LITMIR.BIZ

PROLOGUE:

       ON JALAN SABANG, JAKARTA, APRIL 1968

I DIMAS SURYO

PARIS, MAY 1968

HANANTO PRAWIRO

SURTI ANANDARI

TERRE D’ASILE

THE FOUR PILLARS

      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

PROLOGUE

      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 could even see the early evening wind bearing the smoke and smell rising from skewers of goat satay being grilled on the brazier at Pak Heri’s itinerant but immensely popular food stall located smack dab at the intersection of Sabang and Asem Lama. I could see him using his well-worn pestle to grind fried peanuts and thinly sliced shallots on an oversized mortar, then drizzling sweet soy sauce over the mix. And then I imagined my good friend, Dimas Suryo, studiously observing Pak Heri and discussing with him his choice of peanuts with the same kind of intensity that he might employ when dissecting a poem by Rivai Apin.

      Almost every evening, like clockwork, all other sounds from the outside were drowned out by the long shrill whistle from the steamer on Soehardi’s food cart as our regular vendor of steamed putu—a favorite treat of mine, those steamed rice-flour balls with their grated coconut on the outside and melted cane sugar inside—pulled up outside the photo studio. But other than the smell of Pak Heri’s goat satay, that sound was about the only thing—that shrieking

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