Tash Aw - Map of the Invisible World

At last the temple custodians began to calm the men, reviving them from their entranced battle with evil by throwing holy water over them. Bunches of smoking coconut leaves were brought and stamped on to hasten this recuperation, and after a long time the crowd began to disperse. Bodies lay on the dirt, inert as corpses, their heads cradled in the loving arms of priests or friends. Margaret made her way over to Karl. He had managed to stand up but had not moved away. He looked dazed, surveying the carnage before him.

“Was that your first time?” she said.

“What? Sorry?”

“Was that the first Barong dance you’ve witnessed?”

Karl looked at her uncomprehendingly. “I think I fell into a trance too.”

“Oh m y god.” Margaret could not stifle a giggle. “That wasn’t a real trance. They know there are foreigners here. It’s never the same when there are lots of tourists.”

“Right, sure. But … are there lots of Westerners here? I didn’t think so. I’m not a tourist though. I was born here.”

“In Bali?”

“No. Buru. I’m sure you don’t even know where that is.” His eyes were no longer glazed over, and he was smiling.

“Of course I do. It’s part of the Moluccas. Just a stone’s throw from New Guinea, the last island in the world, where I was born — on the floor of a mud hut, if you must know. I spent most of my childhood there, with the briefest of forays back to the wilderness of America, then Fiji, with a stopover in Australia, then here. You’re not going to beat me when it comes to exotic origins, so just drop it.”

“Oh. I see.”

They started walking up the hill to the village. He had an easy, loose-limbed gait. “I left Buru when I was four. My parents went back to Holland. So I don’t really know it at all.”

“Can’t you remember anything?”

“Just fragments here and there.”

“I can remember everything — and I mean everything . Okay, not coming out of my mother’s womb — I can’t remember that — but I can remember things that happened to me when I was two or three.”

He looked at her with the clearest gray green eyes she had ever seen. He was not a tall man, she remembers thinking, almost as short as she was. “Mon Dieu,” he said. “That’s impressive.”

She giggled. “Why did you say that? In French, I mean. Couldn’t you have said, ‘My god’?”

He shrugged and smiled, blushing a little (she thought). “I’m sorry. I lived in Paris for a number of years and things just stick in your head, I suppose. I’ve just come from there, so every time I open my mouth I’m still half-speaking French.”

“Speech patterns do have a way of sticking to you rather quickly. What were you doing in Paris?”

“Studying. I was at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. I’m an artist, a painter.”

“Oh god, not another one.”

“What do you mean?” He stopped walking, the smile vanishing from his face.

“I didn’t mean anything in particular. There just seem to be an awful lot of painters here at the moment. Every other person who steps off the boat from Java seems to be an artist. They keep going on about the wonderful tropical light here, the lush vegetation, but it isn’t any different in northern Australia, so why don’t they go there? Because they want to paint bare-breasted women with doe-eyed expressions. Either that or they’re homosexual. Lots of strong, willing boys to paint here. We’re very welcoming in Bali, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Which camp do you belong to?”

He looked away and blushed (definitely, this time).

“Oh hell, I was just joking. Don’t take me too seriously, will you?”

He struggled with the fold of his sarong, trying to tighten it around his waist. His shirt tails became caught up in the ugly knot he had made, which he now clutched in one fist. “Are there too many artists here, do you think?”

“No no no, I was just joking. Well, half-joking. There’s Walter, of course, and Rudolf, and several others whom you will meet in due course. Really not that many. Here, let me help—”

“I’m fine—” He began to protest, but Margaret reached toward him with both hands and firmly took control of the errant piece of cloth, working deftly and quickly.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m sure you’re better than they are. Being born in Indonesia must help. The first four years of one’s life are terribly formative — with the accent on terribly. You didn’t have an unhappy first four years, I hope. I did. But that’s another story.” Looking down, Margaret noticed his shoes. They were slim and smooth, and she realized she had never seen an expensive pair of shoes before. She imagined them in a grand shop window on a grand avenue in Paris waiting for a delicate pair of feet to slip into them. “There you are, all done.”

They stopped in front of a compound of houses. “Thank you,” Karl said. “This is my place. I found a room here last week.” Two old women sat in the yard, waving at them, smiling toothless smiles. Karl did not make any effort to invite Margaret to inspect and approve his lodgings, which she had expected, given that she knew about these things and he didn’t.

“Good. Is it nice?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“You think so? Great.” Margaret felt momentarily irked by his smugness. How would he, having just come from Paris of all places, know if a village house in Bali was “nice”?

“Good-bye, then.”

“As I said earlier, if you want to see real trances you should come up to where we live. What you saw today was just … entertainment.”

“Certainly,” he said, sounding uncertain, and began to retreat into the safety of his compound. “I’m very much looking forward to discovering this country” (another little hesitation), “or, more precisely, to seeing you again.” As he crossed the yard in his beautiful shoes he looked impossibly dainty and small. When he was halfway across he turned to wave at Margaret, his fine hand waving tentatively, once, twice, as if he had only just learned to bid good-bye to another person. He looked like a child, Margaret thought, just like a child.

P lease say yes, Mick, I really do need your help this time.” There was a deep sigh on the other end of the phone, followed by a pause that lasted just half a second too long, and which Margaret knew instantly signaled the end of his resistance.

“Come on, Mick, it’s for me. You once said I’m the only person you’d ever trust completely, and I said the same — well, almost the same. Of course that was back when you were still in love with me, before you discovered—”

“—I was never in love with you.”

“You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was something important, something big. Besides, I don’t have anyone else I can turn to.” “I suppose I can’t resist a cri de coeur like that.” “I knew you couldn’t. Come as soon as you can.” Margaret put the phone down and went back to the sitting room where Adam remained asleep on the cane sofa, one arm dangling limply, its curled fingertips almost touching the floor. With the other arm he had gathered a cushion to his face to smother it from the late-morning light filtering through the too-thin curtains. Margaret noted with mild dismay the fading colors on the cheap nylon. The printed peonies had been bleached from deep red to a watercolor pink and there were ugly gray lines of dirt marking the folds. Adam had unpacked the contents of his cloth bag and laid them out in a small pyramid on a chair: a pile of clothes, neatly folded; a map; a book called Diving to Adventure; a frayed old notebook, held together by a single rubber band; a few biscuits in a plastic bag, most of which had been crushed to crumbs. His BERKELEY T-shirt hung separately on the arm of the chair, as if waiting for her to take it. She looked at it for a while and then reached out for it. Maybe this was what mothers were meant to do, Margaret thought, as she felt a funny twinge in her chest. She certainly could not recall her own mother doing any washing — unless she counted rinsing a sarong in a jungle stream as washing. Life with her parents had been resolutely Primitive, an existence that called for the lowest levels of hygiene and the most basic sanitary conditions, even if more modern amenities existed (“the point of studying such cultures,” Margaret’s mother would say, “is to experience their lives completely”) . Occasionally, during sojourns in Asian cities, they would bemoan the lack of Western infrastructure — tarmac on roads, running water, electricity, stoves that didn’t burn the house down — but it was more a reaction against being taken out of the jungle and thrust into contact with civilization. When, finally, they did move back to the States, they did not know what to do with these bizarre contraptions. There was a Bendix in their house in Ithaca, a hulking machine with a power-wringer, but Margaret’s mother chose never to touch it; instead she employed a neighbor’s son to take their dirty clothes to the Chinese laundry and their clothes would return some days later, immaculately pressed and folded. It reminded them of their Primitive Existence, Margaret reasoned: They may have lost the jungle but at least they still had Asians to carry out the most basic chores for them.