Tash Aw - Map of the Invisible World

Margaret listened without paying too much attention, fanning herself with the envelope containing the two slides. There was a radio or a walkie-talkie or something in the front that crackled and hissed with static as the car inched along. She felt as if she were on a boat on a big, silted-up river, carried along by an imperceptible current, occasionally running into a mud bank, then flowing along again. Normally she would be fretting and in a rush to get somewhere, but today she was not at all anxious. There was nowhere for her to go, nothing more she could do. She had done her best with the president, she had given it everything she had, and still she had come up short. She had never experienced this feeling of utter defeat before and she did not know how she should feel. Angry? Frustrated? Frightened? Humiliated? No, not any of those, and yet all of them at once. She felt helpless — yes, helpless, that was it — but this state of helplessness was not terrifying as she’d always feared it would be. It brought with it something worse than terror (which could, after all, be overcome): an eerie unease, a feeling that the worst was yet to come. When she thought of the future now (the future: what did that even mean?), she could see nothing, feel nothing. She did not know what she would do, either for herself or for Adam or anyone else, today or tomorrow or anytime thereafter. There was no vague sense of possibility, of things simply sorting themselves out by a combination of fate and manipulation. There was just a dreadful emptiness waiting to be filled with the unknown.

She had always thought that even if she learned of Karl’s passing away, or if she had known, definitively, that he was never to come into her life again, she would experience a certain calm — a relief or a profound liberation. Finally that niggling grain of hope embedded in her would go away and she would no longer fall asleep remembering his slim hands and uneven walk. But she did not feel calm now, nor relieved nor liberated. She had lost Karl, she was sure, but she still — irrationally, stupidly — hoped that he was out there. The years ahead of her were filled not with calm, but with a horrible uncertainty. And it was all her fault.

Her fault.

She thought about Adam. She looked out the open windows at the dusty shantytowns, the mass of people on the streets, jostling for space in the city. She hated the idea of Adam wandering alone here, and she hated the idea that she had abandoned him to this fate. That was something she would have to live with for the rest of her life, she thought. But she would manage. There are some things that cause you pain, that lodge themselves in your consciousness the way a splinter or piece of shrapnel might embed itself in your flesh; but the human body had a way of dealing with it that could dull the pain so that you didn’t feel it after a while. Your life would continue as usual, and only you would know of this thing that you carried in your body.

The car finally broke free of the worst of the traffic and the hot air began to sweep through the open windows. The driver told her that there had been riots earlier in the day and all major roads had been closed off. He apologized for this; Indonesia has become so messy, he said, not like before. It must be terrible for you foreigners.

“Yes,” she said, “sometimes it’s difficult.” She imagined the scene she would have to face in a few moments, returning to announce her failure to Mick and Bill. She would arrive at the house and find Mick sitting in a chair, gesticulating, Bill pacing around the living room, looking down at the floor; they would watch her as she walked across the yard and through the door. She would feel as children must feel when they have done something wrong or failed an exam, and the moment of confession arrives, only their parents already know what happened. Her own childhood had been free of such moments of anxiety, but she wished it hadn’t. God she wished it hadn’t. She wished that when she was a child she’d known how it felt to fail and to have someone say, It’s okay, next time it won’t be so bad, you can try again, it doesn’t matter. But she was not a child, she had never really been a child; and there would be no next time. Mick and Bill would, she thought, try their best to comfort her, which would only make things worse. They would shrug and smile, as if they had prepared themselves for her failure, and she would know that they had agreed on their response. Mick would say, Hey, it’s fine, it’s okay. But no one would say very much because they knew that it was not, in fact, okay.

She did not think she could face them. She wished the traffic would close in again, ensnarling her in this city forever. But for once they seemed to travel fluidly, cutting their way with relative ease through the tangle of darting scooters and bicycles and trucks, everyone rushing headlong toward nowhere.

Eventually the car eased into the lane that led to Margaret’s house, slowing to dodge the dogs that lay spread out under the meager shade of the papaya trees. As it came to a halt, Margaret could see through the windows that it was just as she’d imagined: Mick sitting, Bill pacing anxiously. But Bill was not pacing anxiously, as she’d expected; he was standing quite patiently, as if studying someone — a third person. Margaret swung open the low metal gate, its hollow bars clanging loudly against the cement columns. There was a third person. Thank god, there was a third person.

Y ou should have seen it,” said Mick, sipping a bottle of beer, “a black Cadillac so huge it could barely squeeze down the lane. Even Bill didn’t have a clue what was going on — for a moment he thought that Sukarno had personally escorted you home! We certainly didn’t expect young Adam to hop out.”

Margaret squeezed Adam’s hand. She had barely let go of him since stepping into the house. When she first realized he had come back, she’d felt like crying. For the first time since adolescence — maybe even infancy — she’d felt an uncontrollable urge to weep. She hugged him and put her head on his collarbone, letting her tears wet his shirt. She looked ridiculous, she knew, but she didn’t care. He had been eating when she came in; there were half-eaten packets of nasi Padang on the table; fat flies sat motionless like sultanas on the turmeric-stained rice. “Don’t ever leave me like that again,” she scolded, sniffing loudly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. When she looked at him she saw that his eyes were moist and slightly teary too. He lifted his hand to wipe his eyes; there were grains of rice sticking to his fingers. He smiled but she could see that he was preoccupied with something. His eyes seemed pinched, older now than they’d been a few days ago. He wiped his hands on a dishcloth that was lying on the table; the cloth was printed with the words Good Morning , which skipped up and down as he cleaned his fingers. He reached for her and put his arms around her slowly, embracing her for a few deliberate moments. “I’m really glad to be back,” he said.

“Where’s Din?” Margaret asked, thinking she already knew the answer.

“He’s in jail — where he should be.” Bill told her everything he knew— honestly , he said: There had been a plot to assassinate the president, which Bill and his people had known about, and Bill had thought that if they could prevent it and find evidence against the culprits, he would be able to present it to the president as proof of American goodwill. No, he was not intending to find and fund these terrorists so that they would kill a president who was no longer favorable to the States — god forbid such cynicism. Why would the United States of America want to destabilize this country? It was unstable enough as it was. Call it currying favor or bargaining or whatever you want — the ultimate aim was to help Indonesia in some way or another. Din was one of the ringleaders they had heard about, and Bill had been anxious to keep track of him, that’s all. And Adam, well, Adam had come this close— this close— to being implicated in a major conspiracy. Thank god for that girl.