Leila Chudori - Home

“But with that approach and the number of people you want to interview, you’re not going to be able to finish all your work in a month’s time.” I was getting tired of the conversation and began to say whatever I felt. “Two months would be the minimum — unless you’re content to make something slipshod.”

A flash appeared in Lintang’s eyes as she yanked her head back and stared at me. “Do you think I would make something slipshod?”

She said “you” like it was a dirty word. How old was she, anyway: twenty-three, twenty-four? Now beginning to feel weary of this conversation, I leaned back in my chair. I wanted to get up and leave her sitting there, but I couldn’t. I could see my mother calling to complain at me for my discourteous behavior. And Kenanga, pounding on the door of my place like she did last year when she was upset with me because I had broken off my relationship with Rianti, whose future presence in my life had, unbeknownst to me, been blessed by my contrarian family. It wasn’t easy having been born into a family of vocal and strong-minded women. Every time I took a wrong step, I was blasted by criticism from all directions. And here I was, expected to sit and engage in a serious conversation with this Frenchwoman, but I was not able. It was getting towards noon; I was hungry; and I was sure that Bimo was angry with me for making him have to wait. The demonstration was sure to have started by this time.

“I’m sure that you do want to make a good and serious film,” I told her, “which is why I would argue that you can’t do it in a month. The topic is too difficult. Not too long ago, a crew from the BBC was here making a documentary about former political prisoners and they were here for several months.”

“I already know some of the names on my list. If I am disciplined, I am sure that I can finish in three to four works.”

I gave up, not wanting to debate with her any longer. Just like when Kenanga interrogated me: I’d give in purely out of boredom.

“OK, go ahead and contact those people. I’ll ask my friends here in the office to help you with information from our database. But please remember, these people are not celebrities who like to preen in front of the camera. It’s not easy for them to open their mouths or speak their minds.”

“I apologize for having disturbed you. If you can’t help me, that is perfectly fine.” She stood and gathered her things. “Really, I can do this on my own. I’m quite used to it.”

Oh, shit. What did I do now to make her angry?

She again started looking for something in her knapsack, lowering her head and sticking her hand into the bag. This time she quickly found what she was looking for.

“This is for you, from my father,” she said in a crackly voice. “My father said that your father gave it to him the last night they saw each other. My father wants you to have it.”

I was stunned to receive from her a classic old watch with Roman numerals on its face. A 17-jewel Titoni. The leather watch-band was obviously new, but the watch seemed to still be running well. My heart stopped beating. Suddenly, Lintang had vanished. Flabbergasted by how fast this Frenchwoman could walk, I rushed to follow her.

“Hey, hey, slow down…”

Lintang was already on the sidewalk in front of our office. Did she know Jakarta or where she was?

“Lintang…”

She turned. Damn it! I’d made her cry. What the hell…?

“I apologize.”

Lintang again looked for something in her knapsack, all the while saying “No need, no need,” Finally, she found a packet of tissues and blew her nose. A whole gob of snot came out. So she really was crying. Maybe I had been insensitive, but I was serious. I really didn’t know what I’d said that had upset her.

“Lintang…”

I put my hand on her arm. She said nothing, but didn’t yank it away either. Suddenly, out of the blue, a crazy idea came into my head.

“Listen, Lintang, let me take you somewhere interesting for you to record. I promise that from there you will be able to find the context for the topic of your final assignment. Follow me!”

She stared at me curiously with her large and tear-filled eyes. “Where?”

Images of the statues in the diorama danced around in front of me like characters on a carousel. This blood-filled diorama continued to flash before me. And at that moment I knew: Lintang Utara would make a documentary film full of significance and heretofore silenced voices.

MY CHILDHOOD HOME. A house filled with tension and disappointment. I never wanted to go back there again. But that is where my mother resides, still silently serving the man she calls her husband at a house in the Tebet area of Jakarta, where he took her along with the risk that she would bring me with her as well.

When my mother married Bapak Prakosa — whom I will never be able to call “Father”—I knew that my life would change. But even though my father, my real bapak , had disappeared from our lives long before, this didn’t mean that I had to willingly accept this man’s presence in my life. In our lives.

Bapak Prakosa was not an evil man — though his career in the military was not a profession that would immediately endear him to many. But he also wasn’t a person who gladly or wholeheartedly accepted the burden that the woman he married brought with her. Bapak Prakosa viewed raising me as an unwanted but necessary duty, something he had to do for the beautiful woman he had taken for his wife. It was a risk he had to take.

I never tried to be the son he wanted. For him, a boy who liked to doodle and draw was fairly useless, not much of a male child at all. That my classmates at school often heckled me because my real father, Nugroho Dewantoro, was said to be a traitor to the state was not a subject I ever brought up at our meals together. The bruises on my body and my puffed lips were always caused by “having fallen on the stairs at school” or “getting roughed up when playing soccer.” (Since when did I ever play soccer?) All those incidents I remember well and have transformed them into comic-strips. Maybe someday I’ll publish the collection.

One very determinant day in my life occurred when I was in junior high school. Ibu had gone somewhere and was not at home. Pak Prakosa called for me.

“Do you think I don’t know that you’re getting beat up by kids at school?” he stated more than asked.

I didn’t answer. My eyes studied the ceramic tiles on the floor of my stepfather’s home.

“Do you think I can’t tell the difference between a bruise that comes from a fall and one from being beaten?”

The tiles looked expensive. Maybe that’s what they call “marble”?

“I am your father. Listen to me!”

You are not my father.

Pak Prakosa came close and stared at me. A cold look. But also a gleam that spoke of his will to put some gumption into this soft stepson of his.

“Fight back! Don’t take it. Beat them up!”

Now I stared at my shoes.

“Are you listening, Bimo?” He clenched my hand and shaped my fingers into a fist.

“This is how you do it, with a clenched fist. Come on!”

Listlessly, I clenched my fist.

“Do it right!”

He took a cigarette and lit it. “I don’t want to see you get beat up again by other boys. Fight back! Do you get it?”

I nodded.

“Where’s your voice?”

“Yes, sir.”

His words of advice were useless, of course. Once, when I was in junior high, I was beaten by three classmates, big and burly guys they seemed to me. It was Alam who came to my rescue. But when Pak Prakosa saw me come home with bruises all over my body, he was so disgusted with me that he jabbed the lighted end of his cigarette into my arms and thighs. That was his usual choice of punishment, the one he meted out whenever he found something wrong in me.