awake would find her crawling around our small apartment.
Vivienne raised no objection to my giving our daughter such a non-French-sounding name. She agreed to my choice instantly, just as Surti had when I proposed the names Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam for the children we once dreamed of having together.
During the first few years of our marriage, I changed jobs several times. Vivienne, meanwhile, had much more steady employment: teaching in the Faculty of English Literature at the Sorbonne. Finally, however, after several years of seeing the look on Vivienne’s face become one of increased annoyance as a result of the unsteady and uncertain nature of my financial contribution to our home—I was spending much of my time writing a newsletter, Political Prisoner, which I distributed to the Indonesian exile community in Europe—I finally committed myself to more permanent work and took a clerical job at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Even though I earned a decent enough salary, I was not at all happy with my desk job at the ministry. Instead of my work, my mind was either on the essays and poems that I intended to publish in the next issue of Political Prisoner or on interesting items of news that I received from friends who worked for the news media in Jakarta. One such piece of news was about the hullabaloo in 1972 when a foundation that had been established by President Soeharto’s wife, Madam Tien, commenced work on an immense theme park called “Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature” or, more commonly in Indonesian, “Taman Mini.” Not surprisingly, given the economic disparities in Indonesia at the time, some of the country’s leading intellectuals objected to the project, including the well-known sociologist Arief Budiman, who damned it as a massive boondoggle; but what was surprising is that they actually voiced their objections in print and incited students to take to the streets. Another interesting but disturbing development in the political sphere was that Indonesia’s political parties were coming to be dominated by businessmen and that Parliament was being transformed into an assemblage of clowns, convened only to rubberstamp anything and all that the executive branch of government proposed.
I wrote about these and other things in my newsletter as a means of keeping the exile community up to date on conditions in Indonesia. I offered the newsletter to fellow exiles, free of charge, but as it was fairly popular it sometimes did attract financial contributions from other exiles. Whenever enough money came in, I’d publish another edition, and with the help of Risjaf’s design skills was able to produce something that was almost professional-looking, like a newspaper.
Gradually, after few years I grew so bored with my work at the Ministry of Agriculture, I knew I had to stop. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to publish a paper. I wanted a change.
So it was, one autumn night, I came home to our apartment bearing a bottle of wine and several cuts of choice beef. It was nine o’clock when I arrived home, and Lintang was already asleep.
“What’s the celebration?” Vivienne asked, taking the bottle from me and pinching the meat. “This is expensive, Dimas. What’s up?”
Vivienne’s green eyes bore into me.
“Sit down,” I told her.
She sat down beside me, a look of suspicion on her face. I took her hand and kissed her fingertips. It always excited her when I sucked on her fingers. I wanted her to understand the decision I had come to.
“You know I love you and Lintang,” I began.
She nodded and frowned, a nervous look. “This isn’t about another woman, is it?” she asked.
“What! Are you crazy?”
Vivienne laughed with relief. “You always forget how good-looking you are, Dimas. The grayer your hair, the more attractive you are for younger women. But never mind… What is it?”
I paused, wondering which younger women found me attractive. How unfortunate I did not even notice. “It’s torture for me, Vivienne. I am so unhappy with…”
“You want to quit your job at the ministry, is that it?”
“Oui.”
She stared at me, a tree offering its shade. As long as the subject at hand was not another woman, Vivienne seemed to me to be the most understanding wife in the universe. Unlike some other French women I knew, who allowed their husbands to flit from the bed of one mistress to another, for Vivienne there were very clear rules in our marriage. She would tolerate everything except one: another woman. And I agreed.
“I knew.”
I embraced her and held her tightly to me.
Once again, I asked myself, what did I have to complain about if I had around me a family that loved me? Why did I feel like a piece of me was still left behind in Indonesia?
That night, we poured ourselves a glass of wine and discussed what our future might bring once I resigned from my steady job at the ministry. In the course of our conversation, we were suddenly interrupted by a rapping sound. I opened the door to find Mas Nug, whose face was forlorn and whose appearance resembled a pile of dirty clothes. He was sweating, his shirt drenched. He held in his hand a brown manila envelope. He stared at me with tears in his eyes.
Vivienne quickly pull Mas Nug inside the apartment. “Come in, Nugroho, come in.”
My heart beat faster. What had happened now?
Mas Nug’s hands were shaking as he held the envelope.
Vivienne slowly took the envelope and gave it to me. I opened and read the document inside: a divorce request. Rukmini, his orchid in bloom, was asking Mas Nugroho with the Clark Gable mustache for a divorce.
I put my arms around Mas Nug and pulled him to me, hugging him tight. I knew how much he loved Rukmini, even if, like Mas Hananto, he too played around.
“I supposed I should have known why she refused to move here,” Mas Nug said slowly, taking the glass of wine that Vivienne proffered.
“Why?” Vivienne asked.
“Because of her relationship with a military officer, the one who protected her during the hunt for communists in 1966 and 1967. This man, Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa, I thought at first was just a friend of her father’s who had in him a kind enough heart to help Rukmini.”
I swallowed, imagining the faces of Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa and Rukmini before me.
“So, you’re saying that Rukmini is asking for a divorce in order to marry Lieutenant-Colonel Prakosa?”
Mas Nug lifted the wine glass to his lips and downed its contents in one gulp. He asked for his empty glass to be filled. Vivienne obediently granted his request.
Between tears and with the smell of wine on his breath, he ranted. “Tell Risjaf he was lucky never to have married her. Inside that orchid was a worm,” Mas Nug spat with anger and hurt.
After emptying the rest of the bottle of cabernet sauvignon, Mas Nug picked up the letter of request for a divorce and flattened it on the dining table.
“Pen!” he shouted at me. Never before had I heard such a dictatorial tone in Mas Nug’s voice.
I frantically searched for a pen but couldn’t find one. Finally, Vivienne rummaged inside her purse and managed to come up with one.
Mas
