Map of the Invisible World: A Novel by Tash Aw

Author:Tash Aw
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: 2010-12-01T23:37:03.552000+00:00

Johan, wait. Don’t let go of me.

They went into the bar. At the end of the narrow corridor, away from the noise of the street, there was another door, and on the door there was a poster of a young woman wearing a wet T-shirt. REACH FOR FLAVOR WINSTON OF AMERICA, she said. It was dark, the corridor lit only by a single fluorescent strip that glowed and flickered, and Johan could not make out if the girl was Chinese or Malay or Eurasian. Maybe she was just a Westerner pretending to be Asian. There was quite a lot of that nowadays.

It was not a big room, but there were many people there, and the air was heavy with cigarette smoke, a silvery veil that made it difficult to discern people’s faces, and even when he blinked he could not tell who was who. He thought he recognized someone—a face here, a long sweep of hair there, a flash of shiny beads on a handbag that he thought he had seen before, but then again maybe not.

Johan, wait, don’t go too fast, Farah whispered. She was holding his hand tightly and staying very close, so close he could feel the hesitant warmth of her body against his, her knee knocking into the back of his thigh as she said, Don’t let go of me, please don’t leave me alone.

Don’t worry, I’m right here.

There was music now, something bright and brassy, a trumpet or a saxophone starting up, then some tin drums and castanets. Not this mambo rock shit again, said Bob as they eased into an alcove deep in the shadows where they could not be seen. A row of lights came on, one by one, and the chatter of the audience turned into a rowdy cheer. There was clapping and some men were whistling. There was no curtain, no elaborate introduction, just some girls onstage who appeared all of a sudden through the smoke, moving their hips from side to side, out of sync with the music, as if it was their first time and they were not sure what to do in this place. They were wearing only panties decorated with gold beads dangling from the end of thin filaments of thread, and when they shook their hips the beads shimmered through the hazy blue smoke in the room. Over the powdery whiteness of their bare torsos there seemed to be a thin slick of sweat, only more viscous, as if it would be cold and almost firm to the touch, Johan thought. Over their nipples the girls wore silver stars that shone in the harsh glare of the lights and appeared to Johan almost like real stars shining through clouds. He remembered the Christmas they had at the orphanage, just that once, in the year before he left. Some foreigners had come to the village and they had presents for all the children, old toy cars and clothes and bags of hard candy wrapped in colored cellophane. They gave Johan a globe filled with fake snow and a miniature Eiffel Tower.

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