Leila Chudori - Home

I knew that for a man like my father, Dimas Suryo, who had come to France from a country in upheaval — a place called Indonesia which, for me, existed only in the imagination — L’Amour would come off as being no more than a primping room for members of the nouvelle bourgeoisie with an urgent need to show off their wealth, and pseudo-intellectuals with brains no bigger than peanuts.

I tried to explain all of this to my dearest Narayana as subtly as I could, but being both stubborn and naïve (at least in regard to my father), he resisted my suggestion and went ahead planning that first dinner with my father, full of love and attention. Meanwhile, I nervously wondered what my father’s reaction would be.

The dress code at L’Amour required that male customers wear suit and tie — something my father never did unless absolutely forced to. That, I guessed would be a big problem. Then, too, I couldn’t imagine him feeling comfortable beneath the fawning attention of the restaurant’s beautiful waitresses or the haughty gaze of its handsome maître d’.

Remarkably, Ayah protested very little when I told him that he had to wear a suit. I knew that he was doing it for me.

That night, the two main men in my life looked handsome, a well-matched pair. My fingers were crossed that everything would work out all right. And I watched them intently as they adopted a polite attitude and began to engage each other in civilized conversation. It would be more accurate to say that Nara began the conversation. He began by telling Ayah of his visit to Jakarta the previous year. He spoke of the city’s horrendous traffic conditions and how hot and humid the city felt. He talked about “Abimanyu Fallen,” a dance-drama performance he had seen with his parents at the Jakarta Arts Building, and about developments in Indonesia’s art world in general. More particularly, he talked about painting, whose popularity, he said, far surpassed that of other art forms.

Perhaps it was this talk about Jakarta, but Ayah suddenly seemed disinterested in Nara’s explanation. He listened quietly, but offered almost no comment at all, as if unimpressed.

When the sommelier came to our table with the bottle of Saint-Émilion Bordeaux that Nara had ordered for our meal, Ayah accepted a glass and slowly took a sip.

“Expensive wine for a college student,” he remarked.

Aha! The first of Ekalaya’s arrows, shot straight at the target.

Nara smiled. “That’s all right. This is a special occasion.”

“What makes it special?”

Nara continued to smile and looked at me.

“Lintang is a very special woman.”

Ayah stared at Nara like a tiger ready to pounce on a creature that had entered his domain.

“So, you’re a student,” Ayah said, “but do you also work part-time, like Lintang does at the library to earn enough money to cover her other expenses?”

The second arrow. But Narayana patiently continued to smile.

“No, sir. But during the summer two years ago I worked at my father’s office.”

“Must have been nice.”

The third arrow, this one straight into the heart.

I stared at Ayah. What was he doing? Was it his goal to make the rest of my life miserable? Didn’t he understand that Nara was the man I loved? The person who always put my happiness first?

Ayah grumbled about his tie and how it was strangling him. His eyes, a camera lens, panned the interior of the cave-like restaurant, scanning the reproductions of paintings around the room and the thick hanging plants suspended from the ceiling. What a mistake this was! Why had Nara invited him to Brussels, to this strange and expensive place?

“Why do we have to wear a suit in this cave? Why not costumes like on The Flintstones ?”

Apparently thinking this was funny, Ayah chuckled to himself. I wanted to take the tub of butter the waiter had just set on the table and stuff it in my father’s mouth.

Maybe because Nara did not react to his taunts, Ayah finally began to act more polite.

“So, Jakarta is chaotic, you say? I’ve heard all there is now are shopping malls. Is that true?” he asked as he cut his steak and broccoli.

“Yes, sir. But the thing is, there’s no clear style of architecture. And not just the malls, but the toll roads that crisscross the city, which the children of the president own,” Nara answered critically.

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!”