The door to the darkroom creaked — why was it I never remembered to oil the hinges? — and then I heard Adi calling to me, announcing the visit of my “cousin from Central Java” which was immediately drowned out by another long shriek from the putu cart. I couldn’t quite make myself hear what was said after that but I knew the intent: I had to surrender.
Opening the doorway to the darkroom, I saw my friend. We stared at each other. I could see tears welling in Adi’s eyes. I knew he was powerless. I nodded then took my jacket from the hook on the back of the door. It was April 6, 1968. I looked at my wrist, somehow forgetting for that instant I had lent my watch to Dimas Suryo, three years previously. Dimas, Nugroho, and Risjaf were now living in exile in Peking, I’d heard. Maybe my 17-jewel Titoni was helping him to keep better time. Strange, I thought, even after three years I could still detect a lighter band of color on the skin of my wrist.
As I emerged from the darkroom, the four “visitors from Central Java” immediately rose from the wooden bench in front of the till and stepped towards me, each with one hand inside his jacket, as I came out from behind the counter. More accurately, they surrounded me and were obviously prepared to shoot me in case I tried to escape. One of the four — the leader, I suppose — stepped closer towards me and smiled.
“Bapak Hananto, I am First Lieutenant Mukidjo.” His tone was polite, with the same level of refinement I had noted earlier. His eyes sparkled and his smile was one of great satisfaction. I caught a glint of gold as his smile widened. He must have been feeling intensely pleased; I was the last link in the chain the military had been seeking. Ever since the hunt for me began three years earlier, they had captured hundreds of friends and associates.
“Please come with us …”
First Lieutenant Mukidjo was acting in a truly civilized way — though I myself was mentally prepared to be kicked and beaten. From news I’d picked up from friends, the military detectives who had been assigned to track me down had dubbed me “the Shadow,” so frustrated they were in trying to find me. I nodded to the officer, then calmly walked towards the front door of the store as he and his three companions, who were dressed in civilian clothing, took their leave of Adi Tjahjono.
Night had fallen, without complaint and without pretext.
Flanked by two men, at both my front and back, I went with them to the two vehicles that were parked in front of Tjahaja Foto: a Nissan patrol truck and a canvas-roofed Toyota jeep. First Lieutenant Mukidjo with the gold-filled teeth told me to get in the back of the jeep. I saw in my mind the faces of Surti, Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam, and then those of my friends who were now so distant. I don’t know why, but of all of them, it was only Dimas Suryo who stared back at me. As the truck’s engine roared, I cast my eyes down Jalan Sabang to see Soehardi’s steamed-putu cart, Pak Heri’s satay stall, and, finally, for the last time, the slowly, seemingly sadly flashing neon lights of Tjahaja Photo Studio.
I. DIMAS SURYO
PARIS, MAY 1968
SHE EMERGED LIKE AN UNFINISHED LINE OF POETRY.
Among the thousands of other Sorbonne students milling around, it was only her I noticed, standing beneath the bronze statue of Victor Hugo at the Sorbonne campus. Her thick and wavy brunette hair defied the wind’s direction, but several unruly strands flittered about her face, obscuring her features. But, even with those strands flitting here and there, I glimpsed a pair of green eyes whose gleam was able to pierce my gloom-filled heart. For a moment she looked in my direction — one second, maybe two — but then went back to what she was doing: assigning marching orders to the other students around her. I was almost sure that she was concealing a smile.
Is the wind not attempting
to touch those perfect lips …
The May breeze continued to mangle her hair. The spring sun jockeyed with the brisk end-of-season Parisian wind. As if irritated, she brushed her unruly hair aside — not with the graceful motion of a dancer nor with the kind of a toss a coquette might use to attract a man’s attention. Hers was the motion of a woman made impatient by a minor disturbance. Her posture was stolid, her eyes unwavering.
Separating herself from her fellow students, she looked back to observe them from a distance. Her eyes held a smile, yet her lips remained even. Occasionally, she’d bite her lower lip, then check the watch on her wrist. A few minutes later, she placed her hands on her hips and turned around, her back to me.
A man approached with two bottles of 1644 beer in hand, one of which he gave to her. He wore eyeglasses and had curly hair. If he weren’t so scraggly-looking, the French might have considered him handsome; but, from the look of him, I suspected he hadn’t seen the inside of a bathtub in at least a week — much like the thousands of other students who were there on the Sorbonne campus demonstrating against the arrest of students from the University of Paris in Nanterre and who had opposed the government’s shut-down of their campus.
The May air was suffused with the rank odor of rarely-washed bodies and the bad breath of mouths unfamiliar with toothpaste but partial to cheap booze which, in their coalescence, elicited an incomparable scent of resistance.
I felt envious.
I was jealous.
The battle lines in the struggle that was taking place in Paris at that moment were clear. Both the plaintiff and the accused were known to all. The struggle was one between students and workers against the De Gaulle government. In Indonesia, we were well acquainted with confusion and chaos, but were never quite sure which people were our friends and which ones were our opponents. We weren’t even truly sure about the goals of the various combative parties — with the exception of “power,” that is. Everyone wanted power. How messy things were there, so very dark!
I had two letters tucked in my jacket pocket. Since the beginning of the year anyone who was thought to have been a member of the PKI — or had family and friends, or colleagues and neighbors, in the Indonesian Communist Party — had been hunted down, detained, and interrogated. My brother Aji had frightening stories to tell about how many people had disappeared and how many more had died.
One of the two letters was from him, my brother Aji, who forbade me to come home. In previous posts he had told me of neighbors and acquaintances who had been swept up by the military. But this most recent letter contained news I never wanted to receive. My constant hope was that Mas Hananto would remain out of the military’s reach. But now, the bad news had come: Mas Hananto, my friend, colleague, and boss; Surti’s husband and father of Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam; and my inveterate sounding board, had been captured one month previously at the place where he’d been surreptitiously working on Jalan Sabang.
In an instant, a cloud fell over Paris. My heart darkened. I didn’t want to open the second letter, which was from Kenanga, Mas Hananto’s oldest child, because I knew that it would further paralyze my emotions.
It was ironic. It should have been me the military arrested in Jakarta that night, yet I was here, in Paris, amidst thousands of French students on the march. In their yells and cries, I somehow caught a whiff of stench from Jakarta’s gutters mixed with the sweet smell of clove-laden kretek cigarettes and steaming black coffee. The bright gleam in the eyes of the French students reminded me of former friends in Jakarta whose fates I didn’t know. With sparkling eyes and effervescent spirits, they demanded in loud voices a more just society (though, to be sure, some of those same idealistic students would one day become part of the same power structure they vowed to tear down).