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by Leila S. Chudori

  “Take a seat if you wish and you can see what we are doing,” Maman said, putting her hands on her hips and turning away. When Maman got this way, I’d bet that even Mitterrand wouldn’t want to take her on. Maman’s bark caused Blue Eyes to fall back a few steps.

  I always cringed whenever Maman stared so hard that her eyeballs bulged from their sockets. Even Ayah would retreat when her green eyes ballooned like that. Usually, he’d back down immediately or scamper off to another room. The four policemen—if they really were policemen—looked nervous.

  One of them, the thinnest and the youngest, plucked the courage to speak, “I’m sorry, Madame, but we’re only carrying out orders.”

  Blue Eyes quickly added, “If all you’re doing here is cooking and serving meals, then that is what we’ll report.”

  At that moment Om Risjaf came out of the kitchen with a platter of nasi kuning and fried shrimp with chilies, the sambal goreng udang whose magic scent immediately suffused the air of the dining room. I watched as the policemen’s nostrils flared and twitched.

  “You’ll pardon us,” Luc Blanchard said as he held his hand out to Maman, though his eyes were fixed on the platter of nasi kuning in Om Risjaf’s hand. Calmer now, Maman extended her own hand to the man.

  “Oh, that smells good,” said Blue Eyes pointing to the platter that Om Risjaf was carrying. “One day, I’ll come back to try it.”

  “That’s our homemade nasi kuning and sambal goreng udang—which are shrimp cooked in a chili sauce,” Ayah said with a smile. “Please do come back.”

  “Nasi kuning…” The man suddenly seemed to have forgotten the reason for his visit as his eyes followed the platter to the table of the customer who’d ordered it. “With shrimp? Ça sent bon!” He swallowed. When his assistant coughed, he hurriedly took his leave, but added that he was definitely coming back to try the nasi kuning.

  And Mr. Michel Durant was not joking. After that time, every month after receiving his pay check, he and his subordinates treated themselves to a meal at Tanah Air.

  Although that incident took place when I was ten years old, I still remember it clearly—even the smells. I also remember feeling that there was something wrong with my family, or, to be more precise, that there was something that always made us feel like we were living in a state of uncertainty.

  It was around that time I began to feel that there was another kind of life that was different from the one I had known as “normal” since childhood. My family was different from most French families. And I was different too. Not just because I was mixed-race, the product of an Indonesian and French marriage—in my class at school there were a number of mixed-race kids: French-Moroccan, French-Chinese, Anglo-French and so on—but because my classmates could talk about their parents’ other home, whether it be Rabat, Beijing, or London. But not I.

  My father came from Indonesia, a distant land I didn’t know and could never get to know (for at least as long as the same government remained in power). Starting then, it slowly began to dawn on me that I would never be able to visit Indonesia, at least not with my father.

  For the longest time I had realized, whether consciously or not, that the difference between my family and others did not end with my parents’ mixed-race marriage. My father’s background, full of political drama as it was, exceeded the absurdity of political events in Russian novels. In 1965 a blood-filled tragedy had taken place in Indonesia, yet Ayah spoke of the events that had occurred only in snippets and ever so sporadically. The older I became, the more stories I learned about that distant homeland of mine, invariably shown in documentary films as blue seas and waving palm trees.

  Never, not even once, was I able to pry from my father the complete, comprehensive, and detailed story. I never really knew, for instance, how Ayah and his friends had been able to leave Indonesia to attend a conference in Santiago (followed by conferences in Havana and Peking) with only a metaphorical knapsack on their backs nor why they had never been able to return to their homeland. Wasn’t that completely absurd? And why was it that Ayah left Indonesia to begin with? Nobody ever told me why.

  At some point, I remember Maman telling me that in Indonesia anyone thought to be a member of the Communist Party, or a member of the family of a communist, had been hunted down, jailed, or made to disappear, just like that. Hearing these stories from Maman and Ayah, I didn’t know which regime was more frightening: Indonesia, with its civilian-dressed dictator, or Latin America, with its generals.

  So who was my father and who were his friends, my “uncles” Nugroho, Tjai, and Risjaf? Why couldn’t they go home? Why were they on a wanted list? The story I got from Ayah and his three friends was piecemeal at best and often not even consistent. According to Professor Dupont, Ayah and his friends were a part of Indonesia’s unwritten history. Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?

  What did he mean? And did I really have to make a record of this absurdity as my final assignment?

  April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire.

  NARAYANA LAFEBVRE

  “LIKE AN ANGEL, DESCENDED FROM HEAVEN…” That is what Gabriel Lafebvre said of his wife, Jayanti Ratmi. I was struck by the phrase. At the age of fifty-six, Gabriel was still a striking-looking man whose eyes were a seine for the sky. I’ve always believed that a man with stars in his eyes is likely to be a friendly man. And the amity I found in him, I came to see had been inherited by son, Narayana Lafebvre.

  Narayana, whom everyone calls Nara, was given his name by his mother, Jayanti Ratmi, a Javanese dancer who loved the stories of the Mahabharata. She also gave him his adorable cleft chin.

  That I spent most of my weekends with the Lafebvre family wasn’t because of the similarity between Nara’s family mine—his also being a mixed French-Indonesian family domiciled in Paris. That was pure coincidence. There was something else, something more significant, more magnetic about his family—something that I found calming when I was with them. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was their comfortable apartment, with a batik tablecloth here and a wayang puppet there—enough touches to show the Indonesian influence, but not like a craft store or a tourism bureau. It might also have been because of their dinners, whose light conversation invited intimacy, something I had rarely ever or possibly never felt again after my father left us.

  I never tried to figure out why I was more comfortable lounging in the den at Nara’s home than in my father’s apartment. Ayah’s collection of books was, in fact, much larger and with more interesting titles. I knew that I could easily spend hours on end talking to Nara, because the both of us were drawn to books of literature and philosophy. Nara had finished his studies in English literature at the Sorbonne and intended to pursue a master’s degree in comparative cultural studies at Cambridge University in the autumn of this year. Meanwhile, I was still working on my final assignment for my bachelor’s in cinematography. But, again, it was not just Nara that made me want to spend my free time in his parents’ apartment. His parents’ living room and their kitchen exuded a warm welcome and promise of comfort in any season.

  I preferred helping Tante Jayanti slice garlic, grind spices, and grill meat to cooking at my parents’ apartment in the Marais. Even conversations about wayang characters, which I had engaged in with my parents when I was small, transferred themselves to the living room and terrace of the Lafebvre family apartment. Maybe it was because I simply liked to see how happy and comfortable this couple was with each other—or maybe because I was trying to recapture something that I had lost. I didn’t know.

  I always imagined Jayanti Ratmi’s marriage to Gabriel Lafebvre to be just like that of the famed French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, with the Javanese dancer Ratna Mohini in decades past. I often asked Gabriel to repeat the story of how he had come to be entranced by his future wife when he saw her perform a bedoyo court dance at an event sponsored by the Indonesian embassy in Paris. (What I didn’t ask was what the staff of the
embassy was like or how the Indonesian diplomats had treated them—those same people who had no time for my father or his friends.)

  Gabriel traded in exports and imports and had a wide circle of friends in the diplomatic community, including one who had worked at the Indonesian embassy. That night, his friend had invited Gabriel to try Indonesian food at an embassy reception being held in honor of Kartini Day. And it was there, at that celebration, that he met his “angel, descended from heaven.”

  Gabriel and Tante Jayanti seemed to like me, or at least to accept my presence in Nara’s life. If they had their reservations, I could understand. Nara, their beloved and only son, was in a relationship with the daughter of an Indonesian political exile. They would have known full well that my father and his friends did not enjoy close links with the Indonesian embassy. But perhaps because I was the daughter she’d never had, Tante Jayanti like to share mother-daughter things with me. One of them was showing me her collection of kebaya. To me, a kebaya is the most demure piece of women’s apparel there is. Long in the sleeve and long at the waist, this high-buttoned blouse completely covers a woman’s upper body, yet there is no second guessing the wearer’s shape.

  And Tante Jayanti did have a wonderful collection. She owned all sorts of kebaya, in both short and long styles. She also had an Encim kebaya, my favorite kind, the style that Eurasian and Chinese-Indonesian women in Indonesia typically used to wear. All of them were very feminine with intricate lacework that was the equal of any piece of Dutch or Belgian embroidery.

  I had never seen a woman as beautiful as Tante Jayanti in a kebaya. I was convinced that the kebaya had been created for angels like her, who had descended from heaven to earth.

  “I’m not an angel,” Tante Jayanti said to me, with a smile. “Our meeting—that of Gabriel and I—was simply a sign that we had to be together.” Her voice was as soft as silk.

  I was entranced. A sign?

  “I bet you’re talking to Jim Morrison!”

  Oh, Nara… He knew that whenever something was on my mind, I would try to regain my composure at Père Lachaise Cemetery, the city’s huge garden cemetery in the 20th arrondissement. There I could sit for an entire day, reading in front of the huge gravestone of Oscar Wilde, which was as flamboyant in its style as the author himself; or rest beside the tomb of Honoré de Balzac. But most often I spent my time in Division Six, sitting next to the simple grave of Jim Morrison as I intoned the lyrics of “Light My Fire. My father still owned several albums by The Doors, which he treasured as much as he did his Indonesian records and cassettes by Koes Plus, Bing Slamet, Nick Mamahit, and Jack Lemmers.

  As it was still fairly early in the day, the throngs of autumn visitors had yet to flock to the place. Nara sat beside me as I stared at Jim Morrison’s tombstone. My mother had introduced me to his music; and apart from his status as a musical legend he was, for me, a true and genuine songsman.

  “‘Light My Fire’ is such an amazing song, a true work of poetry.”

  Nara knew me well, both my nature and my habits. If I wasn’t ready to speak about something, I would choose a topic of conversation that had nothing to do with the subject at hand, which was, in this instance, my final assignment and Professor Dupont.

  “Do you remember the first time we met?” I said to Nara, again avoiding the day’s most important theme in hopes that he would not pressure me.

  “Of course I do—at the Beaubourg library, when I caused you to drop that big stack of books you’d just borrowed.”

  Yes, that was Narayana: my savior angel who immediately and profusely apologized for knocking against me and then helped me to pick up the numerous heavy volumes I had borrowed. I remember the incident clearly. We were both freshman at the Sorbonne and still completely green behind the ears. How could I ever forget that event? But had there been a special sign, something telling us that we were fated to be together?

  My father often said that “Light My Fire” by The Doors and the songs of Led Zeppelin were songs that always reminded him of the early days of his marriage to my mother, after the May Revolution in Paris.

  “Your mother and Paris set me on fire,” said my father, who was more than prone to romanticizing the past. What songs were playing when I first met Nara? I couldn’t say for sure.

  “What’s up?” Nara asked, interrupting my daydream.

  I shook my head but finally saw that it was time to enter the territory of Professor Dupont and my final assignment: Indonesia. I told Nara quickly what Dupont had advised, in just three short sentences. I didn’t wish to rerun the entire embarrassing episode.

  “Indonesia? He’s suggesting that you make a documentary about Indonesian politics?”

  “Not ‘suggesting.’ ‘Commanding’ is the word. He said that I have to make something related to Indonesia, that I need to explore my roots. Seek out what it is that has shaped me—or some kind of philosophical thing like that.”

  Nara frowned, but he didn’t seem put off by the idea, not like I was. In fact, he seemed to be mulling over my professor’s crazy suggestion.

  “Alors…”

  “Alors, quoi?”

  “It’s not actually a bad idea.”

  I looked at Nara’s handsome face. He mostly took after the Lafebvre side of the family: blue eyes, brown hair, fair skin, and rosy lips. His aquiline nose divided his face symmetrically and his cleft chin made most female students want to make love with him. Everyone said that Nara’s face belonged on a Hollywood billboard, pasted next to that of an equally attractive actress in some kind of fluffy romantic film comedy with an implausibly happy ending to its story. Justifiably, I suppose, Nara always got mad at me when I posed such a notion—linking his handsome appearance to something shallow and stupid. Being typically French, Nara was cynical about most things American. He had inherited a true French character. I saw almost no trace of Jayanti Ratmi in him, except for his fluency in Indonesian, and his academic interest in Asia.

  “Didn’t I once suggest that you make a documentary film about Indonesia—which you angrily dismissed?”

  “Oui, I remember. But, Nara, this is about a country I have never even been to. The only way I know it is through the books my parents own, the literature I’ve read, and a few National Geographic documentary films. It’s a country I know from the stories my father and his three friends have told me, whose firsthand knowledge of the country ended in 1965.”

  “That’s more than enough for your final assignment. This is for your B.A., after all, not your master’s or PhD. Your father and his friends are witnesses to history, Lintang.”

  I said nothing.

  “You have the discipline. I know you can finish the work on time,” said Nara with conviction in his voice.

  What Nara should have understood is that this was not an academic problem. He’d already known me three years and was sensitive enough to know that this problem was far more complex for me than simply a matter of writing a scenario, filming interviews, and editing my film record.

  Nara held my chin, then stroked it with his hand.

  “It might be time for you to see your father.”

  “I went by the restaurant this morning, but couldn’t make myself step inside.”

  I stood. Goodbye, Jim. I want to say hello to my friend Oscar.

  Monsieur Oscar Wilde, please tell me if it’s important for a person to look for her roots when she is already a tree, standing tall? You are an Irish poet, a tree who openly flaunted your sexual orientation in an age when such things were secret and not spoken of in polite society; the novelist who created Dorian Gray, a man of androgynous beauty immortalized in a painting that aroused its viewers. Tell me whether a tree, which stands upright and whose branches reach firmly for the sky, should bow in search of its roots for a name? For an identity?

  Neither Oscar nor his bones offered a reply. The grandiosity of Wilde’s tomb, with its sumptuously curved stonework, seemed to accurately reflect the nature of the man as described in his biogra
phies: flamboyant and flirtatious. His lovely tombstone did not condescend to answer my question. But what I could see when I looked at it were images of my father at a much younger age walking among the tombstones of famous people, while holding the small hand of a girl seven years of age. I watched as he explained to the girl how even a warrior as great as Bhisma could fall in the battle of all battles; and how Bhisma could not die, even with his body pierced by hundreds of arrows from the bows of Srikandi and Arjuna, because he alone had been granted the boon to choose the time of his death.

  “Bhisma chose to die the day after the war had ended,” Ayah said to her, “and when he did die, his death was witnessed by the Pandawa brothers, their Kurawa cousins, and the gods.”

  I saw the seven-year-old girl pestering her father with innumerable questions. What a nagger she was! Tales from the wayang world, the land of the shadow theater, were as fascinating as they were baffling for her. How incredible that a person whose body was shot full of arrows could still choose his time of death.

  Ayah then spoke to the young girl about the wayang characters who were closest to his own heart: Bima and Ekalaya.

  It took a few moments for me to realize that the seven-year-old girl who was there, playing with her father, in Père Lachaise Cemetery, was I. How very odd it was, I thought, that when I was such a young age, my father had introduced to me the concept of death through stories from the Mahabharata: about Bhisma, who chose his time of death; about Bima, who was forced to agree to Krisna’s plan to sacrifice Gatotkaca as bait to Karna in the duel against Arjuna; and about Ekalaya, the best bowman in the universe, who had even once defeated Arjuna.

  But in those stories, Ayah also inserted his own hopes, whose tone was that of a person’s final wishes: “Like Bhisma, I too would like to choose the place where I take my final rest,” he said half to himself.

  At first I thought Ayah wanted to be buried here, in Père Lachaise, among the writers, musicians, and philosophers he admired. I didn’t know at the time that that would have been impossible. And it wasn’t until later, when I was some years older, that I realized my father wanted to be buried in Indonesia. When Ayah introduced me to the poetry of Chairil Anwar, only then did I come to realize that, like the poet, he wanted to be buried in a Jakarta cemetery called Karet, a name that sounded so exotic to my ear.