as many failures as victories. Mas Hananto, Mas Nug, Tjai, Risjaf, and I once went through a period when we were competing for girlfriends, a time that ended with victory on the part of the senior members of our group: Mas Hananto won Surti’s hand; Mas Nug tied the knot with Rukmini; and Tjai married Theresa Li. Risjaf and I, meanwhile, ended up as frustrated bachelors and didn’t find our helpmates until after coming to Paris. But whatever the situation and regardless that we five often found ourselves at odds with one another, either because of women or ideology, we were always able to overcome any conflict that might arise between us. And one reason for this was Mas Nug’s unflagging optimism.
Among the five of us, it was only Mas Nug who liked to whistle and sing, even though his was the worst of voices and he was unable to carry a tune. Whether he was aware of this himself is uncertain, because in gatherings at the Nusantara News office, he was always the most eager to join in the singing. Mas Hananto and Risjaf had some musical skills: Mas Han could pluck a guitar and Risjaf was pretty good on the harmonica and flute. Meanwhile, my bass voice wasn’t too bad; but neither Tjai nor Mas Nug could carry a tune. The difference between those two was that Tjai recognized his shortcoming, whereas Mas Nug was blind to this imperfection and whenever there was a microphone present, he’d soon be clinging to it so fast you’d think it was a curvaceous woman.
So it was, blessed with this deep-seated sense of optimism, skilled at both massage and acupuncture (which he had studied and mastered during our time in Peking), and, with his Clark Gable mustache, very confident of his appearance, Mas Nugroho felt that he had all the capital in life he needed to get along. And it’s true: among us, he was the one most capable of confronting the challenges that conspired against us. He was precisely the kind of person our band of stateless people needed to bear life’s harsh realities.
And now I’m hearing Mas Nug’s off-tune voice, happily yodeling as he makes his way towards the kitchen on the ground floor of Tanah Air Restaurant, which for the past fifteen years has been at once our home, our source of income, and a point of major pride.
Mas Nug comes into the kitchen carrying a few bags of cooking ingredients and other supplies I had ordered. I guessed that he had just come from shopping in Belleville, where it was possible to buy Asian spices, because the day before I had been grumbling about how low we were on many of the basic Indonesian spices: turmeric, ginger, red chilies, shallots, garlic, Javanese bay leaf, and citrus leaf. In Paris, some of the spices we needed were available in dried form; but, in Indonesian cuisine, there is no replacing fresh red chilies, shallots, and garlic, whose prices at the market were always much higher than we thought they should be. Bahrum was usually the one who purchased my kitchen supplies, but he was in the midst of cleaning the restaurant’s wooden floor.
Still whistling, Mas Nug removes the purchases from their bags and plops them on the kitchen table I use for preparing spices. I don’t know whether it’s because of his insufferable whistling or my irritation with him for throwing the purchases on the table where I am trying to work, but all of a sudden I feel nauseous, as if I am about to throw up. The fact is, for the past several weeks my stomach has been troubling me on and off, but, up until then, I have always been able to ignore it.
Mas Nug looks at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
I don’t answer him. Both he and Tjai are constantly ragging me about my health, like two parents angry with their teenage son for not wanting to study. Mas Nug thinks he can treat any illness with that bag of needles he takes wherever he goes. He is always going on and on about concepts of energy and acupuncture needles. Any time he starts to speak of such things, I immediately want to fall asleep. Who gives a hoot about “energy,” “chi,” and “New Age” treatments? Only Mas Nug!
I hate needles, especially Mas Nug’s, whose efficacy I’m not at all sure of. But even though the hospital is a place that for me is identical with needles and all sorts of ghastly-looking machines, I do recognize that there are times when I am forced to surrender myself to a doctor for medical care. Like last week, for instance…
On that morning, last week, I suddenly collapsed outside the Metro station. I didn’t feel anything, but everything turned black for a few moments, and the next thing I knew I was in a café near the kiosk at the entrance to the station where I usually bought the daily paper. Staring at me when I opened my eyes was Pierre, the newspaper vendor who never bathed, and André, the handsome blue-eyed waiter at the café who looked like he should be a Calvin Klein model instead of serving coffee. Speaking rapidly, in their nasalized Parisian French, they ordered me to drink water and kept asking me, over and over, if I was all right. When they said they were going to call an ambulance, I finally shook my head and asked them to call Risjaf instead.
What happened then was a nightmare: Tjai and Mas Nug, the two fussiest and most know-it-all people I know, came to the café. Tjai, with his low voice and calculated manner, grilled me about the quantity and frequency of my intake of alcohol. Mas Nug, meanwhile, began hectoring me about energy and similar nonsense. I wanted to disappear from their sight. There was no way they would let me refuse their demand that I go to the hospital for a physical examination. And the fact was, I was still in a bit of shock and too weak to do otherwise. I was suddenly an old codger in need of assistance from two creatures who were putting on airs of being much younger. As they led me out of the café to a taxi, I felt the ground move beneath my feet. When that happened, I knew I had to obey. There was something wrong with me.
The doctor in the emergency ward of the hospital where they took me ordered me to undergo a battery of tests. Afterwards, he prescribed some medicine. But I still haven’t gotten around to picking up the results of the tests.
That same feeling of nausea and stomach cramps were now affecting me again. Mas Nug came over and put his hand on my cheek.
“Lie down in the office. I can take your place in the kitchen.”
Hmm… I liked the taste of my cooking better, especially my nasi kuning or yellow rice with its side dishes of crispy tempeh, yellow fried chicken, and urap, spiced vegetables with grated coconut. And to make everything taste better was my fried hot pepper sauce, sambal bajak. I knew that my nasi kuning, along with my Padang-style beef rendang, gulai pakis, fiddlestick ferns simmered in coconut sauce, and a Lampung-style curried chicken dish called gulai anam, were the most popular dishes on Tanah Air’s menu, at least in terms of number of orders. Mas Nug’s cooking was much too experimental for me. He was so busy coming up with fancy names for dishes, he often forgot about their taste.
“Dimas…”
I could tell from the tone of Mas Nug’s voice that he didn’t want to offend me. He knew that the restaurant’s kitchen was my territory, a no-man’s-land for anyone unable to follow my very explicit instructions. (Don’t change the composition of spices. Don’t touch my knives. Never use the onion knife for cutting meat. The work area must be absolutely clean, with no drops of water or coffee on it. And so on and so forth.) The Tanah Air kitchen was my throne from which I could not be unseated. Reign over other parts of the restaurant, I willingly relinquished to those friends who liked to show off their fine teeth on the stage.
But now Mas Nug was suggesting that he take my position as cook. I immediately thought of Mahmud Radjab, a Malaysian writer and friend of mine, who had booked a number of tables at the restaurant that night to celebrate the publication of his latest book with friends. He had written to me far in advance to tell me that he and several colleagues from Kuala Lumpur had been invited to come to the Sorbonne and that they hoped to celebrate at the restaurant. He sent me a menu, telling me exactly what kind of dishes he wanted to serve his friends. The kinds of dishes he mentioned were common enough in Kuala Lumpur, but not so in Paris. “Your cooking is extraordinary,” he told me. “You have a gift with spices.”
And now eighteen people, Radjab and his friends, were coming to the restaurant, expecting to be served a truly Malay-tasting meal.
I had been preparing the spice mixture since morning. All that was left to do in the afternoon was to mix them with the rice, prepare the chicken, and mix the vegetables with