Across the garden I noticed a cluster of women with big hair and beautiful kebaya in conversation; they kept turning their heads to look in my direction. I felt incredibly thirsty. Not conscious of doing so, I had gulped down the entire contents of my glass of iced lychee. A few seconds later, Tante Sur with the red kebaya suddenly appeared and was standing beside Nara and taking his hand.
“Naraaaa,” she said in a cooing tone. “Come with me, will you?” She then gave me a big smile. “I just need to borrow him for a second.”
Ostensibly, Tante Sur wanted to talk to Nara about something in secret, but she only pulled him a couple meters from our circle and then spoke to him in a voice loud enough for the rest of us to hear.
“Where is your mother, Nara? Why didn’t she come tonight?” Tante Sur pretended to whisper.
“She’s with my father in Brussels, on business.”
“Is that your girlfriend, Nara?”
“Yes, Tante, she is.”
“Oh, not Sophie anymore?”
“Sophie…?”
I snuck a glance at Tante Sur. Her head was thrust towards Nara as if about to discuss a bank heist. “I was just talking to Om Marto, and he said your girlfriend is Dimas Suryo’s daughter.”
“That’s right, Tante.”
Restraining myself from turning to look at Nara and Tante Sur, I pretended to study the name cards Hans and Raditya had just given to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tante Sur do a double take.
“But, Nara,” she said in the voice of a mother chastising her five-year-old son, “Om Marto mentioned the government’s continued stress on the need for ‘political hygiene.’”
Nara burst into laughter. I knew he was laughing at the euphemism the woman had used. The original Indonesian term, bersih lingkungan, could also be translated as “environmentally clean.” The sound of his laughter was one of disgust.
“Excuse me, Tante Sur, but I really don’t think that Om Marto or any of the other diplomats are going to be admonished because Lintang came to a kebaya fashion show held to commemorate Kartini Day. Enough said, Tante.”
A few seconds later Nara was again at my side. He took the glass from my hand and put it on a side table, then took my arm and said that it was time to go home. I could see a look of anger on his face.
In the taxi on the way to my mother’s apartment, where I was going to stay that night, Nara said almost nothing at all. When we arrived at my mother’s apartment building and got out of the vehicle, we stopped and stood together on the sidewalk outside.
“Nara?”
He looked at me.
“That talk about ‘bersih lingkungan’ and the need for political hygiene, is that some kind of rule set down in writing?”
Nara took a deep breath and shook his head. “I have no idea. What I do know is that it’s the most discriminative regulation on earth.”
Obviously, Nara was overstating the case. There were other regulations that were much more discriminatory — apartheid, for one — but Nara was angry, and his anger was natural, because someone had insulted his girlfriend.
As it had been some time since I had broken off communication with my father, I was not up to date either on developments in his life or in Indonesian political life. “I want to know for sure. I think I’ll go to Beaubourg to find out.”
“I doubt if you’ll find much there,” Nara said. “I’d be surprised if the Beaubourg had much stuff on regulations affecting former political prisoners or their families.”
“Oh…” I didn’t know what to say. I could feel my heart pounding.
Nara took my arm and walked me to the door.
“Coming in?” I asked.
“I’m sure your mother wants you to herself tonight. I’ll just go home.”
From the clutch bag I had also borrowed from mother, I removed two name cards and showed them to Nara.
“Hans and Raditya,” I said with a laugh.
This time, Nara laughed along.
“They told me that if I wanted to go to Jakarta on a tourist visa that they’d be willing to help.”
Nara smiled, now with a look of optimism on his face. “Not all the people at the embassy are cut from the same cloth. The younger ones, like those friends of mine, are very different in their thinking than the old-school diplomats.”
I still hesitated to express my opinion on the subject of a “clean environment,” the look on Tante Sur’s face, and the opinions of the various diplomats and guests who were at the party. I was thinking of Professor Dupont’s words about my father, and about history. That night I had been introduced to a part of Indonesia which was very different from the one I knew through Tanah Air Restaurant.
Suddenly, having entered a long and dark tunnel into Indonesian history, I felt the need for a lighted candle. Just as suddenly, blood quickened in my veins. My chest pounded. The word “Indonesia”—I-N-D-O-N-E-S-I-A — suddenly became something of interest for me. I thought of Shakespeare and of Rumi.
How was I to pluck the meaning of Indonesia from the word “Indonesia”? The reaction of Tante Sur, she of the red kebaya, was one I had just come to know at a glance. What is the real Indonesia, I asked myself. Where is it? And where within it are my father, Om Tjai, Om Risjaf, and Om Nug?
I stroked Nara’s chin and then kissed him on the lips. Delightfully surprised, he nestled his body closer to mine.
“What was that kiss for?” he asked.
“Because you are the angel who descended from heaven to save me.”
And then I kissed him again.
L’IRRÉPARABLE
There once was what remained of a park the place where we embraced.
(“AFTERWORD,” GOENAWAN MOHAMAD, 1973)
PARIS, MAY 1997
THE SOUND OF RAVEL’S “MIROIRS” was a constant in Lintang’s apartment. Narayana knew very well that Ravel was always able to soothe Lintang’s soul and heal her wounds. Nara took a video cassette and inserted it in the player As the video began to play, he saw the somewhat blurred image of a younger Dimas from ten or more years previously. Facing the lens, Dimas was giving instructions to the person holding the video camera.
“Don’t come too close or you’ll blur my face.”
Dimas now stuck his head towards the lens to give instructions. The lens turned away from him. Only then Nara realized that the person who had been holding the camera was Lintang. Look at her, how young she is: only nine or ten years of age. But she was a beauty even then, this Eurasian girl with starry eyes.
“Bonjour. This camera is a gift from my ayah. Today is my birthday and I am, I am…”
“Ten years old!” came the sound of Dimas’s voice, announcing his daughter’s age.
Lintang giggled.
“Starting today, I am going to record…”
Lintang’s small hands reached out to take the camera. Garbled images and sounds ensued as the camera moved hands. The next clear image was that of Vivienne sitting on a lawn chair beneath a tree. Her face had a weary look as she leaned against the back of the chair. Noticing the camera, she smiled and waved, but then she looked down, her lips stiff once more. Gloomy.
Narayana’s forehead furrowed as he watched this fledgling documentary.
“It was around that time my parents began to argue a lot.”
Lintang had suddenly appeared behind Narayana with two open bottles of beer in her hands. Nara grabbed one of the bottles and took a swig.