He reaches out his hand, and rests it on hers.
She says, “You said you would show me Wideh’s photographs.”
He gets up and leaves her for a moment. When he returns, he has an archival box containing tear sheets and prints, and he sets it on the table.
She rests her hands on the lid, but she does not open it. Exhaustion seems to shape the air around her.
“It’s late,” he says. “Perhaps we should rest.”
“Yes.” She is lost in her own thoughts. He can see her as a child, the car that winds back through the city, the same roads traced and retraced.
“Tomorrow, there is a place I would like to show you. I used to go there often with Ani and Wideh, a long time ago. It is called Schokland, and in the past it was an island, surrounded by the sea.”
Slowly they gather the cups and dishes and set them in the sink. She smoothes the cloth on the table, then, leaning forward, her face young in the candlelight, she blows out the flames.
Sipke finds a place by the windows. When he closes his eyes, the morning humidity of Jakarta sits heavily, once more, on his skin. Outside, the first calls of the vendors are audible, the ringing of bells, makeshift carts clattering over the sidewalk.
That day when the letter from Matthew Lim arrived, Sipke had asked her what it was that she wished to do. “I don’t know,” she had said, over and over. But, along with the surprise that he saw, there was a thread of hope running through her, so fine as to be almost invisible. He could not help but see it.
Over the next month, he busied himself with things that needed to be done. He prepared to close the studio down and put the space up for sale. He sat for hours in the Dutch embassy, beside Indonesian mothers and grandmothers, flanked by the children they brought with them. Sipke took forms to one building to get stamped, another to get signed. To obtain departure permits for both Wideh and Ani, he visited as many as a dozen offices, continuously taking out his wallet and laying bills on the table. He returned to the Dutch embassy, took a number, and fell asleep under the tall windows.
He did not know if Ani had written to Wideh’s father. He could not bring himself to ask the question, he tried to go on as if nothing had changed. He closed his eyes against her pain, because to acknowledge it would mean admitting the possibility that she would remain here, that she would allow him to leave and not follow.
One night, a few weeks after the letter had arrived, he and Ani stood at the window of their upstairs flat, looking down at the street. The power had been cut again and the kitchen taps were running only a muddy froth. The night was humid, and the air thin. He told her that their visas had been approved, that they could leave before the end of the dry season. “When we arrive in Amsterdam,” he said, “I’ll apply for citizenship for you and Wideh.”
“I don’t know if I can do this, Sipke.”
A strange panic, one he had never known before, seized his chest. What was decided now would be unalterable. He bowed his head against hers. “The decision belongs to you,” he said. “You do not need to be afraid.”
In the days that followed, Sipke found ways to distract himself, to avoid Ani. He walked through the crowded market, along the canals, taking photographs of faces, of children laughing as they splashed in the water. Military exercises were taking place every hour, growing in intensity, blocking the roads. He had no ideas, no plans, only a feeling of deep foreboding. He papered up the windows of the studio, and taped a sign to the door. Tutup. Closed. Gesloten.
Each day, he left the apartment early and walked along Jalan Kamboja. Those who slept on the street were just beginning to wake. One morning, Sipke watched a woman and her two children, a boy and a girl, barefoot, in faded sarongs, washing themselves with the water that trickled from a pipe alongside a house. He had his camera with him. He held it to his eyes, framing the children in the viewfinder, releasing the shutter a half-dozen times. The children cupped their hands together, catching the water patiently. Behind them, the paint was stained and peeling. The little girl watched him for a moment, then she stood up and ran towards him, followed by her brother. He was overwhelmed. Without thinking, he slipped a few rupiahs, all the money he carried, into their open hands.
That week, the paperwork for Ani’s visa was concluded, and he brought the documents home and showed them to her.
She said the words that he dreaded hearing. “Sipke, we are not coming with you.”
For several seconds, he did not answer. “I’ll stay, then,” he said. “There must be some way.”
She said that she had written to Wideh’s father, and that she had decided to remain in Jakarta until his arrival. That much she must do for him. For herself. They both had to have the truth between them, to understand what had been lost, to know how to go forward. For the rest, she could only wait and see.
Fear rose up inside him, but most alarming to him, a feeling of acceptance that it could be no other way. Sipke, she said, but he left the apartment and went downstairs to the studio. The front windows were covered, but all the equipment remained in place. A line of negatives rested on the light box, waiting for him. There, in the half-light, he carried on working, trying to lose himself in the stillness of the room.
Ani let herself in. He was mixing chemicals in the bath, and he concentrated on the movements of his hands. They stood side by side, watching as he poured a measure of liquid into the tank.
There were photos scattered on the table. Sunset on the harbour at Sunda Kelapa, the tall masts of painted boats glowing, luminous. In the foreground, Wideh and Ani stood in the water, laughing as they looked up to see him.
She put her hand on his shoulder, the faintest touch, as if afraid he would turn away. She said that no choice existed for her.
That night, lying alone in his own apartment, unable to sleep, he got up and dressed quietly in the dark. Outside, he crossed the street and sat at a table in the kedai kopi. A man was coming along the road now, drunk and staggering. He was reciting poetry or singing a song. “Turn your heads as you pass,” he said. “We shall die soon enough from a surfeit of words. We do not need the slow poison of your pity.”
In the empty restaurant, Sipke closed his eyes and was back in Algiers, crawling on his hands and knees towards the man, the stranger. He had wanted the camera to speak for him, to make something out of this suffering that, in the end, could never be forgotten. But the photograph was only a shadow, a question waiting for a response, for someone else to take it in his hands and recognize all that it wished to say, all that it had failed to express. He wanted to call her down, to throw stones at the window, break the glass and tell her that for the rest of his life he would love her. He said her name over and over, but only the noise of the city answered.
He asked Ani if he could take a portrait of her, and she agreed. They went into the studio, which was almost empty now, ready for the new proprietor. Rain cascaded against the exterior walls. Ani wore a blue batik kain and kebaya, and the silk of the material was flecked with gold. Her hair was tied back, swept cleanly off her face so that it was her eyes that arrested you. He set his camera on the tripod, and framed her face in his view. They did not say anything to each other, and it came to him that their affair, what they had been to one another, had been redefined, had become another relationship entirely. A photographer and his subject, separate people in parallel worlds, and at the end of it all, no way that he knew to bring them together.