Diary of One Who Disappeared

by Jason Erik Lundberg

  Ailene did none of this. To her, Ms Quek was the alpha personality in the office, and needed to be dominated. Instead of presenting the arguments I’d so painstakingly drawn up in the mission dossier, Ailene imperiously announced that the North American Union was a resurgent power, and that we would soon retake our leadership role among the world’s leading countries. We had come through devastation and starvation, and made our nation great again; she all but said that we would once again be “a force to be reckoned with”. The NAU would be a powerful ally in the future, and Tinhau would be smart to acknowledge this. Delivered as if behind the lectern in the DESD central chapel.

  Ms Quek glanced at me—my shock must have been obvious.

  Ailene finished her speech, and silence hung in the air for seven seconds. I counted. Then Ms Quek stood, held out her hand and said, in a cultured accent that sounded vaguely British, “Thank you for presenting your case. I will take your comments under advisement and pass them along to my superiors. We will contact you again by the end of the week.”

  Ailene, barely containing her indignation that Ms Quek hadn’t been automatically bowled over by her sermon, rose to her feet, shook hands quickly and then left the office without a word of thanks. I offered a brief smile (which Ms Quek returned), then followed my estranged wife back out through the corridors and up to ground level again.

  The ride back to the hotel was utterly silent, the air inside the taxi thick with Ailene’s seething rage. After arriving, she leapt out of the vehicle and stomped inside, not once looking back.

  There’s nothing to do but wait for word from the Ministry, so I’ll spend the rest of the week close to the hotel in case news comes.

  Supplemental

  Just now on one of the local television stations, the Minister of Defence, some pinch-faced man named Yeo who chewed through his words, read a ten-minute editorial about the “subversive danger of the swees in Tinhau”. His rhetoric was a barely-toned-down version of the same indoctrination I’ve heard all my life in the NAU. Yeo didn’t come up in my initial research on Tinhau, which I’m hoping won’t endanger the mission; if MinDef gets involved in our diplomatic talks, the whole dynamic could change, since I could imagine Ailene getting along really well with this cantankerous ideologue.

  After the editorial was an interview with the Minister by a reporter or editor from the station, and she asked lots of good questions, mostly related to how intolerant and out-of-touch his sentiments appeared to be, all of which he deflected. A neurologist before he became a politician, he couched his rebuttals in genetics and neurodivergence before moving on to national security (and repeated a lot of what he’d just recited in the editorial).

  Even if he’s a lone voice in the government (which I doubt; hardliners like that hardly ever operate in a vacuum), it’s unsettling to think that the man in charge of Tinhau’s security has such bigoted opinions about his fellow citizens. Maybe this country isn’t quite so enlightened as I initially thought.

  Tuesday, October 16

  After a late lunch today, I started getting a bit stir crazy, feeling the need to go farther afield to explore. I grabbed some brochures from the hotel lobby, then flagged down a blue taxi. As it silently approached, I discovered that its exterior wasn’t actually painted, but overlaid with an interlocking grid of hexagonal solar panels. It makes sense for a country located on the equator, and which receives an abundance of sunlight every single day; Tinhau’s use of solar technology is one of the items I had noted to discuss with Ms Quek, but I doubt that Ailene was even aware of it.

  “Where to, boss?” the Malayan cabbie asked. “Looking for a sex worker?”

  I was stunned into silence for a moment at the driver’s brazenness, then spluttered out a negative reply, trying to hold back the torrent of offense that threatened to overcome me. What an assumption to make!

  “Okay, boss, no worries, no harm meant. We get lots of visitors from Australia, Germany, like that, and first thing they always ask me is where’s the whorehouses. But hey, just so you know, the girls who work in Cahaya Merah are treated well and their health screened regularly, they pay taxes like anyone else, and enjoy the same rights and protections.”

  “What’s Cahaya Merah?”

  “Our legal red-light district. I know you said you don’t want, but if I was going to book a hooker anywhere in the world, Tinhau is probably the safest place lah.”

  “That’s as may be, but I’m not interested. I’m only in Tinhau for a few more days and want to see someplace interesting. Besides a whorehouse.”

  “You like books?”

  I said that I did.

  I caught the driver’s glance in the rear-view mirror, and the crinkling of his eyes as he smiled. “I have just the place for you, boss: Lorong Buku. Some wonderful bookshops there. Come, I take you.”

  The taxi finally glided forward, and the cabbie switched on the fare meter. We passed out of the main downtown area and onto an expressway, and I was suddenly aware of what sounded like musical notes coming from the body of the taxi itself. After I asked if something was wrong with the cab, he revealed that it was actually the road that was “singing”, that the government had installed patterns of tiny bumps on the expressways that would resonate when cars rolled over them, producing a song.

  We then passed into the mouth of a massive tunnel, five lanes across, the light dimming from sunlight to florescent strips. Tubular fans rotated lazily, attached parallel to the tunnel’s ceiling.

  We had entered the tunnel from full tropical sunshine, but emerged on the other end, just a few minutes later, into a thunderstorm so powerful as to rattle the teeth. The transition was sudden and unnerving.

  “Where you from, boss?” the cabbie asked as fat raindrops streaked down the windows. After I told him, he mentioned that he was a collector of thank-you notes. I had no idea what that meant, so he leaned over without slowing the taxi and popped open the glove compartment to pull out a thick scrapbook, which he passed back to me. Inside were pasted page after page of index cards on which simple thank-you messages were written, many of them not even in English; these were labelled by language in neat pencil. When I pointed this out, he said, “Yes! That’s right, I now have ‘thank you’ in one hundred and thirty-seven languages and counting. Every card is from a passenger who rode in my cab. Eight years I’ve been doing this!”

  I turned the pages, chagrined to realise that he’d been collecting his thank-you notes as long as I’d been married. They were all addressed to “Iskandar”, which I could only conclude was the cabbie’s name. The expected European languages were there, as well as Arabic, Bahasa Melayu and a number of Chinese dialects. But these quickly transitioned to entries I would not have expected: Hungarian, Farsi, Icelandic, Afrikaans. Even Cherokee!

  “Yes, a very nice young man from North Carolina,” he said with a grin, then pulled an empty index card and ballpoint pen from a pocket on the car door, and handed them back to me. “Would you mind, boss?”

  Using the scrapbook as a hard surface, I wrote:

  Dear Iskandar, it was great to meet you in Tinhau; thank you for telling me about your wonderful collection. Please don’t ever stop. All the best, Lucas Lehrer (NAU)

  After signing my name with a flourish, I passed the card, pen and scrapbook back to him, and he said, “Lovely, lovely, thank you so much. You know, it’s so important to have a physical copy of these things. It’s just too easy for digital files to poof!” And here he made a gesture like a small explosion with his fingers. “Gone forever. But paper I can hold in my hand, only way it goes poof is if I do something stupid and misplace it.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told him. “I write in a paper diary.”

  “Good! Good for you! See, you know. Physical diary, physical index cards, they feel more real than ones and zeroes in an ordinator, correct or not? We’re beings with many senses, and touch is an important one; something is lost to us when it becomes virtual.”

  I nodded and Iskandar
chuckled to himself. The rest of the drive was spent in contemplative silence. The rain eased, then abruptly stopped; Tinhau rolled by my windows, shiny from the raindrops, and I became hopelessly lost. I’ve always been bad with directions, but the feeling is especially disorienting in an unfamiliar country. However, I trusted Iskandar to get me to my destination, which he did after only ten more minutes: a cosy bookshop called Indah Books.

  The store was devoted to literary fiction in printed editions. And no disposable fare here, like at the stall I visited a few days ago, but lovingly crafted works of art. Artisanal bookmaking the likes of which I’ve not seen back home. Limited editions, surely, and pricey, yet on a weekday afternoon, the shop itself was thronged with customers.

  I took my time, losing myself in the sights and the smells of that wondrous place, many times tipping titles off the shelves so that I could flip through the pages and stroke the bindings. I found a copy of Amerika identical to the one in my hotel room, and am still amazed that someone could leave behind such a well-made (and expensive) book, foxed as it might be. I was extremely tempted by a slipcased hardcover copy of The Man in the High Castle, liberally illustrated by Salvador Dalí, but the price was more than three times the spending money that I had brought with me, so I reluctantly returned it to the shelf.

  One entire wall was devoted to Tinhauan literature, written by authors with Chinese, Malayan and Indian surnames, with the odd Western name thrown in (presumably migrants who had made Tinhau their home). Novels, short fiction, poetry, stage plays, literary journals, all evidence of a vibrant and vital literary culture. I spent nearly two hours in that place, better than any museum tour I could have imagined, and ended up buying an anthology called Blessed Travels: The Best New Writing from Tinhau, signed by the editor; it cost more than I was intending to spend, but it looked fascinating and would make a great keepsake.

  At the counter, a hunched-over Chinaman somewhere in his early sixties, most likely the owner, rang up the sale, and in a thick accent asked what country I was from. After I told him, he said, “My parents bring me there when I was just a boy, went to Mall of America. You ever been to Mall of America?”

  I admitted that I never had; I didn’t have the heart to tell him how it had been split into many smaller shopping centres long ago, only two of which even still exist anymore.

  “So many shops! No need to go anywhere else!” He laughed, the action triggering a series of dry coughs. When he spoke again, his face was more grave. “Such a shame what happen over there. So much tragedy. So sad.”

  I accepted his condolences, assuming he was talking about the Range, but didn’t know what else to say. He handed me my change and placed the anthology in a brown paper bag.

  “Some great writers in here,” he said, “even a Pulitzer winner! We were all very proud when she won.”

  I stepped out into the early evening air with my new book, walked to the end of the lane, passing by three other bookstores, and stepped into a comfortable-looking coffeehouse called The Oceanic Café. Espresso drinks are such a luxury back home, but the prices here are much more reasonable, so I decided to treat myself to a latte. While waiting for it to cool, I perused the contents of Blessed Travels, which were a joyful jumble of short fiction, poetry and memoir.

  As I did so, a young man at the next table began talking loudly to no one I could see. His head was overly large for his spindly frame, his ears like saucers; he had the sort of severe haircut that made me wonder if his barber had been furious at him for some reason. His clothes were casual to the point of slovenliness, and his flat voice carried to every corner of the café. I wondered if he was mentally ill and in need of some help. After shouting, “Okay, okay, thanks,” he tapped his ear. So not insane after all, but on some sort of telephone call.

  He raised a thin, transparent square of plastic up to his eyes and tapped some pattern onto it that I couldn’t see, then waited for a few moments, his head cocked, before snapping to attention and beginning his sales spiel all over again. He went through the exact same routine half a dozen more times, with only small variations. I had to admire his persistence, even while each successive call increasingly got on my nerves so that I finally had to leave.

  Supplemental

  No one is going to see this, so I have to be honest with myself.

  I had sex with a prostitute. I’m not proud of this.

  I tried to justify it to myself a million ways: I was still angry at Ailene and wanted to make her hurt as badly as she’d hurt me, and therefore was acting under temporary insanity; Iskandar the cabbie had provided lots of reasons why it was a good idea, and maybe even beneficial for the local economy; I deserved a bit of happiness after all that I had endured. And so on. Iskandar had planted that seed in my mind, and I could think of nothing else after leaving the café.

  Still, as I leaned against the rough fabric of another taxi seat, my stomach turned flips. I was still technically married. Fitting revenge, but a part of me screamed that this was wrong, that I’d go to Hell for this sin, that I was opening myself up to all kinds of evil temptations. My skin glazed with sweat, which the air conditioning chilled immediately. My heart raced, like I was on the verge of a panic attack, yet I didn’t tell the driver to stop.

  At last, he pulled into Cahaya Merah and up to a building painted entirely pink; next to the front door was a lighted box labelled with a stylised 37. The driver claimed that they treated foreigners very well there, especially ones as “new” as I was. (Now that I think about it, he must get kickbacks for every customer he drops off there.) I was expecting the interior to be seedy, but was surprised at how corporate and bland the lobby looked. Respectable-looking watercolour paintings on the walls, black marble floors, even a small stone fountain in the corner. At an imposing desk sat an older Chinese woman in a cheongsam with a high collar; behind her on the wall hung a dark velvet drape.

  “Welcome to Number 37,” the mamasan said in clipped English, motioning me over. In front of her was an e-tablet; she turned it to face me. I scrolled through the tablet’s “menu”: each entry displayed a large photograph of a young woman, artfully composed yet leaving very little to the imagination; underneath was a brief dossier containing the sex worker’s assumed name, her measurements, ethnicity, age and spoken languages. Below this was a price list for the sexual acts she was willing to perform, by the hour. As I scrolled through the entries, my breath became more laboured and difficult, and I began to regret even going there. But then I stopped on a twenty-two-year-old Swiss–Korean girl who went by Chlöé, and tapped the glowing square to reserve my preference.

  The mamasan turned smoothly to the velvet drape behind her, parted it on one side and stepped through. I followed her down a narrow hallway lined with doors in near silence; were the rooms soundproofed? She stopped at a door on the left marked with a Roman numeral V, opened it and entered. Chlöé must have been elsewhere, because the room was unoccupied. I looked around: a four-poster bed with dark purple satin sheets, a white vanity table with a large oval mirror ringed with lights, tasteful artwork on the walls. In the corner stood a freestanding claw-foot bathtub, similar to the one in my hotel room, with a shower attachment mounted to a bar on the wall, and a half-open curtain hanging all the way to the floor.

  The mamasan motioned towards the bed and told me to have a seat, that Chlöé would be in shortly. In the five or ten minutes that I waited nervously, I nearly convinced myself to just get up and leave about a dozen times. I didn’t belong there. I was a fool for thinking that a meaningless fuck could solve everything. But then the door opened and in stepped Chlöé, even more lovely than in her photo, dressed more casually than expected, in a sleeveless minidress with horizontal blue-and-white stripes and high-heeled shoes that she later told me were called wedges. She looked like she was headed out to meet with friends, and oddly enough, it put me immediately at ease. I’m guessing that was the point.

  She sat next to me, engaged in small talk, occasionally placing a
hand gently on my arm or my chest. She spied my shopping bag and asked about the book I’d bought, confessing that she’d published a few short stories while still at the University of Bern. I was wearing my wedding band, but Chlöé never once asked me about it or about my marriage. And before I knew it, we were kissing. I haven’t kissed anyone other than Ailene like that for the past ten years, and the feeling was both familiar and wonderfully different.

  She gave me a towel and bathrobe, and led me over to the shower; I realised that it was for me rather than her. I got undressed (she averted her eyes, which I appreciated), washed quickly, towelled off, put on the robe, then joined her once again at the bed; while I’d showered, she had disrobed, and was waiting for me naked under the sheets. I settled in beside her, ready to go. She placed the condom on me herself.

  The act was quick and frantic; I wanted to slow down but it had been so long and I was so eager that it was all over in just a few minutes.

  “If you want to rest a bit, we can go again,” she said in her vaguely European accent. “We still have time.”

  I asked if it would be all right if I could just hold her for a while.

  She smiled, and my heart ached. “Of course,” she said.

  So we spent the remainder of the hour wrapped in each other’s arms. I could feel tears of relief welling up at what seemed like genuine affection, but managed not to embarrass myself. I breathed in the clean smell of her skin (with a faint hint of men’s deodorant), and placed little kisses on her face. I know that it was an artificial intimacy, but my contentment was real.