by Tash Aw
“I can remember my babu,” he said at last. “Not her face or eyes or nose or any details; I just remember her being there with me and then suddenly disappearing. I can remember my father shouting and my mother crying. A house that was very silent—apart from my father’s tantrums and my mother’s sobbing. But most of all, my babu. I remember her because I remember missing her when we went back to Holland. I remember asking for her, long after we had moved back to The Hague, asking when Babu was going to come back, but no one would ever answer. She was a proper babu, you know—she nursed me. My own mother couldn’t express milk when I was born. When we were back in Holland, whenever I got ill—which was often—she would say, ‘You’re such a weak child because you were nursed by that woman.’”
“That’s awful.” Margaret noticed that Karl made no attempt to remove his hand from hers. “You weren’t really ill that often, were you?”
“All the time. I hated The Hague. I hated that house. Now that I can remember. It had very low ceilings with beams that were painted black, and you could see the cobwebs forming on them, silky balls of fluff that I always wanted to touch. There was a small window in my room at the top of the house. Half the view was obscured by the sloping roof, and in the winter, when the snow settled on the tiles, all I could see was this blurred screen of white, and in the distance the gray of the sky. I would lie in bed with the sheets pulled up to my face, and the woolen blankets would tickle my nose. I never got used to wool. And I would feel the cold seeping into my chest, and I would know that I was falling ill. I think I had probably forgotten about Buru by then, but my body hadn’t. It always craved warmth. When the other children put on their hats and gloves and went skating, I knew that I wasn’t one of them, that I was from somewhere else. At school, during history lessons, whenever the teacher said, ‘We conquered’ or ‘ We civilized them,’ it took me a while to understand who we and they were. Isn’t it bizarre? On those cold days I used to imagine myself as a child in Buru, or somewhere else in the Indies—here, for example. I would re-create scenes. And in these scenes I was playing in the sun, swimming—oh yes, that’s another thing I can remember from Buru, the sea. I would imagine myself playing with other local kids, imagine how the sand felt between my toes and my fingers. And that consoled me. Because I thought to myself, One day I will be there again. I didn’t know when, but in the way that children do, I thought it could happen at any moment—and I would be a child in the Indies again. But then, of course, well …”
He smiled at Margaret—a smile that seemed as frail and ephemeral as a butterfly, so delicate that she feared she might crush it if she touched it. She reached out and touched his cheek, barely brushing his skin with the back of her hand, her fingers feeling the softness of his face. She wished her fingers were not so bony; she wished she did not have knobby knuckles, but the gracefully curved fingers of Balinese child dancers. He put his hand over hers, pressing her hand gently between his cheek and his palm, holding it like this for a few seconds; a minute; a lifetime. And then he leaned his head and rested it on her shoulder. She could no longer see his face but could smell his hair—a sweet milky aroma. She said, “But then what?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘But then …,’ only you didn’t finish your sentence.” She began to stroke his hair, drawing her fingers lightly through the long, silken strands.
“I didn’t know how to express what I was thinking.”
“You were going to say, But then we grow up and we find we don’t have our childhood anymore. Is that right?”
She felt the tiniest movement of his head, an imperceptible nod. “It’s not so bad, being an adult,” she continued. “I wish I were an adult. Officially, I mean.”
“You are very grown up indeed, young madam.”
“I can’t say I ever had a childhood. I’ve been like this ever since I can remember. Grown up, that is.”
He lifted his head and looked at her. The darkness in his eyes had lifted, she thought. “There’s something else,” he said, hesitating, waiting for her approval, it seemed, before he continued. His gaze dropped, and he began drawing his palm in little circles on the dry grass once again. Margaret did not say anything. His forehead was so close to her face that she could have leaned forward and planted a kiss on it, right on the thin crease in the middle of his brow. “There was something else I used to imagine. It was this: When I imagined being different from the other Dutch kids, it wasn’t simply because I had lived some where else. I believed—I made myself believe—that it was because I really wasn’t like them. That I wasn’t Dutch. Shh. Don’t say any thing”—he reached out and put a finger to her lips; it was cool and very steady—“let me tell you, otherwise I’m never going to be able to share it with anyone ever again. I used to tell myself that I was only partly Dutch, that my babu was my real mother. Isn’t that silly? It didn’t seem silly when I was six or seven. It felt real, and it comforted me. One day my father was in a very good mood, I don’t know why. We were eating pancakes and apples. He said, ‘When I was a young man in the Indies, pancakes were the food I missed most from home; none of the babu I had could learn how to make them properly.’ And my mother said, ‘Well the last babu learned many things from you.’ Looking back, it probably meant nothing at all, absolutely nothing, but that day I took it as proof that my babu was my real mother. And as I grew older I would make this history more elaborate. I would imagine my father taking the boat from Buru to Batavia to search for a European wife and falling in love instead with a local girl and taking her back to Buru. He would go to Holland on home leave, and there he would meet my mother, but when they returned to Buru they would find the babu pregnant—with me. The funny thing is, the more I thought about it, the more I began to live it. Sometimes the boys at school used to accuse me of being an Indo—you know, a Eurasian. Look.” He put his arm against hers so that their forearms touched from elbow to wrist. “See? You’re pale. I’m much darker in comparison.”
Margaret did not honestly see any difference, but she nodded anyway. He laughed and pinched her cheek. “I told you it was silly,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had childish imaginings.”
She shook her head. “No, can’t think of any. I’m really pretty boring. I told you: Childhood just passed me by.”
They stood up and began walking. The dappled shade of the trees cast intricate patterns over Karl’s face as he talked. “I’ve never told anyone what I’ve told you,” he said, “and I don’t expect I shall ever repeat it to anyone. I don’t think I shall ever need to.”
Margaret shrugged and poked him in the ribs. “No one else would have the patience with you.”
“That’s just it. You … I don’t know, you seem to understand me. We’re similar, don’t you think? I used to feel I was all alone in the world, but maybe I’m not.”
“You’ve finally found someone as bizarre as you are, you mean?”
Karl laughed. “Do you think I should get married to a local woman and have lots of children? I want to have an Indonesian child. A boy. He’ll be my alter ego, except better, and happier—all the things I could have been, but wasn’t. We’ll live in a house by the sea, just like the one in Buru that I remember as a child, only this time there’ll be no unhappiness, just laughter and gifts.”
“I think that is a really, really bad idea,” Margaret said, laughing, as she linked her arm into his. The path began to descend, curving around to point them back in the direction of the village. There were clove trees on either side of the path; and in a field there was a plump cow that looked up at Margaret with big, bright eyes. The houses on the edge of the village began to come into view, perched on the far side of the ridge, half-hidden by vegetation. The sun was still high, its reflection flashing now and then in tiny starbursts on the surface of the river below.
Karl said, “I never believed I could be so happy.”
Johan, wait. Don’t let go of me.
They went into the bar. At the end of the nar
row corridor, away from the noise of the street, there was another door, and on the door there was a poster of a young woman wearing a wet T-shirt. REACH FOR FLAVOR WINSTON OF AMERICA, she said. It was dark, the corridor lit only by a single fluorescent strip that glowed and flickered, and Johan could not make out if the girl was Chinese or Malay or Eurasian. Maybe she was just a Westerner pretending to be Asian. There was quite a lot of that nowadays.
It was not a big room, but there were many people there, and the air was heavy with cigarette smoke, a silvery veil that made it difficult to discern people’s faces, and even when he blinked he could not tell who was who. He thought he recognized someone—a face here, a long sweep of hair there, a flash of shiny beads on a handbag that he thought he had seen before, but then again maybe not.
Johan, wait, don’t go too fast, Farah whispered. She was holding his hand tightly and staying very close, so close he could feel the hesitant warmth of her body against his, her knee knocking into the back of his thigh as she said, Don’t let go of me, please don’t leave me alone.
Don’t worry, I’m right here.
There was music now, something bright and brassy, a trumpet or a saxophone starting up, then some tin drums and castanets. Not this mambo rock shit again, said Bob as they eased into an alcove deep in the shadows where they could not be seen. A row of lights came on, one by one, and the chatter of the audience turned into a rowdy cheer. There was clapping and some men were whistling. There was no curtain, no elaborate introduction, just some girls onstage who appeared all of a sudden through the smoke, moving their hips from side to side, out of sync with the music, as if it was their first time and they were not sure what to do in this place. They were wearing only panties decorated with gold beads dangling from the end of thin filaments of thread, and when they shook their hips the beads shimmered through the hazy blue smoke in the room. Over the powdery whiteness of their bare torsos there seemed to be a thin slick of sweat, only more viscous, as if it would be cold and almost firm to the touch, Johan thought. Over their nipples the girls wore silver stars that shone in the harsh glare of the lights and appeared to Johan almost like real stars shining through clouds. He remembered the Christmas they had at the orphanage, just that once, in the year before he left. Some foreigners had come to the village and they had presents for all the children, old toy cars and clothes and bags of hard candy wrapped in colored cellophane. They gave Johan a globe filled with fake snow and a miniature Eiffel Tower. At the base of the tower there were tiny people playing in the snow, children, maybe, and when he turned the globe upside down the children did not fall but remained glued to their places. And when you returned them to their upright position it would be snowing on them, the flakes swirling around before settling at the feet of the motionless children. Adam spent hours looking at this miniature world, turning the globe on its head and then back again. He set it on the windowsill and watched the sunlight refracting through the glass, bathing the children in rainbow colors. Don’t be stupid, Johan said, laughing, there can’t be snow and sun at the same time, but Adam did not mind. Do you think we will ever see snow? he asked, and Johan said, No, probably not, because you don’t like being cold.
Afterward, the foreigners who had given them the presents put on a play about the birth of the baby Jesus. They dressed up as shepherds and donkeys and they chose one of the orphaned babies to be Jesus and wrapped him up in cloth. Above them, a bright silver star they had made hung from the ceiling against patches of damp and mold, but if you stared at it long enough you could just about pretend you were looking at the night sky. Adam asked, What is going to happen to the baby? And one of the foreigners said, Well, he will die to save mankind from sin. To sin is to do something bad, something wrong, the foreigner explained. We are all sinners, you and I both. And Adam was so sad afterward that he did not speak. He sat staring out of the window, at the fields that were dry and barren that year, scarred by patches of ash where there had been fires. Johan gave him the snow globe to make him feel better. Adam said, We are sinners, aren’t we? That is why we are orphans. That’s why we are alone and no parents want us. No, said Johan, no, you’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’m right here.
Johan, hey, stop staring. Farah squeezed his hand sharply. Hey, why are you staring? Hello? You’re disgusting. This is so horrible. Can we go now? Please. I don’t want to stay.
But the main attraction hasn’t even begun, Bob said. Oh wait, my god, here she comes.
The music changed suddenly to a cha-cha and some men in the audience stood up and whistled. The clapping was louder now and people were smacking their hands on the tables. Johan could barely hear the music. The girls hurried offstage, shoving each other as they disappeared into the wings, and all the lights went out, except one, which was trained on a high, wooden stool. A woman walked onto the stage, dressed as the girls were, but she had her arms crossed across her chest, hands delicately touching her neck to form a What hid the top half of her torso. She turned her back to the crowd, twisting her head to glance over her shoulder, smiling a coquette’s coy smile. Then she slowly spread her arms and held them outstretched. The flesh on her arms drooped and her thighs were ample. Two men appeared from the wings dressed in cheap dinner suits. They were holding a snake, a python whose skin was patterned with black and gold diamonds. They draped the snake across the woman’s shoulders and across her chest, and she turned to face the audience, the reptile curling itself languidly around her breasts, its tail flickering downward, reaching for the space between her thighs until she halted it with one hand. To catcalls and applause she threw back her head and closed her eyes, feeling the smooth, cold touch of the snakeskin with her cheek, thrusting her chest forward in fake ecstasy.
Farah said, This is sick. I’m leaving now, Johan. Don’t care if you come or not. Onstage the woman was struggling with the python, her face contorting in an expression between pain and ecstasy as the snake’s thick coils tightened around her body. Johan did not know if she was pretending or if the pain was real. He eased his way through the crowd, through the messy chorus of whistles and clapping that accompanied every exaggerated motion onstage. He did not look back.
He found Farah standing by the car. She turned her head quickly when she saw him emerging out the door. She stared down the street, at the rows of streetlamps that lit this nighttime city.
Don’t be angry, he said, reaching out to hold her hand. It’s just a bit of fun. She had bunched her hand into a fist and he held the tightly knotted ball until he felt her fingers relax and loosen.
I hope no one’s seen us here, she said, still looking away. It would be so shameful if anyone did. Mummy and Daddy would die of shame.
Daddy’s probably in there somewhere, we just didn’t look hard enough.
She glared at him with narrowed eyes and he felt her hand tense once more, pulling away from him. What is the matter with you? You have such a good family and yet you are so angry all the time. Why? Just tell me: Why? I don’t know, I don’t know. He tried to reach out to her but she shrank away from him again. I’m sorry, Farah, it just feels that there’s nowhere for me to go. When I think of this life ahead of me I see so many empty years. Don’t look at me as if I’m crazy. You know what I mean. There’s nothing left for me, Farah. Sometimes I … sometimes I just want it all to end.
Nothing left for you? That makes me so angry. See how much Mummy loves you? She loves you more than she loves me and Bob put together, and yet you behave like some, some … I don’t know what. Okay, so you’re an orphan, so what? Think about what could have happened to you, what would have happened if you hadn’t come to us. You might be an urchin, or you might be dead… . God knows what happened to all those other orphans.
It was he who turned away this time. The streetlamps that lit the broad avenue before them were too bright, he thought. Cars flashed by, their headlights adding to the glare, bleaching the darkness from the night. He wished the city were darker, without any light at a
ll.
Farah leaned against the car, looking away. He thought she was going to touch him but she did not. I’m sorry, she said. I didn’t mean to remind you of your brother.
He did not answer.
You know what Mummy says, Farah continued, we shouldn’t talk about it. But I want to know, Johan. Tell me about your brother, I want to understand. Oh, abang, don’t look so unhappy. What happened? Just tell me. You’ll feel better. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Johan began to speak but all of a sudden he felt like he was choking. It wasn’t my fault, he said. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know.
What wasn’t your fault, Johan? Please tell me.
But he could no longer speak. The memories were too thick.
She held him with both arms and drew him close to her. He could smell the faint traces of coconut oil in her hair.
· 17 ·
Adam awoke with the sensation of not having slept at all. His ribs hurt where he had been trodden on in the riot, and every breath was an effort, exacerbating the dull pain on the right side of his torso that only abated if he held his breath. His sleep had consequently been disturbed and dreamless, and once or twice he woke with a start, believing, in the midnight darkness, that he was actually back at home, in his narrow, soft bed, and he expected to hear Karl’s footsteps in the other room, his bare feet padding on the linoleum, and then perhaps coming down the corridor to check that Adam was asleep. But the door did not open to let in that thin, comforting sliver of light; instead he found himself on the floor of Din’s room, shifting awkwardly on the rattan mat that they had unfurled on the concrete floor for him to sleep on. Din had snored throughout the night, the adrenaline finally having drained from his body midway through the evening, whereupon he simply collapsed onto his mat, drawing one pillow under his head and another to his belly, folding his body into a tight fetal position in which he remained for the rest of the night. Just minutes before, he had been sitting in a cross-legged position, arms flailing as usual as he spoke in vehement criticism of the death of Sukarno’s revolutionary ideals, riding the last waves of exhilaration from that afternoon’s riot. “We supported him, but he betrayed us,” he said, jabbing his finger at Adam as if the woes of Indonesia were his fault. “You heard his speech today—three hours of lies which we accept because we’re too poor and uneducated to think otherwise. We had three hundred years of suffering under the Dutch and now we think anything will be better, even this”—he jabbed his finger at Adam again. “So I ask you, is it better to be oppressed by a foreigner or by someone of your own race? Oh my god, you’re so stupid, you don’t understand what I’m saying. Let me put it another way: Is it better to suffer because of someone you hate or someone you love?” But even as he pointed accusingly at Adam once more, Adam noticed his eyelids had become thick and dark, and he was blinking to try and keep himself awake. “Is it?” he repeated in a half slur, and then sank slowly from his upright position onto the mat. It was like watching a rare, night-blooming flower, something florid and extravagant, that suddenly curled up and withdrew from the world at the height of its display; and all at once Adam was alone with nothing but that insistent ache in his ribs to keep him company through the long night. In the morning the pain was still there, as was Din’s final, niggling question, the answer to which Adam could not find: Is it better to suffer because of someone you hate or someone you love?
