Map of the Invisible World. Tash Aw

– but don’t you dare leave food on the table.’

      Adam had already risen, his chair pushed back, his hands clutching the side of the table. He remained in this state of limbo for some time, making no attempt to wipe away the thick streams of tears flowing down his cheeks.

      ‘I want to know,’ he said at last. ‘I want to know about my family.’

      Karl sighed. He placed his fork gently on the edge of his plate and then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. He held up his hands and looked at his palms, intently, as if trying to decipher the secrets of his own life. He lowered his face into his hands and sighed again. ‘I found you at the orphanage, that’s all. You know the whole story. There’s nothing more to tell.’

      Adam looked away from Karl. ‘Everyone has a history, you told me that yourself. I want to know about my life – my real life.’

      ‘But this,’ Karl said, gesturing weakly with both hands at the space around him, ‘this is your life. Isn’t this enough?’

      There was no breeze that evening. The rose-coloured lace curtains over the always-open windows did not stir. Adam stared at their pattern of chrysanthemums and palm leaves. The room suddenly felt airless and utterly still.

      ‘Your mother was not local.’ Karl spoke in a measured monotone, as if he had rehearsed saying these words a thousand times before. ‘Some people said they had seen a fair-skinned woman in the village the day before you were found. She had the complexion of a Sumatran or a Malay and she spoke differently, with a big-city accent – Jakarta, some people thought, but no one was sure; it was difficult to understand what she was saying. Someone asked her where she had come from and she said, “From a place far away.” She asked directions to the orphanage. She had a baby. It was so silent and still that some people thought it was dead. There was a toddler too, a little boy with glassy eyes that never blinked. The villagers saw the woman walking along the paths leading out to the hills, along the ricefields that were very green that year. The next day she was gone and there were two children at the orphanage. This is all I know.’

      Adam noticed that he had, quite suddenly, become curiously clearheaded and calm. His breathing had slowed down to a bare whisper. He wondered why he could not react more powerfully to what he had just heard – it did not seem like a revelation but a mere affirmation of something he already knew; it confused him that he should feel soothed, not agitated, by this news.

      ‘So she went back to Jakarta,’ he said eventually.

      ‘I haven’t a clue. She could just as well have been from Surabaya or Medan or even Singapore. This is what they told me when I came to the orphanage. They mentioned nothing else – no father, nothing.’ Karl reached across and laid his hand on Adam’s arm; Adam felt it on his skin, cold and clammy and heavy. ‘Son, please believe me, that is all I know.’

      ‘What about,’ Adam said, hesitating, ‘what about my brother?’

      ‘They say he was taken somewhere far away – Kuala Lumpur, they thought. The people who adopted him did not want to say where they were taking him.’

      Adam looked at Karl’s furrowed brow and tired, red eyes. He moved from the table and felt Karl’s grip on his arm loosen and fall away limply. Karl remained at the table staring blankly at the remnants of their dinner that lay on the chipped china plates, illuminated by the stark light of the single bulb hanging low over the table. It was as if they both knew that by the next morning Adam would be gone, and there was nothing Karl could do to stop him.

      The idea of Jakarta or any other big city held no terror for Adam. For several weeks now he had been reconstructing his own metropolis, rebuilding it in his mind’s eye as he went about his daily chores. While sweeping the yard he summoned a vast flat plain circled by distant hills; while feeding the chickens he painted an aquamarine sky, troubled by rich rain clouds. After dinner he would hurry to bed, longing for that intense, magical hour during which he could return to the focal point of his Jerusalem: a neat modern bungalow with whitewashed brick walls, a roof of red-clay tiles and a compound filled with plants in pots. This was the house in which his mother lived. There were a few cats – sleek blue-grey ones – which his mother would pick up now and then and caress. There was a child too – his brother Johan – but it was more difficult for Adam to picture this boy, who resisted Adam’s attempts to bring him to life and so remained consigned to the shadows. Adam concentrated instead on building the streets around his mother’s house. They were clean and modest, busy with scooters and becaks and bicycles, lined with houses like his mother’s, simple and unadorned, lived in by decent people; but beyond this unsullied heart the city grew darker, murky with unseen danger. There were wide avenues that stretched into the distance, running into nothingness; there were great silvery buildings full of people doing things that Adam could not comprehend; there were areas of brilliant colourful light and slums where there was no light at all. Sometimes the streets were full of urchins and millionaires, sometimes there would be no one.

      He imagined this city into existence, and now it seemed more tangible than the barren place in which he lived. He knew he had to leave. He knew he had to find this faraway city.

      The ferry was not as big as he had expected and there were many people waiting to board. The bus journey from the other side of the island had not been so bad, and he had a pocketful of dollars that he could feel pressing on his thigh. Setting off from home that morning he was so light-headed with excitement that he almost felt sick. It had been one of those rare cool mornings when the sun kept low behind a thin veil of cloud, and there was no dust in the air, just a hint of rain. But now, standing alone at the docks, the sun was high and he was hot and tired. The boat that lay just beyond the jetty seemed too flimsy to withstand the crossing to Java. It must once have been painted gaily in greens and yellows, but only a few curled flakes of paint still clung to the dark slimy timber. Its single deck was already full of people, but the crowd nonetheless insisted its way forward, bottlenecking at the gangway. There was no shouting, no agitation, just an eerie hum of voices as people tried to force their way onto the boat. Adam could not understand. There were men reaching across from the edge of the boat to take children whose mothers held them out pleadingly, and occasionally a bag would be tossed from the crowd onto the boat, from invisible owner to unidentifiable recipient.

      Adam noticed a boy standing next to him. He was older than Adam and wore a clean T-shirt with a bright orange globe on it; he did not look like the other boys hanging around the docks. ‘You’ll want to hurry or you’ll miss your chance to go across,’ he said.

      Adam squinted, shielding his eyes from the sun.

      ‘Everyone’s leaving because of the drought. They think it’s better over there, over in the big cities where there are foreigners, but it isn’t. I’ve come from there, I should know.’ He laughed as if he had told a joke and Adam could not tell if he was serious. ‘Oi! It’s one big turd, this whole country!’ he shouted in the general direction of the ferry and giggled. ‘There’s no escape!’

      Adam began to move away.

      ‘Hey, do you want to get on board?’

      ‘No thanks,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’ He did not know how he would achieve this; he had no idea where he would sleep or eat or hide from the crowds: tomorrow seemed an eternity away.

      ‘It will be the same story tomorrow, my friend,’ the boy said, catching up with Adam, ‘and the day after and the day after and the day after. But listen, I can get you on board.’

      Adam stopped and looked at this boy. He looked normal, just like Adam. ‘How?’

      ‘I know people here. People who can get you on board.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Sure. All it takes is a bit of money. You have money, don’t you? We don’t need much – enough for a pack of cigarettes, plus something for me. Hey, fair’s fair, isn’t it? I’m only asking for some coffee-money, no more.’

      Adam hesitated but found himself nodding.

      ‘Don’t