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LEILA S. CHUDORI spent six years researching this groundbreaking novel, interviewing exiles and their families in Paris and Jakarta, basing her characters on these real individuals, trapped in the tides of history. The novel’s central character, Dimas Suryo, abroad in 1965 and unable to return to Indonesia after Suharto’s rise to power, winds up in Paris, where he helps found a restaurant, based on the real Restaurant Indonesia, a place to join and celebrate their longed-for home culture through food, dance, and song, while suffering a lifetime of homelessness away from Indonesia. In another narrative strand of the novel, Lintang Utara, Suryo’s daughter with a Frenchwoman, arrives in Jakarta in 1998 for her thesis in film studies just as the student protests that bring down Suharto get underway. Father and daughter each become central characters in the history of Indonesia’s tragic 20th century, marking the rise and fall of a brutal dictatorship.
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First published in Indonesian in 2012 under the title Pulang by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG) of Jakarta.
Indonesian language copyright © 2012 Leila S. Chudori
English language copyright © 2015 John H. McGlynn.
First North American edition, 2015.
First English-language edition published in 2015 as part of the Modern Library of Indonesia by the Lontar Foundation, founded in 1987 to promote Indonesian literature and culture through the translation of Indonesian literary works.
The Lontar Foundation · www.lontar.org
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-941920-11-4 (ebook)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2015946454
Publication of this book was made possible, in part, with the generous assistance of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia
Cover design & typesetting by Anna Zylicz · annazylicz.com
Text set in Bembo, a typeface modeled on typefaces cut by Francesco Griffo for Aldo Manuzio’s printing of De Aetna in 1495 in Venice.
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.
Contents
ON JALAN SABANG, JAKARTA, APRIL 1968
II LINTANG UTARA
PARIS, APRIL 1998
NARAYANA LAFEBVRE
L’IRRÉPARABLE
EKALAYA
VIVIENNE DEVERAUX
BLOOD-FILLED LETTERS
FLÂNEURS
III SEGARA ALAM
A DIORAMA
BIMO NUGROHO
THE AJI SURYO FAMILY
FADED PICTURES
MAY 1998
EPILOGUE
JAKARTA, JUNE 10, 1998
END NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
To my parents, Willy and Mohammad Chudori, and my daughter, Rain Chudori-Soerjoatmodjo
ON JALAN SABANG, JAKARTA, APRIL 1968
NIGHT HAD FALLEN, WITHOUT COMPLAINT, WITHOUT PRETEXT. Like a black net enclosing the city, ink from a monster squid spreading across Jakarta’s entire landscape—the color of my uncertain future.
Inside the darkroom, I know not the sun, the moon, or even my wristwatch. But the darkness that envelopes this room is imbrued with the scent of chemicals and anxiety.
Three years ago, the Nusantara News Agency where I worked was cleansed of lice and germs like myself. The army was the disinfectant and we, the lice and the germs, were eradicated from the face of the earth, with no trace left. Yet, somehow, this particular louse had survived and was now eking out a living at Tjahaja Photo Studio on the corner of Jalan Sabang in central Jakarta.
I switched on the red light to inspect the strips of negatives hanging on the drying-line overhead. It must have been around 6 p.m. because I could hear the muzzled sound of the muezzin drifting in to the darkroom through the grate in the door, summoning the faithful for evening prayer. I imagined the scene on Jalan Sabang outside: the quarrelsome cackling of motorized pedicabs; the huffing and puffing of slow-moving opelets searching for passengers; the creaking of human-driven pedicabs in need of an oil job; the cring-cring sound of hand bells on bicycles as their riders wove their way through the busy intersection; and the cries of the bread seller on his three-wheel contraption with its large box and clear glass windows. I
