Teranesia

He said, ‘I’m doing this to satisfy my own curiosity. It was my parents’ work; I want to know where it would have led them. If I happen to run into my sister while I’m there, that will be a pleasant coincidence, nothing more.’

Felix replied drily, ‘That’s right: stick to the cover story, even under torture.’

Prabir turned to him. ‘You know what I hate most about you, Menéndez?’

‘No.’

‘Everything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Everything that doesn’t kill me just fucks me up a bit more.’

Felix grimaced sympathetically. ‘Irritating, isn’t it? I’ll see if I can cultivate a few more neuroses while you’re away, just to even things out a bit.’ He took hold of Prabir’s hand between the seats, and stroked the all-but-vanished scar. ‘But if I’d met you when I was fucked up myself, it probably would have killed us both.’

‘Yeah.’ Prabir’s chest tightened. He said, ‘I won’t always be like this. I won’t always be dragging you down.’

Felix looked him in the eye and said plainly, ‘You don’t drag me down.’

Prabir’s flight was called. He said, ‘I’ll bring you back a souvenir. Do you want anything particular?’

Felix thought about it, then shook his head. ‘You decide. Anything from a brand-new phylum will be fine by me.’

PART FOUR

7

The flight from Toronto touched down in Los Angeles and Honolulu before terminating in Sydney. Prabir changed planes for Darwin without leaving the airport. Choosing this route over Tokyo and Manila had been purely a matter of schedules and ticket prices, but as the red earth below gave way to verdant pasture and great mirrors of water, it was impossible not to dwell upon how close he was coming to retracing his steps away from the island. The boat full of refugees from Yamdena had landed in Darwin, and he and Madhusree had been flown back there from Exmouth before finally leaving the country via Sydney. The more he thought about it, the more he wished he’d gone out of his way to avoid these signposts; the last thing he wanted to do was descend systematically through the layers of his past, as if he was indulging in some kind of deliberate act of regression. He should have swooped down from Toronto by an unfamiliar route, and arrived in Ambon feeling as much like a stranger as possible.

He stepped out of the terminal at Darwin into a blast of tropical heat and humidity. It was barely half an hour later, local time, than it had been in Toronto when he left; even with three stops along the way, he’d almost kept pace with the turning of the Earth. The sky was full of threatening clouds, which seemed to spread the glare of the afternoon sun rather than diminish it. February was the middle of the wet season here, as it was in most of the former Indonesia, but Madhusree’s expedition wasn’t mistimed; in the Moluccas the pattern of the monsoon winds was reversed, and there it would be musim teduh, the calm season, the season for travel.

The flight to Ambon left the next morning. Prabir slung his backpack over his shoulders and started walking, ignoring the bus that was waiting to take passengers into the city centre. Once he checked into the hotel he’d probably fall asleep immediately, but if he could hold off until early evening he’d be able to start the next day refreshed and in synch. With six hours to kill and no interest in window shopping, the simplest method he could think of to stave off boredom would be to wander through the city on foot. His notepad had already acquired a local street map, so he was in no danger of getting lost.

He headed north out of the airport precinct, past playing fields and a cemetery, into a stretch of calm green tropical suburbia. At first he felt self-conscious when he passed other pedestrians – the size of his backpack marked him clearly as a tourist – but no one gave him a second glance. It felt good to stretch his legs; the pack wasn’t heavy, and even the surreal heat was more of a novelty than a hardship.

There was nothing on these serene, palm-lined streets to remind him of the detention camp two thousand kilometres away, but as he passed what looked like the grounds of a boarding school, he recalled his parents discussing the possibility of sending him to Darwin to study. If they’d had their way, he might have sat out the war here. So why hadn’t he? Had he dissuaded them somehow? Thrown some kind of tantrum? He couldn’t remember.

The afternoon downpour began, but the trees along the verge gave plenty of cover and his pack was waterproof. He kept walking north, away from the hotel. The earthy smell of the air as it rained made him ache with a kind of frustrated nostalgia: he couldn’t decide whether the scent of the storm reminded him of Calcutta, the island, or just Darwin itself.

The answer came a few minutes later, when the road ended at a hospital. He stood in the rain, staring at the entrance. He would never have recognised the building by sight alone, but he knew that he’d been here before.