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by Leila S. Chudori

  “You know this has nothing to do with her,” I said unequivocally.

  He gave me a serious look. “So I’m the one who’s inconsistent and you are sure your position is the right one? Tell me, are you consistent? Do you know what you want? Either in politics or your personal life?”

  I said nothing, certain that he was being rhetorical.

  “You don’t belong to a political party. You’re not a member of any of the mass organizations. You always refuse to take sides. You malign LEKRA but then turn around and criticize signatories of the Cultural Manifesto.”

  “Yes, and so?” I stared at Mas Hananto, waiting for him to continue his critique.

  “Well what is you want, Dimas? Take a look at your personal life. You don’t seem to know what you want. Is it because you haven’t been able to move on from the past or is it that you just like being single?”

  Now I didn’t understand. Was he irritated with me because I didn’t want to take sides or because he thought I still had feelings for Surti? Why must a person take sides and join one group or another, I asked myself. Was it merely to prove one’s convictions? And were convictions entirely unitary in nature? Socialism, communism, capitalism, and all the other isms… Must we choose one and then swallow it whole without any sense of doubt? Without any possibility for criticism?

  I looked at Mas Hananto but kept my questions to myself. He had one hand on the steering wheel and was rubbing his jaw with the other. That night we said nothing more, at least not until Mas Hananto’s jeep stopped in front of my boarding house, but how the conversation ended, I frankly no longer recall.

  What I do remember is that the next day and for the entire week thereafter, we didn’t speak to each other. At the office, Mas Hananto said only what was essential, hardly bothering to look at me when he spoke. His jaw and cheek were swollen and blue.

  One day at the office, after about a week of us of not speaking, I watched from a distance as Mas Hananto laughed and spoke in whispers with Mas Nugroho and the editor-in-chief. I gave no thought to their little intrigue. I had no idea that their conversation that day would determine the course of my life, my fate, and my future as an exile, stranded in Paris. But then Mas Nug looked over in my direction and waved his hand, signaling for me to come to his desk.

  “So, they had decided to send you to Europe?”

  “No, they had decided to send me to one conference in Santiago and then on to another in Peking.”

  “So you went to Santiago, Chile, and then after that flew on to China?”

  “My journey in life has been a long one, Vivienne. Before going to China, I went to Cuba first, and it was only after some time in China that I came to Europe.”

  I looked outside the window. To compare Paris and Jakarta would be like comparing coconut milk with gutter water.

  A COFFEE STALL ON JALAN TJIDURIAN, JAKARTA;

  SEPTEMBER 12, 1965

  “I don’t know anything about the I.O.J. or its conference in Santiago,” I said to Mas Hananto after tracking him to an itinerant coffee stall near the corner of Jalan Tjidurian. I tossed the large manila envelope on the stall’s rickety table. This was the first long sentence I had spoken to Mas Hananto since we’d stopped talking to each other. Inside the envelope was an invitation to attend a conference of journalists in Chile.

  Mas Hananto, who was sitting slovenly with one arm on the table and one leg propped up on the bench, stared at his glass of hot coffee as if pretending to be deaf. He lowered his lips to the edge of the glass and started slurping—a sound that disgusted me. I knew he was doing this to annoy me.

  Feeling both surprise and the desire to smack him in the jaw again, I finally decided to sit down beside him. “This invitation is for you,” I said. “Why do you want me to go?”

  Saying nothing, Mas Hananto lowered his head, looking into his glass of coffee again.

  “I can’t speak Spanish. I’ve never engaged in any kind of journalistic activity at the international level. I wouldn’t know what to say at such a conference,” I sputtered, angry with him that he could so flippantly assign me a task without even consulting me beforehand.

  “It’s the Chief’s decision,” Mas Hananto mumbled. “You have to go with Nug.”

  A glass of coffee suddenly appeared before me.

  Mas Hananto said, “The name of the organization is the ‘International Organization of Journalists,’ which is English, right, so the language of the conference is going to be English, which you speak perfectly well. It’s an annual conference for heads of media institutions from around the world. The delegates of each of the countries represented have been given a topic to discuss. You and Nug have one too.”

  Still not looking me in the eye, Mas Hananto took another sip of coffee. “Listen, it will be a good experience for you. Guys from Harian Rakjat are also going,” Mas Hananto continued, as if to bolster the reason for me to go. “And we’re sending Risjaf to Havana to represent Indonesia at the Asia-Africa Organization.”

  I didn’t reply. In a normal situation, I would have made a joke about Risjaf trying out every Cuban cigar he came across or something on that order, but this situation was different; there was something Mas Hananto was not telling me.

  “Why aren’t you going?” I finally asked point blank.

  “The Chief has decided that Nug will represent our office and that you will accompany him.”

  Mas Hananto, still avoiding my eyes, was staring so closely at his glass of coffee, you’d have thought there was a miniature Maya reclining on its rim.

  “We also have the situation here to deal with. Word has been going around about intrigues among the Communist Party elite and military high officials. The Chief feels that it would be best for me to be here in Jakarta.”

  I didn’t know what to say. This was the first time Mas Hananto had ever told me something that sounded so very “internal” in nature. Even so, I still felt that he was leaving out something.

  “After the conference in Santiago, you and Nug will join up with Risjaf in Havana and then go on to Peking for the Asia-Africa Journalists Conference there,” said Mas Hananto, offering further explanation.

  I didn’t want to react. And I didn’t want to drink the coffee that had been placed in front of me.

  Mas Hananto glanced at me. He knew that I wouldn’t give in to his bidding before he divulged the full details.

  “Whenever you sulk, you stick out your lower lip so far you could hang a frying pan off it,” he said with a smirk.

  I waited for Mas Hananto to say more but his attention was now on the stream of smoke rising from his cigarette. Shit! I stood to go, leaving the glass of coffee untouched and the envelope with the invitation and air tickets to Santiago on the table top. I had just turned and started to walk away when Mas Hananto called my name in a loud and broken voice.

  I sat down, my lower lip still hanging.

  Mas Hananto looked both irritated and sad. I had no idea what had come over him. “I can’t go, Dimas. I have to stay here, in Jakarta.”

  I swallowed. This was the first time I had ever seen tears in Mas Hananto’s eyes.

  “Surti is taking the girls to her parents’ home,” he said hoarsely.

  I said nothing. I knew how very much he loved Kenanga and Bulan and how much they loved him.

  “Why?”

  Mas Hananto didn’t answer.

  “Because of Marni?”

  Mas Hananto took a deep breath. “I’m trying to persuade Surti not to leave me. That’s why I can’t leave town, much less the country, at this time. I have to take care of family business. If need be, I’ll stay at home and won’t go into the office until Surti has changed her mind and is ready to try again.”

  Wordlessly, I picked up the manila envelope and then patted Mas Hananto on the shoulder, as if to reassure him that everything would work out.

  Mas Hananto unstrapped his beloved watch. “During the conference, you have to be on time,” he said handing the watch to me.
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  I knew I couldn’t refuse his offer, not that night, so I took the watch and put it on my wrist.

  “I’m sure that by the time I get back, you two will be just fine,” I said, trying to cheer him. “Surti is never going to leave you. She’s just mad at you, is all. Trust me…”

  Mas Hananto nodded. I nodded in return and then looked at him for what would be the last time.

  SURTI ANANDARI

  FOR PARISIAN WOMEN, A CHANGE IN SEASON MEANS A CHANGE in fashion—perhaps just a light scarf with a floral design wound around the neck to complement maroon-colored flats or to contrast with a beret of checkered motif, or maybe just a simple but elegant white long-sleeved satin blouse. For men like me who pay little attention to fashion—except insofar that clothes are needed to ward off the cold—Paris is in any season the largest open-air catwalk in the world. There’s no obvious planning here. And we’re not talking about the designer or model crowd. Normal Parisian women act and look like models. Parisians are a special breed whose lives are filled with style. In my mind, the term haute couture is little more than a ruse of the clothing industry which has conspired with designers to increase their profits. Nothing more. But, whatever the truth may be, it doesn’t matter, because whatever the season, Parisians are very fashion-minded and pay utmost attention to appearances. Even so, with all the city’s apparent luxury and despite being known as “The City of Light,” two things are missing here: orchids and jasmine flowers.

  Tanah Air Restaurant on Rue de Vaugirard is a small and separate island in a Paris full of flair and color. It’s tiny compared to Café de Flore in Saint-Germain-des-Prés which, since the nineteenth century, has been the meeting place for the world’s literary figures and intellectuals who wish to engage in high-minded discussions while sipping soup and drinking coffee. Tanah Air Restaurant—“Tanah Air” meaning “Homeland” in Indonesian—serves authentic Indonesian food, meticulously prepared with ingredients and spices from Indonesia: shallots, turmeric, cloves, ginger, lemon grass, and galingale. But maybe all of this is just the Café de Flore for us political exiles, who spend our lives cooking food for customers and reciting poetry into the night, as we think of the homeland we knew prior to 1965.

  Here, in this restaurant, I am sitting with them now. There’s Risjaf, the most handsome and masculine of our lot, with wavy hair and an earnest and honest heart; Nugroho Dewantoro, originally from Yogyakarta, who sports a Clark Gable mustache and has an effervescent personality but a heart of steel; and Tjai Sin Soe (who sometimes goes by the Indonesianized name Tjahjadi Sukarna), an action man and fast thinker with a calculator in his left hand, which he seems to value more than life itself.

  As always, at the end of each night of service, after our customers have paid and gone home, Tjai takes out his calculator, counts the money that has come in, and divides up the tips among us all. Mas Nugroho makes sure all the perishable foodstuffs have been properly sealed and stored in the refrigerator; Risjaf cleans the tables and chairs and removes the posters from the windows for the event that took place that evening. Meanwhile, my helpers, Bahrum and Yazir, wash and dry the dishes, glasses, pots, pans, and utensils.

  Risjaf has just turned the television station to CNN, which proceeds to air a few seconds of the news that today, in the 1997 presidential elections in Indonesia, President Soeharto was chosen in an uncontested election to serve a seventh five-year term. We are not surprised by the news; just bored. The news is like the sound of mosquitoes at twilight in Solo: ever constant, never changing. Much more interesting for us is the additional bit of news that in the wake of the elections, student demonstrators have taken to the streets throughout the country, and that even the traditionally cowed news media have begun to express public disgruntlement about the fact that the president’s new cabinet is filled with his cronies. Even his eldest daughter, Siti Hardiyanti Rukmana, was awarded the position of Minister for Social Affairs. We look around at one another. Risjaf turns off the television.

  Together and without a word—perhaps all of us feeling the need to think of happy times and be consoled by the memories of younger days when we were naïve and full of love—we go from the lower floor of the restaurant to its ground floor and there stretch out on the chairs and listen to the song “Als de Orchideeën Bloeien,” which Risjaf plays on his harmonica. The song stirs and pierces the heart.

  As the chords of “The Orchids Are Now in Bloom” float through the open window of the restaurant into the spring air, all of us there are thinking of another orchid, one who went by the name of Rukmini. Rukmini, the orchid… Sipping on small glasses of rum to warm the body, our minds travel back in time to a place forty-five years ago.

  JAKARTA, JANUARY-OCTOBER 1952

  Three flowers, three young and beautiful women, transformed Jakarta into a garden of delight. Ningsih was a red rose of arresting beauty who made every man’s heart beat faster; Rukmini, a purple orchid whose color never faded with the passing of the seasons; and Surti Anandari, a white jasmine who left her lingering fragrance wherever she went. Men who fell in love with her could almost not function when she was not in their sight.

  These three young women were members of the freshman class in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. Risjaf, Tjai, and I, being junior classmen, felt ourselves to be much more knowledgeable and superior, and we liked to tease them. The three women rented rooms at a boarding house on Jalan Cik di Tiro. My friends and I lived, as we had for the past three years, in a boarding house for men on Jalan Solo just a few hundred meters away. Across the street from our lodgings was the home of a Mr. Bustami who rented out his paviliun—a semi-detached annex of his home—to Mas Nugroho and Mas Hananto, older friends of ours who had recently begun to work at the Nusantara News office.

  For Tjai, Risjaf, and me, the paviliun across the road became our place of recreation. Compared to our own small rooms, the paviliun was quite spacious, with a separate living room, where we could lounge about or play chess on the comfortable but louse-infested sofa. Mas Nugroho and Mas Hananto, who seemed much more mature than the three of us, frequently lent us their books—anything from anthologies of European poetry to titillating titles with pictures of men and women engaged in a myriad variety of sexual acts. Risjaf’s eyes would open widely in surprise when he flipped through the pages of these books, as if incapable of believing that that women could wrap their bodies in such positions. Mas Nug even made it a point to lend such books to Risjaf, because he got such a kick from seeing this younger and more naïve man’s reactions. Although Risjaf was the best-looking man among us, when it came to women, he was the most inexperienced.

  At first I wasn’t too interested in pursuing these three new freshman girls, not as girlfriends, anyway. To my mind, they seemed excessively cheerful and sweet-natured. Further, with all their fine clothes and makeup, they looked to me like privileged daughters of aristocrats who had never known hardship. One day as I was passing by their boarding house, I saw a man I guessed to be Surti’s father pull up to the curb in front of the house in a white Fiat 1100, a car that only a member of the upper economic class could aspire to own. As I came closer and was able to see the man more clearly, my suspicion was confirmed: Surti was the daughter of Dr. Sastrowidjojo, “the” Dr. Sastrowidjojo who lived on Jalan Papandayan in an elite and leafy residential area in Bogor, south of Jakarta. Not only was he famous, he was the son and grandson of equally famous doctors, members of the crème de la crème in pre-independent Indonesia. Surti’s father was known to have played a leading role in the founding of Jakarta’s central hospital, the Centraal Burgerlijke Ziekenhuis. The fact that Surti had not followed her father’s footsteps and gone into medicine suggested that there might be something special about her; but later, when I heard Mas Nug and Mas Hananto talk about her family background, my interest in knowing her better dwindled. I could neither afford nor be bothered with all the things that having a girlfriend from her social and economic class entailed.r />
  The problem was that Risjaf was attracted to Rukmini, she with the luscious red lips and very sharp tongue. Yet the more caustic her words, the more infatuated Risjaf became. In the end, it was for Risjaf—who swore that if he could go out with Rukmini just once he would be happy to die and go to heaven, and who often woke me when he talked about her in his sleep—that I decided to approach these three lovely women and invite them on a group date with my friends.

  At first, the three girls paid no attention to my advances, pretty much ignoring me altogether. They were too busy flirting with the male students in the Faculty of Law, who were given to citing legal statutes. (And what for? What was sexy about citations from law books, which were still in Dutch no less? Wouldn’t they find our skill in reciting poetry more interesting?) But I knew from the way they pretended to ignore me that they noticed me. At least Surti, for one, sometimes smiled. Once, I even caught her staring at me, her eyes like stars shining their light on me; but when she saw me staring back, she immediately turned her head. At that instant, I knew that she was the jasmine flower I wanted to pluck and store in my heart.

  One day, as she was going into class, I slipped into her fingers a verse from the poem “She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron—“She walks in beauty, like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies …”—but when she opened her mouth to speak, I immediately walked away, worried that she wouldn’t like the poem. The next day, however, she was the one who slipped a note to me: two lines from the poem “Elegy” by Rivai Apin: “what is it that we feel, yet have no need to express / what is it that we think, yet have no need to speak…” I almost swooned—not only from the sentiment of the poem but from the paper on which it was written, with its fragrant smell of jasmine.

  For a few days thereafter, we communicated almost only through lines of verse, with very few words spoken. One time I copied in longhand a romantic section from Romeo and Juliet and gave that to her. She replied with a quote from the poem “Bright Star” by Keats: “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art / Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night.”