to my comment about ponies. “Cats, especially.”
“Ya, that’s good. They like to shit all around and inside the house,” I say. I hate cats. Disgusting things.
“They say that cat fur can cause sterility in some people,” Inu says.
“Why so concerned about being sterile, Mr Inu? You want children?” I ask him.
“Not really, Ms Ratu. Don’t really like babies,” he replies.
“Same here, babies are like typhoons. Such a pain, and if they start crying, ugh.”
