Questions of Travel

by Michelle De Kretser

  Mutti loved Theo best. You’re supposed to love all your kids equally, but everyone knows that’s not how it works. I was a tomboy and a daddy’s girl. But Mutti and Theo spent hours together, Mutti talking about Berlin, Theo taking it all in. When I think about it now, what strikes me is how happy Mutti looked when she was telling us her stories. Although “telling us” isn’t quite right. We were beside the point, in a way. I think she was happy because word by word she was collecting up everything she’d lost, recovering the past for herself.

  After the divorce, when Dad moved to LA, I used to go out there for the summer. Theo always refused to come. I remember taunting him about it, this must have been when he was about eight, calling him a cowardy-custard who was too scared to go on a plane. I went on and on, and at last he said, “I might not be able to come back.” There was such anguish in it, it stopped me in my tracks. One way or another, the favorite pays.

  After Meera’s phone call, Laura had left the room in Prague, left the man in it without a word, left the hotel. It was a glorious afternoon, blue-skied and cold. She walked across a square that went on and on, she walked along the river, first on one bank, then the other, she crossed and recrossed a famous bridge. A queue of patient, scarved tourists waited for Kafka’s castle, another for an organ concert. Laura passed a street portraitist, and people eating pickled vegetables behind glass. There was a terrible sentence in her mind: Now he no longer lacks a conclusion. Nobody spoke to her, although she wore thin clothes and no coat and walked crying and clutching her hair. A green saint sat on a green horse. She passed marble men.

  The frosty weather was back, or had never gone away, when Laura returned to Prague to research her story the following month. It was so cold that as she passed shuttered shops one evening, looking for somewhere to eat, her eyes began to water. A woman stopped her under a streetlamp; a soft North American voice inquired if she was okay. A few blocks on, there was another woman, a girl really, with thick yellow plaits and a knitted hat. She let go of her boyfriend’s arm and put out a hand to detain Laura, offering impenetrable syllables of consolation or help; reassured by a smile, she continued on her way. Laura walked on, dabbing at her eyes with a glove. Then she found that she was crying in earnest. On waking, her mind still reached for Theo. But already there were whole hours in a day when she didn’t think of him. And he had been dead less than a month. Forgetting was the real meaning of death. The same thing had happened with Hester. But Laura hadn’t minded so much, then. Her great-aunt had been old. She had always belonged to the past. Caught up in finals, caught up in the future, Laura had let the old woman go, as a tourist looks for the last time on a landscape that has contained happiness: reluctantly, even sorrowfully, while picking up a bag with a sense of onward motion. Life asserted itself as one small betrayal of the dead after another. It began beside the bier, with an adjustment to a ribbon. Laura vowed, I won’t forget, Theo, I won’t forget. Tears continued to well. Behind her eyes, a picture arose; it was the meal she craved, something starchy that steamed.

  Ravi, 2000

  A LETTER ARRIVED, ADDRESSED to Ravi. It contained a sheet of paper on which the security code for the building was printed above a stylized drawing of a vase of flowers.

  Freda was still holding her small silver phone. She had alerted the police and arranged for the security code to be changed. She had the rather baffled air she wore when the planet didn’t fall into step, but repeated the first thing she had said: “It’s only a frightener. Otherwise there’d be no warning.”

  Ravi thought of the man in sunglasses casually clicking his pen. He thought of Hiran in the Mercedes, looking out at billboards and bikes. The house of fear rose and rose with no need of a blueprint: an airy edifice to which it would always be possible to add yet another wing. He realized that he was looking at a picture of the rest of his life.

  He would leave at once, he said.

  “And go where? Home to your mother? A rooming house like the one you were in? They’ll be expecting you to go to those places.”

  The topmost branches of the tree beside the balcony cast uncertain shadows on the living-room wall. Ravi couldn’t stop looking at them: the soft shapes, the way the light probed.

  Freda took him to a flat in Havelock Town. It was rented by a friend of hers, a Frenchman. Ravi saw an eagle, beaky and hunched. That bird’s face was one of those that had floated over him in those first sleep-shrouded days; he remembered the shy, wild smile. The fridge contained only a bottle of vodka, two limes and a mineral-water spray. “There is nothing better for the complexion,” said the Frenchman, squirting water into Ravi’s face. The flat was dim, and the air-conditioning fit for icebergs; small ones had sprung up in corners. They turned out to be glass ashtrays, many of them full of butts.

  Every night, fully clothed and shivering under his coverlet, Ravi heard footsteps and whispers in the garden. There was no tree at the window here, only a winding, thick-limbed creeper. Its black roots, rummaging in the earth, intruded on the dead. Hiran’s voice found its way out and followed his father. It warned of a devil with long ears. But the devil who came had worn wraparound glasses—no one had mentioned his ears.

  Ravi returned to work. A week later, a drawing was delivered to the Frenchman’s flat.

  “You can’t go on working. They’ll just follow you home. You have to go right away.”

  At one in the morning, Freda had driven him, via insanely circuitous routes and two checkpoints, to a five-star hotel.

  Ravi went on protesting in an undertone while the desk clerk accepted her Visa. She said, “It’s not a problem, actually.” And finally hissed, “I can afford it, you know.”

  The clerk slid a keycard over the counter. He avoided looking at Freda, but understanding quivered in the glance, immediately screened with lashes, that he offered Ravi.

  Freda’s logic was severe. Even if Ravi could find new employment, he would be traced. He needed an income. Therefore he had to leave the country.

  She said, “What about studying abroad? I remember Malini saying you were thinking about it.” So they had talked about him! Ravi’s scalp crawled—he could imagine what his wife had said. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up. He also wanted to hit Freda Hobson, or at least shut her in a drawer where he need never see her again. He began to tell her about scholarships and application procedures and the unlikelihood of succeeding. Freda addressed a fool: “Obviously, we can’t risk waiting till next year.”

  Of late, she had often worn that pinched, thin-skinned look. Now her eyes snapped, there was a new light in her face. She can’t wait to be rid of me, Ravi thought.

  Three evenings later she was back in his room, with a beer she had bought at the bar. She told him what he already knew: Sri Lankans who applied for residency abroad could wait years for a refusal. Freda had talked to a few foreigners, friends who could be trusted and were knowledgeable, and everyone had advised her that Ravi should try for a tourist visa. It was quicker than applying for residency and likelier to succeed.

  Once at his destination, he could apply for asylum, went on Freda. “Can you get a letter from your university saying you’ve got a job to come back to? You won’t get any kind of visa without one.”

  Ravi saw that she had anticipated everything, including any objections he might raise. She was saying, “I’ll need your bank details so I can transfer money into your account. You’ll need proof you can support yourself when you get to the other end.” She would take care of his ticket as well, she added, raising her chin. She had the potency of a figurine placed out of a child’s reach: tempting, expensive, not to be touched.

  The hotel room contained only a single chair, and Freda had ignored it. There are people who fit themselves into rooms, and those around whom space is arranged. Ravi had seen policemen, journalists, his grief-maddened, terrifying father-in-law take on the imprint of Freda’s will; rooms were the least of it. With her spine against the headboard, she sat with one denim le
g stretched on his bed. There was a large, faceted stone on her hand. It had been bought on a visit to Galle when Ravi was still living with Freda; she had thrust it at him as soon as she returned to the flat. “Isn’t it super-gorgeous? A green amethyst. I had to have it. It’s the color of the bay where I was swimming this morning.” What a ridiculous reason to buy a ring! The woman could afford real stones: rubies, emeralds. An amethyst meant one thing only: quartz.

  Freda’s springy hair had grown; Ravi watched her lift it away from her neck. He remembered two saris that had called to each other, dark hair clipped above two pairs of ears. Friendship was conducive to imitation and doubling. He was traversed by a vision—brief, unwelcome, shockingly explicit—of Freda naked and inviting on the ivory spread.

  She was saying, “Actually, we might run into a problem. As soon as any embassy runs a check on you, they’ll find out about the murders. No one’s going to believe you’re just taking a holiday after that. You won’t get even a tourist visa if an embassy thinks you’re likely to be applying for asylum when you get there.” The back of her hand trailed across her mouth, wiping away beer. That she drank alcohol was one of the things about her that fascinated and repelled Ravi. Glancing around the room as if enthralled by its bland orthodoxy, she said, “But we’ll just have to chance it, I suppose.” Then she went away.

  Five minutes passed. She scratched at his door. “Ravi, it’s me.” She came in and sat down on the chair and ran a contemptuous eye over the curtains. “There is another way you could get a tourist visa, actually. I just can’t make up my mind if I should even mention it.” She moved her hands—there was white fire and blue. Ravi found himself the object of her knock-you-flat look. “There’s an Australian. At the high commission.” Freda sounded uncertain, explaining what would be required of Ravi, but he was the one who lowered his gaze.

  When she had finished, he was silent for some minutes. Then he asked how Freda knew about this man.

  “J-P.” That was the Frenchman. “He got a Tamil boy out that way last year. We’d have to arrange everything through J-P, actually—the Australian guy’ll pull out if he gets so much as a hint that anyone else knows. And it might come to nothing. He’s super-cautious. Only one or two a year.”

  If the Australian accepted, went on Freda, he took care of various tricky formalities: the police check, for one. “It’s a vile way to do things, of course. But he does help men who are in danger.”

  When she said, “Before he decides, he’ll want a photo of you.” She looked away at last. Plucking an imaginary thread from her jeans, she murmured, “Of course we could just keep trying Canada or Ireland or wherever in the hope that someone’ll give you a tourist visa. I completely see why that might be what you’d prefer.”

  Ravi said, “No. I’ll do it. If this man is willing.”

  “It would be marvelous if you could go to London, of course. But Australia’s rather good, as it happens. I know the perfect person in Sydney.” Her composure was back; her voice was as polished as her hands. Ravi saw that he was to be disposed of thoughtfully and with minimal inconvenience to Freda; Australia was perfect, actually. Freda Hobson, who knew people in Sydney, in New York, in Ho Chi Minh City, was running the world again.

  The Frenchman had what Freda called a genius idea. She was unpacking a small, wheeled suitcase as she spoke. It contained a daypack, thick-soled runners, German sandals, a camera, clothes. There were also sunglasses and a First Boston baseball cap. While he waited for his visa, Ravi was to adopt the guise of a migrant on a visit home. As soon as he had changed into his new jeans and a T-shirt with a Nike swoosh, Freda drove him to a different hotel.

  Ravi, 2000

  AT NIGHT, STRINGS OF lights twisted through the trees in the hotel garden; Ravi knew that a man stood pressed behind each trunk. Fear came to find him like steps approaching the bend in a corridor. He rose from a table, leaving a meal half eaten, a head waiter hurrying forward. He was certain there were watchers: on a bench in a marble lobby, in a deckchair on the far side of a lawn.

  One of the dreamlike aspects of this time would become apparent only long after it was over. Then it was the weddings that fanned out to command the retrospective screen. Ravi would turn a corner or step out of a lift and find himself caught up among confident, bare-armed bridesmaids. On dates deemed auspicious, the wedding parties followed each other in swift succession. Restrained in formal clothes from the cruder expressions of hostility, men hit each other on the back. Mothers searched their handbags for something vital, a lipstick or a warning. Lobbies filled up with boys in miniature bow ties; rose, lilac, tender blue flower girls gathered in bouquets. Ravi looked on from terrace or restaurant. Tourists lay like offerings beside the pool.

  The black square rose and widened without warning. Then the convulsions clutched. Ravi would begin counting: One, two, three…The struggle against memory exacted its revenge. Having placed food in his mouth, Ravi might realize that he didn’t know what to do next. He would sit on and on at the table with his mouth full. Removed from time, he watched it pass. Sometimes leaving a room posed a riddle. How did anyone contrive to move through a door or escape from a chair?

  He turned his head and saw Malini. She was descending a polished staircase. By the time Ravi reached her, she was a fat woman in checked trousers. For the first time, he registered: They are gone. Who can say where the dead live? Certainly not here. Time was a magician, it always had something improbable up its sleeve and the show lasted an eternity. But two had been dropped from its routine forever.

  Ravi took a three-wheeler to a craft shop, where he bought Freda a handloom tablecloth. It was handsomely striped in cinnamon and red. Paying for it, he was struck by the notion that even the banknotes she had given him were cleaner and crisper than any he had previously handled. They seemed valueless, notes from a children’s game. He gave them away in handfuls, until the afternoon when he saw a man come out of the relaxation center in his hotel. An ayurvedic masseur followed. “Sir! Sir!” When the man turned, the masseur joined his palms and brought them to his chest, murmuring, “Sir, tip, sir?”

  The man spared him a look as blank as it was blue. “A tip?” There was a pause, exquisitely prolonged to allow hope its full deployment. Then, “No tip. I’ve only got plastic.” He patted the place where tradition locates the heart.

  Thereafter Ravi tipped sparingly—he was less conspicuous that way. Mirrors showed him a soft-fleshed stranger with a familiar face. His appetite had revived; in fact he was ravenous. He ate doughnuts for the first time and gorged himself on protein, returning to buffets for second and even third helpings of prawns, beef, chicken cooked in cream.

  At some point, he started to breathe well, his ribs opening sideways and folding without haste. No one spied on him over a newspaper or waited in the shadow of a colonial clock. Even the country’s leaders, cut off at the neck and preserved behind glass, looked no worse than smug. Evil was a real thing. Ravi had seen it—it had looked like a vase. What flourished here was as harmless and false as the piano player’s smile. A bride floated past in her sari, upside down in the gleaming floorboards. The sky darkened, as if something enormous had spread its wings. But only tourists came running in from the rain.

  Every few days, Freda would pick Ravi up in the evening. Flicking her eyes at her rearview mirror, doubling back on their tracks, now and then pulling over to the side of the road, she would drive him to his next destination. Journeys that might have been accomplished in fifteen minutes stretched to fill an hour. This expansion of time, too, was dreamlike, with a dream’s spellbound stagnation. As they approached whichever hotel she had chosen, Freda would call ahead; if a room wasn’t available, she would drive to the next place she had in mind. She was forbearing and humorous on these occasions, as if playing her part in an entertainment organized by children. Ravi decided that she relished the intrigue. He wasn’t wholly immune to it himself.

  Ravi Mendis, Tourist played only to select audiences. Registering r
equired ID, so the desk clerks always knew that Ravi was a local. But he had refused television interviews, and most picture editors had succumbed to a dramatic image that showed a man slumped forward with his hands over his face. No one appeared to connect that ill-fated figure with the one advancing across a lobby in Reeboks and American jeans. In any case, when Freda produced one of her three credit cards at reception, every clerk drew the same conclusion as the man at the first hotel.

  At checkpoints across the city, Freda’s passport was glanced at, Ravi’s ID card inspected. She would lean across. “My friend’s with me. We’re on our way to my flat.” They would be waved on with obscenities only one of them understood.

  Anyone with official connections, or the money to make them, could gain access to the registration data collected by hotels. But what happened was that Carmel Mendis rang Freda. An elderly neighbor of hers had fallen into conversation with a stranger at the train station. They had chatted of this and that, and at one point the stranger mentioned that years ago, at university, he had known a Ravi Mendis who came from here. He wondered aloud what had become of him. The old man replied that he lived near Ravi Mendis’s mother but hadn’t seen her son in a long time. A few days later, turning the conversation over in his mind, he grew uneasy and went in search of Carmel.