Tash Aw - Map of the Invisible World

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 did 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.