Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 2
The previous evening, Madé Ziro, known to all as Nol, sat down in his parlor to
watch the news with his wife and his mother.
Suti sold T-shirts and knickknacks at her shop on beach arcade, and this morning
Nol had borrowed fifty million from the bank to renew the shop's lease and promptly lost
every single rupiah at the cockfights. He hadn't told his wife and wasn't going to tell her
and so pretended nothing was wrong as he turned on the TV, prepared to fake a serene
interest in the country's troubles while frantically wondering how to wiggle out of his
own.
A reporter prattled breathlessly that former President Soeharto had been rushed to
the Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta. For years Soeharto's lawyers had claimed he was too ill
to leave his house on Cendana Street to attend trial for corruption and human rights
abuses, and now he truly was sick.
The television switched to shots of the Cendana Family and close associates
hurrying through the hospital doors.
"All that money he stole can't help him now," Suti said.
She was repairing one of the reed coasters she sold in the shop, peering over the
rims of her reading glasses at the TV. Nol's mother, Wayan Arini, perched on the edge of
a chair, her white hair coiffed, her slender back erect, her elegant hands folded in her lap.
The evening's news had drawn her like a judge to her court, and she watched the reporter
with a stern gaze, ready to catch him out on a lie. Suti relaxed in sarong and blouse, but
Nol's fastidious mother had put on a freshly ironed dress to sit in his parlor as if she were
a guest.
As a panel of analysts discussed the state of Soeharto's kidneys, Nol slumped
lower. Why oh why had his friend Sudana called him about the cockfights just as Nol
was leaving the bank? Why oh why had the cockfights been at the Renon cockpit
pavilion, right there on the way home? Why oh why, after Nol vowed to drive past the
arena, had there appeared a single parking space on the side of the road?
Why oh why had he stopped?
He vowed he'd only gamble a million.
But the entire fifty million vanished like a magic trick, leaving Nol holding an
empty leather satchel. Angry and disgusted, Nol threw it out the window as he drove off.
But it was a perfectly good satchel, and he sped around the one-way block to retrieve it. It
was already gone. Some lousy thief had taken it.
The reporter popped back into view, a weedy young man who must have been in
short pants when Soeharto abruptly resigned during the 1998 riots. The question now, the
reporter said, is whether the president would be leaving the hospital alive.
5