Map of the Invisible World: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  I don’t know. She laughed. I just imagined it this way.

  Johan thought of the Christmas tree they’d had at the orphanage, which never had any lights on it and wasn’t even a nice Christmas tree, just a half-dead sapling with its branches cut to make it less messy. Sometimes there would be a few trinkets hanging on it, palm leaves woven into balls, or some fruit on short lengths of string, but it didn’t matter, because none of the children knew what Christmas was. There were presents, like an old pair of socks or box of biscuits or a toy that some rich city kid did not want anymore but you did not know better, and when you do not know better you are happy for what you have.

  Later, when Johan was with his new family, he had learned all about Christmas and he knew what it was really like. He saw the kinds of presents that people gave each other, the nice things that parents put in boxes and wrapped up, like the tricycle that Bob once got. Mummy would always say, Oh, we can celebrate too, even though we’re not Christian. Christmas belongs to everyone! Daddy would come back from the club in a good mood, singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” trying to make his voice sound like Bing Crosby’s, and Mummy would laugh and say, Eh-ey, darling, I hope you haven’t been drinking. And Johan would know what it meant for people to be happy, even though he was not. He realized too that his Christmases at the orphanage had not really been happy, because when you don’t know the truth you can’t be happy, not truly. And he would think of Adam, who had never known what Christmas was. He wished that Adam had never known that fake Christmas with its fake tree and fake presents, like that snow globe that he loved so much. He wished that Adam had never known all that. They stopped to look at a cloud of fireflies that clung to a branch over the river, dipping toward the surface of the water.

  I shouldn’t feel bad, but I do, said Farah. It’s so stupid of me.

  Yup, it is stupid. Johan squeezed her hand.

  You’re not going to come back, are you?

  The mass of fireflies curled slowly toward the water, and Johan wondered what would happen if it touched the river, whether all the lights would suddenly switch off and they would find themselves plunged into darkness, or maybe night would switch suddenly to day.

  And because he did not answer, she said, Are you going to find out what happened to your brother?

  No, he said firmly. He’s gone and I don’t want to know any more.

  Good. Promise me you’ll come back safely.

  He felt her fingers wiggle in his hand. You’re crazy.

  She turned to look at him and there was enough light in the moonless night for him to see that her eyes were clear and wide. Thank you, she said. Thank you for bringing me here.

  He could smell the richness of her breath, a slight saltiness, and her hand began to feel hot and slightly sticky in his.

  He leaned toward her and when he kissed her he found her lips were cooler than he had imagined, and firmer too. She did not press against him but she did not draw away either, and Johan wondered whether for these few seconds he was happy. He wondered if feeling her lips on his, and smelling her and touching her waist, whether all this meant that he might be happy.

  No, she said at last. He could feel her breath against his neck. It’s wrong, Johan.

  Why?

  You know why. She did not move away from him but let her head rest against his collarbone.

  I’m not your brother, he said.

  Don’t say that, Johan.

  When they looked at the trees on the bank opposite they saw a mass of fireflies, rising and curling like a wave reaching out for some invisible, unattainable shore, a wave in some dream where everything was black and silent.

  It’s beautiful, Farah said.

  He nodded, but it was dark and he did not know if she could see him. He said, I’m going to take you home, Farah. Then I’m going out for a drive by myself.

  · 30 ·

  The ride home from the palace took longer than usual. Roadblocks and demonstrations choked every other street, it seemed, and the car would crawl along for a while then pause for twenty minutes without moving. Everyone turned their engines off, starting up only when there were signs of movement. It was a nice car, a Buick, and the driver whom Bill had sent spoke English with an American accent. He had been an engineer, he said, in Malang, and had followed his wife to the States when she won a scholarship, but she had left him for an American man because she wanted to stay there, so now he was back home, working as a driver for the embassy, but it was okay, he spoke English, he had a good job. Not like everyone else out there, he gestured.

  Margaret listened without paying too much attention, fanning herself with the envelope containing the two slides. There was a radio or a walkie-talkie or something in the front that crackled and hissed with static as the car inched along. She felt as if she were on a boat on a big, silted-up river, carried along by an imperceptible current, occasionally running into a mud bank, then flowing along again. Normally she would be fretting and in a rush to get somewhere, but today she was not at all anxious. There was nowhere for her to go, nothing more she could do. She had done her best with the president, she had given it everything she had, and still she had come up short. She had never experienced this feeling of utter defeat before and she did not know how she should feel. Angry? Frustrated? Frightened? Humiliated? No, not any of those, and yet all of them at once. She felt helpless—yes, helpless, that was it—but this state of helplessness was not terrifying as she’d always feared it would be. It brought with it something worse than terror (which could, after all, be overcome): an eerie unease, a feeling that the worst was yet to come. When she thought of the future now (the future: what did that even mean?), she could see nothing, feel nothing. She did not know what she would do, either for herself or for Adam or anyone else, today or tomorrow or anytime thereafter. There was no vague sense of possibility, of things simply sorting themselves out by a combination of fate and manipulation. There was just a dreadful emptiness waiting to be filled with the unknown.

  She had always thought that even if she learned of Karl’s passing away, or if she had known, definitively, that he was never to come into her life again, she would experience a certain calm—a relief or a profound liberation. Finally that niggling grain of hope embedded in her would go away and she would no longer fall asleep remembering his slim hands and uneven walk. But she did not feel calm now, nor relieved nor liberated. She had lost Karl, she was sure, but she still—irrationally, stupidly—hoped that he was out there. The years ahead of her were filled not with calm, but with a horrible uncertainty. And it was all her fault.

  Her fault.

  She thought about Adam. She looked out the open windows at the dusty shantytowns, the mass of people on the streets, jostling for space in the city. She hated the idea of Adam wandering alone here, and she hated the idea that she had abandoned him to this fate. That was something she would have to live with for the rest of her life, she thought. But she would manage. There are some things that cause you pain, that lodge themselves in your consciousness the way a splinter or piece of shrapnel might embed itself in your flesh; but the human body had a way of dealing with it that could dull the pain so that you didn’t feel it after a while. Your life would continue as usual, and only you would know of this thing that you carried in your body.

  The car finally broke free of the worst of the traffic and the hot air began to sweep through the open windows. The driver told her that there had been riots earlier in the day and all major roads had been closed off. He apologized for this; Indonesia has become so messy, he said, not like before. It must be terrible for you foreigners.

  “Yes,” she said, “sometimes it’s difficult.” She imagined the scene she would have to face in a few moments, returning to announce her failure to Mick and Bill. She would arrive at the house and find Mick sitting in a chair, gesticulating, Bill pacing around the living room, looking down at the floor; they would watch her as she walked across the yard and through the door. She would
feel as children must feel when they have done something wrong or failed an exam, and the moment of confession arrives, only their parents already know what happened. Her own childhood had been free of such moments of anxiety, but she wished it hadn’t. God she wished it hadn’t. She wished that when she was a child she’d known how it felt to fail and to have someone say, It’s okay, next time it won’t be so bad, you can try again, it doesn’t matter. But she was not a child, she had never really been a child; and there would be no next time. Mick and Bill would, she thought, try their best to comfort her, which would only make things worse. They would shrug and smile, as if they had prepared themselves for her failure, and she would know that they had agreed on their response. Mick would say, Hey, it’s fine, it’s okay. But no one would say very much because they knew that it was not, in fact, okay.

  She did not think she could face them. She wished the traffic would close in again, ensnarling her in this city forever. But for once they seemed to travel fluidly, cutting their way with relative ease through the tangle of darting scooters and bicycles and trucks, everyone rushing headlong toward nowhere.

  Eventually the car eased into the lane that led to Margaret’s house, slowing to dodge the dogs that lay spread out under the meager shade of the papaya trees. As it came to a halt, Margaret could see through the windows that it was just as she’d imagined: Mick sitting, Bill pacing anxiously. But Bill was not pacing anxiously, as she’d expected; he was standing quite patiently, as if studying someone—a third person. Margaret swung open the low metal gate, its hollow bars clanging loudly against the cement columns. There was a third person. Thank god, there was a third person.

  · 31 ·

  You should have seen it,” said Mick, sipping a bottle of beer, “a black Cadillac so huge it could barely squeeze down the lane. Even Bill didn’t have a clue what was going on—for a moment he thought that Sukarno had personally escorted you home! We certainly didn’t expect young Adam to hop out.”

  Margaret squeezed Adam’s hand. She had barely let go of him since stepping into the house. When she first realized he had come back, she’d felt like crying. For the first time since adolescence—maybe even infancy—she’d felt an uncontrollable urge to weep. She hugged him and put her head on his collarbone, letting her tears wet his shirt. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but she didn’t care. He had been eating when she came in; there were half-eaten packets of nasi Padang on the table; fat flies sat motionless like sultanas on the turmeric-stained rice. “Don’t ever leave me like that again,” she scolded, sniffing loudly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. When she looked at him she saw that his eyes were moist and slightly teary too. He lifted his hand to wipe his eyes; there were grains of rice sticking to his fingers. He smiled but she could see that he was preoccupied with something. His eyes seemed pinched, older now than they’d been a few days ago. He wiped his hands on a dishcloth that was lying on the table; the cloth was printed with the words Good Morning, which skipped up and down as he cleaned his fingers. He reached for her and put his arms around her slowly, embracing her for a few deliberate moments. “I’m really glad to be back,” he said.

  “Where’s Din?” Margaret asked, thinking she already knew the answer.

  “He’s in jail—where he should be.” Bill told her everything he knew—honestly, he said: There had been a plot to assassinate the president, which Bill and his people had known about, and Bill had thought that if they could prevent it and find evidence against the culprits, he would be able to present it to the president as proof of American goodwill. No, he was not intending to find and fund these terrorists so that they would kill a president who was no longer favorable to the States—god forbid such cynicism. Why would the United States of America want to destabilize this country? It was unstable enough as it was. Call it currying favor or bargaining or whatever you want—the ultimate aim was to help Indonesia in some way or another. Din was one of the ringleaders they had heard about, and Bill had been anxious to keep track of him, that’s all. And Adam, well, Adam had come this close—this close—to being implicated in a major conspiracy. Thank god for that girl.

  “What girl?”

  “The one we met,” said Mick, handing Bill another bottle of beer. They moved and talked slowly, as if they had been doing something physically strenuous. It was the relief, thought Margaret; they were exhausted by the relief of finding Adam.

  “Her name is Zubaidah,” said Adam. “I guess she saved me.”

  “Turns out she isn’t a red-blooded Commie, after all,” Mick said.

  “I knew there was something weird about that girl. I just couldn’t figure her out. I didn’t like her. I thought she was duplicitous and insincere,” said Margaret. “But it does at least prove that it takes a woman to straighten things out.”

  Mick said, “Margaret didn’t like being out-Margareted by the young lassie.”

  “No,” said Adam. “She was not insincere. She helped me see things clearly. Without her, I would have ended up doing things I didn’t want to. This time it was Din, but it could have been anyone. I was just allowing anyone to take advantage of me. But Zubaidah didn’t. She didn’t push me, she just … I don’t know. She helped me, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Margaret watched him as he spoke; he looked down at the table, raising his eyes to meet hers only now and then, as if afraid of challenging her. She put her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just worried about you, that’s all.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Adam. “It’s not your fault things turned out the way they did.”

  Margaret wanted to believe that this was true, that she was not in some way to blame for the fact that Adam was now truly an orphan and that Karl was missing forever, most probably dead. She could not shake the feeling that the current state of affairs was due, in some major way, to her shortcomings, her misjudgment, despite Adam’s trusting, almost grateful smile, which made her feel even more guilty. He had trusted her too readily, she thought, too unquestioningly And his utter faith in her had, in turn, made her believe that she was capable of achieving anything. She remembered something she had seen when she was a child on Irian: a small, dull buff-colored bird attacking a snake, falling on its thick coils in swift, stabbing dives until the reptile was forced to retreat. A villager told her that the bird was a mother protecting her nest from predators, to which Margaret had said, Oh, I understand, the bird loves its children so much that it becomes brave enough to attack a much bigger animal. And the villager said, No, it is not love that makes the bird do what it is doing. It is foolishness. This bird actually believes it is stronger than the snake, it actually believes that no harm can come to it. It is a very silly bird.

  Margaret understood, now, that it was not love that made her want to help Adam but a vain and unthinking sense of heroism. It had flattered her to think she could change his life, and hers.

  “Adam,” she said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “I don’t know if Bill and Mick have spoken to you. We have had no news about Karl. We have tried everything, but I think you should know that the signs are not encouraging. I think,” she paused, wanting to sound firm but supportive, “I think you should prepare yourself for the fact that we might not be able to find your father.”

  Adam stared at his still-greasy fingers; he let them hover rigidly over the table, watching them as if entranced by their stillness. “He might still come back somehow. Nothing is impossible. I know you think so too.”

  Margaret nodded. “That’s right, I do. I guess some stupid part of my brain will always be wired to think like that. But we all have to face the facts sometime—even me.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  A few drops of rain had begun to fall, playing a tinny percussion on the zinc roof over the yard. In the distance a patch of cobalt blue cloud was marooned in the otherwise colorless Jakarta sky. Sometimes, at the end of the dry season, there wou
ld be times like this, when everyone would think the first of the rains had arrived. You would feel one or two heavy raindrops on your arms and the skies would darken, and you would think that the drought was over, but then the clouds would dissolve and the air would lose the smell of moisture and the aridity would return. You could never really tell when the monsoon would arrive.

  IT WAS MICK who decided they should leave.

  “You mean, leave Indonesia?” Margaret had protested.

  “Got a better idea, sweetheart?” said Mick, lowering his voice as they stood in the yard. “This country is falling apart—not just at the edges but at its core. I’m staying because it’s my job. Why are you staying? Because it’s your home? Wake up, darling. You need to leave, for a while at least. Maybe one day you can come back. Or maybe you’ll never come back. Who knows? You can decide all that later, once you’re far away from this madness. Go somewhere: Singapore, Bangkok, the States, Paris—wherever. Somewhere you can sit down in a nice clean café, drink coffee, and take stock of things, think about the future in an objective way. Take the boy with you. You do have a future, it’s not too late for you. Don’t end up like, well, me, just bumbling through life. It suits me. It doesn’t suit you.” He produced a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.