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by Leila S. Chudori

  “I’m thirsty,” I said to Mita. “I’m going to go get something to drink.”

  “Here, I have a bottle…” she started to say, but I shook my head and turned and walked away as quickly as I could, because I didn’t want them to hear the pounding of my heart or see the tears that were welling in my eyes.

  Merde! In Jakarta, I had turned into a sniveling adolescent. I swore heartily to myself in three languages—French, English, Indonesian; French, English, Indonesian—expelling all the worst words I could think of and mixing them together while I looked for a spot to be by myself among the students who filled the upper piazza surrounding the building. I had to still my heart and regain my energy.

  My work was completed. There was no telling how long the occupation of the parliament building would last. It might be days or even weeks. And I didn’t know what was really happening with Ayah. Nara had sounded so strange when he raised the topic of Ayah’s illness. And Maman only ever gave the briefest of reports on what the doctors had to say.

  How was I going to say goodbye to Alam? How could I even look him in the face if he was going to act cold towards me when I said goodbye? What if he acted snidely and give me the same toss-away smile that he had given me minutes before? Shit!

  A hand touched my shoulder. I knew that hand. That smell.

  “I thought you said you wanted to get something to drink,” Alam said from behind me in a friendly tone of voice.

  Now I was angry and turned towards him: “What business is it of yours? And why are you following me anyway?”

  Alam looked at me innocently. Merde! Men always play so dumb when they hurt a woman. I left him and found a place to sit down on the stairs. As I guessed he would, Alam followed me.

  “How are you doing?” he asked politely.

  “Fine. Just fine.”

  Then we were silent. A silence ripe with questions and longing.

  Finally, I spoke: “Where have you been? Two days and not a peep from you,” I said in a voice that sounded flat and uncaring.

  “I’ve been busy. Ever since the fourteenth, a lot of public figures and groups have been meeting with the president, and I want to get this down for the record. I’ve been interviewing the people who have met with the president and documenting what they had to say. … There’s so much I want to tell you.”

  I did in fact want to hear what Alam had to say; I’m sure the stories would be interesting. But I was still asking myself whether he realized what I had just said and what that implied.

  “Mita said you finished your interviews.”

  I nodded, now feeling slightly warmer towards him. At least he had tried to find out what I was doing. But then suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I started to cry.

  Alam was startled and put his arm around my shoulder.

  “I have to go home,” I sputtered.

  “Home, to Paris?”

  “Of course. Where else?”

  For some time, he said nothing.

  “Here, feel this,” he said, taking my hand and pressing my palm to his chest. “What is it you feel every time they shout ‘Reformasi!’?”

  My heart beat faster and I felt my blood speed through my veins.

  “Ever since meeting you, Lintang, I’ve felt that you are part of this place, that you are home here.”

  A warm feeling spread through my chest.

  “Do you think so?”

  “I do. Your roots are here.”

  I paused before speaking again.

  “Why didn’t you try to call me or contact me?” I snapped at him. My eyes were hot and tears began to fall again. “Why did you just disappear these past two days? I know you were busy, but you could have told me.”

  Alam looked at me. The light in his eyes was more subdued. “Listen to me, Lintang… Nara had just called you. He wants to see you. He wants to come here. But he could tell there was something different in you from the sound of your voice.”

  I sensed a tone of sadness in what he said. My tears stopped instantly. I looked into Alam’s face. Had he freshly shaved this morning?

  “I wanted to give you space, Lintang. I want you to make your life decisions without pressure from anyone.”

  I couldn’t say anything in the face of Alam’s explanation. Why did something so simple have to become something difficult?

  “I’ve already told you, I don’t want to part from you,” Alam said, “despite my bad reputation which Bimo keeps talking about!” He smiled.

  The calls for “Reformasi!” had turned into a solid scream that was deafening, even though we were seated quite distant from the free-speech platform. The cry of “reform” pounded my eardrums. Meanwhile, from a different direction came the much fainter sound of students singing a ballad whose lyrics I knew well: “…I can hear voices / wails of the wounded / people shooting arrows at the moon…”

  I was suddenly moved. My heart beat faster.

  Alam knew I recognized the words. “Yes, those are the lyrics of one of Rendra’s poems set to a song by Iwan Fals.”

  Alam knew instantly why I was familiar with that poem. The off-key sound of the student voices was beautiful to my ears, even more stirring than a Ravel composition. Now I felt that I knew where my home was. I hugged Alam tightly. I didn’t want to ever let go.

  “Alam, don’t ever again act like you want to give me space. I don’t want a space that is empty except for me alone! I don’t want distance from you. Not one centimeter. Not one millimeter.”

  Alam held my face in his hands and kissed me even though my face was smeared with snot and tears.

  EPILOGUE

  JAKARTA, JUNE 10, 1998

  My dearest Lintang,

  Listen to these lines: When I die, the cry / that bursts from my heart / will forever be in my poem / that will never die…

  Subagio Sastrowardoyo’s intimate relationship with death is suggested in his poem, “The Poem That Will Never Die.” For me this poem evokes something quite normal. And for that reason, I feel that my own death, which is now very close, is something usual as well—something ordinary for which there is no reason to lament. That said, I do ask your forgiveness for my not allowing your mother to reveal the results of my medical tests to you. The name of the disease alone—cirrhosis of the liver—was enough to make me feel uninterested. The disease has no aesthetic attraction and there is nothing interesting about it to discuss.

  Doctors and nurses were created to map the state of our bodily organs. Unfortunately, they often get this authoritarian streak when they do it. As a result, they are often able to influence our actions and emotions by what they say. And I for one would thoroughly object if you (or I) were to peg our lives (or deaths) on a doctor’s words.

  After a long battle with your mother, who forced me to go to the doctor to pick up the results from my final examination, I made a demand: that whatever the results of the tests, you were not to be told until your visit to Indonesia had ended. Especially after learning the news of the shootings of those students at Trisakti and then the horrendous anarchy that followed, I knew that it would be impossible to extract you from the midst of the madness the country was going through. This aside from the fact that the airport had been shut down and that many expatriates were fleeing Jakarta, at least temporarily.

  The atmosphere at the restaurant was also tense at that time. All of us were on tenterhooks as we watched the television, minute by minute, hour by hour. Even with the delays in news coverage, quite a lot of information was conveyed. (Apparently, CNN and other major news outlets deemed other world news to be far more important so that news about Indonesia was aired only a few times a day.)

  On May 21, when President Soeharto made his resignation speech, the whole lot of us roared aloud. The entire restaurant erupted in shouting. Our two cynics, Om Nug and Om Risjaf, yelled that they were going to find a goat to slaughter. (Don’t ask me where they were going to find a goat in the middle of Paris!) And as if they didn’t know better, they also said they
were going to order plane tickets for all of us to come to Jakarta. Om Nug said that the New Order government had fallen, that we could at last go home and set foot in our native land.

  Your mother kept insisting that it was time for you to come back to Paris to see me but, I’m sorry, I had to forbid her from telling you so. By this time I was just surviving on medicines, but you were in the middle of finishing your assignment.

  And now I am surrounded by four white and boring walls and a nurse with the look on her face that’s likely to hasten my death. She never seems to smile, but then becomes delighted when she’s sticking a needle in me to extract another blood sample.

  Oh, my dearest Lintang…

  It’s truly ironic that with the fall of Soeharto there is, indeed, a good possibility that we pillars here will be able to come home to Indonesia, but that I will be coming home in a coffin (if not in the open-sided keranda we Muslims are supposed to be in). But that’s all right. Didn’t I always say that I wanted my final home to be in Karet cemetery? No need for an expensive plot for me at Père Lachaise in Paris—and don’t dare purchase a plot at Tanah Kusir or Jeruk Purut cemeteries in Jakarta. Choose for me a rectangle of earth in Karet. The soil there, with which my body will fuse, has a smell and texture I know.

  Don’t cry for me. Don’t cry.

  Scatter cloves and jasmine flowers on my grave so that their scent reaches my body lying there below, silent and alone. I am confident of capturing their fragrance through the spaces in the soil that kindly provide a path for their scent I know so intimately to reach me.

  I can picture the ceremony. I can see who will be there to attend my burial alongside you, my life’s most shining star, and your mother, the most beautiful and strongest woman I’ve ever known, who stood at my side through my life’s ordeals. I can see my brother Aji and his fine family; Tante Surti and her three children; and the remaining three pillars of Tanah Air. (Try to comfort Om Risjaf, who won’t have the strength to hold back the bitter pain of it all. Of the four pillars, he was always the most sensitive, and the one the rest of us always thought of as a youngest brother. Stay beside him, please.)

  I can also see Nara and Alam and all of the friends you made at Satu Bangsa among the crowd of mourners. Maybe you will pray for me. Maybe Om Aji will lead the prayer. Maybe the lot of you will be even so wacky as to play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” But if you want to help console Om Risjaf, let him play his harmonica—as long as he doesn’t play “When the Orchids Start to Bloom” because, for me, my orchid withered long ago. Tell him instead to play John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road.” And if that does happen, don’t be surprised if you hear me humming along from my final place of rest.

  There are a few things I need to tell you and I must do it quickly because that foul-humored nurse of mine will be back here soon to jab me with her damned needle. But I can’t resist telling you first that a couple of days ago I played a trick on the nurse that almost drove her crazy. I packed up all my belongings, then straightened my bed and found a place to hide. When she came into my room, she must have panicked, because she pushed the blue emergency call button which brought all the other nurses and caused the guards to start a manhunt. Political exile that I am, used to wandering from one country to the next, hoodwinking my minders was easy for me. I found myself a place to hide in a storage closet where they keep sheets and blankets. Even with the commotion in the hallway, it was so nice and warm and soft in there, I ended up falling asleep. In the end, they did find me, of course, and with their hands on their hips marched me back to my room like an apprehended fugitive.

  The price I paid for my insurrection was high: ever since then, Om Nug and Om Risjaf have been on guard duty, taking turns to watch over me, day and night, as if I were a hardcore criminal. And then when your mother comes to see me in the mornings and evenings, before and after her classes, she always has this little smirk on her face, like I’ve finally been put in my place. Well, just wait! I fully intend to find another way to make a disturbance.

  But, anyway, back to what I was saying. This is the most important part of what I want to say to you and it has to do with Alam and Narayana. Though you never said as much in your e-mails to me, I know that something special has happened between you and Alam. It’s easy to catch the carefreeness and passion in your words whenever you write about Alam or quote for me something that he has told you. You have been struck by lightning. And that’s OK. That’s normal. And although I don’t know Alam—he was just a baby when I left—I’ve seen enough pictures of him to know that he’s gotten the best physical traits of both Om Hananto and Tante Surti. But I’m sure you’re not attracted to him just because of his height or muscular build; such specimens are easily available in Europe. There must be something in Alam that has made you feel at home in Jakarta. It couldn’t just be because of your film assignment.

  And then we have Narayana who has the good looks of a French actor. Again, of course, I know that’s not the reason that you’ve maintained a relationship with him for several years. I won’t say much about this and I won’t try to interfere, but what I want to tell you is this: don’t play with the feelings of a person until his heart is broken to pieces and scattered everywhere. Be brave enough to make a choice, even with all the risks it might entail. You’re still young. Making a choice doesn’t mean having to get married tomorrow. And not choosing either Nara or Alam is still a choice. Whatever it is, make your own choice, for yourself and for your peace of heart.

  I don’t want you to be a person like me, who was never able to choose. I found myself enchanted by so many things, and wandered from one way of thinking to another without finding one that was enduring. The only thing I was ever sure of was myself and my desire to continue my unending voyage. Or, in your mother’s words, to fly like a seagull without ever wanting to alight. As a result of my indecision, life made its choices for me and it was not I who determined my life’s course.

  Your mother had the courage to choose. She chose to marry me, crazy nomad that I am. And then she chose not to marry again. So, too, Tante Surti, another woman who was brave enough to make a choice. Believe me, even people like my friend Hananto and Aji’s son, Rama, are people who made choices. Even if we don’t agree with their choices, we must respect their right to choose.

  The other thing, Lintang, and this is a question: what did you in the end finally pluck from I-N-D-O-N-E-S-I-A? I’m sure that what you found in your time in Jakarta of just a little more than a month is not enough to explain all of the factors that have shaped Indonesia. Your final assignment will help to explain a small part of the country, will reveal a few of the voices to be found there. I do not use the word “small” disparagingly, because I am confident that your work will have an immense impact. Your documentary will be another voice, a voice from the other side which for thirty-two years has been silenced.

  After my burial, think long about whether after your graduation you want to return to Jakarta or to stay in Paris. I force no choice on you. Both Paris and Jakarta are your home and each place has special meaning for you. Wherever you choose to be, you will be close with one part of yourself: with Maman in Paris and with me in Karet cemetery in Jakarta.

  Uh-oh… I just heard a bell, which means I must get back to planning some way of tricking my steel-jawed nurse.

  “Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream?” John Keats provides the perfect closure for this letter. My death, Lintang, will be but a moment of sleep for me, because when I awake, I will meet you.

  Lintang, you gave life to my life and even after I die, you will continue to live in me.

  Your loving father,

  Dimas Suryo

  In Karet, even in Karet (my future abode), the cold wind comes… In the end, Ayah did come home, to Karet, to finally reunite with the soil that he said had a different scent from the earth in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. The soil of Karet. The land he was destined to come home to.

  At the head
of his grave, weighted with commemorative floral arrangements, was a plain wooden marker on which Om Nug had written in a simple hand:

  For a life full of charm and beauty

  For the wanderer now gone forever

  For Dimas Suryo: 1930–1998

  It was the same image that came to my mind and haunted me the night before I left Paris. It was the image of my father’s pending death, the knowledge of which he had persisted in keeping from me.

  As my father predicted, Tante Surti, Kenanga, and Bulan scattered jasmine flowers on his grave. Maman sprinkled cloves. Om Aji led the congregation in prayers that sounded to me like music. Tante Retno, Andini, and Rama also scattered jasmine flowers and rose petals too. My father’s friend, Bang Amir, and his wife were there. I watched him as he cried silently before the grave. He said a prayer, then covered his face with his hands.

  Om Nug and Om Tjai, who represented the larger community of Indonesian exiles in Paris and elsewhere, each gave testimonial speeches. Om Risjaf was too sad to speak; he stood at my left side with a harmonica in his hand, tears falling nonstop from his eyes until finally I took his hand and squeezed it tightly. Pointing with my other hand to the far end of the grave, I whispered: “Look, can you see? Ayah is sitting there laughing at us.” Unable to appreciate my dark humor, he cried all the more. Oh, my father was always right in his predictions.

  In the distance I could see Alam seated by himself beneath a frangipani tree. His eyes were on me constantly, centered on me alone, binding me with him. Behind me was Narayana. You’re right, Ayah. It would be much easier not to choose and to pretend there were no consequences. But, as you said, to choose requires courage; it is what one must do.

  As other mourners said their goodbyes and began to leave Karet cemetery, we continued sitting there listening to Om Risjaf play “Take Me Home, Country Road” in a tempo so slow it seemed to shred the red twilight sky. He played with his eyes closed but tears still issued from his eyelids and he would not allow anyone to approach. I could hear Ayah humming along with Maman, who was singing the song. And then, in the distance, I saw a man of about fifty walking through the cemetery with a girl of about seven years. They were holding each other’s hands. Softly, I heard the father tell his daughter about an episode in the Mahabharata. I heard the name “Bima” and then “Ekalaya.” After that, I listened as the little girl pestered the man with questions, sometimes in French, sometimes in Indonesian.