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by Leila S. Chudori

  That evening, I succeeded in coaxing Ayah to reveal Ekalaya’s tale.

  And so it was, one dark night that was blacker than a night, with no moon, Resi Dorna went into the forest pervasive with the scent of lotus. Suddenly, a young man of exceptionally dark skin appeared as if out nowhere, stopping the teacher in his tracks, and startling him with the light that shone from his eyes.

  “Who are you, young man?” Resi Dorna asked.

  The younger man was very tall and fit, his body all muscle and dark pliant skin. With a poised movement, he bowed deeply before the elderly man.

  “Resi Dorna, teacher of all teachers, I am Ekalaya, the son of Hiranyadanush…” Impatiently interrupting the young man’s introduction, which he expressed in a slow and measured pace, Resi Dorna said, “Go on, go on, young man. What is it?”

  With his hands still raised in a sembah sign of obeisance, Ekalaya stated his desire to study under Resi Dorna, who was known throughout the universe for his mastery of the bow.

  Not waiting even one second to answer, Resi Dorna said that it would be impossible for him to be his guru, because his teaching and mentorship skills were reserved exclusively for the sons of Kuru. What Dorna didn’t say is that he wanted his favorite warrior pupil, Arjuna, to hold the title of best bowman in the world. But Ekalaya would not back down. Before him stood the master who he had long vowed would be his guru. He could not let Dorna leave him without obtaining from him some form of consent.

  “Guru…”

  “I am not your guru.”

  “For this humble servant, you will always be my guru. I beg of you to grant your servant’s request.”

  Ekalaya bowed at Resi Dorna’s feet. As he did this, his long and loosened hair fell forward, brushing the elderly man’s toes and causing him to finally feel the sincerity of the young man’s plea.

  He stroked Ekalaya’s head. “All right then, my son, I shall grant your wish.”

  Fireworks exploded in Ekalaya’s eyes. His happiness was so real, he kissed Dorna’s feet and then ran off shouting through the forest. He cried to all of nature that one day he would be the best bowman in the world.

  Dorna watched the young man with a slight but distinct feeling of unease. What might transpire in the future, he wondered, as a result of his rashness in granting the wishes of a young man, a stranger to him, who had suddenly appeared before him in the forest?

  “And then what happened?” I asked, because Ayah had paused for such a long time.

  “Shush, the film is about to begin.”

  Ayah turned his head and pointed to the other film-goers who were preparing their blankets on the ground. As twilight fell on Domaine de Saint-Cloud, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai began to play on the large outdoor screen. Usually, this was the time I had been waiting for, this shared time of easy intimacy with my parents as we snuggled together between blankets. Maman always brought an extra blanket with her to these viewings, because lying on the ground, close together in the open air, was something the Dimas Suryo family always did. We felt as one together. Warm and close. To this day Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Rashomon are for me two of the best films ever made. Between childhood and the time I enrolled at the Sorbonne, I must have watched Rashomon eight times, and at least four of those times with my parents. At each viewing, my father always said the same thing: “Everyone has his own version of history.”

  When I was older, I often fantasized about Akira Kurosawa being entrusted to adapt the Mahabharata to screen, as he had done with King Lear and Macbeth, transforming them into distinctly Japanese films. As an adolescent I also watched and came to love the works of Federico Fellini and Jean-Luc Godard; but for me their films could never compare with shadow tales from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and Panji Semirang. In wayang tales there are always unexpected surprises—which is why, when Ayah stopped telling me the story of Ekalaya before it was finished, I was unable to concentrate on watching Seven Samurai.

  As soon as the film was over, we dug into the hamper Maman had brought along containing food Ayah had prepared: nasi kuning, tiny potato sticks seasoned with chili, and dried rendang. Usually after a film, it being late in the evening, I was so hungry that I wouldn’t speak until I had gobbled all my food. But that night, even with my mouth full, I tried to force Ayah to finish the story of Ekalaya. He resisted my pleas, saying that he wouldn’t tell me the rest until after he’d finished his meal. He chewed his rice slowly as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. Meanwhile, I hurriedly finished my rice, expecting that Ayah would take notice and heed my wishes. And, after ever so long, he finally did…

  Years passed, and after the five Pandawa brothers and their one hundred Kurawa cousins reached adulthood, the third brother, Arjuna, came to be the best bowman in the entire universe, just as it had been foretold. No one could deny this; no one could challenge him. From every shooting contest, large or small, Arjuna always emerged victorious.

  And so it was, one day, in a forest sprinkled with the color of lavender because of the many purple flowers growing there, Arjuna, Bima, and their group of hunters espied a deer in the distance. Arjuna was just preparing to shoot his arrow when, suddenly, a sharp series of sounds was heard—Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!—that came in impossibly rapid succession.

  At almost the same instant, five arrows impaled themselves into the heart of the unlucky deer, killing it immediately. It was not only Arjuna’s courtiers who shook their heads in wonder; no one was more surprised or chagrined than Arjuna, the world’s best bowman. He asked himself who could possibly kill a deer with such expertise and with no less than five arrows in the deer’s heart. All the knights and jesters and, even more so, Arjuna, knew very well that a person who could shoot five arrows directly into the heart of a deer was someone to be reckoned with.

  After calming his breathing, Bima finally asked his brother Arjuna the question on everyone’s mind: “Who shot those arrows? Did Resi Dorna follow us? Might our guru be testing us?”

  Bima’s questions were meant to console Arjuna, who was now intensely disappointed to have discovered that there was in this world a better bowman than he. If that man were Resi Dorna, Arjuna reasoned, that would be acceptable, for Resi Dorna was their teacher, after all.

  The bushes moved. Without a smile widening his face, Arjuna’s mien looked long—as well as clouded and dark from jealousy. He was sure the bowman was not Resi Dorna; his guru would not have devised such a test. It had to be another warrior.

  Arjuna followed the rustling movement of the bushes. When he parted the bush with his arms, he saw before him a towering man with a bow and arrows. The man’s skin glistened in the sunlight. Arjuna was again surprised and his heart flamed hotter with jealousy. Who was this man with the dark and gleaming skin? From whence had he gained his mastery with the bow and arrow?

  “Who are you?” asked Bima, who was now standing at Arjuna’s back.

  “I am Ekalaya from the clan of Hiranyadanush.”

  Arjuna leaned forward, breathing in gusts: “And where did you learn to shoot like that?”

  With his eyes full of stars, Ekalaya answered, “From Resi Dorna.”

  All the trees in the forest shook with Arjuna’s cries of anger.

  Ayah stopped speaking.

  “So, was Ekalaya lying?” I demanded to know.

  “No, he was not. What he had done was this: he’d made an effigy of Resi Dorna to which he bowed every day before his practice. Even though he trained himself to shoot, he felt that Dorna’s spirit and soul had entered him through the effigy that he had created; it was this that had made him succeed in becoming a better bowman than Arjuna.”

  I stopped to think. I knew for sure that the story didn’t end there, because in the Mahabharata, Arjuna was always referred to as the best bowman in the universe. What happened to Ekalaya?

  “Arjuna whined and complained to Dorna. And Dorna, who was surprised to discover that someone had been able to learn from him at a distance, without
ever having studied with him face to face, went to find Ekalaya. Dorna was astonished and proud, but then rankled, too, because he knew he had to do something to stop Arjuna from bellyaching like a spoiled brat.”

  Ayah’s voice grew louder, as if he were angry. I wondered why.

  “As was the custom, after a guru has transferred his knowledge to a student, there is a kind of handing-over ceremony called a guru-dakshina.”

  “A guru-dakshina? What happens there?” I asked.

  “During such a ceremony, the student must present to his teacher something the teacher has requested as a formal sign that his lessons are now complete.”

  “And did Resi Dorna ask for something from Ekalaya?” I asked, trying to guess what it was.

  “Yes, he did,” Ayah said with a tremble in his voice.

  “What was it?” I then asked.

  “Dorna asked Ekalaya to give him the thumb of his right hand.”

  For a few moments I said nothing; but then I was shocked when I realized that for a bowman a steady thumb is indispensible. And Ekalaya, obedient student that he was, willingly fulfilled Dorna’s request and immediately cut off his thumb. Even though, thereafter, he could still use his bow with four fingers, he was never again the expert bowman that he had been. And Arjuna returned to the perch from which he had been removed, as the best bowman in the entire universe.

  We liked to frequent a used book kiosk owned by Antoine Martin, a retired policeman, who was one of my parents’ favorite book suppliers. Whenever we went there, we would scrounge around until we found one or two books of interest. They were extremely cheap, almost free. If we had a little extra money to spend, we might stop at Shakespeare & Co., which was one of my favorite haunts and that of many famous writers and artists as well. Every time we wandered into the store, my father—just like a tourist guide—would point out the chair in which Ernest Hemingway had always sat, where he would leaf through books, one after another, and then borrow some to take home from Sylvia Beach, the store’s founder and owner.

  “That’s because Hemingway was poor, too. Just like me!” Ayah would say with a touch of pride. Then he’d show me that corner of the store where James Joyce and Ezra Pound often held discussions. When I was older, in my early teens, I came to realize that Ayah knew about these things from the photographs of writers that were scattered throughout the store in open spaces on the walls. By the time I was in high school, I had memorized which famous writers had left their mark in that small and cluttered but historic bookstore. Maybe because of all the history associated with the store, whenever Ayah had friends come to Paris—usually Indonesian exiles from Amsterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Berlin, and Bonn—he would invite them to visit the store. They were happy to do so, because Shakespeare & Co. was one of the few bookstores in Paris that sold English-language books, and also because there they could sit around in the store discussing how the city’s intellectuals, journalists, and creative writers in the 1920s debated among themselves about the “Great War” that had just passed.

  Maybe that was also why I grew up with a great feeling of respect for history.

  So, when I was younger, the days I spent with my parents watching films and looking for books at Shakespeare & Co. were among the most pleasurable ones for me. Though I always wanted to fill an entire shopping bag with books when we went out exploring, my parents usually let me buy only one new book from Shakespeare & Co. and two used books from Antoine Martin’s kiosk. In time, however, I found that even these conservative purchases could be a source of trouble.

  I remember one bright Saturday morning very clearly when I heard Maman whisper to Ayah that we needn’t go to any bookstore that day. And then Ayah whispering back that it was possible for us to visit a bookstore without buying anything at all. What’s going on, I wondered. Didn’t they have any money?

  I passed that Saturday morning with feigned cheer. I put on a happy face but was anxious, nonetheless. Around midday, after Ayah had prepared fried noodles for us to take along to eat on the day’s exploration tour—Ayah’s fried noodles was another one of my favorite foods and more appealing to me than any normal French food—we headed off to Shakespeare & Co.

  At the store, when Ayah was delving into books of poetry, I discovered a copy of Le Petit Prince, the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I had long wanted to own. The book’s colored illustrations—an elephant inside a snake, baobab trees, the Little Prince on a distant planet—were wonderful. And now having the book in my hand, I didn’t want to let it go.

  My cousin Marie-Claire, who was in my class, already owned the book and had told me all about it. But because the book was new and in hard cover with color illustrations—which meant that it was expensive and likely beyond my parents’ means—Maman told me to put the book back in its place on the shelf. I refused.

  “Please, Maman. I’ve wanted it now for so long. I want to fly like Le Petit Prince,” I said, trying to keep from crying.

  The next words she spoke were said in a loud and staccato voice: “Lin-tang. Remet-le. Right now!”

  Trying to hold back my tears as best I could, I returned the book to its place on the shelf. But just as I was doing that, I caught sight of another book, The Mahabharata, a condensed version of the story by R.K. Narayan. O, mon Dieu! Excited by the find, I hesitated, not knowing what to do. With a trembling hand, and stealing a glance at my mother, who was standing near the front door with an annoyed look on her face, I removed the book from the shelf. As I quickly leafed through the book, the names “Shrikand” and “Ekalavya” jumped out at me. Taking the book, I then went to find Ayah in the poetry section. On the edge of tears, I whispered to him how much I wanted to own the book. Afraid that my tears might damage the book’s cover, I hastily wiped my cheeks with the sleeve of my blouse. No more than five seconds passed before Ayah had taken the book from me and paid for it at the cash register. Maman said nothing; she only blinked, but I could guess what would happen later.

  Throughout the walk home, the two of them trained their eyes in opposite directions. I knew that no amount of fried rice the next morning, no matter how good it tasted, would be able to make them smile or to laugh at the silliness of their behavior.

  There was something much deeper going on than just the issue of Ayah’s purchase of The Mahabharata, which I read from cover to cover that very same night. Starting then, I realized that Ayah and Maman were faced with a much larger problem, one that I would never know because, as Maman often said to me about friends of theirs: “It’s useless to even try to pretend to know or understand what goes on between a husband and wife. Only they know what problems are affecting them.”

  When I read Ekalaya’s story, at the moment he cut off his thumb to obey Dorna’s wishes, I started to cry and couldn’t stop. At my age of just ten years, I didn’t know that I was crying because I sensed somehow that I was facing a loss as great as that of Ekalaya; or possibly that I suddenly had a premonition that my days of watching films with Ayah and Maman in the open air were coming to an end. A winter’s wind was coming which, blowing between them, was turning everything cold as ice.

  Only a few months after my parents separated, I began to sense that there was “something” between my father and Indonesia that could never be replaced by anything or anyone. It was around then that I also came to know that he had for years, on a routine annual basis, submitted an application to the Indonesian embassy for a visa to enter Indonesia. A tourist visa, of course. By this time, as a permanent political exile, Ayah—like his three friends—had obtained a French passport. But unlike Om Risjaf, who in some magic way managed to obtain a visa to enter Indonesia, my father’s requests, and those of Om Nug and Om Tjai as well, were always rejected.

  The officials at the Indonesian embassy never gave a reason for their rejection. Nor did they explain why Om Risjaf was being treated differently even though he, too, had been among those whose passports had been revoked when they were in Havana.

  Every time he learned th
at his visa applications had been rejected, Ayah would take Ekalaya from his place on the wall and play with the puppet. He’d go off by himself, to sit alone in his room and read old letters, from whom I didn’t know—a personal territory I did not want to know. When that happened, if it happened when I was spending the night at Ayah’s, I would try, as best as I could, to open for him a space in myself in which to store his sadness.

  It was later still that I came to understand that there was something in the character of Ekalaya that gave Ayah the strength to survive. After having at first been rejected by Dorna, Ekalaya had found his own way to study with the teacher. Every day, prior to his practice, this noble knight would bow before his teacher—even on that final day of instruction when the duplicitous Dorna asked Ekalaya for his thumb, which he willingly gave. Ekalaya knew that regardless of Dorna’s rejection, the world of bowmen would accept him. He was, after all, the best bowman in the entire universe—even if in the Mahabharata Dorna had awarded this title to Arjuna, his personal favorite. Ayah knew that even if the Indonesian government rejected him, he was not being rejected by his country. It was not his homeland rejecting him. And that is the reason he stored a pile of cloves in the one large apothecary jar and several handfuls of turmeric in the other one that sat on the bookshelf in his living room. From them emitted the scent of Indonesia.