“Wonderful,” Mas said, smiling. “We haven’t had a storm like this in months.”
They unrolled several yards of fabric and laid the cloth across the kitchen table. Mas had an old shirt of Halim’s, and she undid the seams, laying the pieces one on top of the other as she pulled them loose. Ani heated the iron. They worked slowly, Mas, seated at the treadle machine, keeping up a low, running monologue as she pulled threads. Ani smiled at Mas’s laughing indignation at the latest teaching methods of the new Form One teacher: “All those children do,” she said, “is sit in the grass and sing songs.” She spat a piece of thread emphatically into her hand. “As if singing nursery rhymes will turn them magically into doctors.”
When all the pieces lay neatly before her, Mas stood up to stretch her legs. The storm had begun to ease off, and she wandered into the sitting room and began to turn the dial of the radio. After a moment, music came through, the reception occasionally disturbed by faint crackling. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said, when she returned to the kitchen. She spoke in English, wanting to keep the conversation private from the two boys. “We received a letter from my cousin Bashir. He is the eldest in your mother’s family, and he lives in Tarakan.”
Ani set the iron aside, listening.
“He says that if you can make the journey to Tarakan, he would like to see you. In two months, he is going into the hospital for treatment, and he thinks you should come before then.” She sat down at the machine. “Will you go to see him?”
“I will.”
“And then, afterwards? Will you stay in Tarakan, or will you come back here?”
Ani hesitated, unsure how to read Mas’s question. “I’ll come back.”
Mas nodded. She nudged the hand crank and fixed the needle into place. But after laying down a few threads, she stopped again. “When I finished teaching my lessons this morning, Matthew Lim’s uncle came to see me. He said that his nephew was accepted at the University of Melbourne.” Mas paused, as if still in wonder at what came next. “It seems that Matthew is thinking about turning this opportunity down.”
“Yes,” Ani said. She felt a warmth in her cheeks as she went to sit at the low stool by Mas’s knee. “He told me.”
Mas reached out, smoothing Ani’s hair. “I couldn’t help but remember you, after the war. Thin as a sheet of paper, and so still, so quiet. I think of you as my own sister, my own child.”
“I’ve never felt so at peace here, Mas.”
“So it is you, as well, who wants to remain.”
Mas looked at the two boys in the sitting room, holding their pencils, beginning to write. She said that, during the war, Halim had been forced into a work camp, and she had been left alone with the children. It was the jungle that had kept them safe. Nothing was what it appeared to be in the light, or in the darkness. There was even food to be found, if you knew where to look. So many people disappeared. A life had been worth no more than a bird feather, that’s what she told herself, when first her eldest child, and then her youngest, died. When the war ended, she felt as if she had awoken from a deep sleep to find herself one of the lucky ones. She had survived, but at what cost? One part of her would always be buried with her children, no matter how many days accumulated, no matter how much distance she put between them. “Your life is changing, Ani,” she said. “There is only one thing that I learned from that time. Try to decide what you want, now, before you are forced to choose.”
Ani thought of her parents, her father walking each day to the airfield. “And if there is no right choice?”
But Mas went on as if she had not heard. “Before choice is taken from your hands,” she said, turning away. “By then, it will always be too late.”
When evening came, Ani walked down to the harbour. She was early, and she watched the last of the lift-net boats coming in. Twenty to thirty feet out, they let their sails fall slack, and their momentum carried them to shore.
It was busy tonight, the dealers and fishermen still bargaining over the last of the day’s catch. Women sat with their children, mending nets, or packing up what had not been sold. On the beach, a group of fishermen lay one beside the other, their feet resting against their boat. They used sand and water and the rough, callused soles of their feet to scrub the hull. Every now and then, a burst of laughter would erupt, and the sand would go flying.
Tajuddin came and sat beside her. He was chewing betel nut and repairing one of a half-dozen metal rings he had set in his lap. “ Selamat petang, Ani,” he said, and she returned the greeting. He told her that he had caught four handsome dorab that afternoon, and he believed that the seas would be bountiful tonight.
After a pause, he said, “Are you well, Ani?”
“Yes, datuk.”
He nodded, unconvinced, then returned his focus to the metal rings.
On the shore, Ani could see the high pyramid of fish, glistening with a sheen of water. Women and children gathered around, and the fishermen talked excitedly, gesturing as they spoke.
When Lohkman arrived, the two men went to see the catch. Ani watched their progress along the sand. They stopped every few steps to be greeted by other fishermen, to examine a newly mended net, or admire a neighbour’s boat. With the wind moving against her face, she did not think about Matthew, or Tarakan, she let all feelings subside. She saw their boat waiting on the beach, the glow of the bird on the prow and the warmth of the orange hull. People gathered to carry a lift-net to its storage quarters. They came in a long line, spaced ten to fifteen feet apart, moving along the water’s edge like a ribbon, each carrying a part of the rolled-up net. Children ducked between them, calling to each other as the men passed. The line moved past her, a slow and joyous procession, beads of water on the lines shimmering in the light.
The child that she remembered, the child walking along the ghost road, no longer hid from her. She could reach her hand across the barrier of time and grab hold. She could save her, finally. Don’t be afraid, she thought. We are here, we have made it to the other side.
She saw the shoreline crowded with people, the bright colours of their sarongs, and then the sea, which she imagined hung like a curtain at the edge of the world.
In the days that followed, Matthew told her that he had made his decision. He did not want to leave Sandakan. “And Australia?” she asked him. He said there was enough work on the plantation, and perhaps, later on, he could take a teaching position at the mission school. What he desired most of all was a life with her, a life free from uncertainty.
She pictured their lives unfolding like the casting of a net, when the lines left your hands, you knew where the entirety would fall.
Then one evening, walking in town together, they were approached by a young man she recognized from her years at the mission school. He wore a white shirt and slacks and carried a satchel over his shoulder. After he had confirmed Matthew’s name, he said, “I remember your father.” At first, the young man’s voice was measured and calm. He told them that he still had the papers, signed by Matthew’s father, that had been issued when his family’s crops were confiscated during the war. Then his voice began to rise, and people passing by on the street stopped, curious, looking from one to the other. The young man took another step forward. “My mother and sisters died of starvation,” he said, his voice shaking. “My father died a broken man.” He gazed into Matthew’s face, as if he could see through to the centre of him, to the man he would inevitably become. “You have no right to live amongst us.” The young man leaned forward, his body tensed, rigid. Then he turned abruptly and walked away.