Map of the Invisible World. Tash Aw

wandered into the square bounded by the last of the great buildings of Old Batavia, stumbling slightly on the remnants of the cobblestones. She flagged down a jeep-taxi in front of the porticoes of the once-handsome, almost-derelict old City Hall, watched by a group of soldiers who huddled in the shade of a wooden lean-to, sharing a kretek between them. ‘Hey, lady, got a cigarette?’ one of them shouted out without much enthusiasm, as if anticipating Margaret’s cursory shake of the head. She knew he wanted Marlboros or Camels, proper cigarettes, not the cheap kretek he and his friends were smoking. Not long ago she’d always carried a pack of Lucky Strikes with her. You could bribe anyone with American cigarettes. That was the curious thing about the human animal, she thought: even in times of famine they would sooner reach for luxuries than a sack of rice. A stick of tobacco laced with noxious chemicals was worth more than a meal for a child, that was why she’d always had cigarettes with her, but they had become so difficult to buy, so expensive, even for a foreigner.

      The jeep jerked its way through the traffic, heading slowly south to the heart of modern Jakarta. The weather was on the turn now: the damp air of the monsoon season was beginning to blow into the city, the risk of heavy thunderstorms growing with each week. For the past few months the winds had been dry and dusty, the moisture bleached from the city, every object like tinder, ready to catch fire. Sometimes the air was so dry it was hard to believe that this city lay on the coast of a tropical island. The flimsy houses in the slums they now passed reminded Margaret of dead leaves on a bonfire, heaped up on top of one another, waiting for a single match or smouldering cigarette butt. There were always fires in the slums in the dry season, and every week for the last three months she had passed the blackened remains of houses, charred fragments of timber and corrugated iron, that just lay there, day after day, becoming part of the cityscape. And yet in a few weeks’ time they would be damp and slimy from the blocked-up drains and the pools of stagnant grey water that collected after the rains, and Margaret would forget the desiccating heat of August. How quickly we forget, she said to herself, how quickly we forget.

      ‘Stop here, please,’ she called out. The taxi shuddered to an abrupt halt outside one of the smart modern buildings on the fringes of the newly laid-out Merdeka Square. The giant rectangular box was made from smooth grey concrete; it had shiny glass in the windows and a façade of fashionable honeycomb shapes. Air conditioners hummed faintly behind closed doors as she crossed the immense foyer, her sneakers squeaking on the shiny terrazzo floor. Behind a semi-circular desk a security guard dozed in his chair, his head hanging limply to one side, his hands clutching a thin exercise book to his belly. There was no one else about; a solitary swallow fluttered aimlessly against the vaulted ceiling, desperately trying to find its way back out of the building. Margaret continued until she reached the back door, re-emerging into the heat. In the shadow of the big new building stood an older, smaller one, its timber upper floor giving it the air of a village house. There was hardly any space between the two structures – no lawn or yard, just a narrow drain. Typewriters clacked without enthusiasm in the stillness of the afternoon as Margaret went up the creaky wooden stairs. The radio was on, broadcasting one of the President’s speeches – a repeat, Margaret noticed – his voice urgent, persuasive, utterly convincing. There were a few men in the room at the top of the stairs, two of them hunched over typewriters, the others napping in flimsy reclining chairs or on canvas camp beds. The shutters were open but here in the shadow of their enormous neighbour there was never much light, just a perpetual gloom.

      ‘Hello, Sailor,’ she said.

      ‘My dear god,’ one of the men said, leaning back in his chair, ‘it’s Jakarta Jane, sweetheart of the forces. To what do we owe this most splendid honour?’

      ‘Nothing, just thought I’d pop by to say hello,’ Margaret said, easing herself into a chair.

      ‘I’ve never known Margaret Bates to “pop by” to say hello. What do you want?’ He had an open smile, his youthful face surprisingly creased with lines. He was a thick-set man with broad hairy forearms and thick agricultural fingers that looked thoroughly unsuited to writing or typing.

      ‘Do I detect a note of cynicism there, Mick?’

      ‘Not a note, a whole goddamn symphony. Rudy – get Margaret a beer, will you? And one for yourself too. In fact, one for everyone. We need no further excuse for a beer now that Margaret Bates is here.’

      The other man, a stout young Indonesian, retrieved three bottles of Krusovice from a fridge that stood against a bare wall like a piece of modern art. He brought one over to Margaret, bowing slightly as he did so.

      ‘Hey, Rudy, did you know that Sukarno himself tried to get her to bed? He had such a hard-on for her.’

      ‘Do shut up, Mick.’ Margaret smiled and accepted the cold bottle of beer. Her headache had faded to a dull throb and she was feeling hot, dehydrated. ‘That was so long ago.’

      ‘Ah-ha! You admit it!’

      She turned to Rudy. ‘Just ignore him. It’s all rumours. You know what you boys are like, forever looking for scandal. Journalists will be journalists – especially if they’re Australian.’

      Rudy shrugged his shoulders indifferently, but continued looking at Margaret.

      ‘I had another job back then, it was different. I met the President a few times at official functions,’ Margaret began to explain, without knowing why she felt the need to. ‘He seemed to like me, and he remembered me. You know what powers of memory he has. I was friendly with his staff, so journalists used to ask me to arrange appointments at the Palace. All these dirty boys–’

      Mick put the bottle to his lips with comic lasciviousness, his tongue curling outwards.

      ‘–started a rumour. You know the President’s reputation with women. Well, just for the record, he was always very correct with me.’

      ‘Um-hmm,’ grunted Mick as he drank his beer.

      ‘Very pleased to make your acquaintance anyway,’ Rudy said before returning to his typing.

      ‘So what do you need from me this time, darling?’ Mick asked.

      Margaret picked up a slim, loosely bound book from Mick’s desk and began flicking through it – a collection of Chairil Anwar’s translations of Rilke. ‘Do you find him faithful to the original?’

      ‘He’s better with Gide. With Rilke it’s like he’s trying too hard, like he wants to be in tune with Rilke. There’s no such clunkiness with Gide, it’s like they know each other. Anwar would have been great with Rimbaud. They’ve so much in common – that unfettered lifestyle, don’t-give-a-damn hair…Shame he never discovered him. They’d have been the perfect couple.’

      ‘Bill Schneider accosted me at the Hotel Java last night.’

      Mick leant back in his chair. ‘Damn, I thought you’d come to talk about Rilke. What the hell were you doing with that man? Bill Schneider – even the name makes me want to retch.’

      ‘He gave me this.’ She handed over the page which she had torn from the newspaper. ‘Have you heard anything?’

      He looked at the page briefly. ‘What’s so special? There’s a civil war brewing, darling. Commies are being arrested and killed all the time – even in godforsaken little islands. Where is Perdo? Never even heard of it.’

      ‘Look at the picture carefully. There’s a European in there. Just there,’ she said, stabbing at a spot on the page with her finger. ‘That’s not usual. There aren’t that many foreigners hanging around in Indonesia, Mick. One of your sources must know something about this.’

      Mick picked up the paper and looked at it again, holding it up at an angle to catch the dim light. ‘Why did Bill Schneider give you this?’

      Margaret shrugged. ‘Beats me.’

      ‘It’s someone you know, isn’t it?’

      ‘Uh-uh,’ Margaret shook her head. ‘No idea who it is.’ She did not know why she lied.

      Mick