At some point, I remember Maman telling me that in Indonesia anyone thought to be a member of the Communist Party, or a member of the family of a communist, had been hunted down, jailed, or made to disappear, just like that. Hearing these stories from Maman and Ayah, I didn’t know which regime was more frightening: Indonesia, with its civilian-dressed dictator, or Latin America, with its generals.
So who was my father and who were his friends, my “uncles” Nugroho, Tjai, and Risjaf? Why couldn’t they go home? Why were they on a wanted list? The story I got from Ayah and his three friends was piecemeal at best and often not even consistent. According to Professor Dupont, Ayah and his friends were a part of Indonesia’s unwritten history. Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?
What did he mean? And did I really have to make a record of this absurdity as my final assignment?
April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire.
NARAYANA LAFEBVRE
“LIKE AN ANGEL, DESCENDED FROM HEAVEN…” That is what Gabriel Lafebvre said of his wife, Jayanti Ratmi. I was struck by the phrase. At the age of fifty-six, Gabriel was still a striking-looking man whose eyes were a seine for the sky. I’ve always believed that a man with stars in his eyes is likely to be a friendly man. And the amity I found in him, I came to see had been inherited by son, Narayana Lafebvre.
Narayana, whom everyone calls Nara, was given his name by his mother, Jayanti Ratmi, a Javanese dancer who loved the stories of the Mahabharata. She also gave him his adorable cleft chin.
That I spent most of my weekends with the Lafebvre family wasn’t because of the similarity between Nara’s family mine — his also being a mixed French-Indonesian family domiciled in Paris. That was pure coincidence. There was something else, something more significant, more magnetic about his family — something that I found calming when I was with them. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was their comfortable apartment, with a batik tablecloth here and a wayang puppet there — enough touches to show the Indonesian influence, but not like a craft store or a tourism bureau. It might also have been because of their dinners, whose light conversation invited intimacy, something I had rarely ever or possibly never felt again after my father left us.
I never tried to figure out why I was more comfortable lounging in the den at Nara’s home than in my father’s apartment. Ayah’s collection of books was, in fact, much larger and with more interesting titles. I knew that I could easily spend hours on end talking to Nara, because the both of us were drawn to books of literature and philosophy. Nara had finished his studies in English literature at the Sorbonne and intended to pursue a master’s degree in comparative cultural studies at Cambridge University in the autumn of this year. Meanwhile, I was still working on my final assignment for my bachelor’s in cinematography. But, again, it was not just Nara that made me want to spend my free time in his parents’ apartment. His parents’ living room and their kitchen exuded a warm welcome and promise of comfort in any season.
I preferred helping Tante Jayanti slice garlic, grind spices, and grill meat to cooking at my parents’ apartment in the Marais. Even conversations about wayang characters, which I had engaged in with my parents when I was small, transferred themselves to the living room and terrace of the Lafebvre family apartment. Maybe it was because I simply liked to see how happy and comfortable this couple was with each other — or maybe because I was trying to recapture something that I had lost. I didn’t know.
I always imagined Jayanti Ratmi’s marriage to Gabriel Lafebvre to be just like that of the famed French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, with the Javanese dancer Ratna Mohini in decades past. I often asked Gabriel to repeat the story of how he had come to be entranced by his future wife when he saw her perform a bedoyo court dance at an event sponsored by the Indonesian embassy in Paris. (What I didn’t ask was what the staff of the embassy was like or how the Indonesian diplomats had treated them — those same people who had no time for my father or his friends.)
Gabriel traded in exports and imports and had a wide circle of friends in the diplomatic community, including one who had worked at the Indonesian embassy. That night, his friend had invited Gabriel to try Indonesian food at an embassy reception being held in honor of Kartini Day. And it was there, at that celebration, that he met his “angel, descended from heaven.”
Gabriel and Tante Jayanti seemed to like me, or at least to accept my presence in Nara’s life. If they had their reservations, I could understand. Nara, their beloved and only son, was in a relationship with the daughter of an Indonesian political exile. They would have known full well that my father and his friends did not enjoy close links with the Indonesian embassy. But perhaps because I was the daughter she’d never had, Tante Jayanti like to share mother-daughter things with me. One of them was showing me her collection of kebaya. To me, a kebaya is the most demure piece of women’s apparel there is. Long in the sleeve and long at the waist, this high-buttoned blouse completely covers a woman’s upper body, yet there is no second guessing the wearer’s shape.
And Tante Jayanti did have a wonderful collection. She owned all sorts of kebaya, in both short and long styles. She also had an Encim kebaya, my favorite kind, the style that Eurasian and Chinese-Indonesian women in Indonesia typically used to wear. All of them were very feminine with intricate lacework that was the equal of any piece of Dutch or Belgian embroidery.
I had never seen a woman as beautiful as Tante Jayanti in a kebaya. I was convinced that the kebaya had been created for angels like her, who had descended from heaven to earth.
“I’m not an angel,” Tante Jayanti said to me, with a smile. “Our meeting — that of Gabriel and I — was simply a sign that we had to be together.” Her voice was as soft as silk.
I was entranced. A sign?
“I bet you’re talking to Jim Morrison!”
Oh, Nara… He knew that whenever something was on my mind, I would try to regain my composure at Père Lachaise Cemetery, the city’s huge garden cemetery in the 20th arrondissement. There I could sit for an entire day, reading in front of the huge gravestone of Oscar Wilde, which was as flamboyant in its style as the author himself; or rest beside the tomb of Honoré de Balzac. But most often I spent my time in Division Six, sitting next to the simple grave of Jim Morrison as I intoned the lyrics of “Light My Fire. My father still owned several albums by The Doors, which he treasured as much as he did his Indonesian records and cassettes by Koes Plus, Bing Slamet, Nick Mamahit, and Jack Lemmers.
As it was still fairly early in the day, the throngs of autumn visitors had yet to flock to the place. Nara sat beside me as I stared at Jim Morrison’s tombstone. My mother had introduced me to his music; and apart from his status as a musical legend he was, for me, a true and genuine songsman.
“‘Light My Fire’ is such an amazing song, a true work of poetry.”
Nara knew me well, both my nature and my habits. If I wasn’t ready to speak about something, I would choose a topic of conversation that had nothing to do with the subject at hand, which was, in this instance, my final assignment and Professor Dupont.