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Brothers, who exercised dominance over them—symbolised by their demanding the gift of a
pig at Christmas each year—, as the Japanese were invading, and thereby beginning the revolt
against the Dutch. It is a story which establishes Maruli’s rise in stature from a village chief’s
younger son to national hero, but in the telling, Maruli associates Alex with the capitalist neo-
colonialists he hates, and, even as he professes his love and enjoys her body, he feels the same
disgust for her that he felt for the Dutch Brothers who had whipped and spied on him:
On the bed beside him Maruli saw a flicker of blue: Alex, he realised,
was only feigning sleep and was watching him. He turned to look at her and
saw her eyelids tremble. He felt revulsion for her and her kind. Her eyelids
trembled in the way the Dutch priests’ had done as they had knelt beside
Maruli in the chapel, pretending to pray but spying on the chief’s son,
watching to see if he had truly accepted the Lord.
Alex, who seems to have a cat’s luminous eyes, is given the plant association just when her
relationship with Maruli is showing signs of distrust and hatred born of rajas. The image
correlates intense sexual desire with exploitation and profound betrayal:
Alex was lying in her sarong, watching him and waiting, as the Brothers
had waited for their open-mouthed pig. Maruli pushed his hand under her
sarong and into her vulva. It was as slippery as a slice of papaya. He rolled
away from her and lay on his face on the bed.
After a few minutes he fell asleep. (MD, 85)
The papaya image is followed when Maruli tells her ‘You bend as sweetly as bamboo’.
This comes after he has announced to her the ‘marriage’ which he considers to have already
taken place—with all of the man/wife dominance/obligation associations necessarily
attendant—and presented her with her ‘wedding ring’, a tribal gold necklace which he only
wants her to keep safe for him until he needs it to finance his escape from Indonesia (MD,
114).
These ironic images of desirous papaya and graceful bamboo reveal Alex’s place in
d’Alpuget’s cosmos. Even though plants are ruled by the lower attributes of tamas, such as
greed and clinging to life, which are the bane of man’s progress towards enlightenment, Alex’s
plant associations are very attractive, especially when juxtaposed with male-chauvinistic
condescension and sexual exploitation. They tend to place Alex on the high road, yet make her
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