Adam's Peak

by Heather Burt

  Well, you know you gotta shake things up, Adam then said, his voice mischievous and provocative. Get back on the motorcycle. Finish that ride we started. Or even better: don’t finish it. Just keep riding.

  How do I do that?

  She looked out the window at the featureless night.

  Doesn’t really matter. Go to Vancouver. Play in a band. Go to Sri Lanka. Yeah, Sri Lanka would be good for you. Something really different.

  Will you be there with me?

  Sure. Yeah. I’ll be there.

  But would I really be doing it for you?

  You can think of it that way, if you like.

  She began a new question then stopped. It wouldn’t happen in her head, this trip; she would be stern with herself. It would happen for real or not at all.

  In the darkness she returned the atlas to the shelf. She knew she should get to bed, but she wasn’t tired at all. It seemed she’d just woken up.

  11

  THURSDAY MORNING, at the start of Rudy’s spare period, Kanda intercepted him at the door to the teachers’ lounge.

  “I have a letter for you, sir,” the boy said, holding out a folded sheet of paper.

  Rudy took the paper and noted the “Mr. Vantwest” written neatly on the outside in Kanda’s hand. “Should I read it now?” he said.

  Kanda nodded his head to one side. “At your convenience.”

  “I have a prep now,” Rudy said, and Kanda nodded again, his manner suggesting he not only knew what Rudy was doing just then but, moreover, could detect the intensity of his teacher’s curiosity.

  The boy strolled off down the hall, and it wasn’t until he’d disappeared around a corner that Rudy wished he’d asked him to wait. He entered the teachers’ lounge, where a few stragglers were rinsing their cups before heading to class.

  “Van Twest!” Nisal called as he hurried for the door. “I still haven’t told you about Fermat’s theorem.”

  “Oh. Right.” Rudy struggled futilely to remember anything at all of the math story. “How about lunchtime?”

  Nisal smiled. “Very good. I’ll see you here.”

  Rudy made his way to a table at the back of the room, where he unfolded Kanda’s letter.

  Dear Mr. Vantwest,

  I apologize but I cannot complete your assignment. I tried to write about Sri Lanka’s problems from the viewpoint of someone else but it was not possible. What I mean is that I am able to write the essay, but it would not be true. I was born as a Tamil and that is what is true for me. I can listen to another man’s point of view but I cannot experience it. I cannot write about this country’s difficulties as a Sinhalese, but only as a Tamil pretending to be Sinhalese. I do not see a purpose to this. My impressions of the Sinhalese life will be influenced by my Tamil thinking and therefore will be incorrect. I believe you thought this essay would change my political ideas but I would not make important political decisions from this type of thinking. The assignment you gave is only fantasy. Every person is formed by his culture and his race, and that is how he should act in the world. You do not ask a gazelle to be a lion or to understand a lion’s point of view. Human beings are no different. I am a Tamil, that is how I think and conduct myself. I do not dislike the Sinhalese. The gazelle does not dislike the lion but it will do what is necessary to survive in the lion’s presence. I apologize again and I will accept a failing grade on this assignment. Sincerely,

  K. Selvarajah

  Rudy folded the letter into a compact square and squeezed it in his hand. He got up and went to the window. Just outside the school’s front gate, Kanda was leaning against a lamppost. His hands were in his pockets and he was scuffing the sole of his shoe into the sidewalk. He could have been on a study break. Most year twelves had that privilege. But they were expected to study in the library. Rudy slid Kanda’s letter into his pocket. He wouldn’t report the boy. He would talk to him, the way he should have before—perhaps let him turn his letter into an essay.

  He was considering the possibilities when Kanda looked back over his shoulder, directly at the staff room window.

  “You know exactly what I’m doing up here, don’t you, you little bugger,” Rudy whispered.

  He motioned to the boy to come back inside, but instead Kanda stepped away from the post and strolled down the sidewalk. If he was playing hooky, he was doing so with an air of absolute confidence and nonchalance.

  For a moment longer, Rudy stood staring, then he darted out of the staff room, down the silent hallway to the custodian’s stairwell. He took the metal steps two at a time, the crash of his hard soles splintering the hush. At the base of the stairwell he paused to check his watch, then he left the building through a side door. As he crossed the lawn, he began to sweat. Still, he carried on to the front gate. He would find Kanda at one of the food stands outside. He’d buy the boy a soft drink, and they’d sit for a while and talk, unimpeded by the decorum of the school.

  Outside the gate, traffic noise competed with the staccato monologue of a man selling lottery tickets from a booth. The sidewalk was crowded, and as Rudy scanned the unfamiliar faces gathered around the food stands, his plan began to lose momentum. His face now dripping, he reached into his pocket for his handkerchief then recalled that he’d left it on his desk to dry out from the morning commute. He swore under his breath and took a final look around. Kanda had had enough time to walk a couple of blocks at least. But then Rudy spotted him. He was a few metres beyond the lottery booth, at a bus halt. He stood a little back from the others who were waiting, drinking a Coke. Rudy looked back at the school and caught sight of a colleague lecturing at the front of a classroom. He moved away from the gate and sank back against the tall hedge that separated the school lawn from the street. His concern wasn’t that he’d be spotted but that the scene at the window would draw him back to that world where teachers kept their distance. He wanted to talk to Kanda, was determined to do so, yet he knew that if he thought about it too much, he would end up trudging back to the staff room, setting the air con to high, and putting the kettle on for a cup of tea.

  He took a few steps in the boy’s direction then stopped as a Fort-bound bus lurched to a halt in front of the lottery booth, its passenger load overflowing from the doorways. Rudy watched Kanda drain his drink, hand the bottle to a nearby vendor, and squeeze through the front door of the bus. Behind the hedge, one of the primary grade teachers was settling her class on the lawn to read to them. The teacher’s instructions and the children’s chatter summoned Rudy back to school, but as he turned toward the gate, his right hand fished his pocket for change.

  The bus pulled slowly away from the curb. Watching it, Rudy caught through a window the angular profile of a young man. It might have been Kanda; it might have been someone else. He wasn’t sure. But for a crucial instant, as he stared, the young man was Adam. He bolted toward the street, dodging people on the sidewalk, then lunged blindly for the rear doorway of the bus. He got his foot onto the bottom step, and a conductor clamped his upper arm and pulled him in. As he manoeuvred himself into a sliver of standing room at the back, he craned his neck over the heads of the other passengers until he spotted Kanda, also standing, just behind the driver. The boy’s navy blazer and snugly fastened necktie seemed a guarantee that he would be back at school in time for the next class, scheduled to start in a little over an hour. Trusting in this, Rudy took hold of the overhead rail with one hand and wiped his face on his sleeve.

  The pointlessness of what he was doing soon became obvious, however. If he confronted Kanda now, he’d have to explain his presence—an impossibility—which left as the next best option simply following the boy, to see where he would go. It was stupid, but Rudy made no move to get off the bus. He leaned his forehead against his raised arm and looked down at a tiny girl in a yellow dress, planted on her mother’s lap. The child’s eyes were rimmed with kohl, and her ponytail sprayed like a fountain from the top of her head. Rudy smiled at her, and she buried her face in her mother’s shoulde
r, peeking out at him from the corner of one eye. He thought of Zoë, still that small in his imagination, and Susie, to whom he still owed a letter. Then, afraid that he’d lose Kanda, he searched the boy out again and kept his eyes on him for the rest of the journey.

  At Fort Station, the still-full bus reached its terminus, and passengers spilled out into a commotion of vans, cars, and three-wheelers, all bickering for passage in intertwining lanes. Kanda jumped from the bus and headed for the steps of a pedestrian overpass. Rudy followed, far enough behind to remain unnoticed, close enough to study the boy’s movements—the confident walk, the running of his fingers through his hair, the checking of his watch. They crossed the overpass and descended to the street. Kanda advanced at a steady pace, scanning the windows of travel agents and gem shops without obvious interest. He seemed to have a destination in mind, and as he walked on, Rudy’s curiosity mounted.

  They progressed deeper into the city’s business district. Up ahead, Rudy saw the clock tower. In fifteen minutes he would be obliged to turn around and go back to school. For the moment, however, he kept up his pursuit. At the intersection of Chatham Street and Janadhipathi Mawatha, Kanda dodged cars and three-wheelers to reach the traffic island on which the clock tower stood. Rudy held back and watched. The boy paused with his back to the tower and took something resembling a business card from the pocket of his blazer. He studied the card then looked up, his gaze seeming to follow the straight line of Janadhipathi Mawatha to the Indian Ocean, a block away. Perhaps he had an appointment, Rudy considered. A job interview, maybe. He wiped his face and squinted at the taut strip of horizon where the ocean’s steely surface met the pale sky. When he turned back to the clock tower, he saw that Kanda had crossed over to the other side. Rudy darted to the traffic island and again into the road, directly into the path of a three-wheeler. The driver blasted his horn but yawned and scratched his belly as he came to a stop, inches away from Rudy’s legs. Heart thumping, Rudy raised his hand to the man and jogged to the sidewalk.

  Kanda was standing at a wooden shop stall, not far from the intersection, drinking another Coke. He’d removed his blazer and now carried it over one arm. Rudy ducked into the doorway of an office building. His spy persona was wearing thin. Either his student had an appointment or he was just wasting time and perhaps had no intention of returning to school at all. Still, Rudy stayed where he was, watching.

  Business at the little stall was thriving. Around Kanda several men hung about, some of them in suits, others in sarongs. Kanda drained his Coke but remained at the stall, scanning newspapers on a rack. As he read, he blew strands of hair away from his face. He checked his watch and looked down the street. An appointment, Rudy concluded. He checked his own watch and resolved to leave in another minute or two.

  Kanda now had his back to him. Rudy admired the boy’s broad shoulders and narrow waist—swimmer’s lines—and for the first time since the news of Adam’s accident, he fell victim to impossible wishes. He wanted another chance. The day of the stone sculpture, the Christmas Zoë burned herself, all the other times he could have responded to Adam’s offers of fraternity and didn’t—he wanted them back. It struck him as he stared at the young man’s torso that not once in his life had he ever hugged his brother. His reticence must have been positively glaring to have scared Adam off. Adam, the fellow who at his high school graduation had hugged everyone—friends, teachers, assholes who’d tormented him over the years—had ventured only affectionate punches or an arm around the shoulders with his older brother. Never a true embrace. After twenty-five years, Rudy had no idea what Adam’s body felt like—the muscles of his back, the strength of his arms. And now ... He retreated into the shelter of the doorway and mashed his rolled-up shirt sleeve into his eyes. He stared at the ground for a long time then took a deep, measured breath, exhaled, and straightened up.

  When he turned back to the wooden stall, Kanda was gone. Rudy squinted at the clock tower, mopped his face with his sleeve, and started walking, eyes lowered from the sun’s glare. Several metres from the office building doorway, he became vaguely aware of a commotion behind him, angry noises from the direction of the shop stall. He paid it little attention until, like a hard kick in the gut, the sound of gunfire stopped him mid-step, and he whipped around. A truck was blocking the road, and men with rifles were barking orders over top of the vehicle. Around them people scattered, wide-eyed; traffic lurched and squealed. The rhythms of the street, of Rudy’s own body, ran amok. But though his neck and arms bristled icily and his cheeks pricked hot, he insisted to himself that the armed men were police, or soldiers, and that everything would soon make sense. Despite the fresh rounds of gunfire down the street, the screams, and the electric sting of the air, he moved backward in slow motion, witnessing through his invisible protective shell.

  Then he remembered his student. He scanned the mayhem and called out into the din.

  “Kanda! Where are you?!”

  The boy, wherever he was, couldn’t have heard him, but he kept calling, turning circles on the spot while people clamoured past him.

  On his second or third rotation, he saw a young man in a white shirt. His muscles tensed, ready to run, when a noise—a massive, magnificent blast, physical as a lunging beast—launched him backward. On his way to the ground, he collided with something heavy and hard; his head struck the pavement. He felt the hard thing fall against him. His vision became a psychedelic swirl. Then he passed out.

  Hours, it seemed, elapsed.

  The journey back to consciousness was peaceful, painless, and black. A floating through nothingness. His first murky thought was that he was dead, but he was unable to recall how such a thing had come to be. He was on his belly, and the surface beneath him was warm, like beach sand. His mouth curved in a fraction of a smile that brought with it the first stab of pain. He wasn’t dead. Outside his body, around him and above him, things were moving in a silent, menacing tempest. He concentrated on the beach—warm sand, swimming with his father—but as the tempest outside his body jostled and chafed him, the scene began to fade.

  He noticed the heat. The air seared his skin, while his organs burned from a fire somewhere inside of him. He attempted tiny movements—flexing his fingers, opening his mouth, bracing his legs against the hard, immovable weight on top of him—but each attempt triggered new agonies, so he lay still. He opened his eyes, but the confusing blur that greeted him made him shut them again immediately. In the dark silence of his head, memories flashed in concert with the flashes of hot pain. He’d been walking downtown—but why? There’d been guns, fighting maybe. There’d been a noise of such magnitude it had knocked him over, but now he heard nothing. The explosion—it had been an explosion, yes—had deafened him. Like Zoë. Again he opened his eyes.

  Across the street, two cars lay like helpless turtles, tires in the air. Rudy blamed the strangeness of what he saw on the awkwardness of his position, wormlike on the road, but as the haze in his mind cleared, he realized, heart pounding against the pavement, that the impossible scene was real. Loose fires danced around him. Beneath clouds of smoke that choked the air, shards of glass speckled the street, their light fierce and beautiful. He shifted his head to squint at things farther on. Up ahead, the skeleton of an office building spewed black smoke and flames. Whatever the building had housed was beyond repair. Rudy watched the hopeless ministrations of the few soldiers and civilians scuttling about the periphery then turned his attention to his own predicament. Though his shirt was stained with the blood of a gash across his forearm, the fire within him was radiating from his hips. He hoisted the throbbing weight of his head and looked over his shoulder. An empty three-wheeler lay on its side, its metal chassis collapsed over the lower half of his body. Next to the three-wheeler was the crumpled form of the driver. The man’s eyes were closed, his skin an inhuman grey, and a dribble of red navigated his stubbled jowls—but his shoulders rose and fell defiantly.

  To ease the tidal wave of nausea that swept over
him, Rudy lowered his head to the hot pavement. He talked to himself out loud, though at first he was still deaf.

  “You’re alive. Keep breathing. Still alive. Breathe ...”

  Dull and distant, the sounds of his own voice began to reach him. He talked on, louder, coaxing meaning from the buzz between his ears.

  “You were walking downtown. You looked at the clock. It was ...”

  An army truck pulled up nearby, its tires pulverizing the shards of glass on the road. A pair of soldiers in khaki uniforms stepped down from the truck then stood, not moving, for several seconds. Rudy talked on.

  “What were you doing there? Why are you—? That woman ... Kristina.”

  He remembered the Danish physiotherapist. He’d been with her. He remembered the guest house room and the bottle of Fanta they’d shared. Desperately he gathered together the facts of their encounter, but the more focused that one event became in his mind, the more chaotic was everything else. He needed order. As the uniformed men ran off, he began to recite—“Our Father, who art in Heaven ... hallowed be ... Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on Earth. Give us ... forgive us our trespasses ... Hail Mary, mother of ... full of grace”—but his garbled prayers were comfortless. He closed his eyes and imagined a quiet suburban street, a young girl standing under a sprinkler, her long, wet hair plastered to her shoulders, her skirted swimsuit a balmy aquamarine. He fixed the image of the nymph-like girl in his mind and managed, for a time, to detach himself from the chaos around him, to retrieve a moment of peace and painlessness under the girl’s calm stare.

  When he opened his eyes again he saw two soldiers gently depositing a young man on the road in the shade of the army truck. The young man wore a white shirt and grey trousers. Rudy lifted his head and squinted at the motionless figure, then he remembered what he had been doing in the city. He braced his forearms and lifted his shoulders.