Map of the Invisible World. Tash Aw
objects. She picked up a small comb made from pink plastic and ran it through her spiky hair. ‘I found it on the road, just lying there waiting for me to pick it up.’
‘But that’s stealing,’ Adam said, repeating what Karl had once told him.
‘Don’t be stupid. If something is thrown away, it means its owner doesn’t want it any more – in that case anyone has a right to take it. Idiot.’ She showed him other things she had found: a small motorbike made of tin, rusting where the paint had worn off; a cracked mirror; a book with a frayed paper cover showing a large sea-fish about to be attacked by a diver wielding a knife (there were some words in German, too, but Adam was not able to read them); and a doll with blue eyes and dark curly lashes. Its painted blond hair looked like a scar on its head, an imperfection. Neng picked it up and cuddled it as if it were a real baby, holding its head to her cheek and swaying from side to side; she sat down with her legs crossed and looked out of the miniature cave. They could see over the low trees to the tawny flatlands and the sea in the distance. ‘No one can see me in here,’ she said. ‘It’s my secret place.’ She leant over and kissed him on his cheek and he could smell the musty unwashed odour of her clothes and skin. He blushed, and withdrew slightly; her lips felt funny – dry and hot; he wasn’t sure he liked it. She giggled and continued to cuddle her doll.
From then on, they skipped school every day, cycling as far as they could or taking long walks into the interior. In the coves of the south coast they stood atop the steep fern-covered cliffs and saw the shipwrecks poking out of the surf; in a rainstorm in the hilly forests they were chased by wild goats; in a dried-up riverbed they found the giant stones for which Perdo is famous, those ancient boulders inscribed with fragments of scrolling words in a foreign language which Adam copied in a notebook and later found out were Spanish (and also nonsensical: ‘dream’ and ‘madman’). They met a team of scientists who were taking rock samples not far from where Adam lived; they wanted to build a mine, but they did not say what kind. One of them, an American, gave Neng and Adam three dollars each and an old T-shirt that said BERKELEY. Neng said Adam should have the T-shirt. She didn’t want it; she was happy enough as it was, not because of the money, but because her father would finally, FINALLY! have a job in this mine. That was what she kept repeating to Adam as they cycled home. She turned around and made funny faces at him, the bike zigzagging along the road. Above them, a flock of birds winged their way slowly southwards, small black flapping triangles against the blue-white sky. Maybe they were migrating to cooler climates, Adam said, to Australia, and Neng replied that he couldn’t possibly know such a thing. He did not know what kind of birds they were; and he did not know, either, that this would be the last thing he would say to Neng.
The next day she was not waiting for him at the bend in the road, and when he got to school she was not there. He asked around and everyone said, Oh yeah, that Madurese girl, her parents went back to Java or somewhere else, dunno, happens all the time with migrants, they weren’t born here so why should they stay?
Adam continued at school; his days were not the same without Neng. His nights, which had for some time been calm and heavy with sleep, became unreliable once more. The sensation of emptiness that punctuated his slumber returned, more frequently and powerfully than before. In his sleep he felt suspended in a void, and he would wake with a start, his legs jerking madly. When he awoke in the dark, he felt as if he had dreamt about his brother, but no image of Johan ever stayed with him, and he realised that his sleep had been as dreamless as ever. He had merely imagined dreaming of Johan – a dream of a dream. He thought he had banished fear from his life, but it was clear that he had not. He would go to the window and stare out at the inky blackness, at the shapes of the trees silhouetted against the night sky, and it would calm him a little to know that he was not in his Old Life with its unknown terrors but in his New Life with its known terrors, which were far less terrible.
One morning he awoke to find a large box on his bedroom floor, wrapped in colourful paper printed with a pattern of butterflies and bow ties. There were creases on the paper as if it had been left folded for a very long time.
‘Happy birthday,’ Karl said, appearing in this doorway. Adam suddenly realised he did not know when his birthday was. At the orphanage there had been no celebrations – at least none that he could remember. ‘I didn’t know when your birthday was so I decided that, from now on, we shall celebrate it on the anniversary of your arrival in this house.’ Adam had not realised that he had spent an entire year there; it seemed only minutes since he’d arrived.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Adam asked as Karl closed the shutters and door. It was a dull, drizzly morning, the sea mists remaining longer into the morning than usual.
‘You’ll see,’ Karl said, placing the box on Adam’s bed. ‘Go on, open it.’
Adam picked nervously at the wrapping paper until he saw a flimsy cardboard box, frayed and torn at the edges. It bore a picture of a curly-haired woman gaily spraying her underarms with deodorant. She wore bright red lipstick to go with her bright red dress and she showed off a bright red flower in her hair.
‘That’s just the box,’ Karl said, taking it from Adam. ‘Here, I’ll show you.’ He reached inside and produced a glass-like object, not quite a globe. ‘It’s a magic lantern. Let me show you how it works.’ He switched on the table-lamp and placed the lantern on top of it. All at once the walls of Adam’s bedroom faded away and suddenly he was in a forest in Europe. A thicket of pointy trees engulfed his cupboard and from the trees a handsome blond boy emerged, riding a horse that glided over yellow moorland. The sunlit sky swirled over this scene, golden and streaked with fantastic clouds. There was a castle too, honey-coloured, but it was sheared off by a wide arc and faded into pearly blankness.
‘Sorry, that’s where the disc fits into the lamp,’ Karl said, reaching for the lantern and fiddling with it. For a moment the hollow gloom of Adam’s room returned once more but then, once Karl had adjusted the lantern, the dream resumed. A princess with pale blond hair and a blue gown stood atop the half-castle, pleading with the youth to come to her.
‘His name is Golo,’ Karl said. He was reclining on the floor, his arms folded behind his head as he stared at the magic sky. And the lovely maiden is called Genevieve. Isn’t she pretty?’
Adam nodded. He too lay down on his bed and looked at the sky. The rain drummed lightly on the roof and in the distance there was the faint rush of rough seas.
‘It used to be mine,’ Karl said. ‘I was about your age, I suppose, maybe younger. We had already left Indonesia and were living in The Hague. I had trouble sleeping. Every night there was a scene. My nanny – my Dutch nanny – would come into my bedroom and put the magic lantern on for me. I loved Golo, I wanted to be him. I would lie in bed hoping my mother would come and kiss me goodnight. I’d imagine her saying, “All right, my child, I’ll kiss you once last time, like Genevieve, but then you must go to sleep.” She never came, but at least I had my magic lantern to make me feel better.’
That night Adam ate his birthday dinner of meat loaf and fried potatoes as quickly as he could. He got into bed and turned the lights off, his room transformed once more into an enchanted forest. He thought about Neng, about the time she had tried to kiss him; he knew that she would never come back. He felt a bitter numbness that seemed familiar, as if left over from his Past Life in the orphanage, and he knew he had to blank it out before it took hold. He took a deep breath and counted slowly from one to ten. He had to eliminate this feeling from his New Life.
‘Good night, my son,’ Karl said, opening the door and breaking up the forest. ‘I know you’ve been having a difficult time, but just remember, we’re very lucky people. I hope you’ve had a nice birthday.’
Adam nodded as Karl turned the light out. ‘Wait,’ Adam said quietly in the darkness. ‘What day is it today? What’s my birthday?’
Karl paused at the door. ‘It’s August seventeenth.’
Later Adam would learn that August 17th was also Independence Day. On his birthday there would always be rousing songs on the radio as well as the President’s speech, the whole of which Karl would insist they listen to. There would be red-and-white flags