over to where I was standing beside the cigarette vendor’s kiosk near where he had parked his car. Son of a bitch!
“What is it?” he asked while lighting a cigarette.
“What do you mean ‘what is it’?”
“Why that hang-dog look on your face?”
“This is the last time I’m coming here with you!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not your lackey, that’s why, and I don’t want to have to lie to Surti.”
Mas Hananto’s face was expressionless. He had always been very good at concealing his emotions. He just smoked his cigarette. We walked towards the car not speaking. The Jakarta sky was absent of stars, a mirror of my heart. I liked Mas Hananto. And I liked women, too; but for me, supposing I had a wife, especially one as lovely and faithful as Surti, that would mean I had made my choice in life. That would mean there would be no more playing around.
“What’s special about Marni anyway?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Mas Hananto smiled. He knew that I couldn’t stay mad at him for too long. “She makes all the cells in my body seem to come alive,” he said with a glow in his eyes.
“Do you love her?”
He gave me a funny sideways look, and the kind of smirk that always made my blood rush to my temples because of the over-confident way he spoke. He was always so sure that nothing he did could possibly create problems for other people.
“Surti is my wife, my life’s companion. But with Marni, I feel the passionate excitement of the proletarian class.”
Pow!
Mas Hananto suddenly toppled over. I was amazed, because I hadn’t thought the fist of my right hand could move so fast to strike his jaw.
“Attends!” Once again, Vivienne’s voice suddenly tore away the scrim from my past, startling me. She raised her brows inquisitively. “Why were you so angry?”
Vivienne deserved an answer, but my voice was caught in my throat. How was I to explain to Vivienne who Surti was to me? The stem of jasmine that never wilted.
“You were angry because you were in love with her!”
Now I was the one knocked over—or, more precisely, dumb-founded by the ability of this Frenchwoman to read my heart.
I had spoken volumes to Vivienne about Jakarta and the political situation there, and never once had she interrupted me. But now, this one time, she instantly knew I was leaving something out and she cut off my story. Hmm…
I coughed to clear my throat. “Surti and I once were close…”
“You were in love with her,” Vivienne said, correcting me, “and you were angry because Hananto was two-timing the woman you once loved.” Vivienne stared at me to assess whether her assumption was correct. “Or, possibly,” she added, “because you were still in love with her.”
I hastened to explain. “What I was feeling at that time was only that Mas Hananto was squandering the affection of a woman who loved him—the same woman who had given him Kenanga and Bulan,” I said honestly, though still avoiding her question.
Vivienne continued to stare at me, a small smile tugging on her lips.
“That was then, Vivienne. We all have a past,” I said sincerely, hoping that the light in her beautiful green eyes would not fade. “I’m serious. And now I care for and respect Surti as I would a sister. She is—or was, rather—my best friend’s wife.”
Vivienne still looked unsure. I myself was unsure. I knew that whenever I mentioned Surti’s name, my heart felt a jolt of pain. And hearing the names of Kenanga, Bulan, and even Alam, the youngest whom I had never known, still made my heart leap. I was the one who dreamt up their names. I don’t know if Mas Hananto ever knew that.
In a firm voice, Vivienne now asked me to continue my story.
THE TRIVELI AREA OF JAKARTA;
SEPTEMBER 5, 1965
Mas Hananto rubbed his rub his jaw in pain. Inside the cigarette kiosk, the vendor snored, unaware of the disturbance outside.
“Mas Han …”
Hananto turned away, avoiding the look in my eye. “You still haven’t gotten over her, have you?”
I didn’t answer. It would have been a waste of time, what with the anger boiling in each of us.
“What time is it anyway?” I mumbled, suddenly feeling my body begin to wilt. My knees seemed to have lost their caps.
“Three,” Mas Hananto said brusquely, looking at his watch, a 17-jewel Titoni which was like a second heart for him and never free from his wrist. “That’s why I keep telling you to go to Senen Market and buy yourself a watch. You’re always having to ask other people the time.”
His tone was rough, but I could tell he was no longer angry. His jaw must have been hurting him, though.
I sat down beside him on the bumper of his jeep. “This will be the last time I interfere in your personal affairs,” I told him, “but I need to tell you that the way you live your life, with your family here and you going off to see Marni or some other woman there, shows that you are not consistent.”
Mas Hananto helped himself to a pack of cigarettes from the kiosk, placed a bill to cover the cost beside the still-sleeping vendor, opened the packet, and then offered a stick to me. He signaled for me to get into the jeep.
The streets in Jakarta were silent. Silence and smoke suffused the jeep’s interior.
In what seemed just a moment, we found ourselves already driving by the construction site of the unfinished National Monument in the park facing the presidential palace. From the disarray of the site, it was hard to guess when construction would be completed.
“So, you don’t think I’m consistent?” Mas Hananto suddenly muttered.
A strange question, I thought, coming from a man like Mas Hananto, who was so sure of the political ideology he had chosen to follow and the woman he had selected to be a helpmate in his life.
“I say that,” I told him, “because you have a family. A family requires stability and consistency. If you can’t control yourself and are always giving in to impulse, then you shouldn’t have gotten married. All you’re going to do is to make other people suffer.”
Mas Hananto glanced at me. “You’re not saying this because of Surti?”
“You know this has nothing to do with her,” I said unequivocally.
He gave me a serious look. “So I’m the one who’s inconsistent and you are sure your position is the right one? Tell
