The Revisionists (16 page)

“A story about the ocean. All right.” Sari missed the ocean, missed the way sunlight moved upon its breathing body like a sheet over a sleeping child, missed the salty brine and the cry of birds circling the fishing boats. She had recently spied a map of Washington in the newspaper, and if she understood it correctly, they were not far from the ocean. But even if this house were half a kilometer from a beach, she would still be living in the middle of a desert.

“Many years ago, like now, the ocean was rising,” she said, remembering something she had seen on television in Seoul only a few months ago, about South Pacific islands that were disappearing as the polar ice caps melted. She remembered the faces of the islanders as they spoke in some jibberish language to the camera, the look of people who were being erased. She understood them now. “Because of this, many islands were being flooded, as each day the waves rose higher and higher, covering first the beaches and then the dunes and then the woods. The people on one island had seen this coming, but they hadn’t known what to do. The ocean continued to rise, so the people left their houses to move as many belongings as they could carry to the mountains. But the ocean rose higher still.”

“What happened to their houses?”

“They were consumed by the ocean. One day the people on the mountains could still see their old houses’ roofs, but then the next they were covered by waves.”

“I don’t like this story.”

“Wait, you will.” She couldn’t tell the truth about the island from the television show, of course. What had the island been called? she wondered. What vanishing language had those people spoken? “One day, a young girl whose family had moved to the mountain had an idea. She thought that—”

“What was her name?”

“It was Oogaloogamoogadooga.”

Hana laughed. “No, it wasn’t!”

“It was a long time ago, so the people had very funny-sounding names to our ears. Anyway, the girl had an idea. The mountains were getting crowded and the ocean was rising further. Soon they would have to live on the lip of a volcano, which no one wanted to do. And everyone was sad because they’d had to leave many of their things behind. So Oogaloogamoogadooga thought of all the things that the people still had. One thing they had—though they were running out—was hope. So she and her friends traveled to all the people on the mountains and asked them to put their hope together and put it underneath the island, because hope is buoyant—that means it floats. So they all—”

“How did they get it under the island?”

“They had special underwater boats. The people pooled all their hope together and were amazed at how much they had after all, and when they put it under the island, the island rose a bit. Their houses were still underwater, but they could see the roofs. Then Oogaloogamoogadooga went to all the people on the mountains and told them they needed to get rid of their fear—fear is very heavy, and it was weighing down the island. So all the people, before going to sleep that night, took out their fear and gave it to some fishermen, who then put the fear in boats—they needed many boats for all the fear—and the fishermen let the boats sail away without any captains. The boats drifted, and before reaching the horizon they sank into the ocean. They’re still there now, many leagues beneath the surface; giant squids live in them. And without all that fear weighing the island down, it rose again. Now the people’s houses were not underwater, though the beaches and some of the low areas still were.”

Hana’s eyelids were heavy, but she wasn’t asleep yet.

“Then the next day Oogaloogamoogadooga told everyone to have a good, full dinner so they would have many wonderful dreams at night. The next morning, she and her friends collected all the dreams, which are like kites, attached them to strings, and tied the ends of the strings to the island’s four corners. The wind was very strong that day—a typhoon had passed nearby—and the wind blew the dreams so forcefully that the island was raised up higher still. It was now the way it had been before.”

“Were the houses okay?”

“Yes. It was sunny for many days, and they dried out just fine.”

“Did their pets drown?”

“On this island they had no pets. The fish and dolphins were like pets to them. Anyway, now everything was back to normal, but because the people had survived such a difficult ordeal, they felt even stronger than ever, and had more hope than before, more than anyone really needed, so Oogaloogamoogadooga decided that each week she and her friends would collect all the extra hope and have the special boats put it under the island, in case the oceans ever rose again. With more and more hope, the land was lifted higher and higher, and the island grew and grew and grew. It became nearly a thousand kilometers long.”

“What’s it called?”

“Java. Where I was born.”

Hana’s voice was heavy, sinking into sleep. “But Omma says people in Java are lazy and stupid.”

Sari’s mind followed the silence through the open crack of the bedroom door, along the hallway, and down the stairs, searching for Sang Hee.

“Yes, I know she does. Now go to sleep.”

Hours more were spent doing dishes, cleaning, preparing bottles for the morning, and then soothing the twins, who woke again. Afterward, Sari made her way to the kitchen. She stood at the phone, listening for any sounds of movement from above. The oven clock told her it was past midnight; master and mistress had gone to sleep an hour or two ago.

She picked up the phone.

He had followed her around two grocery stores—clearly, he was interested in her. She was used to fending off clumsy advances, and despite the joy of being able to speak her language with him, she’d felt she had to dispatch him and get back to the house before she roused Sang Hee’s suspicion. Only at the end of her shopping had she realized that, at worst, he might provide a badly needed distraction from her predicament, so she’d asked for his number.

Maybe he could offer even more than a distraction.

She dialed Leo’s number, each press of the receiver’s buttons too loud. They glowed so brightly, half the room was illuminated a sickly green, but when she held the phone to her face the room disappeared.

After three rings, she heard a man’s voice harshly demand “Hello?,” one of the only English words she knew.

His tone gave her pause. Maybe this was a mistake? She should hang up. No, she needed to be brave, and friendly.
More
than friendly. She steeled herself, then said, in Bahasa, “Hello, is this Leo?”

“Yes,” he replied in Bahasa after a pause. His voice softened with the language, the inflection rising. But it wasn’t just the language. She could tell already that she’d been right, and he was delighted she’d called.

“I’m sorry to call you so late.”

“That’s okay.”

She was nervous about being overheard and wondered if she should try to sound less nervous. Or maybe he liked nervous women? “It was good to talk to you the other day. If you’d… if you’d like to work on your Bahasa sometime, maybe we could meet again?”

“That would be great.”

“How about on Wednesday evening—can you meet me at the same place at seven o’clock?”

“Yes.”

She felt so self-conscious, but he was responding naturally, as if he received such calls every night. Or dreamed of them.

“Okay. I must go, sorry—I’m not supposed to be on the phone. But I’ll see you on Wednesday?”

“Sure. Great.”

She smiled, hoping she would also
sound
like someone who was smiling, and said, “Good-bye.”

She hung up and stood there listening, her heart loud, surely so loud she wouldn’t have noticed the sounds of Sang Hee creeping around a corner or eavesdropping on the line. Maybe she’d made a horrible mistake. What was she really expecting from the American?

But still, there was this: her quickening heart, the feeling of flight beneath her toes as she stepped to her room, the fact that she
existed,
and had proven this existence to another person. It gave her something to look forward to, a horizon. And beyond that? She wasn’t sure yet. But she was close to something, and she needed to get closer.

8.

Leo’s parents lived in Bethesda, less than two miles from him, in a smaller, empty-nester version of the house where he’d grown up. He saw them about once every other month and spoke to them on the phone only slightly more often. He didn’t think of this lack of communication as unusual; it was how they’d always lived their lives.

He met them one night for dinner at a sushi place they’d been patronizing since he was a kid. As was his personality, and as had been drilled into him by his time at the Agency, he was five minutes early. His father, Alan Hastings, was deposited by cab ten minutes late. Leo already had a sake in him by then, and he figured his dad had picked up a little something in whatever business meeting he’d just left.

“What’s new?” Leo asked.

“Prices up, panic up, desperation up. I’m a busy man.” Alan’s Italian suit looked splendid; it was reassuring to see the way the old man kept his physique despite his rarely having time to hit the gym. Hopefully Leo would be as fortunate.

Alan was an energy lobbyist, which meant that he had a lot of energy and a lot of money. He never seemed to sleep much, except on the occasional weekend afternoon when he was home sitting in front of a sports game that bored him into narcolepsy.

When Leo had started work for the Agency, he’d given his parents the standard speech about his inability to disclose details of his job to them, but neither had fully accepted this need for secrecy. They both told him how proud they were that he was working for the government and possibly traveling the globe. Yet, as the weeks and months passed, they were increasingly miffed that they weren’t benefiting from his new knowledge.

“But there’s hardly any oil in Indonesia!” Alan had said when Leo completed his training and was able to pass some basic information (and some basic disinformation) to his parents about his upcoming post. “Come on, if I worked for the
coffee
industry, then Jakarta would be great, but, Jesus, Leo.”

“It’s my job, not yours.”

“I know, but I was expecting a little quid pro quo for the family estate.”

“You were hoping they’d send me to Saudi Arabia or Iraq?”

“Yes!”

Leo hadn’t known how to respond.

“Well, look, I know they’re dangerous,” Alan had said, backpedaling a bit. “Venezuela has a lot of oil too, and South America in general is big with the lithium trade—that’s going to be huge for laptops and phones. Can you ask for something in South America?”

“It doesn’t really work that way.”

“I can talk to some people.”

“
No.
And I’m an Asian specialist. I like the assignment.”

Alan had spent the next few weeks researching the various energy possibilities in Indonesia—there were some interesting developments in Irian Jaya—dropping several unsubtle hints and requests for information the relatively few times Leo called home. Leo soon stopped calling.

At the sushi restaurant, they waited fifteen minutes before deciding to order for Leo’s mother, Joyce. They knew what she liked anyway.

“What’s new with Mom?”

“Don’t mention the word
Microsoft,
” Alan said. “It didn’t go well, and she was blamed.”

“Got it.”

“Technology in general you shouldn’t discuss. The administration is bringing down a bunch of new rules that make life hell for her clients. Which I suppose is good for her, in some ways, but it’s ruining some of her cases.”

Dad was a Republican, Mom a Democrat. They bantered about politics only occasionally and with only as much emotional fervor as they exhibited when deciding which take-out place to order from. At this point in their careers they knew so many top politicians that they weren’t picky about who won what election; they hedged their bets and would profit either way. Leo remembered when D.C. was the murder capital of the world, when the idea of going downtown seemed borderline suicidal for the white suburban kids, and the extent of the city’s cultural life was a few punk bands. Now condos were rising everywhere, developers were filling old crack houses with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and reselling them for half a million each, five-star restaurants and new theaters were opening in every other neighborhood, and the exurbs were busily cloning themselves all the way to the Shenandoah foothills. The capital was a bank, and everyone withdrew.

Joyce arrived, dropping her purse and cell phone and apologies just as the waiters were bringing the sushi. A peck on the cheek, a comment on Leo’s apparent weight loss (“Have you lost your appetite for American cuisine?”), and then on with the food.

“Your new company’s Web site is rather vague,” she told her son after the basic pleasantries and some tuna.

“We’re not really in the clarity industry.”

“But you’re no longer with
them
.”
Them
was what she always called the Agency in Leo’s presence. “What exactly are you doing?”

She didn’t so much mean “doing with your day” as “doing with your life.” Low-paid government work was one thing, but they’d assumed he would parlay that into profit eventually.

“I’m leveraging my taxpayer-funded skill set for private gain.” He let himself smile.

“Do you like it?”

Leo was still thinking up an answer when his dad said, “Leo never likes new things. Give it a few months.”

Leo realized his dad was right. Maybe this funk he was going through had nothing to do with the new employer and less than he’d thought with the sour end to his time at the Agency. Maybe in a few weeks he’d grow to love following war protesters around at the behest of unknown clients.

“But if you decide it’s the wrong place,” Alan continued, “remember: Energy companies need risk analysts. They’d love someone with your experience.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The waiter had poured him more sake but he told himself not to touch it, that it would only cause problems. And he actually had a date, or a pseudo-date, after this.