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By Root 1016 0

new Indonesian friends talked to her about corruption in government agencies, police and military shakedowns, the power of the president’s entourage. When she asked Lolo about it, he would not talk. According to Obama, a cousin of Lolo’s finally explained to Ann the circumstances of Lolo’s unplanned return from Hawaii. He had arrived in Jakarta with no idea what fate awaited him. He was taken away for questioning and told he had been conscripted and would be sent to the jungles of New Guinea for a year. Students returning from Soviet bloc countries had been jailed or even vanished. According to Obama, Ann concluded that “power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn’t his own.” In response, Lolo had made his peace with power, “learned the wisdom of forgetting; just as his brother-in-law had done, making millions as a high official in the national oil company.”

Lolo had disappointed Ann—just as Stanley had disappointed Madelyn. If Lolo worked in “government relations” for the oil company, what did that entail? Where was the line between currying favor and corruption? Perhaps the nature of Lolo’s professional activities was ambiguous. But as long as there was any suggestion of anything questionable to Ann, it would be impossible for her to take a positive interest in his work. “She was upset,” Suwan recalled. “‘How could a bright person take such a position?’ She said, ‘Suwan, after he did that, my whole respect for him was gone.’” Carol Colfer, another anthropologist friend, said Ann came to the conclusion that Lolo would never understand her motivations and her values. In Indonesia, Colfer said, “to do business, there’s a lot of corruption. Even if he went in wholeheartedly not wanting to be corrupt, in that context I don’t think you could have kept a job like that if you weren’t willing to be corrupt.”

There were other tensions, too.

One morning in January 2009, I met Felina Pramono, Ann’s former assistant, in a conference room at the offices of the management school for which Ann had worked. A tiny, brisk woman, attired in a tailored turquoise jacket with black piping, she spoke impeccable English with a very proper British accent. A few minutes into the interview, a man in his late fifties entered the room and was introduced as Saman, a longtime employee of the school. Speaking in Bahasa Indonesia, with Pramono translating, he told me that he had worked as a houseboy for Lolo and Ann in the early 1970s, after which Ann had helped him get a job as a custodian at the school. One of seven children from a family of farmers, Saman had moved to Jakarta as a teenager to find work. When he worked for Ann and Lolo, his duties included gardening; taking care of a pet turtle, dog, rabbit, and bird; and taking Barry to school by bicycle or becak. Ann and Lolo paid Saman well and treated all four members of the household staff equally. Saman remembered Lolo as stern and Ann as kindhearted. When he accidentally knocked over an aquarium that Lolo used for freshwater fish, Lolo insisted that Saman pay the four-thousand-rupiah cost, or two months’ pay, to replace it. If Ann had known, Saman thought, she might have objected to the punishment. “She wouldn’t have the heart,” Pramono explained, translating for Saman. “Her social sense, her sense of helping others, was so high, she would never have allowed that.”

At times, Ann’s lack of concern for appearances added to the trouble between her and Lolo. She would finish teaching at nine in the evening and sometimes not return home until midnight, Saman said. (“After four hours of teaching, Ann still had an appetite for more social interaction,” Leonard Kibble, a fellow teacher, told me.) As far as Saman could tell, she seemed barely to sleep. She would stay up, typing and correcting Barry’s homework, then be up before dawn. On one occasion, Saman said, “She got home late with a student, but the student didn’t see her home properly. So he dropped her near the house, and Soetoro got very