The Beach at Galle Road

by Joanna Luloff

  Occasionally, Nilanthi would huddle in the corner of the kitchen, safely tucked into the darkness of the recent power cuts, and watch for her husband’s return. She savored the melancholy droop of his shoulders as he bent toward his barely edible food. He ran his wiry, dry fingers through thinning hair and left it in tangles. He suddenly had the sloped back of an old man, the defeated sighs of resignation. Nilanthi admired her accomplishments. Soon he’ll look even worse than I do.

  In the mornings, Dinesh put on his disguise of a husband in charge. He approached Nilanthi’s bed, threw off her covers, and shook her shoulders. “Today you’ll sweep up this place and wash my shirts.” But each morning he would be greeted by Nilanthi’s slanted grin, a ghoulish smile and a gurgle. His voice would catch in his throat for a moment before continuing. “I’ll expect a decent dinner when I get home.” And then his words would trail off, swallowed by Nilanthi’s scraping laughter, as he backed out of the room, retreating as if from a raised cobra.

  Nilanthi walked barefoot when she left the house. Barefoot to the well, to the market, to the temple, where others’ sandals lined the entrance to Shiva’s shrine. At first the heat off the desert earth scorched her feet. Pebbles pierced the balls of her uncallused heels. Her toes bled as she stubbed them against rocks. On her way to temple one afternoon, Sunitha laughed at the delicacy of Nilanthi’s vulnerable feet. “Hospital lotions have turned your feet into pincushions,” she teased.

  “My mother never let us out of the house without shoes. My feet were pampered long before the hospital.” Nilanthi rubbed the tips of her toes against the temple’s staircase. The rough stone tickled the soreness out of her feet. She noticed that two of her toenails had started to turn black. When she reached the entrance to the shrine, she placed two anthuriums at Shiva’s feet.

  “And what does your mother have to say now?”

  “It hurts her to see me in such disgrace, I’m sure of it. But she lets me be—which is more than I can say for you. You seem to be enjoying yourself quite a bit at my expense.” Nilanthi scratched at a scab on her ankle and then smiled up at her friend, reassuring her that her scolding was playful and nothing more. Sunitha winked back, but for a moment Nilanthi wondered about her friend’s expression. Whether there wasn’t a hint of smugness in Sunitha’s fleeting smiles.

  A cluster of women dressed in white saris approached the temple with their offerings and prayers. A safe return of their sons, husbands, and brothers. Their voices whispered individual prayers, but together their muffled drone reminded Nilanthi of the rush of the southern sea. Briefly her thoughts traveled to the Galle coastline and to her student days, when her imagination had played in the fantasies of Hindi films. Regal, youthful suitors who carried cricket bats and notebooks and wrinkled love letters meant only for her eyes. In their place now was Dinesh. A crumpled man, bent under the same weight of loss all their neighbors shared. He must think I haven’t noticed all his stashed bottles of arrack and moonshine behind the stacked firewood, she thought.

  “Pathetic, these women.” Sunitha interrupted Nilanthi’s memories. “Their men are dead. No one will come back to this place once they are gone.”

  “You came back,” Nilanthi answered.

  Her friend frowned. “Revenge can keep us in a place. And of course”—her tone lightened—“someone needs to look after you.”

  “You lured my brother back, too, you silly flirt.” Nilanthi pinched Sunitha’s arm and giggled.

  “He came back all on his own. He missed his home.”

  “Sure he did. He spends five minutes with me and then he disappears.”

  “Perhaps if you kept your kitchen cleaner he might linger awhile longer.”

  “Ha! Before Dinesh knows it, his house—my father’s house—will crumble around him. Only ants will keep him company then. He will not have a clean house unless he chooses to clean it himself.”

  Sunitha wrinkled her forehead and murmured toward her feet. “Stupid man, he chose the wrong girl after all.” She glanced at Nilanthi, the anger leaving her voice. “You seem to have an audience.” Another wink and then Sunitha strolled to the temple’s gates, waving once before turning down the path.

  All the women were now staring in Nilanthi’s direction, inspecting a conversation that seemed to have only one gurgling, drooling participant. Malsha and Fatima, Nilanthi remembered from school. Mrs. Priyani, the seamstress. Mrs. de Silva, the bank boss’s wife. Mrs. Thiranagama, her mother’s old friend, approached Nilanthi. “Are you all right, my dear?” She handed Nilanthi a handkerchief and gestured at her chin.

  Nilanthi examined the handkerchief with pretend confusion.

  Mrs. Thiranagama took the cloth back and wiped a bit of drool from Nilanthi’s chin. Nilanthi momentarily thought of her mother, and shame filled her. When she was a little girl, her mother had taken her to this temple, bent alongside her in front of Ganesh, seeking wisdom and luck for Nilanthi. The smartest in her class, her mother had whispered to the statue, thanking the god for his blessings. With this flash of memory, Nilanthi squared her shoulders and straightened her skirt, attempting a smile in her neighbor’s direction. But Mrs. Thiranagama was staring at Nilanthi’s feet and the dried blood caking her ankles. She caught a grimace on the old woman’s face. Repulsion overpowers pity, she reminded herself.

  “A lucky thing your mother doesn’t have to witness this. Such a shame.” Mrs. Thiranagama met Nilanthi’s eye before retreating to the circle of flapping white fabric. Though the woman’s voice had carried traces of kindness, there was also a snap of accusation. Nilanthi realized she had become yet another village reminder of lost hopes and powerless prayers, their sons’ deaths smudged onto her muddied feet.

  As Nilanthi descended the temple steps, a breeze danced around her, rustling her skirt and bringing the women’s words to her ears. What did you say? You really shouldn’t approach her—you could have stained your temple sari. I’ve never seen a girl so dirty. Did she say who she was talking to? Of course she couldn’t explain—those noises she makes. Did you give her your handkerchief? Oh, Mrs. Thiranagama, you are far too sympathetic. There are dangerous spirits in that girl. You keep your distance. It is only a matter of time before that husband of hers shares her ghosts. Their tumbling judgments bruised Nilanthi as she made her way home. She had become so grotesque that even offering her a handkerchief was a dangerous thing. But as she pictured the women’s scornful glances alongside Shiva’s languid gaze, she was confident that her own prayers were being answered.

  DINESH HEARD THE gossip in the neighborhood; Nilanthi was sure of it. Perhaps it was the talk of ghosts and dangerous spirits from the women that increased Dinesh’s distance from her, or perhaps it was the quiet murmurings of criticism from the storekeepers and other men. Now, late in the night, when he returned, he banged and stomped his way through the door, no longer bothering with his shoes or the stale food under the basket. Nilanthi would often find him in a crumpled ball on the floor in the kitchen’s slanted morning light. If she nudged him with the dirty heel of her foot, his eyes would blink awake, find their focus. And then, as she backed away from him, she watched despair take hold of his bloated, scruffy face. Meeting his gaze, she would grin an exaggerated smile until he backed away from her, out of the house, into the morning, and left her in peace.

  Soon it became Nilanthi’s goal to follow Dinesh out of the house, to haunt him in the daylight hours. She wanted him to feel her presence on his way to work, as he chatted with his friends, as he bought the newspaper. She longed to see his confrontation with the rumors, the gossiping, the criticism that surrounded his marriage. She wanted to see him—a man once proud and envied—cowered and reduced.

  After he had slung his cracked briefcase over his shoulder, Nilanthi crept out of their kitchen and, still in her nightgown, pursued her husband out of the house and onto the path toward town. She felt Lalith’s soldierly company as she practiced her own spying techniques. As her brother whispered counsel into her ear, she fel
t herself become quickness and invisibility. When Dinesh glanced to the left, she darted behind a tree. When he bent to tie his shoe, she huddled behind a boulder. When he waved at Mr. Thiranagama, he must have caught sight of a brief flash of her white nightgown, because he paused and rubbed at his neck, looking left and right. Nilanthi savored his confusion. From this distance, Dinesh looked like a rag doll neglected by a thoughtless child. Frayed and substanceless, with his underarms and collar stained a murky yellow.

  “Anything wrong, Dinesh?” Mr. Thiranagama asked.

  “Just felt for a moment that—oh, never mind.”

  “Got one of those pangs of paranoia, didn’t you?” Mr. Thiranagama teased. “Easy to feel those these days.”

  “Well, I should be on my way,” Dinesh said with a chuckle.

  “Right . . . work. One of the lucky ones who still has a job to go to.” Was there sarcasm in Mr. Thiranagama’s voice as he patted Dinesh on the back, causing him to flinch briefly? “By the way, Dinesh, how is your wife feeling? My wife saw her the other day at the temple and, well, she was worried that—”

  “Fine. Fine. We’re both fine.” Dinesh raked at his hair, looking around one last time. “Send my regards to Mrs. Thiranagama. You two should certainly come over for . . . well . . . when the weather breaks. At any rate, give my greetings to her, will you?” Nilanthi watched her husband cling to the facade of normalcy. In some ways, his stubborn allegiance to the fiction he’d created impressed Nilanthi—there was a similarity in their determination, she had to admit. But as Dinesh switched his scuffed bag to his other shoulder and turned from his friend, Nilanthi caught a glimpse of his fatigue and assured herself that her will was stronger than her husband’s.

  Foolish bugger. Mr. Thiranagama’s murmurs carried to Nilanthi as she resumed her shadow journey behind Dinesh.

  Nilanthi followed Dinesh past the tea shop, the stationers, and the pharmacy. She followed him, her nightgown skimming her ankles, as he passed the bank without a glance into his workplace. Here, he picked up speed, followed the road to the right and to the right again. Nilanthi was less familiar with this part of the village. The houses grew sparse, and emaciated cows wandered dopily in the dust. Her husband eventually collapsed on a bench outside a dilapidated shop. A squat man who had been lying with a newspaper over his face rose, smacked Dinesh on the shoulder, and brought out a dusty bottle from the corner of the store. Dinesh handed over a crumpled twenty-rupee note, unscrewed the top of the bottle, and leaned back, coaxing the golden liquid into his mouth.

  So this is what he becomes, Nilanthi observed. No longer a hero, he will have to play the other cliché. The sad, bad-luck drunk. She wondered for a moment how she could ever have been afraid of this yellowed man with his wrinkled elbows and sagging head. He is just an old water buffalo who will wander one day from the herd, take too long a break in the shade. Tired and worn out and no longer useful—no one will notice his disappearance.

  Nilanthi pursued her husband for several days. He had started to change his route to avoid the village center. Soon she didn’t even have to follow him with her eyes; she could track him by his sour smell, his flimsy sighs, and the shuffling monotony of his steps.

  ONE NIGHT, NILANTHI didn’t hear Dinesh come home until she felt him at the foot of her bed. She tucked and readied herself to fight, but his presence there—so small and insubstantial—sent a giggle through her. As her laughter waved over her body, and the slick saliva sounds of her throat traveled toward him, Dinesh met her eyes and started shaking, too. For a moment, Nilanthi thought he was also laughing, and his silent rocking briefly quieted her. In her half sleep, she wondered if they were perhaps about to share in the same joke; she waited for the punch line.

  But instead, Dinesh’s silence turned into slurred whispers. “Please.” His voice wavered. “Nilanthi, please. Don’t do this.” He crawled in her direction and leaned his head against her feet. “I am your father’s friend. Your mother served me dinner here.” Dinesh wrapped his fingers around Nilanthi’s ankles. “Please. I am your family and you are mine. This is all we have left. Don’t leave me alone.”

  As Nilanthi listened to this crumpled man laying claim to her family’s memory, she felt her stomach churn with disgust. She kicked his head away from her legs and lifted her back against the wall. She felt Sunitha’s scornful laughter empty into her belly. In her mind, she listened to her friend’s voice merge with her own. You chose the wrong girl after all, you pitiful man. You took my mother’s food and then you took my father’s house and then you took their leftover daughter, stole her from death. So here is the prize for your family loyalty. She willed him to hear her as she stared at him, this drunk, wasted husband of hers, and spit out both of their shame into his face.

  In the morning, Dinesh was gone. And though as the afternoon shifted toward twilight she understood that he would not be back that evening or any evening to come, Nilanthi listened for the clumsy stumble of his entrance, the halfhearted search for food. All night she listened, but she was greeted only with silence. She waited and listened as the sky turned the electric blue of predawn, and she waited and listened through the next morning. She watched the ants march off with the uneaten crumbs of her husband’s stale dinner. She watched the shadows slide against the walls of her house in the afternoon’s shifting light, and when she gathered herself into bed, still there was only silence.

  When Nilanthi woke early the following morning, she opened the windows of her kitchen and picked up her wizened broom. She swept the crumbs off the floor and then flooded it with soapy water. She mourned, briefly, her drowning ants. They had been faithful members of her army, after all, but they had served their purpose. Nilanthi changed out of her nightgown, putting on her pink blouse and flowered skirt and sandals. She wrestled her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck.

  When she marched into the village center with her wicker basket under her arm, her neighbors parted as she passed. Some of the schoolboys spit into her hair, called her a water buffalo, but mostly there was silence. Nilanthi stretched out her neck, jutted out her chin as her brother had done in his mock salute, and felt her scar expanding along her throat. At the market, Nilanthi shoveled pumpkins and chilies and coconuts into her basket. Lentils, rice, and potatoes. A sad-looking pineapple peaked out from behind her arm. None of the merchants requested any money from her. Instead they backed into the shadows of their stands as if in surrender. It amused Nilanthi that these people, whom she had once known as her neighbors and her friends, were frightened of her. Perhaps they were just so unaccustomed to seeing hopefulness that they now only recognized it as madness, as something terrifying.

  When Nilanthi returned home, she readied a fire under the stove and set about chopping and boiling. She shaved the coconuts and squeezed out their sweet milk. She sprinkled kola and cardamom and cumin over her bubbling lentils. The house took up the scent of her mother’s kitchen, rich cinnamon smells layered with pungent garlic. The earthiness of browning roti. After a bath, Nilanthi draped her mother’s favorite green sari over her shoulders and around her waist. She opened the door and called in her army of ghosts. “Amma! Sunitha! Lalith! Come in! Come in! Let us eat and rest. Let us celebrate! We have won.”

  NILANTHI KEPT HER gaze fixed on the far path beyond her house as the sun lowered. As night approached, the heat from the day grew static. The air no longer carried Nilanthi’s cooking smells, only the occasional whispers of neighbors returning to their own homes. And soon these whispers lessened and the path grew invisible in the heavy purple light. Nilanthi brought the edge of her sari to her nose, sniffed it for traces of her mother or even Sunitha, who had danced in it one evening a long time ago. “Let us celebrate,” she whispered into the night. “Let us eat and rest.” She let the sari fall to the ground. She listened and she waited.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ENORMOUS THANKS TO the people who helped make this book possible: my agent, Christopher Vyce, who remembered my stories years after we met a
t the Harvard Book Store; my editor, Chuck Adams, whose thoughtful reading and suggestions showed great care; Rachel Careau, Brunson Hoole, Lauren Moseley, and all of the dedicated people at Algonquin; my mentors, teachers, and friends—Margot Livesey, Rick Reiken, and Trudy Lewis—whose advice and feedback helped me shape this book; Sox Serizawa, a great friend and the most thoughtful reader I know; Matthew Modica, Kate McIntyre, Lise Saffran, Julie Christenson, old friends from Emerson—Sean, Jill, Hannah, Leslie, Chris, and Karl—who were all early readers of these stories.

  Thanks to the Bucks, Karen Russo, and Tania Hannan for their friendship and ceaseless encouragement. I’m grateful for the love and generosity of my Sri Lankan family, who welcomed me into their home and who shared their stories with me—Dhamika, Ranjan, Amali, and Malsha Thrimavithana. I could not have written this book without the support and love of my family—Dad, Mom, Greg, Erin, Leo, and Sam. And for my sanity, smiles, and constantly unfolding adventures, I thank Will Buck.

  This book is dedicated to my mother, Arlyne Katz Luloff, and my grandfather Ben Luloff.

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  WORKMAN PUBLISHING

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2012 by Joanna Luloff.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.