She nodded. “Every year that goes by makes it more difficult to return.”
Outside, vendors called their wares, pushing carts and trolleys around the potholes, through the crowds of people idling on the sidewalk.
They sat in silence for a few moments, and then he said, “If things keep going as they are, I may be forced to leave Indonesia. My papers may be revoked. I haven’t made any plans, but I’ve been thinking –”
“Do you really believe it will come to that?”
“Those are the rumours.”
“But only rumours.”
“Ani,” he said, “would you consider leaving Jakarta?”
She lifted her eyes, and he could sense her surprise, her confusion.
“Come with me,” he said. “I’ll arrange everything.”
“It’s the other side of the world, Sipke.”
“Come with me.”
He had the sense she could see something that he did not. “We could,” she said, finally. “Perhaps it could be possible.”
That night, they fell asleep together, Ani gathered in his arms.
In the morning, they woke to the sound of rifles. People fighting or celebrating, it was hard to tell which. They did not go downstairs or open the studio. On the radio, a commentator described how, here in Jakarta, rioters had set fire to the British embassy in protest over the proclamation of the new Malaysia. This was konfrontasi, the commentator said, and Indonesia must stand firm against the threat of British imperialism.
Outside, demonstrators gathered, a sea of black caps, of pitjis, growing in number as the morning wore on. Banners printed with slogans, In the name of Allah Ever Onward No Retreat. Wideh, a sarong tied around his waist, gazed down at the crowds, his bare shoulders, slender and fragile, leaning dangerously out the window. He had been examining one of Sipke’s cameras and now he held it to his eye. He moved slowly, framing shot after shot, practising without ever touching the shutter release.
On the radio, one official after another denounced the presence of British and Australian troops in North Borneo. Malaysia, they said, was a threat to Indonesian independence, an incitement to war. Sipke switched off the set. The floor seemed to tremble as the angry crowd marched, chanting. An effigy of the prime minister of Malaysia was set alight, and the smell of burning cut through the air. He and Ani moved as if in a dream, washing the dishes, cleaning the floors. Outside, they heard what sounded like firecrackers or gunshots.
At noon, when they sat down to a meal of rice and curry, Wideh still wore the camera around his neck. While they ate, Sipke began to talk about setting the light metre, adjusting the depth of field, the basics of composition. “The first pictures I took,” he told Wideh, in broken Indonesian, “were landscapes, because I was too shy to speak to anyone. Later on, an older photographer gave me advice. He said that if I was patient, if I waited, then people would forget the camera. Another part of them would drift up into view.”
Wideh surprised him by saying that he had been studying Sipke’s contact sheets. “What I wish for,” he said, politely, in English, “is to have a roll of film of my own.”
Sipke reached into his pocket, and placed a small plastic canister on the table between them. Wideh was ten years old. Below, the noise of the protests grew in volume, waves of sound cascading along the narrow streets. Wideh took the canister in his hand, the way Sipke and his brothers used to hold precious stones, newborn birds, or treasures unearthed from the depths of the canals.
That night, Sipke sat up with Ani beside the radio. The light from the street lamps wavered, occasionally cutting out. “The West can help us,” a speaker said. He sounded like an older man, perhaps one who had fought in the wars of the last two decades. “But they must let us find our own way; and the best it can do is to set examples and help us to reach up to them. It should not be concerned whether our director of agriculture or education or health is a Communist or a Nationalist: that is our affair. If you honestly want to help us, you must not ask questions. You must not demand that we love you. You must earn our respect and then learn to return it.”
Sipke watched her eyes. To him, they were full of anxiety, her fingers adjusting the dial as she listened to the voice distorted by static. The curtain had not been closed, and on the other side of the room, Wideh was still visible, asleep behind the mosquito net.
Together they lifted her mattress out from behind the divan and set it on the floor, then she lay down, leaving a space beside her.
Soon, she said, she would celebrate her thirtieth birthday, she would be older than her parents had been when they died. She spoke openly, her thoughts spilling free in a way he had not heard before. She told him that, often, her thoughts returned to Sandakan, that the pull of home had not diminished. She still imagined going back there some day. It was the place where her parents were buried. In the war, so many lives had been destroyed, others forever altered. Even if she tried, she could not measure what she had lost, or know what she had never attempted. In 1953, when she left Sandakan, she had carried a single hope, that Wideh would be one of this new, modern generation. That he would make his way in the world, unhindered, free to make his own destiny.
Afterwards, he remained by the window while she drifted to sleep. So many voices rose up, carried by the heat and air, a ghostly sound, moving against the walls.
In the house, the phone rings. Gail does not start, but Sipke’s hands jump out in front of him, instinctually, towards the sound. He takes the receiver, turns his face to the darkened window. “Sipke Vermeulen.”
It is Joos, from the farmhouse down the road.
Gail stands up, puts her hands on her hips and tilts her upper body to one side and then the other. She walks into the kitchen. Sipke can hear the refrigerator door opening and swishing shut. Two glasses filling with water.
He finds himself in a rambling conversation with Joos about a kind of bird that seems to have disappeared from the Netherlands. “We saw them when we were boys, didn’t we?” Joos says, in his usual mournful voice. “ Ooievaars, swooping across the fields. And now they’ve disappeared to some other country. Probably Norway or Canada, like everyone else. Even so, this country is so crowded, Sipke. When we die they will have to bury us standing upright.”
After he finally manages to comfort Joos, Sipke asks Gail if she would like to go for a walk. Smiling, she agrees, and they bundle themselves in big coats and pull on woollen toques. Outside, there’s the sound of wind moving through the banks of reeds and the swaying alders. As they walk, he tells her that Wideh lives in Jakarta now. “He is a photojournalist. Perhaps, later on, you would like to see some of his work.”
“Yes, I would love that.”
A light snow begins to fall. Gradually, she tells him about her documentaries, about Ansel and the life that they share in Vancouver.
“And your Ansel,” Sipke says. “He also works in radio?”
“He’s a doctor, a pulmonary specialist.”
“Ah, wonderful. And you have children.”
They curve along the water’s edge. “No, not yet.”
“One day?”
“Maybe one day.” His questions seem to relax a reserve in her and she begins to talk. She tells him that she had seen his letter one day at her parents’ house, the letter telling her father of Ani’s death. “Hers was a name my parents both knew,” Gail says, “and between them, it seemed to have a meaning, a weight.”