We imagined, perversely perhaps, that Ibu Darmo could speak back to the
archives because she more than anyone else with whom we spoke would not
speak directly to us.l14 Addressing herself solely to Nita and Didi, it was as if
we were not there. While others politely attended to our questions, she did not
bother to listen, or appeared to find them incomprehensible. She had little interest
in our venture. She offered no refreshment, by Javanese etiquette an
obligatory part of this encounter. We were made to know not only that we were
an intrusion, but that there was little point in apologizing for our presence or effusing
our appreciation here. In response to Ann's misplaced effort to find some
"common ground" in noting that Ibu Darmo and Ann's mother were the same
age, Ibu Darmo halts us with her blunt response: "I didn't know londos lived
so long." Beginning and end of discussion. Recalling for us that both Dutch
adults and children called her "Babu" and not by her own name, she has little
interest in making connections with our kin. Ann's mother was an aged white,
an unusual category of persons in colonial Java, as she noted, but a "londo"
nonetheless