“They might be too big,” he said of the clothes I had put on, “but yours are wet.”
He handed me a new towel and then helped to wipe my wet face.
“I want the T-shirt that you are wearing,” I said hoarsely.
He looked at me in surprise but then took off the shirt and gave it to me without saying anything. Pulling off the white T-shirt he had first given to me, he put that on instead.
“I’m going to make some tea. Want something to eat? I can make some instant noodles.”
I shook my head. “Just tea, please.”
Alam left the room to boil water. I put on his shirt, which was big enough for two of me to fit inside, but I loved sleeping in T-shirts whose cloth was limp and almost threadbare. And I liked the smell of Alam’s body. My own had no energy, not just because I hadn’t eaten anything since going to Trisakti earlier that day, but because of my memories of that day’s mad events, which I would never forget for the rest of my life. The information Mita had given me was the most disturbing. What was happening in the residential enclaves of ethnic Chinese Indonesians? My God, what about Om Tjai’s family? Did he still have close friends in Jakarta? What had those gangs of unknown men done to their homes? Had they raided them, turned them inside out, just as the military had done in 1965 when they set on the homes of Communist Party members, their families, and Party sympathizers? Was this any different? Alam had mentioned to me the wild and angry look he had seen on the faces of the groups of men—“thugs” would be a better word — who had been overturning and burning cars in the street. They had robbed, they had vandalized…
I closed my eyes — damn them — which were still streaming with tears. I heard the door open. Alam came into the room with a cup of tea for me, but I was too tired to even sit up. He stroked my head softly then disappeared into the bathroom. I don’t know how long I’d been asleep, but all of a sudden I found him there again, lying on his back beside me. I rolled over and buried my head in his armpit. He stretched out his left arm and held me to him tightly.
“I’ve got you.” He kissed the crown of my head.
“You know, I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can.”
He turned his body toward mine and stared into my eyes. “But I don’t want you ever to be free from me again. I mean it.”
And I fell back asleep, a deep sleep.
It felt like I had been asleep for only five minutes, but suddenly the day was bright. I looked at the Titoni wristwatch on the small bedside table. Ten o’clock. The spot where Alam had slept was cold. Apparently, he’d already been up for quite some time. Where was he? My head started to spin. What was happening? I got out of bed with difficulty, my head pounding ever harder. No one in the living room. The blinds were open. I opened the front door slowly. The street outside was empty. But there was Alam, talking to someone on his cell phone. He waved his hand at me and continued his conversation. Om Aji’s van was also there, still parked safely on the street. That’s right. I had to call Om Aji and Maman, and Ayah as well, before they started to go crazy watching whatever news was showing on CNN and BBC.
Om Aji and Tante Retno were fine, it turned out. Bimo had brought Andini home safely. (I intended to interrogate her when the situation was calmer.) Maman had called during the night, but Om Aji had managed to calm her worries. That meant I could put off calling France at least for a little while, until things were more settled.
Alam came into the house, plopped down in a chair, and immediately pulled me down onto his lap. He kissed me long, as if he never wanted to let me go.
“I haven’t bathed or brushed my teeth.”
“I haven’t either. Let’s take a bath together!”
I laughed. “No wonder Bimo is always telling me to be careful around you. No matter the situation, your hormones are always talking.”
Alam smiled but continued to stare at me intensely. “It’s exactly in times like these that hormones act up.”
“Was that Bimo or Gilang on the phone? What do they have to say?”
Alam took a breath and then exhaled. “It was Bimo. He said that on SCTV they reported that at a meeting with Indonesian people living in Cairo, Soeharto said that he would be willing to step down if that’s what the people wanted.” He seemed to be thinking of something. “I suspect that he’ll still try to hang on.”
My head was still pounding.
“What about on the streets? What’s happening there?” I asked.
“There’s still disorder, everywhere, even near our office… But we can talk about that later,” he said. “Right now, you have to eat. Have a headache?”
I nodded. “A little.”
“Too little sleep, too much stress,” Doctor Alam suggested. “Did you call Om Aji?”
“Yes, everything’s OK there. But I do have to go home so that they can stop worrying. Plus, I need to rest.” I felt Alam’s chin with my fingers, which tingled from the touch of his prickly beard.
“Maybe we should stay put for a while. Might be best not to go out until it’s safe, don’t you think?”
Alam slipped his hand beneath the loose T-shirt I was wearing. He knew my body too well and what would happen to me as soon as his fingertip touched my nipples. This was wrong. This should be a time of mourning. We needed to grieve for the chaos this country was in. I got up and off his lap, but Alam pulled me back down again — firmly, without hesitation. And the awful thing was, his action made me all the more excited. His hand succeeded in finding my breast. With only the soft touch of his index finger, I had almost surrendered.
“Alam… We should be in mourning.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled me to my feet, then removed his shorts, and then mine as well.
“And making love is only permitted in happy and prosperous times?” He smiled. “If that were the case, the population of Indonesia would shrink to a mere percentage of what it is!” He sat down again and pulled me down, facing him, on the center of his lap. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Just enjoy. Don’t move…”
“But I want to move…”
“Don’t, baby… Wait…”
That morning, all the evil in the world was slowly chased away by tender loving I never wanted to end. That morning, all misfortune and catastrophe was cast aside by endless love.
JAKARTA, MAY 16, 1998
Yesterday, when they heard the news that President Soeharto had returned to Jakarta from Cairo, Alam and his friends seemed to become possessed — not because the President wasn’t going to be able solve the crisis at hand but because “the time had come for Indonesia to figure out what to do with him.”
Gilang and Alam were acting like two generals ready to raise arms even if their weapons were only the toothbrushes they always carried with them. Regardless, there was now hope in the air. According to Gilang, since the previous day numerous important public figures had been calling meetings to discuss the crisis and what to do about it. Several of his sources mentioned that Nurcholish Madjid, the respected Muslim intellectual Gilang referred to as “Cak” Nur — don’t ask me what the term of address “Cak” means — had met with several other influential figures at the invitation of one of the senior military leaders at the Indonesian Armed Forces Headquarters. He said that Cak Nur had put together on the spot a concept for the transition of power that was to be delivered to President Soeharto. The plan included several key points, but the most important one, and the one that made Gilang and Alam feel as if they’d won the war, was that Soeharto would not stand as a candidate at the next general election, which was to be held at the soonest possible time.