Heaven's Edge

by Romesh Gunesekera

  It looked ready to fly. I saw Kris’s ghost making his final checks. I hesitated, but there was no choice; I had to trust in what was before me.

  I climbed up into the feather-trimmed cockpit forcing myself to recall the sequence of actions Kris had mimed for me. I strapped myself in. There was a din growing under the trees. I could hear vehicles racing and soldiers shouting. Holding my breath, I whispered a little prayer while my fingers searched for the small red starter button; when I found it, I immediately pressed it. The wooden propellor whirred: Kris. Kris. Kris. I shut my eyes and released the catch of the catapult. The chain rattled out and there was a jolt as the aircraft trundled the first few metres. I urged it, ‘Move.’ It yawed and my insides heaved, turning over. Then the mechanism underneath clunked into place and the aircraft hurtled forward. I felt the wind rush through a small passage in its throat as the great wooden bird finally took to the air.

  V

  The Garden

  Hours later my whole body seemed to rock with the flow of blood; a gentle movement allied to the rise and fall of soft sifted breath in deep flesh. Numbness had spread from one leg up through my shoulders into the lower part of my head. There was comfort in the heavy smell of warm water, the fecundity of low-lying leaves, steaming chlorophyll, and hot moist air raddled with pollen. A light lapping vibrated through the wood with occasional clicks and chuckles as the rudder swung, or a flap slapped the water like a sucked flipper. Splintered sunbeams illuminated the cracks in the faciaboard, spiralling wood-motes and the floating debris of brushed feather dust. I unbuckled the strap that held me and the blue webbing retracted lazily, as though the coil had to remember what needed to be done warp by weft. I straightened up, shifting my weight from one side to the other. Everything rolled alarmingly. I saw that the plane was floating on a lake filled with lotuses and water hyacinth. The nearest shore was about a forty metres away and thick with lowland trees. My leg wouldn’t move. There was no wound to be seen; no pain. But slowly, as it revived, blood seemed to bruise the flesh. I slid back the glass dome of the cockpit; the air outside was dank, sweet, dense. There was no sound except for the lapping of the water against the fuselage, and round flat leaves flopping. The lily pads were familiar. Like those in the Waterlily House in Kew. I closed my eyes and remembered one time when we had all gathered together outside the entrance: Eldon, Cleo, my father and my mother. My father took me by the hand and pulled me towards the steamed-up door. But Eldon didn’t want us to go in. ‘It’s too hot in there. The Palm House is better.’

  My father glowered back at Eldon. ‘You used to say this was more like the place where you were born.’

  Eldon looked surprised, although I imagine he must have felt a tinge of secret pleasure.

  Before they could argue, Grandma Cleo intervened. ‘Did you hear the peacock? Down by the lake? I’ll take the little one to see it. Penny, you come too.’

  I can never forget the disappointment when my father let go of my hand and disappeared into the Waterlily House alone. I did not have the words to say what I felt then; I could only look. My grandfather wagged his head gloomily and ambled towards the large glass Palm House opposite instead.

  Cleo and my mother started towards the lake, but I refused to budge. I wanted to wait for my father. When he finally came out Cleo told him, ‘This little one wouldn’t move without you. He wants us all to stay together.’

  I did.

  When I forced open my eyes again, I expected to see them all by my bed. Instead I found only the jungle frowning around a giant eye. A little unsteadily, I stepped out on to the wing. I lay down, spread-eagled, and sipped a handful of silky water. Only then did I try to get the aircraft to move, paddling without much effect. I climbed back into the cockpit and tested the rudder pedals; they were still wired up. I worked them, slowly wagging the tail-fin from side to side. Part of it was submerged in the water and as a result the plane nosed forward. I pushed harder, right and left, right and left. The big bird began to waddle towards the shore like some slow beast from the past.

  When I released the catch on the catapult, seconds before the soldiers stormed the airstrip, my hands had automatically gone to the joystick, my feet instinctively to the rudder bar. I had to forget the terror of the troops, Jaz’s breached body, the detonation of the grenade exploding in Kris’s hand. Somehow I had to learn to fly. I felt the control stick drag as the plane and the wind pressed against each other. I held it firm and the aircraft soared. The whistling of the cold air, the spinning propellor and the emptiness of the sky above the clouds soon soothed me as the wings caught the updraught of a sea-thermal rising against the mountains. The altimeter needle spun faster. The plane climbed higher. The piece of red yarn taped to the outside of the glass flew safe and straight in the airstream. I levelled off up there like an ace. My father would have been proud of me.

  The plane floated free for ages until Farindola, wreathed in smoke far behind, seemed no longer even to exist. Then the horror of it all caught up with me and I lost control. The motor cut out: my peacock dipped. The electric starter would not fire again. I didn’t panic: methodically I tested the controls and managed to bring the plane to an even, steady descent. In the distance, to my right, I could see a solitary mountain; below me the spiky canopy of a rainforest; and not too far away the moist alluring eye I had been looking for. The beaked head below me seemed to crane forward. If not for the smooth upward curve of its neck, the landing would have been a dive. The bang was hard but before my head struck the sidebar, I saw the water rise in a huge spray around the cockpit as the plane gouged the lake.

  Once I got ashore, I felt I had to rest. I needed more strength to explore. As the light began to fail, water sounds grew: a steady lapping, the plopping of what could have been fish breaking the surface. Insects whirling in the twilight.

  I ate a chewbar from the survival kit and watched the water like a hunter, as Kris would have. Should have? The evening air was warm. My whole body was warm: skin, blood, porous flesh. If Jaz was there, he’d have been bustling about: washing, flossing, preparing himself for the night, chatting, honking and gabbing; sucking in his cheeks, rolling his eyes and talking non-stop to keep the darkness at bay. How I wished I could. Despite what had happened, I found I could think of him quite calmly. It was as though by flying I had been able to leave my emotions behind. Up in the sky a magnified moon appeared, staining the world with false light.

  In the morning, I remembered that if this was the region where Eldon had described small coconut estates floating like oases in the jungle, then there should be some sign of human habitation around. It was somewhere here, long before the bombing, the blight and the reasserted jungle, that his beloved twenty acres had once flowered with its thatched cottage and sandy garden: an integral part of my imagination even before Uva made it my promised land. It didn’t take long to reach the first plantation of tall grey trees. They still grew in rows, laced with sunlight. Although not as straight as they once might have stood, they were in better shape than those by the old beach hotel. The ground in between was covered with papery creepers. I stripped a fallen palm frond and cleared a path marking, as I went, a wake which I could follow back later. The older trees looked neglected, but I saw that there were enough nuts around from the younger, wilder ones to feed on as long as I found a way to husk them.

  Eventually, I reached a fence: the strands of barbed wire were broken but the concrete posts had survived. On the other side scrub had spread over parts of a road.

  I went along it until I arrived at a gateway guarded by two concrete elephant heads. The intertwined arms of an avenue of blossom trees beyond them seemed to beckon me. Their broad rubbery leaves clutched bursts of firm flowers, reds in the first trees, giving way to smooth whites further on; each flower glowed with a rich flame at the centre where the petals retreated in a swirl. I was drawn in. The road then banked around a thick hedge and brought me to the brink of a cry.

  The house sat low, dappled in dream
light. The thatched roof bearing down to the ground in the way stone-age dwellings do – close to the earth – sweeping down like a brushstroke with gaping holes where meteorites could easily have passed through. The wall facing me was a hushed pale yellow, while all around overgrown flowering shrubs had entangled themselves with each other in a cacophony of vaulting purples and oranges. On the left I could see a large empty swimming pool, with dwarf palms and lime trees dotted around it in the sand. Beyond the main house, like playground shelters, several smaller mud huts and sheds languished in various stages of disrepair.

  I knew then that this had to be the place I had always been yearning for without ever quite knowing it; but was it my refuge or a place already occupied? Although the house looked neglected, the exuberant flowers gave the place an air of continuing habitation. I knew I should be cautious. I slipped back behind the hedge and settled down as though it were a nest that needed to be watched. My nerves were bare. I felt drained.

  I wondered whether my father might be inside, not dead but another recluse hiding out in an ancestral home, waiting for things to turn better, a son to find his true self. Lee, the ancient aviator threading seashells, waiting to be relieved of his story; his blue-winged Kfir, dripping wax, tucked away in a thatched hangar. If he were to emerge, I wondered, what should I say?

  ‘It’s me. Marc. The son you left behind.’ The words tightened into a child’s fist. ‘I’ve come, like you wanted me to.’ Yes, I would have asked him. ‘So what was it that brought you here, Papa? That has kept you here? Where was the wedding? What happened to the band?’

  I saw him as an old man, now more like Eldon than anyone else; a strong gaunt face, a mantle of silver hair. His phantom voice would be gravelly. ‘I came, son, because I love this place. The warm ocean breeze, the smell of the earth here, the closeness of the moon. When my father first brought me here, I realised this was what I had been looking for all my life. From the first moment I saw the curve of its vulnerable coastline, as we flew in, I knew I would one day have to make this place my own. Just breathe this air, feel the texture of the jasmine, the lantana, the lilies. This was a garden like I had never imagined before. Have you seen the parrots? The orioles? The woodpeckers? The sky is magic. More full of stars than I had ever dreamt of before. I fell in love here. I wasn’t leaving you when I returned here. I came because I knew that one day you would too, and I had to do the best I could to preserve something of what I found here for you.’

  ‘But you came because of war, a destroyer …’ Eldon’s distraught accusation echoed in my head.

  ’No, son. I came to save what I found here, before it was all squandered away. I came to do what I believed was right.’

  I imagined him, in his youth, arguing with his own father as they drove around the hills of this island. ‘No, they must not flood the valleys, the old tanks will do. No, they must not destroy the forests, these animals must live too. No, no more plantations of tea. Go for bio-diversity. No, no more history. No more insane bloody foolery. No more war to end war.’

  My eyes were smarting. I was completely disoriented. You can’t do that, I wanted to retaliate. But it was my grandfather, surely, not my father speaking. The garden could only be his. This had to be the cottage he was so fond of, the one he had searched for in vain with his son. That was a kingfisher, not a Kfir.

  No one emerged. A voyage of love. I realised I was delirious. If anyone would have been hiding inside, it would have been Uva, not my sparring paternal ghosts. Uva, I whispered to myself, with her feathers unfolding.

  Yet, I felt more like a child stirring there, than a lover.

  A mosaic path glittered under a film of sand. It snaked between large earthenware pots and concrete urns up to a patio sheltered by a luscious pergola of rumpled leaves and white trumpet flowers. A small veranda led to the house itself where big brown shutters sealed the doorway like the flaps of a storybook.

  I moved forward slowly, bathed in sweat.

  Under the pergola the patio had been tiled in cobalt; the chipped metal chairs and tables, even the light that entered, was cool.

  On the other side paving stones led across the sand to a wooden door blocked by a fallen branch. The house must have been abandoned. I breathed a little easier and edged forward as though into an adventure film from a golden era.

  The door creaked open. I could make out a big stone sink in one corner and a long galley of waxed cupboards. I poked my stick into the room and rapped the walls: tak, tak, tak. Nothing flew out. No bats, rats or night owls. Not the slightest rustle of life. Even the roaches must have left, I thought. The sink was dry. Above a ledge thin strips of light outlined a closed window. I opened it. Bright sun lit a table piled with clay pots and utensils. A child’s shrunken football was lodged underneath, just as mine used to end up under the work bench in Eldon’s garage. In the still warm air I heard Jaz’s haunting exclamations as he uncovered the cornucopia of our Farindola larder. If only he were here … It hurts to remember everything that has happened, but at least here, with my eyes closed, I find it easier to mould memory to need and practise the simplest art of survival.

  In the centre of the house there was enough light from a small spiral staircase to see a cane settee, a dresser and two wooden trunks. In a corner, a small glass-fronted case held some old almanacs and magazines. There was a yellowed newspaper clipping tacked to the side: a picture of a small padded batsman leaping up, both feet off the ground, hitting a cricket ball high into the sky.

  The big trunks were like treasure chests: packed with sheets, towels, sarongs, cotton quilts. To me they all seemed pristine despite being threadbare.

  The orderliness with which everything had been packed away, except for the football, suggested a house that was never permanently occupied. Every item was storable, kept for periodic not constant use. The place had not been abandoned in a hurry; the family it belonged to seemed to have closed up the house at the end of one weekend, and gone away never to come back.

  Some people are able to do that, I guess; perhaps have to do that: close the door and never look back, never return. Perhaps it is what everyone wants to do. After Eldon died, I remember his old friend Anton’s refrain: ‘Leave the past behind, Cleo. Pack your bags. I’ll help you move somewhere new.’ But she wouldn’t. She said she wanted to stay while Eldon’s beloved roses continued to bloom, and she still had the strength to tend to their neat suburban beds.

  Exploring the house I felt I too might be able to keep some faith here.

  There were two rooms, one on either side of the stairway, each with two beds. The smaller one, stencilled with birds and fish, had a toy cupboard crammed full of jigsaws, board games and crumpled inflatables for the pool. It felt safe despite what had happened to the rest of the region. Perhaps Samandia was the preserve of the gods. I was ready to believe it.

  The upper floor turned out to be a large open arena where the slanted roof had been extended to form the only wall. The other sides were shielded by nylon tats which dropped below the edge of a wooden balustrade. From the front I could see a riot of pinks and oranges. Colours that seemed profoundly familiar. Beyond the flowers, where the sand gave way to tough wild grass, coconut palms reached up towards the sky, and beyond them tall jungle trees sprouted small red flames. Just to look at the jumble of blossom, the shimmering herringbone fronds, was to revel in life that seemed amaranthine. I could live here, I told myself then as Jaz might have. There was even an enclosed crop garden and several fruit trees, including mango.

  As I surveyed my new domain two ring-neck parakeets screeched past, their short wings furiously beating the warm thick air. They shot between the trees – fast, hard, green bullets – and headed towards the lake I had come from. Their screeches echoed the glee of similar parakeets arriving in Eldon’s garden one summer. I had been the first to notice the new migrants on the Victoria plum tree that spread its long, arching branches over the rose bushes. There were three of them, startlingly green, seeming to climb o
ut of my jungle book then, ripping into the soft mildewed fruit with their bright red beaks. I dragged Eldon out to look at them because the old man had not believed me. ‘There are no parakeets in this country, my dear boy.’ But I was right; they were parakeets, and they thrived in his garden, the botanical gardens nearby, and all the fruit orchards of southern England, adding vivid colours, loud songs and unexpected eating habits to the jetscuffed end of his brittle British century.

  Marooned on this hallucinogenic island, I felt I had finally reached the original home of those chance migrants and the other brightly coloured birds that had fascinated me all my boyhood. I was convinced that this, not the Palm Beach coast, was my actual haven – my real destination. Hers and mine.

  In a storeroom I discovered mattresses wrapped in plastic, charcoal, paraffin, candles, a carton of matchboxes and a case of arrack. Right at the back a vintage rifle, protected by an oilcloth, and a box of bullets. The rifle had a brass name-plate pinned to its wooden stock: Lee-Enfield. I was delighted.

  I wanted to explore the other sheds and huts to see what else I might recognise, but I was ravenous by then. From the walled enclosure I collected a gourd, some okra, various wild fruit and a handful of speckled beans and brought them back to the house. The flesh of the gourd was hard and needed to be boiled. Using some twigs from the garden I set about making a fire in the stone stove outside. It took several attempts. Eldon would have been appalled: ‘You must learn the basics of survival. How to make a fire, walk without water, control your sphincter. You have to be prepared for anything, my boy, and be completely self-sufficient.’ I remembered him telling me how on their famous trip together, he and Lee had trekked for hours through the last remaining rainforest of the island in search of a smoking waterfall and a leopard without spots. ‘I couldn’t keep up,’ Eldon confessed stifling a guffaw. ‘Your father could trek all day without even stopping for a pee. He learned to survive, you see, on nothing but his wits and a bit of self-control.’