Putri's delusion

By Mark P. Kancana

The candle merrily flickered a warm glow inside its glass case on top of the white tablecloth. Putri looked at this source of dancing light with her head rested lightly on her dainty fingers and her elbows on the table. She shifted her attention, looking out of the window where she saw a luminous and overcrowded night time Jakarta from the 25th floor of the Residence Luna Building. She was celebrating her second wedding anniversary with her husband, Ari, at the French Le Char restaurant. She wanted to be happy at the moment. She listened to the pianoman playing some classical tune and paused, before she silently said to herself, "I should be happy."

That night on the 24th of February, she was having a romantic candle-lit dinner with her loving husband who sat across from her. He wore a gray three piece Giorgio Armani suit and a Valentino tie she bought for him for last New Year's celebration at the Shangri-La Hotel. Through her eyes, his well groomed dark hair glistened softly as he carefully spooned his bowl of corn potage soup, his favorite cream soup. She would now and then crack a smile at him whenever he looked up at her. Then, she would see him indulge in his soup and occasionally pour tabasco sauce into his bowl. His dark brown eyes sparkled and reminded her of the day they first met five years ago.

Those were the very eyes that took her breath away. She was in love with him then and still is now. But her heart was afraid of what she suspected to be true. This was supposed to be their second wedding anniversary celebration, but something was amiss. Behind his seemingly natural loving gestures there was an oddity. He was perfectly loving, almost as if it were calculated. The way he opened the car door before they entered the building, the way he took her hand into his and even the way he kissed her. It was passionate yet different. It was all too perfect.

That morning, she thought Ari almost forgot about her wedding anniversary. But somehow two stems of red roses appeared by her bedside the very morning before she woke up. They were ordered at a 24-hour florist near from her house. It was 10 days after Valentine's Day. Just 10 days after Ari's so called "business trip" to Bali. It's Saturday night today, she mused as she took the crystal water cup from the wooden table and observed Ari closely through her dubious eyes.

From Ari's peculiar gestures, she imagined that his mind was still savoring the night he spent in Bali on the 14th during his "business trip". As Ari's faithful wife, Putri does not believe in celebrating Valentine's Day. To her the day to celebrate love should be any day and not confined to just one day. She thought of it as a Western tradition not fit for an Indonesian woman. So, it did not bother Putri that her husband was off on a business trip on Valentine's Day. He was a busy man and it was expected of him to travel extensively to tend to his business. So, on the night of the 14th, she contemplated amicable thoughts about her husband, who was, actually, laboring long and hard at the beach in Nusa Dua, showering mundane pleasures to his recent lover, Lisa. On the beach amidst the crashing waves and the whistling of the wind, Cupid's arrow cast its spell and delivered these secret lovers into a lustful bliss.

She ordered two 150-gram tenderloin steaks cooked medium rare with an appetizing dark mushroom sauce for their main course. It reminded her of the first time they met. She was an air hostess trainee at Elang Air. It was during the session at Jane Ruppert Powels School for character development, when Ari's hypnotizing eyes first captivated Putri. Ari was there to make up the table manner session. At the time, she had never eaten a tenderloin steak before and having somebody look at her like Ari, made her even more nervous. Both of them were not used to eating Western food. So, trying to cut the meat with a knife and eat it with a fork was a task unto itself, even without somebody staring at her. It was something new to her, but she had always wanted to learn all this. And being a stewardess, she thought, would allow her to see the world. She wanted a change from her shielded existence in a traditional middle class household. She rebelled from her father and with much pain and persistence finally got her way.

Similarly, Ari as she remembered was not from a rich family but he was driven and determined. He studied hard and made it to law school at the University of Indonesia on a scholarship. He graduated cum laude and was recruited by the best private law firm in the country, Ahmad Buyung Siregar and Associates. He went through many training sessions and though he was new, was well liked at the firm due to his ability to fit in. Knowing how to act and how to be helpful without attracting too much attention was his specialty. He knew what the mentality of the Indonesian senior officers was like and managed to get on their good side.

But there was one thing he wanted the most: he wanted to carry his family to the top of the social ladder. He wanted to be the one to have an office on the highest floor of the Wisma Indosemen Building. He wanted to be respected for his power and wealth. He wanted everything he could achieve within his lifetime, no matter what it took.

Putri knew he was boldly ambitious, yet somehow lost in his blind appetite for success. Putri knew only that she could put him back on track. She knew she was the rain that tamed the ever raging forest fire that he was. She was a calming element in his life. She was so sure of that.

"Don't you think it's beautiful up here, Ari?" Putri asked, breaking the silence. She did not expect an answer. She looked down at the streets and saw a red and white band of car lights, resembling a strip of bright ribbon covering the length of Thamrin street.

The traffic was still held up by routine evening congestion. The cars inched along the road, carrying people from their work places to their homes. They were still a luxury for many in Jakarta. For Putri, the luxury was to spend time in a romantic setting with Ari.

"Ari, you look unusually handsome tonight," she complimented him, watching him grin with a slight embarrassment. But he still kept quiet.

"You know, if I'm not careful I could easily lose you to somebody else," she said jokingly while wishing to God that it would never happen to her. She wanted desperately to know... to feel that he would always be by her side forever, no matter what it took and no matter what happened to either of them. She loved him with all her heart and she knew she would never let him go. Never. She would do whatever was necessary to keep them together. Whatever was necessary.

"Ari, darling, did you have a rough time at the office today?" she tried to sound congenial while pretending he was there. "You haven't told me about what happen to you at the office in ages," she continued. "You're so quiet. You still don't get along with Mr. Bambang, right? I know he's a bit tough to deal with but that's life, honey. He's your boss. Remember the saying that your boss is always right. So the answer to your problems is just to be patient and strive to become the boss, right? Sometimes we must cope. And of all people I know you know that."

She extended her arms and put her hands across the table on top of the white tablecloth in a vain attempt to comfort him. She was happy when she could comfort Ari. It made her feel important and secure. She loved him. She sat there listening only to the sound of her breath and was pleased. Yet, for a fleeting instant she was disturbed by an unfortunate recollection. She creased her forehead as she reminisced about the scarlet past and placed her fisted left hand under her chin.

She said, as if to thin air, "Ari, have you ever thought of our child?" She abruptly looked across the table into the eyes of his mirage. "You know we can still have another child, don't worry about what happened to me. It was an accident. It was not your fault."

She pulled her body upright and stroked her black velvet evening gown to remove any wrinkles in her stomach and took a deep breath of remembrance. "I was six months pregnant then and I lost our little Alya," she took another deep gulp of air and sighed. "I don't know why I had to fall down and...lose her." She cocked her head slightly in an angle and teardrops rolled down her silky light skin, falling onto her cheeks and continuing down to the tablecloth.

"But why? Was it God's will? We had to lose her..." she almost whispered and looked down searching for the answers to her own questions. "But Ari," she exclaimed as she once again looked at the emptiness across her, "we still need to care for her, you know. She was our daughter. We should visit her tomorrow and put some flowers on her home at Tanah Kusir."

She leaned forward, pressed her breast against the side of the table as her hands mimicked the gesture of putting flowers on a grave using those found in the vase in front of her. She carefully placed three of the white chrysanthemums on her napkin.

"Why won't you go with me?" she asked accusingly. "I understand that it was our mistake when we first conceived her. We weren't even married then. But you said you were going to marry me right away, didn't you? Ari, why did you have to lie to me? If you had married me on February 24th two years ago as you had promised none of this would have happened. At least, if you had already proposed to me, we wouldn't have been in that argument and I wouldn't have fallen down. Remember? Please say something, honey! Your silence is killing me."

Her heartbeat increased and her face became warm. "Ari, if we hadn't fought that day I wouldn't have fallen down from those steps and Alya would still be with us. Don't you understand that?" Her voice continued to rise, "Ari don't you understand we have a child together and she will always be part of our lives. We have to try to work things out between us darling, for our little Alya."

She sighed and looked out of the window towards the dark and cloudy sky. She continued her protestation. "Yes, for our little Alya we need to work on our marriage, darling. I forgive all of your faults. Now we need to think of our future, our house, Alya's brothers and sisters and....."

She paused abruptly and grasped her gown. She took a deep breath, almost realizing, for once, that she was all alone there at the table. She mumbled some words and gazed at the splendid scenery. She grimaced and uttered, "Isn't it so beautiful up here Ari?"

Putri's eyes wandered dreamily into Jakarta's bright maze of buildings. She saw the brilliance of the night, unaware of the pretense of the city. Hidden behind this radiance was restlessness and the social puzzles of metropolitan life.

Tightly and close to her heart, she clutched the stems of the two red roses she received two weeks ago. She stared at the blinding street lights of Jakarta beyond the windows of her room. In the darkness of her chamber at Grogol Mental Hospital, she paced across the tile floor in her rubber slippers. She stopped at intervals when she passed the bars of street illumination entering the room through the barred windows.

That night, she was sure Ari still loved her. In her mind nothing could change that. The Ari that got married to Lisa last Valentine's Day was not the Ari she knew. The fact that Ari and Lisa had spent their honeymoon at the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel did not change Putri's mind. She knew Ari, Alya's father, would always love her and had promised to work on their marriage.

"He said so himself at Le Char restaurant that night," she thought to herself. In fact, she still saw him in the room with her. He did not leave her. He would always be there with her. The roses were still in her arms, dried up and dead. The usually dark red tint of the roses was gray under the night light. There was a deafening silence surrounding her. She stared at the corner of her chamber and saw little Alya sitting at the corner near her father. Her heart was content. Her family was not lost after all.

Mark S. Laksana is a pen name of Mariam K. Sutalaksana. She was born in Jakarta but globe-trotting is part of her life's mission. She attended college in the United States and lived there for eight years. Sutalaksana also lived in Malaysia for four years and has traveled extensively in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. Currently she is a director for a manufacturing and trade company and is pursuing her writing interests. Last year she began contributing articles, mostly on dance, to The Jakarta Post. She has written in both Indonesian and English, and Putri's Delusion was her first published short story. At 24, she expects to continue writing both fiction and non-fiction and hopes to have a book in print in the near future.