B r o a d w a y
.
This was only the second night of her stay in New York and already she was bored. Last night she went to see Miss Saigon and was disappointed because Lea Salonga was not there. It was not that the actress replacing Salonga was not a good actrees. She was. The fact was, she went to see that play because she wanted to see Lea Salonga. She admired that young talented Philippine actress with successfull singing career. About the play, she had to admid that she was amazed by the set, décor and the light, not the story nor the acting or the music. After all, Broadway is about light and decor. No more great plays or excellent acts.
Tonight she would skip musicals. She was tempted to go for Cats, which had become legendary to her, the result of her years of mingling with sophisticated people whose holidays were spent in New York and London. Her friend said Cats was a must. A real fun.
She had only three nights in New York and less than US$100 to indulge with, so she had to choose very carefully. She managed to buy half-priced tickets for the two plays and she had in her pocket enough money to treat herself to an opera at Lincoln Theatre tomorrow. Tonight she had decided to see Indiscretions (Les Parents Miserables) where Kathleen Turner played a bitchy mother. It was fun to see her in flesh and blood, after seeing her in movies. Even more, there was a scene where a handsome young man came out from a bath tub completely naked, letting his thing hang freely between his legs when he faced the audience.
She pulled the collar of her coat up her neck. A December night in New York, alone. She never dreamed about his. What she always dreamed about was autumn in New York, walking in Central Park in the afternoon under the colourful autumn leaves, sipping Kahlua cream in one of the theater’s cafes on Broadway after a satisfying play, a full day of art galleries – all of which spent with a lover. None of it happened. She didn’t have time during the day because of the seminar. Her hotel was far from Central Park and nobody was willing to accompay her to a Broadway play.
She asked Julio yesterday morning. He was supposed to be her closest friend, almost like a boyfriend – even though they had never been to bed – but he refused.
“Broadway is not the way I spend time while I’m in New York,” said the tall strong young man from Mozambique.
“Not Broadway, but me,” she had insisted.
“My answer is still no. Broadway is too expensive for me, and stupid.”
That was the end of the conservation. Never say stupid about culture in front of her. Many men failed because of that. That was her weakness. A weakness which made her marry her husband in the first place. The husband she never loved. The husband who had many women besides her.
Some years ago – it felt like a century – she met Baruna, a middle-aged entrepreneur who had interests in culture, at a painting exhibition she had organized. She was always drawn to people who liked culture. Very wealthy and good looking, it was difficult for her to say no when he proposed. Being intelligent and good looking herself, she had received and refused many proposals before his. She decided to take him because she wanted to finance her cultural life, to have security in her hobbies: a gallery, a thousands-of-books library, sponsors for productions by young, talented but less fortunate people, things like that.
When she discovered Baruna’s habit of seeing and keeping beauties in the first year of their marriage, she thought it didn’t bother her. When it continued, she began to think about it. Everything was available for her, except her husband. There were some critical times when she needed him but she didn’t know where or how to reach him. It became an embarrassment for her. An uncaring housewife they called her. When one of their children had an accident and she spent the whole time with the child in the hospital worrying where her husband had been, people accused her of being ignorant. How could a woman not know where her husband was? It was certainly the wife’s mistake. What had she done to him?
She was tired. Last year there was an offer from the U.S. government to study picture restoration for 10 months, and without consulting her husband, she just grabbed the scholarship. Her husband said nothing.
“This is the time,” she thought. “I have been waiting for this for so long. My children are grown up. They’re at high school, at the age that enables them to understand marital matters. When they were sill babies, how could I explain to them? It would only hurt them.”
Julio Mponguliana was another foreign student with U.S. government scholarship. She met him at a campus library. He studied economic growth, a significant subject for his country. She was attracted to him because he had a fine, strong body, dark skin – almost purple black – and a hadsome face. They had nothing in common. He didn’t like what she liked and vice versa. They were attracted to each other merely because they were lonely. One good thing about their relationship was that they were very dedicated to each other. One was always there for the other.
“Except for going to Broadway,” she now thought, bitterly.
“So, what’s the point of your coming with me to New York?” she had argued before.
It didn’t make sense. She sent days in a seminar and he toured the Empire State Building, the World Trade Centre, Little Italy. He didn’t even mention those great New York museums. Maybe he didn’t know there were great museums in New York. Maybe he knew. So what? He was not interested anyway.
These past two evenings he returned to the hotel room feeling tired and prefered to watch movies on TV, spending no money. And let her go to Broadway alone at night. She understood now, he wanted to see New York on her bank account. Pay cheap train tickets – you get a big discount if you buy it as a couple, and there’s no need to pay for the hotel room. Typical students on scholarships.
She thought about her husband. One good thing about him was that he appreciated art and culture. They had many things in common, except love. He would have accompanied her happily to a play, to a musical, to a dance, performance, to a museum, you name it. What was missing in Baruna was warm love. What Julio provided me with was hot kisses. Nobody kissed like Julio. He kissed with his heart. When he touched her and looked into her eyes, he did it wholeheartedly. He made her feel needed, important sexy, young. She always felt guilty about that. Kissing another man while you were still married. It was beyond her imagination. It was like another kind of life. She was not herself.
“You are not a bad woman, believe me,” Julio always tried to assure her when she acted stupidly.
“Think about what we could have done if you were a bad woman,” he added.
“I think it is because you are a good man that we stop from doing what other people like us would have done at this point of relationship. You understand my feelings, you care about me,” she answered, tending to put all the blame on herself.
But she felt secure being with Julio. He was a good friend. He never pushed her to do what he knew she didn’t want to do. And he was faithful. Some young white skinned blue-eyed blond-haired students were after him. And so were some Jamaican girls with their great bodies. They always invited or approached him at student’s parties. But he stuck on this little brown Asian woman with small eyes and straight black hair. She was even some years older than him.
“You have woman values that I never encountered before. You are a dream-wife,” Julio told her one day.
She didn’t quite understand why. Perhaps because she cooked and served him at table. She listened to his problems and comforted him. She kissed back when kissed, not wildly like many African women, but so tenderly and warm, better than European kisses. So he said. She didn’t have to tell anybody, even Julio, how much she enjoyed kissing. It had been a long time. She almost forgot how it felt. She had made love to her husband until before she left, but no kissing. She had closed her eyes, not daring to look at his eyes to find nothing but lust – and duty.
She was freezing under the December snow flakes in the Big Apple. A yellow cab passed in front of her, splashing dirty slush on her coat. She didn’t move. She hesitated, whether to go into one of the bars in the area or to return straight to the hotel. The idea of spending one more night with Julio in the same bed bothered her. She could not believe herself, she was loosing strength. It was not enough anymore for her just to sleep in each other arms, kiss and caress. If she let them spend one more night together, she knew she would give in. And when she woke up in the morning, she would regret what they would possibly have done.
“I married for a wrong reason. Now, at least, I want to have an affair with a right reason. Like love. Which doesn’t seem to be the case right now,” she reasoned.
She looked at her watch, 11.30 p.m. Some of the theaters in the district had just closed. She found it interesting that theaters in New York opened at the same time, and that theatergoers in New York were fasionable people. Dandy men in fancy suits, beautiful women with high heals and fine makeup. Their stockinged long legs were exposed beautifully from their mini dresses. And their beautiful coats. What a feast for the eyes. In Indonesia, only people at parties and social events wore clothes like that, not in theaters.
She started to walk down town to her hotel. She crossed 38th Street, and then crossed Broadway heading east.
“Am I supposed to be afraid? It is very late and this is New York City,” she wondered.
She passed some black men who stared at her. After two blocks, she noticed a crowd about one block in front of her. Several men ran past, a bang rang out and policemen ran after the men. And then she felt a sudden shock in her chest. She felt a terrible pain and she saw blood pouring out of her coat. She gasped. One policeman approached her as she limped and started to fall. She felt the coldness of the sidewalk.
Surprisingly, and terrifyingly, she flew above what was happening. She saw her body lying there, in the center of the crowd. She heard people talking about robbery, man hunting, shootings, and an innocent victim – herself – being shot by a lousy NYPD officer. And the other second, she flew into total darkness.
“When you are in Manhattan, beware of bullets coming toward you,” Petya, her classmate from Bulgaria, had said a few days ago.
“Why?”
“Shootings. Don’t you read newspappers? People – innocent people – are killed.”
“Don’t try to scare me, Petya, because I am not. Everybody has destiny. I believe in that. I believe in my fate. I will just walk and enjoy the lights and the scenery of Manhattan.”
She was right last night. Nothing bad happened.
The next second she flew somewhere else. She saw her husband in his office with a sensual woman. Secretary by day and mistress by night. Then she saw her children, one at home, the other at school.
“How can I see all this? I am supposed to be in Manhattan, in New York City, but I am near my family.”
She wanted to talk to her children, and to her husband. She wanted to apologize for her betrayal, for her bad manner while away from her family.
Nobody paid attention. Nobody noticed she was around. She wanted to scream.
“How could it be? One moment I am bleeding in the center of a crowd in New York and at another moment I am back in Indonesia. It is so absurd. Am I dead? Thank God if I am. I don’t have to be bothered with my personal and marital problems anymore. Thank God I don’t have to commit any sin anymore. Thank God for saving me. I don’t even feel the pain of the bullet tearing my heart. I am dead and I am saved.”
Sirikit Syah
1995
