Certainty

by Madeleine Thien

  She felt cold, a chill radiating through her limbs. “I didn’t realize it for so long. I thought as you did. But what we wanted is not possible.” She struggled to keep her voice steady, but tears stung her eyes. “Our parents would not wish us to be bound by the past.”

  “I know you, Ani. Something has changed you.”

  She shut her ears to the disbelief in his voice, to her own grief. She told him that they were alike, two pieces of the same puzzle, but in the end, if you laid them down beside each other, you’d see an empty space, the jagged edges. And in this space, she knew there was no oxygen, no relief. It was a place they had made together when they were children. They had filled it with all the things they wanted to forget, a landscape of craters and bodies. She said that their feelings for one another had blinded them to the truth, what lay between them was too far-reaching, too vast. They could not hold it or push it down.

  Some part of her was spinning loose, split open. She got to her feet and began to walk away from him.

  He followed her, calling her name, and finally she turned and shouted at him to leave her, to let her alone. At the sudden noise, birds lifted up around them, fluttering up into the trees. He stared after her, shocked. But she continued along the beach to the harbour, where the last of the night boats were heading away from the shore.

  As she walked, the water ran across her feet, and she imagined the tide sliding under her, pulling her away from Sandakan, this life and the pain that she kept adding to, as if she could bear any sacrifice, any tragedy, as if the war had made her strong enough to survive all that the future necessitated. She listened for Matthew’s footsteps coming across the wet sand, coming to join her, but all she heard was the tide and the trees, the nightjars and insects.

  These years in Jakarta have not changed the longing she feels. Sometimes, now, falling asleep, she imagines a different ending. One in which she stands up from the sand and she tells him the truth. Everything that she set in motion that night, the words that can never be taken back, comes to rest. Life moves in reverse. She tells him that she will go to Tarakan, she will wait for him to return from Australia. When we find one another again, we will know how to continue.

  Tonight, after a light supper of rice and vegetables, Ani changes her son into his pyjamas, and they go downstairs to begin her shift in the photo studio.

  Across the street, the Pondok Restaurant is overflowing, and the reflections of the neon signs flash slowly against the walls of the studio. Holding Wideh’s hand, Ani unlocks the door, and they make their way through the foyer. The office is quiet. There are plastic covers on the telephone and typewriter to protect them from dust, and the curtains are tightly drawn. In the developing room, the day’s prints are hanging neatly along several lines, and a dozen film canisters sit waiting on the counter.

  Ani makes a place for Wideh on the tiled floor, opening blankets and fluffing cushions, then she lays him down. He is three years old already, and he smiles up at her, repeating the word Ibu, “Mother,” playing with the sound until the word is lost amidst a jumble of different noises.

  Each evening, she works here, in the darkroom, developing rolls of negatives. In the day, someone else will come and use the enlarger to transform these negatives into prints, but this first step is hers. In the dark, Ani takes the lid off the first canister, removes the film spool and cuts it free. Feeling for the guides, she loads the film onto the tank reel. Only when this is secure, and the lid is firmly in place, does she reach her hand out and switch on the developing lamp.

  Ani has never taken a photograph. All she knows of the process is this one part, but she knows it well. When, at Saskia’s recommendation and with no experience, she had come to Frank Postma looking for work in the studio he owned, she had come halfheartedly, expecting little. Perhaps some evening shifts cleaning and tidying the office, she had suggested. But that was not what he wanted, he told her, first in fluent Malay, then switching to English, sometimes forgetting himself and lapsing into Dutch. “I need help,” he had said, waving his arms at the stacks of film. “And Saskia spoke so highly of you.”

  He had served coffee, and, sitting in the studio, Ani told him that she had met Saskia and Siem Dertik in 1953, on the outer decks of the boat that had carried them to Jakarta. Ani had been on her way from Tarakan, where the last of her mother’s family remained. From there, she had felt the wish to be a part of something greater, to lose herself in the city, and so she had continued to Jakarta.

  “People come here from all over the world,” he had said. “It’s a good place to begin again.” He set down his coffee and opened box after box of photographs. Pictures of Dutch families released from internment camps, Balinese dancers, canals shining like ribbons in the field. “Light on surface,” he had said. “Most of the time, to each other, all we are is light on surface.”

  Then he had taken her into the developing room and shown her, as if it were no more difficult than preparing a meal, how to measure the chemicals, remove the film, soak and rinse it, then hang the finished negatives to dry.

  In the corner of the studio now, Wideh raises his arms above him, turning his hands from side to side, delighting in the movement. While she works, Ani talks to herself and to him, walking herself through the steps. Start the timer, pour the developer, tap the container lightly on the counter. Agitate the contents and never lose track of the time.

  She is at home in this studio, protected for a brief while from her memories, from the chaos and uncertainty of Jakarta. Studying the row of negatives, she follows the trajectory of the photographer’s gaze. She travels beside him as he feels his way through the scene like a child in a darkened room.

  At midnight, long after Wideh has fallen asleep, she is finally finished. The negatives are pinned on a line, and she dries each carefully with a small sponge. Picking up a magnifying glass, Ani examines the work. There are pictures of Indies families posed in front of their former plantations, the men dressed in Western slacks and shirts, the women in kain and kebaya. She cannot read their faces, they have taken care to cloak their emotions. But in one, there is a boy caught unaware. He stands at a gate that is closed to him, his entire body yearning towards the house.

  She knows that these photographs, once printed, will be carefully wrapped, then tucked within soft materials and laid inside a piece of luggage. She has been doing the very same for Saskia. In some distant country, taken out and looked at again, these photographs will become the shadow that follows them, the past that never changes, that never disappears. When all other memories fade, these, at least, will not be lost.

  When she left Sandakan, she brought almost nothing. Arriving in Tarakan, Ani had been two months pregnant. Bashir, her mother’s oldest brother, was dying, and all the other family had scattered during the war years. If that is what you want, he had told her, go to Jakarta. He gave her the money and family keepsakes that remained. All our young people now, he said, are taking their dreams to the city. He brought her to the local magistrate, signing a declaration that her parents had been born here, in the former Dutch East Indies. When she left Tarakan, she had in her possession documents attesting to her Indonesian citizenship. She had, in some way, come home at last.

  Ani lifts her son from the cushions and he wakes up, momentarily, reaching out to touch her face with one small hand. Then, sighing, his eyelids flutter, blink, and slowly close again.

  With his body warm against hers, she leaves the studio, locking the door behind her. She climbs up the stairs to the apartment where they live. Inside, by the light of the street lamps, she lays him down and tucks the mosquito net around the edges of his cot.

  Ani stretches out on the divan in the corner of the room, and eventually, as her mind lets go of the day, the street outside grows quiet, the traffic begins to lessen, and the neon lights of the Pondok Restaurant flicker and turn out. Surrounded by darkness, she sees him standing at the harbour, coming to meet her finally. In the face that she remembers so well, the glimme
r of recognition, of understanding.

  The next night, over dinner, Siem says that he has bought tickets for everyone to see the Shanghai Acrobats that evening. This is his family’s last night in Jakarta, and though the tickets cost six hundred rupiahs apiece, a week’s salary, Siem waves it off, grinning like a small boy. He says that they should not spend their last night morose, washing dishes, cleaning the house. It has become evident, he says, with a flourish of his hands, that there is too little magic in the world.

  The night air is still warm when they near the theatre. Cars and scooters blur past them, and the blinking colours leave an image in Ani’s eyes even after she looks away. At an intersection, the traffic lights are not working, and a large crowd gathers around them on the curb. When an opening comes, they move in unison, flooding into the street, bringing the vehicles to a standstill.

  Ani and Saskia are walking arm in arm, and the children are clutching Siem’s hands. On the front of a boarded-up building, someone has painted, Dutch Get Out, Indos Go Home. They both see it at the same time, and Saskia says, “We’re going, we’re going,” so quietly that Ani just catches the words.

  Up ahead, she can make out the form of a young girl who appears to hover above the crowd. She is sitting on the handlebars of a bicycle. The girl floats towards them, one hand on the crossbar to hold herself steady. Behind her, a young man pedals the bicycle at a leisurely speed, and they move across the pavement in perfect balance. Watching them, Ani’s own body seems to lift. She sees Leila Road in the early morning, her bicycle slipping downhill, the sea opening before her.

  Inside the performance hall, they are swept along by the rush of people, and the theatre is a commotion of voices. In her seat, Saskia frowns, worrying aloud over the last bits of packing still to be done. Siem puts his hand on her knee and says, “Forget tomorrow.”

  When the lights go down, Wideh leans forward on Ani’s lap, gripping her hand in his. He points towards the stage.

  The spotlight opens on a young man standing alone on a high platform. There is no music or sound of any sort. He has his eyes closed, as if deep in concentration, and while he stands there, alone and waiting, a hush falls over the theatre. His chest rises and falls, the seconds pass by. To Ani, it feels as if the audience waits in anticipation of the moment when he will open his eyes, step forward, and fall, which he does, as if releasing his spirit. He arches his back and dives into the empty space below. He is rushing towards the earth, but he doesn’t flinch. A few people in the auditorium gasp, and the sound travels up along Ani’s spine. At the last moment, an invisible wire catches him and he collapses his body into a ball and tumbles up again through the air.

  In front of Ani’s eyes, the lights seem to wane and blur. The boy’s body, slender, he is only a child, passes across the stage.

  When the war was finished, she and Matthew had gone down to the harbour, standing together on the docks. They were nine and ten years old. Still wearing their clothes, they swam out, leaving the few lights of Sandakan behind them. In the water, invisible to the eye, were shipwrecks and unexploded bombs; there were Japanese and American planes lying on the ocean floor. For a long time, she and Matthew floated on their backs staring up into the dark. Were the stars travelling away from them, Ani had wanted to know, or were they coming steadily nearer? He said that the stars were leaving; they were ships carrying people who had left the Earth a long time ago, not knowing that the heavens themselves were a vast desert. Now, it was only the ships that flew on, after the people had grown too old. She remembered Matthew saying that his father, too, had gone away, that he had been killed even though the war was over. The soldiers had lifted his father up and thrown him into the bed of a truck. If you had seen them from a distance, he said, from their movements, so casual, so indifferent, you would not have guessed that they were carrying a body.

  Offstage, musicians begin to play, and three slender girls emerge into the lights. Their dance is slow and meticulous, a hand gesturing, wrists turning in delicate circles. Their bodies twist and open, legs extended in arabesques.

  One steps up onto a platform, and then without hesitation the second climbs onto her shoulders. Finally, the last girl begins her ascent. At the summit, she sets her hand, palm to palm, on the hand of the girl below. Slowly, she lifts her legs up, balanced by the strength of one arm. She unfolds her body as if her limbs are as weightless as the flame of a candle.

  Beside her, Wideh sighs deeply, clasps his hands together, looks out at the stage as if caught in his own dream. One day, she will find the words to explain her life to him. How, in the dark, in Sandakan, planes lifted off from the aerodrome, sending back a murmuring of lights. She had said goodbye to Mas and Halim, to Lohkman, then she had boarded the steamer and travelled across the sea. The note she had written to Matthew was safely in Mas’s hands. Her love for him had not changed, she had written; for both of them, another kind of future must be made to exist. Could she explain it to Wideh like this, make him understand why she had made this choice, why she has kept the secret from his father all these years. When the time comes, she will find a way to tell him the truth.

  In her mind, she sees the kerosene lamps, the still plantation. The air is filled with the sound of nocturnal birds and cicadas, the sound of a small boy counting aloud, the thirtieth row, the thirtieth tree. When he finds the place that he is looking for, he begins to remove the earth. He works desperately, steadily, and the shadows of the trees fall around him like the lines of an imaginary house. How far must he travel? At what point will the treasure that he carries be safe?

  Onstage, the first two girls hold their position while the third arches her back and swings her legs until she is upside down. She tilts her face up and gazes calmly at the audience. For several seconds they remain motionless, and then the girl at the very bottom begins to walk from one side of the stage to the other. Their bodies tremble with exertion, and the girls sway back and forth.

  On her lap, Wideh strains forward towards the stage. He is under the spell of the acrobats, the man who dove through the air, unafraid; and now this small girl who blooms like a flower atop the human ladder.

  Beside her, Saskia takes Ani’s hand, holding on as if she, too, can anchor her own body there, in the theatre.

  The next morning, at the harbour, everything happens quickly. Siem and Saskia carry the luggage, while Ani gathers the children to her. Together, they make their way towards the registration desks.

  The sun is starting to rise now, colouring the edges of the horizon. Ani kneels on the ground beside Wideh and Tash, and the crowd passes around them. Dutch soldiers are trying to organize the emigrants. They hurry people towards the gangway, and the crying and laughing rises in pitch and volume. She does not want to say goodbye, but Saskia whispers in her ear the old saying: “All things change and we change with them.” For a long time they stand holding one another.

  By dawn, the great ship in the Jakarta harbour is boarded and sunrise floods over the sea, the water a deep and brilliant orange. The crowd on the dock has thinned now. As the horn sounds, some wave handkerchiefs, others lift both arms in the air, as if they, too, are floating on the water. Among the hundreds of people leaning over the ship’s rail, Ani cannot find the Dertiks. It is Wideh who sees them first: Tash, perched on Siem’s shoulders, and Saskia pressed close to them. They have almost disappeared into the multitude. The ship begins to move away from the harbour. She holds Wideh close to her as she watches the disappearing form.

  6

  The Garden of Numbers

  VANCOUVER, CANADA

  On the morning of her thirty-ninth birthday, Gail wakes up to the warmth of the light through the attic windows. Ansel is lying on his side, one hand on the curve of her waist. In Gail’s vision, without her glasses or contact lenses, he is blurred and indistinct, like someone in the farthest reaches of a swimming pool. From their bed under the steep roof, she can see the change from night to day, evening stars, rainfall tapping insistently on the gl
ass. Some mornings, Gail wakes up to the sound of their elderly neighbour across the street, Mrs. Cho, who trims her yard with a pair of children’s scissors.

  When Ansel wakes, they climb out from under the covers and dress in comfortable clothes. She takes a comb and does her best to calm Ansel’s hair, which is tossed like grass on a wind farm. He makes the bed and picks her pyjamas off the floor. By the time they have stepped outside, they have spoken only a few sentences, yet she feels a tentative peace. They move as if in memory of a different day, of countless similar mornings.

  They used to have a running joke, she and Ansel. When people asked how long they had been together, they’d say the first number that came into their heads. “Twenty-five years?” Ansel would respond, turning to Gail, eyebrows raised. “Or is it more?” Forty years, perhaps. What, in their minds, seems a lifetime, a history together. She remembers this joke with pleasure, because it returns her to a time when their relationship was carefree, when it harboured neither suspicion nor fear. For almost a month now, she has known about Ansel’s affair with a woman named Mariana. It remains as a space between them, around which they carefully move.

  They walk to the New Town Bakery, where they choose their breakfast from the display case and the high stacks of bamboo steamers. Then they continue, under the Georgia Viaduct, towards False Creek. It is early Sunday morning, and the city still drowses. Ansel counts two or three sails unfurled on the windless bay.

  Tonight, her parents and a few close friends will come over for dinner. Her parents had wanted to host the party, but she had put them off. Knowing them, such a party would involve a ten-course dinner, towering cake and enough sparklers to light the neighbourhood. Even at the best of times, she has never felt comfortable as the centre of attention. Perhaps, she had thought, handling it herself would keep things low-key, and take the pressure off the occasion.