by John Freeman
‘This is delicious,’ he said. ‘You have a talented chef.’
The major beamed. ‘An army marches on its stomach.’ He patted his own. ‘We eat well and take proper exercise. Thirty-six push-ups a minute and a 2.4 K run every day.’
‘I like to run,’ Mr Patrick brightened. ‘It really frees you up.’ The thought seemed to help him get over some of his earlier speech impediments.
The major sized him up. ‘2.4 K?’
‘I like to do about twenty minutes every day. Today, alas, I couldn’t, even though I did bring my running shoes.’
‘Twenty minutes? That’s good. Our run, 2.4 K, we have to do in twelve minutes max. I say, try for ten. You must always have a target, no?’ He cocked his hand this time, like a gun, and aimed a finger straight at my head.
I shivered. This was a man who had done it for real, and I don’t mean running.
‘But you know my real secret for keeping fit?’
Unlikely to be yoga, I thought, but did not utter a word.
‘I can’t imagine,’ Father Perera said. It sounded like the sort of phrase he would use to draw needles out of his flock.
‘Badminton. I play badminton every day. War or peace, the shuttlecock is king.’
‘Really?’ This time even Father Perera did a double take. I guess all three of us saw rocket-propelled grenades studded with feathers shooting through the air.
‘My plan is to start a proper tournament here. Not only for my soldiers, but for the civilians as well. Now, wouldn’t that be something?’ His eyes darted mischievously.
‘What do they think of the army?’ Mr Patrick asked in a low voice. ‘The people here, I mean.’
The major’s eyes fastened on him. ‘The people are with us now, you know. We have done a lot for them. I don’t mean the fighting. In these last few months my boys have built a dozen houses for the people around here. This is not army policy, you know. They did it in their own time. We used our own money. Hundred thousand rupees per unit. You see, we are on their side. This is our home now. I have lived here for fifteen years. Some of my men have lived in Jaffna longer than anywhere else in their lives. They have no other home.’ He cracked his fortified knuckles again and I wanted to duck. ‘Some even have sweethearts here. Isn’t that right, Captain?’
Our dinner was bizarre. My pair of pastors were not doing much converting. I couldn’t tell what they were after. Plain curiosity was not Father Perera’s thing, even of army courtship practices. And the major seemed like a man who hosted dinner parties in the mess every week instead of polishing off enemies of the state. Perhaps that was what he did as a proper gentleman and an officer. I wanted to ask him, so I did.
I waited for a pause in the conversation and then, while the major was picking his teeth, I went for it. ‘Sir, do you get many visitors dining here like this?’
He looked at me in surprise. ‘For dinner, hardly ever. People are frightened, Vasantha, to come here in the dark. You have to be a man of true faith, like the good padre here, to do it.’ He dropped the toothpick on the edge of his plate. His teeth gleamed. ‘But I believe it is very good for us to interact. It is good for our cook to prepare a meal for visitors. It is good for Captain Vijay here to meet people. Otherwise he never wants to go outside, no? I feel very strongly we must prepare our boys for civilian life, to mingle with ordinary people, with tourists. It is not easy, as I’m sure Father Perera can tell you, to break the habits of war. It is a very rough bloody business. But, you see, they can’t be heroes forever. We have to do the TLC, no? Tender loving care.’
The captain placed his knife and fork together, looking forlorn.
‘And you, Major? Are you here always as well?’ Father Perera asked. ‘No gallivanting?’
‘We all stay cooped in too much, Padre. That is our trouble. You see, in the army we all know what to do. Discipline, routine keeps us on the straight and narrow. Whatever the enemy, we do not fear. A command line is a great source of comfort, no? But when I visit my family, I am in a jungle. Last month I had to go to my daughter’s new school in Negombo to see the headmistress. A small matter about music examinations. But, I tell you, after ten minutes waiting for the madam outside her office, I was shaking. You could hear her in the next room. A formidable voice. Used to be at a convent in Panadura, they say. I have never been so frightened in any battleground. With a woman like that, what can you do?’ He waved his whole arm in the air. ‘She’d drive a fellow bonkers.’
For a moment, I saw him spraying the school office with a machine gun. Lobbing a shuttlecock onto her lap. Going bonkers!
The man in white shuffled around clearing the table.
‘Mangoes,’ the major said. ‘Now you will taste the best mango in the country. No longer the forbidden fruit, eh?’
Father Perera smiled.
The fruit came cut in segments with the seed separated from the cheeks. The major was right. It tasted like honey on a spoon. I slowly savoured it while Mr Patrick prattled on about harriers and barriers. Their conversation was like a low-key gun battle: each taking potshots in turn, hitting nothing but exchanging fire. Father Perera retreated and, like me, concentrated on his mango. He was quite an expert at scooping every shred of flesh off each slice. Would he suck the seed? He did. I followed suit.
When we were done, coffee was served. Our Major TLC leaned forward with his elbows on the table. ‘So, Padre, you see, we are not such beasts, are we? We just do the best we can in difficult circumstances, like everybody else.’
Our goodbyes were brief. But before I went for the van, Mr Patrick said he would like a photo with the major and Father Perera. He asked me to take it and handed me his phone. Nice smart Japanese job with face detection built in, but I had to ask them to cosy up to get all three in the frame. The major was in the middle but the other two seemed to veer away, however much I asked them to lean in. Mr Patrick had a funny look but I took a couple of OK shots. While he checked the photos, the major said to Captain Vijay, ‘Now you take one with Vasantha and me.’ He handed him a squatter, meaner bit of kit. I went and stood next to the major. He put his arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. His fingers were strong enough to crush my bones. I could hardly breathe. I thought my chest would burst.
Afterwards, the major called for a bag of mangoes. ‘Vasantha, you take those. Best mangoes in the country. Give them to your family as a souvenir from Jaffna.’
Safely back in the van, I turned off the interior light and started heading back towards the gate. The soldier with the flashlight waved us off. It didn’t seem right to say I had no family to the major. I have a van, nothing else. For some reason, I was too frightened to tell him the truth. It is a problem a lot of us seem to have these days.
On the road, I kept to a steady thirty miles per hour. It was a straight road and there was nothing to worry about, but I didn’t want to go fast. We all needed to catch up with ourselves.
Father Perera was the first to break the silence. ‘You changed your mind?’
In my mirror, I saw Mr Patrick tap his phone. ‘No, I think he is the man. Look, this was the picture we had. The one she took.’
Father Perera squinted. ‘Everything is blurry. You can’t really be sure of the face.’
‘I am sure. He admitted he does go to Negombo.’
‘That’s his home town. He is a college man. Educated, no? I even know his alma mater there.’
‘So? Education is not inoculation. Pol Pot studied in Paris. I can assure you, Marion has been very thorough. She zeroed in on just two possibilities and we know the other guy is dead.’
‘But all she had to go on was the girl once saying that she was seeing a senior officer from the north. What if she meant a Tiger commander?’
‘That’s impossible, Father. You know that.’
I stepped on the accelerator and moved up to forty. A wildcat, or something, scurried off the road ahead.
These trips I do up north are never the same. Each time I find something new about w
hat has happened to our country, and to us. I had never met an army commander before although there are hundreds now, all over the place. The ones on TV are always solemn, with thick moustaches, or barking mad. This major had no facial hair, and spoke like a company man on an executive escalator. Full of himself, true, but that, I have noticed, is one of the characteristics of a confident achiever. I used to see a lot of them in my last job. City folk on a fast track. Now I tend to see only people who are on holiday or on their trip-of-a-lifetime or, like Father Perera, on soul-rectifying missions. Business that requires a much slower pace. Forty miles per hour is ample. But a fighting man, I can see now, has to be one step ahead always and learn to cover his tracks, if he is to survive.
‘So, if he is the one, what next?’ Father Perera asked.
‘I have to talk to Marion. She is the one who knows the girl’s family. He has to be brought to account but it will be a painful process for all of them.’
‘What about the military?’
‘This country is not ruled by the military, is it? He beat her up and left her to die. If he can do that in his home town, imagine what he would have been like in a war zone. They will wash their hands of him.’ Mr Patrick jabbed hard at the cushion next to him. ‘He is a fucking murderer. Surely he must be punished?’
‘I am not a judge, I am only a priest.’
‘I am neither, but I know what is right and what is wrong. I told Marion, if anyone could get us to this psycho, you could, Father. And I was damned right.’
‘I got you to this major, that’s all. I don’t know what he is.’
The words hung in the back of the van like smoke. Why is it, I wondered, that some of us cannot shake our doubts whatever we do while others can be so dead sure of things? All I have for certain is a weird sense of complicity and the more I try to escape from it, the more it seems to grow. I wanted to ask the padre, why is that? He should know, but it was not my place to ask questions any more. I was only the driver now, no longer a fellow diner. They were deep in their own matters; talk that didn’t make sense to me. The major had been decent enough. Mr Patrick was the one proving to be dodgy.
The town, when we reached it, was quiet. A corner shop had a light on, a white fluorescent flare. One eating place was still open. Nothing else. I stopped at the junction and waited for a man on crutches to cross the road. I remembered how when we were coming I noticed several people with missing limbs in this town. There is a lot of damage around that one gets accustomed to very quickly. The burst shells of houses around Kilinochchi, which I have passed a dozen times or more; the wasted fields. The first time you see a toppled water tower or a building with its sides ripped off, it is undeniably a shock. This was the war, you think. But then soon after that a pile of debris, a flattened home or a broken man just becomes the surroundings. It is simply what is there. What happens. Like a soldier whacking a shuttlecock or a padre sucking a mango. You don’t look twice. You don’t think about the boy who lost his home to a whistling bomb, or his mother who stepped on a landmine and lost both feet and now has to hobble around on stumps. North or south, you try to avoid thinking too much. What to do? You put a cassette in the machine and sing along with a song about moonlight and love. Paddy fields and doves. It is normal, you say. We have to live in a normal world, whatever happens. Is that wrong? The major did not seem to me a bad man. He was very correct in his manners and acknowledged me in a way that many people in the civilian world don’t. Not just with the mangoes, which was a treat, but in talking to me. No one has asked to have their photo taken with me before, except tipsy foreign tourists. No doubt he could kill a man without batting an eyelid, but I could not believe he would have really beaten a woman to pulp while visiting his family. How could he? I waited for Mr Patrick to say something more incriminating.
His phone beeped. ‘I’ll text Marion and say we found him,’ he said.
Father Perera shook his head. ‘We only have a fuzzy little picture that looks a bit like him, Patrick. No real evidence that he even met her. You should have asked him. Confronted him. If he is guilty, there would have been a sign.’
Mr Patrick was sweating even though the air con was on full. His face blazed. ‘Do you really have any doubt? Did you not see his hands? When we post the picture the driver took this evening, I am sure someone will recognize him. The two of them must have been seen together somewhere.’
‘I don’t know, Patrick. I just don’t know.’
To my mind, Father Perera was not giving Mr Patrick much pastoral guidance. The kind we need in times of trouble. I was also not too happy getting dragged in as the picture-taker. Matters are a lot clearer to a military man. They are trained to make quick decisions and fast exits. Although in Jaffna, I have to say, the major seemed to be in no hurry to leave. But then, if he is the monster they say he is, where can he go? Where can a big man who loses it go? After all, people do lose control, don’t they, in times of war? The whole business is insane anyway, killing and maiming like there is no tomorrow. How can you shoot someone in the head and call it duty? How can anyone be normal after that? Father Perera was right. They should have asked him, not assumed. Got him to talk more about himself than their crazy PE routine and the taste of forbidden fruit. Father Perera should know how it works. That’s his field, after all. Redeeming the sinner, rectifying our faults. Drawing confessions. I believe Christians say there is nothing that cannot be absolved, if admitted. I’d like to ask him if that is true. It would make a difference, not only for the major but for all of us.
POEM | ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS
Pax Americana
In the desert there is a pocket that
Is the poem. A watery bubble on an
Arid surface, like a fingertip on a
Voided screen that sparks to touch. The failed eavesdrop.
It looks like life, or its mimesis, here
Among the droning decadence of dune
After dune, shrugging, as chrysanthemums
Shrug at a burning, chrysanthemum sky.
It looks like life, or its oasis. But
Now at the door, at the edge of enter
Or invade, of live as though no desert
Has ever known you, fathered you, been you,
Prayed for you, to behold the bubble now
From within, the starry dome of pleasure
Above you, the palms’ perspiring mists
Made from quietly purring machines, no
Drones overhead, no schoolchildren scream;
Thus the poem, your one true saviour, loves you.
GRANTA
* * *
CROW FAIR
Thomas McGuane
* * *
Kurt was closer to Mother than I. I faced that a long time ago, and Mother pretty well devoured all his achievements and self-aggrandizements. But there came a day when the tide shifted and while this may have marked Mother’s decline, it was a five-alarm fire for Kurt. He had given Mother yet another of his theories, a general theory of life, which was the usual Darwinian dog-eat-dog stuff with power trickling down a human pyramid whose summit was exclusively occupied by discount orthodontists like himself. Kurt had successfully prosecuted this sort of braggadocio with Mother nearly all his life; but this time she described his philosophy as ‘a crock of shit’. This comment had the same effect on Kurt as a roadside bomb. His rapidly whitening face only emphasized his moist red lips.
Kurt and I put Mother in a rest home a few months back. I don’t think you can add a single thing to putting your mother in the rest home. If ever there was an overcooked topic, popping Ma in the old folks’ home has to be a leading candidate. Ours has been a wonderful mother, and in many ways, all the things Kurt and I aren’t. We are two tough, practical men of the world: Kurt is a cut-rate tooth straightener; I’m a loan officer who looks at his clients with the view that it’s either them or me. The minute they show up at my desk, it’s stand-by-for-the-ram. Banks love guys like me. We get to vice president maybe, but no fu
rther. Besides, my bank is family-owned and it’s not my family. Kurt goes on building his estate for Beverly, his wife, and two boys, Jasper and Ferdinand. Jasper and Ferdinand spent years in their high chairs. Beverly thought it was adorable until Ferdinand did a face plant on the linoleum and broke his retainer. What a relief it was not to have them towering over me while I ate Beverly’s wretched cuisine. Her Texas accent absolutely drove me up the wall. Kurt has lots of girlfriends in safe houses who love his successful face. His favourite thing in the world is to make you feel like you’ve asked a stupid question. Beverly has some haute cuisine Mexican recipes no one has ever heard of. She has to send away for some of the ingredients. She says she’d been in Oaxaca before she met Kurt. Some guy with his own plane. It was surprising that Kurt and I turned out like we did. Our dad was a mouse, worked his whole life at the post office. In every transaction, whether with tradespeople or bankers like me, Dad got screwed. To make it even more perfect, his surgeon fucked up his back. Last three, four years of his life, he looked like a corkscrew and was still paying off the orthopod that did it to him.
But Mother – we never called her ‘Mom’ – was a queen. Kurt said that Dad must have had a ten-inch dick. When we were Cub Scouts, she was our den mother. She volunteered at the school. She read good books and understood classical music. She was beautiful, et cetera. Like I said. This is the sort of shit that happens when kids fall in love in the seventh grade, brutal mismatches that last a lifetime. Dad’s lifetime anyway, and now Mother’s in God’s waiting room and going downhill fast. Kurt and I always said we hoped Mother cheated on Dad but we knew that could never possibly have happened. She was above it, she was a queen, and despite our modest home and lowly standing, she was the queen of our town. She gave us status, even at school where Kurt and I had to work at the cafeteria. People used to say, ‘How could she have had such a couple a thugs?’ meaning me and Kurt. Some words are born to be eaten.
