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by Leila S. Chudori

  “Enter Indonesia? Impossible! You cannot enter Indonesia with a titre de voyage. And even if you were able to, there’s a very good chance you’d never be able to leave that place again.”

  I didn’t care. I had to pay my last respects to Mother.

  I brushed off all attempts by Mas Nug and Vivienne to calm me down. I had to go home. I had to go home! I would find a ticket. Any kind of ticket. Plane, boat, whatever. The important thing was for me to go home.

  In my apartment, Risjaf took me by my shoulders and tried to calm me down. I roughly pushed him aside as well. Finally, they were all silent.

  That night Mas Nug handed me a telegram from my brother, which read:

  DON’T COME HOME COMMA NOT SAFE STOP PRAY MOTHER IS AT PEACE COMMA WE PRAY FOR HER SOUL STOP

  I crushed the telegram in my hand, threw it in the garbage can, and stomped out of our miserable apartment into a winter night whose chilled air seized my bones. I heard the voices of Risjaf and Mas Nug calling after me, but I picked up my pace and ran. The cold wind was a knife stabbing me in the face, but I didn’t feel a thing. I ran and ran. When I finally stopped, I found myself standing on the bank of the Seine. The river was red in color. My face was hot with tears.

  It was around that time, I guess, that Vivienne began to gradually turn Paris into a kind of resting place for me. Not a home, per se, but a place where I could stop for a while. Slowly, I came to see in her green eyes both assurance and a willingness to provide refuge for me, like a shade tree protecting a child from the blazing sun with its cool shadows.

  Although Vivienne’s curious cousins, Marie-Claire and Mathilde, asked numerous questions about my background—the French always seem to be interested in history—all in all, I felt that the Deveraux family was very accommodative to Vivienne’s Indonésien lover, who as yet could speak to them only in broken French.

  We married a year later in Lyon, at the vineyard of Vivienne’s uncle, the father of Marie-Claire. That was the Deveraux family’s ancestral home. Because all of her family’s members were educated people who seemed to love to cook, I refrained from trying to impress them with my own culinary skills. As Indonesia has no enological history, Vivienne’s father, Laurence, and her mother, Marianne, took it on themselves to give me some basic lessons about wine—ones I very much enjoyed. They taught me the difference between a sauvignon and a merlot; which kinds of wine were a good match for certain kinds of meat; what kinds of white wine were best served with fish. Marianne, who seemed to know how affected I still was by my mother’s death, showed great forbearance with me, carefully listening to each word of French I spoke. Apparently hoping to instill in me a greater sense of confidence about my ability to speak that beautiful tongue, she was patient with my halting French and displayed no exasperation with my faulty grammar. On top of that, she was constantly offering me homemade petit fours—offers I never refused—or filling my glass with wine. Jean, Vivienne’s brother, who was working for the Red Cross in Africa, came home for the wedding and he and I engaged in long discussions on politics and literature. With Vivienne’s family embracing me so warmly, taking me into themselves, what more did I have to complain about?

  Lintang Utara: “North Star.” That’s the name I chose for our daughter, born five years after we married. Everything about her showed her to be her mother’s daughter, except for her wavy black hair, which came from the Suryo family. And I never tired of staring at that beautiful, living and breathing, little round creature with the wavy black hair. I never thought it would happen, but I had inexplicably found for myself a port—who knew for how long?—and put down an anchor in my life. If I ever needed a reason to stop my voyage, then this little creature by the name of Lintang Utara was the one. I couldn’t stop watching her. I loved looking after her, caring for her, even changing her diapers. I sang to her the Indonesian lullabies my mother had sung to me—though more often than not I fell asleep before she did, and when I pulled myself awake would find her crawling around our small apartment.

  Vivienne raised no objection to my giving our daughter such a non-French-sounding name. She agreed to my choice instantly, just as Surti had when I proposed the names Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam for the children we once dreamed of having together.

  During the first few years of our marriage, I changed jobs several times. Vivienne, meanwhile, had much more steady employment: teaching in the Faculty of English Literature at the Sorbonne. Finally, however, after several years of seeing the look on Vivienne’s face become one of increased annoyance as a result of the unsteady and uncertain nature of my financial contribution to our home—I was spending much of my time writing a newsletter, Political Prisoner, which I distributed to the Indonesian exile community in Europe—I finally committed myself to more permanent work and took a clerical job at the Ministry of Agriculture.

  Even though I earned a decent enough salary, I was not at all happy with my desk job at the ministry. Instead of my work, my mind was either on the essays and poems that I intended to publish in the next issue of Political Prisoner or on interesting items of news that I received from friends who worked for the news media in Jakarta. One such piece of news was about the hullabaloo in 1972 when a foundation that had been established by President Soeharto’s wife, Madam Tien, commenced work on an immense theme park called “Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature” or, more commonly in Indonesian, “Taman Mini.” Not surprisingly, given the economic disparities in Indonesia at the time, some of the country’s leading intellectuals objected to the project, including the well-known sociologist Arief Budiman, who damned it as a massive boondoggle; but what was surprising is that they actually voiced their objections in print and incited students to take to the streets. Another interesting but disturbing development in the political sphere was that Indonesia’s political parties were coming to be dominated by businessmen and that Parliament was being transformed into an assemblage of clowns, convened only to rubberstamp anything and all that the executive branch of government proposed.

  I wrote about these and other things in my newsletter as a means of keeping the exile community up to date on conditions in Indonesia. I offered the newsletter to fellow exiles, free of charge, but as it was fairly popular it sometimes did attract financial contributions from other exiles. Whenever enough money came in, I’d publish another edition, and with the help of Risjaf’s design skills was able to produce something that was almost professional-looking, like a newspaper.

  Gradually, after few years I grew so bored with my work at the Ministry of Agriculture, I knew I had to stop. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to publish a paper. I wanted a change.

  So it was, one autumn night, I came home to our apartment bearing a bottle of wine and several cuts of choice beef. It was nine o’clock when I arrived home, and Lintang was already asleep.

  “What’s the celebration?” Vivienne asked, taking the bottle from me and pinching the meat. “This is expensive, Dimas. What’s up?”

  Vivienne’s green eyes bore into me.

  “Sit down,” I told her.

  She sat down beside me, a look of suspicion on her face. I took her hand and kissed her fingertips. It always excited her when I sucked on her fingers. I wanted her to understand the decision I had come to.

  “You know I love you and Lintang,” I began.

  She nodded and frowned, a nervous look. “This isn’t about another woman, is it?” she asked.

  “What! Are you crazy?”

  Vivienne laughed with relief. “You always forget how good-looking you are, Dimas. The grayer your hair, the more attractive you are for younger women. But never mind… What is it?”

  I paused, wondering which younger women found me attractive. How unfortunate I did not even notice. “It’s torture for me, Vivienne. I am so unhappy with…”

  “You want to quit your job at the ministry, is that it?”

  “Oui.”

  She stared at me, a tree offering its shade. As long as the subject at hand was not ano
ther woman, Vivienne seemed to me to be the most understanding wife in the universe. Unlike some other French women I knew, who allowed their husbands to flit from the bed of one mistress to another, for Vivienne there were very clear rules in our marriage. She would tolerate everything except one: another woman. And I agreed.

  “I knew.”

  I embraced her and held her tightly to me.

  Once again, I asked myself, what did I have to complain about if I had around me a family that loved me? Why did I feel like a piece of me was still left behind in Indonesia?

  That night, we poured ourselves a glass of wine and discussed what our future might bring once I resigned from my steady job at the ministry. In the course of our conversation, we were suddenly interrupted by a rapping sound. I opened the door to find Mas Nug, whose face was forlorn and whose appearance resembled a pile of dirty clothes. He was sweating, his shirt drenched. He held in his hand a brown manila envelope. He stared at me with tears in his eyes.

  Vivienne quickly pull Mas Nug inside the apartment. “Come in, Nugroho, come in.”

  My heart beat faster. What had happened now?

  Mas Nug’s hands were shaking as he held the envelope.

  Vivienne slowly took the envelope and gave it to me. I opened and read the document inside: a divorce request. Rukmini, his orchid in bloom, was asking Mas Nugroho with the Clark Gable mustache for a divorce.

  I put my arms around Mas Nug and pulled him to me, hugging him tight. I knew how much he loved Rukmini, even if, like Mas Hananto, he too played around.

  “I supposed I should have known why she refused to move here,” Mas Nug said slowly, taking the glass of wine that Vivienne proffered.

  “Why?” Vivienne asked.

  “Because of her relationship with a military officer, the one who protected her during the hunt for communists in 1966 and 1967. This man, Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa, I thought at first was just a friend of her father’s who had in him a kind enough heart to help Rukmini.”

  I swallowed, imagining the faces of Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa and Rukmini before me.

  “So, you’re saying that Rukmini is asking for a divorce in order to marry Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa?”

  Mas Nug lifted the wine glass to his lips and downed its contents in one gulp. He asked for his empty glass to be filled. Vivienne obediently granted his request.

  Between tears and with the smell of wine on his breath, he ranted. “Tell Risjaf he was lucky never to have married her. Inside that orchid was a worm,” Mas Nug spat with anger and hurt.

  After emptying the rest of the bottle of cabernet sauvignon, Mas Nug picked up the letter of request for a divorce and flattened it on the dining table.

  “Pen!” he shouted at me. Never before had I heard such a dictatorial tone in Mas Nug’s voice.

  I frantically searched for a pen but couldn’t find one. Finally, Vivienne rummaged inside her purse and managed to come up with one.

  Mas Nug scrawled his signature on each of the multiple copies of the letter of request. Silently, I hoped that he had managed to affix his signature to the right spot, because when he signed the papers he did so in anger and with a theatrical flourish.

  When he had finished signing the papers, Mas Nug refolded them and gave them to me.

  “Mail them for me, will you?” he asked, while putting his jacket back on, “I’ll end up throwing them in the fireplace if I take them with me.”

  I nodded and said “sure” while signaling with my eyes to Vivienne. I would have to take Mas Nug home; he was already wobbling. Vivienne fetched my jacket for me and then walked us to the door.

  “Bonne nuit, Vivienne, you’re lucky to have Dimas. He’s a loyal man. Bonne nuit, Dimas. And you’re lucky to have married the very beautiful Vivienne. Bonne nuit. Au revoir, Rukmini. And fuck you, Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa!”

  I patted Mas Nug on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow me. As we walked towards the Metro station, crunching the red fallen leaves under our feet, Mas Nug looked up at the sky and screamed. The Parisian autumn heightened the sense of gloom.

  THE FOUR PILLARS

  A cook a pure artist

  Who moves everyman

  At a deeper level than Mozart …

  W.H. AUDEN

  90 RUE DE VAUGIRARD, PARIS; APRIL 1998

  IN PARIS IN THE SPRING, THE DAYS GROW LONGER AND THE nights begin only when one is ready to pound the mattress. I am listening to a soft whistling sound, a tune of no certain pattern, the song of someone who can neither read music nor keep a beat. It is the song of my friend, Nugroho Dewantoro, who has come to within hearing radius. I can detect the effort he puts into trying to sing like the remarkable Louis Armstrong or any one of a number of the Indonesian keroncong crooners he so admires. At any one time, he might be whistling Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World;” at another, the traditional Indonesian song “Stambul Baju Biru.” It’s always a guess. Only Mas Nug has the verve and gaiety to not be affected by changes in weather. He’s the same, whether it’s an incredibly hot summer day that burns the flesh and causes skin to peal; the autumn, when the pollen count is so high everyone is coughing and sneezing; the winter, when freezing temperatures corrode our tropically pampered Malay bones; or the spring, that fickle time of year when it’s sometimes cold and windy, sometimes warm and humid.

  The only time I remember Mas Nug unable to beat back the gloom was the time he received the letter-of-request for a divorce from Rukmini. At all other times, he’s always been the most optimistic person in the world, ever capable of finding the silver lining in any disaster.

  Even back in Jakarta, when there were the five of us, Mas Nug was a guy who could never say, “give up.” That gang of ours on Jalan Solo was made up of five men, each of whom felt pretty sure about himself in one way or another. Look at Mas Nug, for instance, who, with his Clark Gable mustache, thought himself to be the best-looking chap in the world, but who nonetheless had to deal with as many failures as victories. Mas Hananto, Mas Nug, Tjai, Risjaf, and I once went through a period when we were competing for girlfriends, a time that ended with victory on the part of the senior members of our group: Mas Hananto won Surti’s hand; Mas Nug tied the knot with Rukmini; and Tjai married Theresa Li. Risjaf and I, meanwhile, ended up as frustrated bachelors and didn’t find our helpmates until after coming to Paris. But whatever the situation and regardless that we five often found ourselves at odds with one another, either because of women or ideology, we were always able to overcome any conflict that might arise between us. And one reason for this was Mas Nug’s unflagging optimism.

  Among the five of us, it was only Mas Nug who liked to whistle and sing, even though his was the worst of voices and he was unable to carry a tune. Whether he was aware of this himself is uncertain, because in gatherings at the Nusantara News office, he was always the most eager to join in the singing. Mas Hananto and Risjaf had some musical skills: Mas Han could pluck a guitar and Risjaf was pretty good on the harmonica and flute. Meanwhile, my bass voice wasn’t too bad; but neither Tjai nor Mas Nug could carry a tune. The difference between those two was that Tjai recognized his shortcoming, whereas Mas Nug was blind to this imperfection and whenever there was a microphone present, he’d soon be clinging to it so fast you’d think it was a curvaceous woman.

  So it was, blessed with this deep-seated sense of optimism, skilled at both massage and acupuncture (which he had studied and mastered during our time in Peking), and, with his Clark Gable mustache, very confident of his appearance, Mas Nugroho felt that he had all the capital in life he needed to get along. And it’s true: among us, he was the one most capable of confronting the challenges that conspired against us. He was precisely the kind of person our band of stateless people needed to bear life’s harsh realities.

  And now I’m hearing Mas Nug’s off-tune voice, happily yodeling as he makes his way towards the kitchen on the ground floor of Tanah Air Restaurant, which for the past fifteen years has been at once our home, our source
of income, and a point of major pride.

  Mas Nug comes into the kitchen carrying a few bags of cooking ingredients and other supplies I had ordered. I guessed that he had just come from shopping in Belleville, where it was possible to buy Asian spices, because the day before I had been grumbling about how low we were on many of the basic Indonesian spices: turmeric, ginger, red chilies, shallots, garlic, Javanese bay leaf, and citrus leaf. In Paris, some of the spices we needed were available in dried form; but, in Indonesian cuisine, there is no replacing fresh red chilies, shallots, and garlic, whose prices at the market were always much higher than we thought they should be. Bahrum was usually the one who purchased my kitchen supplies, but he was in the midst of cleaning the restaurant’s wooden floor.

  Still whistling, Mas Nug removes the purchases from their bags and plops them on the kitchen table I use for preparing spices. I don’t know whether it’s because of his insufferable whistling or my irritation with him for throwing the purchases on the table where I am trying to work, but all of a sudden I feel nauseous, as if I am about to throw up. The fact is, for the past several weeks my stomach has been troubling me on and off, but, up until then, I have always been able to ignore it.

  Mas Nug looks at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I don’t answer him. Both he and Tjai are constantly ragging me about my health, like two parents angry with their teenage son for not wanting to study. Mas Nug thinks he can treat any illness with that bag of needles he takes wherever he goes. He is always going on and on about concepts of energy and acupuncture needles. Any time he starts to speak of such things, I immediately want to fall asleep. Who gives a hoot about “energy,” “chi,” and “New Age” treatments? Only Mas Nug!