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HANANTO PRAWIRO

ON ONE VERY MUGGY SUMMER EVENING, VIVIENNE AND I lolled on the floor of her apartment, trying our best to do nothing. Her apartment wasn’t especially large but as my eyes scanned its contents—books, books, and more books—I felt immediately at home. Works by Simone de Beauvoir and other French authors were mixed with titles by British, Irish, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian authors. My eyes paused for a moment on two of Joyce’s works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. I noted that titles generally viewed as mandatory reading on Marxist political thought occupied a special shelf of their own. On another shelf, I saw Ayn Rand’s semi-autobiographical work, We the Living, and her controversial novel, The Fountainhead. Judging from Vivienne’s taste in books, I could see that she was, very much like me, a literary traveler. Like me, too, she apparently liked to study the various kinds of thought that marked important periods of time, without being forced to stop at or become trapped by a particular intellectual current. Hmm… My attraction to her increased exponentially. At that moment, I wanted to take her in my arms and never let her go.

Vivienne got up and opened the windows of her apartment as wide as possible. She was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, and the delicate film of perspiration on her elegant neck excited me. She took two bottles of cold Alsace beer from her small refrigerator and handed one to me. She drank her beer straight from the bottle, gulping the amber liquid as if it were an elixir. I watched the bluish vein on her neck pulsate as she swallowed the beer flowing down her throat. A thin stream of liquid seeped from the side of her mouth and trickled down her chin and neck. The beer mixed with her sweat made me want to lap the salty mix from her neck with my tongue.

Vivienne stopped drinking and smiled at me, a challenge in her piercing eyes. She knew what I was thinking. “Tell me about Indonesia …”

Not knowing how to begin to tell her about my home country, I paused. Where should I start? With my family? With the country in tumult? Or back to early 1960s when President Sukarno’s shifting political alliances led the country—and me as well—to the point we are today? My mind flashed back to Jakarta. What had Sukarno been up to? Did he actually side with his friends on the left? What had he wanted or hoped to achieve with his policy of “Nasakom,” his odd promulgation of nationalism, religion, and communism? And as the chronology of the night of September 30 emerged, why had he fled the presidential palace and gone to Halim Perdanakusuma Naval Air Base? This was a question that had nagged my friends in Jakarta and continued to nag me.

How could I ever explain or even begin to unravel this messy bundle of thread for Vivienne? Maybe it would be best to begin somewhere else—with wayang tales, for instance, stories from the Javanese shadow theater that were my secret obsession. Better that, perhaps, than opening the doors to my country’s warehouse of history to cast light on its cluttered contents.

Vivienne took another gulp of beer from her bottle but didn’t swallow. Instead, she lowered her body to straddle my lap and then kissed me, the cool beer emptying from her mouth into mine. The sensation quickened the flow of my blood, making it dance wildly through my veins, and inflamed my joints. Any attempt to prevent Vivienne from feeling my body’s reaction to the blood coursing through my veins to my extremities would have been futile. How could it not be? Her midsection was pressed into my crotch.

As I became more excited, my blood raced more swiftly through me. Unable to restrain myself, I began to lick her neck and chest, which were slick with sweat and beer. With her torso positioned directly in front of my eyes, her breasts seemed ready to burst from the seams of her clinging T-shirt. And in my darting eyes, her long legs seemed to be begging for me to remove the skimpy blue jeans encasing them.

Vivienne rarely wore a bra during the summer. At times, I protested, not because I was prudish but because of the very evident physical reaction that occurred in me at the sight of her nipples beneath her T-shirt. At times it was almost painful. How could she torture me like that? Wasn’t I supposed to be concentrating on my future life in Paris? I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t think of anything except what was under that damned T-shirt of hers.

Once I begged her to wear a bra to prevent me from becoming so flustered. And her answer…?

“Do you know how uncomfortable it is to wear a bra on a day as hot as this? Here!” She took a brightly colored red bra and shoved it in front of my nose. “You try wearing it.”

My mouth turned dry. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know if Vivienne realized how excited it made me to see her nipples protruding from under her T-shirt. How can women be so cruel? But, in the end, I decided to give thanks to nature for its wisdom in making the summer in Paris so hot that Vivienne refused to wear a bra—because it made what happened next all that much easier. Not having to couch our feelings in lines of poetry from one of the books we were reading, Vivienne and I both raced to remove our clothing. Then we attacked each other, wrestling with each other on the floor. Paris was hot, but we were burning. After just a few minutes we lay exhausted and naked on the floor, staring at the ceiling of the apartment. The August evening was so stuffy and humid our bodies were drenched with sweat. But in our desire for one another, we thought nothing of the discomfort and made passionate love, again and again. What time it was I didn’t know, but I suddenly felt the urge to smoke. “Have you ever smoked kretek?” I asked Vivienne, whose head was nestled on my chest. “No, but I’ve heard about them from Mathilde, who bought some in Amsterdam. She says they’re amazing.” I scrounged in the pocket of my shirt on the floor. “Ah, I still have some.” There were still a few sticks left in a badly crumpled packet. I lit one and then took turns smoking the cigarette with Vivienne. Vivienne smacked her lips. “They have a sweet taste. What is it?” “Cloves,” I said, “desiccated cloves,” while trying to suppress the feeling of longing aroused by the scent of that spice and everything else that smelled of Indonesia. “It would be perfect if we had a cup of luwak coffee.” There, I had said it, that dangerous word. Poor and stranded as I was in the middle of Europe, giving voice to a longing for something as exotic as luwak coffee was the same as sticking a knife in my heart. If I wanted to go on living, I had to—at least for now—bury and conceal Indonesia and anything connected with it. I felt my mind return to the Jakarta where I lived four years previously.

JAKARTA, DECEMBER 1964

A kretek was like a symbol for us. After a long discussion and sometimes heated debate about politics and the nation’s state of affairs at the office, we would often end the discussion with a cup of thick black coffee and a kretek cigarette at Senen Market. At that time, in late 1964, Jakarta was a city that was neither calm nor comfortable.

The office of Nusantara News on Jalan Asem Lama seemed to have running through it some kind of demarcation line separating members of political camps. On one side were members of the Communist Party; people who sympathized with Party goals; members of LEKRA, a cultural organization with close links to the Party; and even people who simply liked to spend time with the artists who belonged to this organization, the League of People’s Culture. On the other side and at the opposite end of the political spectrum were staff members who shunned anything that might be labeled leftist. Among them was my friend, Bang Amir, who was pro-Masyumi, the Islamic political party founded by Natsir, whose pan-Islamic philosophy was antithetical to leftist thought. As for me, I was a bit on the fence. I supported Marxist ideals and enjoyed reading all the books that Mas Hananto gave me on the subject; I enthusiastically listened to political discussions between Mas Hananto and other colleagues in the editorial room, and it wasn’t rare to find me tagging along with them as they continued their debate over coffee at Kadir’s stall in Senen Market. Even so, I also liked, and found much comfort in, talking to Bang Amir about things of a more religious or spiritual nature.

But that sense of wonder stopped at my body, not my soul.

Both Mas Hananto and Mas Nugroho strongly believed in the virtues of socialism, but I saw numerous weak points in their theories and, even in the face of Mas Hananto’s derision, I continued to stand by my view that while there are some things that the government should ultimately be responsible for—public health and services, to name two—there are other things that are far better left entrusted to the private sector.

Lately, I had felt the political temperature in Jakarta rise precipitously, nearing the boiling point. At the top of my mind was the ever more strident war between LEKRA artists, who clung to the notion that art only has value if it serves to promote awareness of social issues, and artists who did not belong to the League and upheld the principles of individuality and humanitarianism. I then thought of literature. A literary work was, for me at least, a matter of the heart. Just because its theme or story line involved the struggle of farmers or laborers didn’t mean it would have an enlightening effect. That power came from the ability of the work to touch the heart of its reader. In this matter, in particular, I was greatly at odds with Mas Hananto’s point of view.

Hananto Prawiro… He was not just my superior; he was also my friend. I called him “Mas,” after all, the Javanese term of address for a man older than oneself with whom one is a friend. But he was also my guru and my mentor. Mas Hananto, head of the foreign desk at Nusantara News, was constantly lending me books he thought might help to expand my world view—which he deemed to be excessively tainted by bourgeois thought and opinion. Novels like Madame Bovary, for instance; plays like Waiting for Godot; and all of Joyce’s work, for that matter, he criticized as being self-indulgent.

“They’re playing with their belly buttons!” he said of such writers one day as he was flipping through A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “They’re not concerned with this world; they ignore class differences and poverty.”

“But Joyce, through his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, is trying to find himself through religion and art. I feel the process to be entirely rational,” I argued, trying to explain myself in a manner not even entirely convincing to myself. I had read the novel several times and never found myself bored by it. Dedalus is both a tragic and humorous figure. Sure, he might be a tad too serious about himself at times, but was Mas Hananto unable to see the bitter humor underlying such a work?

Mas Hananto had the most annoying habit of often repeating his views and opinions, so much so, I swear, that if my ears could have replied they would have screamed that he was merely sputtering clichés. Among Marxist followers in Indonesia, social-realist jargon was sacred. And anyone who wanted to curry favor with the editor-in-chief, a man who happened to be close to Communist Party leaders, had only to drop such terms or quote a few lines from The Mother and then act as if he had read the entire book to gain access to the editor-in-chief’s inner circle of colleagues.

For me, Gorky’s novel, which had been translated into Indonesian by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, was boring beyond belief. All its focus was on social issues with no concern for style or literary execution. My thought was that if the only thing a writer is concerned with is social issues, then he had better not write novels or poetry; he’d best stick to writing speeches or propaganda essays instead.

Mas Hananto once referred to me as a “Wibisono,” the younger brother of the ogre king Rahwana in the Ramayana, who allied himself with Rama, his brother’s foe. But in Indonesian politics, I didn’t know who was Rahwana and who was Rama. What I did know was that Mas Hananto didn’t quite know what to make of my views; they weren’t straight forward like his. And, frankly, if I were going to be called by the name of any character from the legendary Javanese pantheon, it probably would be Bima, who, among the five Pandawa brothers, was the one with the softest heart. Even though Bima fell head over heels in love with Drupadi, when his older brother Arjuna made known his desire to have her, Bima willing stepped aside. Oh, and by the way, this reference to Bima has no relation to past Indonesian politics, but everything to do with my former love life.

Mas Hananto knew that the way to deal with me was not through a battle of wills or disputation of my tastes. He knew I had little regard for the novels that he praised for their defense of the masses. I once rebuked him by asking if it wasn’t the case that we were supposed to be defending all of humanity, not just the proletariat. Why couldn’t we inculcate the concept of embracing the humanity that is found in all of us? Mas Hananto guffawed at my comment. But, unlike Mas Nugroho, whose hackles would rise because of my argumentative manner, Mas Hananto seemed to take on the role of a patient older brother trying to educate his whining younger sibling. That was why, even with the demarcation line running through the office, dividing friends and foes of the Communist Party, I seemed to reside in a kind of Swiss neutral zone, and was able to move from one side to another and to engage with Bang Amir and his friends.

I called Amir “Bang,” a term of address that derives from abang or “older brother,” because he was indeed like an older brother for me. Also a journalist at the Nusantara News, Bang Amir was highly critical of “Bung” or “Comrade” Sukarno, judging the president guilty of too closely embracing the Communist Party leadership and also of having imprisoned Mohammad Natsir, the former prime minister and one of the country’s top religious leaders, on charges of treason.

What with the constant wrangling between the two camps in the office and especially because the editor-in-chief had allied himself with Mas Hananto and Mas Nugroho, who were committed leftists, my in-between position was sometimes an uncomfortable one. Yes, Bang Amir was vocal in his opinions, but he was also a top-notch journalist, and when he was abruptly moved to the marketing and advertising division, I thought the move not only surprising but an insult both to him and to our profession. Regardless of the fact that “marketing and advertising” is essential to the success of a company or institution, Bang Amir was our best reporter. With his easy-going manner, he was able to get along with and, in fact, had become close to the leaders of all the political parties—except for the Communist Party, that is, whose leadership Mas Hananto claimed as his key source. Furthermore, as a writer, Bang Amir was both fast and effective, the very characteristics a news agency needs in a journalist.

“Why do you mean, an ‘insult’?” Mas Hananto asked me in a shrill voice when I criticized the editor-in-chief’s decision to transfer Bang Amir.

“Because it’s idiotic, transferring Bang Amir like that. It was obviously done for political reasons. Isn’t that so?” I asked Mas Hananto in turn. “And if that’s the case, it’s a bad decision.”

Mas Hananto looked at me sourly but he didn’t refute my accusation. “And where is there not politics in life?” he asked instead—another habit that infuriated me, always answering a question with one of his own. Just because he was my superior, my mentor, and better than me in many respects, it didn’t mean he was always right. Sure, everything was political, but to have “exiled” Bang Amir for any reason—and this was for sheer political reasons—wasn’t the right thing to do. And not only was it not right; it wasn’t fair.

“In every struggle, we have to be ready for times that require sacrifice,” Mas Hananto told me.

God, I thought, now he’s sounding like Bung Karno. What was the connection between the so-called struggle and Bang Amir’s transfer?

The scowl on my face appeared to make Mas Hananto uneasy, but I was angry and I wanted him to know it. Apparently sensing this and also knowing that if he tried to counter me our argument would only grow worse, he wisely turned and walked away.

That evening I decided to visit Bang Amir at his home, which was just a becak-ride from Nusantara News, on a small and shady side street off Salemba Boulevard. His wife Saidah—a woman with wonderfully long wavy hair and the tender voice of a mother who never seemed angry or impatient—answered my knock on the door. She invited me in and ushered me to the living room.

“Bang Amir is praying. He won’t be long. I’ll make some coffee,” she said as she retreated to the kitchen in the back.

I nodded. Looking down at the coffee table in front of my chair, I saw Capita Selecta, one of Natsir’s works, and several other titles as well along with a notebook and a fountain pen with its cap on. I knew that Bang Amir was a Masyumi follower, of course; and though I hardly knew Natsir himself and had scant knowledge of the ideology behind his Masyumi Party, the man struck me as being courteous and sincere. One day, in a conversation with Bang Amir at the office, he started talking about Natsir and told me how he hoped that Natsir would soon be released from the prison in Malang where he was being held. Unfortunately, because of a news deadline, we were never able to finish this conversation.

“Dimas Suryo …”

Bang Amir had a low and deep voice, like that of the popular bass vocalist, Rahmat Kartolo. Sometimes I found myself talking to him just to hear the rhythmic cadence of his sultry voice. But I was interested in what he had to say—and not just his criticism of the editor-in-chief, whose management style seemed to derive from herd instinct; I was interested in his other thoughts and ideas as well.

I stood to greet Bang Amir and we warmly shook hands. I stopped myself from blurting out how shocked I was not to see him in the editorial room, but I guessed he was able to intuit the reason for my visit, namely a sense of solidarity with him as a fellow journalist and editor. I’m sure he also guessed that I strongly disagreed with the editor-in-chief’s decision to transfer him to another section. Whatever the case, we jumped into ready conversation, talking about this and that, while drinking tubruk coffee and smoking kretek, completely skirting the subject that was on each other’s mind.

During the course of our conversation, Bang Amir revealed how he had come to meet his wife Saidah. Their first meeting was at the wedding of a friend, he told me, and when they looked at each other, they had immediately fallen in love. Amir stressed that as long as Saidah was beside him, he would be able to overcome whatever peril might befall him. “Even a transfer to the marketing division,” he added sardonically, finally entering that taboo domain. “When I pray, I always thank God for having given me Saidah to stand beside me. Without her, I would be a boat adrift. With her, I am able to maintain my balance and feel calm.”

As if having said enough about the sensitive issue, Bang Amir immediately segued into commentary of a more spiritual nature. “I believe that Allah shows the blessings He has bestowed on me by providing, inside myself, a small and private space, a little vacuum as it were, which only He and I occupy. And it is in there I go, Dimas, whenever I am trying to understand what is happening.

I wasn’t quite sure what Amir meant by this “private space” or that “little vacuum” but I was charmed by the imagery and dissolved in it like cocoa power in hot water. Whether it was because of his mellifluous voice or as a result of what he’d said, I said nothing in reply.

He took another sip of coffee and then asked out of the blue, “So, why don’t you want to get married and settle down?” yanking me back to the profane world.

I smiled. Suddenly, the image of Surti flashed before me. Bright. Shining. A kitchen smelling of turmeric. A kiss that overwhelmed my senses. I was startled. Why had her face appeared just now, when I was annoyed with Mas Hananto?

“That look on your face tells me you have someone already,” Amir said. “Is she pretty? Who is she?”

I smiled and shook my head. “It’s no one. I’m still single. But maybe one day…”

He smiled knowingly, like an elder brother. “Don’t worry. One day you’ll meet your Saidah.”

I was unnerved by Bang Amir’s sincerity. Shortly afterwards, when I stood to take my leave, I hugged him warmly. And as I walked away from the house to hunt for a becak, my heart felt like it was strapped in irons.

One night we finished writing up the news sooner than usual. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. At first I thought I’d find a bite to eat and go home, but then Mas Hananto signaled for me to come with him. When I asked where we were going, he just smiled and kept driving his beloved Nissan patrol jeep. On the way to wherever it was we were going, he mentioned that he and Mas Nugroho were in frequent correspondence with people close to Andrés Pascal Allende.

“You mean, as in the nephew of Salvador Allende?” I asked in awe, like some country hick when hearing the name of a celebrity.

“Yes,” he smiled, “and the founder of that country’s leftist party, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria.”

I said nothing, leery of knowing (or not wanting to know) what their correspondence was about.

At the corner of Jalan Tjidurian in Menteng, Mas Hananto turned left. I said nothing. Now I knew that we were heading to LEKRA’s headquarters. From a distance, I saw, sitting on the terrace of the large house being used as LEKRA’s office, a number of people engaged in casual conversation.

“I don’t know about this…” I whispered to my friend.

“Take it easy. I just want you to meet some of my friends. Plus, I have a book in there I want you to read.”

I sat down among the nine or ten people who were there and soon found myself falling into easy conversation with them. Almost unaware of the passing time, we stayed at the office until almost midnight, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Afterwards, Mas Hananto gave me a lift to my boarding house.

As I was getting out of the jeep, he handed me a copy of the Indonesian-language edition of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. “Pramoedya translated it,” Mas Hananto said to me, as if this gave the book official imprimatur. “The book is mine but you can have it.”

I said nothing but nodded my thanks.

“After you have read it, I want you to tell me if you still think social realism is not interesting.”

“What happened to Hananto and his family?” Vivienne’s voice broke the spell and yanked me back to Paris in 1968. I couldn’t give her an immediate answer. She seemed to acknowledge this and to understand that there were other chapters in my life’s story that should, in their telling, precede what had happened to Mas Hananto.

I stared into her green eyes and stroked her face. I stood and was shocked, suddenly aware of my naked body. I looked down at Vivienne who smiled as her eyes traced my body’s shape, moving upwards from my legs to my chest.

“His wife Surti and their three children are still in detention,” I said flatly.

“Kenanga?”

“Yes, that’s their oldest”

“Such a pretty name.”

“It’s a kind of flower. I’m not sure what it is in French. The name of Bulan, their second child, means la lune and Alam means la nature. He’s the youngest, just three.” I said, chattering and looking away as I put on my trousers. I didn’t want Vivienne to know that those name were ones that I had once chosen when we were daydreaming. And by “we” I meant Surti and I.

“But what about Hananto?” Vivienne asked.

I was reluctant to say. The smoke rose from our cigarette, twirling in the air, taking me to a world of fog.

“Mas Hananto was the last link in the chain to be captured. Most of the other members of the editorial board at Nusantara News had already been swept up. The only ones not arrested were members of either Islamic or anti-communist organizations. Of course, they were close to the military as well.”

I sat down on the floor, silent in thought, counting the rising rings of smoke.

“There were these conferences for journalists in Santiago and Peking…” I finally began, attempting to give my gradually emerging story more historical context. “And Mas Hananto should have been the one to go to them with Mas Nugroho. He was more senior and much better than I in those kinds of networking jobs…” I stopped, searching for the words to continue. Vivienne stared at me, anxious to hear the rest. “But Mas Hananto couldn’t go. He had a ton of work to do, or so he said, and some pressing personal matters to settle as well. So I replaced him and went with Mas Nug instead. Neither was against my going or taking Mas Hananto’s place. Both thought I would learn a lot and gain some valuable experience besides.”

Vivienne brushed her fingers over my hair.

“If he had gone, he wouldn’t have been captured,” I said, suddenly feeling a chill in my bones. I put on my shirt but still felt myself shaking.

Vivienne frowned. “Not necessarily!”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not the way life works. If Hananto had gone, then everything else that happened would have been different. We don’t know what would have happened. Maybe you’d have been taken in or maybe not.”

“I’d feel better if I was the one who had been captured. I don’t have a family.”

“You have your mother and your brother.”

I didn’t reply. I knew Vivienne was trying to comfort me. She had a good heart, a gentle soul, but there was no way I was going to feel consoled when I thought of what had happened to Surti and her children. My cigarette was a stub in my fingers.

Vivienne lit a new kretek. She took a drag then handed it to me.

THE TRIVELI AREA OF JAKARTA;

SEPTEMBER 5, 1965

I was on my fifth cigarette already and Mas Hananto was still getting it off with that woman in her house. I looked at my watch. Two o’clock in the morning! I swore that if he didn’t settle his business and show his face before I finished the cigarette, I was going to leave him. I didn’t care if he groused at me the next day at work. And what was he doing in there anyway? He had a beautiful wife: Surti, who was perfect in almost every way. He had no reason to betray her. I couldn’t understand the man’s behavior but, as I was his friend, I also couldn’t remain oblivious to his proclivity for extramarital affairs.

This was the third time Mas Hananto had forced me to go with him when he went to see Marni. He needed me along to provide an alibi in case Surti asked where or with whom he had been.

Hearing a sound, I looked around to see Mas Hananto finally coming out of Marni’s place. As he approached me, I could see that he was sweating but also beaming with satisfaction. With a big shit-eating grin on his face, he came over to where I was standing beside the cigarette vendor’s kiosk near where he had parked his car. Son of a bitch!

“What is it?” he asked while lighting a cigarette.

“What do you mean ‘what is it’?”

“Why that hang-dog look on your face?”

“This is the last time I’m coming here with you!”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not your lackey, that’s why, and I don’t want to have to lie to Surti.”

Mas Hananto’s face was expressionless. He had always been very good at concealing his emotions. He just smoked his cigarette. We walked towards the car not speaking. The Jakarta sky was absent of stars, a mirror of my heart. I liked Mas Hananto. And I liked women, too; but for me, supposing I had a wife, especially one as lovely and faithful as Surti, that would mean I had made my choice in life. That would mean there would be no more playing around.

“What’s special about Marni anyway?” I asked, breaking the silence.

Mas Hananto smiled. He knew that I couldn’t stay mad at him for too long. “She makes all the cells in my body seem to come alive,” he said with a glow in his eyes.

“Do you love her?”

He gave me a funny sideways look, and the kind of smirk that always made my blood rush to my temples because of the over-confident way he spoke. He was always so sure that nothing he did could possibly create problems for other people.

“Surti is my wife, my life’s companion. But with Marni, I feel the passionate excitement of the proletarian class.”

Pow!

Mas Hananto suddenly toppled over. I was amazed, because I hadn’t thought the fist of my right hand could move so fast to strike his jaw.

“Attends!” Once again, Vivienne’s voice suddenly tore away the scrim from my past, startling me. She raised her brows inquisitively. “Why were you so angry?”

Vivienne deserved an answer, but my voice was caught in my throat. How was I to explain to Vivienne who Surti was to me? The stem of jasmine that never wilted.

“You were angry because you were in love with her!”

Now I was the one knocked over—or, more precisely, dumb-founded by the ability of this Frenchwoman to read my heart.

I had spoken volumes to Vivienne about Jakarta and the political situation there, and never once had she interrupted me. But now, this one time, she instantly knew I was leaving something out and she cut off my story. Hmm…

I coughed to clear my throat. “Surti and I once were close…”

“You were in love with her,” Vivienne said, correcting me, “and you were angry because Hananto was two-timing the woman you once loved.” Vivienne stared at me to assess whether her assumption was correct. “Or, possibly,” she added, “because you were still in love with her.”

I hastened to explain. “What I was feeling at that time was only that Mas Hananto was squandering the affection of a woman who loved him—the same woman who had given him Kenanga and Bulan,” I said honestly, though still avoiding her question.

Vivienne continued to stare at me, a small smile tugging on her lips.

“That was then, Vivienne. We all have a past,” I said sincerely, hoping that the light in her beautiful green eyes would not fade. “I’m serious. And now I care for and respect Surti as I would a sister. She is—or was, rather—my best friend’s wife.”

Vivienne still looked unsure. I myself was unsure. I knew that whenever I mentioned Surti’s name, my heart felt a jolt of pain. And hearing the names of Kenanga, Bulan, and even Alam, the youngest whom I had never known, still made my heart leap. I was the one who dreamt up their names. I don’t know if Mas Hananto ever knew that.

In a firm voice, Vivienne now asked me to continue my story.

THE TRIVELI AREA OF JAKARTA;

SEPTEMBER 5, 1965

Mas Hananto rubbed his rub his jaw in pain. Inside the cigarette kiosk, the vendor snored, unaware of the disturbance outside.

“Mas Han …”

Hananto turned away, avoiding the look in my eye. “You still haven’t gotten over her, have you?”

I didn’t answer. It would have been a waste of time, what with the anger boiling in each of us.

“What time is it anyway?” I mumbled, suddenly feeling my body begin to wilt. My knees seemed to have lost their caps.

“Three,” Mas Hananto said brusquely, looking at his watch, a 17-jewel Titoni which was like a second heart for him and never free from his wrist. “That’s why I keep telling you to go to Senen Market and buy yourself a watch. You’re always having to ask other people the time.”

His tone was rough, but I could tell he was no longer angry. His jaw must have been hurting him, though.

I sat down beside him on the bumper of his jeep. “This will be the last time I interfere in your personal affairs,” I told him, “but I need to tell you that the way you live your life, with your family here and you going off to see Marni or some other woman there, shows that you are not consistent.”

Mas Hananto helped himself to a pack of cigarettes from the kiosk, placed a bill to cover the cost beside the still-sleeping vendor, opened the packet, and then offered a stick to me. He signaled for me to get into the jeep.

The streets in Jakarta were silent. Silence and smoke suffused the jeep’s interior.

In what seemed just a moment, we found ourselves already driving by the construction site of the unfinished National Monument in the park facing the presidential palace. From the disarray of the site, it was hard to guess when construction would be completed.

“So, you don’t think I’m consistent?” Mas Hananto suddenly muttered.

A strange question, I thought, coming from a man like Mas Hananto, who was so sure of the political ideology he had chosen to follow and the woman he had selected to be a helpmate in his life.

“I say that,” I told him, “because you have a family. A family requires stability and consistency. If you can’t control yourself and are always giving in to impulse, then you shouldn’t have gotten married. All you’re going to do is to make other people suffer.”

Mas Hananto glanced at me. “You’re not saying this because of Surti?”

“You know this has nothing to do with her,” I said unequivocally.

He gave me a serious look. “So I’m the one who’s inconsistent and you are sure your position is the right one? Tell me, are you consistent? Do you know what you want? Either in politics or your personal life?”

I said nothing, certain that he was being rhetorical.

“You don’t belong to a political party. You’re not a member of any of the mass organizations. You always refuse to take sides. You malign LEKRA but then turn around and criticize signatories of the Cultural Manifesto.”

“Yes, and so?” I stared at Mas Hananto, waiting for him to continue his critique.

“Well what is you want, Dimas? Take a look at your personal life. You don’t seem to know what you want. Is it because you haven’t been able to move on from the past or is it that you just like being single?”

Now I didn’t understand. Was he irritated with me because I didn’t want to take sides or because he thought I still had feelings for Surti? Why must a person take sides and join one group or another, I asked myself. Was it merely to prove one’s convictions? And were convictions entirely unitary in nature? Socialism, communism, capitalism, and all the other isms… Must we choose one and then swallow it whole without any sense of doubt? Without any possibility for criticism?

I looked at Mas Hananto but kept my questions to myself. He had one hand on the steering wheel and was rubbing his jaw with the other. That night we said nothing more, at least not until Mas Hananto’s jeep stopped in front of my boarding house, but how the conversation ended, I frankly no longer recall.

What I do remember is that the next day and for the entire week thereafter, we didn’t speak to each other. At the office, Mas Hananto said only what was essential, hardly bothering to look at me when he spoke. His jaw and cheek were swollen and blue.

One day at the office, after about a week of us of not speaking, I watched from a distance as Mas Hananto laughed and spoke in whispers with Mas Nugroho and the editor-in-chief. I gave no thought to their little intrigue. I had no idea that their conversation that day would determine the course of my life, my fate, and my future as an exile, stranded in Paris. But then Mas Nug looked over in my direction and waved his hand, signaling for me to come to his desk.

“So, they had decided to send you to Europe?”

“No, they had decided to send me to one conference in Santiago and then on to another in Peking.”

“So you went to Santiago, Chile, and then after that flew on to China?”

“My journey in life has been a long one, Vivienne. Before going to China, I went to Cuba first, and it was only after some time in China that I came to Europe.”

I looked outside the window. To compare Paris and Jakarta would be like comparing coconut milk with gutter water.

A COFFEE STALL ON JALAN TJIDURIAN, JAKARTA;

SEPTEMBER 12, 1965

“I don’t know anything about the I.O.J. or its conference in Santiago,” I said to Mas Hananto after tracking him to an itinerant coffee stall near the corner of Jalan Tjidurian. I tossed the large manila envelope on the stall’s rickety table. This was the first long sentence I had spoken to Mas Hananto since we’d stopped talking to each other. Inside the envelope was an invitation to attend a conference of journalists in Chile.

Mas Hananto, who was sitting slovenly with one arm on the table and one leg propped up on the bench, stared at his glass of hot coffee as if pretending to be deaf. He lowered his lips to the edge of the glass and started slurping—a sound that disgusted me. I knew he was doing this to annoy me.

Feeling both surprise and the desire to smack him in the jaw again, I finally decided to sit down beside him. “This invitation is for you,” I said. “Why do you want me to go?”

Saying nothing, Mas Hananto lowered his head, looking into his glass of coffee again.

“I can’t speak Spanish. I’ve never engaged in any kind of journalistic activity at the international level. I wouldn’t know what to say at such a conference,” I sputtered, angry with him that he could so flippantly assign me a task without even consulting me beforehand.

“It’s the Chief’s decision,” Mas Hananto mumbled. “You have to go with Nug.”

A glass of coffee suddenly appeared before me.

Mas Hananto said, “The name of the organization is the ‘International Organization of Journalists,’ which is English, right, so the language of the conference is going to be English, which you speak perfectly well. It’s an annual conference for heads of media institutions from around the world. The delegates of each of the countries represented have been given a topic to discuss. You and Nug have one too.”

Still not looking me in the eye, Mas Hananto took another sip of coffee. “Listen, it will be a good experience for you. Guys from Harian Rakjat are also going,” Mas Hananto continued, as if to bolster the reason for me to go. “And we’re sending Risjaf to Havana to represent Indonesia at the Asia-Africa Organization.”

I didn’t reply. In a normal situation, I would have made a joke about Risjaf trying out every Cuban cigar he came across or something on that order, but this situation was different; there was something Mas Hananto was not telling me.

“Why aren’t you going?” I finally asked point blank.

“The Chief has decided that Nug will represent our office and that you will accompany him.”

Mas Hananto, still avoiding my eyes, was staring so closely at his glass of coffee, you’d have thought there was a miniature Maya reclining on its rim.

“We also have the situation here to deal with. Word has been going around about intrigues among the Communist Party elite and military high officials. The Chief feels that it would be best for me to be here in Jakarta.”

I didn’t know what to say. This was the first time Mas Hananto had ever told me something that sounded so very “internal” in nature. Even so, I still felt that he was leaving out something.

“After the conference in Santiago, you and Nug will join up with Risjaf in Havana and then go on to Peking for the Asia-Africa Journalists Conference there,” said Mas Hananto, offering further explanation.

I didn’t want to react. And I didn’t want to drink the coffee that had been placed in front of me.

Mas Hananto glanced at me. He knew that I wouldn’t give in to his bidding before he divulged the full details.

“Whenever you sulk, you stick out your lower lip so far you could hang a frying pan off it,” he said with a smirk.

I waited for Mas Hananto to say more but his attention was now on the stream of smoke rising from his cigarette. Shit! I stood to go, leaving the glass of coffee untouched and the envelope with the invitation and air tickets to Santiago on the table top. I had just turned and started to walk away when Mas Hananto called my name in a loud and broken voice.

I sat down, my lower lip still hanging.

Mas Hananto looked both irritated and sad. I had no idea what had come over him. “I can’t go, Dimas. I have to stay here, in Jakarta.”

I swallowed. This was the first time I had ever seen tears in Mas Hananto’s eyes.

“Surti is taking the girls to her parents’ home,” he said hoarsely.

I said nothing. I knew how very much he loved Kenanga and Bulan and how much they loved him.

“Why?”

Mas Hananto didn’t answer.

“Because of Marni?”

Mas Hananto took a deep breath. “I’m trying to persuade Surti not to leave me. That’s why I can’t leave town, much less the country, at this time. I have to take care of family business. If need be, I’ll stay at home and won’t go into the office until Surti has changed her mind and is ready to try again.”

Wordlessly, I picked up the manila envelope and then patted Mas Hananto on the shoulder, as if to reassure him that everything would work out.

Mas Hananto unstrapped his beloved watch. “During the conference, you have to be on time,” he said handing the watch to me.

I knew I couldn’t refuse his offer, not that night, so I took the watch and put it on my wrist.

“I’m sure that by the time I get back, you two will be just fine,” I said, trying to cheer him. “Surti is never going to leave you. She’s just mad at you, is all. Trust me…”

Mas Hananto nodded. I nodded in return and then looked at him for what would be the last time.