As Manju had anticipated, Lalith was singled out. He was asked to travel with two other soldiers to locate a reeducation camp where ex-Tiger rebels were being held by the Sinhalese army. The Colombo newspapers had reported that there were several such camps where the rebels who had turned themselves in and thrown themselves at the mercy of the government army were supposedly being held in detention, fairly and humanely, until they could be “deprogrammed.” Of course the rebels believed that these “ex-rebels” were being systematically tortured for information, held against their will, stripped of their cyanide necklaces and the means for dignified suicide. One of the camps was said to be in Bandarawela, a hill station thick with tea estates hidden within the rolls of mountains. To get there would take a night of walking, followed by a day of hiding and waiting and another night of walking. The instructions were simple: Lalith and the two soldiers were meant to observe the camp, search out evidence of torture and mistreatment, but take no action.
At first the journey had felt like an adventure, like an old tale from the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna and his loyal men sought out Arjuna’s wife, the princess, who was being held against her will in a distant land. The darkness seemed to open itself up to Lalith as his imagination carried him forward through openings in the dense forest and over the muddy tea estate paths. The other men allowed him to lead, one keeping his palm heavy on Lalith’s shoulder so as not to lose him. The third man followed behind, resting his palm on the second soldier’s back. They could be mistaken for a snake, Lalith thought, slithering undetected in the underbrush. Sometimes they crept on their knees, palms pressed into the damp earth. There were moments when Lalith forgot about the reeducation camp entirely. Instead he fantasized that the darkness would lead them home. That in this blind wandering, the pull of Batticaloa would be too strong and would lure him off his Bandarawela route, putting him on a path more intuitive and instinctual. The smell of fish and dry, heated earth would greet him, and Nilanthi would welcome him home.
But the pull of his orders must have overpowered his homesickness, because in the early morning of the third day, Lalith guided the men to the camp. The previous night’s darkness had protected them long enough to find a hiding place in an abandoned tea factory, where they slept under old burlap sacks until the night could disguise them again. Lalith woke as the sun drowned beneath the mountains. The game was over and it was time to wake the men.
Lalith didn’t know what he had expected to find at the camp. He hadn’t really allowed himself to imagine the “arriving there” part of the adventure. Though darkness enveloped the surrounding landscape, the camp was illuminated by towering lights, as if this tiny space of land was burdened with never-ending day. With binoculars pressed against his eyes, he focused and refocused until shadows became forms.
And he saw what he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine—that the superiors had been right. Through magnified clarity, he saw things that he knew would never be washed from his memory. There were half-naked girls turning and turning in listless circles. There was a boy with a dislocated shoulder who held a limp arm against his belly. There was an immobile slump of a form leaning against the barbed-wire fence, long-dried blood a patchwork of stains on her back. And flies. Thousands of flies. As Lalith lowered his binoculars, he felt his boyhood drain from him and understood that he would never be happy again, not happy in the way he had been at home with his family, or in the games of hide-and-seek at the rebel camp, or even listening to Manju and Rajit’s arguments.
Lalith and the men returned to camp four days later. The heavy weight of soldiers’ hands smacked his shoulders in congratulation. After offering the three soldiers praise and several rounds of arrack rum, the commanders asked them to report their findings. Lalith forced himself to swallow the cloying rum and willed himself to steady his voice. He began his sentence twice in silence before he muttered, “They were all teenage girls and children. Some ten years old, maybe others were fourteen. The oldest were my sister’s age.” Lalith half listened as the other men described the evidence of torture and starvation they had witnessed. They used precise words that carried an indisputable clarity, but to Lalith the words had suddenly lost their meaning. He sank into memory and felt abandoned by language. He saw braids woven into barbed-wire fences, having been separated from the girls’ scruffy scalps. He saw bruises thicker and longer than leeches along cheeks, thighs, backs. He saw bones jutting out of yellowed skin. But his voice wouldn’t return. He had crept away from the reeducation camp, weakened and ashamed, and now he wasn’t even strong enough to tell these stories.
Lalith had expected outrage. He expected retribution and calls for heroic revenge and rescue. He wasn’t prepared for the orders that came. An ideal opportunity to get our fellow Tamils enraged. A chance for more money, improved weapons from abroad. The foreign papers will hear of it and there will be international support for our struggle. Girls and children. Perfect emblems for compassion and aid. They will and must hear this. These were the motives given as the superiors selected the soldiers with the fairest skin, those who could pass for Sinhalese, and tossed stolen government uniforms in their direction. The heavy khaki material fell at Lalith’s feet and at his brothers’. The crumpled material smelled of other men’s sweat and fear, the stained creases holding the mysteries of capture and death. You will storm the reeducation camp and execute everyone you find there. You will make it bloody and inhuman and tragic. You will leave behind proof of Sinhalese government guilt, and our friends’ deaths will not be in vain. They will have strengthened the movement.
As the orders gathered around him, Lalith knew he would let the jungle swallow him. He was not strong enough; he did not possess the necessary wisdom to understand the logic of this plan, nor did he have the bravery to combat his own dread. Like a boy, he still clung to words like good and bad, fair and unjust, right and wrong. He distrusted his simplicity and all its weaknesses. What he was good at was making himself invisible, and there was no room for heroism in that. He did not want to smell death again, not in the heavy cotton of an enemy’s jacket, nor in the fires that would envelop the reeducation camp. And so as the evening meal ended, Lalith took small steps backward, away from the fire, away from his brothers, away from duty and responsibility. Manju, perhaps sensing something, looked up and nodded at Lalith as he teetered backward, on the edge of still being seen. Manju’s nod carried the finality of a good-bye. It would be the last time they saw each other, and Lalith hoped that in that slight gesture, there had been an older brother’s blessing.
LALITH OPENED HIS eyes. Sunitha was crouched across from him, her head in her palm. Against the silence, Lalith heard her speak. “You talk in your sleep like a little boy. I listened to your story, and I will not tell your sister, though I know she would forgive you.” Sunitha winked as she stood. “Shall I dance for you once more before I go?” Lalith smiled and the green fabric began its sweeping movements. He felt the breeze of the whipping silk across his mouth and neck. He smelled the cardamom-and-curry smokiness of his mother’s kitchen and the powdered sweetness of Nilanthi’s handkerchiefs. He smelled Batticaloa’s fish market and the temple’s incense. As she spun and twirled, Sunitha’s dancing sari blended into the thickness of the flat and heavy leaves. Her anklets clinked and jingled, growing softer until both she and the music of her dancing disappeared, carrying Lalith’s story into the silence of the jungle.
PREPARATIONS
Dinesh spent the morning oiling and buffing and reoiling the entranceway to the house. He restored the red, glassy polish to the front porch and the walkway that leads to the visiting room. He has spent so many hours in this aging house as a guest, but as he admires his work, he begins to accommodate the feeling of being its new owner rather than just a visitor.
There is an intricate balance to his work on this house. On one hand, he is scrubbing away the old reminders, the ghostly footprints and the stubborn stains of the past. But at the same time, he needs to keep traces of the happin
ess that was shared within this house’s generous walls—the laughter of shared friendship, meals enjoyed in the company of old friends, family. So while he buffs and polishes away mud stains on the floor and the meandering patterns of mold on the walls, he also makes time to dust off old photographs, trim the overgrown vines of the garden, and arrange the left-behind possessions in a way that will remind them of happier days. A cricket bat is perched along the doorframe. A framed drawing of the old family dog is on the desk. Books are stacked neatly on a new bookshelf. When Dinesh takes a step back and looks at his recent work, he sees the old and the new colliding, memory with the promise of new plans. As he examines one room and the next, he hopes his old friends would approve of the effort he’s put into their home. He believes they would. And so he keeps to his task of welcoming back their daughter, making a new home for her where he can look after their shared memories and make new memories in their life together.
The muscles in Dinesh’s back ache, and he can’t turn his head at all to the left, which he realizes has been making him walk in circles as he examines his progress. When, exactly, did I get so old? he teases himself as he rubs the crink in his neck. He doesn’t notice that he is leaving red fingerprints along his throat and under the collar of his shirt. He backs away from the porch and gazes at the shine of the front steps. Perfect, he compliments himself, and nods at no one. In another few days, the old house will be as good as new, and then he can bring Nilanthi home.
Several weeks ago he decided he would do all the work himself. In that way, he could prove to her the love and care he was prepared to offer her. He imagines leading her up the entranceway with its renewed luster. He will guide her through her mother’s restored garden. Mrs. Thiranagama from next door helped cut back the overreaching vines and the overgrown rhododendrons. She also helped him pot some new white anthuriums that he felt certain gave the garden a fresh, welcoming aura. At least those were the words Mrs. Thiranagama used, and he was confident she knew about such things.
After he and Nilanthi toured the garden, he would show her the kitchen. He kept all her mother’s cookery in place, believing this would soothe her. But he also bought a brand-new gas stove, a rice cooker, and an electric kettle. He compliments himself on these choices now. When he glances over the kitchen things—the old grinding stone and coconut shaver alongside the shining newness of the stove—he hopes he is offering her the right blend of old and new, a respect for the house’s memories as well as a positive look forward into their shared future.
DINESH HAD FIRST visited this house with his wife, his late wife, Suchinta, when he had been transferred to the Bank of Ceylon branch in Batticaloa from Trincomalee, farther north up the coast. The move was a promotion, but Suchinta had been nervous about leaving their home. Their daughter was eight years old, and his wife worried about her having to change schools, leaving behind her friends and the only home she had ever known. Dinesh knew Suchinta was pushing her own anxieties onto their young daughter, but he had promised them both that they would make new friends quickly, that their new home would be bigger and grander than the one they were leaving behind, and that if they ever felt lonely for their old neighborhood, it really wasn’t too far away to make a visit.
And Dinesh had been right. They had made new friends quickly, their first being Dinesh’s coworker Nilan and his wife, Kamala. After Dinesh’s first week at work, Nilan—in his characteristic friendliness and generosity, which Dinesh would grow to depend on over the years—had invited Dinesh’s family over for a Saturday lunch. They had eaten on the porch Dinesh has just finished polishing, in fact, and Kamala had taken the family on a tour through her garden. In those days it was tangled with orchid vines and hibiscus flowers arranged in a sort of canopy that shaded them as they walked under the afternoon sun.
Within a few weeks’ time, Dinesh and Nilan had agreed that one Saturday each month they would take turns hosting lunch. Kamala encouraged Suchinta to join the parents’ club at the local school. Nilan and Kamala’s oldest, Manju, took to chasing their daughter around the gardens, and the two families settled into an easy routine of sharing meals and laughter and plans for the future.
IT IS DIFFICULT for Dinesh to think about these things now. There has been so much loss, so much silence in their two homes since first the mothers disappeared and then the boys. Dinesh rubs at his neck as he struggles out of his memories. He is determined to change things. He will bring love and laughter back into this house, back into his and Nilanthi’s lives. He has promised himself and he has promised Nilanthi. It is a promise he intends to keep.
When she returns and he leads her to the living room, she will see the new Sony television set. It is eighteen inches, color, a deal from a relative who runs a shop in Colombo’s Pettah Market. Alone in this room now, Dinesh presses the remote control and the TV sizzles to life. A Tamil movie takes over the screen. A woman is dancing in the hills under a rainy sky. Her smile is radiant and music fills the living room. Dinesh finds himself meeting the girl’s grin; he nods with the rhythms of her dancing. She is beautiful. There is a man in the distance. He is holding his arms out for the dancing girl and she runs into them.
Dinesh never used to cry, but lately the slightest little emotion brings tears. He is embarrassed about this weakness. He is embarrassed now, even though there is no one to witness his quiet crying. He turns the television off, wipes at his face with the oil rag he has kept tucked into his trousers. The room falls back into silence, and Dinesh crumples on the sofa. He is tired and his body aches. It is easy to drift into sleep.
WHEN DINESH WAKES up, it is late afternoon and the mosquitoes are attacking. He doesn’t know why they are such a nuisance here; they are not nearly as ferocious at his own house, the house that really isn’t his anymore, now that he’s let some of the local soldiers stay there. It was easier than putting up a fight when they came asking. For money, for supplies, for a place to sleep. And really, he was happy to help. He understands that it is a place of transience now, but he is glad that it provides some rest, some peace for the boys who stop on their way from here to there. He hopes that Nilan and Kamala’s boys may be welcomed in the same way wherever they may be.
When he thinks about his house, Dinesh imagines the boys’ sweat seeping into the mattresses, their dirt being scrubbed off in the shower, their blood escaping from haphazard dressings, staining the towels. He has left almost everything that was his and Suchinta’s behind. He has convinced himself he doesn’t need those things anymore. What he needs instead is newness, freshness, things that don’t have such intimate memories attached to them. He has bought new bedsheets, towels, teacups, and plates for Nilan’s house—Dinesh’s new house. He loves that these new things have no smell to them. No stains. No past. He and Nilanthi will mark them up with the future.
Even as he admires these new purchases, he knows Nilanthi may not feel the same way. He senses that, unlike him, she will still need her family close until she comes to share his plans for their future together. It will take time for them to fill the house with hope again. But they will; he believes it and he will convince Nilanthi to feel the same. There will be friends to welcome to their home when Nilanthi gets well, when she is strong again. Perhaps the village will grow as calm as the tamed garden. Perhaps there will be children. There are many things Dinesh hopes for.
Dinesh stretches his legs and groans loudly into the late afternoon light. He had wanted to get more done today. He had planned to replace the shelves in the bedroom wardrobe. He goes there now and opens the windows to let the breeze in, to give the room some air, to upset the dust clinging to the furniture. He has already replaced the old mattress with a new one, a mattress of thick foam that the storekeeper promised would keep its firmness over time and would never, under any circumstances, tear or wear out. The storekeeper had met Dinesh’s gaze playfully when he made this promise, but Dinesh found he could not share in the joke. He regrets some of the past things he has done. He pressured her too soon to
see him as a man she could love as a husband. He will have to be gentler from now on, more patient. The first thing will be to get Nilanthi strong and well, to get her to trust him again.
Dinesh has picked out a green and yellow embroidered bedspread. He thinks that these are Nilanthi’s favorite colors. He seems to remember her playing dress-up in her mother’s saris. She used to choose her mother’s green one, he’s fairly certain. But he has to admit that his memories get jumbled from time to time. And there are some memories he’d rather just push away permanently. Sometimes it’s easier for him to push through the days in a determined blankness where he can protect himself from the past’s encroachment. Too often he sees Suchinta’s hand—it is often only her hand he remembers, the left hand with its simple gold band, which had been his mother’s wedding ring. He sees Suchinta’s hand smoothing out the part in their daughter’s hair, or falling across her chest as she sleeps, or reaching out to pat his cheek on his way out the door to work. And then inevitably he sees her hand falling out of the dirty blanket that was covering the rest of her. Her beautiful hand, all those months ago, confirming his worst fears.
DINESH STRAIGHTENS THE pillowcases at the head of the bed and scolds himself, again, for his tears. He cannot keep letting his emotions get the better of him. Nilanthi must see him as strong, confident, certain. How can she put her trust in a man who is always crying like a small child? He looks around the room and tries to decide what else it needs to be welcoming, to be the place where Nilanthi can heal and rest and feel comfortable. He plans to arrange a few vases here and there that he can fill with flowers. There should be a small table at the side of the bed where Nilanthi can keep her books. Again, he has tried to remember her favorites. He brought back a stack from a bookshop in Colombo. A book of poetry by the English Romantics, poems by the Tamil poet Sivasegaram, a mystery novel by a British writer named Highsmith. These and many others. Dinesh is looking forward to watching Nilanthi sort through them. She has always loved books. They all believed she would become an excellent teacher, maybe even a university professor. Even though that cannot come to be any longer, Dinesh hopes the new books will bring back some of her curiosity, some happiness.
The Beach at Galle Road Page 20