Home

by Leila S. Chudori

  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.

  The living room might better be described as a library, because all four walls were covered with bookshelves, and in its center was a sofa and two chairs, as if it were a reading room. Only a small bit of wall remained visible and that is where there hung two shadow puppets, Bima and Ekalaya, the two characters that had always served Ayah as his role models. On one of the shelves, in the middle of a row of books, were two sacred apothecary jars. The one jar was filled almost to the top with cloves. The other jar held turmeric powder. These two jars had been one of the reasons behind the argument that took place between Maman and Ayah on the night they separated.

  “Hello. What’s up?” Ayah said, looking at me over the top of his glasses as he came out of the bedroom.

  I had already decided that I wasn’t going to stay long, so I remained standing, my heart suddenly quivering with anger. “Ayah, Nara invited you to dinner to get to know you, not to be insulted,” I told him straightaway.

  Ayah took off his glasses and frowned with surprise. I couldn’t believe it. He was surprised that I was angry? He told me to sit down, but I remained on my feet. I didn’t want to get caught there.

  “Insult Nara? Who insulted whom?”

  “You had to find something wrong in everything he said and did: his choice of restaurant, his choice of films, even his choice of poems!”

  “He’s pretentious!” Ayah barked impatiently, as if he had forcibly refrained from expressing his true opinion about Nara the night before. “He’s a rich bourgeois kid used to getting anything he wants without working for it, whether it’s a car or eating in the most expensive bistro in Europe. If he wanted to meet me, why did we have to go all the way to Brussels? Wouldn’t you call that pretentious?”

  This was the first time I began to suspect the real reason why Maman had been unable to remain married to Ayah. How could she have endured living with a man who always had to criticize everything that was wrong in his eyes?

  “I’m not faulting Nara for having the good fortune to be the son of a man who got his wealth from hard work. I’m just not interested in pretense. His choice to recite lines from ‘Sonnet 29’ was such a cliché.” He paused before adding, “Sure he’s good-looking and a smooth talker, too—but what is it you like about him?” Now he was being saracastic.

  “I like being with him and his family. Une famille harmonieuse! They are kind and welcoming to everyone they meet. I feel comfortable when I am with them.”

  “What I asked you,” Ayah stressed, “is what you like about him, not about his family.”

  Now Ayah had gone too far. “I don’t want to be like you,” I spat. “You’re never happy. You’re never thankful for the things you own. I don’t want to be like you, always cynical about other people’s happiness.”

  As these spiteful words spilled from my lips, tears fell from my eyes in a torrent. Ayah looked at me, speechless, as if not comprehending the meaning of my accusations.

  “I don’t want to be trapped by the past! And not just by your political past, Ayah, but by your personal life either.”

  Ayah seemed shocked by what I’d just said. But I left him standing there in silence. I saw the hurt that was in his eyes, but I didn’t care. That night Paris was no longer the City of Light. Paris had turned into a dark and gloomy place, because that was the night I decided to break off communications with my father.

  Lintang leaned her head against the arm of the sofa and lifted her legs to the cushion. Sometimes she didn’t know where she was supposed to put her long legs and arms. By Indonesian standards, she was fairly tall, almost 170 centimeters. Her physique had clearly come from the Deveraux family. Anyone looking at her would immediately see her to be the spitting image of her mother—except for her black hair, that is, which came from her father, and the dark brown color of her eyes, which came from him as well. Otherwise, almost everyone said of Vivienne and Lintang that they looked like two very beautiful sisters, even when neither was wearing makeup. Lintang once told Nara that what made her different from her mother was that her mother was raised in a happy, normal, well-balanced family. Her mother had had a harmonious family life. Nara pointed out that another similarity between them was their amazing aptitude for languages. Aside from French, Vivienne was fluent in English and Indonesian. And Lintang, even at an early age, was able to speak unaccented English and Indonesian with fluency and ease—a rare gift in France.

  Nara pushed the play button, and the images Lintang had recorded in the past began to flash by again. He was now able to see that the images were a kind of record, not just of the times and places in Lintang’s life, but of her progression in the mastery of film. He noted that over time the recorded images gained greater focus and cohesion: Canal St. Martin, Notre Dame, Musée Picasso, up to the Cimetière du Père Lachaise.

  “And that’s why finding you is so easy when you’re down,” Nara said with a fond smile. “You always end up at Père Lachaise Cemetery!”

  “Irréparable,” Lintang muttered.

  Nara pressed the pause button and looked into Lintang’s eyes. “What can’t be fixed?”

  On the screen was the image of Oscar Wilde’s tomb: elegant and flamboyant, but nonetheless an attempt to eternalize something that was already gone.

  “After months of me having to listen to Maman and Ayah’s endless fights, Ayah finally left.”

  Though Lintang’s eyes were fixed on the screen, her thoughts were in the past.

  “What did you mean by your father’s past personal life?” Nara asked cautiously.

  “There’s something I still haven’t told you,” said Lintang to him.

  Nara stared at Lintang with no force in his eyes.

  Lintang then told him about a time in the past when she had inadvertently discovered a letter her father had written but which he had never sent. She had read the letter, which was addressed to a woman by the name of Surti Anandari. Years on, she could still vividly recall the letter’s intimate tone and how bewildered this had made her feel. She had given a stack of her father’s letters to her mother and that was the start of an unending argument between her parents.

  “That night, Aya
h came into my room and gave me a big long hug. After that, he left taking with him just a small bag with just a knapsack on his back. For the longest time after that, I blamed myself for their divorce. If I hadn’t found that letter, Ayah and Maman would still be together.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Lintang,” Nara said, stroking hers cheek. “I’m sure they already had issues you knew nothing about. The letter was just a trigger.”

  Lintang remembered looking out the window to see her father’s back as he walked away from the apartment building. Every evening thereafter, she still set three plates on the table at dinner time. She missed her father’s fried rice with its scent of cooking oil laced with onions. But she always ended the night by returning his unused plate back to the cupboard.

  Finally, after a few months, unable to bear her daughter setting three plates on the table for dinner, her mother could do nothing else but tell her daughter the truth.

  “Your father’s and my relationship is irréparable,” she said. “Forgive me, Lintang.”

  Lintang continued to hold her father’s blue plate. Staring wordlessly at her mother, she pressed the blue plate tightly against her chest. But once she was sure that her mother was not going to add anything more to her pronouncement, she put her father’s plate on the table, as if nothing had happened.

  She wiped away a tear drop that had fallen onto her father’s plate. Vivienne said nothing.

  Lintang looked at Nara. Only now, after all these years, did she finally realize what it was that was missing in her life: it was her father’s past life, the part of his life she had never known.

  The telephone rang and then rang again. Lintang was reluctant to pick up the receiver but finally did. Her mother.

  “Oui, Maman …”

  Nara noted the look of seriousness that suddenly appeared on Lintang’s face. She talked to her mother for quite some time. Finally, after she had replaced the receiver, he asked, “What happened?”

  “Ayah collapsed at the Metro station a few days ago. He was taken to the hospital and put through a series of tests.”

  “And what were the results?”

  Lintang shook her head. “Ayah has yet to pick them up. That’s why the hospital called Maman.”

  Lintang knew the time had come for her to put differences aside and go to see her father

  EKALAYA

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT MY FATHER and his relationship with Indonesia I had always wanted to know. It wasn’t about the country’s blood-filled history or the problems affecting the lives of Indonesian political exiles as they roamed the world in search of a country willing to receive them. There was something that made my father extra sensitive to rejection, which I became aware of, little by little, because of his obsession with the story of Ekalaya he often told to me.

  Up until when I was ten years old, my parents and I had a ritual we always went through as summer approached. The sun in late May is a friendly creature, not the angry monster it can become in June or the months that follow. And every year, at that time, we would fall in love once more with the Parisian sky, which seemed close enough for us to touch.

  Ayah and Maman would take me to Domaine National de Saint-Cloud, the large park on the outskirts of Paris. For our personal comfort, as we waited to watch the films shown there—un cinéma en plein air—we’d bring with us knapsacks filled with blankets and books and a hamper of food and canned refreshments. As Ayah and Maman had begun this tradition when I was just a baby, these outings became something I looked forward to each year. It wasn’t until years later I came to realize that this custom hadn’t evolved simply from the pleasure we found in watching film retrospectives in the open air, but also because this form of entertainment cost my parents almost nothing.

  On the blanket that Maman spread out on the park lawn, we’d lie on our backs, staring at the sky above. Another hour to go before the film began. Would the film tonight be one by Federico Fellini or Akira Kurosawa? Or maybe Woody Allen? Even when I was in primary school, my parents had me watching the classics of cinema—which until today remain clearly in my head. But the most pleasurable time of those evenings was when we, the three of us, would let our imaginations fly. I can see our hands raised upward, our grasping fingers trying to clutch the sky as we imagined a throne room and other such things up there. And I can hear Ayah relating stories that he plucked from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the two sources of almost all stories in the shadow puppet theater. Looking back, I guess that had been his way of trying to familiarize me with all things Indonesian—though he did explain that most of the stories had originally come to Indonesia from India. Through his repeated tellings, a number of wayang characters came to hold a special place in my heart. Two of them were Srikandi from the Mahabharata and Candra Kirana from the story of Panji Semirang. My choice of favorite characters seemed to surprise my father.

  “Why Srikandi?” he asked.

  “It’s like, in the story, she’s searching for the right body for herself.”

  “And what about Panji Semirang?”

  “He is looking for his identity.”

  I noted the surprised look my parents gave each other.

  “It’s interesting that you’ve chosen characters who change their gender,” Ayah said, not judgmentally. He seemed curious as to why I had chosen those two figures.

  I was only ten years old at that time, and maybe my answers sounded too precocious, but it truly was because Srikandi and Panji Semirang were able to change their gender that they attracted me.

  For me, the rules of the game in the world of wayang were as complex as they were baffling: imagine being able to switch genders back and forth! Ayah said my choices might be an indication of the kind of person I would become.

  That night, after we were home and as I was beginning to fall asleep, I overheard my parents talking about our conversation in the park. My father said that he felt guilty, that I had probably chosen characters who were in search of their identity because he himself suffered from an identity crisis. She must be asking: who am I, an Indonesian who has never been to Indonesia, or a French person who happens to be half Indonesian?

  Maman placated Ayah by telling him that she was sure I liked those two female characters because they were strong and their stories were action-filled, something that children always liked.

  I found Ayah’s hunch to be the more interesting. He himself always said that his favorite wayang characters were Bima and Ekalaya from the Mahabharata. At first, I guessed that he liked Bima because the character was the epitome of masculinity: big and tall, strong and protective. But the fact was, he was attracted to Bima because of his faithfulness to Drupadi, the woman who—in the Indian version of the Mahabharata, at least—became the wife of all five Pandawa brothers. Bima’s devotion to Drupadi was even greater than that of Yudhistira, the eldest of the five brothers. It was Bima who defended Drupadi’s dignity when she was insulted by the Kurawa cousins at the time the Pandawa brothers had lost a bet with their cousins at a game of dice.

  “It was Bima who protected Drupadi the many times that other men tried to force themselves on her during the twelve years the Pandawa brothers were forced to live in the forest,” said Ayah, with his lively interpretation.

  “So why Ekalaya?” I asked.

  “Because only he was able to match Arjuna’s skill with the bow—even without having studied under Resi Dorna.

  According to Ayah, the lesson we find in the tale of Ekalaya is that a person is able to attain perfection of knowledge on his own accord, without having to study under someone. Ekalaya achieved his goal because of the strength of his commitment and will. Of course, the story actually begins with Ekalaya wanting to master the use of the bow and arrow beneath the tutorship of Resi Dorna. The arrow… What a unique and extraordinary weapon. So simple: just a rod, straight and thin, but with a sharpened tip capable of piercing the heart of its target. Arrows appear in some of my favorite stories; those from the Mahabharata and in films
by Akira Kurosawa. But Ayah was frugal in sharing the story of Ekalaya with me. He waited for the right time.

  I remember when I was little, Ayah received a package from his brother, my uncle Aji. In it were the two shadow puppets: Bima and Ekalaya. Ayah’s eyes glistened with joy as he removed them from their box and found a place for them to hang them on the wall in the living room. He kept saying how difficult it was to find an Ekalaya puppet, because he was not one of the main characters in the Indonesian Mahabharata. Ayah guessed that Om Aji could only have found the puppet in some out-of-the-way and forgotten corner of Solo.

  Often, while waiting for the Saturday evening film to start at Domaine de Saint-Cloud, we’d talk about stories from the shadow theater, mostly ones from the Indian-based Ramayana and Mahabharata but also ones from the Panji cycle, tales that were indigenous to Java. The sky overhead became a huge shadow screen. With his low but soft and velvety voice, Ayah became the dalang, the shadow master extemporaneously reciting a section from the Mahabharata. Ayah was very good at playing with his deep and heavy voice. If he had ever wanted to, I’m sure he could have been a dalang or a singer.

  Except for a few brief demonstrations at Nara’s home and at Tanah Air Restaurant, I’ve never seen a real wayang orang performance, where, in a reversal of what is normally the case in live theater, people play the roles of puppets and not the other way around; but when I was young I always enjoyed it when Ayah mimicked the basso profundo voice used by the character of Bima on the wayang orang stage. He often used that same technique to dissipate tension in the air when Maman was irritated with him. Like in the mornings, for instance, when he’d make fried rice. Almost every morning, before Maman left home to teach, Ayah would prepare a breakfast of fried rice for us—“special fried rice,” he called it, because of the shredded omelet he always put on top. Maman always grumbled at the sight because, like most French people, she thought fried rice was much too heavy a morning meal. But Ayah always ignored her. Switching his voice back and forth, he’d make up a conversation between Bima and Ekalaya, as he tickled Maman’s neck. No matter how hard she tried to maintain the scowl on her face, Maman would finally break into laughter and then join us in eating a plate of Ayah’s fried rice: hot and tasty to the tongue and rich from the oil he’d used to fry the rice. Ayah always like to make his fried rice with minyak jelantah, oil which had already been used to fry something else, shallots and onions, for instance, so that their taste, too, was imparted in the rice.