His answer appeared to appease Ayah somewhat. He looked at Nara and then at me with a friendlier light was in his eyes.
Nara might be from a wealthy family, but he wasn’t stupid or ridiculous like many of the rich Indonesian kids I come to meet in Paris who drove Ferrari or Porsche cars to show off the fruits of their fathers’ corruption.
“What with their fingers in businesses everywhere, I’d say Soeharto’s children are the source of the problem,” Ayah suggested.
“I was there in June last year, just at the time the government revoked the publishing licenses of those two news magazines and a newspaper. You heard about it, I’m sure. It really was quite the scene. People took their protests to Parliament and were demonstrating in the streets.”
“I know, I follow the news,” Ayah remarked. “It was an idiotic thing for the government to do. All it did was prove to everyone that the Soeharto regime continues to want absolute power.”
I sensed Nara breathe a sigh of relief to see Ayah now acting in a more courteous manner. At the very least, he had smiled.
But, apparently, Ayah wasn’t quite ready to give in so easily. His face grew serious again. Looking downward, as if to bury his face in the plate, he cut at his steak intensely. I knew the look on his face; it was the same one that appeared whenever Maman started to get on his back about their precarious financial situation.
I broached a different subject. “Nara likes to watch films.”
“Of course he likes to watch films,” Ayah snapped. “If you’re a student of literature, you’re going to be interested in theater, film, dance, and music as well. That’s normal. It would be strange if he didn’t,” he added coldly.
I was getting the impression that the only reason my father had accepted Nara’s invitation to come all the way to Brussels for this meal was to insult and hurt this rich kid’s feelings. What he didn’t seem to realize was that by hurting Nara, he was also hurting me, his own daughter.
The restaurant was getting busier and the music emanating from the piano and violins on the small stage in the corner of the cave made me want to cry.
“You’re right, sir. A person has to choose the field he likes, but this is not a freedom all of our friends enjoy. Life makes its own choices.” Nara continued to maintain a pleasant demeanor and friendly tone of voice. He must have wrapped his body in some kind of anti-bullet or anti-arrow armor. He seemed immune to all the negative energy being directed towards him, his body a shield that deflected the jousts aimed at him.
Ayah said nothing for a moment. Maybe it had begun to dawn on him that Nara was, in fact, an intelligent person.
“What films do you like?” he asked in a warmer tone of voice.
“Well, one of my all-time favorites is Throne of Blood. It’s amazing how Kurosawa was able to reinterpret Macbeth the way he did. I had no idea that Shakespeare could be adapted to fit in with Japanese artistic traditions.”
Ayah cut another piece of meat from his steak before answering, but then nodded. “Throne of Blood is a great film,” he finally consented with a grunt.
“It’s Kurosawa’s interpretation of Lady Macbeth that really floored me,” I said, joining the conversation. “The soliloquy she delivers while seated, with her eyes fixed straight ahead as she speaks her poisonous words… Just incredible!”
“But you like Rashomon and Seven Samurai better,” Ayah stated as a truth before turning to Nara. “When Lintang was small, we used to go to film retrospectives in the park at the Domaine de Saint-Cloud,” he added in an aside.
“I know that, sir. Lintang has told me about all the films she’s seen,” Nara said with a smile as he squeezed my hand in his.
Wrong move. I could see it in my father’s eyes. His smile vanished.
The plates had been cleared away. Dessert arrived, but Ayah declined the offer and ordered coffee instead. I asked for mint tea. The waiter brought to the table several stems of mint arranged like a miniature tree in a pot. I had only to pick the leaves, rinse them in a small receptacle of water, and then submerge them in a cup of hot water. As he followed this process and the movement of my hands with his eyes, Ayah kept shaking his head. It was obvious that bringing such a cynical man as my father to this place had been a very bad idea.
I tried to bridge the looming silence. “Nara is one of the few men I know — aside from you, Ayah — who actually likes to read poetry,” I said.
“Really?” Ayah asked with a tone of disbelief. Again his eyes scanned the interior of the restaurant with its hundreds of candles. “Whose works do you like?”
Nara wiped his lips with his napkin and slowly recited the lines of a poem: “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes / I all alone beweep my outcast state / and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries …”
“Shakespeare, huh?” Ayah took a breath. “But why did you choose ‘Sonnet 29’?”
Nara said nothing. My heart beat faster.
Ayah set down his coffee cup on its saucer, then looked into Nara’s eyes as if he were seeking some kind of truth. Ayah contended that a person’s honesty could be seen in his eyes. Even the smallest of falsehoods could be detected in a person’s downward glance or a timorous shade in his eyes. Ayah was confident of his ability to judge a person’s character merely by the light in that person’s eyes. He always frightened me by his ability to do so.
“When I think of that sonnet,” Ayah said, “the picture that comes to my mind is of a young aristocrat who was born into wealth but is now depressed because he has fallen into poverty. He covets the things that other people own: ‘Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope…’ The sonnet is well written, with a good choice of words, but its message is conveyed though the figure of a spoiled young man.”
Ayah glanced at Nara as he said this.
This time Nara’s reserve of patience seemed to be depleted. But he was not a person who easily angered, and he held his tongue.
“Nara likes Indonesian poetry too,” I put in.
“Especially Subagio Sastrowardoyo,” Nara said. “There’s one collection of his that never fails to move me…”
Nara spoke softly, as if worried that he was about to be clapped like a mosquito. Ayah stopped drinking his coffee and stared at Nara, but didn’t ask what book Nara was referring to.
Suddenly, they both said at once: “And Death Grows More Intimate.”
Although their chorus had been coincidental, I felt relieved. “I’ll have to read it again!” I remarked enthusiastically, feeling that the shadow of a white flag had fallen between them.
“I’ll bring the book for you tomorrow,” Nara cheerfully told me.
I wondered if the source of his good cheer was my enthusiasm or the perception that he might have finally gotten an edge on my father; but then Ayah suddenly returned the conversation to enemy terrain.
“You can have my copy. It’s on the bookshelf. Second rack down from the top, on the far left.”
There was no sound of friendliness in Ayah’s voice. Then he immediately pushed back his chair and stood up, a sign that our dinner together was over. It was going to be a very long drive back to Paris.
The next day I went to Ayah’s apartment for the sole purpose of berating him for his behavior the night before. His apartment, a small one in the Marais, with just one bedroom, a living room, and a tiny kitchen, was where he had lived since separating from Maman. His bedroom, though, was relatively large — at least compared to the living room. Apart from his bed, the room contained several free-standing shelves stuffed with books and a desk with a typewriter that faced the window.