“And while you’re at it,” I added, “you might pick up a bulk order of Jempol shrimp paste. And tempeh, too. And kretek cigarettes. Oh, and don’t forget the turmeric, both powdered and fresh…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… You and your fresh turmeric. That’s what’s so expensive!” Mas Nug grumbled even as he wrote down all my orders.
“Up to you, but if you don’t want the pindang serani tasting strange…”
The telephone suddenly rang again, clipping my commentary. Tjai picked up the receiver but then immediately put it down again. Mas Nug looked at Tjai in surprise.
“Who was that, Tjai? Your mistress calling?” he asked with a laugh.
“That’s your department, not mine,” Tjai said straightaway, not raising his face from the figures on the sheet in front of him.
“Yeah, yeah, but who was it? What if it’s someone wanting to order catering?”
Tjai raised his head and motioned towards the clock. It was eleven o’clock. He then went back to work again, leaving Mas Nug’s question hanging in the air.
Again the telephone rang and this time Mas Nug rushed to pick up the receiver. Tjai took a breath and crossed his arms, waiting to see how Mas Nug would respond to this mystery caller.
A startled look suddenly appeared on Mas Nug’s face and he lowered the receiver slowly.
“How many times has that person called, Tjai?”
Tjai raised his shoulder. “I’ve lost count. Every day at eleven. He’s crazy.”
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Some thug, looking to shake us down,” Tjai spat. “What, do you think Indonesia is the only country with shakedown artists?”
Mas Nug shook his head.
“How much is he asking?”
Tjai opened his eyes wide and quoted a figure that made me gulp. The swig of beer I’d just taken rushed into my nasal chamber. Damn!
There was no counting the number of rendang meals or skewers of satay that we would have to serve in order to come up with the baksheesh the man was asking for. For some reason, after Risjaf called Amnesty International to ask for their advice on what to do, the harassing phone calls stopped for a while. Maybe the people there had put in a call to the police or something—we didn’t know—but we were sure that one day they would start again.
Then there was another kind of caller: the deep breather. Whenever that kind of call came in, Tjai, whose work area was right next to the telephone, would balance the receiver on his shoulder while going on with his calculations of income and expenditures. After a few minutes Tjai would put the receiver to his ear to see if the deep breather had already hung up. If he had, Tjai hung up our phone too.
One time a group of prominent Indonesian academics came to Paris to attend a conference at the Sorbonne. Among them was the sociologist Armantono Bayuaji, who was a strong critic of the Soeharto regime. He suggested a group dinner at Tanah Air. When they came to the restaurant and saw how busy it was, plus the slate of book discussions and photographic exhibitions that Risjaf had planned, he left the place truly impressed. A few weeks later, Armantono published an article about his trip in Indonesia’s leading news magazine—almost two entire pages of praise for the work that we were doing and a not-so-veiled criticism of Indonesian government policies. Basically, the point of Armantono’s article was that if the tens of thousands of political prisoners who had been incarcerated on Buru Island had already been released and allowed to return home—even though branded with a stigma—why was the government not doing something to encourage those political exiles who were still abroad to come back home? Armantono said that Tanah Air Restaurant was Indonesia’s true cultural ambassador in Paris.
I don’t know what happened in Jakarta after that, but I’m sure that Armantono’s article must have caused quite a stir. Whatever the case, we continued to enjoy a steady stream of customers that surged daily at lunch time and early evening.
Then there was the day when a new form of harassment emerged. That day, Yazir burst into the kitchen like he had just seen a ghost.
“It’s Snitch. Snitch is here.”
I was startled.
“Snitch” was the sobriquet for a man we exiles viewed to be lower than a sewage drain. The man’s real name was Sumarno Biantoro. He was a writer—a writer of some talent, I must admit—who had once been a friend. Many a night we’d spent together in friendly discussion with Mas Hananto and Mas Nug at Senen Market. Marno, as I called him then, was the son of the owner of a cigarette manufacturer in Central Java. He had been counted among the list of writers whose work before the fall of President Sukarno had garnered for him a fairly high measure of respect from leftist critics. His poems and plays were said to be “revolutionary.”
Not surprisingly, therefore, after the September tragedy he was among the many artists, writers, and intellectuals who were arrested. It was said that he was tortured: that his teeth had been yanked from his mouth with pliers and his penis flattened beneath the leg of a chair. But it was also said that afterwards he had been allowed to go free and that he hadn’t been sent to some unnamed detention center, much less to the penal colony on Buru Island. He got the name “Snitch” because when his interrogators presented him membership rolls for the many Indonesian arts organizations, he pointed out for them the names of leftists and left-leaning persons. It was also said that the military finally succeeded in capturing Mas Hananto after his three years on the run because this man had learned where he was in hiding and had informed the military.
Tjai came into the kitchen, his face pallid, one of the few times I had ever seen him show such obvious emotion.
“He wants to talk to you, Dimas. Somehow, he knows that Mas Nug is in Amsterdam.”
But would a rat be a rat if it were not quick on its feet and aware of the movements of its enemies? My body felt nailed to the floor. I was holding a long knife I used for cutting up chickens. Long and very sharp. My fingers trembled as I walked towards the door, the knife still in my hand.
I could see Sumarno seated alone at a table facing the front door. I noted that he had chosen not to descend and take a seat on the lower floor. I stopped walking. He was smoking, hadn’t ordered anything. I sensed that he knew I was behind him. At my back were Tjai, Risjaf, Bahrum, and Yazir.
Sumarno turned and I don’t know what it was that caused me to blink: the gleam from the pomade in his slicked-back hair or his gold teeth. Apparently, he’d replaced his former enamels with gold.
He rose and shook my hand. “Dimas Suryooooooo.” A strong and sure shake. He looked authoritative but also wily at the same time. He laughed, at what I didn’t know and didn’t care, and then motioned for me to sit down across from him, as if he were the owner of the restaurant who required a word with his cook.
I remained standing, the knife in my left hand.
“Busy cooking, are you? Come, sit down and talk to me.”
I placed the knife on the table in front of me, removed my cooking smock, and then sat down face to face with the rat with the golden teeth. If he tried to lay a hand on me, I was ready to impale his hand to the dining table with my carving knife. I imagined Tjai worrying about damage to the table, but I didn’t care.
I glanced at Risjaf and Tjai, who stood behind me like bodyguards, ready to act if anything untoward happened. My two assistants, who suddenly seemed to have forgotten that they still had more spices to grind, also stood in the background, waiting to see what would happen next.
“So, Marno, what’s up?” I asked him. “Why are you here?”
“What, can’t I be a customer here? Where is that European hospitality of yours?”
Sumarno looked beyond me and waved. “Sjaf, Tjai… Come here and join us. You know, Sjaf, I ran into your wife just this morning at the supermarket, uh, what’s the name of the place…?”
Risjaf frowned and walked towards the table as if being pushed. Tjai came forward as well, but then went straight to his usual position at the cash register. I guessed that h
e wanted to be close to the telephone if that proved to be necessary.
But Sumarno was a rat, not a thug, and a coward besides, as sweet as sugar to your face but a backstabber when you turned around. The way he dealt out the information he possessed was yet another form of harassment of the most clichéd kind. In the course of our brief conversation, he quickly revealed that he knew the apartment building where Vivienne and I lived and the home addresses of Risjaf and Amira and Tjai and Theresa as well. Sniggering as he spoke, he also told me where Bahrum and Yazir lived. Although I knew he was a coward, unlikely to attack me physically, I kept turning the handle of the knife over and over in my hand.
“Nice set up you’ve got here,” he said in Javanese, looking around. “You guys must be doing well.”
“Would you like something to drink?” Risjaf asked.
“What do you have?” Sumarno looked in the direction of the bar to our right.
I couldn’t bear this charade much longer. “Whatever poison suits you,” I said. “Rat poison, perhaps?”
Sumarno burst out laughing, cachinnating like a gorilla. No one else saw the humor and everyone continued to stare at him.
For the next hour, without a drink and with no food on the table, Sumarno chattered nonstop about what was happening in Jakarta and what had become of the former political prisoners who had been released from Buru Island.
“It’s too bad, though, they have a code affixed to their identification cards. You’ve heard of that, right? ‘ET’ for eks-tapol—former political prisoner. Remember Mas Warman and Mas Muryanto? They’re working as journalists again but have to use pseudonyms; but I’m sure you knew that already. Warman writes under the name ‘Sinar Mentari’ and Muryanto goes by the name ‘Gregorius.’ Silly of them, really, to use names that are so obviously false. And you know, the children of former prisoners, those who are also working for the mass media, they’re using pennames as well. I guess that’s the trend these days, huh, to use fake names? Like father, like son, everyone hiding from one another.”
As if there were something humorous about this situation, Sumarno giggled to himself and for so long that what came to my mind was a scene in the Bharatayudha where Bima uses his long, steel-like thumbnail to slice Sangkuni’s mouth from off his face.
Risjaf knew what the grinding of my jaws meant. I clenched the knife in my hand so firmly that no one could take it from me. I felt myself grow hot then cold. The man in front of me not only took pleasure in causing the misfortune of others—people like Mas Hananto, for instance—but he was an opportunist as well. Like a rat, he lived in darkness and filth.
Tjai came over from the counter with a cold look on his face to tell us that it was time for our weekly finance meeting, a lie of course but a good enough reason to bring this gavotte to an end before anyone got hurt.
The movement of Tjai and Risjaf to Sumarmo’s sides forced the man to stand up. Still laughing, he said goodbye. But at the door to the restaurant, he stopped and turned around, then gave me a serious look. “You know, Dimas… If you apply for a visa again this year, feel free to mention my name. Maybe that will help you to enter Indonesia.” He laughed again, then opened the door and disappeared.
Tjai and Risjaf took hold of each of my arms, knowing that I wanted to throw my knife into that bastard’s heart.
After the rat slithered away, Yazir and Bahrum immediately wiped the table, chairs, and door handle—anything Sumarno had touched—with disinfectant, as if the man had been carrying a disease. This display of solidarity on the part of my two young assistants made me smile and breathe a sigh of relief.
“Go back to the kitchen,” Tjai said to me as he locked the front door, “and use that knife on some beef or chicken.” Lunch time was just one hour away.
I thought of Mas Hananto and of Surti and their children, and then of all the other friends whom Sumarno had put his finger on. I realized that Sumarno was not unique, but he was for me the personification of that mass of rats who prospered from misery. In life, it seemed to me, there are many people like Sumarno, all of whom easily breed to reproduce creatures of the same kind.
PARIS, APRIL 1998
I suddenly felt sunshine attacking my eyes. What was happening? This was crazy. Why was I back in my apartment? I was confused about both time and space. I slowly rose, feeling completely disoriented and agitated. Amazingly, though, my head now felt clear. I no longer felt dizzy or like I wanted to throw up. In the living room, I found Mas Nug stretched out on the sofa.
The sound I made caused him to stir.
“Hey,” he said, as he wiped his eyes and sat up. “Feeling better?”
“Much better. Who brought me home? And where is Sumarno?”
“Sumarno? What? You must have been dreaming.”
Hmm… I said nothing. This was serious. What year was it anyway?
“Don’t you remember getting sick last night? You took some medicine and fell asleep at the restaurant. I ended up cooking for those Malaysian friends of yours. And then Risjaf and I brought you home in a taxi.”
I took two cups from the cupboard and began to prepare coffee.
“You shouldn’t be drinking coffee or tea,” Nug told me.
I ignored his ridiculous suggestion. How could I live without coffee?
“Listen, Dimas. While you were asleep, I put my magic needles in several of your pressure points. That’s why you’re feeling better now. And from the points I stuck, I could tell that something is wrong with your liver.”
Mas Nug sounded more like a charlatan than a healer to me. After the coffee had brewed, I gave a cup to Nug and then poured one for myself. As I took a sip, I noticed that there were some used acupuncture needles in the waste basket. Good God, he wasn’t kidding.
“Where did you stick those things in me?” I asked, darting my eyes at my arms and stomach.
“You don’t need to know. The important thing is that you’re feeling better now. You are, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you stick those things in me again.”
Mas Nug grinned and took a sip of coffee. “Before you go back to sleep, there are a couple of things that you should know.”
Now what was he going on about? I waited for him to speak.
“The first is that in our conversation with those Malaysian friends of yours last night, the subject of political activism in Indonesia came up. They especially had a lot to say about one particular activist, a young man by the name of Pius Lustrilanang who had been kidnapped and tortured. Not that I found this information particularly surprising, but what did surprise me is not only that this Pius kid survived the torture but, as the Malaysians told it, he convened an international press conference and described in detail how he had been kidnapped and tortured and that he fully intended to find his captors and make them face justice.”
I almost dropped my cup of coffee.
Wasn’t that crazy to think of? Justice? In Indonesia? It was one of the most startling things I had heard in my thirty-two years in exile.
“What’s happening there?”
Mas Nug shook his head. “I don’t know; but now that one person has spoken up, it will only be a matter of time before other victims begin to speak out as well.”
After mulling over this incident, I suddenly remembered something. “And what’s the other piece of news?”
“Vivienne called this morning to say that the hospital had contacted her because the results of your tests are still at the hospital, waiting to be picked up.”
“The hospital called Vivienne?”
Mas Nug shrugged. “When we filled out the registration form at the hospital the time you fell, we put down Vivienne’s name and number in case of emergency.”
“What the hell? Damn you!”
Mas Nug shrieked like a monkey with a banana. He knew very well that Vivienne would now be on my tail about getting medical treatment. We may have divorced years ago, but she and I continued to maintain an amica
ble relationship.
“When I talked to Vivienne, she mentioned that she had told Lintang about you collapsing at the Metro station.”
Merde! Now that Lintang knew, there would be no end to the matter.
Mas Nug finished his coffee and then packed his kit of needles. He needed to go home and take a bath and change his clothes, he said. Then he’d go to the restaurant to help in the kitchen and would come back to see me in this evening after the restaurant closed.
“We’ve all agreed that you need to rest. Go get the results of your test, and whatever they may be, follow the doctor’s orders! If you don’t, I’m going to come back here and stick you with a thousand needles,” he said with a threatening tone.
“But the kitchen…”
“Let me and your two assistants take care of the kitchen. There’s no bargaining this time,” said my dictatorial friend, not permitting a reply.
As Mas Nug left my apartment, I listened as he began to sing “What a Wonderful World” in his terribly off-tune voice.
II
LINTANG UTARA
PARIS, APRIL 1998
FROM THE WINDOW OF THE METRO, I looked out on a gloomy Parisian spring. Dark and gray, thick with haze Where were the colors of cheerful times: bluish purple, golden yellow, and pastel pink? It was April. The air should be suffused with the scent of flowers and the aroma of a freshly baked croissant just dunked into a cup of sweet-smelling hot chocolate. And the people of Paris should be dressing up the city’s body in preparation for a glorious summer ahead. But as the great poet T.S. Eliot said so effectively, April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire …
Thus, it’s not the fault of Paris, for this city is not a land of the dead that gives birth to putrid-smelling flowers. Nor is it the fault of spring, which should be festooned with flowers. April is an accursed month for the students at the Sorbonne, a time with no pause button for their lives. At this time, professors become gods, doling out assignments for tens of papers and examinations, even as they retire to cafés and bistros to drink glasses of wine and cackle with laughter.
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