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by Leila S. Chudori

  Nara slowly approached and put his hand on my arm, a soothing feeling.

  “This is an anxious spring,” he said, looking at Oscar Wilde’s tomb.

  I could never be angry with Nara for long. Next to Maman, he most understood my heart. He knew there was inside me a space I didn’t know, an odd and alien space called Indonesia. Although we were the same generation and both born in Paris to French and Indonesian parents, the difference between us was that Nara and his parents could go in and out of Indonesia freely, while Ayah and his three friends would always be repulsed by a force called the “September 30 Movement”—to which the Indonesian government had later come to affix the phrase “of the Indonesian Communist Party.”

  I tried to explain the meaning of this force for Nara. “The problem is, if I were to make such a documentary film, the subject could only be the testimony of Indonesian political exiles. I wouldn’t be able to go to Indonesia to interview government officials. I wouldn’t even be able to set foot in the Indonesian embassy to record their official stance on political exiles like my father, Om Nug, Om Tjai, and Om Risjaf. And…

  “Why can’t you go to the embassy?” Nara interrupted. “If you really want to, I can introduce you to people there.”

  “No…”

  “Why not? The embassy is always hosting one event or another. Almost anyone can attend and they’re always a good excuse for getting a good Indonesian meal. In fact, I have an invitation from the embassy to celebrate Kartini Day. What a brilliant idea!” Nara announced. “You really do have to see another side of Indonesian society—on the opposite side of the spectrum from the one at Tanah Air Restaurant.”

  I scratched my chin.

  “Come on, what do you say?”

  “But they might…”

  “As you yourself implied, if you really want to be an observer or, in your case, a student with a research assignment, then you have to get to know the other side of things, the people who stand opposite your father and his friends. There’s no need to be afraid. They’re not going to chuck you out the door.”

  “But they might say something bad about my father in front of me.”

  “It’s a celebration. Nobody’s going to do anything to ruin the party. You can be my date. We can go there to study the enemy’s movements.”

  “They’re my enemies, not yours. Your family is on good terms with all of them.”

  “Whatever… But let’s go. If you find yourself growing uncomfortable, we’ll just leave and go home.”

  “T’es fou! You’re crazy,” I said.

  “And you can wear a kebaya! It’s Kartini Day, after all. All the women will be dressed up in beautiful kebaya and there will be lots of good food.”

  Hmmm, a kebaya… My heart began to waver. To waver because of kebaya… I had fallen in love with kebaya not because of Kartini Day—an annual celebration where Nara said women were expected to dress like Kartini, Indonesia’s proto-feminist whose every image shows her dressed in a sarong and kebaya with her hair in a low chignon—but because of its sensuous shape which serves to accentuate a woman’s beauty. The kebaya obeyed, did not oppose, the shape of a woman’s body. And always complementing the kebaya was a selendang, a simple but elegant long scarf which became an extension of a woman hands, slicing the air when she danced.

  Nara slowly rubbed his lips against mine. A second reason for me to waver. I loved his kisses. He was always able to excite me.

  “Kartini Day? You know, I’ve never read her book of letters. Do you think I should…”

  “Good lord. You can research Kartini later. I bet you could count on one hand the number of Indonesians who have actually read From Darkness to Light. This is a ceremonial event, OK?”

  “Do you think I should wear a kebaya?”

  “Oui. A kebaya, a selendang, and all the other garb.”

  Nara kissed me again. This time for a much longer time.

  I first knew of kebaya from the photographs of my parents’ wedding. The pictures held a promise of something for me in the future. In them, Maman looked beautiful. Ayah, too, looked dashing in his suit, and the two of them were full of smiles. Now they were divorced, but the image of my mother’s beautiful white kebaya, a gift to her from my father’s family, remained clear in my memory.

  Earlier today, I rushed to the Beaubourg library to find a copy of From Darkness to Light, the English translation of Door Duisternis tot Licht, a collection of letters from the aristocratic young woman Kartini dating from the end of the nineteenth century to her early death in childbirth at the age of twenty-four in 1904.

  When I was in high school, Ayah had told me about Kartini and her struggle against Javanese feudalism for the advancement of women’s rights, but I had never read her letters. Fortunately, the Beaubourg library had a copy of the English translation and I was able to read about half of the book before I was forced to return home. Not too bad, I thought. At the very least, I wouldn’t appear to be completely stupid if anyone asked me about Kartini at the embassy celebration. But more important for me was that the celebration gave me the opportunity to wear a kebaya. I chose to wear an Encim kebaya, a pink one my mother owned. From Nara’s reaction, who said nothing except with his eyes, I knew I was right in my choice of this warm and cheerful color.

  But Wisma Indonesia—the official Indonesian ambassador’s residence—was, for me, far from warm. This was my first time to the ambassador’s home, an immense, ostentatious building in Neully sur Seine, an elite area of Paris. Was Indonesia really a “developing country,” I wondered when seeing the place.

  Upon entering the gate to the residence, I could hear the lively sound of gamelan music playing somewhere in the distance. Balinese gamelan music, for sure, with its rapidly paced notes punctuated by a hammering sound. I was trying to remember where I had first heard Balinese gamelan music—was it from a cassette of my father’s or one that Uncle Nug owned?—when a nudge of Nara’s hand on my elbow signaled me to enter the outer grounds, an area already full of attractive and well-dressed guests.

  Most of the Indonesian women wore their hair in a high bouffant style, ratted underneath and sleekly smoothed over. Each must have used an entire can of hairspray to make their hair stand so stiffly high and in place. Weren’t they worried about being caught by a gust of wind? Or maybe they had birds resting inside their chignons, which resembled swallows’ nests.

  The men were inconsistent in their apparel. Some wore suits and ties, but many others wore long-sleeved batik shirts. I favored the batik, which I thought was Indonesia’s most brilliant discovery. Ayah told me that his mother, my late grandmother, had been a skilled batik maker. To this day I am amazed at how a person with the use of just two fingers is able to create a painting so absolutely feminine on a stretch of cloth. When I was a little girl, Om Tjai once invited a batik artist to demonstrate her work at Tanah Air Restaurant. Every day after school, for the duration she was there, I would sit staring wide-eyed at the woman as she demonstrated her skills.

  When Nara and I stepped into the portico of the residence where the ambassador and his wife were standing, we greeted the couple with a salaam, a quick rise of the hands, palms pressed together, our fingertips touching theirs. Because there were so many guests, I figured our hosts would not remember each and every one of the people they’d greeted. Inside the residence, we were greeted by a woman with a high bouffant who was dressed in a red kebaya and whose perfume was almost overpowering.

  She motioned for us to proceed to the garden. “Go right in,” the woman said to Nara. “You know your way to the buffet. But first tell me, who is this young woman with you? She’s very lovely.”

  “Tante Sur, let me introduce you to Lintang,” Nara said straightaway, quickly covering his gaffe in not having introduced me immediately.

  “Ayuneee. Truly beautiful. New to Paris, is she? I must say you do have an eye for the girls,” she said to Nara as if I had no ears. “Go in and help yourselves. There’s goat satay, gulai, and lo
ts of other food.”

  After saying that, this Tante Sur, who apparently was chairwoman or some such thing for the event’s organizing committee, immediately rushed from our side to give orders to her various assistants and liveried servants. In the distance, through a set of double doors at the rear of the large hall, I could see a stage in the rear garden of the residence. Now I knew why the sound of the gamelan music was so clear. The music was live, coming from a complete gamelan orchestra, not from a cassette. On the stage was a dancer, performing a Balinese pendet, a ritual dance of welcome. I was just admiring the long buffet table heaped with enough food for at least a thousand guests, when two young men of about Nara’s age came up to us. They shook Nara’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. One of the two was looking at me so hard, I quickly pretended to be busy trying to choose what to drink from among the many choices. Did I want a lychee drink or cendol on shaved ice?

  “Lintang, this is Yos,” Nara said.

  The man named Yos, who was dressed in a blue batik shirt, immediately shook my hand and broke into laughter. “No wonder you’ve never introduced us before. What a looker!” he said to Nara.

  Yos continued to hold my hand as his eyes rolled upward in their sockets.

  “And this handsome guy…”

  “I’m Raditya,” the man said, not giving Nara a chance to finish his introduction. “I’m single, not married, and don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Raditya was the one who had been staring so intently at me. From his way of dressing—a suit coat and shirt but no tie—I guessed him to be a junior diplomat at the Indonesian embassy. My surprise and unease with the manners of Nara’s two friends hadn’t quite receded when three more of his male friends came up to us, all with broad smiles on their faces.

  “Lintang, this is Hans. This good-looking guy is Iwan. And this big hunk of a man is Galih.”

  “Hans, why don’t you get her something to drink?” This was Raditya giving orders. “What would you like?” he then asked me. “Orange juice? Or maybe cendol or a cold lychee drink?”

  I didn’t know how to react to this man’s aggressive behavior. I looked to Nara for help, but he just rolled his eyes and smiled.

  Hans then reappeared with a glass of cold orange juice and offered it to me.

  “Merci.”

  “Tu es étudiante à la Sorbonne?”

  “Oui, I’m in my last year.”

  Yos stepped forward to nudge Hans aside.

  “That’s a very beautiful kebaya,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “Careful now, Yos,” Nara cautioned, shaking his head. “It’s my mother’s; I don’t have any of my own.” I said with a smile to Nara, who I could see had begun to become irritated.

  “Would you like to have some made? I know this seamstress, Bu Narni, who specializes in kebaya. She’s the one behind most of the kebaya and baju kurung that the women here are wearing.” Yos wasn’t slowing down. “She’s here tonight. Come on, I’ll introduce you to her.”

  Hans now stepped in. “Don’t listen to him, Lintang. He’s married and has kids besides. But I’m still a bachelor and I promise always to be faithful.”

  Hans took my fingers and kissed the back of my hand. I turned to Nara who gave me a look of resignation, as if to say “What am I supposed to do?” It’s true. It probably would have been useless for him to even try. For these friends of his, hitting on women was probably their only entertainment. Laughing loudly, they resembled a pack of male gorillas who’d never seen a female gorilla before.

  It was at that moment that I realized something: this Kartini Day celebration had nothing whatsoever to do with Raden Ajeng Kartini or the ideals she expressed in her letters. Kartini Day was an excuse for people to get together and eat; for women to rat their hair and put on kebaya; and for men to show off their best batik shirts.

  More than an hour had passed since we’d arrived at the residence, and not once in my conversation with other guests had anyone mentioned Kartini, that young woman from Jepara whose date of birth is one of Indonesia’s most important days of commemoration. I began to ask myself if any of the other guests had even read Kartini’s letters; her thoughts on the challenges to education for the native population in the colonial era were far advanced for the times.

  Pretending to have to go to the ladies room, I placed my glass of orange juice on the table and left Nara’s group of friends. As I was walking away, I let my eyes roam the garden. The pendet dancer had left the stage, and now there was being held a fashion show of sorts, with a number of very attractive Indonesian women showing off various kinds of kebaya. As fascinated as I was by the apparel, tonight I was far more interested in observing the guests—some of whom I could see were also studying me with a range of expressions on their faces. Some seemed to be trying to remember my face. Others stuck out their lower lips at my sight; but most gave me a friendly and welcoming smile, just as Nara’s friends had done.

  I was quite sure that most of the guests didn’t recognize me and didn’t know who I was. But I was also sure there were others who did and were whispering about me—that I was the daughter of Dimas Suryo, the Indonesian political exile who had found himself stranded in Paris and was never allowed to return home. When I went to take a glass of lychee and ice, I heard at my back a number of men engaged in a conversation about me. I kept my back to them and listened.

  “Who the devil brought her here?”

  “What does it matter? She’s not her father.”

  “But have you forgotten government policy?”

  “But that ban is for former political prisoners working as civil servants, or as teachers or journalists. What’s the big deal about her coming to a party?”

  “It’s no big deal, but we did get that notice from Jakarta.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That we’re not to frequent Tanah Air Restaurant; that all the people there are communists.”

  “That’s not what it said. It said…”

  “What does it matter any way? What matters is the food and they have good nasi kuning and fried sambal.”

  “The problem isn’t about us going to Tanah Air Restaurant. The problem is that she’s here and that, that she’s…”

  “That she’s what?”

  “That she’s beautiful!”

  At that point, I snuck away, distancing myself from the young diplomats busily debating my presence, unaware that I, the uninvited guest, was able to hear what they were saying. I safely returned to Nara’s circle of friends, who were still razzing him.

  Although I continued to find the behavior of Nara’s friends to be juvenile, after the conversation I had just overhead, I now enjoyed their japes and jibes. At the very least, they had accepted me into their presence without making an issue of my parentage. Furthermore, they didn’t seem to care that my father was a political exile who was considered an enemy of the Indonesian government. But standing there, in the midst of all those people, I felt like there were hundreds of eyes staring at my back.

  Across the garden I noticed a cluster of women with big hair and beautiful kebaya in conversation; they kept turning their heads to look in my direction. I felt incredibly thirsty. Not conscious of doing so, I had gulped down the entire contents of my glass of iced lychee. A few seconds later, Tante Sur with the red kebaya suddenly appeared and was standing beside Nara and taking his hand.

  “Naraaaa,” she said in a cooing tone. “Come with me, will you?” She then gave me a big smile. “I just need to borrow him for a second.”

  Ostensibly, Tante Sur wanted to talk to Nara about something in secret, but she only pulled him a couple meters from our circle and then spoke to him in a voice loud enough for the rest of us to hear.

  “Where is your mother, Nara? Why didn’t she come tonight?” Tante Sur pretended to whisper.

  “She’s with my father in Brussels, on business.”

  “Is that your girlfriend, Nara?”

  “Yes, Tante, she is.”<
br />
  “Oh, not Sophie anymore?”

  “Sophie…?”

  I snuck a glance at Tante Sur. Her head was thrust towards Nara as if about to discuss a bank heist. “I was just talking to Om Marto, and he said your girlfriend is Dimas Suryo’s daughter.”

  “That’s right, Tante.”

  Restraining myself from turning to look at Nara and Tante Sur, I pretended to study the name cards Hans and Raditya had just given to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tante Sur do a double take.

  “But, Nara,” she said in the voice of a mother chastising her five-year-old son, “Om Marto mentioned the government’s continued stress on the need for ‘political hygiene.’”

  Nara burst into laughter. I knew he was laughing at the euphemism the woman had used. The original Indonesian term, bersih lingkungan, could also be translated as “environmentally clean.” The sound of his laughter was one of disgust.

  “Excuse me, Tante Sur, but I really don’t think that Om Marto or any of the other diplomats are going to be admonished because Lintang came to a kebaya fashion show held to commemorate Kartini Day. Enough said, Tante.”

  A few seconds later Nara was again at my side. He took the glass from my hand and put it on a side table, then took my arm and said that it was time to go home. I could see a look of anger on his face.

  In the taxi on the way to my mother’s apartment, where I was going to stay that night, Nara said almost nothing at all. When we arrived at my mother’s apartment building and got out of the vehicle, we stopped and stood together on the sidewalk outside.

  “Nara?”

  He looked at me.

  “That talk about ‘bersih lingkungan’ and the need for political hygiene, is that some kind of rule set down in writing?”