Jakarta Read online

  14.

  She never mentioned the novice, but then again she didn’t need to. She said: Jakarta. And we replied: Indonesia. This was a way of giving the rest of the syllabus short shrift, but there were other consequences: we were divested of our names, for a start, and eased into—in a way, reconciled with—the disappointment of knowing there was a world out there, a fully fledged outside reality, but the only contact we were ever going to have with it was this call-and-response memory game concerning its national jurisdictions and capital cities. It’s good to know nice and early if you’re going to amount to fuck all. Doubly so to be under no illusions: truly, this is all you’re good for. The best thing is to really understand, really and truly: your own innate mediocrity is something you will never overcome. The only danger is to fling yourself over the precipice into what some choose to call hopefulness, others, enthusiasm. There was nothing to distinguish our fourth-grade studies from a politics of pure despair: any enthusiasm we encountered, any upbeat individual, we learned to shun as though it were the Ź-Bug incarnate. And yet the school harbored one dangerous agent of magical thinking: our carpentry teacher. He drifted around the workshop inspecting our work, smiling indulgently at our efforts. Any bit of sanding, chiseling, or sawing, anything at all, no matter how cack-handed, and he’d clap his hands and do a little jig: You’ve got talent, he would lie. It’d be a tragedy to let it go to waste. Double lie. The job you’re learning in here is worthy of respect, a way of being somebody in the world. Double, quadruple, endless lies. Know what Saint Lacewing’s father did for a job? Can anybody guess? Another jig. A chill ran down my spine at the sight of his dismal capering, while the boy next to me at the workbench, Fatty Muñoz—pure unleavened mass, all jowls and threadbare clothing—watched me blanch to the point of transparency, though he didn’t dare say a word either. I looked at him in turn. How ridiculous he appeared in those moments, how deflated, just like everyone else in class: recoiling but also visibly shrinking, even him seeming somewhat diminished—as though slipping away through the black hole of childhood, into which everything subsides from time to time. Poor Fatty M., his big, benumbed ass, his chubby, useless hands gripping tools he would never wield with anything but utmost ineptitude. In my mind our carpentry teacher was worthy of all the contempt you could muster, the lowest of any low-life I’d ever encountered, certainly the most cruel: there was nothing to be gained by praising Fatty M. like this, letting him suspect he might one day be somebody when the opposite was true; the only thing he was ever going to become was a fuckup—a fucking fiasco of a fuckup, a fat one at that—and then what was our inspirational worker of wood going to do? I’ll tell you what: shrug, and assure Fatty Fuckup Muñoz that it was his fault alone he hadn’t realized his colossal potential. It’s no good having all the right ingredients—which you did, kid, you surely did—if you don’t then follow the instructions. Meanwhile the air grew increasingly stale in that cramped workshop, more a shed than anything, barely enough oxygen to go round. There we sat, protective goggles, overalls, planes gripped in faithful hands, gouges, hammers, chisels, wood saws of many kinds, triangles—and that piece of wood in the vice, the one that had been there since the beginning of time, trapped between the rusty jaws, pinned there eons before with dark, labyrinthine rings. My thoughts would drift away to the game, to the Vakapý plaýers cutting elegant diagonals across the court. To loveliest Zulaýma. To really going far—away. Images that alleviated the cramped, clamped sensations. Go on, son, keep on sawing. That’s it, nice and steady now. Do it like you’re singing to the wood. Hear that? Hear the way it sings back? Who’s to say, one day they could be naming streets after you.

  15.

  I pick my way through the morass of cables and gaming stations, latter begetting former. Vestiges of the last game still hang pixel-like in my vision and echo disconcertingly in my ears. The identikit stations are like cramped cubbyholes, no bigger than the antique postage stamps from before the most recent Bug, or even the really tiny ones from the epidemic before that: no ventilation, barely space to breathe, though as I come past I am able to make out the labored or agitated breathing of gamblers of all different physical conditions and ages (so much for the official under-fourteen ban) keeping time with the constantly updated personalized betting offers. There, ensconced in headsets, they see themselves as exceptionally well qualified to judge the odds, deeply versed, measured in all that they do, dons among mere fans, when plainly they’re the same scum as the rest of us, parasites supping on Vakapý for anything resembling a thrill, needles dangling from forearms. It’s a pretty disgusting exercise: I have to clamber directly over some of them, and my hands and legs become coated in their slather. I have to find my way out somehow and mustn’t so much as look at those headsets, must avoid getting sucked back into the Vakapý maze once more. Another of the gamblers calls out his discońńect balance, trying to get away—he’s into hour twenty-five—but something keeps him there, stuck in the limbo, forever nearly about to win. I carefully pick my way through them, forcing myself not to stop, orienting myself by the huddled, panting bodies. I don’t know what’s got them so excited—a sudden bump in the Cređit allocation, perhaps, or some botched attempt to keep the ball in play, both of which, after all, could be ways of describing life itself, or survival at least. I keep my eye on the halogen bulb beyond the door grate at the far end, light that marks a kind of outer limit to this zone. I push my way to the exit and just before I go out cast a final glance back across at my allies in idleness. I feel for them, I really do.

  16.

  When the Department of Hygiene, Social Services, and Public Wellbeing announced that the quarantine was over, we were lost. We handed in the hazmat suits, and in exchange, they gave us a city that wasn’t ours. The roads began teeming with vehicles and people once more, and it was all downhill from there. Immigrants took the place of the dead, and those who had survived the ravages of the Ź-Bug went and signed on for the paltry welfare stamps again. And back to life creaked the city, its many moving parts: the old ladies back to the bingo halls, the gamblers to their gaming stations, the rapists to the public parks; all the highways and byways were reopened, along with the churches and the whorehouses; and you could get all essential household items in the supermarkets once more (at three times the former price). But the newly established order had no place for us. We left the Ź-Brigađe, but in many ways it did not leave us; the only reason I stopped exterminating rats was because they disappeared. Otherwise I imagine I’d have stayed underground, eager for Kovac the Albýno’s every command. In the end, with nothing better to do, I started hanging around down at the docks. Then Clara appeared.

  17.

  Any luck? says Señora Albýno#2460, and immediately repeats herself, which means there’s no way of avoiding the question: Any luck? No luck. Well, there is: the same as ever. But that isn’t luck, I think, it’s custom, or habit, it’s the same old. I see, she says, I see, not batting an eyelid as she glances up at my Cređit balance on her screen. She goes back to shuffling a stack of the trashy “education” comics on the counter; the counter itself has a green sheet of glass atop it, with a five-directioned crack that has been mended with numerous layers of Scotch tape. This has been Señora Albýno#2460’s establishment for as long as I can remember. The walls in the stationary store have grown old, they’re mildewed and fissured, but not her. The place is even legitimate: between the retention files, the starved-looking ranks of teddy bears, the drooping helium balloons, and a sparse stock of cellophane, certificates, bookmarks, and various kinds of paper organized by color and thickness, a framed license has pride of place on the back wall, the writing in four different colors, the inspection stamps numerous. I stand and stare at Señora Albýno#2460’s hands, which make short work of the comic strips intended to teach our youth about history and social issues, sorting through them hypnotically: a cascade of the brash, reductive illustrations, glimpses of sideburns, sashes, flags, tricornes. To one side of the coun
ter is a bench and sitting on it a man with an aquiline, flaring nose, the hair on top of his head partially shaved and a toupee sown into the skin of his temples. He looks a bit like one of our nation’s famous sons to me—an impression supported by the rapier-swift movements of Señora Albýno#2460’s hands, her deft and dexterous gesticulations, which seem, like a clairvoyant’s, to have conjured this haggard dignitary of our great and noble country, a country always ready to honor misery when it sees it. He’s at the front of the queue, a queue that will eventually stretch half the way round the block. Gaming centers are not in short supply: three to every one citizen of voting/gambling age, the latest government numbers suggest. This particular gaming center, for example, is considered one of the upmarket ones, though the state of the walls and ceiling, and of the carpets, never apparently introduced to a vacuum cleaner, suggests otherwise. The man awaits instructions, rubbing the back of his hand against his chin, a stiff and imploring gesture—a result of his condition. The obvious question is why, now that I’ve discońńected, I’m still hanging around. Señora Albýno#2460 gives him a sidelong squint, followed by a nod. One more nod: that’s his signal. The man jumps up, places his ID on the counter, and hurries past as though she doesn’t exist. He pulls open the door, goes through, and swings it softly shut behind him. Señora Albýno#2460’s sight lingers momentarily on the back of the shop. A thick pair of glasses, the frames imitation tortoiseshell, perch on the squashed protuberance of her nose. She keeps just one eye on the ID; I’m not sure what the other one is looking at. The interruption seems to take an age, and eventually the gaze of her wayward pupil returns to the papers. At the top of the pile is one that reads “Natural Disasters” and features a list of the most significant catastrophes to befall the country in recent times. Señora Albýno#2460 looks at me—half looks at me. I read somewhere that Albýno optic nerves are more knotted than our own, the wiring back there more complicated, and that this, according to the antiabolitionists at least, has something to do with the congenital deceitfulness they attribute to her kind. By which I mean: at the back of most people’s heads, the optic nerves reach to the respective opposite side of the brain, whereas in the case of the Albýnos all is an untidy crisscrossing and tangling and even, in places, fusing. The upshot being this ocular drift, plus all the bodily grace of marionettes with broken spindles, though it does also mean they’re able to swivel each eye independently, 180 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees up or down. So it goes—none among our academic geniuses, let alone our representatives in parliament, have come anywhere near dispelling prejudices that sprang up almost as soon as the first settlers arrived, bringing the Albýnos with them in shackles. They made pacts with historically oppressed indigenous tribes, which in turn, at the urgings of a monk who had been living among them for some time, agreed to replace the crab eyes with which they traditionally decorated their good-luck charms with Albýno eyes instead; to gods old and new alike, they now began bringing talismans made of pigmentless flesh. Some people still believe that these neural connections, which mean in well-lit places that they can see only a reduced color spectrum, also account for certain behaviors. Strange how something so obvious can be the cause of such disagreement: it’s possible to glimpse, through their pinkish retinas, the accumulation of nerves beyond. I stand, stare, picture Señora Albýno#2460 as a complex system of fibers: not an easy fit for the comic-didactic schema laid out in our country. She goes on painstakingly filling in registration forms. Another man comes in off the street, identical to the last guy. He’s at the front of the queue now. I ask Señora Albýno#2460 for my ID back. Please, I say. First you gotta do my hair, she says absently—absent as a ghost—First you gotta do my hair, and I know she won’t take no for an answer, and anyway I can’t say no because in the time it takes for me to think how long I’ll need to drag a comb through her disgusting locks—quite a long time, not so much dithering as stuck in the headlights of my own growing anguish, my growing unease at being separated from Clara and from the stone—she has produced a comb, plus a couple of hair slides and hair bands for good measure. May as well get on with it: I reach over, starting out with a center part—her hair is so thin it’s difficult to hold without it tearing. I picture a diadem extending outward from the center, like a flower composed of nerves, the perfect do, and with this in mind split each half into three subsections, start plaiting a la Roumanian, with sections from either side of the head crossing the center. Seven or eight cross-folds, bringing in sections from occipital and parietal, always folding over-under, always keeping the hair taut as I fold in the different tranches, so much so that strands start coming away in my hands—strands at first, then entire tufts. My hands, my clothes, and all about us on the floor, hair of whitest white, strewn like a lot of straw, like we’re in a stable, the problem certainly being my zeal once I’ve committed to the task, my urge to construct a perfectly knot-free diadem, perfectly limned, a crown of braids in honor of the owner of gaming center #2460, fully accredited by the Department of Chaos and Gaming, who now takes up a small beveled hand mirror, nodding: she likes. Nice, she says, nice, and I have to agree: in spite of the missing clumps, I’ve done an OK job, the finishing touch being the colorful hair ties. She goes on nodding, and the next toupeed gambler comes forward, sets down his ID, hurries past, like we’re both ghosts! Pulls open the door, goes in, shuts it noiselessly behind him. As for me, I don’t even say goodbye: I grab my ID and go outside, brushing the hair from my clothes. Outside, the wind is up, part of the usual din in the street. And I was wrong: the queue reaches all the way along this side of the block, to the corner, past the corner, and snakes away down a side street. It’s anybody’s guess where it ends.

  18.

  Then I met her. That could be a beginning too. Like: I was walking along the beach when … Oh, such an artless declarative, but sufficiently discreet as to avoid false hopes! Plus I don’t actually remember the details: was it Clara who walked up to me, or the other way round? Plus what does it matter. The first thing was me following her footprints: sunk fairly deep, clean edges. A regular sequence of regular footprints. What I needed now—the only thing I needed—was to set eyes on the feet that had left these marks. They came from the sea, or ended in it. It’s clear to me now, looking back, that the true beginning of our stone-quest lay with those footprints in the sand. Within days of finding one another we were doing the usual: killing time, her talking about her, me talking about me, general pointless nattering, sex, walks along the esplanade, visits to the uninhabited local cinema. The authorities had dispatched the Ź-Bug, but there were still Department of Hygiene warnings in force; you were expected to wear masks in public places, and physical contact was a big nono. In any case Clara never liked to be touched in public, though she did like Westerns. In her view, all the stories ever told, past, present, and future, could be boiled down to the conflict between the land and human will. A single pasture, or a thousand head of livestock: all you needed for narrative conflict, right there. White sombrero versus black sombrero. Even the Bible, she said, was just a question of warring sombreros. Her views were far from ideological, they were based in her own authentic interest, if I can put it like that. She had a way of asking questions, and answering them, that enabled the conversation to flow, that gave it a rhythm, dragging out her vowels and dropping so many consonants that any link between them was all but decimated, leaving each of the syllables effectively autonomous, vying for a foothold as actual parts of speech. She’d say sombrero and the eeeee would get jammed before it even really emerged, rattling around somewhere in her digestive tract: a trapped vowel, struggling to make it out from the mire of warmish body fluids or sticky cells, snagged perhaps on a secret flap inside some tubular organ or other, there it would stay, right theeeeere, theeeeero, sombreeeeero, milled or milling around or ground down or just stuck inside the inner workings of her stomach, or the workings of the formation of her words, before finally, eventually surfacing, crossing the threshold of her palate
. Only then did the subsequent syllable get to embark on its journey toward articulation. She and I saw each other under strict conditions but with a certain amount of frequency. And then one day she found the stone. I took them both back to my place, stone and girl, gripped by sudden fears. And for a while there-after there was no time for Vakapý, or time down at the docks. It was these two and nothing else: my life became an exercise in deciphering what it was that joined them. And then one day the images began. Perfection. I didn’t need money because money represented an obstacle in my new task, my new life’s work. More than just an inconvenience, money became something utterly not worth going after, given that the more a person makes, the greater one’s gains, the more acute the possibility of losing it all becomes, an acuteness that quickly transforms into worry. So I gave up all my winnings as lost, and the only thing I now spent any effort on was establishing whether Clara, in the stillness of her trances, intensely subsumed in the stone visions, was still breathing. On rare occasions when the room became so crammed with the images that it felt like the roof would squash us from above, I slipped out and diluted my brain for a little while with the distraction of some Vakapý. Sometimes I don’t even need to see the ball in flight. The sound is enough. Enough just to plug in, hear the welcome jingle, the faintest whiff of a game. You lose yourself in any case. Whatever happens, the Sýstem wins. It’s the Sýstem, you see.