by Tash Aw
Adam drew himself into a sitting position, listening to the sounds of the unfamiliar neighborhood: crying babies, the hollow clanging of metal on metal, the sawing of wood, and, most of all, the curious absence of human voices. There was a sheet hanging over the window, screening the room from the fierce morning sun; the light fell on the floor in funny, swirly patterns—translucent sea creatures that wriggled, disappeared, and reappeared each time the sheet shifted. Adam listened for Din but could not hear him. He did not know what time Din had left; it must have been not long after dawn, just after Din had risen to observe Azan Suboh. Adam had stirred briefly from his sleep and seen Din rising and falling to his knees in seamless, graceful motions—weightless, like in a dream. He must have left soon afterward.
When he stood up, Adam was pleased to find that his ribs did not hurt quite as much. He ventured out into the corridor of the silent house. Din’s landlady sat in a rattan chair, fast asleep with her head thrown back and her mouth open, a thin trail of dried spittle tracing its way from the side of her mouth to her chin. A box of buttons lay next to her, and in her lap there was a small tray containing spools of thread. In the palms of her upturned hands there were a few buttons attached loosely to a length of thread. Adam peered down the corridor in search of a toilet but there was only another bedroom and a minuscule open kitchen, beyond which lay the narrow empty street in this agglomeration of houses that was neither a suburb nor a slum but something in between, something that wanted to be decent and clean but appeared squalid and threatening. His need to relieve himself became instantly more pressing as he realized there was no toilet; he would have to urinate in the street, into a canal, or onto a pile of rubbish as he had seen others do since his arrival in Jakarta. Just a few days ago he had been shocked by this lack of shame, by the dirtiness of the people of this city, but now he was learning that it was not a question of modesty but one of need. There were no bushes in this neighborhood, nothing he could use to hide, and so he too would have to debase himself in public.
Out in the litter-strewn front yard he found Din and the girl called Zubaidah, or Z, who was holding a piece of paper up to Din’s face, pinched between thumb and forefinger as if it were a dead animal. Her voice was terse and insistent, and she took no notice of Din’s protests as she spoke. They stopped as soon as they noticed Adam.
“Don’t worry,” Din said immediately, “I’ve spoken to Margaret. She knows I’m looking after you.”
“Hi, Adam,” Z said. “I hear you had an interesting day yesterday. Shame you decided to leave us early. You might actually have learned something about the politics of this country.”
“But I did want to stay,” Adam said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Din broke into cheery laughter. “This boy just cracks me up! You’re only saying that because there’s a pretty girl here, aren’t you? Yesterday you told me you were tired and you wanted to leave. You said you didn’t understand a word those university students were saying.”
“But—” Adam protested.
“Then, as we were leaving, we accidentally got caught up in the riot, didn’t we? It’s not as if we went and joined some hard-core violent youth group. Isn’t that right, Adam? Z thinks we’ve been mixed up with the wrong people and wants us to denounce all violent activity. But what violence have we been involved in? None, right?”
Adam shook his head. The pressure on his bladder was becoming intolerable.
Z looked at Adam with wide, expectant eyes, as if awaiting a more elaborate answer. He thought: She doesn’t believe me.
“Just remember,” she said, turning to Din once again, “that if you are involved with any violent factions, pro or anti Sukarno, you will lose all the support you enjoy now. You won’t be able to write for Z magazine, and we will inform the university council of your unlawful activities, which will mean that you will lose your office, your stipend, and the use of university facilities. In addition, you won’t be able to vote in any matters of student politics.” Adam could not help but admire the fluency with which she spoke, the effortless articulation of each word. It was clear that she was angry, but she managed nonetheless to sound restrained, almost polite.
Din took half a step toward her but then turned sharply away, head bowed. The muscle at the top of his jaw twitched, and he said nothing for a few moments. When he spoke he was smiling again—a bright, cheery smile that Adam found frightening. “So this is what you educated Communists do, is it? Kick out anyone who disagrees with you.”
“Don’t play the victim. You know the rules,” Z said calmly.
“You treat people with as much cruelty as your enemies do. In fact, I don’t know who your enemies are—come to think of it, I’m not sure you do either. People to you are just stray dogs, nonsentient creatures who become pawns to your ideology. And you know what? Your whole life is just that—an ideology—no, an idea. There’s nothing concrete about it.”
Z folded the piece of paper she was holding and tucked it into Din’s shirt pocket. “I don’t think I need to get into a useless argument. Here’s a list of the things you are accused of. You know we’ve always believed in nonviolent agitation. There’s been too much bloodshed in the history of this country as it is.”
“Nonviolent agitation,” Din mocked as Z turned away from him. She moved toward her bicycle, which stood propped up against a tangle of old planks and rusty wire. “Adam,” she said, as she began wheeling the bicycle onto the street, “please do not allow yourself to fall under the influence of someone with a misguided view of life, someone who’s trying to avenge some imagined personal injustice. What’s going on is not about one person, it’s about a whole country. You’re a clever person, anyone can see that. You’ve a bright future and you have a lot to offer. Only you can decide what’s best for you. If you need me, you know where to find me—we meet in the same place virtually every day.”
“Stupid bitch,” Din said as she cycled away. “Don’t listen to anything she says.”
“I need to pee,” said Adam.
“Miss High and Mighty—what a princess. Do you know what her father does? He’s a director of Hati Mas, the international trading company. Bet you’ve never heard of it. Oh, you poor village idiot. It’s the company that supplies things like screws and other hardware to big projects like the Senayan Stadium and the National Monument. It provides a ‘professional liaison’ between Indonesia and the Japanese and the French, or whichever neo-Imperialist is building our bridges or hospitals. What does that mean? Their offices are full of girls typing. Clickety clack clack all day long. Just typing. Where are the nuts and bolts and machinery? It’s all just a front! And she, she dares to tell me what to do. It’s all right for her—she can mess around with this idea of communism because if she loses her place at the university she just goes back to some huge palace in Menteng. People like us, you and me, where do we go?”
“Din, I need to pee.”
“We have nowhere to go. This is all we have, Adam,” Din continued, pointing vaguely with a quick flick of his hand to the area behind the house. Adam was not sure if he was indicating where the toilet lay or if he meant to say, This is where we belong. He might just as well have been swatting away an insect.
“You’re like me, Adam—you understand what I mean. We have no real home to return to.”
Adam followed the narrow lane beyond the house without knowing where it led. He just wanted to escape the sound of Din’s voice. He winced every time Din said “you and I” or “we.” At first Adam had thought that Din might have been referring to “we the Indonesian people,” or “we who are not the government,” or “we who are not them;” now it was clear that “we” meant all of those, but in particular the “we” that consisted of Adam and Din. He did not like the idea of belonging to a unit made up of himself and Din, which in turn belonged to some hazy group that seemed to include the million shirtless people who had been at the rally at the palace, but not, it would seem, Z or Margaret or Karl. Adam especially di
d not like it when Din said, “We have no home.” He hated it because he knew it was true.
He reached a pontoon that jutted out over a stretch of stagnant, black water. A sharp smell of ammonia—of urine soaking into sunbaked, rotting timber—hung in the air; and underneath this odor was the rich stench of excrement. A young woman stood before a rusty water tank, dowsing herself with bowlfuls of water; through her wet sarong Adam could see that she was pregnant, and he averted his eyes. Flimsy panels of broken wood provided scant privacy on the jetty. With a sudden sense of horror Adam thought, I am meant to relieve myself there, in one of those half-open compartments, with a woman standing a few yards away from me. But he had no choice: He stepped onto the platform, wondering if it would give way, and stood facing the stretch of water. Patches of brown scum floated past him, held together by rafts of foam. Underneath the platform he could hear the sound of small creatures scrabbling along the muddy bank, their feet dipping occasionally into the water. Through the gaps in the timber he could see someone—a man—squatting in the compartment next to him; the sweet smoke from his kretek relieved the stink of the canal and Adam was glad for it. He thought maybe he too would take up smoking. Across the canal some children were kicking a takraw ball whose frayed edges spun messily every time it went up into the air, like the fireworks the Chinese kids set off during their lunar new year. There had not been many Chinese on Perdo, but the whole island seemed to celebrate their new year with them. Karl would take Adam into town, where rockets would light the night sky with brilliant sprays of flowers that seemed to remain suspended in the air, falling so slowly that Adam could hold his breath and count to four, five, six, before they began to dissolve into the inky blackness. There would be firecrackers and the clanging of cymbals and the smell of joss sticks and roasting meat, or even the unfamiliar perfume of tangerines imported at great expense from Java.
“What took you so long?” Din said when Adam returned. “Hurry up, I want to take you somewhere.”
“Back to Margaret’s house?”
“No, Margaret has gone out. She told me to look after you for a few days.”
“But I need some clean clothes,” Adam protested. “Why can’t we just go back and wait there for her? I want to go home.”
Din approached him and sniffed theatrically. “You smell okay,” he said. “And did you say home? Margaret’s house is not your home. Perdo is not your home, not as long as you share it with that white man. This is your home”—he waved his arms in the air, drawing a large semicircle above his head—“the revolutionary Republic of Indonesia. And you are going to be one of its new heroes, a true revolutionary, like me.”
“You?” Adam said. “Me?” His ribs began to hurt again—a nasty twinge that ran down the side of his body every time he breathed. He felt tired, and he did not wish to be a revolutionary. All he wanted was to go home, wherever that was.
“Yes,” Din replied, lowering his voice as if about to divulge a secret. His face, which had been set firmly in a scowl, softened into a smile. He put his arm around Adam’s shoulders and guided him back to the house. “I will look after you, don’t worry. I know you’re confused, but trust me: Everything will turn out okay. I know it’s difficult, but you must try and believe in me.”
Adam wished the pain in his rib cage would go away. It made him feel weak and slightly teary, and his head was beginning to spin. He thought he heard the crackle of static, a fuzzy hum punctuated by low voices, a snatch of a soaring coloratura, the news, hail, hail, we progress, pride in our nation. He began to feel nauseous, his knees suddenly weak. The sounds hovered at the edge of his consciousness. He did not know what was happening to him. He leaned against Din’s wiry, surprisingly solid frame as they made their way back to the house.
“Hey, hey,” Din said, “you’re looking pale. You need to sit down for a minute. It’s very hot today. You’re probably starving too. Let’s go to Glodok and get some Chinese food—how about that, huh?”
Adam nodded weakly. The hum of the radio came back again, calmer and clearer now. This time Adam knew it came from his life with Karl. He remembered the songs on the radio, patriotic ones sung by children’s choirs: “The earth upon which my blood is spilt, that is where I stand.” He thought of the music playing in the sitting room and Karl’s out-of-tune humming. Independence Day: He recalled the small feast they would have each year in the village, red and white flags hanging from the eaves of houses; and later, a present from Karl.
Yesterday was his birthday, Adam remembered, and he began to feel an emptiness in his chest. He was suffering, and it was because of someone he loved. Maybe if he hated Karl he would feel less bad. He considered telling Din about his birthday, but then, without knowing exactly why, decided not to.
“And then, when you’re feeling better,” Din continued, his voice still low, almost gentle, “I am going to show you how to be a true revolutionary.”
· 18 ·
To be honest, I’m not even surprised. This is a perfect illustration of everything that is wrong with you—a classic Mick Matsoukis mess of the highest order.” Margaret half-raised her hands in exasperation and then let them fall heavily on the arms of the rattan chair. It was shaped like a bowl, half a hollowed-out coconut shell set at an angle so that she was neither sitting nor reclining, her toes barely touching the floor. She tried not to think of Adam, for each time she did so she began to panic in a way that was completely foreign to her. She tried instead to remain perfectly still as she spoke, making no attempt to raise her voice or her body for emphasis; it was not worth the effort. She sounded tired, she thought, and she knew she looked dirty, inelegantly slumped in that awkward chair in Mick’s office. She wanted to tell Mick about the riot, about how she and Bill had finally man aged to escape just by staying still. She would have told him what her father had told her when he was teaching her to swim: Just let the waves wash over you, and you’ll be fine. It had been like that in the riot. They had remained perfectly motionless and let the sea of people flow over them, and when the tide receded they were still there, like two pieces of debris stranded on the shore. Sure, Bill was so badly traumatized that he could only speak in monosyllables, but she knew he would recover his composure soon enough and be the same old appalling show-off. She wanted to say to Mick, You know what? We survived, and it really wasn’t that bad at all. We can do this; we can find Karl and reunite him with Adam; we can face life and win.
But then she had arrived at Mick’s and discovered this mess, and all the things she had wanted to say had rapidly dissipated into nothingness.
“It’s not my fault,” Mick said, stubbing out a cigarette that was only half-smoked and reaching into his shirt pocket for another. “You said you were going to ask Din to look after Adam.”
“But I didn’t, did I? I thought about it and it seemed like a bad idea—What if Bill’s right, I thought, what if Din really is a criminal of some sort? I didn’t want to risk it. If I had rung him, don’t you think I would have told you?”
“I came by to look for you—out of my own initiative, I might add—and to check on Adam. How was I to know that he’d been kidnapped by your colleague?”
