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the mix. Her father sharecropped for the palace, her family was poor, and she was the<br />
first to get the education that the palace children took for granted.<br />
<strong>One</strong> day in class Mantera grandly presented her his pen, saying it was a shame she<br />
still used chalk and got her fingers dirty. He didn't want to dance with a girl with dirty<br />
fingers (for they were in the same dance troupe). She was so angry when she was alone<br />
with her friend Catra she cried in private, as Catra tried hesitantly comfort her.<br />
She got Catra to glue the pages of Mantera's notebook. The prince was so angry<br />
he ripped the notebook and threw the wadded pages at her.<br />
Their dance teachers paired them during dances to let the sparks fly. The teachers<br />
choreographed a dance for them, of battle and seduction and love. They didn't have to<br />
fake the hostility, which was real. During the final scene, they fell in love, only for Arini<br />
die in Mantera's arms. But when the final gamelan notes drifted into silence, they sprang<br />
apart as if repelled by electric forces.<br />
Then something terrible happened. When they were teens, they danced for<br />
President Sukarno and state guests at his Tampaksiring Palace. In the climatic scene,<br />
Arini lay dying in Mantera's arms of the arrow meant for him, her blood began to gallop.<br />
By all the Gods, she she'd fallen in love with Mantera for real!<br />
When the dance was over, Sukarno pinched her cheek but all she wanted to do<br />
was to sneak away and be alone with Mantera. They strolled down the palace steps to the<br />
temple of the holy water, and there in the outer courtyard, under the banyan tree, they<br />
kissed.<br />
Arini was a teen, and like teens the world over, how grand and painful and lovely<br />
and forever and eternal was her first love!<br />
She and Mantera eyed each other in classes, pretended to fight so they could be<br />
together, snuck off to meet in private whenever they could. There was to this innocent<br />
romance the added spice of danger, for it was unthinkable for a palace prince to be with a<br />
common girl.<br />
Then one day Catra's older brother Dharma found them in rice field hut, laying on<br />
the bamboo mat and holding hands and talking about this and that. Dharma had his eye<br />
on Arini, had tried to steal kisses from her, but she'd always cut him off cold. Now he got<br />
his revenge by telling the palace and Mantera's father.<br />
They packed Mantera off to a private school in Java.<br />
Arini pined for awhile and then forthrightly decided she'd better get on with her<br />
life. Dharma was interested in her, but to snub to him, she developed an interest in Catra,<br />
who'd always been smitten with her. After high school, Catra left on scholarship for<br />
university in Java, while Arini opened a warung offering simple but delicious food.<br />
Then Mantera's father fell sick with the illness that would soon take him. He<br />
summoned his son home. <strong>One</strong> day, out of nowhere, Mantera stopped in at Arini's warung<br />
for lunch.<br />
Adolescent love hardly lasts. It is a flexing of new emotions, a tentative<br />
exploration of the growing body's new desires. But Arini found that her love for Mantera<br />
had not died and gone cold. Without warning, it erupted once again like one of Bali's<br />
volcanoes. It was an impossible thing. Such a romance broke down local and cosmic<br />
order. Even so, they made secret plans to elope, but again Dharma got wind of it and<br />
informed the palace, who sent thugs to burn her warung. Angry, she stormed into the<br />
palace and tried to shoot the palace hog. The police arrested her. Her family held council<br />
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