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“Where the hell were you yesterday and what the fuck are you up to now?”

“Calm down, Bro. I took her to see Lubang Buaya yesterday.”

“What for?”

“She's making a documentary on '65. I wanted to give her
some context and to make sure she understands that the history of Indonesia as it is depicted there is the only one the younger generation knows.”

“And…?”

“She was mesmerized. She recorded everything: the monuments, the diorama.”

I said nothing. I was beginning to understand the reason for Alam's disappearance.

“And how is she up here?” I asked, with my index finger on my forehead.

“Very bright. At first I thought she'd be the typical Westerner: all rational-minded and that kind of thing but then bowled over by exoticism and so on. But in fact she's not. She asks good questions, straight and to the point.”

Alam smiled.
Ngehe!
Fucker! He's the one who's mesmerized.

“You watch yourself, buddy. This one isn't for the bedroom. You'll be tarred and feathered by all of Paris and Jakarta if you try. God, I can see your mother running after you with a machete and hacking you to pieces!” I chortled, imagining Alam's elegant mother crazed and with a machete in her hands.

“Don't worry. Not my type. The bright ones are always trouble in bed.”

Alam took a cigarette and offered me one, too.

“Not now, Alam. My mother,” I glanced inside the house.

Alam put his cigarette back in its packet and swished his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if to dissipate the urge to smoke.

“So why did you want to meet up here?”

Lintang returned to the terrace. She looked at Alam and then at me. “Bimo, I have a huge favor to ask of you.”

“Name it.”

“All the names on my list of potential respondents are victims. But I'm thinking…I'm thinking that I really need to interview the other side, too.

The other side?
I shook my head in disbelief.
The man with the burning cigarette butts? You must be kidding.

“I know this might be hard, Bro, but I think it's a good idea,” Alam said to me. “Yesterday Lintang recorded Lubang Buaya but she needs more…”

“More context! Right, I got it,” I cut him off impatiently. “But I don't think he'll agree to do it. The military has its own special bureaucracy and procedures. And even though he's retired, he'd still have to get permission and that could have consequences. Lintang would have to provide an official letter of request and then, even if her request for an interview was granted, which I doubt it would be, they'd probably appoint a public communications officer to talk with her, not my stepfather.”

Alam looked at Lintang, who was trying to get her head around this bureaucratic tangle.

“Then how about this, Bimo… How about if I just try speaking to your stepfather and see what he says?”

I took a breath.

“OK, Lintang, but only if you can accept the risk in what you're doing. My stepfather is not the friendliest guy in the world.”

Lintang nodded. The three of us then went into the house and walked through it to emerge at a rear terrace that faced a small garden. After my stepfather retired from the military with the rank of brigadier-general, he was appointed to serve on the board of commissioners of PT Maharani, the state-owned tin mining company. The job was neither pressing nor time-consuming and most weekends, Ibu told me, my stepfather usually spent at home, sitting
there on the back terrace, viewing the garden as she prepared their midday meal. Afterwards, she said, they usually went to visit friends or, if they were in the mood for spending money, maybe go to one of the malls where Pak Prakosa might buy a new golf club and my mother a tube of expensive lipstick. I didn't know whether they had plans to go somewhere today or not. When I called my mother the night before, she didn't say if they had plans today but told me that she would tell my stepfather that I was coming to see him. “Pak…” My stepfather closed the newspaper he was reading and turned his head toward me. No change of face. No difference in expression. “Yes?”

“I want you to meet Lintang, a friend of mine. She's a student at the Sorbonne and would like to ask your help.”

My stepfather looked at Lintang and nodded. Lintang extended her hand to him, which he shook, and then asked us all to sit down on the chairs facing him. My stepfather had never much liked Alam, whom he thought was a trouble-maker but also because his father was Hananto Prawiro. He scarcely acknowledged Alam's presence.

“So, Lintang, how can I be of assistance?” he asked.

“I'm sorry to bother you, sir, this being a weekend and all, but I came to Jakarta to finish my final assignment for my undergraduate degree.”

“Good. Good for you,” he nodded, without evident emotion. “What's it about? What's your field?”

“Cinematography. I'm hoping to make a documentary film.”

My stepfather nodded again, his face still expressionless. He didn't seem to know who Lintang was, but I was sure that he was trying to guess right now.

“I want to make a one-hour documentary about Indonesian history.”

“Well, that's awfully broad. What part of Indonesian history do you have in mind?”

“September 1965 and its impact on the families of victims.”

Pak Prakosa straightened up and looked at Lintang more closely.

“What do you mean by ‘victims'?”

“I mean the families of political prisoners, the ones who didn't know anything or weren't involved but then had to suffer for years afterwards, even up to this day.”

The general's features immediately hardened. At that same moment, my mother came out of the house and onto the back terrace, no doubt to announce that lunch was ready to be served. Ibu didn't know that I was bringing others along to talk to her husband.

“Ibu, this is Lintang, a friend from Paris. From the Sorbonne.”

“Oh…” Ibu shook Lintang's hand and nodded towards Alam. “Paris?”

“That's right, Bu Prakosa,” Lintang answered in a polite tone of voice. Ibu studied Lintang's face, as if searching her memory for something she knew about the younger woman.

“Lintang, is it?”

“Yes, Lintang Utara Suryo.”

Lintang seemed to be testing the waters. My mother's face immediately paled and she released Lintang's hand. “Oh…”

My stepfather immediately stood up and looked at her. “You're Dimas Suryo's daughter?” I could feel the tension in the air and stood, I don't know why.

“Yes, sir, I am,” Lintang answered calmly, “but the documentary film is for my final assignment as a student at the Sorbonne.”

Ibu quickly took control of the uncomfortable situation by doing what she always did: changing the subject and ignoring the matter at hand.

“Lunch is ready, Mas,” she said to my stepfather. “Bimo, do your friends want to eat lunch here?”

Offering lunch was, of course, the only civil thing to do, but it was also a sign for us to go. I knew very well the look on my mother's face, which meant that I was to get out of the house now and to take with me these “friends” who were likely to give her husband a migraine.

“That's kind of you, Tante, but we have an invitation for lunch at a friend's house,” Alam smoothly lied.

“Yes, thank you, but we must be going,” Lintang interjected, no less politely. “I'm sorry if I've disturbed your weekend, Bapak and Ibu Prakosa.”

“Lintang…” Pak Prakosa's voice caused Lintang to stop in her tracks.

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though I'm retired, I am not allowed to give any kind of interview without permission. If you would like one, you'll have to go to the military headquarters with an official request from your university.”

Lintang nodded. “All right, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“But…” My stepfather was never satisfied until he had driven a thorn into the flesh. “Even if you are granted permission, I won't say anything to you.”

He smiled. Coldly. As if he had won.

“We got to go,” I said to my mother while taking Lintang's hand. “Goodbye, ma'am, sir.”

“Bye…”

The three of us left the house, not breathing again it seemed until we had reached the front terrace. The nervous tension that Alam and Lintang felt was, I knew, very different from what I was feeling.

What I had felt during that brief time with my stepfather and mother was the endless torture of my childhood years, which suddenly returned to grip me.

“Are you all right?” Alam asked when he saw that my body was suddenly wet from sweat.

I nodded. Alam hailed a taxi. Lintang held my shoulders. In the taxi, none of us said anything.

In just twenty minutes we arrived at Jalan Diponegoro. Even though it was Saturday, our office was full of people. One could hardly see the office signboard, “Satu Bangsa,” because of the many banners with protest slogans about the increase in the price of fuel, the need for reform, the abusive practices of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. People were lounging about the place, on floors and benches.

Lintang got out of the taxi with her large knapsack and the laptop she seemed to carry everywhere. The girl was a mobile library with everything on board she might possibly need. Even so, she refused my offer to help lighten her load.

Gilang, who seemed to have just bathed because his hair was still wet, was on the terrace smoking a cigarette. He smiled when he saw the three of us.

“Hi, Lintang. Where have you been? Have you eaten?”

Then, in front of us, Ujang appeared and asked, “Lintang, would you like to order something to eat?”

Alam shook his head to see the attention being paid to Lintang.

“Thank you, but not now. Maybe later, OK?”

“Come on, let's order something,” Alam suggested. “If you don't, you're going to get hungry and then start to cry,” he wisecracked.
“
Nasi Padang
for all of us,” he said to Ujang. “Would you like
rendang
or chicken?” he then asked Lintang, very attentively. Whenever Alam went into such a supercilious mode, it usually meant he liked the woman he was with. If he wasn't interested in Lintang, he wouldn't be so fawning or showing her so much attention.

“Do they have grilled chicken?”

“Sure they do. Breast or thigh?” Ujang piped in. “And how about a cold fruit cocktail for desert?” Now he was going close to going overboard in showing off his hospitality skills.

Lintang laughed and nodded, then opened her wallet.

“Put that away!” Gilang said, shaking his finger to stop Lintang from giving money to Ujang. “I'll make you a deal. I'll treat you to a meal here and you can treat me in Paris!”

“Why don't you introduce Ms. Sorbonne to our other friends here,” he said to me. “I need to talk to you,” he said to Alam.

Alam looked at Lintang and pointed at his desk. “You can put your things over there, on my desk.”

Lintang followed Alam's suggestion and then went with me as I began to show her around, but I could see that she was keeping a watch out of the corner of her eyes on Alam, who was now off with Gilang in a corner of the room discussing something.

“We have several advocacy divisions,” I said to Lintang as I began to introduce her to other staff members. “This is Odi. He handles cases of discrimination towards the ethnic Chinese. Odi, this is Lintang. And that's Agam. He's in charge of land rights issues.”

Lintang greeted our fellow activists, one by one, who were busy working at their desks. Then I led her into what we called our audio-visual room, a very simple affair. Lintang looked at the computer and our set of editing equipment, which was old and out of date.

“These antiques… I'm sure you don't have anything like them at the Sorbonne,” I remarked.

Lintang looked with wonder at Mita, who was operating the editing equipment. “What's important is the result, not the equipment itself,” she said with a smile.