Map of the Invisible World: A Novel

by Tash Aw

  “This,” he began softly, still staring at the slide, “I do not think I have seen this before.” He cleared his throat again. “I cannot remember.” He blinked at the slide—once, twice. A thin frown crept over his brow and his eyes appeared glassy, as if suddenly troubled by a speck of dust.

  Margaret wanted to fill the silence but she could not find the right words, either in Indonesian or in English. She looked again at the photograph of the two presidents. A slight wind made Kennedy’s hair wispy and his eyes squint; Margaret could not see Sukarno’s eyes, for they were hidden behind his very modern sunglasses, which matched the perfect blackness of his topi. They looked like a schoolboy and his fashionable-but-stern uncle on an outing, each trying to appear happy, even though they had little to say to each other. It was the kind of cheerfulness put on when nothing one said would make sense to the other person, and to avoid the awkwardness of a ruined afternoon together, both parties make every effort to be happy, yet this pretense of great happiness leaves them feeling empty and lost, for each thinks: I should know what it is like to be this happy, but I do not.

  The president blinked at the image a few more times and then lowered it, sliding it neatly back into the envelope. He said, “I think the time for gifts has passed.” Margaret began to reply but he continued to speak. “There was a time when this—how shall we say?—this relationship between us, between our two countries, might have worked. We might even have loved each other. For a time, maybe we even thought we did. We gave each other many gifts. We were both much younger then, and much more foolish. And now, I am afraid that time has passed.”

  “Perhaps,” Margaret began; she breathed deeply, trying to sound calm, “perhaps it was not foolishness but hopefulness.”

  The president looked at her, his expression changing minutely, becoming less benign, Margaret thought, the edge of his mouth lifting as if to mock her. But when he spoke his voice was very calm. “Hope. Americans always talk of hope. What you hope for now is that I will do something for you,” he said at last. “Is this correct?”

  Margaret did not answer.

  “When Western people offer gifts they expect something in return. When Asian people receive gifts, on the other hand, they think immediately of how to return this kindness. So in fact, the two work very well—though not always fairly. This is why I cannot accept your gift, for I have nothing to give your country in return. Now I must get back to my work as leader of this country. It was pleasant to meet you.” He pushed the envelope to the edge of the table and the young aide-de-camp retrieved it swiftly, handing it back to Margaret as he put his hand lightly on her elbow to lead her out of the room.

  “Please,” Margaret said, turning back to the president, “you do not want to give anything to my country, I understand that. But would you give me something—the gift of kindness? I have nothing to offer you, I can only ask—plead—for your help.”

  The president raised his eyebrows.

  “I am asking for your help, as one humble human being to another.”

  He nodded. “Go on.”

  “There is someone I need to find. He is lost in this city. Maybe he is with the army, maybe not. No one seems to know. He is Dutch by birth but Indonesian by nationality, and now I am afraid he has been taken away.”

  “Ah, een Nederlander,” the president said, laughing his slow, rich laugh. He had taken a cigarette from a silver box sitting on the table. “I understand from your voice that this is someone you love.”

  Margaret felt light-headed and very hot. She nodded. “Some might say that.”

  He studied her for some time, and then he looked at his colleagues; the cigarette was very slim between his thick fingers. He shook his head and smiled. “As I said, the time for gifts has passed.”

  · 27 ·

  In an earlier time, in a place far from this city, gifts had seemed plentiful in Margaret’s life. This period had not lasted very long—a year, perhaps—but it seemed to fill the entire canvas of Margaret’s adolescence so that whenever she thought of her childhood now, all she could remember was that there had been so much to give and receive. Maybe this was what happened as one grew older: The tiny incidents of youth acquired a magnitude they did not really possess. “Never, ever trust your memory,” her mother used to tell her, “it never gives you what you want. When you go back to it, hoping for solace, all you get is misery. And when you need to use it as a library, purely for information, it’s always blank. Just leave it all behind and concentrate on the present.”

  This was what Margaret tried to tell herself over the years, whenever her forays into her memory provided her with nothing but an emptiness in her chest, as if her heart had stopped beating for about five or six seconds. But the problem was that she knew her memories were all true, every last detail. She remembered how this period of gifts and gift-giving had ended, the very moment her life passed from the clarity of childhood into the murky depths of adulthood. Her memory of it had never warped, never blurred; it always retained the sharp edge of truth.

  “I’m leaving,” Karl said. It was one of those nights when the Balinese moon was so full and clear and the air so still and warm that there did not seem to be any need for day; one of those dry evenings that come in the middle of the rains and make you forget the days of mist and mud. They stood in the yard at the center of Karl’s compound, surrounded by the silvery outlines of the houses.

  “I know. I heard about what happened.” Margaret could see his face clearly—more clearly, she thought, than if it had been day. When he blinked she could see the bright moistness of his eyes. He did not answer. “Lots of people are leaving,” she continued, filling in the silence. “It hasn’t been the same these last few months with all the news we’ve been getting.”

  Six months ago, Margaret had never heard of Sudetenland, or of Moravia or Silesia. She knew about the independent state of Czechoslovakia, but she thought that Bohemia was a place inhabited by penniless writers and artists, or people such as her mother, who was often called “Bohemian.” For a while she had believed that to be Bohemian was to have no fixed home, so she herself might have been Bohemian. Now she knew all too well where these places were.

  “There’s going to be a war, isn’t there?” Margaret said.

  Karl nodded. “We can’t pretend anymore, we have to accept it. Ever since Anschluss I’ve feared this day would come. Everyone was saying, Oh, but no, the Germans didn’t invade Austria, they didn’t fire a single shot. But we knew, we knew. And now this.” For a moment he sounded almost angry and Margaret realized she had never known him to be angry. She reached out for his hand and tried to picture these invaded countries, their hills covered with pine forests tinged with patches of melting snow, the tanks rolling slowly through the river valleys while small children watched fearfully from the windows of their mountain houses, muttering silent prayers. She wanted to share in the distress and helplessness that he was feeling, but she could not. All this was happening so far away, in places remote and beautiful, places that had nothing to do with her. You could only feel pity for somewhere if you belonged there, she thought. Karl belonged to Europe, but she did not.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I have to sit down.”

  “Sure, oh god, of course.” They crossed over to a bench at the edge of the yard. “How is your leg?”

  “Not too bad. Some days it’s worse than others. Today it seems to be all right. The doctor tells me I’m always going to have a funny walk. But I think he’s wrong.” He laughed; a clear, bright laugh that made Margaret feel better.

  “What happened, exactly? I’ve only heard sketchy details.”

  Karl sighed and bowed his head, nodding weakly. “It’s terrible. I can’t understand how we can do such things to other people.” He paused for a moment, looking at his leg. “I was at Walter’s for dinner. We had just sat down at the table when we heard the police arrive. They simply marched into the house and took him away. There was nothing I could do. I spoke to them in Dutch, I
shouted at them. It was barbaric and unjustified, I said, ‘You have no authority to arrest him, I will attest to his good character.’ And that policeman—that brutish Friesian who’s just arrived from Jakarta to lead this witch hunt—do you know what he said to me? He said that if I continued to defend a German national he would assume I was a Nazi sympathizer and a traitor. But that wasn’t the worst of it.” He did not raise his voice but Margaret saw his fine hands curl into fists. “There were two other Dutch people there, Jos Smit and Rudi Kunst. They remained silent the whole time. They never once tried to intervene. Rudi looked down at his food and Jos coughed and looked out the window, and when the police had taken Walter away he started humming along to the music on the gramophone, as if the party was still going on. I stood up and said, ‘We have to do something. Walter is our friend. Nationality isn’t important, he’s one of us here in Bali. This is our home. We have to defend ourselves.’ And these people, these people I’ve called friends, all they could say was that I shouldn’t antagonize the police, that we have to remember that we are Dutch and there was nothing we could do for Walter anymore. We were in his house, eating his food, and that was all they could say. The host was no longer there, but they wanted the party to continue. I don’t know what came over me. I can’t remember very clearly what happened, but next thing I know I was clinging to the policeman’s back like a barnacle on a huge turtle.” He laughed again, but this time it did not make Margaret feel better. “He shook me off and then all I could see was this hulk standing over me, and when he kicked my leg it was as if he wasn’t even making an effort to hurt me. It was just this gesture to say, You’re nothing to me. At first I thought nothing was wrong, I didn’t feel any pain at all. But when I tried to get up I found my foot was completely useless. I felt so weak and helpless, Margaret. And Jos turned to me and said, ‘Here, have some cognac.’ It was unbelievable. He behaved as if nothing had happened. At that moment I hated him.” He sighed. “I hate this pretense.”

  “I can sort of understand it, though,” Margaret said. “I mean, look at us. We’re a million miles from the troubles in Europe. People like Jos and Rudi, they think they belong here.”

  “But that’s just it,” Karl said, turning to face her once more. He took both her hands and grasped them firmly in his. “It’s all a charade. They don’t belong here. They’re merely trying to run away. I know this because that’s what I was trying to do when I came here—running away from a country I didn’t like, from responsibilities, from family, from everything that was mine. But when something like this happens, you realize that you can’t flee. You have a duty to confront the things that frighten you. You can’t just stand by and watch.”

  “But what can you do?” She felt his hands tighten around hers; they felt warm and comforting, and she tried to savor the feeling of his skin against hers. She wanted to capture the sensation so that in years to come she would be able to summon it whenever she wanted, in times when she needed comforting or reassurance, for she knew that she might never feel those hands on her again.

  “I don’t know. But there must be something. Do you know why they are rounding up every single German now, even a completely harmless artist like Walter? Three weeks ago a terrible thing happened in Germany. You must have heard about it. In one night, thousands of Jewish shops and synagogues were destroyed and Jews were beaten, killed. Many disappeared in the night. There was glass everywhere on the streets. Ordinary people were turning against their neighbors, those who had been their friends for years but who’d suddenly been declared evil and dangerous. What madness is responsible for this? That, for me, was the sign. It was when I knew I had to leave. My family is still in Holland. Who knows what might happen to them? Hang on, I need to move my leg, it’s getting a bit stiff.”

  He led her across the yard toward the studio. There were no more canvases or pots of paint and Margaret could only make out the silhouettes of a few easels framing the view of the valley at night. They sat on the steps at the back of the house, where the land fell away steeply. It was very late; the moon bathed the valley in a white light and at that precise moment it was hard to believe that even daylight was capable of such brilliance.

  “Look at this,” Karl said softly. “I don’t think I can bear to leave this place, but I have to.” A night bird started to sing, a two-note call that repeated without the slightest variation.

  “Why?” said Margaret, calmly. “If you want to, that’s one thing, but I don’t understand why you have to.” She was lying, she thought, or at best half-lying, because she could understand. Yet a germ of a thought had lodged somewhere in her head, and this invisible, unreasonable thought said: Don’t go, I don’t understand why you are leaving without me.

  “Staying here makes me feel helpless. I can’t remain in this paradise while such things are happening in Europe. Everyone on this island pretends that the war has nothing to do with them, but it does. We can’t hide here forever. Look at poor Walter.” The night bird was still singing; the noise it made seemed too sharp and loud for the perfect stillness of the evening.

  “We’re probably going to leave too,” Margaret said. “Not immediately, maybe in a few months. My parents are finishing up their work anyway, so it’s time to move on. Nothing ever lasts very long in my life. But this time I think we might at least be moving somewhere with running water and electricity.”

  “Where will you go?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. I heard whisperings about America. You?”

  “Holland. Then, who knows—probably Paris. I liked Paris. But who knows if it will ever be the same again. Things change so quickly, and once they’ve changed they never change back. It’s not true that people leave things or places behind—it’s the things and places that leave us behind.”

  The bird that was singing seemed to have changed its tune; now it sounded like an owl, calling in single, ghostly bursts.

  “That’s silly,” said Margaret, “I don’t agree. Look at you. Bali is staying put, you’re the one who is leaving. You have a choice, Bali doesn’t.”

  “But it is changing, Margaret—you can see that, can’t you? And someday soon it will change so much that you’ll find yourself marooned in a place you no longer know.”

  “Not if you change with it.”

  “The place I knew a year ago would not have allowed Walter to be taken away so easily.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know this place as well as you thought.”

  Across the valley, just below the shoulder of the broad hill, Margaret could see a row of lights—a string of pearly globes that glowed like white fireflies. The lights bobbed up and down slightly, as if they were lamps carried on the end of sticks; but the slope of the hill was very steep and Margaret had never noticed any paths there. There was a tightening in her chest and she began to feel a little pale and lightheaded, as if she were about to faint. Sometimes in Bali she had nights like this; she would wake up from a troubled sleep, her lungs and windpipe constricted, making it difficult to breathe. No matter how hard she coughed to try to clear this congestion it would not go away, and she would have to stay awake, listening to her parents’ whispered arguments in the other room, waiting for daybreak, which was the only thing that could bring relief. These were the nights when the malevolent spirits roamed the valleys, the people in the village said; there was dark magic in the air, and that was what caused Margaret’s malaise. “Nonsense,” her mother would say, “it’s just a touch of asthma.” But Margaret had never experienced this discomfort in any other place she had lived. Maybe these Balinese demons were responsible after all; they had taken away the vigorous health of her childhood. And on these nights, if she got out of bed and went to the window, she would often see tiny balls of glowing light drifting across the valley.

  “Do you know Hugo’s poem about the ladybug?” said Karl after a while. “It’s odd, but I woke up thinking of it the other day. It’s about a boy who wants to kiss a girl but he isn’t sure whether to do it—I
read it when I was a boy myself. I don’t know why it has come back to me all of a sudden.”

  “Why doesn’t he just go ahead and do it? It’s not one of those silly poetic things, is it?”

  “He’s not sure. She offers him her neck and he thinks she loves him. But when he comes close he realizes that all she wants is for him to get rid of the ladybug on her neck. She didn’t really love him after all.”

  “Poor boy. He has my deepest sympathy.”

  “No, you mustn’t feel sorry for him, because at the end he sees that it is a good thing. The truth may be painful, but it’s better than an illusion. At least that’s what I remember. And I can see now that my love for Bali has been like that. This island—she hasn’t really loved me, has she? The longing is all one-sided. It’s because of you that I can see this.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Whenever I’m with you I see the Indies through your eyes, and it’s wonderful. It’s as if you’re truly a part of this place. It belongs to you and you to it. You don’t have to make any effort, yet you understand it completely. You view it all as a whole, not in parts as the rest of us do. You belong here. When I see that, I realize how I don’t.”