Here, in Jakarta, nothing holds to a steady state. Electricity and water can’t be depended upon, and the military parades in Freedom Square now spill onto the streets, taking over the roads. Only in Wideh can she recognize the passing time. Ani puts her nose to his hair, she smells the sweetness of his skin, talc and sweat. When she looks at him, she is moved by his resemblance to his father, the high cheekbones, the searching eyes. He is an echo of the boy she knew long ago. She wraps one of her hands around his, and it reminds her of Chinese boxes, one disappearing completely within the other. Ibu, he says, half waking, and Ani whispers his name, Wideh. He sighs, gazing at her for a moment, then returns to his dreams.
There was a time when she could find her way in Sandakan without seeing the landmarks, the sea or even the horizon. This was 1953, and in the mornings, at first light, she folded her sarong between her legs, climbed onto her bicycle, pedalled hard until gravity pulled her down the slope of the hill. In the fog, nothing was visible. People on the road could hear her coming. They ran from her, the baskets on their backs toppling, root vegetables spilling onto the ground as she sped past, missing them by inches. Murderous child! She only heard murder – before she left them behind.
The bicycle, an Australian-made Malvern Star, was painted blue, and the frame felt almost weightless. When she leaned her body forward, the wheels seemed to lift off the ground. She skittered over the rocks, the pedals throwing her feet off, and then steadied again. The road curved downhill, towards the market and the sea. Ani steered with her hips. Beware, beware, and children ran. She was more than Ani, then. She was unpredictable, a piece of light streaking across the ground.
The market gardeners laid their offerings on straw mats. A yellow pyramid of bananas, hillocks of red and green chili peppers, everything neat as the stones in a congkak game. Under a pink umbrella, her neighbour Eika crouched on the ground, chattering about the ginger bulbs and lemongrass. Beside her, watermelons and spiny jackfruit, Hooi-joo smoking, exhaling with her face lifted towards the sky. They took turns jingling their pockets, shouting out, “Sister, sister, take a look here.”
This morning, the market was full of old women. The older they were, the more they pushed. But Ani would have none of it. She shoved right back, sticking her elbow into someone’s arm, then propelling herself forward. “You’ll make a fine old maid,” someone snapped, and Ani turned her body, shoved the woman aside. Eika pressed something into her hand, a paper bag filled with seeds. “Take this to Lohkman for me?” she asked, blushing when she said his name. Ani took it from her hand, smiling, and then she was carried past by the crowd. At the fish market, Lohkman was bargaining with a dealer, both men seated cross-legged on a tarpaulin. “At thirty, I won’t give,” he said.
“Give me your basement price then.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Lohkman, my friend, speak decently. A little lower perhaps?”
He ignored the dealer, turning to Ani. Kelah and black pomfret, lines of shiny blue wandering beneath the fishes’ skin, were stacked neatly at his feet. “Will you have coffee tonight?” she asked him.
He faked a yawn, stretched his arms into the sky. “Not with the money they’re offering me.”
She laughed and handed him the paper bag from Eika. “From an admirer.”
“Not another one.”
“Are we fishing tonight?”
Lohkman nodded. “My brother says the sea is too choppy for dorab. We can use the casting nets.” As she turned to go, he said, “Don’t be late, Ani. If you are, I’ll make you swim for the boat.”
The dealer, half teasing, laid his head-cloth on top of the fish, put his head on it and pretended to go to sleep. “Should I bid?” he said, in a tragic voice. “I don’t know. The seller ignores me.”
Riding home, loaded down with vegetables, was when she felt the worth of her Malvern Star and its never-before-seen-in-Sandakan metal carrier. She balanced on the pedals, the bicycle shifting side to side with her weight. Ani passed women who walked tilted over, bamboo poles heavy across their backs. When she looked over her shoulder, they were only shadows on the ground, swaying with the trees. From the ridge, she could see Sandakan harbour, a stroke of blue beneath the mist. The town was two straight lines of atap roofs and a swirl of people.
In the last year, concrete and glass had come to Sandakan. There were new British administration buildings south of the market, and the padang was busy again with picnics and cricket games. Each night, families spread woven mats on the grass. They turned their faces towards the west, hushed in reverence as the sun fell behind the hills.
In her room, there is a calendar on the wall, and each morning she tears off the previous day and unveils the new one. She has the sense that the days are precise and ordered, free from overlap or confusion. Her life now with Mas’s family, in the house on the hillside with a view of Sandakan town, is more than she dared to imagine. But even now she wonders what it would be like to leave here, finally, to travel to Tarakan, and keep the promise she made to her mother so many years ago.
In what remained of the buildings taken over by the Japanese during the war, the British had set up temporary offices and also an orphanage. Ani had stayed there for a month until Mas, a cousin to Ani’s mother, had found her. Before the war, Halim and Mas’s had been a family of six, now they were four. All of the children had been boys. The eldest had died early on. But if the war had ended sooner, Mas once said, a few weeks or a month, perhaps her youngest might have survived. She said this and half-smiled, her eyes pained, knowing that it was not useful to wish for a different present.
Ani had been ten years old when she came to live with them, a small, thin girl, and Halim used to joke that even her shadow was malnourished. It traipsed behind her, finally disappearing when she dove into the water to swim with Lohkman and her friends. One morning, she had woken to the call of the muezzin, a sound she had not heard since before the war. The lone voice travelled across the hillside, calling the faithful to prayer, his words lingering above the houses. She had lain awake remembering the long journey she made with her parents from the Dutch East Indies to Sandakan. They had walked barefoot along a mud track, where the flowers were taller than she was. She remembered her father’s hand against the back of her head, the sound of her mother’s feet always behind her. They ate mangoes from the nearby trees. In her memories, she fell asleep eating, the sweetness coating her tongue and lips, her limbs exhausted, warm air settling down on her.
Mas believes in spirits. They live in shapes and in the air; sometimes they are the souls of those who have not yet found their way to the land of the dead. Without them, she says, the world would be too bleak. But for Ani it is different. She knows that her parents are gone, that they do not remain in the air around her, they are not embodied by the sunlight or the curve of the Earth. She doesn’t dare say it aloud, and yet Mas knows.
So many in Sandakan cannot speak about the war at all. To them, it is something left at the wayside, best forgotten. Sometimes, that is why she prefers to be with Lohkman. He is eighteen, the same age as she is, and they have both completed their studies at the mission school. She feels at ease with him, because they believe the same things; what happened in the past is there, unaltered by spirits or wishes. It will never disappear.
Ani changed out of the sarong she had worn to the market and replaced it with a clean one, smoothing the material against her body. On the dresser was her mother’s jade pendant, carved in the shape of a bird. She had kept it safe all these years. Closing her eyes briefly, she ran one finger over the delicate stone. Tomorrow morning, she would see Matthew; they had arranged to meet near the harbour, after the night fishing was done. Since the end of the war, he had been living in Tawau with his mother, returning to Sandakan only a few weeks ago. When she looked up again, she barely recognized herself, a young woman in the mirror, the happiness that she possessed.