Leila Chudori - Home

“No, no, no, Vivienne! Please allow me,” Sumarno said. “Chalk it up as returning the favor that Dimas once showed me. Yes, back in those days in Jakarta, when he was still thick with Surti, he’d often treat me to food or drink at places on Cikini or in Senen Market. I had so little at the time, there’s no way I could ever have gone to Paris like he did.”

My heart was pounding — and not because he had mentioned Surti’s name, but because it was apparent that he was intentionally trying to terrorize me. I no longer had time for good manners. I stood, picked up my belongings, and walked away from the man to the cashier’s counter. I paid for my coffee and the brioche I’d eaten, then walked back and past the table without saying anything. But then I stopped. I didn’t like this. He had to know that I was not afraid of him. I turned, went back to the table and looked down on this man with the hair pomade and gold teeth, then looked him sharply in the eye.

“Listen to me, Sumarno, or whatever your real name is. I don’t know who you are or what you want by coming to see me here. And, frankly, I don’t care. But I know that you are no friend of my husband. And if you ever again dare to show your face here or to bother me or my family, I will call the police. And in this country, at least, the police do their jobs. Get it?!”

Sumarno looked at me in surprise, but then nodded slowly. I left him and walked back towards campus with the wind pushing me in the back.

That night, when I went to Rue de Vaugirard, I told Dimas, Nug, Risjaf, and Tjai what had happened. Hearing my story, these aging men suddenly turned into a gang of angry youth: clenching their fists, slamming a knife into the table, and doing all sorts of primeval “manly” things.

But my instincts were right. Though Sumarno had been an acquaintance of Dimas, he was now called “Snitch” for having pointed out to the military who should be picked up.

People like Snitch are everywhere in the world, of course. They might even be behind the door or the walls of our homes. They have ears everywhere and a thousand poisoned tongues. I knew Dimas and his friends did not want to expend energy uselessly on getting angry at a louse like Snitch. My experience in meeting him was just one part of the country of Indonesia. I was convinced that another part of Indonesia would yield for me an experience that was much more honorable and intimate.

“Are you OK?” Dimas asked, stroking the back of my hair worriedly as we walked towards the Metro station.

“ Oui , I’m fine. People like Sumarno are everywhere. Don’t worry. Matters like these I can handle on my own,” I said embracing Dimas for a feeling of safety and closeness.

Dimas laughed. “I called him a rat. You called him a louse. I don’t know which description is more apt.”

We continued walking, embracing tightly as we did. He whispered how much he loved my strength. And then I asked myself, did he love me because I was strong and independent so that he did not have to protect me as Bima protected Drupadi? Or did he love me because he would not be able to breathe if ever I were to leave him? Why could I not find the answer?

AS TWILIGHT SLOWLY SETTLED ON THE MARAIS, sadness also fell. Lintang could never understand why the area always evinced such a feeling of loneliness; the Marais was, after all, an area filled with cafés, galleries, and the homes of prominent French artists. Nara believed the Marais to be the hippest, most multicultural area of Paris. But Lintang could never decide whether the sadness of the place was caused by the colors of the twilight sky — thin strips of red, yellow, and orange — or because it always reminded her of her parents’ divorce.

She once said to her father: “Your decision to live in the Marais must have had something to do with Victor Hugo, what with all his heart-wrenching works.” Lintang preferred the morning because morning time brought with it the possibility of hope: maybe the possibility of doing something good that day or correcting a misdeed. Or maybe a reunion with her father after five months of evading him — which was something that made her feel guilty, of course, but angry as well. Even so, to feel riled by her father when she felt him to be judging her life choices was one thing but to be so put out as to shut down all avenues of communication was quite another, something she’d never before done, regardless of how irritated she was with this man whose attitude towards life she deemed to be warped and cynical.

Outside the door to her father’s gloomy apartment, untouched by the warmth of spring, Lintang knocked on the door. No answer. She took the door key from her knapsack and opened the door. Entering the apartment, she took off her jacket and unwound the light woolen scarf from around her neck.

She scanned the length of the apartment where her father had lived all these years alone. Her heart began to crumble. Everything that had been upsetting her these past five months suddenly evaporated. The state of the apartment seemed to indicate that its owner was either very tired or ill. The living room and work space, separated one from the other by a wooden partition, looked like an untidy storeroom full of books. Usually the bookshelves in the room were neatly lined with their volumes arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s name; but now the place was in such disarray it looked as if it were inhabited by a slovenly teenager.

On sections of the wall not covered with books hung glass paintings from Cirebon and photographs of Lintang and her father, many of the same ones that were displayed in the apartment she shared with her mother. The brown and green batik cloth with an avian motif that covered the coffee table — a gift from her grandmother, her father said — was wrinkled and faded, looking more like a rag for cleaning the kitchen counter. An array of LPs lay scattered about: Louis Armstrong, Branford Marsalis, Jack Lemmers, Bing Slamet, Koes Bersaudara, Édith Piaf, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In former days, whenever her father had played a Led Zeppelin record, he and her mother would compete in telling her about their meeting at the time of the May Revolution in Paris. “That was the year Led Zeppelin was born,” her father declared proudly.

Lintang always felt that her parents forced the coincidence. In 1968, at the time of her parents’ first meeting, didn’t many other things happen in the world? But just as it was forbidden for her to criticize the works of Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and James Joyce, it was also forbidden to mock Led Zeppelin. Her father was in awe of their music.

Lintang now turned her gaze to the walls. Oh… The large shadow puppet of Bima, the strongest of the Pandawa brothers in the shadow theater pantheon, which usually stood erect as would befit such a mighty character, now hung aslant, as if forlorn and sad. At least the Ekalaya puppet remained upright.

On the coffee table, covered with a layer of ash, was an ashtray heaped with cigarette butts, a coffee cup in which only dreg were visible, and a hunk of half-eaten bread. She noticed the two apothecary jars with cloves and turmeric root standing neatly upright among the many books that were piled in disorderly stacks on the book shelf.

Suddenly, Lintang heard raised voices coming from her father’s bedroom. A look of surprise washed over her face as she heard Nugroho trying to persuade her father to do something he obviously did not want to do. Her father was clearly rankled.

“It won’t hurt; it’s just a small needle. You don’t even have to watch!” That was Nugroho speaking.

“No, Mas Nug, I don’t want to,” said her father.