History depicts the May 1968 revolution in a heroic light, but when I read historical accounts of the time, I find myself feeling somewhat uneasy; the generation of that time comes across as overly serious and full of themselves. When Maman first used the term coup de foudre in a conversation we were having about the May 1968 movement, I almost choked. The water I’d been drinking immediately surged up the wrong pipe and came out of my nose. The literal meaning of “un coup de foudre” in French is “lightning,” but if used in the context of a meeting between two people which makes their hearts pound, the term is laced with emotion and means “to instantly fall in love.”
Whenever Maman told me how romantic her first meeting with Ayah had been, even after their divorce, I could not stop myself from laughing. Like Maman, I guess—before she met Ayah, that is—I simply rejected the possibility of le coup de foudre. For me, the road to love is much more simple and predictable: two people meet, get to know each other, and gradually find themselves attuned and comfortable with one another. That is love. Love at first sight is a phrase cooked up by greeting-card companies to sell Valentine’s cards and Hollywood, which employs every means to sell love on the big screen. I once suggested to Maman that perhaps she and Ayah thought of May 1968 as such a monumental time for France only because of the meaning it had for them as a couple.
In response to my insolence, she warned me: “Be careful what you say. The time will come when you might have to eat your own words.” And now it seems that time has come and I am being forced to eat my own words.
I’d always been sure that I would never experience what my mother did: being struck helpless by a flash of lightning. I already had Narayana, after all, who could never be described as a bolt of lightning. He was a giant umbrella, protecting me from the threat of storms. Having him, why ever would I worry about being struck by lightning?
Yet, the fact is, I was stuck by le coup de foudre, in the form of a man named Alam: Segara Alam. Tall, with wavy hair, chocolate-colored skin richly darkened by the sun, and chiseled facial features roughened by the stubble of his beard. The shirt he was wearing could barely conceal the muscles of his arms, the breadth of his chest, and the flatness of his stomach. At first I thought he might be an athlete but that guess made no sense at all. After all, I met him at Satu Bangsa, a political activist organization. He was the son of Hananto Prawiro, my father’s friend, but also one of the Jakarta contacts Om Nug had recommended me to meet.
At our initial meeting, Alam didn’t appear enthusiastic to see me. It was as if I was an intrusion on his busy schedule. He kept looking, back and forth, at his watch and his cell phone, which wouldn’t stop ringing and which he declined to turn off. Maybe it was his flashing black eyes, darting here and there, not looking at me; maybe it was his brisk and clipped way of speaking, as sharp as the knife my father used to slice onions; or, quite possibly, it was his dismissive attitude, which said to me that my presence at his office was a waste of time and space and that he had more important work to do. Whatever, I found myself suddenly nervous in his presence and had difficulty forming complete sentences. I sounded stupid when I spoke, especially with my every phrase being immediately contradicted by this supposedly brilliant and experienced activist.
I became irritated with him for constantly disputing whatever I said, and I began to pout—something I find embarrassing—but he still wasn’t in the least bit swayed. With Narayana, I was able to get what I wanted: besting him in arguments (not because I was always right but because he always gave in); the choice of a restaurant; the choice of menu; the choice of where to sleep, at his place or mine; even the choice of position and location when we made love.
Why I suddenly began to think of Nara in the middle of my dialectical duel with this rude individual, I didn’t know; but it was clear that Alam couldn’t hold his tongue when he was impatient or didn’t like the person with whom he was conversing. He refused to let me call him “Mas” even though Ayah had insisted that I was to use this honorific when speaking with Alam and Bimo, because they were ten years older than me.
Initially, at the beginning of our conversation, I thought that Alam might just be testing my knowledge of Indonesia, as if I were a naïve college student who readily accepted whatever she was told. In the end, however, I finally had to conclude, from both his cynical tone of voice and the anti-government protests that were picking up steam—which he pointed out more than once was making his schedule packed—that he would have no free time to give to me and that I would have to do my work without his assistance. But with him being like that, I thought, who would want his help? Enough was enough, I decided. It was time for me to leave. Taking the Titoni watch from my bag, I rose abruptly, and placed it on the desk before him, causing him to stop mid-sentence and look up at me—finally straight in the eye.
“My father sent you this. It was your father’s,” I said before turning and walking away.
Marching out of the Satu Bangsa office, I found myself back in the roar of a Jakarta afternoon. The yowling of three-wheeled bajaj, like that of lawnmowers; the jumble of cars parked every which way, both beside and on the curb; and the pockmarked sidewalk with loose and missing bricks, made me trip several times and swear out loud. Damn, damn, double damn! Why was I suddenly crying? I wasn’t a woman who sniveled. I wanted to walk away from that office with my pride intact. Merde!
“Hey, hey, I’m sorry…”
It was Alam’s voice, behind me. “I’m sorry,” I heard him say again, as he followed at my back along the dusty roadside of Jalan Diponegoro. I did not want to turn around or to look at him. Damn, damn! I was embarrassed by my tears, my runny nose, and the sweat now pouring from my flushed face. I rifled through my bag. God damn it! Why was it was impossible to find my packet of tissues with that snide but attractive man behind me?
That was the moment I felt it. At that moment, he again called my name and put his hand on my arm. What was it called: an electric shock or a bolt of lightning? I didn’t know and I’d suddenly forgotten the three languages that I can speak: French, Indonesian, and English. Through his touch, so shocking in sensation, I felt something from inside of him move into my body, which made my blood move faster. My sudden inability to speak in any of those languages—in any language at all—left me paralyzed. Maybe that was the reason he sought a way to make me speak again. He invited me to go with him to Lubang Buaya to visit the museum there: “Museum of the Treachery of the Indonesian Communist Party.”
The afternoon sun was biting hot and even Alam, who was born and had lived in Jakarta all his life, was constantly having to wipe the sweat from his neck and forehead. And I, being from a country where the sun shone brightly for only four months a year and not nearly as fiercely as it did in Jakarta, could hardly bear the heat. The incredible humidity made me feel like a dampened rag.
In this suffocating weather, with sweat dripping from my brow, I tried to read the booklet which provided explanations about the sites to be found on the museum’s nine-hectare plot. I used the booklet’s table of contents as a guide to what I then visually recorded with my video camera: each of the thirty-four dioramas portraying acts of heinousness allegedly perpetrated by the Indonesian Communist Party. I then understood why Alam had invited me there. Everything must have a starting point, and President Soeharto’s New Order government saw this place and all that was depicted in it as its raison d’être, the very basis for its authority. As if preparing a shooting script for a film, I made notes about each of the dioramas, rooms, and other objects I captured on camera.
“There’s a feature film about it, you know,” Alam said, as if guessing what I was doing. He stood at a distance, leaning against one of the museum’s supporting columns, being careful to not stand too close behind me, so that his reflection wouldn’t appear on the protective glass in front of the dioramas.
“I know,” I said with an air of authority as I shut off my camera, “a three-hour feature film produced by the government in 1984. I�
��ve read about it, but I have yet to see it.”
Groups of primary and secondary schoolchildren on a field trip, I guessed, had filled the museum and stood in lines before the displays, listening to explanations from museum guides. Alam studied the children, many of whom were diligently taking notes, and then looked at me and smiled, as if I were a schoolchild too.
I spoke to several of the teachers who were there to chaperone the school groups, recording my interviews on film. Two of the women teachers told me that a visit to the museum was a requirement for history class. They also confirmed what Alam had just told me, that all students were required to watch the film The Treachery of the September 30 Movement and the Indonesian Communist Party.
“I really must get hold of a copy of that film,” I said to Alam as I approached his side. “Ibu Rahma, one of the teachers I was speaking to, said that the dioramas here are exactly like the scenes from that film.”
I put my video camera in my bag and then touched my cheeks and forehead, which were hot to the touch and glistening with perspiration. Because of my fair complexion, I knew they must have turned a bright red. Maybe that was why Alam was staring at me so intensely. Yet he had been looking at me that way ever since he chased me down at the intersection of Jalan Diponegoro. Now as then, I suddenly felt nervous and hesitated to return his gaze, unsure of what would happen if I did. Alam’s gaze seemed able to penetrate anyone’s body, to infiltrate any defense fort, and with ease his eyes pierced into me. I was bothered and uneasy because I felt that his gaze would leave no shred of privacy in me.
He stepped towards me, took a pack of tissues from his back pocket, and held it out to me. So leery I was of his power, I grabbed the pack from him and sputtered thank you.
“Your face is like boiled crab,” he said with a smile, “red but tasty-looking.”
Hearing him say this, I laughed. We then left the museum, going down the stairs to the courtyard outside, where I took a number of distant shots for footage of the building from the outside.
“You know, I do think I’m hungry for crab, for chili crab, that is,” Alam remarked as if to himself.
Now that was the weirdest non sequitur I’d ever heard, I thought to myself, but then I asked him where one could get good seafood in Jakarta.
He mentioned a number of places, the most popular one being at Ancol Park on the Jakarta bay, but he said that his personal favorite was a place called Kamel in the Kampung Melayu area of South Central Jakarta. The name “Kamel,” he informed me, was an acronym from Kampung Melayu, the name of the area in which it was located, and its specialty was boiled shrimp and crabs with pineapple sauce. Then, with evident hyperbole, he asserted that Kamel also served crabs with the best Padang sauce in the world. Despite the exaggeration, my mouth was beginning to water. I hadn’t ever tried crabs with Padang sauce, I told him hungrily.
Alam told me that when I got around to going to Roda Restaurant—a stop I had to make at the request of Om Nug—he would take me to Kamel, which was close by. But not today, though, because he had to go directly from Lubang Buaya to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, where the demonstration about the government’s plan to raise fuel prices was being held. Bimo and Gilang were already waiting for him. Alam’s cell phone, which had been ringing regularly every twenty minutes, made me quickly apologize to him for taking his time and upsetting his plan to join the protest.
“No problem,” he told me. “The demonstration today is a small one: just a few activist groups and some college students. The big one will be after the government announces the fuel-price increase. When they do that, prices for everything else, staple goods included, are going to follow suit which, at this moment, neither the lower class nor middle classes can afford,” he explained while scanning the roadway outside the museum. “But anyway, it’s time you met Bimo,” he said with a smile. “I’m sure Om Nug is going to demand a full report from you.”
“All right, let’s go meet him. I’ve finished my filming here.”
Out on the street, Alam hailed a taxi to take us back to the center of the city, where he was to meet his friends at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, a favorite site for mass demonstrations. With the traffic so bad that day, it seemed to take forever to get back into town. Even before my arrival in Jakarta, I’d heard of the city’s scathing reputation for its traffic problems, but I never imagined that it would be so bad. The only good thing about the lengthy trip was that it gave me the opportunity to speak at length to Alam. We talked about the museum; about how the New Order government, with its solid hold on power, had propagated an image of evil on the part of its historical enemy and successfully cultivated among Indonesians an irrational fear of and hatred towards the specter of communism; and about the many examples of foreign scholarship containing alternative theories on who was in fact behind the events of 1965.
“‘Communism,’” Alam said, “is now nothing more than a term used to describe objection to the status quo. Because of the ban on books about communism, Indonesians don’t know what communism is. Even university students aren’t allowed to read the works of Karl Marx or interpretations of his theories, unless they somehow manage to read them on the sly. What the government fails to see is that its obsessive paranoia about the subject only heightens people’s curiosity, especially among younger intellectuals.”
Alam took out a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, but then only held it in his hands. I guessed he wanted to smoke but was suppressing the urge. “And if they do learn about Marxian theory, what’s the big deal anyway? By and large, it’s failed everywhere. Nobody here is interested in trying to put it into practice. I’m not. Bimo isn’t either. And this isn’t because of what happened to our families; it’s because of what we’ve read and studied on our own and because of reason.
“I’m looking forward to meeting Bimo,” I told Alam. “Om Nug is forever talking about him, of course, but his name has been mentioned to me by other people as well. From what I gather, the two of you are real close.”
“We’ve been like brothers ever since we were kids. When dealing with bullies, I was his big brother.” Alam glanced at me. “But in terms of girls, he was mine.”
I was curious. “Why’s that?”
“He always gave in, never had the nerve to face down the bullies,” he said.
“No, not that—the second part of your statement. Why was Bimo like your big brother when it came to girls?”
“Oh, that…” he said but then stopped speaking, his hand gripping the pack of cigarettes.
“If you want to smoke, go ahead,” I told him, feeling pity for him as he kept turning over the cigarette packet. “Just crack open the window a bit!” I added. “French people smoke a lot.” I rolled down the window on my side of the car a bit, then leaned over him to open the window on his side.
He frowned as my body brushed his.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Go ahead and smoke. You look nervous.”
“I am, but not because I need a cigarette,” he said as he shut the windows I had just opened. “I’m nervous because I want to kiss you.”
My blood immediately pulsed faster. My head pounded harder. All the organs in my body seemed to shiver with thrill when I heard that sentence spoken—spoken by a man I had met only several hours before yet was able to make my heart tremble. I knew at that moment Bimo was a big brother for Alam in matters of women because Alam was given to the reckless expression of his emotions, of stating things like he had just said.
Oh, Maman, I apologize for having made fun of you.
I noticed in the rear view mirror the taxi driver eyeing the two of us to see what would happen. I said nothing, did nothing. Alam laughed lightly, then touched my lips with his fingers. Even that was electrifying. Le coup de foudre.
The next few days, as I was trying to set up an appointment to interview Indonesia’s most famous former political prisoner, the novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer, I ran into difficulty because of the author’s own
busy schedule. Alam promised to help find out the writer’s upcoming schedule of activities. “Most of the time, when Pak Pramoedya gives a lecture or a talk, it’s possible to ask him for an interview at the location of the talk,” Alam said. I had already arranged to meet three other former political prisoners, but those interviews weren’t scheduled until two and three days hence. Thus, as my schedule for the next day was free, Alam called me at Om Aji’s house and suggested that I use the opportunity to talk to his mother, whom I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to meet. Alam wouldn’t be able to be with me, however, because the government had just announced an increase in fuel prices and he had to help Bimo and Gilang supervise the demonstrations that were scheduled to take place at several locations in Jakarta the next morning.
“Do you think you can you find my mother’s house on your own?” he asked me over the phone, “or do you need me to take you there?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Go off to your demonstration. I can take care of myself,” I told him, though secretly I liked his attention, even if only over the telephone.
“Andini told me earlier about what happened last night at the dinner with Rama’s fiancée.”
“Oh, really, did she?”
“Yup. And are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m just worried about Rama and how his job and his relationship with his fiancée might suffer because of what I said,” I answered, thinking of the drama that had taken place the previous night, which was truly embarrassing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alam said dismissively. “What with the way he’s been and the things that he’s done, Rama has hurt his family’s feelings a lot,” he asserted angrily. “It’s time for a little payback.”
“Maybe so, but my own behavior last night—that wasn’t me either.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Alam lobbed back, “Rama knew what he’d gotten into.”
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