Jalan Jalan

by Mike Stoner

  ‘I am angry because I know I should have made that phone call a long time ago. The phone call you made.’ His hand leaves the steering wheel, squeezes my thigh, slaps it and returns to the wheel. ‘Thank you.’

  The tightness in my stomach loosens. ‘Have you heard something?’

  ‘She called me last night. It was very difficult. But she called and we have spoken about things. About the children. About possibilities for the future.’ Charles removes his sunglasses and rubs his eyes. ‘She told me you called her. She told me you were worried about the children and about me.’ Sunglasses replaced on face. ‘Thank you for doing something I was too scared to do.’

  I lean back against my door and smile. I look at this man who does so many questionable things, but yet is as fragile and scared as the rest of us. He deals drugs, has prostitutes in his club, turns a blind eye to promiscuity, but he is also a loving father, husband and friend. It might be morally wrong for him to be all that together, but that is what he is. And what do I really know about morals?

  ‘I can’t judge you, Charles. I don’t want to. Not when you come from a world so different to mine. And who am I to judge anyone? All I know, wrong or right, is that I like you. And you have great children.’ I look from the window. The city passes by for the last time. ‘I really just wanted to help all of you. Fitri and Benny as much as, if not more, than you.’

  ‘They will be seeing their mother and sister soon. Su-Chin won’t come here, but I will be taking them to Singapore next month. I haven’t told them yet.’

  I wish I could be there when Fitri hears this, hugging her dad, then me. Her face lighting up and the corners of her mouth twitching with near laughter at the news. I’d like to see this very much. But I’d like to see Laura more. More than anything. As I think of her I wait in case she has anything to say. But no. She has stopped haunting my mind. Please, please, please let that be because she’s walking around the square in Prague, taking the city in for one last time before she boards her bus to come home. Or maybe she is already on the bus. Maybe she’s already home.

  In England it is only two in the morning. Today I’ll get her email. Or not.

  I punch and kick reality away. Smack it in the face. I can’t afford to be realistic. I should check if that email account has been set up before I leave, to see if the address even exists. No. I’ll do it after my flight. Not now, I don’t want the pain of finding out everything is still the same. I’ll endure the hope, the possibility, for as long as possible.

  ‘So how many numbers did you have to try first out of my little black book before you got the right one?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh. Just a few.’

  ‘It must have cost a lot in calls.’

  ‘A bit. But it doesn’t matter. You’ve changed my life, so I wanted to change yours.’

  ‘Well, let us hope we have both helped the other for the better.’

  We look out of our respective windows and I do hope. I think he also does. I think we both hope during that peaceful interlude in our farewell drive.

  The street stalls and roadside shacks slide past. Noodle sellers, sugarcane juice and coffee stands already have groups of people under their canopies, hiding from the sun, smoking cigarettes and playing chess. We pull up at traffic lights and three boys, no more than twelve years old and dressed in dark-stained open shirts and barefooted, work their way along the waiting cars, hands cupped to the windows. One comes to my side as the other arrives at Charles’s. In my front pocket I have my last small roll of rupiah notes. I pull it out and hand it to the boy on my side. He looks down at it in his hands, as though he has caught some beautiful creature there.

  ‘Thank you mister. Thankyouthankyou.’

  ‘Tidak apa-apa,’ I say through the closing gap of my window as Charles pulls off with the changing lights.

  ‘You are too generous. Someone will probably steal it from him.’

  ‘But maybe they won’t. And it wasn’t so much. Worth nearly nothing in English money. Not even worth me changing it at the airport.’ I suddenly remember the cigarette seller from outside the club, the boy with big, tired eyes.

  ‘Charles, can I ask one more thing?’

  He smiles. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Please can you do something to help the boys who sell cigarettes outside your clubs?’

  ‘They are nothing to do with me. They are run by street mafia gangs. I do not work with them.’

  The car swings off the main road and turns into the airport’s potholed car park.

  ‘But can you?’

  ‘Some things cannot be changed. In poor places children will always be abused in this way and worse. People will starve. Rubbish will be left on the streets to rot and for rats and beggars to eat. The rich will always use these truths for their own gains. They will learn to make excuses for themselves for not doing the right thing, for not changing things. I know because I am the same.’ He pulls up in front of the airport building and switches off the engine. With it the AC whirrs down and the temperature starts to rise. ‘I never want to be poor. I never want for my children to need for things. They never will. I will make sure of this. People will always do things that others don’t approve of, but if it keeps them and their family safe, why should they care?’

  ‘I’m just asking about some small boys on your street, nothing more. Please keep an eye on them. Can’t you just do that? Keep an eye on them?’

  ‘Alright, I will keep an eye on them, but you must do something for them too. You must let people know that they are here. Tell them about the shit things you have seen here.’ He pats my leg again. ‘Tell them the good things too, but don’t forget them, the poor cigarette boys who make your Western countries so much money. Tell your friends and keep telling them.’

  He sweeps his sunglasses off his face and his hand is held out before I have time to say any more. Our relationship is in its final moments.

  ‘Have a good journey. And thanks again for what you have done.’

  ‘Thank you, Charles.’ I hold his hand and his stare.

  ‘Let us hope Teddy is not just a crazy old man.’ He winks at me.

  ‘If he is or isn’t, it’s good to have hope. Even if it’s in the impossible.’

  ‘Impossible happens.’ His other hand covers our joined hands. ‘As you have proved to me. Su-chin talking to me again was an impossible idea, but it isn’t now.’

  A last hard squeeze and my hand is dropped. The stare lasts a moment longer and I see some light flash briefly, brightly, in his narrow dark eyes. He swings back around in his seat, sunglasses go back on his face, hands grip the wheel, he squints frontwards.

  ‘Goodbye. Good luck.’ The engine is juddering again. Sunlight reflects off the bonnet as cool air blows across my face.

  ‘Goodbye, Charles.’

  Across the zones. Time speeds up in the white bullet cutting through the blue. Cutting the sky like a scalpel. Moments push together, squash up. The Indian Ocean glitters seven miles below. Next sea becomes land. Dubai shimmers on the approach. Bags are unloaded and loaded into a different plane. Lifting again. Dubai fades behind. Cutting through the air once more, defying the turn of the world. Europe passes below. A small strip of sea. England. Londoners and their tick-tock lives await.

  Descending through cloud. Shaking us back to reality, back to the current. Here it comes. London: grey, wet, sick, only aware of itself.

  Tires scar the runway with black. Nearly fifteen hours of travelling. Time on the clock has only changed by nine. It is early evening. July thirtieth.

  I have stopped trying to picture the meeting. I have stopped trying to work out how it could be, if it is to be. I have even slept, and then I have been awake with streamers flying around in my stomach, a marching band striding across my chest, beating drums and blowing trumpets. I have been breathless. My head has almost spun on its shoulders.

  An electronic ding-dong. People are standing, swinging bags from overhead lockers, standing too soon, impatient, staring in t
he same direction at the back of heads, all waiting for the stale air to be released from this sealed container. Waiting to stream out, to walk like a gigantic creature to the passport gates, where one by one, each person will be separated off from the mass and given permission to get on with their planned lives, or turned away, forbidden entry to the land of false hope and feeble promises.

  I will live my hope, false or not. I will. It cannot be any other way.

  I want to rush, want to climb over their stupid heads, jump from the plane to the tarmac and run to the building, smash through the glass doors, vault the passport control and hammer the keys on a computer, but I wait. I wait.

  ‘Mivvi6969. Mivvi6969.’ Only I can hear the words that come from my lips like baby breaths.

  Finally I stand on legs of rotten wood. They are near numb and seem to bend in strange directions and quiver and to want to snap under my weight as I walk. I hang on to the end of the long creature which winds down the steps from the plane and slithers down tubes and along corridors. It grows as more people join it from other passageways. I am no longer at the tail, I am in the middle, being pushed along. The creature has stopped rushing. It now shuffles forward in little movements of its infinite feet.

  Up ahead passport signs tell the creature how it is to divide.

  I follow the line in front, controlling myself, telling my muscles to relax. Don’t push. Don’t rush. This moment will move on and you will be on the other side of the passport control very soon. Very soon. Then just your bag to collect, and then through the sliding doors and into the nearest internet café. A few taps on a keyboard, the log-in screen will appear. Type it in, icecreamlover@spacemail. com. Was that it? Was it? Fuck. Was it?

  Of course it was. It was. You know it was. Calm. Stay calm.

  Just three people between me and the expressionless man in the passport uniform.

  Mivvi6969.

  Smutty girl. God, I miss you.

  Be there.

  Press Enter.

  Wait for the page to load. I can wait. I will wait and watch. It will load.

  And look for the messages. There will be a message. She has sent me a message. She has. She has. She has. She must have. God, she must have.

  Certainty and uncertainty swirl around inside me.

  I must be certain. It is my only option. Laura cannot die again. It is impossible. It would be a joke. A big, sick joke that would destroy me. She will not be dead again. The email will be there.

  I force an unsure smile as I stand in front of the passport man. He has a moustache, brown and straight, like it’s drawn on in quick downward movements. Blue eyes. Lines around them. I hand my passport to him. The eyes fix on the open page. Then on me. The moustache doesn’t move. Doesn’t twitch.

  Hurry up. Please hurry up. This moment is stuck. It isn’t moving on.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘What? Oh.’ My throat is dry. The drumming of my heart carries along arteries into my neck and my legs and hands like someone banging on heating pipes. I can feel it in my temples.

  HURRY UP.

  ‘Indonesia.’

  ‘Have you been gone long?’ Eyes don’t blink.

  ‘A while. I’ve been gone a while.’

  Please, please, please. I close my eyes. I can see a computer screen behind my eyelids.

  One message.

  Laura.

  —Come get me, Ice-Cream Boy.

  ‘But I’m back now.’

  The moustache twitches. The corners of lips turn under the brown hair. The eyes narrow.

  ‘Interesting name, Mr Wells.’

  Oh, come on.

  ‘Yes, my father had a thing for science fiction and time travel. He thought the initials would be funny.’

  Science fiction. It’s not science fiction. It’s possible. It is.

  ‘Harper Gregory Wells. A good name.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Give me my passport and let me go.

  ‘I read The Time Machine, too. I can remember a bit. Now let me think.’

  Oh please, do I have to. Come on, you idiot.

  ‘What was it.’ He peers to the ceiling. ‘Ah, yes. “There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.” I always liked that one, the thought of time as a dimension.’

  I look at him and a smile turns the corners of his moustache. Then it’s gone. He hands me my passport.

  ‘Welcome back, Mr Wells.’ ‘Thank you. It’s good to be back.’

  And I’m through.

  And running.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  T hanks to Sian for being honest and giving some bonzer suggestions.

  That’s it.

  The Tuttle Story:

  “Books to Span the East and West”

  Many people are surprised to learn that the world’s leading publisher of books on Asia had humble beginnings in the tiny American state of Vermont. The company’s founder, Charles E. Tuttle, belonged to a New England family steeped in publishing.

  Tuttle’s father was a noted antiquarian book dealer in Rutland, Vermont. Young Charles honed his knowledge of the trade working in the family bookstore, and later in the rare books section of Columbia University Library. His passion for beautiful books—old and new—never wavered throughout his long career as a bookseller and publisher.

  After graduating from Harvard, Tuttle enlisted in the military and in 1945 was sent to Tokyo to work on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff. He was tasked with helping to revive the Japanese publishing industry, which had been utterly devastated by the war. After his tour of duty was completed, he left the military, married a talented and beautiful singer, Reiko Chiba, and in 1948 began several successful business ventures.

  To his astonishment, Tuttle discovered that postwar Tokyo was actually a book-lover’s paradise. He befriended dealers in the Kanda district and began supplying rare Japanese editions to American libraries. He also imported American books to sell to the thousands of GIs stationed in Japan. By 1949, Tuttle’s business was thriving, and he opened Tokyo’s very first English-language bookstore in the Takashimaya Department Store in Nihonbashi, to great success. Two years later, he began publishing books to fulfill the growing interest of foreigners in all things Asian.

  Though a westerner, Tuttle was hugely instrumental in bringing a knowledge of Japan and Asia to a world hungry for information about the East. By the time of his death in 1993, he had published over 6,000 books on Asian culture, history and art—a legacy honored by Emperor Hirohito in 1983 with the “Order of the Sacred Treasure,” the highest honor Japan can bestow upon a non-Japanese.

  The Tuttle company today maintains an active backlist of some 1,500 titles, many of which have been continuously in print since the 1950s and 1960s—a great testament to Charles Tuttle’s skill as a publisher. More than 60 years after its founding, Tuttle Publishing is more active today than at any time in its history, still inspired by Charles Tuttle’s core mission—to publish fine books to span the East and West and provide a greater understanding of each.