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family.”
    â€œYou have your mother and your brother.”
    I didn’t reply. I knew Vivienne was trying to comfort me. She had a good heart, a gentle soul, but there was no way I was going to feel consoled when I thought of what had happened to Surti and her children. My cigarette was a stub in my fingers.
    Vivienne lit a new kretek . She took a drag then handed it to me.

    THE TRIVELI AREA OF JAKARTA ;
    SEPTEMBER 5, 1965
    I was on my fifth cigarette already and Mas Hananto was still getting it off with that woman in her house. I looked at my watch. Two o’clock in the morning! I swore that if he didn’t settle his business and show his face before I finished the cigarette, I was going to leave him. I didn’t care if he groused at me the next day at work. And what was he doing in there anyway? He had a beautiful wife: Surti, who was perfect in almost every way. He had no reason to betray her. I couldn’t understand the man’s behavior but, as I was his friend, I also couldn’t remain oblivious to his proclivity for extramarital affairs.
    This was the third time Mas Hananto had forced me to go with him when he went to see Marni. He needed me along to provide an alibi in case Surti asked where or with whom he had been.
    Hearing a sound, I looked around to see Mas Hananto finally coming out of Marni’s place. As he approached me, I could see that he was sweating but also beaming with satisfaction. With a big shit-eating grin on his face, he came over to where I was standing beside the cigarette vendor’s kiosk near where he had parked his car.Son of a bitch!
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked while lighting a cigarette.
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘what is it’?”
    â€œWhy that hang-dog look on your face?”
    â€œThis is the last time I’m coming here with you!”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause 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.
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œDo 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.
    â€œSurti 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.

    â€œ 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.
    â€œYou 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