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with a volcano inside’, and he is a ‘colonised man’, but one who is ‘apparently asserting
himself successfully’, which creates the condition ‘where questions of self-definition and
identity are important; where various stances and attitudes must be tried out, paraded and
asserted as a colonial people seeks to re-form its own identity and style’ (Tiffin, 1982, 333).
Kwan motors around Jakarta gathering information on his scooter in emulation of Sukarno in
his white helicopter, who is emulating the supreme God Vishnu riding across the cosmos in his
chariot. Kwan displays amazing capacities at appearing at the right place at the right time and
then disappearing again, much like the shadow figures on the wayang kulit screen, but ubiquity
for a man travelling without a police escort proves an exhausting practice, and, like even
Sukarno who has that benefit, Kwan eventually loses control over the world he has created.
Cookie tags Kwan variously as a medieval wandering scholar and a puritan, and Wally
warns Hamilton that Billy’s predilection to committing himself to causes could be dangerous.
‘Since I’ve known him—from our fervent student days—he’s been a Buddhist, a Methodist,
and then he entered the Church of Rome. He hasn’t been a Communist yet,’ Wally says,
adding nevertheless that he knows Billy is a liar by claiming not to speak Bahasa. Wally then
questions his parallel claim not to speak a word of Chinese and asks Hamilton, ‘Have you ever
considered that he might be an agent?’ (YLD, 68). It is an interesting question, for, in order to
defragment his self, Billy must indeed become an agent—of Krishna—, and he can only do so
not by cloaking but by defroking himself of his masks.
11.3.2.2. The Dwarf
The dwarf, as the mask which underlies all the others of Billy Kwan, is possibly Koch’s
most important metaphor in The Year of Living Desperately. Kwan is just one of the novel’s
variously strange and surprising cast of dwarves which serves as a mirroring device, much like
Alice’s looking-glass world, with which Koch directs critical attention to the other characters
attitudes, prejudices and perspectives. The dwarf is also among Koch’s most successful
attempts at infusing the vitality of Eastern mythology into desiccated Western symbols. The
reason for this is the dwarf’s nature as an attractive/repulsive, outwardly ugly and weak, yet
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