The Wandering

by Intan Paramaditha

  You keep trying to excavate memories. What else do you need to remember?

  ‘God willing, Samara will continue, Dik.’

  ‘Samara? Who? What?’

  ‘Samara. In your household. Sakinah mawaddah wa rahmah. Sa-ma-ra. Familial tranquillity, love and mercy.’

  Your sister’s words are causing panic to set in. You’re the wife of a man named Teddy, a religious leader. In what world is this even possible?

  ‘Ah, there’s Teddy, on his way with Abah,’ she says. ‘You’re coming again for the Tarawih prayers tomorrow, right?’

  From a distance you see your brother-in-law – Abah – walking with his son (that must be Raihan, you think). Next to him is a handsome, well-built, light-skinned man with glasses. The three of them wear white robes and caps. As soon as Abah approaches, your sister goes to him and kisses his hand, the gesture of a virtuous wife. The man next to your brother-in-law walks towards you, smiling warmly. The closer you get, the more handsome he looks, and the deeper the panic that descends upon you.

  In the car, you remain silent. The dashing, elegant cleric who is evidently your spouse drives a BMW. As his wife, you likely live well. But in the passenger seat, you feel anxious. What brought you here? You try to remember what has happened to you.

  The snow globe in the mosque is the key. When was the last time you saw one?

  Bob’s apartment. That’s it. Devil came, offered you a second chance, and you took it. You placed your red shoes in front of the door. After that you remember nothing else. Bob, New York and everything that belonged to you has been lost somewhere. Then where is Devil? There could hardly be a dirtier trick than dropping you here, as the virtuous wife of a cleric with a BMW. You sure as hell would never have made a life choice like this.

  ‘I found the magazine at the bookstore.’ The man next to you finally breaks the silence. ‘I bet you’re proud of me, darling.’

  Everything about him is a bit over the top. He’s too good-looking, his voice too suave, and he speaks like an actor in a soap opera. You feel nauseous. You say nothing. Apparently, that isn’t the desired reaction. Your husband opens the glovebox and takes out an issue of Time magazine. He turns on the car’s interior light so you can have a good look at the cover. You see three turbaned men – all handsome, clear-skinned and wearing spectacles – looking stylish for the camera: your husband, the famous Aa Jim and another cleric you don’t recognise. Above their photo is the title ‘Wealth and Taste: Young Muslim Celebrity Preachers in Asia’. You feel dizzy.

  ‘I want to get out,’ you say.

  You refuse to be a celebrity cleric’s wife. This choice is one you’ve never made, never would have made, and it has to end this very moment. The man next to you bursts into uproarious laughter. His guffaws are prolonged and terrifying, making you cringe. Then, his handsome face begins to wrinkle. It dawns on you: your husband’s ears are pointed and hairy.

  ‘Devil!’ You yank off his cap and tug his hair forcefully. ‘Damn you, Devil!’

  ‘Pleased to meet you again! Glad you guessed my name.’

  He keeps laughing heartily, and you feel an intense desire to strangle him. The only thing that stops you is that he’s driving and you don’t want to die in a stupid accident.

  ‘I’m famous now. Awesome, huh?’

  ‘You motherfucker! Why are you pretending to be religious?’

  ‘Pretending? Pretending?’ Devil cackles. ‘It just so happens that the devil has always been tight with religious types.’

  ‘Your jokes aren’t funny.’

  ‘This is no joke, baby. We’re having ourselves a brand-new adventure.’

  He presses a button to turn on the car stereo. Samba percussion and rattling maracas come through the speakers. You recognise the Rolling Stones song that’s playing, but you’ve never really listened to the lyrics until today. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself …’ Devil, in his guise as a cleric, taps along to the song on the steering wheel with gusto. A man of wealth and taste, indeed.

  Ten in the evening in Jakarta. You look out the window at the boulevards and buildings passing by. For the first time, an air-conditioned luxury car makes you feel trapped. Where will you go after this? The night is still young; you will demand that Devil returns the lost years, or at least tells you where those years went. And this horrifying joke had better only be a temporary whim, Devil’s brief jest. If not, you’ll find a way to escape, escape abroad, to the moon, to hell, anywhere. Anywhere but here.

  FINIS

  Then what about you? Will you stay on in the Netherlands, wandering without purpose? Or settle in one spot for a while? Will you buy a ticket and return to Indonesia? How does your story end?

  Nobody has the right to determine your adventures, including an author with arbitrary whims. Hecate is right. It’s time for you to write the end of your own adventure (maybe it will never really end):

  FINIS

  Upon returning to Bob’s apartment, you gather your things into a suitcase. After a year away, there’s not much to collect but your case quickly fills. Your movements are fast, almost robotic. You don’t want to think. You don’t want to flit around.

  You kneel in front of your bag, your shoulders sore. What else can you pack? You scan Bob’s entire apartment. The desk. You’d often see Bob working there, his back to you, while you sat on the couch watching a movie on your laptop. You usually wore headphones because you didn’t want to disrupt his concentration. Bob’s large map remains in place, as do the calligraphy paintings and half-dozen snow globes. You glance at the bookcases that line the walls, left and right. Just take any book you want, Bob always said. You took a novel from a shelf once or twice and cracked it open, but you never made a serious attempt to read them.

  Your eyes have grown hot.

  You feel empty, as bare as your apartment in Jackson Heights when you decided to move to Bob’s. Move, purge. You’ve been cleansed of everything: Bob, apartment, New York. You are spacious now. Someone could probably run around inside you.

  New York. You don’t know why you want to stay. Because you’re used to queuing for kebabs at the Halal Guys truck in front of the Hilton on Sixth Avenue? Because you know how to save time on the train from Jackson Heights to West 4th? Go to the front car so you can get off by the basketball court near La Candela, not at the other exit. Flimsy reasons. You cast about for something firmer, and your eyelids start to droop.

  You don’t know what time you wake. Is it morning? You feel thirsty. You stumble towards the kitchen. Your eyes widen when you see that the refrigerator door is open.

  Shhh …

  A diminutive man puts his finger to his lips. He pops the top off a bottle of Bob’s beer. It’s been sitting there since before you left, before all this happened. You rub your eyes.

  Little Johnny.

  Where did you meet him? On television? In dreams?

  He nods, as if he can read your mind. He looks up, downs the beer.

  Yes, in dreams.

  He starts dancing. You seem to hear music. Little Johnny holds the beer bottle as if crooning into a microphone: In dreams I talk to you …

  You stand frozen. Why does he keep appearing uninvited? Is he an incarnation of the devil?

  I’m your guardian angel.

  Raqib or Atid? When you were studying recitation, you memorised the angels’ duties. Two angels always follow us, jotting down our good and bad deeds.

  Little Johnny giggles.

  I’m not that kind of angel. I don’t like taking notes. I’ll leave that to writers.

  Little Johnny continues to prance around. You don’t know what to do, and stay motionless as you watch his odd little jig.

  Don’t go. Stay here.

  This isn’t my home.

  Really? he asks. What language do you dream in?

  You follow his steps from kitchen to living room. He stomps on Bob’s carpet, romps on his couch, still acting as if he’s holding a mike.

  New York, New York. Eve
ryone wants to claim New York, but New York isn’t anyone’s property. It belongs to a rat pack. New York is your home because you’re a queen.

  Queen? Queen of what?

  The little man laughs uproariously. Before he disappears in the dark, you hear his question, so warm and familiar:

  Where have all the rats gone?

  Suddenly you feel cold.

  You see a thermostat on the wall. 74 degrees Fahrenheit. You think in Fahrenheit. You shouldn’t feel cold. Maybe the heater isn’t working. You walk towards the radiator near the window, and put your hand near it. Cold. That’s when you notice a strange smell, as if something is rotting behind it. You shift it a little.

  You scream. Behind the radiator lies a giant rat carcass. Not just one, but several – eight, ten – bound together, their tails intertwined, entangled. Flesh, fur and grime, inseparable. A huge, revolting lump of rodent.

  On Sunday morning you wake with your emotions in disarray. Your dream last night was really weird. You have no desire to see what you found behind the heater ever again. You feel disgusted, but the giant rat ball rouses an unexpected sentiment: you will stay here. Nothing can drive you from your home. You’ve found an answer to Little Johnny’s question after all this time.

  Where have all the rats gone?

  You will go where the rats go. Because you are a queen.

  And so, to Queens you return. You leave Bob’s apartment and take the subway to meet Mr Zhao – the E train, the train that brought you home for the first time.

  Wei has graduated from NYU and now works as an immigration lawyer. He lives in Astoria, a ten-minute train ride from Mr Zhao’s home in Elmhurst. On Sundays, he visits his parents and occasionally helps translate for his father.

  ‘Wei, do you know of any jobs I can do?’

  Wei thinks for a moment.

  ‘My aunt’s restaurant in Flushing needs workers,’ he said. ‘But the restaurant is too …’

  You wait. He looks hesitant.

  ‘Have you ever eaten at a Chinese restaurant in Flushing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re too busy. Crowded. Chaotic.’ Wei seems to be searching for the exact term to describe his aunt’s restaurant. Finally he hits upon it: ‘Hard core.’

  You feel your resolve shrivel.

  ‘Work in Flushing definitely wears you out. Do you want to go back to La Candela? You can call Tony.’

  You think of La Candela, the cafe that introduced you to Bob and the world you wanted to enter. But full of confidence, you say, ‘Flushing. I choose Flushing.’

  You stay on in New York. Maybe this is your way of living through paradox, simultaneously waiting for Bob while forgetting Bob. He might come back, he might not, but you will stay. Your old apartment in Jackson Heights is now too expensive for you, so you live in Flushing, on the third floor of a house owned by Mr Zhao, and every day you walk to work at Kam Lun Restaurant.

  No rich American guy arrives to rescue you, but you feel no need to be rescued. You develop tight friendships with several Indonesian girls who work as nannies, but their friendships bore you over time because their main goal is to marry a white man. For you, adventure means enjoying the corners of the city that take you beyond banal fantasies of New York – not as a tourist in Times Square, or the girlfriend of a white intellectual at NYU or Columbia, or a hipster in Brooklyn. Flushing is a wilder side of New York. You work at Kam Lun Restaurant for a few years, setting aside money on a regular basis. When you’ve saved enough, you’ll continue your education at the New School and study Creative Writing. You imagine that one day your modest room in Flushing will give birth to a book about a red-shoes adventure.

  Your story ends here. But before we part, do you want to know what happened to your red shoes?

  If you want to know the fate of the red shoes, turn to the next page.

  If you don’t want to know the fate of the red shoes, well, who gives a damn? Turn to the next page.

  Noel finds himself in a taxi. He doesn’t know how he got here; he’s not wearing his usual tight shirt and jeans, but a light blue dress and white stockings. Noel sees his reflection in the rear-view mirror. He’s wearing an auburn wig, pigtails tied in blue ribbons. Is this a dream? Why is he dressed like a young girl? He sees people passing by on the road, wearing all sorts of costumes. Some wear pink fur shawls, beaded black velvet masquerade masks and purple organza wings. Wings? He has a feeling he’s not in Los Angeles any more.

  He gets out of the cab and steps into the crowd. The sea of ​​people is moving towards a road: Oxford Street. His glittering red heels click on the pavement. They sound loud and sexy.

  ‘Hey, Judy Garland!’

  Shouts and whistles can be heard from the roadside. A group of shirtless men wave. Their muscular frames make Noel grin. He finally understands and responds to his admirers’ greetings by putting some sass in his step. Dorothy and her magical red shoes have landed in Oz.

  Sydney Mardi Gras. A fiesta is about to begin somewhere over the rainbow.

  FINIS

  You refuse to part with your shoes. You race as fast as you can, leaving the Shoemaker’s tomb, down the corridor in search of a way out, past the chapel and unlit candles. You pass some empty pews facing the altar and turn. Again, you follow a dark corridor. You run for a while but then come upon the same scene: the same altar, the same pews.

  You stop, gasping for breath. You are circling in a labyrinth.

  You shout, but the sole response is your own echo. In this church, your only companions are mute statues of Jesus. You run further, more panicked, groping every wall, desperate for an exit. The cathedral is pitch-dark.

  You continue your flight until you return to your starting point: the tomb of the Shoemaker. Suddenly you hear the sound of stone crumbling beneath your feet. You leap backwards as the cracks spread in each direction. The Shoemaker’s tomb yawns open, sucking you inside.

  You see nothing but darkness as you tumble into a tunnel. You manage to scream, but you have fallen too far. You will never be found.

  Your story is coming to an end now. To learn your final fate, turn to page 414.

  Soekarno Hatta Airport, Jakarta, February 2, 2009

  Upon disembarking, you’re assailed without warning by tropical air. You look at the joglo-style ceiling and wood carvings in each corner. Under dim white lights, you see the same shades of brown, the same tiled floor. The airport remains unchanged, stuck in an eighties time warp, although you could call it exotic. Your skin feels sticky as you line up in front of an immigration officer. You remove your jacket. As you enter baggage claim, a large poster on the wall greets you, bearing a sugar-coated slogan for migrant labourers: ‘Welcome home, foreign exchange heroes’. Your suitcase is among the last to arrive on the carousel. You uplift it and pass straight through customs. Without your red shoes, you have nothing of note to declare, anyway.

  Before looking for a taxi, you go to the airline office. You’re keen to hand over the nameless woman’s notebook. It’s not a matter of being a good Samaritan: you don’t want to keep it, and hope someone else will throw it away to spare you the guilt. After reading the piece about the haunted house, you’d turned to the next page. Written there was a single word:

  TAMAT

  For no clear reason, you hated seeing this Indonesian word, indicating that you’d reached the end. Maybe the framing letter ‘t’ made it ring poorly in your ears. A palindrome: like a dead end. On the plane, you picked up a pen and scribbled over it with as much energy as you could muster.

  The airline clerk takes the notebook and asks you to wait a moment. Maybe he wants to write a report. There is no name printed on the notebook, making it nearly impossible to return. He must simply be following protocol. And really, you don’t care whether the notebook makes it back to its owner or not. If it’s important, the owner will search for it. Maybe the clerk will keep it for several days and then throw it in the trash.

  To your surprise, he returns with a large
plastic bag that reads ‘duty free’. Your jaw drops when he hands it to you. Apparently, just fifteen minutes ago a woman reported the loss of a notebook and asked the clerk to call her at her hotel if someone returned it.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘She said it was a present,’ the clerk says. ‘A gesture of thanks.’

  Bewildered, you leave the office. As you queue for a cab, you open the bag. Inside is a light blue toy piano and a card, unsigned: Thank you. Hopefully we’ll meet someday at a crossroads.

  Continue to the next page.

  You take a taxi to your sister’s house in Bintaro. From behind the glass you stare at rows of billboards and giant malls sheltering beneath a dull grey sky (you dare to wager that new malls have been built since you left). On the overpass, the flow of vehicles scarcely moves. The driver’s repeated haphazard braking makes you feel like vomiting. You force yourself to nap because the trip to your sister’s house can take two hours. Welcome to Jakarta!

  As happens so often in this city, though, you have miscalculated. The taxi arrives at your sister’s house three hours later. Instead of napping, you shifted position constantly, restraining your urge to pee. Your stomach complains bitterly as you emerge from the cab, with sensations that lie between nausea and hunger. In front of your sister’s house, a Kijang is backing into a parking space. Your sister waves at you with a glance from behind the wheel, but immediately returns to her rear-view mirror, looking tense. The car lurches forwards, backwards, then forwards again. This is a novel sight. The family Avanza has metamorphosed into a new Kijang. And now she, who has never driven in her life, sits in the driver’s seat. She must have somehow squeezed in time to learn while looking after baby number three.

  Then comes a bang and a squeal of brakes. Realising that she has hit something, your sister switches off the engine and flings opens the car door. You run after her and see a shattered statue of a chubby figure with a pointed hat. You’re speechless. It’s the garden gnome that you’ve seen in the photo.