Anil's Ghost

by Michael Ondaatje

Apart from the driver she was the only sentinel. She saw the jackrabbit. She heard the thud of a night bird against the bus. No lights on within this floating vessel. She would be cleaning up her desk for five days, and then leave for Sri Lanka. She had somewhere in her bag a list of every phone and fax number where he could reach her on the island for the next two months. She had planned to give it to him. She had circled around his fucked-up life, his clenched fears, the love and comfort he was scared to take from her. Still, he had been like a wonderful house to her, full of unusual compartments, so many possibilities, strangely rousing.

  The bus climbed above the valley. Like him she couldn’t sleep. Like him she would continue the war. How would he sleep in the night with her name between him and his wife? Even the tenderest concerns between this couple would contain her presence, like a shadow. She didn’t want that anymore. To be a mote or an echo, to be a compass unused except to give his mind knowledge of her whereabouts.

  And whom would he talk to if not her at midnight through several time zones? As if she were the stone in the temple grounds used by priests as the object of confession. Well, for now, they both had no destiny. They only had to escape the past.

  Anil was one unable to sing, but she knew the words and the pace of phrasing.

  Oh, the trees grow high in New York State,

  They shine like gold in autumn—

  Never had the blues whence I came,

  But in New York State I caught ’em.

  She said the lines in a whisper, head down, to her own chest. Autumn. Caught ’em. How the rhyme snuggled into its partner.

  The Life Wheel

  Sarath and Anil had identified Sailor at the third plumbago village. He was Ruwan Kumara and he had been a toddy tapper. After breaking his leg in a fall he had worked in the local mine, and the village remembered when the outsiders had picked him up. They had entered the tunnel where twelve men were working. They brought a billa—someone from the community with a gunnysack over his head, slits cut out for his eyes—to anonymously identify the rebel sympathizer. A billa was a monster, a ghost, to scare children in games, and it had picked out Ruwan Kumara and he had been taken away.

  They now had a specific date for the abduction. Back at the walawwa they planned the next step. Sarath felt they should still be careful, have more evidence, or all their work would be rejected. He proposed that he go to Colombo and search for Ruwan Kumara’s name in a list of government undesirables; he claimed he could get hold of such a thing. It would take two days and then he would be back. He would leave her his cell phone, though she would probably not be able to contact him. So he would call her.

  But after five days Sarath had not returned.

  All her fears about him rose again—the relative who was a minister, his views on the danger of truth. She moved around the walawwa furiously alone. Then it was six days. She got Sarath’s cell phone working and called Ratnapura Hospital but it seemed that Ananda had left, had gone home. There was no one to talk to. She was alone with Sailor.

  She took the phone and went out to the edge of the paddy field.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Anil Tissera, sir.’

  ‘Ah, the missing one.’

  ‘Yes sir, the swimmer.’

  ‘You never came to see me.’

  ‘I need to talk to you, sir.’

  ‘What about.’

  ‘I have to make a report and I need help.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You knew my father. You worked with him. I need someone I can trust. There is maybe a political murder.’

  ‘You are speaking on a cell phone. Don’t say my name.’

  ‘I’m stranded here. I need to get to Colombo. Can you help?’

  ‘I can try to arrange something. Where are you?’

  It was the same question he had asked once before. She paused a moment.

  ‘In Ekneligoda, sir. The walawwa.’

  ‘I know it.’

  He was off the phone.

  A day later Anil was in Colombo, in the Armoury Auditorium that was a part of the anti-terrorist unit building in Gregory’s Road. She no longer had possession of Sailor’s skeleton. A car had picked her up at the walawwa but Dr. Perera had not been in it. When she arrived at the hospital in Colombo he had met her, put his arm around her. Then they’d eaten a meal in the cafeteria and he had listened to what she had done. He advised her to take it no further. He thought her work good, but it was unsafe. ‘You made a speech about political responsibility,’ she said. ‘I heard a different opinion then.’ ‘That was a speech,’ he replied. When they returned to the lab, there was confusion as to where the skeleton was.

  Now, standing in the small auditorium that was half filled with various officials, among them military and police personnel trained in counter-insurgency methods, she felt stranded. She was supposed to give her report with no real evidence. It had been a way to discredit her whole investigation. Anil stood by an old skeleton laid out on a table, probably Tinker, and began delineating the various methods of bone analysis and skeletal identification relating to occupation and region of origin, although this was not the skeleton she needed.

  Sarath in the back row, unseen by her, listened to her quiet explanations, her surefootedness, her absolute calm and refusal to be emotional or angry. It was a lawyer’s argument and, more important, a citizen’s evidence; she was no longer just a foreign authority. Then he heard her say, ‘I think you murdered hundreds of us.’ Hundreds of us. Sarath thought to himself. Fifteen years away and she is finally us.

  But now they were in danger. He sensed the hostility in the room. Only he was not against her. Now he had to somehow protect himself.

  Between Anil and the skeleton, discreetly out of sight, was her tape recorder, imprinting every word and opinion and question from officials, which she, till now, responded to courteously and unforgivingly. But he could see what Anil couldn’t—the half-glances around the hot room (they must have turned off the air-conditioning thirty minutes into the evidence, an old device to distract thought); there were conversations beginning around him. He shrugged himself off the wall and moved forward.

  ‘Excuse me, please.’

  Everyone turned to him. She looked up, her face amazed at his presence and this interruption.

  ‘This skeleton was also located at the Bandarawela site?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And how much earth was found over it?’

  ‘Three feet approximately.’

  ‘Can you be more precise?’

  ‘We cannot. I really don’t see its relevance.’

  ‘Because sections of the hill outside the cave, where this one was found, had been worn down by cattle, trade, rains . . . isn’t that correct? Can someone turn on the damn air-conditioning in here, it’s difficult for us all to think clearly in this heat. Isn’t it true that in the old nineteenth-century burial grounds, murder sites as well as graves were often—in fact in nearly every case—found with less than two feet of earth over them?’

  She was becoming agitated and decided to be silent. Sarath could sense them focusing on him, turning in their seats.

  He walked down to the front of the auditorium and they let him approach her. He faced Anil now across the table, leaned forward and with a set of tongs pulled out the piece of stone imprisoned within the rib cage.

  ‘This stone was found in the ribs of the skeleton.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell us what happens in ancient customs. . . . Think carefully, Miss Tissera, don’t just theorize.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Please don’t speak like that. Patronizing me.’

  ‘Tell us what happens.’

  ‘They bury bodies and they place a stone on the earth above it, usually. It acts like a marker and then it drops when the flesh gives way.’

  ‘Gives way? How?’

  ‘One minute!’

  ‘How many years does that take?’

  Silence.


  ‘Yes?’

  Silence.

  He spoke very slowly now.

  ‘A minimum of nine years usually, isn’t it? Before the stone falls through, into the rib cage. Right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Yes. Except for fire corpses. Burned ones.’

  ‘But we’re not even sure of this, because most of them were burned in the last century, these ones in the historical gravesites. As you know, there was a plague there in 1856. Another in 1890. Many were burned. The skeleton you have here is likely to be a hundred years old—in spite of your fine social work about its career and habits and diet. . . .’

  ‘The skeleton I could have proved something with has been confiscated.’

  ‘We seem to have too many bodies around. Is this one less important than the confiscated one?’

  ‘Of course not. But the confiscated one died less than five years ago.’

  ‘Confiscated. Confiscated . . . Who confiscated it?’ Sarath said.

  ‘It was taken while I met with Dr. Perera in Kynsey Road Hospital. It was lost there.’

  ‘So you lost it, then. It was not confiscated.’

  ‘I did not lose it. It was taken from the lab when I was speaking with him in the cafeteria.’

  ‘So you misplaced it. Do you think it’s possible Dr. Perera had something to do with that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I have not seen him since.’

  ‘And you wished to prove that skeleton was a recent death. Even if we now do not have the evidence.’

  ‘Mr. Diyasena, I’d like to remind you that I came here as part of a human rights group. As a forensic specialist. I do not work for you, I’m not hired by you. I work for an international authority.’

  He turned and directed his words to the audience.

  ‘This “international authority” has been invited here by the government, has it not? Is that not right?’

  ‘We are an independent organization. We make independent reports.’

  ‘To us. To the government here. That means you do work for the government here.’

  ‘What I wish to report is that some government forces have possibly murdered innocent people. This is what you are hearing from me. You as an archaeologist should believe in the truth of history.’

  ‘I believe in a society that has peace, Miss Tissera. What you are proposing could result in chaos. Why do you not investi-gate the killing of government officers? Can we get the air-conditioning on, please?’

  There was a scattering of applause.

  ‘The skeleton I had was evidence of a certain kind of crime. That is what is important here. “One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims.” Remember? I thought you represented more than you do.’

  ‘Miss Tissera—’

  ‘Doctor.’

  ‘All right, “Doctor.” I have brought here another skeleton from another burial site, an earlier century. To establish the difference, I would like you to do a forensic study of it for me.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’

  ‘This is not ridiculous. I would like to have evidence of the difference between two corpses. Somasena!’

  He gestured to someone in the back of the hall. The skeleton, wrapped in plastic, was wheeled in.

  ‘A two-hundred-year-old corpse,’ he said out loud. ‘That’s what we assume, anyway, the boys in archaeology. Perhaps you can manage to prove us wrong.’

  He was tapping his pencil against her table, like a taunt.

  ‘I need time.’

  ‘We give you forty-eight hours. Leave the skeleton you were talking about and go with Mr. Somasena to the lobby, he will escort you. You will have to sign back all your research before you leave. I must warn you of that. This skeleton will be waiting for you in the front entrance in twenty minutes.’

  She turned from him and collected her papers.

  ‘Leave the papers and the tape recorder, please.’

  She was still for a moment, then removed the tape recorder from the pocket where she had just put it, and left it on the table.

  ‘It belongs to me,’ she whispered. ‘Remember?’

  ‘We’ll get it back to you.’

  She started walking up the steps to the exit. The officials hardly looked at her.

  ‘Dr. Tissera!’

  She turned at the top of the stairs and faced him, certain it would be for the last time.

  ‘Don’t attempt to return for these things. Just leave the building. We’ll call you if we want you.’

  She stepped through the door. It closed behind her with a pneumatic click.

  Sarath remained there and spoke quietly, out into their midst.

  With Gunesena he wheeled the two skeletons on the trolley through the side door. It opened onto a dark passageway that would take them towards the parking lot. They stood still a moment. Gunesena said nothing. Whatever happened, Sarath did not want to return to the auditorium. He felt for a switch. There was the crackle of neon trying to catch, that stuttering of light he was used to in buildings like this.

  A row of red arrows lit the passageway, which inclined upwards. They pushed the trolley with the two skeletons in the semi-darkness, arms turning crimson every time they passed an arrow. He imagined Anil two floors above him, walking angrily, slamming each door she walked through. Sarath knew they would halt her at each corridor level, check her papers again and again to irritate and humiliate her. He knew she would be searched, vials and slides removed from her briefcase or pockets, made to undress and dress again. It would take her more than forty minutes to pass the gauntlets and escape the building and she would, he knew, be carrying nothing by the end of the journey, no scraps of information, not a single personal photograph she might foolishly have carried with her into the Armoury building that morning. But she would get out, which was all he wished for.

  Since the death of his wife, Sarath had never found the old road back into the world. He broke with his in-laws. The unopened letters of condolence were left in her study. They were, in reality, for her anyway. He returned to archaeology and hid his life in his work. He organized excavations in Chilaw. The young men and women he trained knew little about what had occurred in his life and he was therefore most comfortable among them. He showed them how to place strips of wet plaster on bone, how to gather and file mica, when to transport objects, when to leave them in situ. He ate with them and was open to any question in regard to work. Nothing was held back that he knew or could guess at in their field. Everyone who worked with him accepted the moats of privacy he had established around himself. He returned to his tent tired after their day of coastal excavations. He was in his mid-forties, though he seemed older to the apprentices. He waited until the early evening, until the others had finished swimming in the sea, before he walked into the water, disappearing within its darkness. At this dark hour, out deep, there were sometimes rogue tides that would not let you return, that insisted you away. Alone in the waves he would let go of himself, his body flung around as if in a dance, only his head in the air rational to what surrounded him, the imperceptible glint of large waves that he would slip beneath as they rose above him.

  He had grown up loving the sea. When he was a boy at school at St. Thomas’s, the sea was just across the railway lines. And whatever coast he was on—at Hambantota, in Chilaw, in Trincomalee—he would watch fishermen in catamarans travel out at dusk till they faded into the night just beyond a boy’s vision. As if parting or death or disappearance were simply the elimination of sight in the onlooker.

  Patterns of death always surrounded him. In his work he felt he was somehow the link between the mortality of flesh and bone and the immortality of an image on rock, or even, more strangely, its immortality as a result of faith or an idea. So the removal of a wise sixth-century head, the dropping off of arms and hands of rock as a result of the fatigue of centuries, existed alongside human fate. He would hold statues two thousand years old in his arm
s. Or place his hand against old, warm rock that had been cut into a human shape. He found comfort in seeing his dark flesh against it. This was his pleasure. Not conversation or the education of others or power, but simply to place his hand against a gal vihara, a living stone whose temperature was dependent on the hour, whose look of porousness would change depending on rain or a quick twilight.

  This rock hand could have been his wife’s hand. It had a similar darkness and age to it, a familiar softness. And with ease he could have re-created her life, their years together, with the remaining fragments of her room. Two pencils and a shawl would have been enough to mark and recall her world. But their life remained buried. Whatever motives she had for leaving him, whatever vices and faults and lack he had within him that drove her away had remained unsought by Sarath. He was a man who could walk past a stretch of field and imagine a meeting hall that had been burned to the ground there six hundred years before; he could turn to that absence and with a smoke smudge, a fingerprint, re-create the light and the postures of those sitting there during an evening’s ceremony. But he would unearth nothing of Ravina. This was not caused by any anger towards her, he was just unable to step back to the trauma of that place when he had talked in darkness, pretending there was light. But now, this afternoon, he had returned to the intricacies of the public world, with its various truths. He had acted in such a light. He knew he would not be forgiven that.

  He and Gunesena pushed the trolley against the incline. There was hardly any air in the tunnel. Sarath put on the brake.

  ‘Get some water, Gunesena.’

  Gunesena nodded. There was irritation in the formal gesture. He went off, leaving Sarath in the half-dark, and returned five minutes later with a beaker of water.

  ‘Was it boiled?’

  Again Gunesena nodded. Sarath drank it and then got off the floor where he had been sitting. ‘I’m sorry, I was feeling faint.’