Heaven's Edge

by Romesh Gunesekera

  ‘It is very pretty,’ Jaz admitted, ‘but what’s this?’ He pointed to a rip along the along the edge of the starboard wing. Kris climbed down and examined the tear painstakingly, his fingers touching each damaged ligament, probing, smoothing, already restoring.

  ‘That’s torn, isn’t it?’ Jaz ran his fingers behind his. ‘How could you fix that?’

  Kris gently rolled back a layer of thin material. ‘Dope resin and aluminium paint.’

  I noticed a small engine behind a bench at the back of the hangar. I pulled it out.

  ‘Is that the whatsit?’ Jaz gasped in disbelief.

  ‘A motor.’ Kris nodded at the propellor mounted at the back. ‘A very neat little motor for that.’ He unfastened the casing and examined the copper coils of an electromagnet.

  I asked him how it worked.

  ‘Electricity.’ Kris glanced across at Jaz and smiled. All around him the tools of a mechanical enthusiast lay in readiness: long-nose pliers, screwdrivers, grips and vices, clips and cogwheels, wires and fuses. He set to work immediately, reassembling the motor and working out the gearing for the propellor. The whole hangar seemed to hum to his fingers, a prototype to the sound of the motor itself.

  ‘You are not fixing that for us to go in, are you?’ Jaz tapped Kris on the shoulder.

  Kris looked up briefly, but said nothing.

  I told them both about the glimpse I had had of the plains below.

  ‘You are not going to get me in that. It looks cute and I have an awful lot of faith in dear Kris, you know, but I don’t think the birdie-bee thing is for me, actually.’

  I was tempted to mention the dead bodies buried in the garden, or to remind Jaz of the helicopter above the tea estate.

  ‘Anyway, it’s a museum piece. Just a thingamajig for kooky curators to party in. Look, the seats are made out of leather, for God’s sake.’ Jaz slapped his hands together, done with the discussion. ‘If you really want to leave here, you guys better fix the cruiser we came in instead.’

  * * *

  By the end of the day Kris had powered up a work bench and was completely absorbed in his laborious repairs. I slipped back into the hangar to observe him. He was working, hunched over a thin opaque solar panel. His black soldering iron rested – like one of Eldon’s everpresent cigarettes – on the rim of a saucer, a thin spiral of smoke rising out of its bubbling silver tip. Next to it, the fuse wire and pliers waited, primed. He had also brought out some copper sheeting and a hammer. One sheet was already stippled. I watched, mesmerised, as he picked up the soldering iron and brought its tip to the bare end of a thin red wire pressed against a terminal on the panel. In the silence of the hangar the soft metal sizzled like flesh. He checked the other terminal; satisfied, he carried the panel over and slotted it into place.

  I coughed and stepped closer. Kris looked up as though out of another world. ‘How is it?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘It’ll fly.’ He showed me how the power-lines ran through the plane. There was a small battery linked to the solar panels as well as to the electric motor he had fixed behind the cockpit. Watching Kris work on the controls, I wished I had learnt to fly like my father had and his before him. For once there seemed a point to those frequent recourses to waving arms, diagrams of airfoils, leading edges, trailing edges, angles of attack and centres of gravity with which Eldon tried to illustrate the laws of physics to me. But as far as I could tell from Kris’s actions, this particular machine had been simplified to the point of virtual automation. I tried to get him to show how each of its minimised controls functioned. He seemed willing to give more than he ever had before. He explained how the aircraft had been designed for power-assisted gliding. His voice was gruff but, for the first time, unstoppable. ‘A beautiful machine, so light, so aerodynamic. The solar battery and motor will be very efficient once you are up in the air, but you have to use a catapult like the one outside to get up to speed for the necessary lift. You need a bit of luck. With that massive drop at the cliff-edge, this is probably the only place on the island you can be sure of a flight without being towed.’ His voice trailed away. ‘It is also the only way out of here.’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘It’s a two-seater. When the time comes, one of us will have to stay behind,’ he added quietly, reading my mind.

  Outside, the night sky swung low. The mountain air as chilly as the cold that numbed me before I ever came here, before I met Uva, as though perhaps she was slowly forgetting me; withdrawing into a world of her own, as she seems to even now. I tried to imagine how we might fly. I saw my father in the sky fighting for his life.

  Even after Lee’s death, Eldon found it hard to accept that his son had ever decided to fly as a fighter. It was the only thing that made him lose his temper. I would never forget the time some long-lost acquaintance of his had asked, in innocence, ‘And Lee? What’s the young hero up to now?’

  My father had been dead for over a year, but Eldon acted as though he had only just flown away. ‘He had a lovely wife. Penny had a very important job, first-class research – your field, in fact. Bio-whatever. They produced a fine son. Marc here. Everything was perfect. And then he just buzzed off.’

  ‘Flyer, no? Artist of gravity, like you.’

  ‘Fellow went like a bloody mercenary …’

  ‘Eldon!’ Cleo jerked around and glared at her husband.

  ‘Well, what was his business? Another bloody war. And what for? You think it is for peace? After everyone is destroyed, is that peace? Is that what they got after that débâcle in the desert? What do you think he was going to do this time? Sell ice-cream? It was the same bloody business, I bet you. Gunships with bullets like bombshells. You’ve seen what they look like. Those are killing machines. For annihilators not aviators…’ Eldon slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand and stormed out of the room.

  My profound aversion to flight was reinforced in the mounting air strikes and perpetual strategic bombardment of those years; like many of my isolated generation, I learnt to tune my screen to entertainment-only channels designed to massage all our surface irritations. Life increasingly became pleasured only by bits. After Cleo died there really seemed nothing left to care for, nothing worthwhile. Nothing until my father reached back through his celluloid wormhole to prompt me to unearth a past of my own; a line that might make sense from one moment to the next, and to find out whether it was better to remember, or better to forget, stuck as we were on this beleaguered world.

  That night in Farindola, standing at the edge with my hands in my pockets, I kept wondering whether I was on the verge of something new or something old; whether what I wanted was something behind me, or something ahead.

  Inside the hangar a high-pitched whine started. There were several short bursts, and then a long, piercing bout of drilling.

  Over the next three days while Jaz cooked and cleaned and preened himself, Kris concentrated on the aircraft. I swung from one to the other with a growing sense of helplessness. They both seemed to have attained some peculiar anodyne state through their respective labours, but I was impatient. I was anxious to move on. To find Uva. On the third evening, as I hurried back from the hangar, I heard an owl hoot. It was the signal she used whenever we met at our rendezvous near her farm. I wondered whether she too had found Farindola first, before Samandia. Stars littered the sky above, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Inside the dining room, when I shut the door, I was back in limbo again.

  ‘Is Kris going to be out there all night?’ Jaz complained, as he spooned out another of his lovingly prepared meals. ‘Is he going to eat at midnight again? Alone?’ Jaz’s voice, exasperated as though by a wayward charge, hovered over the dining table suggesting an intimacy of shared responsibility. But I recognised in Kris’s devoted attention to the aircraft a kind of obsession. I told Jaz that the aircraft was more or less completely restored.

  ‘So what? Is he going to fly away now?’ He fluttered his hands and leant forward,
flaring his pampered nostrils to catch the smell of crushed cloves and juniper in what he called his scrummy curry.

  ‘Tomorrow, I guess. With one of us.’

  ‘Why?’ He glared at me.

  ‘We can’t stay here for ever. The cruiser is no good any more.’

  Jaz was silent for a while. I could see tears in his eyes. ‘But I’m happy here like this. Maybe fresh air and celibacy do suit me. I don’t really want either of us to go anywhere.’ Then he rose, snuffling loudly. He crumpled up his serviette and squeezed it in his hands. ‘How about a game, Marc. I found a carrom board. You know how to play?’

  * * *

  Carrom was my favourite childhood game; I loved the speed and sound of it. I loved flicking my finger to spin the wooden billiard pucks on our polished, sherbet-scented board with its painted mandala and silk pockets. The wooden board, about the size of a card-table, would be brought out by Eldon every Sunday afternoon; he would snap his fingers against the ivory striker like a master player. The clucks, the clicks, the hiss of the pucks flying across the pale wood dusted with Imperial Leather talc were the most precious sound charts of those days before my pop, rock, dub and rap; those days of my growing older as Eldon grew old. ‘You are a much better player than your father,’ he would declare as though he wished Lee had tried harder to find the romance of spinning and speeding and unerring accuracy on the board, rather than over the deserts and dry lands of his war-zones.

  I would watch, fascinated, as Eldon flicked with his fingers: middle to the thumb. On some days they looked thick and swollen, about to burst. On other days they would seem withered, brittle and skeletal. And yet somehow, at the stroke, they would always thrum perfectly and leave his knotted palm wonderfully open in a gesture of pure delight. I’d stare at it and then look up to find Eldon observing me. ‘I wish I could see out of your eyes, son: live another lifetime and see what it would be like even thirty years from now.’ His son’s eyes, and his son’s son’s eyes, were all that Eldon seemed to wish for in the end, although each day he seemed to play more and more with the shadows of his youth rather than the company now present. Perhaps we all do.

  The next day I woke up tense, as though all night I had dreamed of Kris’s drill, his spanner and his hammer, screwing, tightening, banging until every single muscle of mine was hinged like an aileron. I went to breakfast in trepidation, trying to sort my concern for Uva from my worries about Kris and his aircraft. Jaz was already up, sipping blossom-tea by the window. Outside the early mist had cleared and the sun was melting on the hills. I filled a large mug with hot water from the urn and brought it over. Jaz looked up, but said nothing.

  I asked what was wrong.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel so good. I woke up with a real headache.’ He wrinkled up his nose.

  ‘Drowned your losses with too much gin last night?’

  ‘No, not that kind. More like a bad dream. I even tried to wash it out.’ He gave a little shiver to shake it off.

  I asked if he’d seen Kris.

  ‘Funny guy, really. I think he still disapproves of me deep down, you know? He really doesn’t want to talk to me – to us – does he? Like we are trespassing on his property all the time, don’t you think?’

  Peering over his bowl of steaming tea, Jaz seemed in that unleavened light more vulnerable than ever. His face was creased like a much older man’s, his eyes heavy and marbled, but there was something very delicate about the way he propped his chin on just one curved finger. His whole body seemed to be curling in on itself, the shoulders furled around a collapsed chest, a neglected heart.

  ‘You don’t disapprove as well, do you?’ He fiddled with his tea-bowl, spinning the blue porcelain landscape of willow trees, birds and pagodas hopelessly in a circle on the table.

  ‘Disapprove of what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He pushed the bowl away and stood up. He was wearing one of the foil jump suits he had found in the small gym downstairs; he straightened out the wrinkles around his thighs and redid the Velcro straps on the cuffs. His hair was still damp and some of it was caught inside his collar. He freed it and checked his reflection in the window. There was a bit right at the back sticking out. ‘A duck’s arse, no?’ He tried to smooth it down, stroking the back of his head with his ladylike fingers. Then his face brightened. ‘But your darling Uva … she really knows how to treat me. I do love her, you know, almost as much as you.’

  Before I could ask him what exactly he meant, the door to the dining room burst open, splintering the air with flying glass. My blood stopped. A stream of camouflage khaki poured in, filling the room with the stench of soldiers, sweat and gun oil. At first I saw only the glint of cats’ eyes, a blur of Maravil uniforms. Jaz collapsed back on to his chair, ashen, his arms like frail sticks on the table. We had only an ivory-handled butter knife between us. Half a dozen soldiers formed a semicircle by the door. The commander was a small wolfish man in a cap. He screamed out, ‘Up against the glass, gollas.’ But before I could get to my feet, the gun in his hand fired. Jaz’s bowl exploded in front of him and the hot brew scalded him. A thin shard of china nicked a pink groove across his face. He recoiled, jumping back, toppling his chair, but he didn’t make a sound. The cut on his smooth cheek turned bright crimson. ‘Up, up, up,’ the commander shrieked. His tongue was stained black like the gums of his teeth. The whole face disfigured by a life too long at war with itself. He fired again, expertly, and the bullet grazed the table top close to my fingers. ‘Up, up.’ I pressed back against the glass wall. The commander crowed: his pack stood fast, feet apart, mouths pinched, guns to the ready.

  I felt hollow and impotent before the fury. Nothing in my body seemed to work; the whole room rocked out of focus.

  He strode up to Jaz and prodded his gun hard into Jaz’s navel. He traced a line up to his throat and stuck the barrel under Jaz’s chin. When Jaz lifted his head up, the commander grabbed the thong on his zipper and pulled. The front of the jump suit ripped open. He screamed out another order. Jaz looked helplessly at me, unable to talk, his charm torn out of him. For a moment he looked about to cry, but he screwed his eyes tight and peeled off the rest of his suit. His clenched, quivering stomach already bore the mark of the gun barrel. The man then thrust the gun into Jaz’s groin and barked until his shrill voice skidded off every wall. Jaz’s exposed genitals shrank to a tiny nubble. I was sure the gun would fire again; explode the flesh flattened against it.

  Instead he pulled back and snapped at one of his men. The soldier marched out and a moment later returned pushing a cowed figure in front of him. As he stumbled towards us, my last hopes sank. Somehow, at the back of my mind, I had hoped Kris might save us yet.

  ‘These?’ the commander snarled.

  Kris’s head was bowed low. ‘Yes, Captain,’ he spluttered. Then he looked up at me briefly, his eyes drowning. They had broken his nose. His mouth had blood smeared around it. There were burns on his neck.

  I turned to Jaz, confused. But before he could respond, the commander shoved Kris to one side and grabbed Jaz. ‘You, puckface, run to jungle, now. Wanna hunt, hunt, hunt.’ He pushed him and turned to me. ‘You tourfucker, you gonna die here.’ I could see the lard turn to sweat around his mouth; his cat’s eye numbed me.

  Then, as he raised his gun, Jaz hurled himself forward, howling. They both toppled to the ground. The gun went off in a burst of blood. Jaz got hold of the gun and, using the commander’s twitching body as a shield, fired at the rest of the squad who were too astonished by his actions to react. Two soldiers fell immediately under his fusillade; the others dived for cover behind tables and chairs. Jaz swung around and fired at the glass wall behind me, shattering it. He kept firing, spraying the rest of the room. ‘Go, darling, go,’ he yelled at me before a burst of gunfire ripped his human shield from him. I saw his tender, graceful throat perforate, his huge lips seeming still to mouth silently even as his blood pumped out of the sudden black wounds. More bullets ploughed into his body, pun
cturing the skin and bursting open his bare breast, snapping rib after rib, pulverising the vertebra of his arched column. Another gun fired. Kris, from the floor, killed the remaining three soldiers within seconds. Kris’s front was soaked in blood. One of his legs was riddled; the kneecap was smashed and showed bits of white bone. The leg squeaked, dangling behind him, as he shifted his position to reach over Jaz’s hewn, rented body and pull at the commander’s belt of bombs and bullets. I heard a groan as the body rolled over. I couldn’t speak. My ears were ringing. Then another bunch of soldiers tried to storm the room. Guns thundered. Kris fired back with one hand while with the other he released a grenade from the thick canvas belt. His face was all screwed up. ‘Jump,’ he yelled at me under the barrage. Then he bit the detonator pin and pulled it out with his teeth. I watched him count to five. ‘Now.’ He kept the grenade gripped in his hand.

  I rolled back and jumped out of the hole in the glass wall. The blast seemed to push me out on to the soft slopes of the lower garden.

  There was a succession of explosions set off by Kris’s: the whole building shook. As the debris – fragments of old ochre tile, furniture, cinders – rained down around me, I headed out into the reserve, towards the cliff. Behind me I could hear the commotion of more soldiers in what remained of the building.

  When I reached the landing strip I was shaking. I could see the doors of Kris’s workshop had been rolled back and, right next to it, out in the open, the aircraft hitched on to the catapult, its arced wings quivering in the light wind, more like a butterfly’s than a peacock’s.