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by Leila S. Chudori

  Lintang mused. If it had been Hananto and not her father who had gone to Santiago, her father would never have met her mother and she would not exist.

  Lintang continued going through the stack of letters until she came to another one from her uncle Aji, but this was one that time had not served well. So faded its ink and so fragile the paper, her father had placed it in a protective plastic sleeve. In sections of the letter the ink had faded so much she found it almost impossible to decipher. It was written in “1968,” but she couldn’t read the month or date.

  … 1968

  Dear Mas Dimas,

  Now that we’ve moved to Jakarta, I finally can give you some detail on what happened in Solo. In Solo, I was much too paranoid to write at length about the hell that the city became after September 1965. Even now, three years after the tragedy, it seems like only yesterday the world was turned upside down. Imagine: three years later and we still live in fear! How did it all happen? How did our hometown come to be divided into two ever opposing camps—with one in support of the PKI and the other against the Party—when previous to that time differences in opinion were accepted and tolerated? I remember you telling me before you left for Santiago that the pro-PKI people had become ever more aggressive in their tactics and had begun to go after their opponents. Maybe that’s why, after September 30, the table turned. But what I witnessed wasn’t just a matter of anti-PKI people getting revenge for the past actions of PKI supporters. A concerted effort was made by the military to inflame the enmity of the one camp towards the other, so much so that the hunting down and slaughter of communists came to be seen as normal.

  I remember in mid-October, two or three weeks after the events of September 30, military troops arriving at Balapan train station. They weren’t brought in just to tear down anti-military posters or to help clean up the town; they were brought in to stir people up and drive them to burn and destroy all Communist Party offices, symbols, and equipment. By this time the PKI in Solo was completely paralyzed and powerless—at least that’s what was reported in the news. With them now so weak, I thought the madness would end and the situation would be brought under control. In fact, it was allowed to spin further out of control.

  One day when I left the house to send a telegram, I heard that the military had embarked on a coordinated roundup of senior PKI officials who were said to be hiding in the Sambeng area of Sidorejo. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but I heard it from Om Kiasno.

  Even after the Party leaders had been arrested, the hunt continued, but now they were bringing in anyone thought to be sympathetic to the communists: mothers, wives, and friends. That was what made me worried: thinking of Mother being hauled into the city square where people were being held. Fortunately, Om Kiasno had enough power and authority to prevent that from happening. It was only because of him that Mother and I weren’t touched, though we were interrogated several times.

  Now in Jakarta, even though we feel we still need a pair of eyes on our backs, we can at least pass the days a bit more calmly. It’s not that Jakarta itself is any safer but, for us at least, there is now a distance between ourselves and the calamity that happened in Solo. For the time being, at least.

  I hope you are well. As soon as I find more information about Surti and the children, I’ll send you a cable.

  Your loving brother,

  Aji Suryo

  Lintang shivered to think of how awful it must have been to live through that period of time. It was lucky her two cousins, Uncle Aji’s children, hadn’t yet been born. Lintang then removed another letter from her uncle, this one relatively recent, having been written in 1994.

  Jakarta, June 1994

  Dear Mas Dimas,

  I just watched a news program on television about an incident that’s as shocking as it is disturbing. Last month the Indonesian government banned two news magazines, Tempo and Editor, and a tabloid newspaper Detik—which, quite naturally, angered the students and political activists, who took to the streets and staged a demonstration outside the Department of Information building on Merdeka Barat, which is only a few hundred meters away from the presidential palace. Rendra was there, reading his poetry. The crowd held aloft banners protesting the ban. The military came and victims fell. They arrested Rendra (but later let him go) and beat the painter Semsar Siahaan so bad they broke the bones in his legs.

  I know that the New Order government has more power than ever before, but the ban of those magazines and newspaper indicates a level of arrogance that is beyond belief. They did it because they knew they could do it and get away with it without there being any impact whatsoever on their continuation in power. The students and activists can protest all they want, but the noise they make is little more than the buzzing of a mosquito waiting to be slapped. The (Western) world may grumble, but the Indonesian government could care the less; their ears are plugged and sealed. It’s all so easy. Life goes on, “aman sentosa,” as our Javanese president is prone to say, in a situation of safety and security.

  What is the news of Lintang? She must be a high school senior now. Is her plan to go to the Sorbonne working out? I always pray for her success.

  Andini is preparing for her final high school examinations and is experiencing a bit of stress. She hopes to get into the Faculty of Letters at the University of Indonesia. Rama meanwhile has just done something both startling and worrisome: he applied to and was accepted for employment at PT Cita Karya, one of the state-owned construction companies in Jakarta. Obviously, he didn’t use the Suryo name on his application form. Ever since his acceptance into the firm, he’s rarely been home to visit except at the time of the Idul Fitri holidays.

  Retno sends her warm regards. If you know anyone coming to Jakarta, let me know and I’ll find the cloves and other spices you want. And, of course, if there are any new books you want, tell me and I’ll pick them up as well.

  In closing, give my love to Vivienne, Mas Nug, Bung Risjaf, and Bung Tjai. And a big hug for Lintang!

  Yours in Peace,

  Aji Suryo

  Lintang leaned back against the chair and thought of her uncle’s family. She had never met her two first cousins, only seen their pictures. What she knew of them she had learned first from her father, when he would tell stories about his brother, and then, when she was older, from her own correspondence with Andini. She had met her uncle Aji just once, when he came to Europe for office-related work and took some extra days off to come to Paris to see his brother, whom he hadn’t seen in the flesh in more than a couple decades. Even though she was only in primary school at the time, she would never forget how long the two brothers had embraced and how they had talked as they smoked and drank coffee through the night and into the morning. That was the only time her mother hadn’t grumbled about the ashtray full of butts and the ashes scattered everywhere.

  That visit was when Lintang learned a bit more about her two cousins, Rama and Andini, enough to make them more real for her. Rama was in senior high school; Andini was still in primary school, just like herself. Om Aji told her that Andini liked to read, just like her; so that same evening she begged her mother to take her to Shakespeare & Co. to buy some English-language children’s books. Lintang willingly sacrificed her small allowance so that her cousin could read the books that she was then reading: Little Women; an English translation of Le Petit Prince; and an abridged English-language edition of Les Misérables.

  Sometime after Om Aji returned to Jakarta, Lintang received a thank-you letter from Andini for the gift of books she’d sent. Thereafter, the two of them soon became pen pals. Lintang was especially pleased to have a cousin like Andini who, like herself, was a fanatic reader. Over time, and with the advent of the Internet and their subscription to e-mail accounts two years previously, the traditional snail-mail exchange of letters between the cousins had changed into a rapid exchange of ideas through the virtual world.

  Lintang imagined meeting her cousin for the first time and how happy she would be. Having grow
n up as an only child, she had often wished for a sister or brother. She had some distant cousins from her mother’s side of the family; but since her mother’s brother, her Uncle Jean, had never married, she had no close cousins in France. She was excited and looking forward to meeting this sister-like cousin with whom she had corresponded for so many years.

  Lintang’s thoughts returned to her father’s cache of correspondence. Looking through the stack, she found several more from Aji but then, when she saw one with a completely different kind of penmanship, her fingers stopped searching. She removed the letter from the pile. Surti Anandari. Her fingers trembled. The stationery had yellowed and the ink was somewhat faded, but she could still read the words clearly.

  Jakarta, December 1968

  Dear Dimas,

  I don’t know whether you will receive this letter or not. After having been detained for several months at the Budi Kemuliaan detention center, I am now home.

  In the many times I was interrogated, I didn’t know what to say and didn’t know how to answer their questions whenever they asked me about Hananto, because I really didn’t know where he was. I wasn’t lying then and I never will lie. I never knew what Hananto was up to—either in matters of love or politics. But they didn’t believe me. Or simply didn’t want to believe me.

  Since they captured Hananto last June, we’ve heard nothing from him directly. After he disappeared in October 1965, I only heard about—but didn’t actually know—how he was able to move about, like a shadow in the mist, from one village to another, from one city to another. I only heard of his peregrinations through the wind. And more than that, through silence.

  For the last three years, I have faced calamity, which was a risk I took on when I married Hananto. In each session, the interrogators threw at me the same set of questions from morning till night, with breaks of only a few minutes in duration. Sometimes the interrogators were polite. More often they shouted the same questions over and over like a cracked LP. Did I know about Hananto’s activities, and what kind of activities his friends were engaged in? Did I know about the meetings that Hananto attended?

  But if I had to choose between the two kinds of interrogators who questioned me, I would choose the one who shouted and screamed at me rather than the soft-spoken one, who asked in a mild-mannered tone what I and Hananto did in bed. One interrogator, a middle-aged man, was truly vile. The day it was his turn to find out where Hananto was hiding—Was he with some family member? Was he at their home?—he asked his questions with his left hand in his pants pocket all the while. As he slipped in questions about our marital relations, he slowly masturbated. I was so disgusted, I refused to answer his questions. But then he began to ask about Kenanga—how old she was and whether she had begun to menstruate. That, I tell you, Dimas, was the worst kind of mental terror that I experienced! I wasn’t as concerned with Bulan and Alam, as they were still so young. Being just six, Bulan looked on everything happening as a kind of game. In fact some of the guards and interrogators even gave her and Alam toys to play with. Alam was still of the age that he liked to be cuddled by almost anyone. Alam is such a good-looking boy, and with his fair skin and curly hair, many of the inhabitants and detainees of Budi Kemuliaan took pity on him and gave him rice water as a substitute for milk.

  But Kenanga was almost a teenager. She knew that her father was being pursued and that we were being held there because of something he’d done.

  If I wasn’t careful, I feared they might do something to her.

  One day, one of the interrogators politely asked if Kenanga could be assigned to clean one of the rooms in the building. I could say nothing but agree, even though it turns out that her job was to mop up the dried blood on the floor of the torture room. She once found a stingray tail in the room, matted with dried blood—but this she didn’t tell me until a month afterwards. I had been down with a terrible fever for ever so long and she didn’t want to make anything harder for me. She finally told me, crying all the while. She imagined her father being captured and that happening to him as well. She’s seen too much. She’s told me of the men she’s seen, their bodies covered with blood and staggering all the way, as they were moved from one cell to another.

  I write this to you, Dimas, only to share with you and at once thank you for taking the time to send us assistance, even though as an exile you are in difficult straits and don’t know what lies ahead.

  Whatever difficulties we here might face, we know and recognize that you are doing whatever you can to make our lives easier. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know that you are a friend forever.

  Surti Anandari

  Lintang breathed in and out, trying to fathom how her father’s friends and family had coped in such straits, even as she began to become aware of the difficulties that she herself might face after her arrival in Jakarta. The letters she was reading were old ones, written ten, twenty or more years previously, but the Indonesian government now in power was still one and the same.

  Lintang fingered another letter, written with a deft hand on white paper. She studied the penmanship: so neat and written in evenly spaced lines, almost as if by a machine because of its uniformity. The thought occurred to her that Indonesian teachers of penmanship must be very patient. Most of the samples of writing by Indonesians she’d seen were very similar and very neat—far different from the way that she and her French schoolmates wrote, paying little attention to the uniformity of size and shape of the letters they put on papers, not controlling their fingers, and letting them moved as they pleased.

  Jakarta, June 18, 1970

  Om Dimas,

  I feel like the sky in Jakarta has cracked apart and sharp pieces of dark metal are raining down on us.

  There’s no end to the problems affecting us. I don’t know if this is the start or the end of our suffering. For the last month, ever since they executed Bapak, I haven’t been able to function at all. All I’ve been able to do is stay in my room until, finally, it seemed that I became part of the room’s features, no different from the bed or the floor. I felt more useless by the day.

  Exactly a month ago, we were told to come to Salemba Prison in order to see Bapak for the last time. We were given two hours to talk to him before he was to be executed. What were we supposed to say in those two hours when all we could do is imagine him standing in front of a row of men with rifles aimed at him?

  My father held Alam on his lap where he giggled and played with Bapak’s fingers. Just five years old, of course he’s going to look at the sky and see rainbows. Bulan, who had just turned eight, understood the meaning of “coming” and “going,” All she could do was cry and repeatedly ask if she was going to see Bapak again. Mother tried to be strong. She held Bapak’s hand tightly and tried to stop herself from crying. Every once in a while, she would whisper something to him I couldn’t hear.

  Trying to avoid the sadness, I sat as far away from Bapak as possible. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t know what to do to make my body sit up straight when all I really wanted to do was to scream and wail. I didn’t cry and I don’t know why, but I was actually proud not to leave a trail of tears in there. I didn’t want to look at my father’s face, which, on that day, in those two hours, looked so calm and wise. What could have been going through his mind?

  In the last thirty minutes, Bapak came to me, alone. He kneeled beside me and took my hands in his own. “Kenanga,” he said, “you are the tree that protects the entire family. You are the heartbeat of us all…”

  Still trying to avoid looking into his face, I stared down at my shoes, a rundown pair of sneakers I’d been wearing for years, and all I could think about at the time was to wonder where Mother had bought them and what color they once had been. Was it pink or orange? Their color had faded so much and the shoes were so stained, the only way to describe their color was a muddy brown.

  But then, suddenly, I felt my father’s hands holding mine in his own. He said “Kenanga … I beg your forgiveness
for all the trouble I have caused. Because I now must take my leave, I can ask only that you remain strong—for Mother, for Bulan, and for Alam…”

  I hate tears, I hate crying. Tears come and go as they please with no regard to me.

  Kenanga Prawiro

  Lintang felt all her energy exhausted by these blood-filled letters—not only because she was spent from trying to chase away her own tears, crying for the broken family she didn’t know, but because she suddenly felt so close to them all. Reading these blood-filled letters had made her feel bloodied herself. She wanted to find a message that might lift her spirits. Within the pile was one written on light blue paper. The letter was short, the penmanship superb. Jumping to the bottom of the paper, she saw from the signature that it was from her father’s friend, Bang Amir.

  Jakarta, 1969

  My brother Dimas,

  Having received your message, I now write to you. I am sorry for the loss of your mother, Dimas. I kneel and pray to God that He has taken her to His side. I hope that you and our fellow countrymen there in that distant land are strong and in good health.

  Do you remember our discussion that one time about the vacuum that each of us has inside, the one that only you and God can fill, to create a Union between you and God that can never be broken or disturbed by anything or anyone? This is the right time for you to look at that space inside yourself, alone. To converse with it if that is your bent, or to be silent if that is what you choose. Either way, He will listen to you.