They stopped to eat a meal in the shade of one of these stone monuments. The sun was high and hot and the children were irritable after several hours of walking under that great golden orb. A fight broke out between Amal and Banni over the last mouthful of Pepsi, and then Gayan began a high-pitched shrieking after a moth crawled into his ear. Malini said to Nanda, ‘You fix it.’ To Banni she said, ‘Feed them.’ And she sat close by with the maps.
It seemed to Malini that they were now between two highways and were approaching a region of many small villages indicated on the map with square symbols and a number written in Tamil. Ulla Alakana might be any one of those villages. Sooner or later, Malini would have to find someone to ask which village was which. The most urgent landmark to find was what looked on the map to be an important road running north-east to south-west. A number of villages lay along the route of this road, Ulla Alakana among them, maybe.
Nine years had passed since her last visit to her grandfather’s farm. There was, at that time, a lull in the civil war and it was possible to drive down the big highway and then along a sealed road and a rough dirt track all the way to the village. She remembered that the village was an oasis of rich greenery in the parched landscape that surrounded it.
The lands of Malini’s appappa were beautifully kept. Three natural springs fed an irrigation system that dated back a thousand years or more. Although the village was Tamil, Sinhalese families found a haven there. A small Buddhist temple had been built five hundred years past on the fringe of the orchards that gave the town its living. The temple’s ten monks went to the orchards each day and gathered for their needs what fruit was ready, with the full blessing of the Tamil orchardists.
She could not know this, but as Malini sat hunched over the maps, she was being closely watched through the electronic sight of a sniper’s rifle. The man who held the rifle had been given the nickname of ‘Panaha’ some years ago, meaning ‘Fifty’. The man was a bounty hunter, and fifty American dollars was the price the government soldiers paid him for a Tamil cadre in uniform. That price was for a dead cadre; for a living one, the price was twenty American dollars. The bounty hunter always took the fifty-dollar option.
From where he lay stretched on the ground with his rifle resting on a tripod, the bounty hunter could, if he chose, kill the girl with one shot. The girl was not a Tiger, but she was the right age, and he could easily dress her body in a tiger-stripe uniform, of which he carried a half-dozen in the panniers of his trail bike. Many girls of her age served with the Tigers. He moved the sight to the others in the group, just out of curiosity, to the two small boys in strange uniforms; to a girl in a green blouse; to another girl in baggy khaki shorts. Who were these idiots? He switched his aim back to the older girl’s head and set the sight’s red tracking dot to a point just below her left temple. Those with her would scatter once the girl was dead; they would cause no trouble.
For the past little while, Banni had been troubled by a feeling of dread in her heart. She helped Nanda feed the children, but when Nanda handed her a biscuit, she shook her head.
‘What’s wrong, Banni?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know.’
‘Then eat.’
‘Not now.’
Banni went to Malini, bent over the maps.
‘We must leave this place,’ she said to her sister.
‘In a few minutes,’ said Malini, paying little attention.
‘No, Sister – we must leave now.’
‘Don’t vex me! I am trying to find the village on these absurd maps! We will leave soon enough.’
Banni walked away with her head bowed. Then she stopped and turned her gaze to the south. She could make out in the distance a place where the low trees grew together more closely. A faint whistling sound hissed in her ears. She moved a little to the right and listened again to the whistling. Then she returned and stood in front of Malini. She said in an urgent whisper. ‘Listen to me, Sister. Stay still. Do not move from where you are. Don’t speak.’
Malini looked up from the maps with a frown on her face. What now? Had Banni lost her wits after a day in the hot sun? She was about to tell Banni to come to her senses, but something in her sister’s stare caused her to remain quiet.
Banni moved closer to her sister. Neither moved a muscle. Banni stood perfectly still, her gaze still fixed on the distant grove of trees.
The bounty hunter paused. A girl had stepped in front of his target. He lifted his sight to her face. She seemed to be staring straight at him, even though he was more than a kilometre away. There was something uncanny in her stare. It was as if she could see him as clearly as he could see her. Everyone around her was motionless, as if carved in stone.
The bounty hunter considered the possibility of first shooting the younger girl, then the older girl. He rested his finger on the trigger with the girl in his sight. He had collected many bounties over the past ten years and would normally have pulled the trigger without further thought. But this time he couldn’t. He was a superstitious man who kept good-luck charms in his pockets – the claw of a mother leopard, a Portuguese gold coin from Sri Lanka’s distant past, the tooth of a sadhu who had lived to be one hundred and nine years old. The girl’s strange stare unnerved him. He heard a whistling sound in his ear, such as an owl makes when it flies overhead in search of its prey.
He said beneath his breath, ‘Move yourself, fool. I don’t want your blood.’
But the girl remained exactly where she was, staring directly at him.
The bounty hunter, a highly skilled marksman, moved the red dot of his sight to the girl’s shoulder. He would shoot to wound her, without killing her, then his second shot would kill the older girl. But as he rested his finger on the trigger, a chill came over him, even in the heat of the high sun. He uttered a string of curses. ‘In the name of all the gods, who is this witch?’ The girl was still looking at him. For fifty dollars, would he risk a lifetime of bad luck? Would he? He gave the dilemma another sixty seconds’ thought, then muttered an oath and unclipped his rifle from the tripod. He packed the weapon away into a cylinder on the back of his trail bike, straddled the saddle, kicked the engine to life and roared away east through the trees. As he rode, he felt in his pocket for his sadhu’s tooth, put it to his lips and kissed it. ‘I did not kill her,’ he said. ‘Did you not see? I let her live.’
Banni pointed south towards the sound of the trail bike. A long cloud of dust rose into the air in its wake. Malini, Nanda and the boys watched in silence. Finally, Nanda whispered to Banni, ‘Who was it?’
‘A bad man,’ said Banni. Then to Nanda, ‘A biscuit, please.’
Malini studied her sister in wonder. How did she know someone was over there in the trees, so far off? The sadhu had said she was a moon girl, but Malini only half-believed tales of that sort. And yet… No, no. Her sister was just a girl like any other. A little less of a pain than she’d once been, maybe, but still just a girl.
‘We’ll go now!’ Malini called. ‘We’re looking for a road, a proper black road, not a track. When we find the road, we will ask someone the way to the village. One more day, maybe.’
The further west they travelled, the more lush the countryside became. The sandy earth of the plateau gave way to rich, rust-coloured soil, and the trees grew taller. Scanning the way ahead, Malini picked out terraced paddy fields on the hillsides, and lower down, thriving market gardens. In this region of Sri Lanka, you could grow anything.
Malini’s appappa, Panya Ranawana, had worked for five decades as an actuary in his small town, forever dreaming of the farm his own father had left him at Ulla Alakana. He had told Malini of that dream, more than once. ‘When your grandmother, my beloved wife, left this life behind, I knew the time had come, if it was ever to come. It would be my solace, do you see, child? I would grow mangoes, queen pineapples, passionfruit, breadfruit. And if I had success, I would dedicate the happiness it would bring me to your grandmother.’ Malini, gazing at the thriving fields i
n the distance, recalled walking among the fruit trees with her grandfather, and of saying to him, ‘You did have success, didn’t you, Appappa?’
‘Yes, my love. I had success. But when I first came here at the age of sixty, I found a stony waste. It took me ten years to turn it into a jewel. I hired men and women to clear the land of stones.’
It was a story that Malini’s grandfather loved to tell. And since she had heard it four or five times, it was her task to ask the right questions at the right moment.
‘So many trials you had to face, Appappa! Isn’t that true?’
‘So many trials, Malini. So many. Just to bring water to the fields I had to plead with the local authorities for a licence. When I harvested my first crops, I paid the Tamil soldiers to allow my trucks safe passage northwards through land that the Tigers held. And I paid government soldiers to let me send my queen pineapples south to Colombo. Always paying this soldier, paying that soldier! But my fruit was splendid, Malini – splendid! People rushed to buy Ranawana fruit.’
Exhausted though she was, feeling not at all well, Malini slipped into a reverie as she thought of those days with her grandfather. She whispered to herself, What was your secret, Appappa? That was what she was expected to ask whenever her grandfather reached this point in his story: ‘What was your secret?’
Banni, wondering what on earth her sister was doing, came up beside her and waved her hand in front of Malini’s face. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Why have we stopped? Why are you talking to yourself?’
Malini ignored her, or perhaps didn’t even notice her sister. She whispered again, What was your secret? And she heard her grandfather’s chuckle of pleasure as he prepared to tell her how Ranawana fruit came to be so prized.
‘One day, my love, I was looking through the wares in a gypsy peddler’s caravan when I came across an old book written by a sadhu in Sanskrit, a language I had taught myself over the years. Page after page advised the reader on every single thing that would improve the growth of fruit. Fruit is the bounty of heaven, the sadhu had written. A peach is a gift to your lips from Lord Shiva. The flesh and juice of every fruit is a message of love. Grow this bounty with reverence. I took the sadhu’s advice. When I planted, I prayed. When I harvested, I gave thanks to every god.’
Banni tugged at her sister’s sari. ‘Can we go now?’ she said.
‘Hmm?’
‘Can we go now? You’re in a trance. It scares me.’
‘I was thinking of Appappa,’ said Malini, returning to the here and now. ‘It would be a shame if I were permitted ten minutes with my thoughts, I suppose. Very well, let’s go.’
They walked for a further hour or more, the greenery in the distance gradually coming closer. Malini’s strength was ebbing from her body, but she wouldn’t allow herself another rest, fearing that if she stopped she would never make her limbs start moving again. Dominating her thoughts was the call she was waiting on from her father. He had said, ‘Three days,’ and this was the third. She took the phone out of her sari every so often to see if there was a missed call or a message. She would be relieved when they arrived safely at the village, but unless she was reunited with her parents, the journey would mean nothing to her. She desperately needed to hear her father say, ‘You have done well, Malini, my beloved,’ and to have her mother smother her in kisses and fret over the state of her hair and her fingernails. She wanted to be a child again, or almost a child.
The call came towards evening. But it was not from her father; it was her mother who rang. She was in an emotional state, barely able to talk. She said that she and Malini’s father were travelling west towards Ulla Alakana but that Appa had been wounded and could not get to a doctor.
‘Wounded?’ said Malini. In her anxious state, she felt she was about to faint. ‘How?’
‘He has been shot! He—’
The call cut out.
Malini dialled the number back. There was no response. She dialled again, then a third and a fourth time.
Half mad with anxiety, she pressed on with the journey, refusing to stop until she came to the paved road just before midnight. She found a concealed place for a camp in the forest near a stream, and saw the children fed and bedded down. Then she dialled her father’s mobile number once more.
This time there was an answer. A stranger’s voice asked in Sinhala who she was.
‘Who am I? Why do you ask? I wish to speak to Chandran Ranawana or Tamara Ranawana.’
The stranger said, ‘Again I ask, who are you?’
Malini hesitated briefly before saying that she was the daughter of Chandran Ranawana.
‘He is dead,’ said the stranger.
‘What? No! Please give the phone to my mother!’
She heard another voice in the background, then a third. A new voice, a woman’s, said, ‘You are the daughter of Chandran Ranawana?’
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘He is wounded. We are operating.’
‘Where are you? Please, I have a right to know!’
‘This is a field hospital of Sri Lanka Red Cross.’
‘What happened?’ Malini asked, but the call cut out.
Malini dialled again, and a further six times without any answer.
There was enough battery left for one call, maybe. Malini saved it in case her mother rang again. She refused to accept what the man had told her. Her father couldn’t be dead. It was as the woman had said: he was wounded; he was being operated on; but he was alive.
Malini let the children sleep, but she herself did not sleep at all; she paced up and down, fighting her fear.
At the first light of dawn, she roused the children. She told Banni and Nanda to bathe the boys in the stream and prepare some breakfast. The boys could see how distressed she was and crowded around her, kissing her hands. Banni asked her what news there was of Appa and Amma.
‘News? None. Don’t ask me.’
Malini had avoided villages for the whole length of the journey, but now she threw caution to the wind and marched alone into the first village she came to on the western side of the paved road. She stopped at a kiosk that sold magazines, peanuts and Coca-Cola. She asked the woman serving in the kiosk the way to the village of Ulla Alakana. The woman, in her middle years but with grey hair escaping from beneath her shawl, asked Malini why she wanted to know.
‘Because that’s where I am headed, honoured lady,’ said Malini.
‘Because that is where you are headed,’ the woman repeated. ‘But why?’
Malini wanted to say, ‘That is my business.’ But she knew that in a village such as this, anyone’s business was everyone’s business.
‘To find my appappa.’
‘What is the name of your grandfather? That is my question.’
‘My appappa’s name is Panya Ranawana.’
The woman had been sitting. Now she stood and put her hands to her face in surprise. ‘I know him!’
‘You know my grandfather?’
‘A good man! An ornament to our town! He lives alone. His honoured wife died many years ago of a disease called typhus.’
‘Your town?’
‘I didn’t tell you. In these times, it’s important to take care. This is the town of Ulla Alakana. Your honoured grandfather is lord of the orchard at the bottom of the hill path. It’s an hour’s walk.’
Malini took directions from the woman then returned to Banni, Nanda, Amal and Gayan. Tears were running down her face. ‘This is the village,’ she said. ‘This is Ulla Alakana. This is where our appappa lives.’
Banni rushed to her sister and kissed her rapidly on both cheeks. Nanda, Amal and Gayan took their turns to kiss Malini, recognising that she was on the brink of wailing her heart out. ‘A happy day,’ said Nanda. ‘You made this possible, Malini. I think we would have died without you. I think so.’
Gayan made the light clapping sound with his two hands that was his signature of delight. Amal held Malini’s hand to his cheek.
Malini dried her eyes on
her shawl. ‘We walk for twenty minutes on the west side of the paved road. Then we take the dirt road over a hill. Appappa’s house is at the bottom of the hill path.’
Is it truly possible? Are we really here? Malini thought. And she began to weep again.
Panya Ranawana employed a housekeeper, a woman of sixty by the name of Varya. She had endured the exhausting life of a tea-picker for many years before finding her present, much more comfortable position. She guarded the peace and the health of Panya Ranawana jealously. Hawkers and peddlers who came to the door were chased away, and she settled any disputes among the orchard workers with a few efficient words. She knew how to count, and with the aid of an electronic calculator she kept track of all the expenses of the orchard. To the orchard workers, fifty of them, Varya was ‘Mrs Boss’, or sometimes, ‘Lady Boss’. She was respected by everyone and admired despite her sharp tongue, for underneath the prickly surface her heart was tender.
Varya had been the housekeeper for the past eight years, so she had not met Malini or Banni. It was for this reason that she watched the approach of the ragtag band of children led by a tall girl in a dirty sari with suspicion. Ripe fruit hung from the trees of the orchard for seven months of the year, and for those seven months, children tried every trick in the book to sneak past the orchard keepers and fill hessians sacks with guavas, passionfruit and apples to sell to peddlers.
Varya hurried out to the gate and called, ‘No gypsies, thank you very much! No beggars, either! Take yourselves somewhere else!’
Malini stepped forward and spoke through the slats of the tall wooden gate. ‘Honoured lady, excuse our appearance. I—’
Malini Page 12
