by Tash Aw
“Traffic’s bad today, isn’t it?” Mick said. He sounded cheery, but Margaret easily discerned the note of anxiety in his voice. He reached for the radio and flicked it on. “If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air …” the voice crooned, “you’re sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.”
“These guys look as if they’re high on drugs,” she said.
“The only thing they’re high on is Sukarno’s revolution. They know they want change, but they haven’t got a clue how they want to achieve it. Don’t worry, they’re just students—you’ve probably taught most of them.”
“… if you like the taste of lobster stew served by a window with an ocean view …”
They broke free from the last of the demonstrators and slipped away like a boat freeing itself from a shallow shore, escaping into deep water.
“What did Bill Schneider mean by ‘this time’?” Mick asked as they joined the sea of cars and becaks and trucks.
“… you’re sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod …”
“What did he mean by what?”
“This time. He said he wouldn’t ask you to do anything you didn’t want to—this time.”
“Did he? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“What happened last time?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“‘It’s the nonverbal communication that forms the basis of society.’ What do you think you’re communicating now?” They had come to a halt in the traffic. A young boy, shirtless and barefoot, wearing a dirty pair of maroon shorts, pressed a newspaper against the window and held out one hand for money.
“Nothing—especially since I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You’re twirling your hair and fiddling with your nose, and only just resisting the urge to bite your fingernails because you know I’ll notice it. And you’re frowning as if you’re confused. I’d say you were communicating the fact that you’re lying. Doesn’t take a fucking anthropologist to work that one out.”
“Bill Schneider said a lot of things—I can’t recall every single detail. Besides, he’s not exactly Chekhov when it comes to choosing his words, in case you hadn’t noticed.” She was feeling very hot; the windows were still closed and she began to think that even the choking Jakarta air would be better than the stifling heat of the car. “Can we turn this godforsaken music off?” She reached for the dashboard and fiddled with the knobs, but nothing worked.
“Whatever he is, he isn’t a fool. So, you worked for the CIA? How fantastic! You never told me.”
“Even you know how ridiculous that sounds.”
“Not as ridiculous as your denials. It’s obvious you were thick as thieves with Bill Schneider. Come on, what did he have you do? Was it … sexual?”
“One day when you’re in a less immature mood I will tell you all about my very limited involvement with Bill.”
“That had better be soon, otherwise you can ask him and not me to drive you around town.”
The Jakarta sky was a murky ocher color, a blank canvas of yellow brown haze. If you stared at it long enough it glowed, faintly but definitely, becoming phosphorescent like a neon bulb. From behind this curtain of smog the sun cast a light that did not seem real; every thing in this city looked uncertain, imprecise “… if you spend an evening you’ll want to stay watching the moonlight on Cape Cod Bay… .” Margaret continued to gaze at the sky. She rolled down the window and felt the rush of hot air against her face, and, before long, the dust and grit on her lips and tongue. She could not make out where roads merged or stopped, or where the buildings began and ended. There was only the iridescent sky above her.
Go on, take this.
There were no lights where they were. The city glowed faintly in the distance but they were beyond its grasp now. The car lay on the muddy road flanked by rows of bushes leading deeper into the palm oil estate. Johan reached for Bob’s outstretched hand. He could just about make out a dark square on the paler background of Bob’s palm. It was a piece of paper, but he could not tell what color it was. He lifted it with his fingertips and put it in his mouth and then took a sip of whiskey from the hip flask he had with him.
Thanks, Bob.
Anytime, Brother.
The shapes of the darkened bushes around them seemed to swell like rain clouds on a December afternoon. Now and then a car would drive by on the main road and its headlights would sweep past, filtering through the foliage in a burst of white light before leaving them alone in the dark once more.
Not again, for god’s sake, Farah said. You said we were going to the movies tonight, you said we were just going to have a nice, quiet evening.
We are, Johan said. Everything’s … quiet. Okay, we’re going home. Enough of this. Hey, Sis, Bob said. Just take some of this and you’ll feel better. Where the hell do you two get this stuff? Johan shrugged. All over. Anywhere. Don’t lie to me. I don’t see it when I’m walking down the street. Who gives it to you?
No one gives you anything in this town, Johan said. He held up his hand and made a twiddling motion with his thumb and forefinger. Everything has a price.
Johan has friends everywhere, Bob said. Especially in Bangkok, don’t you, Johan?
The brotherhood of Asian nations, that’s what it is, Johan said. There’s a new world order. Freedom to trade, it’s our right. But this, this excellent product, this comes all the way from the U. S. of A. He laughed and made that twiddling motion with his fingers again. Farah’s face was lit by the moon but somehow blurred. Johan blinked but could not make out the details of her features. Her skin looked powdery, almost white, clearer, brighter than ever. This light, he said, it looks like frost. He reached out to touch her chin. He needed to make sure he was not imagining it.
Get lost, she said, and swatted his hand away. You wouldn’t know what frost looks like, you’ve never seen it.
There was frost in England when we went last year.
Not where we were there wasn’t. Oh god, look at you. Your eyes. I hate it when this happens to your eyes. I feel as if I’m staring into a big, black, empty well.
I’m okay. I’m okay.
Leave him alone, Sis. Bob lay sprawled out on the backseat. He’s fine. Everything’s just fine.
Johan, you’re in no shape to drive. What the hell is Daddy going to say if he finds out? Give me the keys.
What are you going to do? You don’t know how to drive. Johan started up the car as he spoke and reversed slowly until they were on the main road. Don’t worry, your daddy isn’t going to find out.
He’s your father too. And you know Mummy always wakes up early. She’ll kill you if she sees you like this. Please drive slowly, Johan. Let’s go home.
No. We’re going to the movies. I promised you.
They sped toward the city, streaming along the smooth roads that led sinuously into the heart of this bright new town. They glided past construction sites for the new housing estates on the outskirts, fields of mud and concrete ringed by chain-link fences. In the purple moonlight they looked like an ocean, an ocean troubled by small jagged waves carrying all manner of flotsam. Quickly, then, they were in the city. The buildings flowed past them, blurred and glittering, casting their lights upward into the sky. Sometimes, Johan thought, sometimes it doesn’t feel as if I am in the city, the city is in me.
Outside the Rialto a throng of people was basking in the golden glare of the ten thousand bulbs that lit the theater and the neon bill boards spread across the theater’s facade of angular pigeonholes. Next to a sign saying NO PARKING there was a thick rope strung across two iron posts. There were some boys and girls laughing cold, hard laughs. They watched the Mercedes as it crawled to a halt.
Don’t look back at them, Johan, Farah said. Just don’t provoke anyone.
Johan honked, pressing long and hard until the crowd dispersed. An old Chinese man emerged, bent over, hurrying, and uncoiled the rope from the posts. It hung from his hands like a dead python. He waved the car into a space
just outside the steps to the theater.
Hello, Tuan, hello, Miss Farah, he said as they walked up the stairs. Coming for the midnight show?
Hello, Seng, Farah replied. How’s your grandson? Must be big now. (Johan, Bob, she whispered, for god’s sake try and behave normally, walk faster.)
Miss Farah, if you want, tonight midnight show is The Love Eterne, otherwise just started there is Story of the Sword and the Sabre, part one, or Three Dolls of Hong Kong.
Oh, I thought From Russia with Love was still showing.
James Bond finished yesterday. So sorry, Miss Farah.
Johan said, It’s Imperialist Western nonsense anyway.
Next month we are going to have Contempt. Don’t know what it’s about, but sounds good. That French woman on the poster looks so beautiful.
That’s fine, Seng, three tickets for the midnight show then, please. What was it again?
The Love Eterne. This way please, for you—no need to pay.
Of course must pay.
Please don’t mention it anymore, Miss Farah.
Johan settled in his chair in the musty darkness of the theater. Over the wild symphony of the music there was the steady crack-cracking of people eating pumpkin seeds, splitting the shells between their teeth before dropping them onto the floor. It sounded to him like drops of rain falling heavily on sand, the start of a storm at the seaside. He remembered his first holiday with his new family in Port Dickson. He had wanted to see the sea, to find out if he was still frightened by it. So he had gone into the water late in the afternoon, when it was raining, when he was not supposed to go swimming. The rain drops were heavy and cold on his head, the sea warm, so warm, and when he put his head under water the sound of the rain falling on the surface of the sea was just like the sound of the rain on the zinc roof at the orphanage, only softer. He had closed his eyes. Brilliant colored cloudbursts filled his head. He could feel the pulse in his temples, quick and insistent. His cheeks were hot but he felt a thin chill at the back of his neck.
It’s so bloody hot in here, Bob said. I’m sweating like a dog. Is there even air-conditioning in here? This place is rubbish, you wouldn’t get this in Singapore.
Shh.
The Technicolor screen swirled with vivid hues. Johan tried to follow the story, but he could not make sense of it. All he could see was the wash of color. Blue hills. Streams of gold cloth. Fluorescent green fields. Rivers of pure cobalt. A violet sky. There was a girl pretending to be a boy, falling in love with a boy. She loved him, but he did not love her. Or maybe he loved him, but he did not love him.
Johan, stop laughing. Are you okay?
Fine. Everything’s perfect.
He loves him but he goes away from him. She goes away, far away. He realizes that he loves him and she loves him and he loves her. He feels sad. She feels sad. They both feel sad.
Why?
Why what? Johan, please stop mumbling.
There is plenty of wind. It is cold in here. They both die. There is a storm. White powder fills the world. Rainstorm on sand.
Johan. Farah put her hand on his arm. Her fingers are not cold, not warm, just perfect and unmoving and strong. I’m worried about you. Johan, look at me. She touched his face gently. Look at me.
The white shower was over and the light was dim on her face, dancing faintly across her small nose and wide-open eyes. Don’t worry, I’m happy now, Farah.
She gripped his arm tightly. No you’re not. I am. I can’t remember anything.
Breathe deeply, slowly.
I wish it could be like this all the time. I wish I could forget everything. I don’t want to remember anything, Farah. Nothing at all.
Will you two shut up over there? Bob said.
Farah? I’m here.
Later, when they were back in the car and the world seemed less brilliant, Johan looked again at Farah. Her hair was messed up by the wind blowing hard through the windows as they sliced along the darkened streets. He said, What kind of dreams do you have?
Don’t know. Mostly nice ones. Sometimes scary. I guess just normal ones. You?
I can’t sleep at night.
I know. I can hear you fidgeting and coughing. Sometimes you sigh and cry out. Are your dreams so bad?
If I fall asleep it all comes back to me and I wake up again.
Farah turned around to check that Bob was asleep. What comes back to you?
The orphanage. The boys. The rain dripping through the roof, the sound it made, like a ticking of a huge clock that would never stop. The dorm was long and thin and there were rows of cots, just sheets of canvas between pieces of wood, not even real beds, and the rows were so close together there was barely any space to walk between them. You could hear the breathing of the other boys when they were asleep and every night there would be someone crying in his sleep. And my brother—
—Oh no, Johan, you know we’re not supposed to talk about that. She put her hand on his.
That’s such a stupid rule. Why? I do—
Shhh, she said.
He liked the sound her lips made. You’re the only one I can talk to, Farah, the only who has ever—
No, Mummy cares. She loves you.
No, he said. She needs me.
They did not stop. They drove through the silent city.
· 10 ·
After Margaret left the house Adam found himself alone, again.
Being alone was not something he was good at. He had realized this over the past week, during his long voyage through the islands and along the never-ending sweep of the Great Post Road through Java. There had rarely been a moment when he had been physically on his own. Whether on the boat from Perdo or the bus coming into Surabaya, he had been surrounded by people, by bodies that jostled against him and voices that shouted obscenities at him. Waiting for the bus in a village near Yogya he had endured a whole evening of an old Madurese woman reminiscing about the island she had left behind; he sat under purple neon lights, listening to her tales of knife fights and ghosts. On the ferry three nights before, he had listened to a young couple sing songs of love while he was throwing up violently into the dark blue water. The words had spun wildly in his head—“across the wide wide sea I will wait wait for you you”—making the rocking of the boat seem even worse. And yet, in spite of the endless cacophony and the crush of people, he had begun to realize just how alone he felt. He had also begun to realize how little he liked it. Loneliness, this curious state of being alone, was not something he had ever experienced in his life with Karl. It had not even crossed his mind that he should ever feel alone. In fact he had, if anything, only known the opposite sensation, of wanting to be rid of Karl, to be alone in that house by the sea.
During the seemingly endless bus ride on the Great Post Road, punctuated by nighttime stops at nameless villages, he had tried to think about whether he had ever been lonely at the orphanage. He was never left on his own, of that he was certain. There were always other boys around him, and though their faces eluded him, their presence remained: a shifting mass of bodies swirling around him, even in his sleep. But in this shadowy crowd he had never felt alone, or even lonely, as he did now, because there had always been someone more constant with him, someone who remained by his side and was not part of the amorphous mass—Johan, whose face he could not, sadly, recall. He closed his eyes. The bus jolted as it rumbled over the potholes; his bottom felt sore and he could feel the metal bars through the thin vinyl-covered seat. He knew that Johan’s face would not miraculously appear to him after all these years, but he could not resist reconstructing his brother, as he so often did, in these drowsy presleep moments, using the few fragments he had retained: Johan’s perfectly straight bearing (he had been the tallest of all the boys in the orphanage); his shaven head (that one was easy: They had all had shaved heads); his curiously long fingers, with the middle three on each hand exactly the same length, so that when he held them together they seemed squared-off, cut neatly at the end; his earlobes (or at least o
ne of them) shaped like a tiny, fleshy flower that you could reach out and pinch, time and time again, but never crush; and finally this: the smell of soap mixed with something harsher, like turpentine, or kerosene—he could not be sure of this last detail. Adam was no longer even frustrated by the fact that Johan’s face remained elusive. He re-created Johan’s entire being, as he always did, imagining how he might look today; and yet he resisted giving his brother the final defining features: no eyes, no lips, no nose. He knew that whatever details he supplied would be wrong.
