Free Democracy by Joan Didion Page B

officer was waiting downstairs for the bags with a walkie-talkie and one of the ten autographed paperback copies of The View from the Street: Root Causes, Radical Solutions and a Modest Proposal that Frances Landau had thought to bring in her carry-on bag.
    “Which friend of Inez’s exactly,” Inez said.
    “Jack whatever his name is.”
    “Lovett.” Janet was examining the curtains. “His name is Jack Lovett. This is just possibly the ugliest print I have ever seen.”
    “Batik,” Frances Landau said. “A national craft. Lovett then.”
    “Frances is so instructive,” Janet said. “Batik. A national craft. There is batik and there is batik, Frances. For your information.”
    Frances Landau emptied an ice tray into a plastic bucket. “What does he do?”
    Inez stood up. “I believe he’s setting up an export credit program, Frances.” She glanced at Billy Dillon. “Operating independently of Pertamina.”
    “AID funding,” Billy Dillon said. “Exploring avenues. Et cetera.”
    “So he said.” Frances Landau dropped three of the ice cubes into a glass. “In those words.”
    “I thought he was in the aircraft business,” Janet said. “Inez? Wasn’t he? When he was married to Betty Bennett? I’d be just a little leery of those ice cubes if I were you, Frances. Ice cubes are not a national craft.”
    “Really, the aircraft business,” Frances Landau said. “Boeing? Douglas? What aircraft business?”
    “I wouldn’t develop this any further, Frances,” Harry Victor said.
    “I’d definitely let it lie,” Billy Dillon said. “In country.”
    “It’s not that clear cut,” Harry Victor said.
    “But this is ludicrous,” Frances Landau said.
    “Not black and white,” Harry Victor said.
    “Pretty gray, actually,” Billy Dillon said. “In country.”
    “But this is everything I despise.” Frances Landau looked at Harry Victor. “Everything you despise.”
    Inez looked at Billy Dillon.
    Billy Dillon shrugged.
    “Harry, if you could hear yourself. ‘Not that clear cut.’ ‘Not black and white.’ That’s not the Harry Victor I—”
    Frances Landau broke off.
    There was a silence.
    “The four of you are really fun company,” Janet said.
    “This conversation,” Frances Landau said, “is making me quite ill.”
    “That or the ice cubes,” Janet said.
    When Inez remembered that week in Jakarta in 1969 she remembered mainly the cloud cover that hung low over the city and trapped the fumes of sewage and automobile exhaust and rotting vegetation as in a fetid greenhouse. She remembered the cloud cover and she remembered lightning flickering on the horizon before dawn and she remembered rain washing wild orchids into the milky waste ditches.
    She remembered the rumors.
    There had been new rumors every day.
    The newspapers, censored, managed to report these rumors by carrying stories in which they deplored the spreading of rumors, or, as the newspapers put it, the propagation of falsehoods detrimental to public security. In order to deplore the falsehoods it was of course necessary to detail them, which was the trick. Among the falsehoods deplored one day was a rumor that an American tourist had been killed in the rioting at Surabaya, the rioting at Surabaya being only another rumor, deplored the previous day. There was a further rumor that the Straits Times in Singapore was reporting not only an American tourist but also a German businessman killed, and rioting in Solo as well as in Surabaya, but even the existence of the Straits Times report was impossible to confirm because the Straits Times was said to have been confiscated at customs. The rumor that the Straits Times had been confiscated at customs was itself impossible to confirm, another falsehood detrimental to public security, but there was no Straits Times in Jakarta for the rest of that week.
    Inez remembered Harry giving a press conference and telling the wire reporters who showed up that the rioting in Surabaya reflected the