Madeleine Thien - Certainty

Wideh turned to Matthew, looking curiously into his face. “In Sandakan?”

“Yes, but I no longer live there.”

Wideh set his satchel on the embankment where Ani and Matthew were sitting. He fiddled with the buckle, all the while looking down at the grass.

“Do you fly kites, Wideh?”

He shook his head. “But I’m going to build one some time. A swallow. The pattern isn’t complicated, not like some of the others.” He motioned towards an older man in a quilted jacket standing nearby. His three kites, attached to one another in a triangle, were painted to resemble birds. They spun and fell sharply, their tails tracing patterns in the sky. The man stepped sideways and they plummeted to the ground, somersaulting over the grass before lifting up once more.

Wideh turned back to Matthew. “What is it like in Sandakan?”

“Nowadays, it’s peaceful. Not as vibrant as Jakarta, but the harbour is very busy; ships come in from many places. When I was small, I used to imagine the town was a child, standing with his back to the jungle, and his face to the sea.”

“As if to set foot in the water and sail away,” said Wideh.

“A swimming city!”

Ani laughed. “You never told me.”

“I still remember walking down to the harbour in the early morning,” Matthew said. “Seeing you there on Tajuddin’s boat.”

“She hardly speaks about it,” Wideh said, his voice filled with wonder.

“It was so long ago.”

“Everyone knew her. In Sandakan, Tajuddin’s boat was famous.”

Matthew and Wideh continued to talk, about kite-flying, then distant cities, and Ani did not interrupt them. She listened to their voices, this knitting together, felt as if she were balanced within, a soul sheltered between the past and the present.

A civilian regiment, recognizable by their khaki shirts and trousers, swept onto the road, stopping traffic. They moved in unison, chanting slogans whose words she could not make out. Beside them, the canal was busy with people bathing and swimming, the womens’ clothing blurring in kaleidoscopic patterns.

“One day, I’ll go to Sandakan,” Wideh said. “I’ll put flowers on the graves of my grandparents. Ibu told me both my grandfathers died there, and also my grandmother.”

“And if there are no graves?”

“Then the sea.”

Matthew nodded. “I, too, was glad to go back. If only to say goodbye.”

They sat together as the sun faded behind the trees, lowering through the branches. The kites drifted to the ground, a swirl of colour, and children ran to gather them up.

When they parted, he left as if he would be seeing them again, shaking Wideh’s hand, then putting his lips to the boy’s hair. She knew that what she and Matthew had shared in childhood had carried them safely through, a net where all other lines had been torn away. All these years, the net had held. His eyes rested on Ani’s face. They said goodbye to one another, and then he stepped away from them. She saw what he had given her, the one thing her parents had been unable to do, prepare her for this parting, this letting go.

A betjak came along and he climbed in. She watched the vehicle pull out onto the busy street, watched for as long as she could, until it was one among so many others. Wideh took her arm and pulled her lightly, and together they walked along the crowded road, eventually crossing back into the park, towards Jalan Kamboja.

In the late afternoon, Wideh sleeps on a blanket in the grass, a magazine open on his chest. The fuchsia shrubs, planted in a border along the canal, reach out luxuriantly. Low against the sky, a flock of avocet, or kluut , veer and dip in unison. They are familiar to Ani now, these elegant northern birds, the kluut with their black-tipped wings; the heron that stand in the fields, watchful.

The birds tip towards the east, their movement coinciding with the appearance of Frank Postma, who steps with a flourish into the garden, his daughter, Ingrid, close behind him. Ani walks across the grass to meet them, and he puts his hands on her shoulders, kissing her on both cheeks. Ingrid presents the box of pastries that she says they bought in the Indonesian market in The Hague. Spekkoek , Frank announces, klepon and ongol-ongol . Only the best. Ingrid nods. “A veritable dessert buffet.” At these words, Wideh gets to his feet.

Frank asks to see Wideh’s photographs, and, after some prodding, Wideh brings out an envelope of prints taken during a recent trip to Southeast Asia. In one, the harbour at Sunda Kelapa, a study of the myriad lines of rigging that criss-cross the sky. In another, a stand of trees half concealed by fog, the trunks, otherworldly, crooked and gnarled. “Mount Kinabalu,” he says. “A cloud forest in North Borneo. In the high altitude, the clouds deposit drops of water on the trees, and this provides what little moisture they need.” He selects a print and shows it to Frank. “Here’s a pitcher plant, one of the carnivorous plants of the region.”

For a moment, Ani believes it is her father speaking. In her memory, they are walking single-file through the jungle, Ani between her parents, their voices layering into the canopy above her.

Sipke appears, bringing beer and wine and a half-dozen glasses. In the last few months, his hair has begun to grey, a brush of white at the edges. Ani pours the drinks and Sipke stands with one hand on the small of her back, listening as Wideh describes Jakarta, the neighbourhoods bulldozed or rezoned, made over into something entirely different. Walking on Jalan Kamboja, he had searched among the remaining businesses, finding an elderly woman who remembered the street the way it was in the early 1960s, the Pondok Restaurant, the Dutch portrait studio. “They went away with their little boy,” she had told him. “I’m not sure where they’ve gotten to now.”

“Up to no good, of course,” Frank says. He lifts his glass, takes a sip of beer. “I remember it all so clearly. Now, when I look at these young kids, going off with their cameras to Bosnia, to Croatia, I want to pack my bags and follow them. Being a photographer is what I’ve always done. I’m not equipped for any other life.”

“That time is gone,” Ingrid says, reaching out to touch her father’s shoulder. “You’ll have to content yourself with dusty old Holland. What was that line again?” She looks up at the cloudless sky, remembering. “‘O starshine on the fields of long ago.’”

Sipke finishes the words. “‘Bring me the darkness and the nightingale . . . and the faces of my friends.’”

Twilight comes, and the frogs are a chorus on the banks. Joos, their neighbour and Sipke’s boyhood friend, shows up with box wine. Quantity, Joos says, is the order of the night. Beside him, Sipke frowns at the seal. While the glasses are being refilled, Ingrid stands up and finds Wideh’s guitar leaning against the wall. She sets it on her lap, her fingers moving lightly over the strings, and the notes disperse, weaving together the space around them. Their voices rise, enclosing her, Frank’s erudite and Joos’s bombastic. Her heart eases to see Sipke and Wideh relaxed and laughing. It does not feel as if it is she who is leaving. Rather, the world is withdrawing from her, stepping back; it is taking its leave.

There is a child in the canal, barely visible. In the dim light, Ani can see her floating on her back, her hair in pigtails, her arms flung wide. Around her, tall fronds reach above the water, interrupting the reflection of the evening sky. Slowly, the girl drifts past. Then, as if aware of someone watching, she turns onto her stomach, swimming, her shoulders appearing then submerging, her pale feet taking turns to break the surface.