Oh, Risjaf… I told my friend to sit down and take a deep breath. Obediently he sat down on the edge of the bed. His thick wavy hair was disheveled and big drops of sweat rolled from his forehead and down his cheeks. Risjaf, this Malay man with such a fine heart, was completely unaware of his own charm.
“Risjaf, just look into Rukmini’s eyes and tell her that you want to ask her out.”
Risjaf’s mouth dropped open. “Where?”
Good God! How could such a handsome face exhibit a mien of such stupidity?
“Out! On a date!” I almost yelled. “Take her to see Solo by Night at the Metropole; invite her to dinner at Tan Goei; treat her to a milkshake at Baltic Ice Cream; or, if you really want to save your money, go for a walk with her at Zandvoort.”
“Zandvoort…Zandvoort…” With his mouth still agape, Risjaf repeated the word over and over.
“In Cilincing, stupid!” I half shouted at him.
“You talk to her first, will you, please?” Now he was pleading with me.
My God.
For two long and painful hours I mentored this man who was so handsome but so naïve about women. Risjaf nodded at my instructions and wrote down all the places he might take Rukmini. After that, he quickly bathed and then changed into a blue dress shirt. He glossed his hair with pomade and combed it neatly. He folded the notes he had made during my primer course and put them in his trouser pocket—as if they were some kind of amulet that would help him to speak fluently.
With Surti spending the weekend at her parents’ home in Bogor, I myself was “on vacation” that night, so I gave my blessings to Risjaf, wished him the best, and made ready for a night of reading. Risjaf strode from the house with an almost confident air.
No more than a half hour later, I heard a weak knock on my door. Who could that be, I wondered. Opening the door, I found Risjaf, who came into my room with his head drooping like a limp dish rag. He let his body fall onto my bed. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling overhead.
I looked down at him. “What is it, Sjaf?”
“I went to her place…”
“And so?”
“So she wasn’t there.”
“Then you can go back another time.”
“She’d gone out with another man!” Risjaf cried.
I was silent, not knowing what to say. My heart poured out for him.
Risjaf stared at me, his eyes reddened with anger or perhaps pain.
He spoke slowly and in a low voice, but the sound in my ears was like the ticking of a bomb.
“The lady at the boarding house told me that Rukmini had gone out with a man named Nugroho.”
That night I let Risjaf sprawl on my bed as he played the same song repeatedly on his harmonica, the Dutch tune “Als de Orchideeën Bloeien.” After about the fifth time, I was ready to wrest the harmonica from his hand and throttle him with it, but the tears welling in his eyes made me feel sorry for him. And after midnight, when the orchid still hadn’t bloomed, Risjaf, in his now-crumpled blue shirt, finally fell asleep and began to snore. I stretched out on the floor and stared at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. There were still many things about women that I, too, did not understand.
In the weeks that followed, I was Risjaf’s shadow, going with him wherever he went: to campus, the library, Senen Market, Metropole Cinema, most everywhere, just to make sure he didn’t wind up standing atop a tall bridge or on the edge of a deep well. His demeanor and manner were those of a man without hope. I also shadowed him when he walked across the street to stand motionless on the sidewalk outside Mas Nugroho’s paviliun. He had held the phlegm in his throat for so long, I knew he was now ready, that he had to spit it out. Splat! At least he had spat on the walk and not into Mas Nugroho’s face, I thought. But that would not have been my friend Risjaf, who was not the kind of man given to open displays of anger. I knew he realized that he had no claim on Rukmini. Therefore, what right did he have to be angry? Even so, I could not allow the situation to continue indefinitely.
From my point of view, the problem rested with Mas Nugroho, who was completely insensitive to Risjaf’s feelings. He didn’t seem to realize that Risjaf was suffering from a broken heart—even though I thought it was apparent to everyone else. Whenever we saw Rukmini stop by at the paviliun across the road, even if it was only for a moment, Risjaf would immediately scurry into his room, hide behind a pile of homework, and not come out again.
One Sunday, I finally spoke about the situation with Surti, who gave me a look of complete surprise. “What? Risjaf likes Rukmini?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know?” In the mortar, I used my pestle to attack the sliced shallots and garlic and chunk of peeled turmeric root, as if they were to blame for keeping Rukmini and Risjaf apart.
Risjaf was still in the throes of misery, and I had promised myself that on Sunday I would cook up a pot of ikan pindang serani as a means to soothe his heart. Originally an Indo-Portuguese dish, the recipe for this spicy and sour milkfish soup was from my mother, and the taste of the fish which had been simmered slowly in turmeric sauce never failed to cheer me or my brother Aji when my father, who often had to travel for work, was not at home. I hoped that the dish would turn its magic on Risjaf, permitting him to recover and cast his attention on another woman.
As it was now Tjai’s turn to shadow Risjaf, who had gone to borrow lecture notes from a friend, I had some time to spend alone with Surti, even if I was cooking.
The cuts of milkfish, sliced shallots, green tomatoes, and citrus leaves were in their respective piles on the countertop and I was now grinding the turmeric with red chilies and garlic. The skin on my hands had turned yellow from the turmeric, and the paste of spice mixture began to splatter as I ground.
Surti, who was standing next to me, placed her right hand on mine, causing me to stop what I was doing.
“How was Rukmini supposed to know?” she asked, now stroking my hand. “Whenever Risjaf is around her, he’s as stiff as a statue, like he’s in electric shock.” She smiled gently and looked me in the eye. “I’m very sure that Rukmini is unaware of Risjaf’s feelings towards her.”
I stopped torturing the spice mixture and wiped my forehead with the back of my arm.
She was probably right. “Does Rukmini like Mas Nug?” I asked.
“It would appear so,” she said evenly. Adding another slice of turmeric to the paste, she began to move the pestle. By the way she crushed the root—gently, wordlessly—she seemed to be coaxing the spices to surrender themselves to their individual destruction in order to create a more perfect union of taste, one more pleasing to the tongue. I stared, fixating on her as she slowly turned the wooden pestle in the mortar as if massaging the spicy mixture. I swallowed. My body tensed. I hardly knew what was happening and I was unable to comprehend why her actions excited me so.
“What’s clear,” Surti said as she continued to grind the spices (which in turn made me more tense and less able to speak), “Mas Nug is willing to express his feelings. As is Mas Hananto. They are men who know what they want.”
She was right, of course. Damn the two of them, both of them older and more mature! Both had good jobs, though neither held a college degree. After graduation from high school, Mas Nug had enrolled in Chinese studies at the University of Indonesia but had never completed his degree. For several years, Mas Hananto had been a student in the Faculty of Law, but hadn’t finished his studies either. Even so, regardless of their educational deficit, the two of them were definitely more experienced in dealing with women. I felt chagrin. It wasn’t fair that we—Risjaf and I—were being compared to the two