by Roma Tearne
‘And someone killed my friend Sugi,’ she added and, without warning, she began to cry. ‘He was such a good man. He was my only friend in this town. Now I too have no one. The fishermen found his body on the beach. He was a jewel of a man. I don’t know who could have wanted to harm him. He never did anything wrong. That’s why I think something has happened to Nulani Mendis. Go and ask that wretched uncle of hers, will you? Please. Ask him where she is. Say you are a friend and you want to know.’
Outside on the veranda the heat had risen again and the afternoon clamoured with a cacophony of sounds as, deep within the crematorium, Mrs Mendis’s coffin began, slowly, to be licked by flames.
The end when it came was quick and decisive. The girl had been totally silent during the drive. They had been quiet, for what was there left to say? Giulia sat in the back of the car with her, holding her hand, guiding her through this last journey. It had still been light when they set out, the smallest glimmer of sun fading rosily into the sky. They drove through the outskirts of the jungle. Dark branches brushed against the sides of the car. Occasionally they saw the headlights of some other vehicle but it was always in the distance, on some other dirt track that never crossed their path. Only the wind, rustling the trees, disturbed their thoughts. It was a clear night for flying, Rohan saw. But he said nothing. The visibility would be good because of the moon. She would see the island from above as she left, if she found a window seat. Giulia was thinking too. How much will she remember of this? she wondered. Sorrow spilled across the night, varnishing her thoughts. In all the endless years to come how much of it will remain to comfort her? What can her life possibly be after this? Rohan was silent. His bitterness had become a heavy thing, filling the car, impenetrable as an ancient rock. I wish we were going on this plane with her. We have to get out, he decided. There is nothing more for us here. By now they had skirted the perimeter of Katunayake Airport and darkness had fallen. The radar antennae turned slowly in the sky, a bowed dagoba. Journey’s end, thought Giulia sadly, remembering the day Theo had brought Nulani to them. And how, it had been she, Giulia, who had seen, before anyone else, that he had loved her.
Then, in an unmarked space of time, in the swift way of significant events, Nulani Mendis left them, going through the barrier into the area restricted to passengers. Barely registering the last moments, or fully understanding as they took their leave of her, she was gone, her passport checked and stamped, herded along with the other travellers into the waiting area. They watched the plane through the window. The refuelling had finished. The ground staff moved away, the engines started up. The great bird was ready for flight. They watched helplessly as a fly buzzed endlessly against the window. Giulia stared at it with unfocused eyes, thinking of the long dark shadow of this moment, and all the other moments that had led up to this. And of the cost on what was about to become of Nulani Mendis’s life.
The tarmac was hot with the smell of fuel, and the air filled with the drift and swell of the sea, hidden just beyond the trees. The plane began to taxi across the runway, it hurried through the darkness gathering speed, and then swiftly, too swiftly, even as they watched, it was airborne, flying briefly over the thick covering of coconut palms. She would see a few roads, some twinkling violet neon lights, thought Rohan, before the aircraft would bank gently and turn out towards the sea. And, he thought, feeling as though his heart might at any moment break, then she would see the moon stretch far across the crumpled water, and catch the last lingering sweep of coastline. Bone-white and beautiful and all that remained of her home.
10
BEFORE THE DUST COULD SETTLE ON Mrs Mendis’s ashes, Gerard began making his enquiries. The town had sunk back into its usual apathy of heat and sleepy indifference. The house where the Mendis family had once lived, where children had played and the sounds of voices were heard, was no more. Empty coconut shells lay scattered everywhere, overripe mangoes still thudded to the ground, and cane chairs faded dustily in the sun. Someone had thrown a broken mirror out with the rubbish, and the two sewing machines that Mrs Mendis had made her living by had been sold. Mrs Mendis’s brother had seen to all of this. He had installed himself on the veranda and in the house. He was sleeping on his dead sister’s bed, eating off his dead brother-in-law’s plates, enjoying himself. He told Gerard, the house was his now. Possession was everything, he said defensively, draping himself across a planter’s chair. He was an odd-jobbing man, he said, in his falsetto way. Odd and jobbing, he had said, laughing at his own joke. Well, a man had to make a living. The army had offered him good money for Mr Samarajeeva, he added, helping himself to Gerard’s arrack. No, no, the man wasn’t dead, at least not when he delivered him to the headquarters in Colombo.
‘I say, what d’you think I am?’ he asked. ‘A murderer?’
And he laughed again. Gerard apologised. But he had got what he wanted, he had got his information; Theo Samarajeeva had been alive when they caught him. And the girl? Who knows, said the uncle. The army hadn’t wanted her. The uncle laughed, she must have found another man by now! Anyway, she needn’t think of coming back. The house was his.
‘I want you to go to Colombo,’ Gerard told Vikram later. ‘I want you to find Theo Samarajeeva. He’s our man. Someone will talk, if you hang around long enough. The uncle doesn’t know any more.’
Vikram waited. He knew if he stayed silent Gerard would say more than he should.
‘We need Samarajeeva,’ said Gerard. ‘He writes eloquently. Foreigners respect him. We need him to speak out against the government. What the Chief is doing isn’t working. I should be in charge of the Tamil image. The Chief is just a soldier.’
He paused, absent-mindedly pouring them both another drink.
‘If you are successful, Vikram, I promise you, I shan’t forget,’ he lied. ‘If we form the kind of government I have in mind, you’ll be part of it. My right-hand man, no? Understand?’
He stared at Vikram. The boy was getting on his nerves. Sluggish and constantly sullen, today he looked particularly mulish. Gerard had had enough. The boy was no longer of any use to him. After the airport bombings he had shown telltale signs of stress, wanting to save one of the team, risking his life for a lame duck. And afterwards, he had been upset. Then he had trailed Gerard back to the south in a state of exhaustion and apathy. Gerard hadn’t forgotten any of this. He knew that Vikram had come to the end of his usefulness and that his battle fatigue and his nervous exhaustion had made him a liability even to the Tigers. Added to which it would be difficult to use Vikram in any further high-profile activities. He’s finished, Gerard decided.
Vikram had no idea what Gerard was thinking. Lately, he had not been sleeping well. He had begun to dream again. Those things once hidden had risen to the surface; his sister’s face growing out of a plantain tree, his mother’s death cry. He would go to Colombo, he decided. There was nothing for him here any more. It would take a few days for him to get ready. He was tired and in any case he needed the necessary papers. Good, thought Gerard, satisfied, watching his face. That’s settled then. Of late, Vikram had become transparent about certain things.
‘The Mendis girl is probably in hiding,’ he said out loud. ‘If you find Theo Samarajeeva for me, he will probably lead you to her,’ he added cunningly.
So Vikram left, taking with him a package from Gerard to be delivered to someone in Colombo. The air was oppressive. The sea lay like a ploughed field before him. All along the coast the fishermen were back on their stilts, delicate nets fanning out like coral beneath the green water. Nothing much had changed. As the train pulled out of the station Vikram caught a glimpse of the writer’s house. It sat snugly at the edge of the bay, overlooking the sea. The carriage was empty. Vikram opened his wallet and took out the photograph of the girl he had stolen. He stared at it and the girl stared back at him. The corners of her mouth were turned up with the beginnings of a smile and her eyes were dark and unfathomable. The last time he had seen her she had been standing on the b
row of the hill, staring at the railway line. He had startled her, he realised, but then she had seemed glad to see him. It occurred to Vikram suddenly that she might have been planning to throw herself on the railway line. He had no idea why he had thought this. The train rattled and swung round a bend, and suddenly, without warning, Vikram saw his sister’s face again. Twice in one week, calling out a warning to him. Her face stared at him like the face in the photograph, caught by a lens, cactus-sharp, rock solid and frozen for ever. Staring at the horizon, at the point where the sky met the sea, he counted the ships, idly, out of habit. His family had been dead for over a decade. In a rare moment of retrospection he supposed he had come a long way. And although he had no idea where he might be going, he was certain the Tigers no longer interested him. He saw now that they had never really interested him, they had simply been all there was on offer. Gerard too had ceased to interest him, Gerard couldn’t give him anything much. Avenging his parents was not possible, he saw. Briefly, feeling strangely light-headed, Vikram remembered Gopal. And again his sister’s face rose up, issuing some warning he did not understand. Or was it the face of Nulani Mendis? Had his sister really looked like the Mendis girl? he wondered, confused. He couldn’t remember any more, he was too tired, everything was blurred by the heat. The train lurched its way into the central station in Colombo and Vikram took down his suitcase from the luggage rack, handling it with care. He reached for the handle of the carriage door. As he opened it there was a blinding yellow flash followed by a distant thud and the sound of breaking glass. Then, seconds before he felt the pain in his face, the handle was wrenched from his hand as the compartment buckled and collapsed to the ground, dragging him with it.
Seventeen people were killed in the bomb blast that day, including Vikram. The Tiger separatists claimed responsibility.
The river running through parts of the jungle was a wide gaping mouth. It cut deep into the interior like a gangrenous wound, neglected and rotten. Too wide to cross, to swollen to ignore, it provided a natural barrier around the low-slung concrete building that was the army headquarters. Because of the existence of the river this part of the jungle was wet and rich with vegetation. Brilliant tiger-striped orchids sprouted everywhere. Lilies grew wild, choked by the scented stephanotis, and huge creepers tangled with the trees. Birds rustled in the dense mass of leaves, their cries echoing across the valley. Everywhere, in every pocket of light, there were small clouds of tiny butterflies hovering above the flowers, slipping through the hard scalloped leaves of the belimal trees. For the forest was teeming and heaving with life. Close to the wall of this makeshift barracks, resting in the sun, was a lyre-headed lizard. It paused for a moment, head darting swiftly, waiting for some mysterious signal before moving on. This part of the jungle was still an area of outstanding natural beauty, but the army traffic that moved backwards and forwards throughout the day was blind to all it offered.
On the fourth day of Theo Samarajeeva’s captivity and solitary confinement the guard came in. He told Theo that he had orders to move him.
‘Where to?’ cried Theo hoarsely. His lips were cracked and caked with dried blood. His throat was closing up, he could hardly speak. ‘I want to speak to whoever is in charge.’
His voice sounded unnatural even to his own ears. The guard spoke to him in his native tongue, handcuffed him, pushing him roughly out of the cell. He told him, when they got to their destination, there would be plenty of time to speak.
‘But where are we going?’ demanded Theo.
He wanted to appear determined, but he heard his voice rising in panic. The light flooded painfully into his eyes, making them water. He could not shield them. All his questions, all his pleas during the last four days had remained unanswered. Although the knock on his head had confused him at first, some of his memory was returning shakily. He remembered it had been the girl’s uncle who had hit him in the garden. He remembered walking out on to the veranda, wanting to talk to the man. He had wanted to stop the man entering the house. Did the uncle know the girl was with him that night? Had he in fact come for her? The thought chilled Theo. He had wanted to question the guard but did not know the uncle’s name and in any case he had not wanted to implicate the girl further. With his returning memory, his anxiety for Nulani had risen steeply. It was worse than the pain in his head. He felt weak; the wounds across his face and back ached dully. He had not eaten or drunk much. And he suspected that his whole body had been repeatedly kicked and beaten. But for what reason? thought Theo, bewildered. For loving the girl? He knew he was running a fever. As he stumbled and was pushed towards the waiting truck, the day pressed against him as though tuned to some high-pitched frequency, feverish and urgent. The light too seemed excessively bright, and although the heat was relentless he shivered violently with cold. Again, he guessed the time to be about seven o’clock in the morning but he had no idea what day it was or how long he had been in this state. Again, he tried talking to the guard.
‘Look,’ he said in Singhala, ‘will you at least tell me where we’re going?’
He tried to sound reasonable, confident, his old self. But the guard did not answer. He was too busy negotiating the rough dirt track across the jungle. They began to follow the river and Theo wondered whether it was the Mahiyangana and if they were in fact moving towards Koddiyar Bay. He saw suddenly that he might not survive what was to come. With painful clarity, he saw the girl’s face, close up and very beautiful. The image was disconnected to the dull throb in his body. He knew, in some part of his brain, that capture such as this seldom led to release, and that his only hope was in finding ways to endure the minutes and hours of what was left of his life. These were his people. And now, for the first time, he felt the shock of double betrayal.
In front of them was an army jeep. Behind, following closely, were two more.
‘Who brought me here?’ he asked in vain. ‘Tell me his name, let me speak to him.’
The guard ignored him. The jungle was full of its morning activities. It occurred to Theo with a detached, surreal irony that here, in this very spot, was the location for his film. But the film had been made in another rainforest, in another country, for there had been no possibility of entering any part of Sri Lanka at that time. He had not thought of the film since leaving England. Now, in order to stay calm, he forced himself to think about it. The premiere, his time in London, all seemed long ago, already in some other life. The critics had been appreciative; the reviews would be good. Good for the box office and good for sales of his book. But none of it had mattered. It had passed in a blur of nothingness and all his energy had been spent in getting back to the girl. He shied away from any thought of her and concentrated instead on the book. It had been written before Anna died.
Anna, he thought, with a rush of relief. He would think about Anna. Thinking about Anna would save him. He would focus on their life together, their travels around Europe, the memories they had made, the happiness. And now he recalled the hazy, halcyon days of summer when youth had been a mere careless thing, full of endless possibilities. Where had it gone? Happiness, he saw, had left silently, slipping through a crack in the door, an open window, vanishing into the night, unnoticed, going even as death arrived. Remembering how it had begun, that first night when he had missed the last train, Theo closed his eyes. The pain in his back was unbearable. The truck bounced and rattled along the dirt track road. He had stayed with Anna, that first night, and she had taken a bath with the door ajar. Provocatively, knowing he would have to look in. He forced himself to conjure up the moment as the truck lurched and swayed around a bend. The road appeared to be climbing upwards. Theo sat dully staring at the flickering light by his feet, his mind moving restlessly, recalling other times, other things. They had established themselves as a couple, rented their first flat, and decided to start a family. All their plans, she had laughed, wrapped around the lovemaking that followed. That night was the future, they had declared. Their future! How lovely she had looked.
He could remember it still. Could he have imagined any of what followed? Some time after, the next day perhaps, they had gone for a walk and seen long-legged herons fishing gracefully on the mudflats near the lagoon, and she said she knew, she was pregnant. She had been laughing, but she meant it too. And so he tried photographing her and the heron together, but they had disturbed it and it flew away.
Remembering Anna in this way, he managed to avoid thinking of the girl, knowing instinctively that this would push him into a more urgent, immediate despair. He saw his only hope lay in staying calm. His other hope was Sugi, and this too gave him courage. Sugi would be looking for him, he was certain. And more importantly, Sugi would make sure the girl was safe. The jeep carrying him through the jungle lumbered on. Most of the windows had been blacked out and what little he could see made no real sense. Leaf-green, delicate light filtered down through the canvas roof. The moment was dreamlike and undefined, the future full of shadows and some other terrible reality he was unable to comprehend. His thoughts rushed by in this way, careering against each other in a confusion of past events. What was the past, he wondered, shivering, but only the substance of present memory? Time had lost all meaning. Staring at his bare feet he saw, from some great blurred distance, his shoes, placed neatly beside the wardrobe in the bedroom of the beach house. Already, he intuited, it had become another life. His hands were not visible to him. And he wondered at the kind of life that denied a man the use of his own hands.
Far away in the distant tangle of trees, the sound of the yellow-green iora arose, calling to its mate over and over. From this he knew they were moving deeper into the rainforest. Then this too vanished and all that was left was the steady ache of his limbs, and the throbbing sound of the engine.
