A Passage North

by Anuk Arudpragasam

  The director was taking out bales of hay from the sack beside the pyre, inserting them one by one into the gaps and crevices between the wood piled above and below the body, rendering Rani completely invisible. He began tearing out the white satin lining on the inside of the coffin lid, revealing the bare wood beneath, then picking up the dried palmyra leaf and taking the long stem in both hands, thrust the fan of the leaf inside till it was lodged inside the stack of wood. He lit a match and brought it to the part of the leaf that was now inside the pyre, lighting the fan at a few different points and then blowing in order to encourage the fledgling flames. Krishan had heard the news of Rani’s death two days prior, had seen and touched her lifeless body just two hours before, but it was only now, watching the director trying to light the pyre, that he truly began to register that Rani would soon be gone, that she was, in fact, already gone. It was only now that he was realizing what it meant for her body to burn, what it meant for a fire to build in the hay and the wood, for it to spread to the casket and to the surface of Rani’s body before entering, finally, inside her. Her hair would be the first to burn, he knew, the wild and unruly hair of her head that had been combed and domesticated after her death, followed by her eyelashes, her armpit hair, and the hair on her arms and legs, then by the softer, tenderer parts of her exterior, her lips, her eyes, and her skin, which would probably melt before they burned. The director had managed to consolidate a small fire beneath the casket, the fan of the leaf and the bales of hay burning in unison, the individual stalks blackening and curling as fire ran through them, and though the flames hadn’t yet spread to the wood, let alone begun touching the casket, Krishan could sense within his own body what he knew would soon be occurring to Rani’s. He thought about the burning of her eyes, so fragile and delicately constituted, thought about the melting of the eyelids, the dissolution of the iris and the lens into the simmering water of the tear glands, thought about the retina curling up and with it all the images that had been imprinted there over the course of Rani’s lifetime, images of beauty and violence that had been superimposed over everything she saw. The fire was spreading slowly and evenly below the casket, crackling as it burnt up the hay and the shavings on the surface of the wood, spitting out embers as it ate its way through the fan of the palmyra leaf, and Krishan thought of how, if there still remained in Rani’s body any trace of memory or consciousness, this too would soon be extinguished. He wondered whether this was what Rani had, during all her time in Colombo, secretly desired, the complete dissolution of all her thoughts and feelings, the extinction of consciousness that she could never hope to achieve through sleep the way most people did, that she hadn’t been able to achieve through the mind-numbing quantity of sleeping pills she took or any of her other medications either. It was an extinction she’d tried and failed to obtain through shock therapy, through the general anesthetic she took and the electricity that was passed through her brain immediately afterward, an extinction she’d tried and failed to obtain through her various attempts at self-harm as well, hoping perhaps that severe physical pain, which had the effect of reducing all consciousness to the site of injury or laceration, of reducing the world to a point on the body’s surface, leaving nothing else available for thought or consideration, would allow her to forget her other, deeper and less tangible pain.

  It no longer mattered whether Rani’s death had been planned or accidental, Krishan understood now, there didn’t need to be a sharp line between these two kinds of death, a meticulous plan wasn’t necessary for a death to have been intended. All it took sometimes was a vague desire for self-destruction in order for a person to become just a little more careless when crossing the road or leaning out of the train, to become just a little less vigilant when lighting a firecracker or fixing a hole in the roof, all it took sometimes was a silent half-wish for oblivion in order for the line between accidental death and planned death to be blurred, for death to become something the deceased would, eventually, be pushed toward. The idea of Rani being driven toward such a death seemed more and more plausible to him now, even if he had no evidence except the regret in her daughter’s voice when she’d spoken of wishing that Rani had never left Colombo, even if her daughter herself seemed untouched by the possibility that her mother had wanted to die. Rani had lived for six years since the loss of her two sons, had been unable to recover despite her best efforts and the best efforts of everyone who knew her, and it made sense, after all that effort and all that time, if death, the total and irrevocable cessation of consciousness, had seemed to her in some instinctual, primordial way like the only way to achieve the extinction she sought. Thinking about the possibility no longer made him feel guilty, his brief interaction with her daughter at the funeral house having made it clear that Rani’s death was not something he or his mother or grandmother could have prevented, not something they had caused or been responsible for. Rani’s fate had been sealed long before their paths came together, on that day before the end of the war when a shard of shrapnel had sliced through her younger son, as though a fragment from that same shell had pierced her too that day, entering her not through her skin but her eyes, a small but insidious fragment that had entered her pupils like a needle and gradually made its way deeper inside her body over the years, eventually becoming the cause of her death too. What he felt was not so much guilt as a kind of amazement that he’d shared a home with such a person to begin with, that their lives, so different in quality and tenor, had somehow run in parallel, that Rani had been part of their lives for so long without him being able to foresee what was now so obvious, the inevitable endpoint of the trajectory along which she’d been silently advancing, though perhaps such trajectories only became visible when everything was over and it was already too late, perhaps they only began to seem inevitable or necessary in retrospect, once they’d already been incorporated into a new, more sober conception of reality.

  Watching as the wood beneath the casket began to catch fire, the fire beginning to spread from the center of the pyre as the long stem of the palmyra leaf slowly burned through, Krishan remembered a conversation he’d had with Rani on New Year’s Day, back when he was still living and working in the northeast. He’d returned to Colombo for the occasion and had planned to go out, less because he cared about New Year than from a desire to get intoxicated with friends after the sobriety of the previous months in Jaffna, drawn by the appeal of being out among people his own age in a state of heightened receptivity, the slim but enticing possibility of meeting someone new he always felt in such situations. The plan was to have dinner and drinks with a few friends before going out later to a house party they’d been invited to, and he’d gone that evening to his grandmother’s room to say good night a little earlier than usual. Appamma and Rani had just finished eating and were watching the news with absorption, listening as the presenter discussed the various preparations for the night that had been undertaken throughout Colombo, while in the background of the studio, behind the presenter, flakes of digital snow were soundlessly falling, an embellishment that felt especially absurd given the drought that had been afflicting the country that year. The screen cut to clips of the president and prime minister wishing all Sri Lankans the best for the new year, snippets of their speeches dubbed into Tamil by the station, then to scenes of fireworks and celebrations from Sydney, Tokyo, and Beijing, where the New Year had already begun. Appamma had asked him what his plans for the night were, what time he was planning to come back, and he told her for what must have been the third or fourth time that day that he wasn’t sure, that it would probably be late depending on what his friends wanted to do. He’d asked Rani whether people celebrated New Year’s in the north, more for the sake of making conversation than to really find out, knowing that for most people in the north the New Year began not in January but the middle of April, in accordance with the Tamil calendar. Rani responded that people acknowledged the day, since it was a government holiday, but that nobody she knew really celeb
rated it, not at least in the way it seemed to be celebrated in Colombo. It occurred to Krishan as she said this that Rani might like to go and see the fireworks at Galle Face that night, that she might enjoy experiencing this aspect of Colombo that she wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to see. Rani didn’t generally like leaving the house, he knew, but Galle Face for some reason was always heavily frequented by Muslim and Tamil families and she would feel safe there, especially if he was with her too. He knew it would complicate his plans for the night, but not bothering to think the matter through he asked whether she wanted to join him, saying he could come back home shortly before midnight to pick her up and then bring her back once everything was over. She would get to see all the fireworks, he went on, there would be a big display, she probably hadn’t seen anything like it before, and it was only on saying this that he realized that being in Galle Face could actually be triggering for her, that the sound of laughing, shouting Sinhalese voices and the sudden, chaotic explosions of firecrackers going off around them might remind her of the end of the war. Rani smiled to show she appreciated the offer but said that she couldn’t, that she and Appamma were planning to watch a film that night. He looked at Appamma with surprise as if to ask whether this was true, to which Appamma had nodded her head and told him that yes, they’d made their own plans, that he wasn’t the only one with something to do. They were airing a special film for New Year’s, Rani explained, a new Vijay film that would play at midnight, the kind of film you would otherwise have to go to the cinema to see. Krishan shook his head in mock disapproval, as though he was jealous of being left out of their plans, then smiling stood up and kissed each of them good night, relieved that his offer had been turned down but warmed, at the same time, by the fact that Rani and Appamma had made their own plans for the New Year.

  He’d gone out to dinner with his friends as planned, had drunk and smoked weed at one of their homes before heading out to the party, the kind of party he would be unlikely to meet anyone interesting or thoughtful, he’d known beforehand, but which he was nevertheless keen to attend, too drawn by the possibility of flirtation or intimacy to be put off by its more obnoxious elements. He could no longer remember any of the specific details of the night, the flat had been loud, smoky, and crowded, populated mainly by English-speaking people in their twenties and thirties, liberal people who said liberal things but became uncomfortable whenever identity or tradition was foregrounded too strongly. Everyone was drinking, smoking, and talking, and as midnight approached the party migrated to the roof to watch the fireworks, remaining there for a while after the fireworks had peaked and then making their way back down, everyone looser and more familiar with each other for having shared the intimate moment of transition. The music became louder, the movement and interaction more lively, more people beginning to dance as their drunkenness deepened, a few people arriving after having spent midnight at other parties, the ashtrays slowly filling up and the empty bottles and cups accumulating. When, around four-thirty in the morning, the energy of the party began dwindling and people began filtering out, first the couples and then everyone else in little groups, Krishan did his best not to give way to the sense of disappointment he always felt at the end of such events, when it began to dawn on him that the promises with which the night had started were failing to come to fruition. He and the two friends of his who were still at the party were heavily intoxicated, had been smoking joint after joint through the night, and not yet wanting to return home but knowing they’d be overstaying their welcome if they remained much longer, had decided to smoke one last joint and go to Galle Face, where they could talk for as long as they liked and where there might still be people. They managed to find a three-wheeler after wandering the roads for a while, and were relieved when they arrived to see that the place was still lively, the long, wide lawn far less crowded than earlier in the night no doubt but still full of activity, mainly groups of boys and young men dancing obliviously to the clashing music that sounded from different speakers, though there were also, surprisingly, a large number of families, mothers and fathers, babies, children, and grandparents sitting peacefully on mats they’d brought from home, some of them talking as they sipped on cups of tea or coffee, others stretched out and fast asleep. The grass was full of the debris of the night, spilled food, ice cream wrappers, empty plastic bottles, and the burnt remnants of firecrackers, but managing after a while to find a section that was relatively untouched, the three of them sat down in a small circle and made themselves comfortable. They lit cigarettes and talked under the wide, starless sky, the salt breeze of the sea cool on their tired skin as the darkness gradually let up, the crowd becoming sparser as the sun came up quietly behind them. Increasingly weighed down by their intoxication and from having spent the entire night talking, their conversation soon petered out, each of them losing themselves in their own heavy, swaying thoughts as they looked out over the calm January sea that was making itself visible beneath the pale dawn light.

  He had known it was time to make his way home, his throat was parched from smoking one cigarette after another, there was nothing he could possibly obtain by staying up longer, but feeling a kind of restlessness at the thought of leaving, a reluctance to admit that the night was coming to an end, he’d persuaded his friends to stay just a little longer, citing the length of their friendship and the fact that he would soon be returning to the northeast. It was normal of course to be reluctant to go home when you were inebriated and unfulfilled, not just on New Year’s but whenever you were out and about, but thinking of that night at Galle Face now Krishan wondered why it had always been so difficult for him to end such nights unless he was absolutely exhausted, till going home was no longer a choice but a necessity. It didn’t simply happen when he was out with other people, he knew, he found it hard to go to bed at a reasonable hour even when sober in his room, some part of him always resistant to going to sleep, as though going to bed was a kind of concession or surrender, as though by staying up something might happen that would justify having lived through the day. In Delhi, where for the most part he’d had no fixed schedule, he’d frequently found himself trapped in cycles of going to bed later and later every night, waking up later and later every morning, cycles he would attempt to correct by forcing himself at last to wake up early one morning, hoping he would fall asleep early the next evening out of sheer fatigue, cycles that repeated themselves no matter how hard he tried to maintain a consistent schedule. The pattern had been broken to some degree during his time in the northeast, where work was often so physically exhausting that he came home looking forward to sleep, but it had resurfaced once more upon moving back to Colombo, where despite having to get up early for work he went to bed late almost every night, losing sleep almost every day of the week and then compensating for the loss over the weekend. He often wondered about people who managed to keep regular hours of sleep with little effort or discipline, people who went to bed at the same time each night as though naturally in sync with the revolutions of earth, sun, and moon, as though the movement of their bodies was in some kind of inner harmony or alignment with those of the solar system. It was as though the desire that drew one out into the world each morning in the hope of some small fulfillment or some profound discovery was counterbalanced, for each person, by the disappointment and struggle that moving through the world entailed, as though by the end of each day most people’s longing was equaled or exceeded by the fatigue the world produced, so that at a certain moment each evening they became content to stop searching and return to the comfort of their homes, to yield finally to sleep and the concession to reality it involved. It was as though for most of his life he’d been driven by a longing that was somehow stronger or more insistent than that of most people he knew, by a desire that had to meet more resistance than average before it could be vanquished, as though his body was adapted not to a twenty-four-hour day but a twenty-five- or twenty-six-hour day, so that what he and others like him needed, he couldn
’t help feeling, was nothing so much as a world of vaster circumference, a world whose movement through space could do justice to the longing he felt inside him.

  By the time he’d said goodbye to his friends it had been seven or seven-thirty in the morning, the new year already well under way, and entering the house quietly he’d gone straight to his room, not wanting to alert his mother to his presence in such an unkempt state. He’d peeled off his clothes, full of the stale, damp odor of cigarette smoke, then stepped directly under the shower, letting the cool water wash over his hair and body. Turning off the tap he’d heard the sound of Appamma’s door opening and closing outside, of Rani announcing to his grandmother that she’d brought up their tea, and knowing that if he went to bed he wouldn’t wake till afternoon, that it would be nice to wish the two of them while it was still early morning, he dried himself off, put on a pair of fresh clothes, and went to their room. The two of them were sipping their tea in silence, Rani on her chair, Appamma at the edge of the bed, and kissing each of them on both cheeks he wished them a Happy New Year. Appamma was under the impression he’d just woken up, that he’d come home early the previous night, and after explaining that he’d just returned and hadn’t yet gone to bed he asked how the film had been, whether they’d stayed up to watch the whole thing. Rani had looked at Appamma with a teasing smile, then told him that his grandmother had fallen asleep five minutes after the film started. Appamma immediately interjected, a mixture of embarrassment and indignation on her face, insisting that she’d been tired all of the previous day, that she’d hardly slept the previous night, that she didn’t like watching all these new Indian films and that seeing the introductory part was enough for her to know that she was better off going to bed. He asked Rani if she too had gone to bed without watching the film, knowing she might have felt let down by Appamma’s withdrawal from their plan, but Rani shook her head with a smile, told him she’d switched off the lights and stayed up to watch the film anyway, the volume turned off so not to wake his grandmother. With the volume turned down or with the volume turned all the way off, he’d asked, taking her last statement to be an exaggeration, to which Rani confirmed that she had indeed watched the entire thing without sound, shrugging as though there was nothing surprising in this. He asked how she’d managed to watch without being able to understand the dialogue, not quite believing she’d spent two and a half hours in front of a soundless screen, and she replied that it hadn’t been too difficult to follow, that you could tell the emotions of the characters simply by looking at the expressions on their faces.