The Wandering

by Intan Paramaditha

  In the whiteness of the morning, as the snow blankets the streets and buildings outside your window, you realise that something in your apartment has changed. A large mirror, even too large, now hangs on the wall, right in front of your bed. It wasn’t there before. The mirror has an inlaid silver frame, exquisitely carved, like a mirror you’d expect in a well-to-do home from centuries past. It certainly doesn’t go with your modest apartment. You’re glad to be able to see yourself from head to toe, but something about the mirror is unnerving. Maybe it’s the extravagant size, or its engraved frame, which reminds you of Medusa’s hair.

  You approach the mirror and examine it carefully. A scrap of paper is attached to its dusty surface.

  A message from Devil.

  Darling,

  Happy 28th. This is my birthday present to you. I know you already have a mirror, but I think you need a bigger one to fully appreciate your beauty. If necessary, I’d give you a mirror several times over, because I adore you, and because every mirror is a door. Have I mentioned this before? Mirrors open doors to secret rooms – inside, outside, or somewhere in between.

  This is a magic mirror. It can make you more beautiful. It can also show you who you really are. But the latter can be risky. If you truly want to know who you are, look in the mirror at midnight, and count backwards from ten. Just as an aside, however, I strongly discourage you from doing so. You shouldn’t be too critical on a journey.

  The message stuns you. If your lover doesn’t want you to conduct midnight mirror experiments, he should just keep his damned mouth shut. Humans don’t like being told what not to do, and Devil knows this more than anyone. Now you are tempted by danger.

  The curvy, carved frame like Medusa’s hair catches your eye. You feel there is something sly about the mirror, moving sinuously like a snake, coiling unhappiness around your apartment. Maybe you shouldn’t keep it.

  If you don’t want the mirror in your apartment, turn to page 117.

  If you want to know who you are and are willing to experiment, turn to page 151.

  You’re not interested in chatting with Yvette, or anyone else. You’d prefer to spend time alone and wander through Berlin with a guidebook in hand. A few weeks later, though, you’re bored. It’s time to go, but where? You enter a bookstore and see a rack of travel guides. There’s ‘Amsterdam’, and next to it ‘Zagreb’. They sound exciting. Maybe you can visit one of them.

  If you want to go to Amsterdam, turn to page 204.

  If you want to go to Zagreb, turn to page 214.

  You and Yvette are in a small cafe. She orders black coffee, and you opt for a cappuccino. At the cash register, she hands over ten euros for both cups. You try to restrain her, but she insists: next time you can treat me. You’re slightly amused. This is a random encounter, what kind of next time could there be?

  Yvette removes her leather jacket and drapes it over a chair. Her collared shirt reveals broad shoulders and a protruding clavicle. She looks dashing, and her lips are oh so red. The cafe lighting, a tad brighter than the cinema lobby, makes visible the crinkles at the corner of her eyes. Maybe she’s thirty-eight, forty, or more? The tutu skirt gives her an impish air. You pour sugar in your coffee and stir. She doesn’t add anything to her cup.

  The conversation about work continues. Several years ago Yvette became involved in friends’ film projects as producer and screenwriter. You listen to her story enviously. As far as you can tell, she works when she wants and goes abroad occasionally. In fact, she’s planning to go to Indonesia soon for a second time.

  ‘To make a movie?’

  ‘No, you could call it an early stage of research. Very early.’

  You offer little white lies in response to Yvette’s questions about yourself. Your biography should be simple, but you also need to hide how boring your life is. In your account, you become an English teacher who has used up her savings for a trip to New York, then Berlin.

  Ah, how exciting; an adventure alone. Without a boyfriend?

  No boyfriend. You’re cagey about your relationship status: it’s complicated. Things can be a bit messy when your boyfriend is a devil. Yvette says she always travels alone, sans boyfriend.

  I’ve always thought of Western women as more independent, you say.

  Travel is a new luxury for many women, she responds. In eighteenth-century Europe, women were always looking for ways to move on their own. The ones who wandered the streets as they pleased weren’t considered good women. Some women wound up on boat tours to see faraway lands, but they tended to come from the upper class.

  She looks out the window, observing the passers-by. You do the same. From time to time women in blazers and slick skirts zip past. You ask if in the eighteenth century any women travelled abroad on business. Yes, she says. Missionary business.

  You are reminded of Snow Red. One could say she’s a traveller too, though she doesn’t go on tours. Nobody dares disturb her on the street, and she has very important business: abduction, if not spreading religion. You miss Muhammad. Ismail. Your face must look a little sad. Yvette asks if you’re all right.

  ‘Do you know the legend of Snow Red?’

  Yvette shakes her head. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It’s not important. I thought you’d know because you’re German.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  OK, here it is.

  You want to start with the scene of little Helga at Oma Rachel’s house, but then you feel you should drop the part about Oma Rachel and how the house was taken away. You don’t know where to put it. You’re not sure you can do it justice. Maybe you should recount the story of love between husband and wife that ends in tragedy because of a third party. Ah, no. This is no mere love story. They’re not even in love with each other.

  It’s so hard to tell someone else’s story, especially someone who narrates his own death.

  Finally you choose what you consider to be the simplest path. Snow Red is a legend about a woman in a red dress who walks in the snow. It’s said she kidnaps people. But that part is a bit ambiguous. You remember what Muhammad said: we don’t know how things start – if Snow Red desires the victim, or the victim desires Snow Red.

  Yvette listens intently. I’ve never heard of such a legend, she says. But maybe older people know it. She leans towards you and her eyes widen as she asks, ‘If she comes, would you want to be taken away?’

  ‘But she’s not real.’

  ‘You said she comes to those who long for her.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ you say. ‘Would you?’

  Yvette has never fantasised about Snow Red, but as a child she imagined being abducted. She hated her life and hoped a kidnapper would rescue her.

  ‘And?’

  She grins. Her expression suggests a little girl hiding something. There was no kidnapper, she says. ‘Unfortunately. Maybe I wasn’t good kidnapping material. So I went and rescued myself.’

  You laugh together. Watching the lines at the corners of her eyes, you think: not especially funny, but you’re happy to share a laugh with her. She is also someone who wants to be on the move. Is she running away too, the way you escaped from your home town with your red shoes?

  You don’t want to overstep your bounds with too many questions. You just know that the woman before you is also a wanderer. She talks about the many cities she has visited, then asks about yours.

  ‘Ah, yes, Jakarta. What do you think of Jakarta?’

  Raucous. Frenetic. But going nowhere. A city that chugs along as it chokes on traffic.

  Who loves Jakarta wholeheartedly? You didn’t want to move to Jogja in the late nineties, because for you at the time fun only came from living among skyscrapers and going to the mall. But later you saw Jakarta as your fate, not unlike being Indonesian because you were born there, or being Muslim because it was the only religion you knew from your parents. Leaving Jakarta would have demanded sacrificing energy and emotion that probably wouldn’t have amounted to anything. Like a masochistic l
over, you couldn’t move on. You watched Jakarta change quickly and in increasingly tyrannical ways. The din became your fault. It was you who was wrong for hating the motorbikes that clogged the streets and drove down the sidewalks. Your bourgeois aspirations kept you from empathising with those who rejected the pathetic public transport system but couldn’t afford a car. You were wrong for hating the strident calls of the azan from loudspeakers every hundred metres. You should have been grateful for reminders to pray. You were wrong to be sick of cheesy music in the atria of second-class malls and in mini-marts. Everyone should enjoy being entertained while shopping.

  Yvette is silent while you talk, but her eyes don’t leave yours. All your petty complaints seem to hold meaning for her. Finally, she says, ‘Juwita thinks just like you too.’

  ‘Who?’

  Juwita Padmadivya, she says.

  Cafe conversations often move haphazardly, and it’s impossible to map them out. But Juwita Padmadivya is a beginning. She represents a new chapter in both your conversation and your relationship with Yvette.

  ‘Is that her real name?’

  You knit your eyebrows when you first hear ‘Juwita Padmadivya’. Of course, Yvette doesn’t realise that there’s a natural question about whether the name is genuine. A good name, overly pretty and a bit pretentious. It sounds more like a stage name than an everyday one. Still, you think of certain names as so common, familiar … banal. Names like Agus Purwanto, Rizki Perdana, Dewi Utami, Tri Handayani. Sort of like Jane Doe and John Smith. These days, names like Budi and Siti have a classical quality because others, like Nazwa, Raihan and Salwa, have become so popular (you think of your sister’s children). Juwita Padmadivya sounds odd. Although Juwita is certainly an Indonesian name, it recalls an earlier era, from the fifties when your grandmother was young, the days of singer Sam Saimun, who sounded like Nat King Cole.

  I dub thee Juwita Malam. Juwita Night.

  Juwita was a traveller but then decided to go back home. She was born in Indonesia and finished her education in America. She had worked there, before returning and making a film, her first and last work in Indonesia. At home and on the road, she was a stranger.

  ‘I don’t expect you to know Juwita,’ Yvette says. ‘She’s a film-maker.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t watch a lot of Indonesian movies.’

  ‘I deal with lots of film people, and none of them know Juwita either.’

  Through festival connections, Yvette had managed to meet some programmers and film-makers in Jakarta. Not many, but they seemed important enough in their respective fields. None of them knew Juwita.

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘I’ve never met her,’ she answers. ‘I’m looking for her.’

  You pause, trying to understand Yvette’s connection to this woman. Juwita is like a mysterious guest who knocks politely on the door, slides into a seat at your table, and before you know it, has taken control of the conversation.

  Yvette’s eyes are fixed on her coffee, now almost empty. You wait.

  Next you learn that Juwita is a mystery. Yvette came across her in an odd way. Two years earlier, she had received a package with American postage from a Juwita Padmadivya, with a Connecticut address. Inside was a DVD without a cover. Yvette received many films for her festivals, but this package bewildered her, because it contained none of the information that should have come with it. She assumed that the film-maker had been in such a rush that she had forgotten to include it. Instead of the entry form, the sender had inserted a stack of printed email messages, written by Juwita Padmadivya to someone named Nadya Shafik.

  ‘What did you do with the movie?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve just held on to it. I can’t screen it because there’s no signed release form.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  Yvette appears to hesitate. She glances at her watch and remembers that she is supposed to meet someone at seven o’clock.

  ‘Shall we get together again tomorrow?’

  You nod without giving it much thought. In this town you have no job, and you are keen to buy Yvette coffee in return. Maybe you just want to see her again. In front of the cafe, before you part, you finally say, ‘I like your shoes.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She seems pleased by your compliment. ‘I have a special bond with red shoes.’

  Her words startle you. Me too, you want to say, but you restrain yourself. Anyway, you’ve left your red devil shoes at the hotel. Yvette waves and goes in the opposite direction. Before long you look back, stealing a glance at her purple hair, her sashaying black tutu skirt, and her galloping red boots. Where is this nymph enchantress going? Perhaps she lives in a tiny cottage in a forest full of wolves.

  Turn to the next page.

  Museums

  Hi Dik,

  How are you? We’re all fine. Why don’t you ever write? Busy with school? Mom and Dad are thrilled you got a scholarship to America, but don’t push things too far. Give them a call once in a while. They miss you and don’t know how to use email. Oh, I just opened a Facebook account. You use Facebook, right?

  Steeling yourself, you finally read the email from your sister. Your family seems to think you’ve gone abroad to study. Who knows where they got that idea. There’s a blank space in your head. You can’t remember anything, that is, anything after when you put on the red shoes in your room and before you found yourself in the taxi heading towards JFK. How long was that in-between moment in space and time? Maybe it was the blink of an eye, or maybe it was also like a waiting room made of elastic. Inside that space you were able to say goodbye to your parents, as well as your sister and her children. Maybe your relatives came out in droves, like a carnival troupe, to see you off at hot and stuffy Soekarno Hatta Airport.

  In-between moments. In fact you’ve often experienced them in situations that are hardly mystical. You never remember how you spent daytime during Ramadan. All you can recall is waking, grouchy, dazed and drowsy, for the pre-dawn meal and then the joy spreading inside you when you broke the fast in the evening: the aroma of coconut milk and brown sugar mixed into the dessert compote with its chill of iced fruits. In between, nothing stuck. Midday during fasting month was a time of waiting, a time in between, and so a time forgotten.

  Are you planning to come to Indonesia for vacation this year? If so, I’d like you to pick up some goods for my store. OK, Dik? There are a few brands of bags and shoes that are hard to get from Singapore, and I’ve got some loyal customers who are incredibly picky. They’re only after designer originals and won’t buy knock-offs. If Dior made hijabs, they’d be the first to refuse fake Dior hijabs.

  You skip the next few paragraphs because you’re not interested in the details of your sister’s Muslim clothing business. The way it has developed is actually pretty amazing, though. She started by selling headscarves and clothes more cheaply than the mall, and once her customer base grew, she branched out into other items: purses, bags and shoes. A year later she started dealing with distributors from Batam and Singapore, and little by little brought in more expensive goods. She thought about adding a ‘High End Collection’ to her catalogue, but her husband warned her that doing so could lead to riya: ‘Astaghfirullah, let’s not encourage ourselves or fellow Muslims to show off.’

  Not once have you and your sister called each other by your first names. Only Mbak and Dik, Big Sis and Little Sis. You were always treated as a unit. She’s two years older than you, but your mom always bought you the same clothes until you were in middle school. Mom didn’t want the bother. You grew up as very different people. At first, you’re sure, this difference revealed itself in your musical tastes. She remained mired in the mainstream, while grunge tugged you to another world. Yes, your sister, devoted to Celine Dion, and you, the Nirvana fan – her heart would go on and on, but you always had a new complaint. In your parents’ eyes you remained sisters who should always be together, everywhere. You hated it when she called you Dik. She always reminded you that she was older
, that she knew more than you. But strangely, you’ve never been able to call her anything but Mbak.

  Last week Nazwa went to the Wayang Museum with her school friends from Lentera Iman Elementary School. The museum collection is supposed to be quite good, but unfortunately not well maintained. Here’s a picture of Nazwa for you.

  You open the attachment and glance at your niece posing with some other children in front of the museum. Ah, kids in school uniform. Why do they look all the same?

  You know, the teachers were going to tour Lubang Buaya. Can you imagine, like in the days of Suharto? I was the first to protest. I don’t want pictures of torture leaving my child in tears.

  The Sacred Pancasila Monument at Lubang Buaya, the ‘Crocodile Pit’. You shudder at the name. When you were little, every schoolkid in Jakarta visited. The pit is where they discovered the corpses of the generals, the victims of the outrage committed by the PKI, the Partai Komunis Indonesia. Or so your teacher explained in the voice of a documentary narrator. You and your friends took diligent notes to make a report on your field trip. At least, it was called a field trip, although the term dark tourism would have been more appropriate. Black tourism for babes. The visit served as a warning to ten-year-old pupils that they could become helpless chicks at any moment; their fathers could be murdered and thrown into a pit.

  So, don’t let the communists rise again.

  Sometimes you felt no need to listen to Teacher, as you’d memorised the contents of your history book word for word: the PKI masterminded a coup by kidnapping, torturing and murdering six generals on September 30, 1965. But General Suharto crushed this attempted insurrection and saved the nation from the communist threat. These events were relived in books, monuments, and the docudrama Treason of the September 30 Movement, which was shown on television every year. Under the New Order, the PKI rebellion was turned into an extravaganza of multi-media infotainment. Years later, you know that the whole narrative served as a tool to legitimise the regime (you also know an alternate narrative that has never been fully brought to light, of how millions accused of being communists were slaughtered). Even so, the images that rise in your head when you hear the word ‘communist’ are the hammer, sickle, blood and decomposing corpses.