“Tante Sur, let me introduce you to Lintang,” Nara said straightaway, quickly covering his gaffe in not having introduced me immediately.
“Ayuneee. Truly beautiful. New to Paris, is she? I must say you do have an eye for the girls,” she said to Nara as if I had no ears. “Go in and help yourselves. There’s goat satay, gulai, and lots of other food.”
After saying that, this Tante Sur, who apparently was chairwoman or some such thing for the event’s organizing committee, immediately rushed from our side to give orders to her various assistants and liveried servants. In the distance, through a set of double doors at the rear of the large hall, I could see a stage in the rear garden of the residence. Now I knew why the sound of the gamelan music was so clear. The music was live, coming from a complete gamelan orchestra, not from a cassette. On the stage was a dancer, performing a Balinese pendet, a ritual dance of welcome. I was just admiring the long buffet table heaped with enough food for at least a thousand guests, when two young men of about Nara’s age came up to us. They shook Nara’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. One of the two was looking at me so hard, I quickly pretended to be busy trying to choose what to drink from among the many choices. Did I want a lychee drink or cendol on shaved ice?
“Lintang, this is Yos,” Nara said.
The man named Yos, who was dressed in a blue batik shirt, immediately shook my hand and broke into laughter. “No wonder you’ve never introduced us before. What a looker!” he said to Nara.
Yos continued to hold my hand as his eyes rolled upward in their sockets.
“And this handsome guy…”
“I’m Raditya,” the man said, not giving Nara a chance to finish his introduction. “I’m single, not married, and don’t have a girlfriend.”
Raditya was the one who had been staring so intently at me. From his way of dressing — a suit coat and shirt but no tie — I guessed him to be a junior diplomat at the Indonesian embassy. My surprise and unease with the manners of Nara’s two friends hadn’t quite receded when three more of his male friends came up to us, all with broad smiles on their faces.
“Lintang, this is Hans. This good-looking guy is Iwan. And this big hunk of a man is Galih.”
“Hans, why don’t you get her something to drink?” This was Raditya giving orders. “What would you like?” he then asked me. “Orange juice? Or maybe cendol or a cold lychee drink?”
I didn’t know how to react to this man’s aggressive behavior. I looked to Nara for help, but he just rolled his eyes and smiled.
Hans then reappeared with a glass of cold orange juice and offered it to me.
“Merci.”
“Tu es étudiante à la Sorbonne?”
“Oui, I’m in my last year.”
Yos stepped forward to nudge Hans aside.
“That’s a very beautiful kebaya,” he said, looking me up and down.
“Careful now, Yos,” Nara cautioned, shaking his head. “It’s my mother’s; I don’t have any of my own.” I said with a smile to Nara, who I could see had begun to become irritated.
“Would you like to have some made? I know this seamstress, Bu Narni, who specializes in kebaya. She’s the one behind most of the kebaya and baju kurung that the women here are wearing.” Yos wasn’t slowing down. “She’s here tonight. Come on, I’ll introduce you to her.”
Hans now stepped in. “Don’t listen to him, Lintang. He’s married and has kids besides. But I’m still a bachelor and I promise always to be faithful.”
Hans took my fingers and kissed the back of my hand. I turned to Nara who gave me a look of resignation, as if to say “What am I supposed to do?” It’s true. It probably would have been useless for him to even try. For these friends of his, hitting on women was probably their only entertainment. Laughing loudly, they resembled a pack of male gorillas who’d never seen a female gorilla before.
It was at that moment that I realized something: this Kartini Day celebration had nothing whatsoever to do with Raden Ajeng Kartini or the ideals she expressed in her letters. Kartini Day was an excuse for people to get together and eat; for women to rat their hair and put on kebaya; and for men to show off their best batik shirts.
More than an hour had passed since we’d arrived at the residence, and not once in my conversation with other guests had anyone mentioned Kartini, that young woman from Jepara whose date of birth is one of Indonesia’s most important days of commemoration. I began to ask myself if any of the other guests had even read Kartini’s letters; her thoughts on the challenges to education for the native population in the colonial era were far advanced for the times.
Pretending to have to go to the ladies room, I placed my glass of orange juice on the table and left Nara’s group of friends. As I was walking away, I let my eyes roam the garden. The pendet dancer had left the stage, and now there was being held a fashion show of sorts, with a number of very attractive Indonesian women showing off various kinds of kebaya. As fascinated as I was by the apparel, tonight I was far more interested in observing the guests — some of whom I could see were also studying me with a range of expressions on their faces. Some seemed to be trying to remember my face. Others stuck out their lower lips at my sight; but most gave me a friendly and welcoming smile, just as Nara’s friends had done.
I was quite sure that most of the guests didn’t recognize me and didn’t know who I was. But I was also sure there were others who did and were whispering about me — that I was the daughter of Dimas Suryo, the Indonesian political exile who had found himself stranded in Paris and was never allowed to return home. When I went to take a glass of lychee and ice, I heard at my back a number of men engaged in a conversation about me. I kept my back to them and listened.
“Who the devil brought her here?”
“What does it matter? She’s not her father.”
“But have you forgotten government policy?”
“But that ban is for former political prisoners working as civil servants, or as teachers or journalists. What’s the big deal about her coming to a party?”
“It’s no big deal, but we did get that notice from Jakarta.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That we’re not to frequent Tanah Air Restaurant; that all the people there are communists.”
“That’s not what it said. It said…”
“What does it matter any way? What matters is the food and they have good nasi kuning and fried sambal.”
“The problem isn’t about us going to Tanah Air Restaurant. The problem is that she’s here and that, that she’s…”
“That she’s what?”
“That she’s beautiful!”
At that point, I snuck away, distancing myself from the young diplomats busily debating my presence, unaware that I, the uninvited guest, was able to hear what they were saying. I safely returned to Nara’s circle of friends, who were still razzing him.
Although I continued to find the behavior of Nara’s friends to be juvenile, after the conversation I had just overhead, I now enjoyed their japes and jibes. At the very least, they had accepted me into their presence without making an issue of my parentage. Furthermore, they didn’t seem to care that my father was a political exile who was considered an enemy of the Indonesian government. But standing there, in the midst of all those people, I felt like there were hundreds of eyes staring at my back.