The Wandering

by Intan Paramaditha

  You head for the cemetery gates, trying to act naturally, but a voice startles you. Its source is not especially close. Is Muhammad playing with you? You turn around. Behind you stands a bronze statue of a man of imposing height, dressed in opulent baroque style, complete with waistcoat and knee-length breeches.

  ‘Waiting for a prospective lover, miss?’

  You gasp. The statue is solid and mute. Two seconds later you realise that it isn’t the statue talking, but a figure hiding behind it.

  Devil.

  With a sprightly leap he descends to you. The way he’s dressed makes it difficult to recognise him. He looks sharp in a black suit, as if he’s just come from a funeral. In his right hand he carries a long black umbrella, folded neatly. A round black hat perched above his brow keeps him incognito, until you study his crimson eyes. He doffs his hat elegantly, then greets you with a smile. He looks quite handsome. For a devil, that is.

  You didn’t suspect that you’d see him again so soon. Too soon. His presence is unwelcome. With no regard for your stand-offishness, he tugs your hand until you have no choice but to follow him. He pushes you up against a century-old marble grave. His skinny frame presses against yours from behind. He grabs your hair and begins to kiss your neck, while his wrinkled hands expose your skirt and stockings. Your heart thumps. You’re anxious but aroused as you imagine eyes upon you, eyes of the living and eyes of the dead.

  Fifteen minutes later, Devil sits next to you, taking drags on a cigarette as you straighten your dishevelled clothes. Your chest pounds, you feel hot; he can always surprise you, thrill you. You’re still panting when he says softly, as if to comfort you, ‘Your boyfriend won’t be coming.’

  He pulls out a folded newspaper from his black coat. He spreads the yellowed print and draws your attention to a small column, seemingly insignificant.

  ‘I don’t know German.’

  You look at the rows of letters while Devil translates for you a news excerpt about a man who committed suicide by jumping from the ninth floor. You understand only the name and date. Muhammad Ismail Saleh. 1977.

  A leaf falls on your hair. Its dull, dry pigments mock you, reminding you of endings. You crumple the leaf.

  You gaze into Devil’s crimson eyes, seeking answers to questions that are not yet clear. He stares back at you intently, as if wanting to share your grief. You feel a momentary urge to embrace him, but then the look in his eyes grows stranger and stranger. His lips lift a bit, betraying a sneer.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He pats your shoulder. ‘There’s nothing you need to understand other than that you’re not the only haunted wanderer.’

  Devil removes something from his pocket and places it in your palm. The Empire State Building snow globe. The crystal globe that Muhammad gave you is still in your backpack. What sits in your hand was intended for Muhammad’s grandson.

  ‘I pinched it from the old guy,’ Demon Lover confesses.

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘Don’t you want a present?’

  ‘Devil!’

  ‘At your service!’

  You slap Devil and claw at his face. You want to pour out all your anger on him, destroy him, murder him again and again. He does not respond. Eventually you grow tired. It’s no use hurting him. He was wounded before his fall.

  ‘Unruhig sitzen wir so, möglichst nahe den Grenzen, wartend des Tags der Rückkehr,’ says Devil, as he dusts the dirty patches from his trousers.

  Seeing your confusion, he adds, ‘Brecht. “Uneasily we live, close as we can to the border, awaiting our day of return.”’

  You sob and sob, for who knows how long, like a little girl. You cling tightly to the gift you received from Muhammad’s story, or rather, this new gift you rejected that ultimately became yours anyway. After the shoes, now a crystal snow globe. You swear that this is the last time you’ll keep a hand-me-down from the dead.

  *

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird don’t sing,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

  And if that diamond ring turns brass,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

  You wake, exhausted, alone in your hotel room, and glance at a clock on the wall. Ten in the evening. You’ve just woken from a long, chaotic dream that you have no desire to piece together. Is what happened at the grave also part of it? You hope so. You reach for the camera next to you, but, alas, what you remember happening not only did happen, it’s been digitally archived. The camera holds pictures you took of graves that afternoon, including Bertolt Brecht’s.

  You ponder the series of events. Demon Lover left you sobbing in the cemetery. After all, he is a devil. Man turns away from God, but Devil must turn away from you before you turn away from him. You stumbled out and wandered aimlessly along Chausseestraße until you finally grew weary and boarded a subway train. Arriving at the hotel, you sat down in front of a computer reserved for guests. In a search engine you typed ‘definition XXX’.

  Alcoholic beverages.

  Pornography; a type of X rating applied to some pornographic films.

  A warning or danger signal, or symbol for doubt/the unknown.

  The code for ‘of unspecified nationality’.

  You went back to your room, removed your jacket and hurled yourself onto the bed. Your head rang with Muhammad’s voice – or Ismail’s – and his talk of passports. From inside your bag you took the two snow globes, the gift from Muhammad and the loot from Devil, and shook them both firmly. Look how the lovely snow churns in a raging blizzard. Snow globes fascinate us because we long for worlds that can be contained. You stared at the ceiling of the hotel room, as if waiting for snow to descend. But nothing fell, nothing tumbled, there was nothing but your eyes growing heavy and swollen. You imagined someone comforting you with ‘Nina Bobo’, the lullaby from your childhood.

  Hush, little baby.

  After languishing in bed for a while, thirst sets in. Sluggishly, you stir at last and pick up a bottle of water from the table. Your eye catches something curious, a cardboard box, like a parcel sent by mail. You’re positive that the box wasn’t there before.

  Too many surprises. Can one more surprise make today any worse? You take a small pair of scissors and open the package. Beneath layer after layer of newspaper, you discover a hand mirror engraved in silver. A short cord allows it to be hung.

  Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

  A plain white card is affixed to the back of the mirror. You tear it off and read:

  If you accept this make-up mirror as a gift from me, hang it behind the door. For everything that comes to you is both mirror and door – you see yourself every time you want to travel on.

  Don’t you wish to keep viewing yourself while on your journey?

  A game of Devil’s, again. A gift as well as a curse. But the mirror is very nice.

  Everything that comes to you is both mirror and door.

  Mirrodoor. Of course.

  If you accept Devil’s gift, hang the mirror behind the door and turn to page 77.

  If you reject it, return the mirror to the box and flip to page 89.

  You don’t want to know who sent those murderous rats. There’s little point in uncovering the secrets of a story from a dream. Will the knowledge change your life – offer a sign, perhaps? You don’t care. The red shoes have become yours, and you can damn well choose where you will go in them.

  You get out of bed and go to the kitchen. Hungry, you look for something to eat in the fridge, but its contents are depressing –—a half-empty carton of milk already past its expiry date and a bunch of plastic bags that contain wilted vegetables pooling in moisture. Shit. You grab your keys and slip on your shoes, ready to go out in search of fast food.

  In the lobby, the doorman smiles at you again. This time you return a friendlier smile. A strange day. Too much has happened. But at t
he same time you feel you’ve missed many events. Maybe you’re muddled because of the time difference, a jet lag of sorts. After all, the red shoes have escorted you to another continent, even if you didn’t arrive by plane.

  This is a new day, a new adventure. You, an English teacher who’s never visited an English-speaking country, are now in New York. Celebrate!

  Proceed to page 79.

  Little Johnny’s advice rings in your ears as you brush your teeth and see your face reflected in the bathroom mirror. 11.55 p.m. Yesterday was really bizarre. How is it that you ended up on a Chinatown sidewalk, meeting such a mysterious man and asking a nonsensical question about rats? You deposit your toothbrush in a plastic cup on the edge of the sink. Was it yesterday? Or a few hours ago?

  You feel light-headed. A jumble of memories come to you at random and then disappear. You cannot trace them. You wash your face with warm water and dry it with a towel. While staring in the mirror, you consider other possibilities. God forbid that Devil slipped you some hallucinogenic drug. You look to see if medicine bottles lurk behind the glass, but discover only moisturising cream and a few vials of perfume.

  Maybe the time difference has left you addled, a jet lag of sorts. After all, the red shoes escorted you to another continent, even if you didn’t arrive by plane.

  11.59. Time is running out. You hurry to turn off the bathroom light and climb into bed. In the end you do take Little Johnny’s advice to heart. Don’t look in the mirror at midnight for too long.

  You never know whose face will appear.

  This advice may be useful in the future.

  You open your laptop because you don’t feel tired and begin to plan the tourist sights you want to visit in New York. You don’t fall asleep again until 4 a.m. No doubt about it, you think. This has to be jet lag.

  Proceed to page 79.

  You take the mirror and hang it by its cord on the coat hook on the hotel-room door. Maybe a spectacular scene will greet you any moment now – a quaking of the floor, a flash of light, billows of white smoke, etc. A few minutes pass. Nothing. You catch your face in the mirror. Your eyes are swollen from crying and oversleep. You look a mess.

  You sit back on the bed. The clock shows 10.30. Only half an hour has passed. Time moves so slowly. Feeling cold, you curl up under the covers. Strangely, you feel sleepy even though you’ve just woken up. Maybe you’re still jet-lagged. Your eyes close slowly. In a state between sleep and wakefulness, you imagine you hear the lullaby ‘Nina Bobo’.

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

  The chirping of birds wakes you in the morning. With great effort you force your eyes open. The sound seems to be coming from a digital alarm clock beside your bed.

  A clock. You don’t remember any digital clock in the hotel.

  You force yourself up and then sit on the bed, rubbing your eyes repeatedly. Why has your room changed? You’re on a different bed, with floral-patterned sheets. You open the window, look out, and conclude that you aren’t in a hotel. In fact, chances are you’re not even in Berlin. You walk to the wardrobe and discover jackets and dresses that seem to be yours. Opening the door, you find yourself in an apartment fitted out with a small dining table, a futon facing a television, and a tidy kitchen.

  You hurriedly don your shoes and dash to the elevator. You’re looking for an exit. After walking a few blocks, you see a string of shops with a grocery, an Indian restaurant, and a vendor selling colourful saris. You wonder where you are. It wouldn’t be funny at all to abruptly find yourself in Mumbai. You turn and come across a boulevard. Small stores by the side of the road carry signboards with all manner of lettering: Ecuador Notaria, Foto y Digital Video, Compro Oro. Where exactly are you? South Asia? Latin America?

  Passing crowds, busy traffic, and a row of street vendors, you arrive at a train station. Now you understand. You have returned to New York. Devil’s make-up mirror has brought you back.

  Welcome to Jackson Heights, Queens.

  Proceed to the next page.

  You spend the rest of autumn and early winter in New York indulging in tourist life. Apparently, visa sponsorship from Mirrodoor Cultural Council comes with a $20,000 stipend. You consider yourself fabulously wealthy. You’ve never seen so much money in your bank account. You believe you should show this windfall the respect it deserves and spend, spend, spend, if only for a short while, the way that Faust celebrated his youth.

  Every day you blow cash on seeing the sights. You feel like you’re in a musical with a spotlight calling attention to each of your steps, accompanied by the crooning of Frank Sinatra. New York, New York. You want to be a part of it, and you even have just the vagabond shoes for it. And so, on your tourist itinerary you tick off the city’s iconic symbols one by one: Times Square, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, various museums (you learn too late that entrance is free every Friday at the Museum of Modern Art – but no biggie, because, hey, you’re a rich girl). You ask anyone passing nearby, sometimes fellow tourists, to take your picture so you can capture yourself against different backgrounds: the bright lights of 42nd Street, Brooklyn Bridge, Van Gogh’s Starry Night and the lions’ pen in the Bronx Zoo. Ah, and of course New York is a city of trains, your favourite childhood toy. You take the train anywhere and everywhere: the F to Brooklyn, the C to Harlem, and the G, connecting Brooklyn and Queens. The G train isn’t so reliable: sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not, suggesting how it got its name, G for Ghost.

  Over time, you feel awkward interrupting others for shots of yourself. In New York, people walk briskly, as if in chase. More than once you stopped in the middle of the road to check the map, and the human flow behind you immediately erupted in irritated tsk-tsking. New Yorkers don’t like to relax their pace for anything, whether it’s a red light or ambling sightseers. Once you got told off loudly for standing on the left side of an escalator. Later you learned that the city’s escalators have slow lanes and passing lanes. Yes, that’s the flock you belong to: tourists who drive others crazy, like pigeons. Taking pictures is no easy matter. It’s best to ask casual strollers or daydreamers for help. Finally you hit upon a way to memorialise your presence without depending upon the kindness of strangers: you snap pictures of your red shoes all over the city.

  Your red-shoe photo shoots create their own narratives. Others pause on the sidewalk to say how beautiful your shoes are. At Times Square a swarm of camera-toting tourists follow suit with their snaps. They take pictures not only of the shoes but of you, the photographer, as you compose your shots in a variety of poses: standing, kneeling, bent over. At Grand Central Station, someone assumes you’re working for a fashion magazine. Some ask where you got those fine red shoes.

  Oh, I bought them on eBay, you lie.

  You grow even prouder of your red shoes, which work their magic on people of all ages. You can vouch for how girls adore their sparkle. In fact, young girls often wear similar shoes. As you’re photographing your shoes on a train, a little girl, about eight or so, sticks out her feet. She is wearing glittery red slippers, like yours, but without the high heels. Her mother tries to stop her from bothering you.

  ‘Mommy, Mommy! She has Dorothy shoes too!’ The girl tugs her mother’s hand.

  ‘Honey, your legs are in the way.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ you smile.

  ‘Are you a Wizard of Oz fan too?’ asks the mother.

  ‘You know the story, right?’ the girl chimes in.

  If you want to read (or reread) about The Wizard of Oz, turn to page 21, then come back here.

  Have you just returned from page 21?

  Fine, let’s continue.

  Yes, The Wizard of Oz. Come to think of it, your shoes do look like the ruby slippers worn by Dorothy, the pigtailed girl played by Judy Garland. As a child you watched The Wizard of Oz at the house of a friend from a well-to-do family. Her parents provided her with a decent collection of Western
books and movies. You had a VCR at home, but your parents would rent Hong Kong martial arts films and Indonesian horror flicks, not Disney or other American movies. In the home you grew up in, kids were treated as having no voice, no tastes. As far as your parents were concerned, you and your sister had plenty of entertainment in the stack of VHS cassettes: The Legend of the Condor Heroes serials, and local B-movies about Sundel Bolong, a ghost who could polish off two hundred satay skewers and a big pot of soto without getting fat, thanks to the hole in her back. Only when you visited your friend did you understand that, in a different social class, a kid’s tastes could be taken seriously. Your friend’s room was filled with Disney cartoons that her parents hadn’t just rented but bought. Your friend introduced you to international children’s culture: The Wizard of Oz, Cinderella, Enid Blyton books, and Barbie dolls from Mattel, not the cheap fakes sold in the morning market.

  ‘Do you want to go to the Emerald City too?’ The little girl follows up with another question.

  ‘Hmm, maybe.’

  ‘Don’t go back to Kansas. There are tornadoes!’

  You and the girl’s mother exchange smiles.

  ‘You know, those ruby slippers don’t belong to Dorothy,’ the girl continues. ‘They were the Wicked Witch’s. She got killed when the house fell down from the tornado and squished her.’

  ‘Hmm,’ you mumble. ‘Yes, the witch.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ the mother interrupts. ‘But your shoes are from Amazon, honey.’

  On your camera’s viewfinder, the girl’s legs are still in the shot. She obviously wants a photo of her little Dorothy slippers with your big Dorothy ones. You’re no match for her pleading expression, so you take a picture and show her the result on the display screen. The girl practically jumps with joy.