Map of the Invisible World: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  A few more soldiers stood outside the doors, facing in. They had guns, cocked and ready. Some of the guests in the lobby noticed that soldiers had come into the building. Adam paused next to a middle-aged couple. “What’s happening?” the woman asked. “Oh, nothing, darling, don’t worry,” replied the man, but he sounded worried. The music continued, but Adam could feel the unease in the crowd; some people had stopped talking and were watching the soldiers push their way toward the restrooms. Adam looked up briefly in the direction of the doors. He would make a run for it; he would wait until a new group of people arrived, and when the doors opened to let them in he would make a dash for it. Hadn’t Din said that the president himself was due to arrive very soon? Surely no one would notice a boy slipping out just as the president’s entourage arrived. He had to keep calm, be patient, then break for freedom. Chance, he thought, just surrender to chance.

  But no one seemed to be arriving. Whereas previously there had been a constant stream of guests stepping out of limousines, now it was as if the hotel had been sealed off. Adam looked around him cautiously. The noise had died down; just a bit of nervous laughter, one or two men trying to sound jolly; all other sounds were drowned out by the music. The song was definitely “Bengawan Solo,” even though the band played it as though it were a military march. Adam tried to remember how it really sounded; he imagined it playing on the radio as it always did; children would sing it at village celebrations and their parents would become teary and melancholic and talk about the war and the occupation. “Bengawan Solo … Trapped by mountains/you journey forever and finally/escape to sea.” “But it’s just about a river,” Adam would say to Karl. And Karl would smile and say, “Not just that, Son; one day you will see.” Adam thought about this now and he remembered how the song really sounded, away from this place.

  He would make a break for it. At the count of three. A path had formed between him and the doors, a narrow alley that snaked its way through the static crowd. Adam began to step forward, feeling a sudden surge of strength in his legs. But at the end of his path he suddenly saw the waiter who had been looking for him, the waiter who was definitely from the islands and who knew that Adam did not belong in this place. The waiter raised his hand, beckoning to the soldiers. He was waving them over to Adam, pointing into the crowd to where Adam stood. His eyes were wide with fear, and Adam realized it was the first time in his life he had ever inspired fear in someone. He heard the clatter of boots on the marble floor across the foyer. He had to run, he knew he had to, but he couldn’t.

  “Adam?” someone said. A woman appeared before him, someone he had brushed past earlier. “Is that you? Oh my god, it is you. I wasn’t sure if it was you. What are you doing here?” Her hair was pulled back from her face; her eyes were lined with black and shaded with a dark turquoise and her lips were pink and glossy. She wore a blue and red kebaya with red shoes; she looked like a film star, Adam thought. “It’s me, Zubaidah,” she said. “You know, Z. What a surprise to see you!” She reached out and took his hand, clasping it between hers as if greeting an old friend.

  Two soldiers were now standing with the waiter. They were looking helplessly into the crowd, but not at Adam. Adam looked at the waiter and caught his eye, just for a second; but the waiter looked away swiftly. He stood with his shoulders hunched; he shrugged and shook his head before sloping away, leaving the soldiers to scan the room for the invisible enemy.

  “So, are you best friends with the president too?” She laughed and raised her hand to brush away a wisp of hair from her face; on her wrist she wore a slim, silvery watch that glinted shyly.

  Adam shrugged. He could not quite believe that this film-star woman was Z, but the voice was the same, the throaty giggle was the same. It was her.

  “Isn’t this awful?” she said, half-whispering. “All these terrible people. I’m here because of my father. He forced me to come. My mother’s away and he needs to appear as if he has a nice, happy family. What could I do?” She spread her fingers, palms facing upward in a gesture of helplessness, and rolled her eyes. “In the end even revolutionaries have to do what their parents tell them. I like your shirt. It’s nice.”

  “It belonged to my father,” Adam replied.

  They heard raised voices from the far corner of the lobby; a scuffle. A woman gasped loudly; people in the crowd stirred, trying to see what was going on.

  “It’s so stupid,” Z said. “People panic so easily nowadays. Ever since that ridiculous assassination attempt on the president, things have been getting worse. All these rich people think that Communists are trying to bomb them to pieces at every turn. Look at them. Who would want to bomb this lot? The shrapnel from the jewelry would be terrible.”

  Adam noticed that there were even more guards outside now. Some of them ran into the lobby, heading for the corner where the rest-rooms were. The music stopped and everyone could hear the soldiers’ harsh voices echoing in the lobby. There was a murmur in the crowd; a few people began to leave, shepherded by soldiers into their waiting limousines.

  “Maybe it is serious,” said Z. “Anyway, I think the party’s over.” The guests were being ushered out of the lobby by the soldiers and Adam could see that even the band had abandoned their instruments. “Come on, Adam, we should go.”

  “I thought you were with your father?”

  “He has his own driver. He never comes home anyway—his poor mistress has the pleasure of his company most days.”

  As they left, they turned around to look at the commotion. Two soldiers had emerged from the men’s room, marching briskly with the old janitor between them. His hands were cuffed, resting on top of his head, and he had a bruise on his face that Adam had not noticed earlier. A third soldier was holding the satchel by its long strap; he held it away from his body as though it were a dead animal.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Z. “Don’t look. It’s so pitiful. He’s just an old man.” They walked to a black Cadillac and the driver opened the door for them. When the door closed, Adam found himself cocooned from the city; he could barely hear the noise of the traffic. The car joined the line of limousines fleeing the hotel, inching its way down the curving ramp.

  “So, what were you doing at the party, Adam?” Z asked. “I thought you didn’t know anyone in Jakarta.”

  Adam’s limbs suddenly felt lifeless, as if he could not control them. He wanted to lift his hand to wipe his brow but he did not have the strength; he could not even feel where his fingers were. His ribs were very painful again; he had forgotten about them, but now they were hurting. They were hurting badly and he wanted to throw up. He nodded. That was all he could do.

  “Adam,” Z said, lowering her voice. She cast a nervous look at the driver and leaned toward him. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you? What is it? You can tell me. Listen to me, Adam. Are you okay?”

  He nodded again. He felt the sweat trickle down his temple, following the line of his jawbone before falling onto his neck. He was glad he was in the car and not out there, out in the city.

  The Cadillac eased its way onto the road and joined the barely moving traffic. Through the tinted windows they saw more soldiers on the street. A group of them were surrounding a man on his knees; like the janitor, he had his hands on top of his head. A soldier reached into the man’s shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He tossed them toward his friends and smacked the man on the head, a heavy blow with an open palm which made the man tumble forward, his hands reaching out to break his fall. He picked himself up and returned obediently to his previous position, kneeling, hands on his head—like one of those children’s toys that twists into a hundred different shapes but always folds back into the same position. And although the man had his head bowed, both Adam and Z could see that it was Din.

  Z looked at Adam. Her eyes were calm and she did not say anything for a while.

  “Are we heading home, Miss Zubaidah?” the driver asked.

  Z nodded. “Quickly. Please.” She did
not stop looking at Adam. She said, “You’re coming home with me.”

  · 23 ·

  When she could no longer bear life in Ithaca, New York, Margaret left for Europe, as she’d always known she would. It was an unfussy departure, announced calmly and executed without drama or emotion. She had gone to the campus to tell her mother the news. It was early in the fall; a new crop of students, wide-eyed and gullible, were gathered in her mother’s book-strewn office, listening enthralled as she held aloft a ritual circumcision stick from New Guinea. Margaret coughed to indicate her presence, and then simply told her mother that she had booked her passage to Europe—to Paris. Her mother did not reply for quite some time; she simply regarded Margaret with a look of confusion and annoyance, the long spearlike stick held aloft in her right hand like an oversized conductor’s baton. Margaret felt quite proud of herself. It was just the kind of thing her mother would have done; she had out-mothered her mother.

  “When are you going?”

  “Next week,” Margaret replied in a tone of voice that suggested mild irritation, as if it were obvious what the answer would be.

  It took her mother a good few seconds to regain her composure. “Well,” she said, finally, “that sounds like fun! Don’t be too dissolute, will you—you know what those Parisians are like.” She waved the stick as though cracking a whip or a riding crop; the students chuckled.

  Outside, the trees had turned the landscape into a patchwork of gold and rust. The leaves were beginning to fall, spiraling gently to the ground like the first flakes of snow at the start of a heavy snowstorm, slowly, as if they would never reach the earth. Margaret went home and told her father she was leaving and that she did not know how long she would be away. He had been studying sheets of tiny photographs through a magnifying glass; he looked up and said, “Come back soon. Please.” Then he went back to his photographs and did not look at her again.

  The journey on the Île de France was quicker and duller than she had imagined. Her second-class cabin was simple, small but not at all cramped, shared with an aged woman who nodded pleasantly at Margaret but otherwise showed no desire to converse, which suited Margaret perfectly. It was here that Margaret remained for most of the crossing, staying away from the rich young Americans for whom she was already developing a distaste. They roamed the decks calling after each other in high-spirited voices, arranging rendezvous in the first-class dining room or tumbling noisily into their expensive cabins. The men were strong-boned and floppy-haired, the women sophisticated, almost world-weary, even at that age. Margaret thought she recognized two of them from Cornell; she could not remember their names but knew that she did not wish to speak to them. The farther she traveled from New York, the more justified she felt in disliking them; slipping away from the landmass of America, she no longer had reason to pretend to be one of them.

  On the train from Le Havre to Paris she read the headlines on someone else’s newspaper. LA CHINE DEVIENT COMMUNISTE, it shrieked in big bold letters: MAO PROCLAME LA RÉPUBLIQUE POPULAIRE DE CHINE. A much smaller picture caught her eye, and she tried to follow the pages as they turned—a fuzzy image of a man of darker complexion than a Chinese; Javanese, surely, or perhaps Malay. She waited for the reader to return to that page, but the picture was gone, and she could see only VIÊT MINH REFUSES TO RECOGNIZE PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE. There was a picture of the emperor Bao Dai, newly installed as head of state, but the Javanese man had disappeared. Maybe she had just imagined him.

  When she reached Paris she felt she already knew the place. She remembered all the things that Karl had told her about the city, about himself. Every time she walked on a cobblestoned street she half-hoped to look up and see him walking toward her, collar turned up against the growing October chill, tripping occasionally on the uneven surface (he’d never learned to lift his feet). Or she would look in the window of a bookshop near the Sorbonne and imagine him hurrying away holding a new box of pencils. Sometimes she would pass someone and catch a whiff of cologne, and she would turn as though she knew him. It was the same scent she remembered on Karl: fresh, grassy, familiar.

  She went to look at the place where he had lived, a narrow street of tall, white houses that did not seem to catch much sun. She found the address and stood outside the house for a while, wondering what she was doing there. Don’t be silly, Margaret Bates, she said aloud to her self, he isn’t here. She even smiled at her own stupidity and wondered if one day in the future she would look back and be embarrassed at how ridiculous she had been. And yet she remained standing there for a while, looking up at the windows, trying to remember which one of them Karl would have stood at. At the end of the street there was a pretty iron gate that led into the Luxembourg Gardens. She strolled along the gravel paths, under the drooping branches of lime trees that were shedding their leaves in the wind. She spent many afternoons walking in these gardens, not knowing what to do next.

  She went to a grand brasserie in Montparnasse that Karl had once told her about. She loved the shiny brass railings and plush red furnishings, but she did not love the elegantly bored waiters and the immaculately dressed men who looked up at her with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. “Vous êtes seule, madame?” the man at the door asked. She hated the way he said “madame” with an almost imperceptible stress on the first syllable; the overformal politeness made her feel unwelcome, and old. She was only twenty-seven—still very much a mademoiselle. She held her menu upright so that it hid her from the stares of the respectable men around her. Her clothes felt shapeless and dull and slightly soiled, and under the table her shoes seemed clunky and enormous. She spent a long time looking at the menu because it comforted her to have it in front of her—a shield behind which she remained safely anonymous. She thought she would have something elegant, a sole meunière, maybe; but when the waiter came to take her order she suddenly thought: No, I am not going to have a delicate piece of fish, I am going to have something big and smelly and disgusting. She put down the menu and said, “Andouillette. I will take the Andouillette.” She had never had it before but she knew it was pig’s intestines, rolled up into a squat sausage, perfectly revolting. She smiled and sat with her coat on, her chin lifted to meet the gaze of anyone who stared at her. When her food arrived it was worse than she had imagined—a length of pun gent meat covered in charred scabs. She cut off a big piece of it and tried to swallow it whole, like an oyster, but found herself gagging; she lifted her napkin to her mouth and coughed to hide her discomfort, starting to chew furiously until the moment of danger had passed. You are going to finish this, Margaret Bates, she thought to herself, you are going to finish every last bit of this. With each acrid mouthful she felt more resilient. She took a big gulp of red wine, which she didn’t really like either, but it took away the taste of the intestines; before long she had finished a whole carafe and ordered another. It wasn’t so difficult; she could do this. She looked at the other diners with a half smirk, challenging them to disapprove, but they looked away; only one man with a thick mustache smiled back, almost encouragingly. For dessert she had tartetatin and two cups of coffee, which dulled the sharp taste that lingered in her mouth. She paid the bill and left a generous tip that she could not really afford. She enjoyed watching the waiter nod in grudging acknowledgment as he came to collect the silver tray, for somehow it made her feel strong and even a bit wicked, especially when she thanked him with a flourish. He inclined his head slightly and avoided her steady gaze, and that too made her want to smile.

  Out on the street she felt light-headed and uncertain. It was a long way to her hotel, too far to walk. She had kept her coat on in the restaurant and only now, in the fading afternoon, did she realize that she had been sweating. She had been sweating in the restaurant and now she was cold. She was cold and she had drunk too much wine. Maybe she could make her way to the Luxembourg Gardens again, where she would watch the children running amid the piles of fallen leaves, laughing and calling out to their young mothers. She could sit on a b
ench, maybe, near the curving stone balustrade that Karl had liked when he was a young man, younger than she was now. She would like that, she thought. As she began to walk a man fell in step beside her. It was the man with the mustache who had smiled at her during lunch. He wore a gray herringbone coat and a felt hat. “Bonjour,” Margaret said. She realized how miserable she sounded, how miserable and cold and lonely. They walked for a while and chatted about things that Margaret cannot now remember. What she can recall is that after some time they reached a handsome building of pale stone. They paused at the heavy door. It was painted black and carved with foliage; next to it there were dark plaques with CABINET MÉDICAL and people’s names written in gold letters. They went up to a room. In it there were two armchairs and a sofa covered in old, blue cloth embroidered with gold bees. There was a beautiful writing desk and a neat pile of cream-colored paper on it. He lit the fire, and when she felt warm again he led her into a smaller room, where there was a bed and nothing else. This is what you call a garçonnière, Margaret thought. The man’s name was Georges, and he had broad, kind hands.