Map of the Invisible World: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  He went to the back of the house, where Margaret had indicated he would find a shower. There was a bathroom, not dissimilar to the one he and Karl had at home, but much smaller and dimmer, its zinc roof covering only half the space, leaving the rest exposed to the sunless sky. One half of the floor was damp and smooth, the other pockmarked with star-shaped bird droppings and bits of dead leaves that had not yet been cleaned up. There was a hose attached at one end to a tap; the other end disappeared into a bucket that had holes drilled into its base. Adam turned on the taps and watched the water begin to fall, rainlike, onto the smooth stone floor. At home they had a large earthenware pot from which they scooped water with a pail, sluicing themselves generously; he wasn’t certain what these tentative streams of water would do. He stood under this miniature rain shower; it felt odd to be standing naked in the rain, and Adam could not decide if it was pleasant or not. He let the droplets wash over him for a few minutes, slowly becoming more at ease, though when he turned the tap off he was still unconvinced by this new method of washing.

  At least he was clean again. He had hated wearing the same clothes for a week, hated the way people looked at him as if he were just another street urchin. There had been that Chinese shopkeeper in Magelang who had chased him out of the shop when he had gone in to look for something to eat. Adam had barely touched the bag of dried squid before the man had come after him, waving a stick at him as if he had been a dog, and he had run away, his face hot with shame, even though he had done nothing wrong. In the hour before rejoining his bus, everyone had looked at him in that suspicious, wary way as he wandered the streets in the fading afternoon, in that town between two great mountains. He had never felt so dirty in all his life.

  He made his way to the kitchen and began opening the cupboards tentatively, but found only an almost-empty jar of peanut butter and a few cans of something called ravioli, which seemed utterly mysterious to him. He searched for a can opener but could not find one. Meals were never this complicated at home. Adam just turned up at the dinner table and the food was there, prepared either by Ibu Som, who came every other day to help with the housework, or by Karl himself. These meals were always simple, especially when Karl cooked. Often they ate only plain steamed rice (which Karl had never managed to master, and consequently, emerged from the pot in stodgy wet lumps) with some sambal or pickles. During these meals they would eat quickly and in silence, and Adam would know not to ask why they could not have the type of food Ibu Som cooked; he understood that Karl was making some sort of point by eating as simply as possible. He knew that it was to do with “empathy for our fellow citizens” and “not profiting from the misfortune of others, just because we have more money.” At one of these Spartan dinners, even though he had not uttered a word, Karl had caught his eye and said, “It’s just a reminder.” Adam was not sure what this was a reminder of, but he had chosen not to ask.

  He opened the refrigerator and found a hard, putrid lump. Its label read ROMANO WHEEL. It did not smell at all appealing, but memories of dinners at home had sharpened his hunger and he cut a wedge of cheese and ate it. He cut the rest of the lump into pieces and put them on a plate, wanting to arrange them like spokes of a wheel but finding instead that they created a miniature atoll, like the haphazard clumps of coral on the seabed as he drifted over them. As he ate, he opened his notebook and wrote:

  Things to Tell Margaret

  my father was wearing a blue shirt when they took him away

  it was definitely soldiers and not the PKI.

  (Communists always kill their captives, soldiers don’t always)

  (And I can also recognize Communists—they dress very badly because they are poor)

  my father’s only crime is to have been born a foreigner

  i searched the house for clues but found only pictures of you and my father you looked very happy

  He recalled scrabbling around nervously among Karl’s papers, afraid he was transgressing some undefined boundary. The memory of Karl’s room—his small desk, his curling handwriting on sheets of paper, the smell of mothballs and old books—was clear and unwavering.

  He looked up from his piece of paper. The radio crackled in and out of tune: “Indonesian paratroopers … landings in Malaysia … skirmishes with British forces … deaths … prelude to invasion. He thought he heard the front gate creak open but there had not been a car. He went to the window and looked out; there was no one in the yard, just a black-and-white cat with a broken tail licking itself in the shade of the potted plants. There was a scattering of dead leaves across the yard, and Adam noticed that most of the plants were parched, their foliage turning crinkled and crispy at the edges. It was never like this at home (one of Adam’s more important daily chores was to ensure that the plants were well watered). He returned to his list. There was a song on the radio, a keroncong tune with its frilly strings and sweetly sung melody. It was important that he concentrate, he told himself; he needed to provide Margaret with all the information he could so that she would help him. He was seized by a sharp sense of anxiety, one that he had experienced several times over the last few days, always accompanied by visions of Karl in a squalid prison cell that he shared with badly dressed Communists who would try and steal his shoes. There would be no food and very little water, and the water would be dirty and make Karl sick. Adam closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, which had begun to ache. He made a quick mental calculation: Karl had been missing for eleven days—not quite enough time to die from starvation, but certainly enough time to die from dehydration. A noise startled him, and when he opened his eyes there was a man in the room.

  “Hello,” the man said, though it sounded more like a statement than a greeting. He was half-frowning but smiled, as if trying to hide displeasure. “Who are you?”

  Adam did not move in his chair. He rested his hands lightly on his knees, wondering what he would do if the man lunged at him. He had managed to go a whole week without being accosted on his travels, and now, when he thought he was safe, he had let down his guard and allowed a stranger into Margaret’s house.

  “Who are you?” Adam managed to say.

  The man did not answer immediately but instead placed a package on the table. It was wrapped in newspaper and cinched with a rubber band. “I’ve brought something—it was for Margaret, but I guess she’s not at home.”

  Adam stood up and backed away slightly.

  “Don’t be afraid. My name is Din,” the man said, unwrapping the package to reveal a bunch of bananas, perfectly ripe. “I’m one of Margaret’s colleagues—well, I’m technically her student, but she doesn’t really supervise me. Here, have one. They’re very hard to find nowadays.” He tore off a single plump banana and held it out to Adam.

  “I was just passing by—I tried the telephone but the lines are down. Happens a lot these days. The exchange is always a mess, what with the troubles on the streets.” He looked out the window as if expecting someone. “I hope Margaret is okay. There weren’t any classes today, everything’s been canceled, it’s a mess. Margaret normally comes in to the campus anyway, and when she didn’t, I got worried. She still cares about her students, even though they don’t actually do any studying anymore. She’s probably the only person in the world who still cares.”

  “She seems very nice. I like her.”

  “Are you a student too?”

  “No,” Adam said, taking the banana. “Well, not a university student, if that’s what you mean. I’m too young. I’m not sure if I’ll go to university—my father hasn’t decided yet.”

  “That’s a shame,” said Din, settling into an armchair facing Adam, “because education is the future of our country. So, who are you?”

  Adam paused to consider his questioner, a small slight man dressed neatly in a short-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers with a crease running sharply down each leg. He would not be stronger than Adam if they got into a fight, Adam thought—not unless he was armed, which he did not appear to be. “My name is
Adam de Willigen,” he said. “I am a friend of Margaret’s too.” As he said that he blushed and felt as if he had just told a lie.

  “What kind of name is that? You’re making it up.”

  “No, I’m not,” Adam said. There was something in Din’s face that irritated him: the nondescript features that took on an air of self-righteousness, the gently furrowed brow, the slim Sumatran nose—all these things suddenly became pronounced and dislikable.

  “Did you give yourself that name? Why do you want to be Dutch, of all things? We should be breaking free from all that. Don’t you know anything? That is why we’ve been fighting for the last twenty years.”

  “They were not all bad. And anyway my name is also that of my father, and he is as Indonesian as you are.”

  Din smacked his forehead with his palm, just once, hard, and squeezed his eyes shut. Adam hoped that he had hurt himself. “Not another one of these self-deluding white people. I hope you don’t believe any nonsense he might have told you. It makes me so angry.”

  Adam did not reply. If it had been his house he would have asked Din to leave.

  “Okay, so you’re too young to be a university student,” Din continued, his voice dropping to adopt a more conciliatory tone, “but you must have some idea of the revolution that is going on. You don’t look like a stupid, uneducated boy. Listen, we Indonesians—I mean, real Indonesians—need to determine what is best for us. We have to forge a path to our destiny.”

  “That is what my father tells me. Indonesia will decide what is best for itself.”

  Din lifted his chin and half-laughed, half-sneered. “Listen to that. You don’t even believe it yourself. It means nothing—you’re just repeating what someone told you. ‘Decide what is best’? It seems your whole life has been determined by someone else. Some foreigner decides what you should do—go to university or not, eat or not, pray or not. We know what is best. What is best is to live in a world that is not controlled by the West for their unjust intentions. What is best is to have a future where Asian and African countries control their own destinies. For three hundred years, someone else has written our history books for us, but now we have to rewrite them.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Din pinched his own forearm. “Look—we have the same skin. Same color. I would not lie to you.”

  Adam nodded. He realized that he had never heard another native Indonesian speak at length about anything other than the tide or the waves or the drought or the rice harvest. It felt odd to hear someone who looked like him talk in the same kind of language that Karl used, only with more urgency.

  “Your father—okay, well, he’s not your father, but I can see why you call him that—I’m sure he’s a good person. But he cannot decide your future for you. He can no longer even decide what to do for himself—all the Dutch people are being sent back to Holland. What are you going to do? Go back to Holland with him?”

  The music seemed louder, more shrill now, but Adam could not make out the words. He shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “And once you’re there? What will you do then? Do you think you’ll blend in, with skin this color?” Din reached across and pinched Adam’s arm lightly. “You won’t. Believe me, I’ve been there. You’ll be treated worse than a dog. Your so-called father will start to become ashamed of you, and people will say things about him, about you. You’ll have no work, and you’ll become a burden to him. You’ll be completely dispirited and you will realize that you only have one place left to go: Indonesia.”

  Adam shook his head. He knew this was not true. He tried to remember the Dutch phrases he knew, the expressions he had gleaned from visitors or that Karl had breathed secretly, all those words in that forbidden, magical language. Mijn naam is Adam de Willigen. De zee is leeg. De schapen zijn verbrand. Zo was het nu eenmaal!

  “Let me share my experience with you. I lived in Holland for three whole years. I went there full of hope. I was young and bright and I was selected for a Dutch education—can you imagine how I felt? My father was so proud of me. He was completely illiterate. So was my mother—she died when I was a baby and her only wish was that I escape our village. My parents wanted a better life for me and so they sent me to school in Palembang and then to university in Jakarta. They were so happy when I won my scholarship to Leiden. They told everyone I was going to be a professor, even though they didn’t know what that meant—they just liked the sound of the word. It sounded important to them. Professor, president—these words have power over poor, uneducated people. I arrived in Holland thinking I was special, that I could change things. It was raining when I arrived. I took this as a good sign—an omen of great things to come. Not even a week later, I realized that Dutch rain is not like Indonesian rain. One brings a chill to everything it touches, the other brings life. It did not stop raining in all the time I was there. Someday, if we become friends, I will tell you about the thousand injustices I suffered over there, but for now, all I will say is that they were the longest, darkest, coldest three years of my life.”

  Adam paused. He wanted to ask a hundred questions about Holland, to ask all the questions that Karl had refused point-blank to answer—whether there were windmills and placid canals of cold, clear water and plump black-and-white cows and quiet cobbled streets—but he knew that he would not get the answers from Din.

  “Was it really terrible?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you the whole story sometime. Let’s just say that I realized one thing: that the only place I could call home was this”—he gestured around him. “Indonesia might be a shit hole but it’s our shit hole. We will never be happy anywhere else. What’s happened to your so-called father anyway? If he’s so wonderful, why isn’t he here to look after you?”

  “He’s missing. They took him away—the army took him.”

  Din said nothing for quite some time, but stared straight at Adam, his eyes moving almost imperceptibly. On either side of Din’s mouth, Adam could discern tiny muscles twitching, just briefly, as if Din was going to smile. But he did not smile. He said, calmly but very firmly, “He’s abandoned you. I thought as much.”

  “No, he hasn’t. Margaret is getting in touch with him. He’s coming back very soon.” Adam tried to sound casual but he knew he was not convincing. He tried to tell himself that Karl’s return was indeed imminent, but it was too much to hope for.

  “Tell me,” Din said, his face adopting a more serious, less confrontational expression, “you’re an orphan, aren’t you? Why are you expending all your energy looking for your foster father when you could look for your real family?”

  Adam shrugged. “I don’t know anything about my parents. They’re probably dead. They wouldn’t want me anyway—that’s why they left me in the orphanage in the first place.”

  “Rubbish! Of course they loved you. They were just too poor to care for you.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Tell me everything you know about your family.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know anything. I don’t want to know anything about my past. Please stop asking me.”

  “No, I won’t stop because it’s important. You need to know about your past. It’s who you are.” Din’s voice softened and he smiled. “Look, surely you have some clue about your background? I mean, look at you. You’re clearly Sumatran, for a start—just like me! I can recognize a fellow Sumatran when I see one.”

  “Really?” Adam was caught off guard by this revelation; not even Karl had been able to tell him where he was from. He stared at Din’s face and was disconcerted to find more than a passing resemblance: the skin tone, the way the eyes sat evenly on a fine-boned face. He recognized these things, and was disturbed by them.

  “Yes, it’s clear you’re Sumatran. There’s been so much movement across the islands over the years, what with this stupid transmigration policy. Good principle, bad result. Javanese should live in Java, not in Nusa Tenggara, Sumatra should remain Sumatran, and so on. So we know your ethnic background. What else?
Brothers and sisters?”

  Adam hesitated. He did not see why he should say anything to this person, but at the same time there was something about this invasive, almost repugnant man that made Adam think that he would understand everything about Johan. It was crazy, he thought, but he might know things about Johan, just as he had known things about Adam. “I think …”

  “Go on,” Din said, his voice calm and soft. “I’m listening.”

  “I think I have a brother.”

  “That’s great,” Din encouraged. “You’re sure of this?”

  Adam could hear his own breathing—perfectly regular and even. He nodded. “Yes. I have a brother.” This time the words did not seem so awkward; they sounded firm, comforting.