Map of the Invisible World: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  They crossed the highway on the overhead walkway. Beneath them the never-ending traffic beeped and hooted and revved as usual, a river of bashed-up, rusting steel whose current flowed everywhere and nowhere. The sun had begun to calm slightly, hazy now behind the perpetual layer of cloud; the sky was a dirty yellow, a yellow over laid with gray, and soon, when the sun was setting, it would turn mouse-colored and finally—swiftly—black. There was never any blue, nothing true or clear.

  They walked along the road for a while trying to hail a taxi, but there seemed to be none today so they settled for a becak, ridden by an ancient Javanese whose face was so fleshless that they could see the outlines of his skull under the old-leather skin. He rode with surprising speed and agility, passing men and women pushing their cartloads of peanuts and scrap newspaper and fruit. Stallholders along the road cried out to them as the rickshaw went past; they offered watches, toys, magazines, bottles of Benzine. Often Margaret thought they would collide with something—a horse-drawn cart or a bare-framed jeep or a bicycle—but at the last moment their driver would casually veer past the obstacle. Every few minutes they went past an accident or a broken-down vehicle. There were few cars, few recognizable ones, anyway. Everything had been cannibalized, picked to pieces and reassembled to look like something else so that it was impossible to identify a car as a Datsun or a Fiat or a Skoda. Something could begin as a Mercedes, morph mid-chassis into a Cadillac, and end up as an open-sided truck.

  She looked across at Din, whose serious expression never seemed to alter very much. A more or less permanent frown drew his close-set, almond-shaped eyes even closer together and lent his slim features an air of mild anxiety. She liked him. He was certainly a great improvement over the last few who had filled his position; they had been, by and large, American postgraduate students earnestly pursuing dull projects on the Economics of Oil or International Aid in Newly Independent Asia. Without exception, they had been spectacularly unsuited to life in Southeast Asia. The longest serving of them had stayed for two years, the shortest a mere three months. There were rumors that they might not have been bona fide students, that they were in fact working for the U.S. government, but Margaret could not substantiate these rumors. She did find it slightly odd that there was such a steady stream of American students wanting to be teaching assistants in Jakarta, but there was nothing to suggest that they were funded by anything more sinister than indulgent Ivy League scholar ships. Once or twice she had casually slipped into conversation the presence of the CIA in Indonesia, which was an open secret in town, but she was met by blinking incomprehension, so she let the matter rest. In this city you could never be sure if anyone was who they said they were and, frankly, Margaret couldn’t care less.

  Din, however, seemed far removed from the sordid details of Jakarta life. He did not have a comfortable scholarship to fall back on, and Margaret felt guilty because there was no money to pay him properly. In fact neither of them had drawn any salary for this month and although he never complained she knew that even his small rented room would soon begin to weigh heavily on his finances. He said he had taken a room in Kebayoran, but she did not believe him; it would be far too expensive for him. She knew that he did not want her to think him destitute, just another semi-slum dweller. He wanted her to believe that he was an ordinary middle-class professional, and she was happy to go along with it. But she did not know how long he could continue like this. She did not want him to leave.

  “Do you ever miss Leiden?” she asked. They were traveling alongside a canal filled with stagnant black water covered in a film of grease.

  He shrugged. “Not really.”

  “But you said you liked it. You did really well there—academically, I mean.”

  “I didn’t like the cold.” He could be like this, uncommunicative to the point of sullenness. Margaret wondered if he suffered from that respect of hierarchy that (she had noticed) seems to plague all Asians, so that she, being his elder and superior, could never be a companion with whom he could converse freely. It troubled her somewhat to think of herself as a Mother Superior figure, wizened and stern.

  “I can understand that,” she said, deciding not to push too far. She wished he would relax in her company, and she began to imagine how the evening might proceed if she had her way. They would have something simple to eat at a street stall and then they would have drinks, lots of them, and at some point in the evening he would begin to confide in her, telling her all about his village sweetheart and the girls he had had in Holland; he would begin to trust her, think of her as his equal, his confidante, and the next morning, at work, they would be friends and colleagues and she would no longer feel awkward in his company.

  She was not sexually attracted to him; she wanted to make that clear. She had worked out that he was twenty-four going on twenty-five; not quite twenty years her junior but certainly young enough to be her son in this country where girls of eighteen often had three children. Besides, she had long since shut out the possibility of romance. Once, in an age of endless possibilities, love had presented itself to her and it had seemed so simple, so attainable that all she had to do was reach out and claim it. Falling in love then had felt as easy as swimming in a warm, salty sea: All she had to do was wade into it and the water would bear her away. But she had not done so, and now the tide had retreated, leaving broken bottles and driftwood and tangled nets. It was a landscape she had learned to live with.

  The lights had just come on in Pasar Baru. The air was filled with the steady hum of portable generators and strings of naked bulbs burst sharply into life, casting their harsh glare on to the faces of passersby. There were not many people there yet, and Margaret and Din were able to stroll around for a few minutes before settling on a place to eat.

  “What do you feel like eating?” Margaret asked.

  “Anything. It’s up to you.”

  She’d known he would say that and had therefore already decided. “Why don’t we just grab some nasi Padang? Since you’re Sumatran. It’ll make you think of home.”

  They chose a place at random, sitting down at a folding table that wobbled when Margaret put her elbows on it. Din sat facing her, though he did not look at her face but stared into the space beyond her left shoulder. He looked clean and neat, as he always did, his plain, white short-sleeved shirt uncreased even at the end of the day. He never seemed to perspire. This evening he was not wearing the thick, black-rimmed glasses that he wore at work, and Margaret was glad because she had a clearer view of his eyes. “Isn’t this nice?” she said. “The first time we have been out together.” Even as she said so she was aware of the inappropriateness of it: she, a white woman, he a young Javanese man, together in public. They didn’t like this kind of behavior, the Indonesians, she knew that. Perhaps this was why he was being so stiff. She looked around quickly but could see no other foreigners. A young woman came and took their order; she looked sexless in her baggy male clothing—oversized shirt, but toned at the collar, and dirty, pleated trousers—and disapproving. Margaret felt her own décolletage, modest though it was, suddenly too revealing.

  “Tell me about the research you started in Holland,” Margaret said once they had ordered. They were on surer ground if they stuck to work matters; he liked talking about his work. “Pre-Islamic religion, wasn’t it?”

  “More or less,” he said, his gaze shifting gently but noticeably so that he met her eye and held it. It caught her off guard, this sudden switching of moods, and she blinked and smiled to hide her unease. She didn’t like being taken aback this way. “Actually it was a bit wider than that,” he continued. “I was looking into writing a secret history of the Indonesian Islands in the Southeast, everything from Bali eastward. To me those islands were like a lost world where everything remained true and authentic, away from the gaze of foreigners—a kind of invisible world, almost. Such a stupid idea.”

  “Why stupid?”

  “Oh.” He smiled, suddenly bashful again. “Such a big subject�
��too big for a little guy like me.”

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea. You shouldn’t give up.”

  “No, there’s no hope for someone like me. I was stupid to think I could do something like that, as if I were a Westerner.” He spoke with no bitterness but a despair so deep that it felt almost calm. He won’t be shaken from it, thought Margaret; it was so frustrating.

  “What a thing to say,” she said, trying not to sound didactic. “You can do anything you put your mind to. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if you want something, you’ll get it. Don’t be so defeatist.”

  The food arrived, dishes of watery curries of meat and vegetables. Margaret peered at the rice and noticed that it had been mixed with maize. “I think we have a civic-conscious vendor on our hands,” she said. Since the previous year’s drought every meal was a lottery. Sometimes your rice would be rice, other times it would be a gritty bowl of ground meal, in accordance with government recommendations.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Din said with a shrug. He spoke as if trying to convince himself of something. “My idea was that we needed a history of our country written by an Indonesian, something that explored nonstandard sources that Westerners could not easily reach. Like folk stories, local mythology, or ancient manuscripts written on palm leaves—”

  “Lontar, you mean.”

  “Yes. When you think about the standard approach to history, all the historical texts, you’re really talking about Western sources. It’s as if the history of Southeast Asia started with the discovery of the sea routes from Europe to Asia. Everything begins at this point in time, but in fact so much had already happened. The empires of Majapahit and Mataram had been established; Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism … I wanted to retell the story of these islands because I have a theory that their history is beyond the comprehension of foreigners—sorry, you’ll forgive me for saying that, I know—”

  “Forgiven—”

  “—and that history has to be told by a voice that is non-Western …”

  Din continued talking, but Margaret had become distracted by a boy who had sat down three tables away. He was an Asian of indeterminate age—anywhere from fourteen to twenty-one—not malnourished like most of them were, but still somehow ragged. His dirty white T-shirt bore a logo of an animal on the front (a bear?) under blue and gold letters that said BERKELEY. He appeared at once lost and deeply focused. Was he looking at them? She glanced at him once or twice and each time he ducked away just as she turned her head in his direction. Establishing eye contact too freely was a mistake many foreigners she knew made, misjudging Asian regard. What their smiling faces suggested was not always accurate, and what your own smiling face transmitted was not always what you intended. There was nothing on his table; he had not ordered food or drink.

  “… and of course the unknown story of Muslim seafarers.”

  “Well,” Margaret said, “why don’t you just go ahead and do it?”

  Instantly Din fell pensive and silent, as he played with the pool of curry in which he had drowned his rice. “No one will fund me. I asked everyone in Holland and they all said no. They think it’s about politics. And here, well, the president talks about grand projects, but we all know there’s never going to be any money. Not for people like me.”

  Margaret did not answer. She looked at his slim, sloping shoulders as he toyed aimlessly with his food. He had a way of making the morsels on his plate seem meager and almost inedible. There was nothing she could do for him, she thought; perhaps she ought to give up. Perhaps she ought to have given up on this country a long time ago. It was still early in the evening, but she was already tired.

  “Let’s go for a drink,” she said. She would shake off this lethargy; she knew she could.

  Din’s face twisted into a half frown. “Um, no thanks, actually. I’m quite tired today. Maybe I’ll just go home.”

  Margaret stacked the empty dishes on top of each other, to signify the end of the meal. “Just come for one quick drink. You’ll enjoy it from an anthropological point of view if nothing else. Come on.” She waved a few bills at the vendor.

  “Really, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’d be comfortable at the Hotel Java.”

  “Rubbish. You’ll have a ball. I told you, I never take no for an answer.” She smiled sweetly and knew that he would come: When she decided she wanted something, she was never refused.

  As they got up to leave Margaret turned back to look one last time at the boy with the Berkeley T-shirt, but he was no longer at the table. She looked around at the stalls, expecting to see him half-hidden behind a pillar or milling in the crowds, but she could see nothing. He had been there at the table half a minute ago and now he was gone.

  “Well, what fun this is going to be,” Margaret said brightly.

  BUILT IN 1962 to celebrate the Asian Games, the Hotel Java sits on the edge of a sweeping roundabout in an area that might be called down town if this city had an uptown. Like so many of the brutalist concrete buildings springing up around Jakarta, the hotel’s angular lines and slightly industrial appearance were meant to remind the beholder of both Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus aesthetic: international yet functional. The roundabout in front of it is in fact a shallow, perfectly circular pool from which jets of water spurt majestically at a young peasant couple standing on a tall narrow plinth. The hotel and the fountain are just two of the many projects designed to impress visitors to Jakarta with the city’s dynamism, and were commissioned by Sukarno himself (the president’s majestic erections, Margaret called them). Not more than two years had passed and already the toilets in the hotel were unpleasant; some of the bulbs in the grand chandelier in the lobby had burned out and hadn’t been replaced; the carpets were scarred by cigarette burns and the table linen dyed with old wine stains.

  “Looks as if the president’s erections are faltering,” Margaret said as she looked at the chipped edge of the bar. She had had two martinis already. The first had gone straight to her head and the second had slipped down all too easily. She was trying to make the third one last, but it was difficult; she felt a flush in her cheeks and she wanted to drink quickly. She was already quite light-headed, she knew, but she felt strong again.

  Din stood with his elbows on the bar, facing away from the room. He stared at the rows of bottles arranged on the mirrored wall facing him, as if examining every single label. He would take only a Coke, no matter how hard Margaret tried to persuade him otherwise. He wouldn’t even drink a Bintang. She was usually sensitive enough not to transgress cultural boundaries—but Din was different. Yes, he was Muslim, but he had lived for three years in Europe and was not just another unsophisticated small-town Indonesian. If they both had a drink, she thought, the alcohol might help break down the boundaries that remained between them and they would be friends.

  There was music, a band and a pretty Filipina in a tight white dress singing “Solamente Una Vez” in bright, clear notes, rolling her r’s impeccably while shaking a pair of brightly colored maracas to accompany the Cuban drums. The bar was not full but it was already very noisy, the air smoky and filled with men’s voices. There were a lot of men here and not many women; not many locals either. The only Indonesians present seemed to be women, and nearly all were prostitutes.

  “Here you have the Occident’s finest at play,” Margaret said. “See those two guys? Pulitzer winners a few years back. They’re supposed to be reporting on one of the most urgent political situations in the world and what do they do? Chase after girls they can’t get at home. And that idiot over there, yes, that one canoodling with the Batak girl, he’s meant to be administering aid for the World Bank, but it doesn’t look as if he’s capable of administering anything but a strawberry daiquiri.”

  “Do you know everyone here?” Din asked.

  “I recognize a few faces.”

  A big pink-faced man with sandy hair and freckles came through the doors and headed straight for Margaret. He had a young local girl with him, tall for
a Javanese and quite fair. “Margaret, how are you? Haven’t seen you in ages—not since last year’s Fourth of July party at the Lazarskys’. Who’s the boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my colleague at the university.” She was about to introduce Din when she noticed he had slipped away, heading for the bathroom. “How’s the girlfriend, Bill?”

  “Fine,” he said, putting a fleshy arm across his companion’s shoulders, “just fine. Her name’s Susanti, but I just call her Sue.”

  “Been together long?”

  “Guess so. Longest since I got here, at any rate.” He laughed, patting his pockets in search of his cigarettes.

  “Wow. Two weeks? Congratulations.”

  He smiled for a moment then broke into an overhearty laugh. “You just kill me. You’re still just so … Margaret.”

  “See you around, Bill.”

  A table and two chairs became free at the back of the room, in a shad owy corner where the lightbulbs had gone out. Margaret went over and sat down, making a cursory attempt to fiddle with the bulbs. She pre ferred everything to be bathed in light, preferably sunlight. It was not that she was afraid of the dark: She just did not like it, for it frustrated her not to be able to make things out clearly. The windows looked out onto narrow streets away from the noise and great rush of traffic of the grand roundabout. There were not so many people here, just a few of the embassy drivers waiting for their bosses to finish dinner. They milled about in small groups, smoking and exchanging gossip. Most of them were smartly dressed in creased trousers and khaki shirts, but there were a number of other locals who were more difficult to place: bodyguards trying to look casual, perhaps, or local journalists bribing the drivers for information. Margaret tried to discern the differences between them. She was good at this, good at spotting what lay behind this Asian mask of inscrutability. She had learned to do this in the jungle, with tribes who wore real masks and whose body language was indecipherable to outsiders, and she applied it with great success everywhere in Indonesia, even in this city of three million people. In America and Europe she had not been quite so successful; her antennae did not pick up the right signals with other Occidentals. She had not really even been able to understand her parents.