by Tash Aw
“Speaking of which, what are we going to do with the boy?”
Margaret paused before replying. Her initial instinct was to keep Adam by her side every moment of the day. She had not felt at ease leaving him on his own at home. He was too vulnerable, too helpless. But the thought of losing him was even more frightening. “He stays here,” she said, dropping her voice. “It’s too dangerous having him with us. Maybe I’ll call Din and ask him to look after the kid. Let’s just get through today and see how we make out.”
Daybreak over Jakarta was swift and uneventful, the darkness of the night sky replaced decisively by its murky daytime haze; noncolor substituted noncolor in a quick, perfunctory sweep. There was no ceremony, no lingering moment of aching beauty during which one might reflect on life and love, or yearn for things lost, or things as yet unrealized. The change was ruthless and efficient and unsentimental—typically Asian, thought Margaret. She liked it that way. She was no longer a prisoner of the night and all its limitations. In the intense days of this city she could accomplish anything she set out to do.
“I’ll check in with you later this afternoon,” she said, starting to make herself a cup of coffee. “And remember, Mick: This is your big chance too. The mother of all stories is just around the corner, and it’s got your name written all over it.”
THE WHOLE CITY seemed to be clad in the Merah Putih. The stark scarlet and white of the young republic hung from every window and lined the streets on hastily erected flagpoles. It adorned the city in every conceivable manner: Giant banners hung veil-like over entire facades of buildings; streams of tiny flags were strung up high over the roads, fluttering in the wind like starlings on a wire; municipal workers painted huge, stylized murals—one featured a waterfall that swirled and cascaded its river of red white water on to the beholder; trucks were painted half-red, half-white; little girls wore red and white rib bons in their hair and ate red and white bonbons; young men riding three to a single motorbike wore bandannas of red or white that trailed behind them and made them look like warriors as they weaved through the red white traffic on the red white roads. And the president’s face was everywhere, proudly regarding his red white city, at once virile and benign—and a good few years younger than he was, perfectly preserved at that moment of independence in ’45. At least it brought relief to the grayness, Margaret thought, but it was already beginning to seem dull to her. She had seen thirteen Independence Day celebrations, each one grander and more lavish than its predecessor, marked by the construction of a grandiose “gift” to the nation, some useless futuristic monument or stadium or theme park. She had become inured to it all, familiar with the grotesque. She remembered—with no sense of regret, just a tinge of sorrow—how those first Independence Days had seemed so exciting, so full of promise. She was newly arrived from Europe and her whole life was waiting to be rebuilt, much like this new country with its young president. She had been ready for change, ready for the task ahead of her, and so had they. She looked around this city now: They had lost their way, but she would not allow herself to be dragged away with it.
She tried to remember how she’d felt back then—not just how she or the city had looked, but the optimism she had felt. The physical scenes were easy enough to recall. The streets were muddy and barely covered with tarmac; even the center of the city seemed to be filled with kampungs that ran indistinctly into one another, clustered on the edge of the black canal where people washed and lived their entire lives. There was the smell of drains and sewage (that hadn’t changed) but also the odor of camphor, she remembered, a woody, heady smell that made her feel good, even healthy, like some mysterious fortifying medicine that was everywhere in the air; all she had to do was breathe. What was more difficult to recapture now was that well of strength, that sensation that no hurt or sadness or damage of any kind could not be put right. Nothing was beyond repair, everything was achievable. It wasn’t that long ago, goddamn it, so why didn’t it just instantly come back to her? Everything she looked at had seemed full of promise, even Bill Schneider.
She stopped the taxi at Pasar Baru and stepped into the labyrinth of stalls on the fringes of the great bazaar, passing quickly from bright sunlight to deep gloom. The alleyways between the shops were narrow and slightly damp and lit by kerosene lamps, even in the daytime; the dim yellow gaslight only added to the gloom. She went past stalls that sold stacks of cloth that smelled of old mothballs and others that sold cheap silvery handicrafts that glowed under the lamps; there were dried-meat stalls, dried-fruit stalls, raffia-string stalls, rubber band stalls, shoelace stalls. She knew her way to the coffee stall where Bill was waiting for her.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said.
“It makes me shudder when you say that.”
“There was a time when it didn’t. I remember it very well, you know.” He smoothed his thinning hair across his head, even though not a wisp of it was out of place. He had not lost any hair in the years that Margaret had known him; he had always looked like this—an overgrown schoolboy forced into a man’s body, someone who had learned the gestures of adulthood long before his time without truly understanding what those gestures meant. And now that he was an adult, it was too late to recapture the innocence of his youth. It seemed that only Margaret had ever seen this part of him. She had latched on to that tiny bit of goodness, she thought, and had wanted to make it her own. She had spotted him talking to a group of friends in the Arts Quad early that fall semester—his first and her last. He was wearing a blue blazer and gray flannels and was smoothing his hair down in long, languid movements—just as he was doing now. At first she had thought that it was a reflex action triggered by nervousness, but once she had spoken to him a few times she knew that he was a boy who had never been nervous. Maybe it was about control, she thought, though she wasn’t sure. He’d asked her out. They’d driven along the banks of Seneca Lake and shared an ice-cream sundae in Geneva. What do you think Geneva in Switzerland looks like? they wondered. And when he put his hand on hers it felt light, as if it belonged to a child; it was freckled and pale and hovered nervously without settling. And then, years later, when he turned up in Jakarta, she had taken him to Sunda Kelapa to look at the old fishing boats and he had said, Wow, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, as if he really meant it, as if he had stumbled upon a whole new world, and it had been Margaret who had helped him discover it. And at that moment of wonder at Bill’s innocence she had fallen resolutely out of love with Karl (or, to be more precise, with the memory of Karl). She remembered that clearly. She had told him about how she had fallen in love with a Dutch artist in Bali when she was in her teens, yes, a crush, that was it, a silly schoolgirl crush; Bill had laughed and said, “That’s hilarious.” And now he was using it against her.
“I’m sorry, Bill, I don’t know if I can give you what you want.”
“Of course you can, sweetheart, I’m not asking for much. You’ve done it before.” He leaned across the table and touched her forearm. She expected his hand to be clammy but it was dry and smooth, as it had been twenty years ago.
“It’s different now,” she said. “The students don’t trust me anymore. They don’t respect me.”
“That’s not the Margaret I know. I hope you’re not being deliberately unhelpful.”
“Honestly, Bill. I just—I just don’t have my finger on the pulse anymore.”
“Look, Margaret,” he said, sweeping his hand across his forehead again. His voice changed suddenly, becoming calmer, less cajoling. His fingers began to feel curiously heavy on her arm. “I need names. Commies. That university is a hotbed of activism. I just need to know who the ringleaders are, what they’re planning. You have an ear to the ground. We have these kids just out of grad school sitting in offices analyzing political trends, trying to tell us how the next few months are going to turn out, but it doesn’t count for anything. I have one guy, fluent in standard Indonesian and old-fashioned Javanese, PhD in linguistics, picking apart all of Sukarno’
s speeches from the last ten years, looking for clues as to how this guy is thinking, what he’s going to do next—and you know what? We still don’t have a clue. You remember that outburst six months ago, when Dean Rusk announced there was to be no more aid to Indonesia? In every newspaper in the world Sukarno screamed, ‘To hell with your aid.’ This kid wrote a twenty-page report on that one line. Conclusion? Sukarno doesn’t want U.S. aid. Jesus. But you know, Margaret. You hear things. You’re one of us, but it’s like you’re one of them too. How about your colleagues? I hear your research assistant has an interesting background.”
“Din? You’re crazy.”
“I have information, Margaret—intelligence. Something is being planned on that campus, something big. I need to know what it is, and whether it’ll harm our interests.”
“Our interests? What does that mean? For years I reported on the students to you because I thought you wanted to help, because you were new here and you needed information to help this country to help itself. That’s what you said. God, I was stupid. If we hadn’t been … oh, forget it. This is crazy. What sort of intelligence do you have on Din? I just cannot believe he is a danger to anyone.”
“I can’t tell you that, Margaret, but you have to trust me. Please. Just give me whatever you can find out. You might think I’m exaggerating, but your country needs your help. Your people need you. The world’s gone crazy and America needs all the help it can get so that it can help others. And don’t forget that I’m doing all I can to find your friend.”
Margaret did not say anything. A number of witty, cutting responses began to form in her head but faded away quickly. There was really nothing left for her to say.
Bill’s hand was still on her arm. “Call me tomorrow,” he said suddenly, as if some bright memory had reentered his thoughts after a long absence; his fingers tightened slightly around her wrist, pleading rather than threatening. “It’s Sukarno’s big twirl before the cameras of the world. This year’s Independence Day speech is going to be something else. The temperature’s going to be raised quite a few degrees. Let’s listen to it together. I think I can get access to the presidential palace—a friend will fix it for us. Please say yes—it’ll remind me of my first days here, running around town with you. You’ll see all your old contacts, and you never know who might help you.”
Just say no, Margaret thought. She paused. The breathless excitement in Bill’s voice was not genuine, she told herself; he doesn’t care about you, or about the past, or even about himself. This man is an actor, a fake; it’s part of his job.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll come.”
· 14 ·
The poet known as Hanawi, who celebrated the lives of the fishermen and subsistence farmers of Perdo and its neighboring islands, remained unknown during his tragically short lifetime, despite a prodigious literary output over a career that lasted a mere decade before he drowned at age thirty-two. He had taken his little outrigger far out to sea, its gaily painted hull braving the swell of the powerful waves that morning, according to the fragments of hearsay and eyewitness accounts that have since crystallized and become quasi history. He knew these waters well (which schoolboy can forget the immortal lines “And thus the sea is my country/It is my land, my sky/Indeed, it is my blood”?), but that day the skies were exceptionally dark with clouds and everyone knew a bad storm was about to break over Perdo. Most of the other fishing boats came back early, but Hanawi’s did not. The storm lasted two days, and when the waters had calmed the fishermen found his boat washed up on the rocks that circled the western end of the coral reef. Its frail mast had been broken but the sail was curiously intact, floating in the clear, green water. After the storm, the sea was glasslike and flat once more; it was hard to imagine that there had been a storm. It is like this in Perdo: The changes are so absolute, so extreme, that you can never believe anything else exists before or after the very moment in which you find yourself.
The manner of his death no doubt contributed to the image of the romantic poet who lived the authentic life of the masses. In language of extraordinary simplicity, he captured the harshness and beauty of rural life. His verse was free from the conventions of court poetry with its formality and associations with nobility: His voice embodied a sense of freedom and pride that echoed the lives of poor villagers, a sense of liberation and identity that has taken on greater importance in recent times, even (or perhaps particularly) in the cities. Take these lines from his celebrated poem “Hartini,” for example:
When seas are dark, anxious, the quick swell of each wave
lifts the boat quite some way, as light as an arrow.
When you fly, all your tears—yes, tears—are for now, save
the few which may, just may, be shed for tomorrow.
When the catch is bounteous, on those rare fine bright days,
the mackerel seem to play, spinning a small rainbow.
You notice her eyes: fierce, yet lost, too, in a haze.
Come back, you want to say. Come back from your sorrow.
Can you hear that it is a double pantun? Hanawi uses this traditional everyday form in new and playful ways, tweaking it, making it seem casual and more modern—but none of this is really relevant. What is important is that even illiterate villagers can relate to the rhythms of this style. We grew up with it, our ears are tuned to it. And so, in a funny way, it means something to us all. We feel what it is to be one people, free in our own country.
Does it matter, then, to find out that Hanawi was not, in fact, born on one of these remote islands but into a prosperous family of Chinese immigrants in Malang? He did not grow up speaking the coarse dialect of Perdo with its dull vowels and overemphasized consonants, but Javanese of a very stately variety, in addition to what was to become standard Indonesian and, of course, Dutch, educated as he was at the Hoogere Inland School. At home his family spoke Teochew, the language of his forefathers who had emigrated from southern China midway through the nineteenth century. It is true that he shunned the trappings of sophisticated Javanese life in favor of a simple existence in the islands, but he was able to do so because of the wealth and generosity of his family. He wrote ode after ode to the lives of fishermen but did not himself work as one; in fact, he never worked at all. Do you think this affects the authenticity of his voice? Does this change the way we read his work? When political leaders quote lines of his to show how in touch they are with the lives of ordinary folk, should we be moved, or simply howl with derision?
“Um, I’m not sure,” Adam said at last. It was hot; not the brilliant heat of the islands, tinged with the smell of sea winds under swirling skies, but a kind of dead, lumpen mass of stickiness that clung to every bit of his skin; he could even feel it on his eyelids. The scant shade of the becak offered little protection against this assault and there was not a breath of wind. Adam felt he was being slowly suffocated. He blinked several times. His eyes felt ill-equipped to deal with the city; it was very different from the one he had imagined. A dog trotted past, and Adam saw that it had something embedded in its hindquarters, a bit of shrapnel; the flesh and skin had grown back over it, covering it with a lump of tissue so that only the tip of it poked out.
On top of all this, Din talked endlessly, his arms flailing to emphasize words, becoming more and more agitated, his voice growing hoarse as it competed with the noise of the traffic. He had been in an irritable mood ever since he’d turned up at Margaret’s house earlier that morning and announced that she had asked him to look after Adam. He seemed glad to find Adam alone.
“But aren’t we better off staying here?” Adam protested. He felt uneasy at the thought of leaving the snug safety of the house. He had quickly developed quite an attachment to it—its contents seemed oddly familiar to him, and he did not want to leave. “Margaret left a note saying not to leave.”
“You can’t stay in all day, can you? Don’t you want to see a bit of Jakarta? Come on, let’s go and discover things. I’ll be your tour guide. Don
’t you trust a fellow Sumatran?”
Adam remembered how Din had been generous in his advice the previous day; he meant well, thought Adam, feeling childish and immature at being afraid to venture out with his new guardian. They would simply go out for the day and Margaret would not even have to know about it.
Din’s monologue had begun placidly enough—something about the difference in culture between Perdo and Jakarta, about uniting everyone in Indonesia because it was such a big country. By the time they flagged down a becak he was in full flow. Nothing escaped his wrath; he had a lecture prepared for everything: why the streets were so dirty (low self-esteem, bad education); why we had low self-esteem and bad education (the Dutch, corrupt politics); why we had corrupt politics (poverty, America, the Dutch, ignorance of history); why we ignored our own history (poverty, America, the Dutch, corrupt politics).