The Water Is Warm

by Jennifer Stawska

  When I did jump I was swept along, spinning in the water under the surface without any hope of control; each time I came to the surface, there was a wave that pushed me down again. There was also a mass of floating debris which was all moving in different directions and at different speeds. Palm and other trees cover this island and the water drove straight into a heavily wooded area. Time and time again I felt the blow as I was driven into a tree or knocked against something under the water. I knew that it would only take one blow to my head to kill me. I remember thinking with complete clarity: ‘I am going to die soon.’

  I didn’t feel afraid, just helpless. But I also remember that initially, for another split second, I felt something else. I felt relieved that a solution had been found. That I didn’t need to worry any more about what I was going to do because the decision had been taken out of my hands. I can remember very clearly the words ‘oh well’ floating into my thoughts. I think I may even have tried to say them out loud.

  But that thought evaporated as I began to drown, properly drown, in the water. Josh made me relive that moment often when we were together because he knew that I had to talk the mental scarring out of my system. So, I have another very clear memory which is of the feeling of pressure in my lungs and in my head as it built up to the point where I thought that I would burst. It wasn’t painful, just full of pressure as if my head was a balloon that was being blown up beyond its endurance. I have often relived with Josh the panic of impending death that I felt and the realisation that I would shortly tip into unconsciousness. The most comforting thing for me has been to realise how quick it was; I can’t have been in the water for more than about two minutes at the time when I felt that I was on the fulcrum’s point between life and death. That’s all it took; it was as quick as that. A bit like the goats in Nepal, I suppose.

  The next thing I felt was a searing pain in my right leg as it hit something and I thought ‘this is it.’ Once, with Josh, we were sitting watching some washing turning in a washing machine and I remember telling him that it reminded me of how I had felt then; locked in, surrounded by water and powerless.

  But then I did stop turning and realised that I was on the surface and I found myself fighting for survival. The water swept me into the branches of a tree and I locked my arms around one, clenching my hands together in the tightest lock that I could create. I manoeuvred myself so that my legs were facing inland, allowing my body to surf and also allowing me to watch what might be floating my way. It was a terrible sight, the sort of hellish chaos that only someone like Hieronymus Bosch could have painted. Dead bodies floated by with the dreadful limpness of recent death. One body, of a Sri Lankan man, became caught up in the branches of my tree causing an immediate and irrational revulsion in me and a hatred for his invasion and defilement of my space. His head was about two feet away from mine and there was nothing I could do to move it. Then a floating cabinet knocked into his legs, causing his body to turn into the flow and float away. I couldn’t think of anything to say as he drifted away like a log.

  Wood and other floating material were also swept into my tree and against the locked fingers of my hands. I knew that I could not maintain my hold indefinitely and so I managed to pull myself up into the tree as high as I could and lay in the branches, the tree swinging in the current, feeling as though it would be uprooted at any time. It was then that I saw my right leg and I remember thinking that it looked like something out of a butcher’s shop. There was a neat slicing wound on the outside of my thigh revealing the flesh of my leg; it looked as though blood was pouring from it but how much was blood and how much was water was impossible to say. It was obvious that I had to close the wound or else I would simply bleed to death so I pulled off my T-shirt, which was ripped but still in place, and tied it as tightly as I could around my leg. Removing my shirt hurt like hell - I later discovered that I had three broken ribs. And then I just clung there, watching.

  The forceful rush of water stopped almost as quickly as it had started and then there was the much slower counter drag as water drifted back to the sea. Then there was a period of stillness but, very quickly, the cries for help began, mingled with loads of wailing. I just lay in my tree and watched, too whacked to join in. I must then have passed out.

  The next thing that I can remember properly now is when I found myself at Batapola hospital, some ten miles away from Peraliya. I have no real recollection of how I got there. I was incredibly thirsty and every part of me ached, most of all my head and my leg. My leg had been loosely bandaged but, other than that, I was in the same condition as when sitting in the tree. I stank and was filthy. I had no clothes or shoes on, save that I was still wearing my boxer shorts and my money belt was still strapped around my middle. It must have been mid-afternoon.

  That’s when I first met Sunil. He was squatting against the wall, near to where I was lying in the hospital, his head in his hands. Dead bodies were already being carted up from the shore and dumped in the grounds of the hospital in piles. What sort of a sight was that for a child? The stench was appalling and kept getting worse.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ I croaked. He nodded.

  ‘Please can you fetch me some water to drink?’

  He nodded again and then ran off. I thought that I would never see him again. I was lying on a bed in a busy corridor. There were similar metal framed beds lined up next to mine on which injured people of all ages were lying, with a throng of the able bodied bustling around them. Their movements appeared both urgent and futile; I remember thinking that it was like watching an ants’ nest that had been disturbed. It was very hot and utterly chaotic.

  However, Sunil did come back and did bring me some water. He also brought me a sheet which he then unfolded around my legs and trunk. He had found an empty Coke bottle and had filled it with clear and clean water; he held it towards me and said ‘Drink.’ Then seeing that I was too weak to take it, he lifted my head with one thin arm, using it as a lever, and put the bottle to my lips. I drank the water but did so too quickly as I choked and retched. Sunil looked appalled and apologetic. He allowed my head to drop back, waited until I had stopped spluttering and then said: ‘You must drink more slowly.’

  He then raised the bottle to my lips again, lifted my head as best he could and I took sip after sip of the water, this time successfully.

  The weight of my head was too much for him to keep holding and, in the end, he rested it back down on the mattress.

  Then he said these words: ‘Have you seen my parents?’

  I looked at him. The picture that I retain is of Sunil with his shoulders sagging and of him biting his lower lip in anxiety. I had not paused to think why he was at the hospital but it was obvious.

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I haven’t. Have you lost them?’

  He nodded but his face remained blank.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Sunil,’ he replied. So that is how Sunil enters into this story. He is the nearest thing that I have got to having a son of my own. I know you felt the same.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘I will find a doctor’ - that was Sunil taking charge at only nine years old. In fact help had been pouring in to the small rural hospital in Batapola and I watched as Sunil tugged at the sleeve of a doctor who was even wearing a white coat and was met with that distinctive hand movement by which people in authority here waft seemingly lesser beings away - in India it was usually accompanied by ‘Ja’o,’ meaning ‘go away.’ However, shortly afterwards the doctor did come.

  The doctor looked at me and did that distinctive drawn-in Eastern ‘tuck’ sound that I have also learnt that people in authority do here when faced with something frustrating.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  I couldn’t think how to reply to that and paused. ‘England,’ I said eventually.

  ‘I need to look at this leg,’ he said and started to unravel the b
andage. The pain, as he removed it, was indescribable.

  ‘Fuck!’ I yelled, vomited up water and very nearly fainted for the first time in my life. I can feel now the flow of sweat that sprang from me but I can also feel the small comforting hand that came into mine - it was Sunil’s and it is a hand that I have held many, many times since.

  ‘That needs cleaning and stitching,’ the doctor said in perfect English and called over someone who either was, or was working as, a nurse.

  ‘This patient needs to be cleaned up and then made ready for his wound to be debrided and stitched. Call me when that has been done please.’ That sort of thing.

  Orders given, the doctor moved on. The nurse then put a loose bandage back on my leg, told me that I had to get up and helped me to hop to an outside shower. I passed a large window on the way and caught sight of my image in the reflection.

  I was covered in cuts and bruises (including a whacking black eye), I was filthy and giving a remarkably accurate performance as a zombie or a monster from the deep.

  Sunil said that he would stay on my mattress to make sure that it was not taken by someone else - he jumped on to it and lay with the sheet partly over himself to make it look as though he was a patient. To get into the shower I had to remove all of my clothing and so stood there, stark naked except for my bandage feeling as though I was going to throw up again. Nobody batted an eyelid about the sight of a battered middle aged man standing naked in the middle of the throng of people. The nurse gave me a sheet to cover and dry myself after the shower and I hopped, inelegantly, back to the mattress where I flopped down, exhausted.

  When the doctor returned he explained how important it was for the wound to be cleaned properly and stitched without delay, so, he said, he was going to do it under local anaesthetic. I had to hop to another part of the hospital with the doctor hurrying me along and was then made to lie on a bed where the doctor did the operation. The injections did not hurt that much but cleaning the wound did, big time. The doctor gave me a corner of a pillow on which to bite and I used it. Sunil, wonderful Sunil, had stayed with me and kept saying ‘Well done Simon’; he certainly heard some expressive language from me that day.

  It must only have taken the doctor about 15 minutes to do the operation and, after it, he gave me a tetanus injection, arranged for some malaria medication and gave me masses of antibiotics and pain killers.

  ‘You must rehydrate yourself. Drink plenty,’ he said as he disappeared. That was the last I saw of him, which is not surprising given the demands on his time, and I was then taken by another nurse back to the same bed where I lay staring at the white ceiling of the hospital.

  Yes, my leg hurt like hell but, do you know what? The thing that hurt me most was the thought: ‘What am I going to do now?’ How many other thousands of people had that thought that day, I wonder? So, I just lay there, pitying myself. Again. I had been found a T-shirt and a pair of cotton, pyjama style trousers so at least I had the beginnings of decency about me.

  Sunil had waited for me to return and stayed with me, crouching beside the mattress in silence. After I had had my moment of self-gratifying misery I looked at him and saw that he had his head in his hands. He then said quietly: ‘I must go now.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ I asked.

  ‘Back to Peraliya to look for my parents.’

  ‘How will you get there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied and buried his head in his hands again.

  Out of habit I had put my money belt on after the shower and it remained round my waist. Sea water had permeated the bag that held my money and so the notes were soaked through but I managed to peel some apart although others were so wet that they were beyond redemption. Fortunately, the passports had suffered little damage - I had taken particular care with them and had made sure that they were well wrapped in the money belt after my experiences of getting drenched in the monsoon when out walking in Coonoor one day, a lesson well learnt. Although I needed to access my money frequently, I only needed to access the passports from time to time and so it was easier to keep them well protected. Of the money, it was possible to salvage five 1,000 rupee notes (each worth about £5). I remember thinking how oddly serene the pictures of the peacock and elephant looked on the green notes as I handed two of them to Sunil.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take these.’

  ‘It isn’t necessary.’ He pushed my hand away.

  ‘No. But it may help. Take it.’ He shrugged his shoulders and took the money.

  ‘And Sunil…’ I kept my hand stretched towards him and beckoned to him with it. He lifted his hand towards me and I held it.

  ‘Thank you for being such a kind boy to me. Good luck.’ He turned to go.

  ‘You know where I am. My name is Simon Greenwood.’

  It was a false promise because there was no way that I was going to stay in that hospital any longer than I had to. It was full of injured and dying people and also must have been rife with infection. I suppose I just wanted to say something positive, but it wasn’t a very bright thing to do.

  ‘Thank you Simon.’ Sunil put his hands together in the prayer symbol of gratitude and deference that people use here.

  ‘Good luck Sunil’ I repeated and he was gone.

  I was knackered by then and must have fallen straight off to sleep; it was probably about 7 p.m. because it was dark outside. I woke at about midnight in pain, took some painkillers and antibiotics and went straight back to sleep. The place stank and sleep was the best way to shut out the smell. Besides, there was not a lot else to do, I suppose.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  When I woke next it was daylight and I just lay watching what was going on around me in the hospital in a scene that does not need description. It was full of other people’s pain and grief and I tried to sleep through it. Beds were scarce and so, by the afternoon I moved to a spare chair while a totally beaten up guy was laid out on the bed. I spoke to him a bit, he was Dutch, but we weren’t the best conversationalists and I don’t speak Dutch. I just wanted to get out of the place and slept as much as I could.

  I woke in the evening to find Sunil squatting down next to my chair. It took me some time to clear my head of sleep and of the surprise at seeing him again but eventually I smiled at him and he passed me some water.

  ‘Did you find them?’ I must have asked him, because I remember his reply well.

  ‘Unfortunately, no.’ Unfortunately?? After what he had just seen?

  ‘Have you checked to see whether they are here?’

  ‘Yes. They are not.’ He started to cry; it takes a lot for Sunil to do that.

  ‘Well, you must stay with me. I need to get out of this hospital and when I do I will help you find them, if that is OK with you.’ That was my side of the bridge between us. A bit late, but I got there in the end.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What did you find at Peraliya?’ I asked without thinking.

  What emerged then was an account of the scene that he had just witnessed. Some of this is what he told me on other occasions as well because it only came out over time.

  He described how, due to the number of dead bodies at Peraliya, a bulldozer had been brought to the site of the train disaster already and a large hole had been dug. Under the guidance of Buddhist priests and village leaders, the bodies of the dead had been piled up and then bull dozed into the hole before the bulldozer covered it over and moved on to dig another one. Sunil had searched around, trying to find his parents but there was no chance of him doing so as a nine-year-old boy hunting for bodies in what sounded like a battlefield. In the end, he had given up and found a bus back to Batapola on his own.

  Realising the stupidity of the question I had asked, I made a clumsy attempt to comfort him by holding him in my arms. There was nothing else that I could think to do or say. He then reached into his pocket, took out what was left of the money that I had given him and tried unsuccessfully to give it back to me. He still had all but 200 ru
pees and so cannot have eaten or drunk much, if anything.

  There is a Bank of Ceylon in the curve of the main Street of Batapola, so with Sunil’s help, I picked myself up and we went there by tuk-tuk. Once there I had the usual headache of getting money based on a credit card but eventually succeeded and caught a bus from Batapola to the ruined coast.

  ‘Where are you from, Sunil?’ I asked.

  ‘Unawatuna,’ he replied.

  ‘Where is that?’ I asked. I had never heard of it.

  ‘Near Galle. But further away.’ That was his way of saying that it was further along the coast from Galle, towards Matara.

  ‘What were you doing in these parts?’

  ‘My parents and I came to Colombo for the holidays. To visit my mother’s family, who live there. We were on our way back home on the train.’

  ‘Who else was with you?’

  ‘No one. Just me and my parents.’

  ‘Don’t you have brothers or sisters’ I asked, stupidly again.

  ‘No’

  ‘And the rest of your family?’

  ‘I have an uncle and aunt in Unawatuna. The rest were killed in the war.’ He looked to the floor of the bus. Sunil’s father was a Tamil and I only learnt later about the atrocities that he had witnessed. I should have known better than to ask.

  The bus pulled in to the bus stop in Peraliya. I was just not ready for the scene that met us. There were people milling around everywhere but eventually we made it to the place where the train had been struck; rails had been ripped from their housing and lay twisted on the ground or pointing up into the air, red carriages were scattered and now lay at different angles around the scene, some in a zigzag formation in an area where the sheer force of the water had created a clearing. Some carriages were on their sides and, we were told, were still full of dead bodies. The engine itself was on its side as well, its massive wheels resembling the limbs of a slaughtered animal as they rested, useless and lifeless. Debris was everywhere, even in the trees; I remember seeing an old clock that had somehow become caught in the branches of a tree and gave the appearance of telling the time, only the hands did not move.