by Roma Tearne
Gerard unlocked the drawer and watched Vikram’s face.
‘Well,’ he said very gently. ‘Don’t tell me you’re scared? Don’t tell me you won’t avenge your family, given a chance?’
‘Will you teach me to use it?’ asked Vikram, startled from his usual reverie, staring at the gun.
‘Patience, patience,’ Gerard laughed, closing the drawer, amused by Vikram’s sudden interest, preferring it to the boy’s usual indifference.
‘All things come to those who wait. You must learn to clean it first.’
It was the best way to start; it would keep Vikram’s interest alive. Cleanliness was next to godliness, he told the boy, and God was the gun. Vikram liked the idea of the power of God. He liked the mantras Gerard was always reciting. For a moment he felt as though he had a purpose in life. Most of the time the empty, shut-down feeling in his head made him lethargic. But now, for the first time in ages, he felt a stirring within him. A new energy. Avenge your family, Gerard had said. Vikram looked at him and thought, Gerard likes me. The notion was oddly pleasing.
One morning soon after all this happened, having decided he had no need for school, Vikram was on his way to Gerard’s gem store when he saw the Mendis girl again. He had forgotten all about her. But she stopped and began to speak to him.
‘Don’t you go to school any more?’ she asked.
Vikram was confused. He thought she didn’t speak. And how did she know he was not at school? He stared at her.
‘I’m Jim’s sister, Nulani, remember?’ she said, clearly thinking he did not recognise her. ‘You live at Sumaner House, don’t you?’
Vikram nodded. Nulani Mendis fumbled in her satchel. She took out a small battered notebook.
‘Look,’ she said, showing him a drawing.
She was laughing. He could see her teeth, white and very even. Vikram took the book reluctantly. Then, in spite of himself, he too grinned. It was a picture of a teacher no one liked. Nulani Mendis had drawn a caricature, catching his likeness perfectly. Suddenly, Vikram felt shy. The girl was standing close to him. He could smell a faint perfume.
‘You’re good,’ he ventured at last, hesitantly.
For some reason she scared him. There was an air of determination, a certainty about her that confused him. He felt as though she might ask him for something he could not give. He saw she was still smiling at him and again he felt an urge to run away. Then he noticed that close up she was even prettier than she had appeared from a distance. Tongue-tied, he continued to stare at her, hardly aware she was still speaking.
‘Has your brother gone to the UK?’ he asked finally, with some difficulty, not understanding and wanting to distract her.
The girl shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she said.
She smiled again, but this time it was she who hesitated. Then she seemed to withdraw slightly. He thought she appeared older than he remembered, and he saw her eyes were very dark and deep and sad. They seemed full of other puzzling and unnamed things. He stared at her for a moment longer and nodded. Then, making up his mind, he loped off.
That afternoon, after he had finished his target practice with the silencer on the gun, Gerard told Vikram he had something important to say.
‘First,’ he said, ‘well done!’ He took the gun from Vikram. ‘Congratulations! You’ve worked hard and as a reward I shall take you on a little operation with me at the end of the month. If you do well at that, there will be bigger and more interesting assignments ahead, OK? And then, in a few months’ time you will go to the Eastern province for something extremely important.’
‘What?’ asked Vikram. ‘The Eastern province? Isn’t that where the Tigers are trained?’
‘Vikram,’ said Gerard, ‘you must learn not to ask too many questions. You’ll be told everything. But, all in good time. Don’t ask questions. You aren’t going to be an ordinary member of the Tigers, believe me. You are both intelligent and a good shot. So now you’re going to be trained for something top class. Trust me, men.’
‘When?’ demanded Vikram.
‘Patience, patience,’ said Gerard, holding up his hands mockingly, shaking his head. ‘Patience is what’s required now. We’ve both waited a long time to prepare you for this. Don’t ruin things. I promise you the time is coming when you will avenge your family. I fully understand how you must feel. Just wait a little longer. And for heaven’s sake, Vikram,’ he added, ‘do me a favour. Go back to school for your exams. You don’t want to attract any notice at this stage. If the Mendis girl knows you’re absent, then others will too.’
Vikram picked up the gun and held it below his crotch. He stroked the tip of the barrel. He laughed, a high-pitched out-of-control scurrilous screech.
‘That’s enough,’ said Gerard sharply. ‘Put it down. It’s not a toy. You can have all the things you want if you show restraint. You’ve been earmarked for great things. Now, go back to school.’
Gerard was aware that underneath his silent exterior Vikram was coiled like a spring. He knew whatever simmered in Vikram was dangerously near the surface. And that it was best to keep a tight control over him. Just in case.
A few days after his exams, Vikram saw the Mendis girl once more. She did not see him. She was hurrying in the direction of the beach. Interested, he decided to follow her. He watched her body move darkly beneath the lime-green skirt, in the sunlight. Her hair was tied up and it swung to and fro as she walked. Where is she going? Vikram wondered curiously.
The road went nowhere in particular. In fact, it was not possible to reach the beach this way without scrambling over the giant cacti. Then the road curved, and suddenly it was possible to see the sea. The beach was completely empty and scorched. Just before the road came to an end, there appeared a long, low house, surrounded by a flower-laden wall and flanked by two stone lions. The top of the wall was covered in barbed wire. Vikram remembered now. It was the house where the UK-returned writer lived. He had seen the man once when he had come to the school. The teachers had shaken their heads, saying he was a Singhalese who was pro the wretched Tamils. What kind of a Singhalese was he? they asked. Still, they had said, he was famous. Misguided, but famous. So they had invited him because of that.
A large jackfruit tree overhung Theo Samarajeeva’s garden wall. Its leaves were thick and succulent, and the girl, stopping outside the gate, began to draw in her notebook. She had no idea she was being followed. Nor did she seem to notice there was no shade. Nulani Mendis sat on the withered grass verge absorbed in her drawing, as the low hum of mosquitoes and the drowsy buzz of other, more benign, insects slowed to a halt in the baking air. Across the sun-drenched garden Vikram could just make out the writer, in his pale linen trousers and his white shirt, working at a table on the veranda. The veranda had been bleached white by the sun and appeared dusty in the dazzling light. Then the manservant came out to fetch the girl in for lunch, and shut the gate. And that was all Vikram saw of any of them that day.
Nulani had almost finished the portrait. In a week she would be ready to show both Theo and Sugi.
‘I will cook kiribath, some milk rice,’ Sugi said. ‘And buy the best fish.’
‘I shall decide where it must be hung!’ said Theo.
An air of gaiety descended. Sugi replaced the lanterns in the trees. And Theo declared the day of the unveiling a holiday from his writing. His work was progressing slowly. In October the film of his second book would be out. He would have to go to London for the premiere.
‘For how long will you be gone?’ asked Nulani, her eyes suddenly anxious. ‘Will they let you come back?’
Her hair was coiled against the back of her neck and a frangipani blossom quivered just above her ear. Theo watched it shake as she moved her head, wondering when it would fall. Once, he nearly put his hand out to catch it. How could he explain to her that no one could stop him coming home? When had he started to call this place home again?
His agent had rung him complaining. It was impossible to get a call
through to him, did he know that? The lines were always down. How could he live in a place with no access to the outside world, where the lines were always down? The agent hoped he was working. Through the crackle on the line the agent sounded like a peevish nanny. The summer in London, he told Theo, was disappointing. Wet, cold and miserable. The only consolation, he supposed, was that the telephones worked!
Because the curfew was not in operation just now Theo walked openly on the beach. The sand, ivory and unblemished, seemed to stretch for ever, smooth and interrupted only by his footsteps. One evening Nulani went with him. She had told her mother she was working late on the painting. They walked the wide sweep of beach without seeing anyone, with only the slight breeze and the waves for company. It felt as though they had walked this same beach for an eternity. She walked close to him, like a child, her hand brushing against his arm. He felt her skin, warm against him. He had an urge to take her hand and cradle it in his two hands. He knew she was worrying and he wanted to tell her to stop. But he felt helplessly that he had no right to intrude.
‘I feel as if I have known you for ever,’ the girl said suddenly. ‘D’you think we knew each other in our last birth?’
He swallowed. Her eyes were large and clear. They seemed to mirror the sky. Looking at her he could not think of a single thing to say. Twenty-eight years between them and still he was lost for words, he thought, amazed. They walked the length of the beach and he watched the frangipani in her hair, marvelling that it did not fall; half hoping it would, so that he might catch it.
4
‘WHEN CAN I SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?’ asked Theo impatiently. He sat squinting at the sun. His white shirt was crumpled and the light cast purple shadows against the creases of the cloth.
The girl smiled. ‘What if you don’t like the painting?’ she asked, teasingly. ‘What if the money you are paying my mother is wasted?’
‘I will love it,’ he said, certain. ‘No question. I can’t wait. Don’t forget, I saw it when you began. And another thing, while I remember, I want the money to be kept for your work only. Should I tell your mother that?’
She laughed. What did she need the money for? She had wanted only to paint him. It will soon be October, thought Theo. The rains would come then, he knew. When they broke he would be in London. He did not tell her but he no longer wanted to go. The film had no significance for him. It was all part of another life. A life he seemed to have discarded with alarming ease. Living among his own people, here in this amorphous heat, seeing the mysterious and uneasy ways in which one day flowed into another, he felt as though he had never left.
The girl was sitting close to him on the veranda, staring dreamily at the garden. She was so close her arm brushed against his. She had the ways of the very young, he mused. Physical closeness came naturally. He could see the shadows of her breasts, small dark smudges, rising and falling through her thin white blouse. She looked very cool and self-possessed. And she seemed happier. He realised with shock that loneliness had clung to her like fine sea dust when he had first met her. But now she’s content, he thought. Now she is happier.
He wanted to think he had given her something, some comfort for the loss of her father. Even if all he did was offer her a space and encouragement to paint, surely that was better than nothing? He felt a growing certainty in his desire to help her. He felt it rise above the anxieties of this place.
‘You must work here when I am in London,’ he said.
An idea was forming in his mind. He did not know whether to tell her. He wanted to organise an exhibition of her paintings. But she had opened her notebook and was drawing again, her eyes half shut against the glare. Green and red splashed against him, other stories unfolded. He saw she was drawing his outstretched foot.
‘You can’t keep drawing me!’ he said laughing, moving his foot out of sight. ‘Now look, I’ve been thinking, I want to organise an exhibition of your paintings. I can’t do that if you only draw me!’
‘Where? Colombo?’ Her head was bent over her notebook.
‘Yes, maybe,’ he said, suddenly wanting to take her to London with him in October.
Thinking, what was wrong with him that he could not bear to be parted from her? He knew nothing about art but even he could see the astonishing things that were conjured up by her hands. They were the hands of a magician. Like shadow puppets they illuminated other dimensions of the world, probing the edges of things and those corners where drifts of light revealed all that had been concealed from him until now.
‘You must work hard until I get back,’ he said instead, trying to look stern.
So that she threw her head back and burst out laughing. And he saw, how in spite of everything she had been through, her youth could not be contained but was mirrored in her laugh. It was low and filled with happiness. October is still a long way off, he reassured himself. I’ll feel differently then.
The hot season was coming to an end and the full moon was ten days away. Twenty kilometres from the town was a sacred site where the festivities were beginning. It had been at the time of the festival that her father had been murdered, Nulani told him. Just before the water-cutting ceremony, in the build-up to poya, the religious festival on the night of the full moon. All across the town fear mushroomed in polluted clouds, hanging over two thousand years of faith. Fear seemed inseparable from belief. Men with bare feet walked over red-hot coals or swung themselves on metal hooks across the coconut trees. And all the while, interwoven with the sounds of drums and conch shells, the nada filled the air.
‘You must be careful,’ said Sugi. ‘Not everyone is a believer. These are troubled times. And even if,’ he added, ‘even if they are believers, some people still have evil intent.’
Every year Sugi went to the festival. He always met his family there; he had done this for as long as he could remember. But this year he was worried about leaving Theo on his own.
‘This is the time when some people try to put curses on their enemies.’
‘Sugi, for heaven’s sake, what d’you think is going to happen? No one’s interested in me. I’ll be perfectly fine.’
‘But the girl won’t be here either,’ said Sugi worriedly.
Theo laughed. The girl was going with her mother to the festival. They were going to pray for her brother Jim. To be certain he would get the scholarship.
‘Well, I thought you’d be pleased about that,’ he teased, giving Sugi a sly look.
‘Sir!’ said Sugi reproachfully.
‘Oh, Sugi, I’m only pulling your leg. I’m going to work like mad while you’re away. No distractions, no chatting, you know. No stopping for tea. Just work. I shall have most of this next chapter finished by the time you both get back. You’ll see.’
In the now skeleton-staffed Department of Tropical Diseases, a conference, planned two years previously, had to be cancelled because of lack of funds and resources. Many eminent scientists from all over the world, having been invited to give papers, were now told the unstable situation on the island made it impossible to guarantee the safety of their stay. It was a disappointment for all those who had worked tirelessly to eradicate the threat of an epidemic. An article appeared in a scientific journal. ‘No animal on earth has touched so directly and profoundly the lives of so many human beings. For all of history and all over the globe the mosquito has been a nuisance, a pain and the angel of death.’
Deep within the jungle the festival was in progress. A god with many hands sat inside the dagoba. The monks had placed him there, hoping he would give an audience to the crowds. This happened every year; it was the highlight of the festival. People came from far and wide to pray to him. The hands of this many-handed god were empty apart from his spear. He looked neither right nor left. If he heard the prayers of the tormented he gave no sign. There were peacocks at his side and sunlight shone on his burnished anklets. Young girls brought him armfuls of offerings, walking miles in the boiling heat. Young men came carrying hope. He received each of
them without a word. All day long the drumming and the sounds of elephant bells filled the air in a frenzy of noise and movement. Trumpeters and acrobats walked the roadsides while men with tridents chalked on their foreheads paid penance for ancient inexplicable sins. Elsewhere the ground was strewn with red and yellow flowers and the heavy smell of cinnamon was underfoot. There were giant mounds of sherbet-pink powders and uncut limes piled up on silver platters everywhere.
The many-handed god watched them all. He watched the backs of the women bent in devotion. Who knew what they prayed for? Was it for abundance in their wombs? Or was it simply peace for the fruits of these same wombs that they desired? The crowds came with their coins tied in cloth, with their ribbons of desires, their cotton-white grief and their food. As night approached a full moon arose across the neon sky silhouetting the dagoba, white and round, with a single spike pointing at the stars. Hundreds of coconut flames fanned an unrelenting heat.
Midnight approached and the temple drums grew louder, announcing the arrival of the Kathakali Man of Dance. The crowds gasped. With his pleated trousers and beaded breastplates, the Kathakali Man pointed his fingers skywards. He seemed to be reaching for the stars. With ancient gesture and sandstone smile, he danced for the gaping, amazed gathering. The Kathakali Man had a many-faceted jewel that gleamed in his navel and a peacock’s cry deep in his throat. His drum tattooed yet another ancient tale, telling of those things which were allowed and those which were forbidden. His was a dance of warning. History ran through his veins, giving him authority. Everyone heard him in the neon-green night but not everyone was capable of interpreting what he said. Those who ignored him did so at their peril, he warned.
