Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Reed was reminded of Jesus's apostles, preaching the gospel.
He envied her the simplicity.
He said, "Having Dr. Subandrio as a family friend must sure open doors for you."
She gave him a little hiccupy look. "I open my own doors."
She was uncompromising in her political views but did not argue them. If you
believe in something then you do something about it, she said, explaining her activism.
She also believed in ghosts, two of them she'd seen as a young girl in a field near her
village home, Dutch sailors that the Japanese had captured and executed.
Her favorite color? The question seemed to puzzle her. Reed put the question
another way. If she were to buy a dress, what color would she choose? She said she'd buy
the cheapest one that fit well. Then she laughed and said her favorite color was the shade
of living green when rice seedlings were half-grown, except it didn't look good on her.
Her favorite food? Sweet coconut kolak.
She liked cats better than dogs because cats were independent. She never had
pets. Pets were a colonialist indulgence—in Dutch times, the colonials fed their dogs and
horses better than their servants. She thought about this and added, "When I was a girl I
did find a starving puppy in the gutter and I kept him until he was grown but then he
disappeared. I cried for days. What about you? Did you have pets?"
Reed said that his father didn't like animals except for horses. In his boys' school,
boys didn't have favorite colors, that was sissy and could get you teased mercilessly
unless you said something like you liked the color of blood on the football field, which
led to digression on the game for Naniek. But if he had to pick a favorite color he'd say
the color of her eyes. Velvet black.
"And I don't believe in ghosts," he said, "only superstitious feudal reactionaries
believe in ghosts.
She laughed and lightly smacked him on the arm. "What would your family say if
they knew about me?" she asked.
"My parents wouldn't say a word. In fact, they wouldn't say a word to me for the
rest of my life."
"That is not good."
"What about your folks, if they knew about this big-nosed foreigner you're
seeing?"
"It is my brother you have to worry about. We're very close. He is very protective
of his little sister."
"Is he a dedicated Revolutionary?"
"Bambang? He is dedicated to himself." She said that with exasperated affection.
August arrived with big blue skies and friendly puffball clouds drifting along on
the cool trade winds. The island never looked more lovely than in August, but
underneath the bucolic charm, tensions were ratcheting. There were mass marches and
demonstrations and occasional violence between Communists and nationalists. Impatient
at the foot-dragging over the enactment of land reform laws, the Communists began
orchestrated actions, forcibly seizing agricultural land for the landless peasants.
Wendell harassed Reed for intelligence on the mysterious Luhde Srikandi. She
appeared to be a loose cannon agent, an anomaly in the well-run and well-regulated PKI
machinery with its hierarchy of control. Wendell said that if Reed could get his
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