by Roma Tearne
Thornton and Alicia had begun to play a duet, laughing and stumbling over the notes, pushing each other off the piano stool. Sunil hesitated, his eyes on Alicia. She was so much younger than him. More than anything else in the world he wanted her life to be trouble-free. He wanted her to live a life of peace.
‘I was out on the streets all of last week,’ he said. ‘Canvassing for the United Ethnic Party.’ Robert had gone over to the piano and was watching Alicia. Sunil lowered his voice. ‘It wasn’t too good.’ He shook his head, gesturing helplessly. ‘There’s a lot of ignorance, a lot of aggression.’
He stopped, seeing Grace’s face. He could not tell her; what he feared the most was a bloodbath.
Christopher scowled at Robert. White fool, he was thinking. Go back to where you belong. You’ve done enough damage with your empire-building. Christopher edged nearer to the door. He had hoped to visit Kamala tonight but now it didn’t look possible. Thornton’s laughter drifted towards him. ‘Oh why don’t you shut up!’ muttered Christopher, distracted. Looking around at her family, aware of certain tensions, Grace sighed. There was a guest present; she could not let Aloysius start an argument. She could see that Christopher was unhappy about something; she could hear Jasper making barking noises, he was probably thirsty. It was not the time for discussions; she would talk to Sunil later, when they were alone and she would find out what he really thought. But for now she needed to change the subject.
‘Christopher,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘could you make sure the servant has given Jasper enough water to drink? It’s very hot at the moment and he seems restless.’
She smiled at him, but Christopher continued to scowl, ignoring his mother.
‘Idiot!’ screeched Jasper suddenly, breaking a longer than usual silence. ‘Imbeciles!’
He fluttered somewhere in the darkness above them. Myrtle could hear his unclipped claws scratch, on heaven knows what antique piece of furniture. Myrtle hated the bird most of all.
‘Idiot! Bastards!’
‘Jasper!’ said Grace sharply. ‘That’s enough. Don’t be so rude.’ She smiled at Robert, a smile as sweet as Alicia’s, adding somewhat unnecessarily, ‘Jasper is our mynah bird, Robert. Unfortunately he has no manners. We’re really not sure what to do about it, but we do think he’s a bit of an oracle!’
Everyone laughed except Myrtle and Aloysius who looked meaningfully at his wife. Who knows what Jasper might say at the wedding? his look warned. But Robert, like many before him, was entranced. A talking bird, he thought. How exotic! The household, the whole family, everything about the de Silvas, was delightfully eccentric. Why had he ever thought this country boring? England suddenly seemed a very long way away.
On the day of the Prime Minister’s party for the High Commissioner Grace brought Vijay a mango freshly picked from a tree in Jaffna. It had been given to her by a servant. No other mango tasted as sweet as those from the north, Vijay told her. But he did not look happy. Carefully he cut into it with his penknife, the juice running down his arm, and all the fragrance of his childhood, all the yearnings of his youth, gathered and fell to the floor. This morning, during their lovemaking, he had hardly looked at her. Sensing some desperation, she tried questioning him afterwards, but he avoided her eye.
‘What is it, Vijay?’ she asked, frightened suddenly. ‘Has something happened?’ She knew he did not want her to go to the party tonight and meet the Prime Minister. He hated this figurehead in a puppet government. She wondered if this was the problem.
‘I had a letter this morning,’ Vijay said slowly. And then, in a rush of unaccustomed bitterness, he told her about his niece, his brother’s daughter. He had often talked about the girl. ‘You know she was five last month.’
Grace nodded. Vijay looked terrible.
‘She became ill with diphtheria a few weeks ago. My brother was very worried. He took his bullock cart into the town where the doctor lived. He walked in the burning heat, the road was covered in red dust. My brother took two pots of curd, hoping to find a doctor he could afford. One that would treat a Tamil child.’ He stopped talking.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Grace.
Vijay was staring at the floor. ‘They sent me the news, today,’ he said barely audibly. ‘They could not find such a doctor. Now they want me to make a puja for her.’
The child had died. His brother was inconsolable.
‘One more Tamil death is not important,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh my God! What kind of people have we become? Where will it end?’
‘There is something wrong with a country that will not unite. There is something wrong with a nation that hates its own people.’
Grace could see that things were breaking inside him, and would not be easily mended. The night before there had been a police attack on a crowd of Tamil office workers and tonight there was a large demonstration taking place near Galle Face. Vijay would go to it, Grace was certain. What could she do? He was stubborn and angry, he had been hurt for so long, Grace could not stop him. She stayed as late as she dared. Then she left to get ready for the party.
Towards six o’clock, in the sudden darkness that descended, Vijay went out into the city. The talk was that there would be another march followed by anti-government speeches. He felt a desperate need to be part of it. Just now the darkness lent a little substance to the city. There was no twilight in this part of the tropics. The heat had brought out the local families. Small children played on the beach, lovers strolled, young men loitered, buying sweep tickets, hoping to win the money to purchase a dream. All along the roadside were small shanty kadés glowing with green and white lights, selling everything from cheap plastic toys and brooches and bangles, to multicoloured drinks and string hoppers, hot sambals and sweetmeats. The betel seller rolled his leaves, red and white goo dribbling from his toothless mouth. He waved at Vijay. But Vijay did not stop to talk tonight. His niece’s death had been in his thoughts all day. He was certain: two more deaths would follow. He walked on through the meat market, with its stench of rancid fat and congealed blood. The heat of the day had penetrated even here, even into this subterranean part. There were flies on every surface, on the vaulted ceilings, clinging to the carcasses, their blue wings hanging like drops of moisture. Vijay walked on seeing none of this, his feet picking their way swiftly and fastidiously through the filth. Unseeing, towards the clock tower, a lone figure in a white sarong, trembling into the distance, silhouetted against the darkened sky.
At some point during the evening, out of a sense of nostalgia and probably because he was bored, Aloysius looked around for his wife.
‘This is entirely your mother’s fault,’ he told Frieda grumpily. ‘Why do we have to be here, wearing all this finery, suffering this silly party?’
Frieda was watching Robert. She too wished they were at home. Percussion instruments jarred in her head. One look at Alicia and I no longer exist. No one cares, he has forgotten about me! On and on went Frieda’s thoughts, round and round. She felt dizzy. Aloysius, thinking his younger daughter seemed a little glum this evening, helped himself to his third whisky and wandered off. Grace was standing on a balcony overhanging the private beach. She could see the top of Mount Lavinia Hill, with its whitewashed houses and its funfair. Someone on the beach below was flying a box kite and its tail flickered lazily in the wind. As always, whenever she was alone, Grace’s thoughts strayed back to Vijay. She had told him she would look across the bay and think of him. Tonight the view was hazy and the horizon had become blurred by a storm far out at sea. In the distance, forked lightning speared the water. The sky was heavy and full of menace. Soon the storm would reach the shore.
‘I see Thornton has found all the good-looking women again,’ Aloysius greeted her peevishly, breaking into her thoughts.
Grace laughed lightly and went inside to see for herself.
It was quite true; Thornton was having a wonderful time. He saw no reason to be as morose as his elder brother Jacob
, or bad-tempered like his younger brother Christopher. Not, of course, that anyone knew where the devil Christopher was. Gone, no doubt, to some political rally. Thornton could never understand how anyone would deliberately choose a meeting over such a good party. Well, wasn’t that Christopher all over. Always making life difficult for himself. Still, Thornton was not one to try to change the world. No, no, he thought, seriously, shaking his head, frowning a little. He did all of that with his poetry. In the new ‘voice’ he was developing.
‘Can I read some of your poems, Thorn?’ asked the pretty nurse he was chatting to, anxiously seeing his frown. She hoped she wasn’t boring him.
Thornton smiled, and the world tilted. Before righting itself again. The girl’s knees locked heavily together, making her sway towards him. Thornton did not notice. He had begun to recite one of his poems.
‘Oh!’ the girl said breathlessly when he had finished. ‘I think that was wonderful!’ She felt that she might, at any moment, swoon with desire.
‘Oh please,’ asked another girl, joining the group belatedly, looking at Thornton’s glossy hair. ‘Please say it again. I missed the first verse.’
Jacob, deep in conversation with someone very dull, glanced up just as his brother was tilting the world again. There was nothing new here as far as Jacob could see, nothing suspicious, he thought, satisfied. Although, he paused, frowning, it suddenly occurred to him that lately Thornton had been out rather a lot. Feeling his elder brother’s eye on him, Thornton coolly tried tilting the world at him too, with no success. Jacob merely shook his head disapprovingly and went back to his dull conversation. Oh dear, thought Thornton regretfully, no joie de vivre. None whatsoever.
The Prime Minister had asked their sister to play the piano. He had made a little speech about the lovely Miss de Silva. He told them all how proud he was of this home-grown talent. Then he led Alicia to the piano. Everyone fell silent as Alicia began to play. She played as though she was alone. As though she was at home, and the Prime Minister had not held her hand and smiled at her. She played as though there was no one there at all. Life was like that for her, thought Frieda, standing beside Robert with her breaking heart, watching him watch Alicia. Life was so easy for her sister. On and on went Alicia’s fingers, galloping with the notes, crossing boundaries, lifting barriers, drawing everyone in this elegant room together without the slightest effort. Aloysius reached for another drink. No one noticed.
Sunil watched Alicia from the back of the room. Words like ‘majority language’ did not matter to her. Her language was simpler, older, less complicated. If only life could be like Alicia, he wished, filled with tender pride. It had been a useful evening for Sunil, meeting the Prime Minister, being noticed. His hopes for a united country were strengthened in spite of all the talk of civil unrest.
Alicia was playing when a telephone rang for the Prime Minister. She was still playing when he received the news that rioting had broken out all over the city. The police needed the Prime Minister’s authorisation to deal with it. She was still playing as he left the party in his dark-tinted limousine with Sir John and the Chief Constable. No one saw them go. Sunil, suspecting an incident, went in search of more information. He learned that the rioting had got out of hand. What had been a slow protest, a silent march, days of handing out leaflets had turned into crowds of angry people, voices on the end of a megaphone. Someone had been injured. Then the number had risen and there had been some fatalities. A petrol bomb had been thrown. It was a night of the full moon, this night before the eclipse. There was a rumour that a Buddhist monk had been involved. An unknown passer-by had seen a young priest running away, a thin smear of saffron in the night. If a Buddhist monk had really been involved Sunil knew it would be bad for everyone. It would only take one single gesture, he thought, one furious shaven head, for centuries of lotus flowers to be wiped out forever.
Alicia had just finished playing when the intruder broke in. Walking swiftly past the guard, past the doorman who tried and failed to stop him and past the servants who then appeared, he burst in, blood clinging to his shirt. His face was streaked with sweat and dirt. He was no more than a boy, his hands were cut and bruised, one eye was swollen and bleeding. There was glass in his hair and he smelt of smoke and something else. Someone screamed. The servants, having caught up with him, twisted his arms behind his back. The boy did not struggle. He stood perfectly still, searching the faces in the room until he found the face he had been looking for, crying out in anguish,
‘They killed them! They killed them! I saw them burn! Oh Christ! I saw them burn!’
Grace, recognising him before anyone else, stepped forward saying in Sinhalese, in a voice seldom heard in public, coldly, sharply to the servants, ‘Let him go! He’s my son!’ And then in English, ‘Christopher, who has done this to you?’
Outside, the rain they had all longed for began to fall with a thunderous noise, in long beating waves. Drumming on the earth, on the buildings, lashing against the land in great sheets. But no one heard.
5
THE RAIN DESCENDED WITH A VENGEANCE. It filled the holes in the road, it beat a tattoo on the fallen coconut shells and moved the dirt, transforming it swiftly into mud. It fell on Grace, standing stock-still and statue-like in the coconut grove, sari-silk clinging to her, flowers fallen from her hair. There was no escape. The land became a curtain of green water. Pawpaw leaves detached themselves, floating like large athletic spiders to the ground. The rain spared nothing. There were so many rivulets to form, so many surfaces to hammer against. Although it was still quite early, huge black clouds gave the garden an air of darkness. Even the birds, sheltering, waiting patiently, could barely be heard above the chorus of falling water. Earlier on, in the dead of night, a servant swore she had heard the devil-bird scream. It had come out of the forest because of the rain, the servant said, in the hope of escape. But escape was no longer possible.
‘Aiyo,’ wailed the servant, for she knew this was an ill omen. ‘You must leave an offering on the roadside,’ said her friend the cinnamon seller. ‘If you heard the devil-bird you must pray to God for protection.’
So the servant woman took a plantain leaf and some temple flowers. She wrapped a mound of milk rice and rambutans in it, decorated it with fried fish and coconut, and left it outside the gate. She hoped the gods would be pleased. But the gods were not listening. They were too busy with the rains.
Then just as suddenly, without warning, it stopped. The noise and the roar of the water ceased, and the early-morning traffic picked up from where it had been held up. Bicycle bells rang, the rickshaw men ran, and the crows that had been sheltering under the eaves of buildings came out again and continued their scavenging in the rubbish as though they had never left off. The ground steamed. The mud remained on the road of course, and passers-by still held up their umbrellas to catch any stray drop of wetness, but by and large the rain had stopped for the moment. It was as though someone had turned off a tap. What a different the sun made, bringing out all the everyday symphony of sounds, of callings and cawing and whistling and scrapings, and because she had slept in late after last night’s event, Alicia’s scales and arpeggios, joining in where the rain left off.
The servant, having made her offering to the gods, on this day of total eclipse, brought in the breakfast. It consisted of milk rice, coarse jaggery, seeni sambal and mangoes.
‘For the lady,’ she said, beaming at Grace.
It was meant as a pleasant surprise, but Grace, coming in just then (where had she been at this hour? wondered Myrtle), soaked to the bone and ashen-faced, did not look pleased.
‘What is this?’ she had shouted. ‘Who gave you permission to make milk rice? Who told you to make this auspicious dish? Do I pay you to make food without instruction?’
Myrtle was astonished. Her cousin seemed beside herself. She was not normally a woman to show her temper in this way. Grace did not look well. She looked on the verge of collapse.
‘Where’
ve you been, darl?’ Aloysius asked, astonished. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere. You’re soaking. Here, give her a towel, will you, Myrtle? Thornton, pour your mother a drink.’
‘I have a headache,’ Grace said abruptly, seeing Myrtle staring at her. ‘I’m going to bed.’
She disappeared to her room.
‘What on earth is going on?’ asked Myrtle slyly.
Aloysius, ignoring her, walked abruptly out of the room.
‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ Myrtle asked Frieda.
But Frieda did not want to talk either.
‘I think I’m coming down with a fever,’ Frieda mumbled. And she too disappeared into her room.
Some party, no? thought Myrtle. She nodded her head from side to side, as though having a heated conversation. Jasper watched her intensely. He was on his higher perch this morning and felt much better since it had rained. The air had thinned out and it was generally much cooler. He felt his old self again. Almost. He shuffled round and round the perch.
‘Hello, bastards,’ he said, and when Myrtle ignored him he jauntily whistled a snatch of The Magic Flute, the bit he knew the best. Then he did his impersonation of the neighbour’s dog and for an encore he whistled the Schubert that Alicia always played. Then, when his saw-drill noise had finally driven her from the room, cursing, he began to repeat a new sound he was learning. Softly at first, for Jasper always perfected his repertoire softly, he practised the sound of the devil-bird. Last night he had been woken up several times. First, there had been the sounds of sirens rushing past. Then Christopher had come crashing in.
‘Good morning, men!’ Jasper had remarked, though, unusually for him, Christopher had not replied.
The rest of the family followed, making no effort at being quiet. And finally, sometime towards the early morning, he had awoken again to a long and awful scream, so long and so strangled that Jasper, lifting his head, sleepily protested.
