by Roma Tearne
‘Next year, I’m having a show in Munich,’ was all Rohan said.
Six years is a long time by any standards. Six years is like a steep mountain. Theo Samarajeeva climbed his mountain almost without noticing. He did not set out to do so but he began to write. What else could he do, he was a writer. He had been writing all his life, how could he stop now? At first it could hardly be called writing. At first it was more ramblings. Because his fingers had been broken, he could not type easily. Everything ached. His back, the soles of his feet, his leg. He never went in the water again. He no longer had any desire to swim. Nevertheless, the will to live remained in some strange and unaccountable way. And so he began to write again. Slowly, because he was uncertain, because his fingers were unsteady and the typewriter was too painful to use, he wrote by hand. It was Thercy who had encouraged him. Thercy who still came over to cook for him, walking slowly down the hill with her bunches of greens, her coconut milk and fresh fish. She had become less formal with him and he was no longer frightened of her. She was part of his landscape. Whenever his depression descended on him like a smoky cloud of mosquitoes, it was Thercy who would talk to him, cajoling and distracting him as best she could.
‘You are a writer,’ she would say. ‘So why don’t you write?’
There were things he could not write about, he told her. Thercy did not think this was a problem. She had seen too many things herself to be shocked, she told him. But she could understand, he was not ready to write about his experiences.
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘you will never be ready for that. So write of other things.’
She had only a vague knowledge of his books. It pleased him that she had not seen the film in Colombo. It pleased him that she knew very little about his past. Picking up his notebook he began to write. As always he started with Anna. Nothing could be counted before her. It was she who had led him to the girl. And it had been her voice he heard first.
After a while, unasked, he began to tell Thercy things.
‘I was blindfolded,’ he told her cautiously. ‘And I was hit. Sometimes I was hit so hard that I fell forward. Then they gave me electric shocks. They put chilli inside me. They were laughing. Later, I’m not sure when, but another time I was hit with the butt of a rifle. They broke my fingers. See, three of them are broken! A writer without fingers, they laughed. They found this funny.’
Thercy was polishing the floor with old coconut scrapings. Watching her he felt his heart contract with grief. Sugi had polished the floor in this way.
‘If you have a wound that you can’t heal,’ Thercy said very quietly, not looking at him, ‘it will get bigger. You must try to heal it yourself.’
She no longer called him Sir. In fact, she seldom addressed him in any specific way. But her eyes followed him when he wasn’t looking and she understood his moods. Long ago, she told him, in the early days of the war, she had had a son.
On another occasion, Theo told her, ‘They played psychological games when I was blindfolded. I thought I was standing at the top of some steps and if I moved forward I might fall. But when they hit me I smashed against the wall instead.’
‘Yes,’ Thercy said. ‘What happened then?’
But he could not say. Later, after she had gone slowly up the hill again, he went back to his notebook.
‘I have been tortured,’ he wrote.
He looked at what he had written. The ink was black. Four simple words. Changing a life for ever. He needed to write it in red ink. Who would believe me, he thought, when I can hardly believe it happened? But Thercy seemed to believe him, all right. Why should she not? she had asked, surprised. Violence had been done to her, why could it not happen to him?
‘Self-pity,’ he wrote, ‘is all that’s left. When I arrived I brought it with me. And now I’m in possession of it once again.’
He paused, thinking. And then he wrote again.
Only the girl made a difference, coming back like a stray cat. At first I had no idea why this was so. I was worn out by your death, unable to believe in the future. And suddenly, there she was, appearing day after day. The war, although I didn’t realise it then, was gathering momentum and all she did was draw. Everything made sense by illusion. Fabulously. Stories appearing under her fingers, stories I never knew existed, even. What took me twenty words, she achieved in an unwavering drift of a line. It was astonishing, really.
Thercy brought him some milk rice. It was a poya day. She had been to the temple earlier because it was the anniversary of Sugi’s death. She did not tell Theo this but Sugi was on her mind.
‘He was frightened for you,’ she said, chewing on a piece of jaggery. ‘You and Miss Nulani, both.’
They were drinking a cup of tea together. Theo had been writing all morning and he was glad to see her. If she was ever late he became anxious. But Thercy was seldom late.
‘Sugi saw where it could all lead long before I did,’ he agreed. ‘It was only afterwards, after she painted me, that I realised. My wife’s death had left me with a set of beliefs too naive to be of use. Sugi must have known that. He must have watched me and seen what was happening. He didn’t like the way I talked about this country. He wanted me to be more cautious.’
Theo glanced at her. He wasn’t sure how much she understood, but Thercy nodded. He’s better than he used to be, she thought.
‘I had never seen anyone draw as she did,’ Theo said, ‘nor will I again.’
Wondering, how would she draw my life now? That evening, after Thercy went home, he continued to write.
Of course, she was so much younger. I always knew that. Who could say what might have happened had we been together? Perhaps she would have tired of me and found a younger man? After a while I would have become a millstone. You had been my whole life until that moment, Anna. Your death had robbed me of many things, I felt spent, finished, over. And then she arrived. What was I to think? Now of course I see more clearly how great the need was, to fill the gap you left. She was different from you, yet the same. You see, Anna, the truth is, the shameful admission is, that I have always defined myself by someone else. First you, and then the girl. When we met, you and I, I had the strangest feeling that I was enveloped by your identity. Then later I wanted to be supported by her. Can I be brutally honest? I went to her for the renewal of my courage, and for help with all I had to bear. I was so afraid, so alone, so needing from the outside for the assurance of my own worthiness to exist. There, I have written the shameful truth. Have I given you pain? Is it possible to love again, with a different intensity, without losing what went before? Some would say so. In prison, I was filled with guilt. Each time they beat me, when I could breathe again it was guilt that always rose to the surface.
A little later on he wrote:
In my worst moments I felt as though I had tried to wipe you out with her. So, you see, I deserved to be punished. And now you have both vanished. Although in the end, it is perhaps I who has disappeared.
Alone in the broken beach house, with its blue-faded gate, and its endless glimpses of the sea, silence swooped down on Theo like the seagulls. Time had passed without a sound. Time had gathered in pockets in the landscape but he never noticed. He walked the beach and watched the sea rise and heave unmoved. Like memory, the sea had a life of its own. Sun and rain came and went regardless. Further up the coast, where once a man had been hung, a huge high-rise hotel was going up. Daily it grew, thrusting its scaffolding into the blistering sky. Workmen in hard hats drove on the beach where once army jeeps had patrolled. A beach restaurant was being built, and an oyster-shaped swimming pool with fresh water was planned for those tourists who did not want the sea. International cuisine was all that was needed. New glass-bottomed boats began to appear and old ones were being painted over. It was many years since the coral reef held such interest. Suddenly paradise was the new currency. The island began to rescue itself, hoping to whitewash its bloody past. Theo Samarajeeva watched from afar. He was writing steadily now, almost all of
the time. When he had filled up three notebooks he walked the beach, thinking. He wanted to approach his old agent, he told Thercy, but he was nervous.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Thercy said. ‘Yes, yes, it’s a good idea. I’ve told you. The only way you’ll survive this life is to refuse to let them beat you down.’
Looking at Thercy, he was reminded more and more of the old ayah who had looked after him as a child.
‘But I have nothing more to say about Sri Lanka. Everything has been pushed so far back inside me that I can’t dislodge it. I don’t want to.’
‘So? That’s fine,’ Thercy said firmly. ‘Write about the way we survive then. Tell them how we live. Miss Nulani gave you hope, didn’t she? She showed you that you were still a person, capable of loving, of living. I think she gave you back yourself. What more d’you want?’
She was right. Walking along the beach that evening, he searched the sea for a sign. But the sea could not answer him and the moonlight on the empty beach unrolled silently like a bolt of silk across the sands.
Lately his eyesight was beginning to mist over. He was loath to visit an optician. It would mean another trip to Colombo and he could not face going back. Nor did he want to think of Rohan or Giulia, shying away from the thought that they too might have died because of him. But he had reckoned without Thercy. Insistently, day after day, she cajoled him until at last, reluctantly, he wrote a letter to his agent. He wrote cautiously, taking days to find the right words, hesitating, rewriting it. In the end, with a sigh, he gave it to Thercy to post. His book was growing and a certain urgency because of his eyes made him write furiously. For the first time he was attempting a book that was not politically driven. He had no more to say about injustice. Having lived it, he saw the hopelessness of defining it. This book, he saw, was about loving. This book was about something he could speak of. Every night he walked the beach, waiting for the monsoons, watching the clouds gather across the sky, seeing a new generation of children fly their box kites. Local people knew him, now. He was that writer fellow, they said, who had once been famous. Once he had been a handsome man who came from the UK to live among his people. But then he had gone away to England and returned mad. He had gone mad for love, they told their children. He was crazy now, they said. Better if he had stayed in England and been happy. Foolish man, coming back to this place! Let this be a warning, the mothers told their children. If you are lucky enough to get to England, stay there. So the village children flew their kites and rode their bicycles, taking care to stay away from the madman in the beach house, careful always to avoid the place after dark.
A lifetime passed. Objects marked the years on Theo’s table. Each was from another life, each irreversibly linked to the next. They were all his possessions. A penknife from his childhood, that was one. He had been six when he had been given it. Many words had been carved with its blade. An oil lamp, given to him by his mother, left over from the days when he used to visit the temple. He had always taken it on his travels and somehow it had never broken. A small beaded bag belonging to Anna. They had found it on the ground where she had been mugged. He had kept it all these years. Inside was the wedding ring he had taken from her finger before he buried her. A palm leaf, kept between the pages of a book. He had picked it on a trip down the Nile. A mollusc shell from the Adriatic, indigo blue and black, and pearl white. A rag, moulded and stained with vermilion, and a small hand-sewn notebook, unused and torn.
The agent was astonished to hear from him.
‘For God’s sake, Theo, I thought you were dead. I sent you letter after letter, but you never replied. I tried phoning you but the lines were constantly down. What sort of hole have you been living in?’
Theo laughed. It was the first time he had laughed in years.
‘I’ve been writing,’ he said.
‘Theo,’ said the agent, sounding hysterical, ‘what do you mean? You ring me up after years and tell me you’ve been writing. You can’t do this to me. Do you know the trouble I’ve gone to trying to get hold of you? I even thought of coming out to that wretched place in search of you but the Foreign Office gave out a warning against travel. Your countrymen seemed such bloody savages that I gave up. Well, what happened? And another thing,’ the agent rushed on, ‘you’re a rich man now, you know. The film was a runaway success. And did you say you’re writing again? Tell me all about it.’
‘I’ll put it all in a letter,’ Theo said faintly, not wanting to talk.
So Theo wrote to him. For talking wore him out and his own voice could not be trusted. So he wrote.
‘The book is about hope,’ he wrote, ‘and survival. About war, and also indifference. But you’re wrong,’ he added, surprising himself by the strength of his convictions, ‘they are not all savages here. There are savages everywhere, not just here.’
Then he sent the agent the first part of his story.
18
AFTER HIS SHOW IN MUNICH ROHAN had had two more shows in Venice. In the four years since he had started painting again, he had worked with dogged determination, spending all the available hours of daylight possible in his studio. Giulia had begun collecting his reviews in a book. She was glad he was working properly again; glad he had picked up where he had left off in Colombo. It appeared they had shaken off their turbulent years in the tropics, outwardly it might have been said they had recovered. Rohan was mellower, less bad-tempered, and for her part Giulia expected less. Old age had crept up on both of them, she noticed, thinking, too, this suited them in many ways. All in all they were more content these days. Occasionally Giulia even managed to make him socialise with the few friends she had made, and they had stopped sniping at each other as they had when they first arrived in Italy. The difficult patch in their marriage appeared to have passed, but, Giulia saw with sad acceptance, the optimism had gone from it also. They lived quietly, seriously, no longer taking risks and were wary of new things. And the past with all its light and shade was never mentioned. Only in Rohan’s paintings, strange, elegiac and ghostly, could it be glimpsed. Threadbare like a carpet, all his memories showed in his pictures with a transparency that Giulia found at times unbearable. He was an exile; he would remain an exile always. Once, in a rare moment of admission, he read Giulia a small notice in an English newspaper.
A spate of credit-card crimes involving a gang of Sri Lankans has erupted in London. The Home Office has confirmed that these underaged youths, currently facing trial, could also face deportation back to Sri Lanka despite the spasmodic violence still taking place in some parts of the island. Young Tamil boys, who left their homeland hoping to provide for their impoverished families, could soon be returning in disgrace often to a worse situation than the one they left behind. It is well known that Tamils who evaded the guerrilla army by escaping abroad often face execution on their return.
‘So it goes on,’ Rohan said. ‘Once an outcast, always an outcast. Memory is all we have to rely on. Let’s hope the girl is holding on to hers.’
Reviews of his paintings were appearing with marked regularity in the Italian papers. They spoke of his depiction of loss and alienation, and of warmth remembered. Giulia read them without comment. And so the years had passed. This was their life now, neither so good nor so bad. And at least, they both thought privately, they were free.
One day towards the end of summer Rohan was introduced to an Englishwoman from London. Her name was Alison Fielding, she told him, and she ran a small gallery called London Fields. Having seen his paintings in Art Basel, she contacted him, inviting him to submit slides of current work.
‘London?’ said Giulia, surprised. ‘I thought you didn’t want to show in London?’
He had not been back since that day, seven years ago, when he and Giulia trawled the city looking for Nulani. Giulia too had never returned. Somehow it had never happened. The small difficulties, the shifts and changes in their relationships, all the minutiae of the everyday, had made her reluctant to disturb the past. Too much had been lost, too
much remained precarious for either of them to open old wounds. But now, as summer began to recede, before the sharp forerunners of winter winds stirred the leaves, Rohan finally had a reason to visit. Alison Fielding was enthusiastic.
‘Do come,’ she wrote. ‘Bring some work. We can talk it over. I liked your paintings very much.’
Giulia could not leave her work, so Rohan went alone to a city still basking in an Indian summer. The land was brown through lack of rain and the city glowed with an alert bustle that he had never noticed before. The gallery was smaller than he had expected, tucked away in a corner of Clerkenwell. He almost walked past it. In the window were two paintings, one black on red, thick impasto, marked and stained, and another white as marble. Small numbers were stencilled along the edges of the canvas. Something about them caught Rohan’s eye. He gazed, puzzled.
‘Ah,’ said Alison Fielding, greeting him, smiling. ‘You’ve noticed my other Sri Lankan artist!’
Blue flew out from a canvas. Followed by another, deeper shade, more piercing, hinting gold beneath it and something else, some unidentifiable movement of light. Rohan stared. A line, excavated, as it were, in the dark, seemed slightly muffled, bringing a mysterious sense of intimacy to the whole. Another painting hung alone on a far wall. He found himself thinking of the inner chamber of ancient, sacred tombs. Stars showed faintly through a midnight sky. The canvases glowed; there was no other way to describe them. They were both luminescent and extraordinarily still. The contradictions of this vast, aerated space within the density of the blues were magical. Darkness and light, together in the most unlikely place of entombment, appeared to sink to the depths of the earth, to the human body itself, metaphorically binding two impossible worlds. The paintings had no names, only numbers. There were more, stacked in corners. Rohan followed them around the room, mesmerised. Downstairs, the images were of carefully drawn objects, glimpsed and then rubbed out even at the moment of recognition; hinting at the ways in which the past inhabits us, shaping us at some level hovering below conscious thought. And all the time anxiety and claustrophobia remained inescapably part of the whole.
