Malini

by Robert Hillman

  ‘Strike two at once.’

  Malini accepted the suggestion. The glow of the flame reached far enough for her to make out a long wall, decorated with paintings and designs. Some of the drawings clearly depicted animals, others human figures.

  ‘What is this?’ she whispered.

  ‘Ancient people. Before our faith, and before the faith of the Sinhalese.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I read it in a book when I was in school.’

  ‘You like books?’

  ‘Very much.’

  The first people of Sri Lanka, thought Malini. And she asked herself: Did these first people fight each other? Did they make wars? Probably. In a world so rich in beauty, people still made wars on each other; people made ugliness. It baffled her.

  Now they came to a low passage that made it necessary for the two of them to crouch and drag the bags. Malini, by this time, had given up on keeping Kandan from chattering even though she contributed nothing more than an occasional, ‘Really?’ or, ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Miss, I have such a good joke for you!’

  Kandan prattled on with a ludicrous joke about an elephant and a birthday cake. As tiresome as he could be, in some ways Malini was glad to know that a boy could have a rifle put in his hand, be instructed in murder, and yet turn his back on it as completely as Kandan had. She thought: Let every boy in Sri Lanka keep rabbits, let every boy in Sri Lanka throw his rifle in the river. And then: I like him. He’s an idiot, but I like him.

  Nanda sat with her arms encircling Amal. Banni hugged Gayan. All of them were baffled by the voice. To attempt to scramble out of the cave now seemed futile. Whoever it was seemed to be making progress without light. Nanda thought, If we stay huddled here, maybe we won’t be seen. With her foot she nudged the rifle cartridges as far from her as she could.

  More sounds of struggle. But no laughter. The sounds stopped. Nanda could hear breathing from a short distance away.

  ‘Sister?’ shrieked Banni suddenly.

  And, from out of the darkness, ‘Banni?’

  ‘Sister! We are here!’

  A hand reached into the nook where Nanda and Banni and the boys waited in tense expectation. The fingers touched Nanda’s face, felt its shape.

  ‘It’s me, Malini.’

  Banni launched herself towards the sound of the voice.

  ‘Sister! Oh, Sister! I have been praying for you with all my strength!’

  Kandan lit a match, startling Nanda, Banni and the two boys. Gayan raised his hands as if to protect himself, and Amal shrieked, ‘Demon!’

  In the glow of the flame, Kandan’s huge smile did in fact look rather demonic. His camouflage uniform also acted on Nanda and the boys, less so on Banni, as a menace.

  ‘Oh, kalai vanakkam, good morning, children. I mean good evening. I am Kandan.’

  ‘Who is that?’ said Nanda, for Kandan had now crept closer.

  ‘Don’t be frightened of him,’ said Malini, who was holding Banni close, ‘He’s harmless.’

  The flame of the match died, but a moment later the luminous insects came to life again: the fireflies in their thousands. Malini, in her astonishment, murmured, ‘All the Gods, what is this?’

  In the faint light of the fireflies, Banni stroked her sister’s face and sobbed as if she were suffering a fit of hiccups. Malini reached out for Nanda and the boys. Kandan, whose cheerful manner seemed to have convinced the children that he was indeed harmless, sat close by, not too close, saying over and over again in Sinhala and Tamil, ‘Such a day!’

  Stroking Banni’s hair, Malini told the story of her escape from the raft, and of her discovery of Kandan. ‘His arm is broken,’ said Malini. ‘Or injured. It’s difficult to tell.’

  Within the hour, Malini had moved her family, now including Kandan, down to the mouth of the cave and had managed to get a fire burning. Nanda’s Bon Jovi T-shirt hung in the smoke on two sticks, gradually drying out.

  Malini first served all the children and Kandan with hard biscuits, orange and apple halves, then with curried rice and eggplant. She was so exhausted after the ordeal of the day that her hands trembled with fatigue. Nanda said, ‘Sleep, now, I beg you.’

  Malini said no, she would wait until night, but in the end she lay just inside the mouth of the cave and slept a long, dreamless sleep until the stars came out. She lay listening to the sound of laughter. Kandan was telling jokes in Sinhala of the sort that only small children could possibly enjoy. ‘Ho, ho, this one will please you! It is about a monkey and a parrot. One day, it seems, a monkey from the north met a parrot from the south…’

  Malini fell asleep once more, and remained asleep until morning.

  First, breakfast, then it was time for the children to be washed in the stream. Malini, scrubbing Amal with the bar of soap, holding him still and admonishing him when he squirmed, said aloud for everyone to hear, ‘I am a mother before my time. And I will be an old woman before my time if this keeps up. Stay still, monkey!’

  It was just a complaint, but not a trivial one: Malini felt herself ageing in a way she didn’t enjoy. She feared that she would soon find herself carping and coaxing and laying down the law like an old village matron. How often in the past she’d listened with dread to her Aunt Talla, her father’s sister, who would come to visit from Madras in India and spend the entire time shouting and smacking and giving lectures on the best way to bring up children. Malini’s father would say, ‘Oh, Malini, Banni, what joy is ours, we are to be visited by the Dragon of Madras!’ And Malini had made this promise to herself: I will never scold in this way of Aunt Talla’s when I am a mother, if I have that good fortune. I will smile at my children, I will say, ‘Enjoy life, every second of it!’ Yes, that had been her promise, but now there was no room in her head for anything but fret and worry. Yet another thing to hate about war! It robbed you of your sense of humour, robbed life of all colours other than grey and black, turned you into an Aunt Talla.

  Malini lingered over packing for longer than she needed to, because the next thing she had to do – and this was awful – was to tell Kandan he could not come with them. If government soldiers found them, Kandan would be arrested, very likely executed, and Malini and the children would be regarded with great suspicion for being in his company. Malini called Kandan away from the games he was playing with the children and told him that he must try to find a Tamil village and take refuge there. Kandan listened without saying a word, but the expression on his face was one of utter devastation.

  ‘Oh, this is the saddest news of my life!’

  ‘Yes, Kandan, but you can see the danger.’

  ‘Miss, I will hide if government soldiers come! I am good at hiding.’

  ‘No, Kandan. I’ve made my decision.’

  Malini had tried to keep their conversation secret, but the children were watching and could see that something was wrong. Banni had taken a great liking to Kandan, finding that he was easy to boss about, and now she hurried over to the riverbank where Kandan stood with his head drooping almost onto his chest.

  ‘Sister, did you say that Kandan must stay behind? No! A thousand times no! He is our friend!’

  ‘I have made my decision.’

  ‘No! I forbid it! ’

  ‘You forbid it? You are a child. You will do as I say!’

  Banni’s eyes welled with tears. ‘I will tell Appappa to strike you with a big stick when we reach the village. You are like a crabby old woman!’

  Malini turned away from Banni to prevent herself losing her temper. What the child had said touched on the very fears that had vexed her earlier.

  When Malini turned back to face Banni, she had regained control of herself.

  ‘I am sorry we cannot take Kandan with us. It’s too dangerous. We will leave him some food, but after that he must find a village where he can be safe.’

  Banni walked away with her head bowed.

  The parting with Kandan acted on Malini’s nerves badly, probably because sh
e felt so guilty for leaving him behind. She stood aside with a stiff, set expression on her face while Amal and Gayan and Banni hugged him and patted his hand. Kandan’s tears fell from his cheeks in streams. Even Nanda, who had been standing beside Malini, rushed over at the last minute to put her arms around Kandan’s skinny frame. When Kandan called to Malini, ‘Miss Malini, always in my life I will remember you!’ she shrugged and said, ‘Yes, good, whatever you like.’ Then she called out, more forcefully, ‘Hurry up, all of you! Do you think this is a holiday?’

  Malini led the way along the riverbank, with Nanda at the back and the three children in between. The landmark Malini was searching for was the great highway that stretched south-west from Trincomalee on the Bay of Bengal down to the capital, Colombo. Once it was recharged, the phone’s signal would be stronger close to the highway. What she yearned for was just a brief message of encouragement: ‘Keep going!’ or something like that. She knew that what courage she possessed was weakening with every hour that passed, like the bars that showed the strength of the battery charge in the phone itself had diminished then disappeared. Even more than the highway she needed a place where she could recharge the phone. That meant a town. A village probably wouldn’t do: many did not have electricity.

  Once they had scaled the hill slope on the north side of the river and had a clear path to follow, Malini called a halt. She wanted to study Kandan’s maps. She sat cross-legged with one map on her lap and another two spread beside her. Banni, Nanda and the boys hung over her shoulders and offered unhelpful advice.

  At first, the military maps baffled her. There were no labels, only numbers. Eventually she worked out that if a number began with a certain numeral it represented a type of structure, such as a bridge, or a checkpoint on the highway. Other numerals must signify towns.

  With the river behind her, her best guess was that she was well within North Central Province. If they continued to head due west by the sun, they should reach the big highway after a further few kilometres. There appeared to be a town ahead where the river they had crossed passed under a highway bridge. Malini decided that was the town they would travel to in order to recharge the phone.

  The first sign that Malini’s calculations were right came when a helicopter with government markings broke into the sky from the south-west. Malini rushed the children off the track and into the dense cover of the forest. Through the foliage, she could see that the helicopter was keeping a course along a north-east line. It almost disappeared, but then returned, now on a south-west course. Malini guessed that it was scanning the highway below, flying up and down it. It was certainly not looking for them, but the helicopter pilot might radio down to a patrol if they were spotted.

  Amal pointed a stick at the helicopter and pretended to blast it out of the sky.

  The helicopter had gone out of sight and stayed out of sight for five minutes when Banni suddenly pricked up her ears and said, ‘Someone is near.’

  Malini said, ‘It must be an animal.’

  Banni said, ‘A person.’

  Nanda, whose nerves were more raw than Malini had realised, pulled the boys to her and squeezed her eyes shut, as if closed eyes made her invisible.

  ‘Mama, is it soldiers?’ Amal whispered.

  Gayan said, ‘Mama, I don’t want soldiers. Mama, no soldiers.’

  Banni listened for another few minutes, then declared that the person, whoever it was, had gone.

  Malini led the children in the direction of the big highway, instructing Banni to listen for any sign of the helicopter’s return, or for cars and trucks. ‘We will hear the highway before we see it,’ she said.

  They reached the highway in the late afternoon. On each side of the asphalt the forest had been cut back a long way; it was not possible to cross without breaking cover and walking in clear view. They would have to wait until night. Malini and the children watched the traffic on the road from the fringe of the forest, counting five vehicles each minute heading south-west, and ten vehicles each minute heading north-east to Trincomalee. No cars were heading north-east, where the fighting was, only trucks carrying government soldiers and heavy weapons.

  As Malini studied her maps, she realised that the town on the highway must lie further to the south. She could make out an elevated water tower further up the highway and she had to gamble that its symbol was the triple numeral on the map. A town inland from the north-east coast would probably be Tamil, since this was still a region more Tamil than Sinhalese, but at this stage of the war, it would be full of government soldiers. She decided that she would go alone to the town under cover of darkness. Then she would steal into a house with electricity lines attached, find a power point, plug in her mobile and recharge the battery for as long as she dared.

  When she told the other children what she intended to do, the boys wept.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ she asked them, and Amal, whose affection for Malini was always bubbling over, said, ‘They will kill you!’

  ‘No. I will be very careful.’

  ‘They will put you into prison!’

  Nanda whispered fretfully into Malini’s ear. ‘Malini, this is too dangerous. The boys and I will have to hide in the forest again if you are taken from us. That is why they are afraid. And…’

  ‘And what?’ said Malini.

  ‘Pardon me for saying this, but your plan is mad.’

  ‘Mad?’ Malini felt herself plunging towards rage. ‘Mad? I want to speak to my father. Is that mad? I have all of you to worry about every minute I am awake, but who takes care of me?’

  Nanda recoiled as if she’d been slapped. ‘I’m sorry, Malini.’

  ‘I have become the slave of all of you,’ said Malini. ‘I am tired of it!’

  And she stormed off, back along the track that had brought them all to the highway.

  ‘Leave me be!’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  Nanda wept. ‘Oh, what have I done?

  Banni put her arms around her. ‘She is coming back, be sure of that. I will fix it.’

  Amal and Gayan, their faces wet with tears, mimicked Nanda. ‘“What have I done? What have I done?”’

  Banni comforted them. ‘Don’t cry, you silly things. Do you think Malini could leave you behind? Never in this world!’

  Banni went off to find her sister.

  She found Malini sitting cross-legged under a tree staring grimly ahead.

  ‘Sister?’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘Sister, may I sit with you for a short time?’

  Banni attempted to take Malini’s hand.

  ‘No,’ said Malini, and wrenched her hand away. ‘Ennai thodaathe, don’t touch me!’

  ‘You miss Appa and Amma. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘Well, that is brilliantly perceptive of you! You should enrol in university immediately. The professors will be astounded.’

  ‘I don’t understand big words, Sister.’

  ‘Then go away!’

  ‘Sister, I want to speak about your plan.’

  Malini, even in her anger and unhappiness, had to concede that her plan was a little desperate. But she was not about to admit that to her irritating sister.

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Sister, you can’t creep into a house and recharge the battery. You would have to stay hidden for an hour, or even more. In the first place, you would make a noise like an elephant. No, no, wait, Sister! You don’t know how to creep. I’m sorry, but it is true. And you wouldn’t do it anyway. Sister, you are a goody-two-shoes. You would…’

  Malini said, ‘I am a what?’

  ‘A goody-two-shoes. I heard it on The Simpsons. Bart said Lisa is a goody-two-shoes. It means that—’

  ‘I know what it means,’ said Malini, smiling for the first time that day.

  Banni was now sitting beside Malini, and had taken her hand to hold, acting as if she were the older sister. ‘I have another idea. It’s a big town we are looking for, isn’t it? Only you and I will go. No one w
ill know us. We must find a cheap guesthouse – we have enough money left. In our room there will be a place where we can plug in the phone. When the battery is charged, we will leave.’

  Malini had been hoping that Banni’s plan would be so ridiculous that she could laugh it to scorn. But in fact, it was clever. Apart from one or two things…

  ‘We have no identity papers,’ said Malini. ‘We cannot register at a guesthouse, even a cheap one, without papers. And they will not accept us without a parent. And what if government soldiers stop us? Without papers they will lock us up.’

  ‘We will slip past the soldiers. And we will tell the people at the guesthouse that you are my mother.’

  ‘Do I look old enough to be your mother? You must spend the whole day dreaming up ways to insult me!’

  ‘Keep your scarf over your face and speak in a bossy way. Say, “Banni, stand up straight! Banni, mind your manners!” Like that. You are tall. They will believe us.’

  ‘I will think about it. “Mind your manners.”’

  Malini had to concede that her little sister was beginning to grow up. It was not just the common sense of her guesthouse idea; small actions had revealed that in the space of a few days, she had begun to shrug off her spoilt ways. Malini thought, Underneath, she is stronger than me.

  Malini rejoined Nanda, Amal and Gayan to tell them of Banni’s plan. Amal said, ‘Aiee! Now they will kill you!’ Then he spat on the ground and stamped on his spittle to destroy the power of a bad thought.

  ‘No,’ said Malini. ‘I will come back and kiss you on your cheek. Then you will have a beautiful sleep and in the morning, a good breakfast.’

  Nanda, Amal and Gayan were to wait in the cover of the forest. ‘But make sure you can still see the road,’ Malini told Nanda. ‘If government soldiers leave the road and start searching the bush for any reason, go deeper into the forest. Banni and I will come back to this place. If you are not here, we will wait. Whatever happens, Nanda, stay calm. If we do not come back in two days, continue the journey without us. Try to find the village of Ulla Alakana. Ask for my grandfather. I have written his name on this piece of paper. I have written a message, too. It says, Care for Nanda, for Amal and Gayan as if they were part of our family. I will leave the maps with you. See where I made this cross? That is where we are now. Head west.’