Heaven's Edge

by Romesh Gunesekera

  Jaz appeared. ‘Cuppa tea?’ He did an extravagant pirouette across the other end of the factory hall.

  ‘You find some?’

  Jaz beamed. ‘There’s this packet.’ He held up a small green carton framed by decorative gold leaves. ‘It’s full of black stuff. Is it original toasted tea, do you think?’

  My heart skipped. Eldon’s tea.

  ‘Kris will help me make it. I’ll bring the tray out to the front.’

  A tea tray?

  I was just twelve. I wanted to be the first one up in the house. A low snore like the whistle of a turbine emanated from Eldon’s room, but by the time I got down the stairs he was already shuffling out. ‘Good morning,’ he greeted me in a stage-whisper. I followed him to the kitchen which was filled with sunshine. He stood in the light, blinking, then shambled over to the sink and turned on the cold water tap. He let it pour into a plastic washing-up bowl which had streaks of red curry fat stuck to the rim. After the statutory two minutes, he filled the electric kettle and switched it on. He opened a Twinings tea caddy and picked two tea-bags and put them into a white teapot. He didn’t bother to warm it. ‘I am not a slave to habit,’ he mumbled more to himself than to me. ‘In any case it is nearly summer,’ he observed, as if it made a difference. The beauty of spring and summer for Eldon was being able to spend time in the garden, in the open air, making up for a winter indoors where the central heating dial was permanently fixed at 24 degrees Celsius. His skin would become drier than tissue paper, until the summer allowed it to heal again. Eldon said even the blood flowed around his body a little easier after the honeysuckle bloomed on Mayday. The robin was on the window sill, staring in. ‘Hungry, are you?’ Eldon lifted a microwave dish cover and picked at the fried belly pork that Cleo had saved from the previous night’s dinner. He opened the side window and the robin hopped a couple of steps back, staring defiantly. Eldon placed a charred piece of rind on the window sill. The robin immediately hopped over and picked it up. After another quick stare at Eldon, it flew away, whirring. The kettle bubbled to a roar and clicked itself off, the water subsiding like a passing jet. For some reason I became conscious of his tremendous age then. I felt anxious watching him pour the hot water into the teapot. After a quick stir, he closed the lid. He got two cups and saucers out, making more of a clatter. ‘This is my test,’ he grinned at me. ‘Carrying a tray with two cups, one for me and one for your grandma.’ He had invested in extra-large cups so that he could carry them half-full, with plenty of margin for spillage during the bumpy ride upstairs, and yet retain enough liquid for more than a single sip in bed. It meant the tray was substantially heavier. The weight should be helpful, he explained, for finding the centre of gravity, in keeping his hands steady. But that morning his wrists seemed to show the strain. He grumbled about having to do too many infuriating calculations to work out what was best: reduce the volume of tea and thereby the weight; walk faster and reduce the time but increase the risk of a missed step; take one cup at a time. Drink his first, then take Cleo hers, or vice versa. He looked for a moment like a harassed captain of an aircraft, constantly redistributing his payload for optimum lift in a journey from nowhere to nowhere.

  I offered to carry it for him.

  Eldon snapped back. ‘No, no. I can manage. I could fly a jumbo once, you know.’

  That afternoon, while I was still at school, he had been rushed to hospital. He had died before the ambulance had crossed the gates. In the coffin his hands were cold and rigid; unshakable. Unfairly steady.

  Jaz sipped the brew and screwed up his face in disgust. ‘I can see why they’ve gone out of business.’

  In front of us the hills formed a troop of bowed green heads. The once tightly curled tea bushes, slackened with neglect, seemed to be stretching out for freedom. I breathed in the cool air; the fragrance of the infusion, the blend of Uva and my grandfather, was like hope released. I saw Eldon restored with his cup and cigarette; a mist rising, warm and pungent, his eyes lighting up cheered by each bittersweet sip; his hands strong, puffed full of life once more. All the pointless exclamations and vacant phrases that he used to punctuate his days with – his Ah … Bliss… I like a cup of strong tea – slowly began to make a safe and meaningful world again. A lost world of small true affections. One I was just beginning to recover with Uva.

  ‘What’s that sound?’ Jaz cocked his head, his ear turned towards the suck and chug of a valve pumping air.

  The sound grew louder. I looked back at the factory, half-expecting its phantom machinery to be starting up. Then Kris came running from the back, looking up at the sky, circling one arm over his head and pointing with the other at the cruiser. The sound was deafening. I ran to the vehicle and shot it into the parking shelter just before the military Dragonfly whirred overhead, chopping the cool air and swooping down towards the open front of the factory. But the space was too small for its long, vicious rotors and it veered up sharply to one side. It circled the factory once more, and then moved on. The suck-swop died away, although by then my blood was pumping as hard and as loud in my ears.

  ‘Was it them?’ Jaz asked. ‘Do you think they saw us?’

  I didn’t reply. The aircraft had no markings; but even if it was not from Maravil, it was clearly a gunship. Kris quickly began to pack the cruiser with our few belongings.

  By midday we reached what had been cultivated smallholder land: narrow, old terraces that once might have harboured cabbages, radishes, cauliflowers. Sunshine burst through the bobbled fleece in the sky, creating pools of light and shadow on the road and the slopes; we seemed closer to a thinning above, a hole. But then the cruiser’s wheels slowed down. An alarm bleeped from the dashboard signalling a malfunction.

  ‘Is it the gas? Is it the gas?’ Jaz rapped his knuckles furiously on the fuel gauge.

  I coaxed the cruiser on, working the throttle, the overdrive, even the ignition. The tank was not empty. I thought if we could just get up to the ridge, then we could see where we were, but when we reached it the air was mulled with the dust of collapsed farmsteads and toxic fumes from the valley below. We rolled down the next dip. The road seemed to evaporate before a large arena wreathed in smoke.

  ‘Race-course.’ Kris pointed out the white wooden rails of a defunct oval. Two skinny ponies were nibbling at the edges of a smouldering mound of rubbish. Could this be the famous hill town Eldon used to praise for its pure air and perfect turf?

  I stopped the cruiser.

  ‘Won’t it go any more?’ Jaz asked in a voice that seemed more lost than I was.

  I said we had better take a look. I couldn’t get up any proper speed. ‘There might be soldiers around. We might have to move fast.’

  Kris grunted. According to him we were on the edge of a hill town that might still be a Maravil outpost. ‘Best avoid it.’ He slipped out and opened the engine panel. The steel intestines were too hot to touch. Kris fiddled with a spring mechanism.

  ‘My grandfather understood these things, but I never had the knack,’ I confessed, baffled.

  One of the ponies reared its head and whinnied. The other one stamped and lunged at it, pushing it out of the way. In a sudden frenzy they went for each other, neighing and biting. A pack of other ponies – black, brown, scorched grey – emerged from behind the festering garbage; they all entered the fray, their hooves pounding the earth. They tore at each other, drawing blood, and charged through the debris, wild-eyed, churning it up and spreading the embers of small fires around them until flames began to flare up briefly everywhere, singeing their shin hair and tails. Jaz stuck his head out of the window. ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They want to be rid of each other.’ Kris clenched his teeth and set about testing the connectors on a black tube. He then wriggled beneath the vehicle to check the rest of it.

  While Kris was underneath, the ponies turned towards us. I could see their ribs sticking out. ‘They are heading this way,’ Jaz warned from inside. ‘You’d better get in quick.’ They
came up to the side of the cruiser, kicking at each other, rattling their hooves. The grey bumped the vehicle, rocking it. Blood was trickling out of a gash on its face where the flesh had turned inside out. Kris squirmed out on the other side and we piled back in. I tried the ignition. The engine started; I revved it. The ponies in front reared up. Then they broke away from each other and cantered back into the rubbish.

  ‘I don’t like those animals. I don’t like this place. I don’t like it at all.’ Jaz locked all the doors.

  I calmed him down. ‘We’ll go now, we’ll go.’ The cruiser moved sluggishly forward. ‘How do we skirt the town?’ I asked Kris, easing into second gear.

  Kris directed us to a road leading to even steeper hills.

  ‘We’ll never make it. We still have no power. Is there no other way?’

  ‘It’s the only way. The engine won’t fail.’

  But with each increase of the incline the cruiser dropped its speed by half, until we were barely crawling up the road. The engine was grinding as if ready to burst; Jaz clamped his hands over his ears and lowered his head. ‘Oh God, can’t you do something?’ I reached for the handbrake but Kris would not let me stop. ‘Keep going,’ he commanded. When we finally got over the first range, the darkness was impenetrable. The weakened headlights lit up only the verge, the outer tendrils of the giant plants, but not any further, not even the earth of the hillside rising behind those infernal ferns. When the road turned into a hairpin, the lights missed everything and failed at the cliff’s edge.

  ‘I can’t drive like this,’ I said. ‘We have to stop. At least for daylight.’

  Kris picked up his gun and placed it across his knees. ‘OK,’ he agreed grudgingly.

  I parked the cruiser and turned off the engine.

  Kris opened a ventilator flap. ‘You two sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

  Jaz rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and settled into his seat. ‘I don’t think I should ever have spoken to you, Marc. It was a big mistake. I should have given you a bottle of Pin and walked away. Walked right away. Kept you out of my sweet, safe life.’ He kicked off his shoes and stretched out under his blanket in the back. ‘I had a such good life, you know, in my nice blue bar before you turned up.’

  The air was cold in the morning; damp with hill-chilled dew. I had slept collapsed over the steering wheel. Next to me, Kris had also slumped forward and dozed against the dashboard. Outside, moisture seeped out of the grass, making the moss creak. An unbelievable contrast to Maravil with its harsh brackish breeze. I wondered, if I were to utter her name, would the wind carry it to her wherever she lay?

  When Kris woke up, he immediately got us moving again. As we climbed higher, the road twisted between trees that became more and more deformed, brutalised by the winds escaping the lower country. Only a variety of moonwort seemed to thrive between the granite rocks. Below the airflow, small pink wild flowers clung to the edge. In places wisps of cloud blew over the road, momentarily obscuring the view of the foothills below, as well as the road winding ahead. We moved slowly, as though every tread on each tyre had to secure a foothold before turning, a groove at a time, up the sharply drawn zig-zag of the road appearing in front of the cruiser.

  At the summit, a long stretch of soggy grass reached out for the grey hank piled against the horizon. The cruiser picked up a bit of speed and seemed to roll with the land. The heat, the venom of the lowlands, even the belligerent ponies seemed more than a world away. Jaz was humming behind me, happy again. I could see him in the mirror, supine in the back with his hand trailing out of the window. I wanted to sing too, feeling absurdly hopeful. At last able to believe that the air was unstained, that light was illuminating and that the future was not, in itself, a pollutant.

  But then Kris held up his hand. A small waterhole came into view where a big black boulder broke the surface like the back of a beast. There were more rocks on the shore, and two small trees. I slowed down. Under one tree an enormous hawk-eagle hunched, gripping a rodent in its talons. Its wings swelled threateningly as it bent down to tear at its prey with a great hooked beak. I felt my own hunger tighten inside. ‘An eagle.’ I swallowed hard. ‘A real eagle.’ I waited for Kris to raise his gun, wanting not its death but that lean, feral meat.

  He eyed the bird without moving. ‘We are nearly there,’ he breathed.

  I was surprised. Samandia? It couldn’t be.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ Jaz chivvied from the back. ‘Let’s go.’

  Kris nodded and I, squeezing in my empty stomach, eased the vehicle forward. We rounded another small glen, a rise and a fall, and came to the manicured grounds of a colonial palace. A red and white striped barrier marked the end of the road.

  Kris put his finger to his lips. I cut the engine. Silence enveloped us. Before I could stop him, Kris slipped out and padded ahead. He paused by the side of the barrier and listened with his head held slightly at an angle. Then he turned and signalled to us to wait. A moment later he disappeared into the grounds. We watched him steal up the side of the steep garden, weaving in and out of the shrubs.

  ‘Why does he do that? Like a machine he just goes.’ Jaz shook his head. ‘Why can’t he communicate a little?’

  I felt anxious but Kris seemed to know what he was doing. I opened my door.

  ‘Wait.’ Jaz hobbled into his shoes. ‘Now don’t you start too. Wait for me.’

  I sneaked up to the barrier. The building at the top of the hill seemed to be floating like an empyreal pagoda crested with balconies and glazed ochre tiles. The scene was a picture held in glass. Protected, but with a sense of emptiness that echoed like a loss of heart, a truncated life.

  After a while Kris appeared high up on the front steps, his sleeves rolled up, waving. ‘He’s calling us.’ Jaz tugged at my belt.

  Halfway up the rough concrete walkway Jaz paused. ‘This place is really deserted, isn’t it?’

  At the entrance to the building, two stately black doors dressed with rows of lacquered brass studs and finger plates were open. The walls on either side, decorated with ornamental pillars, were painted a regency red.

  Kris, breathing heavily, ushered us in as though into his own home.

  ‘Is there no one here?’ Jaz asked, dubiously.

  Kris coughed into his hand. ‘It’s safe.’

  Inside there was a courtyard with a garden of ageing rose bushes in the middle and a gallery of delicate fretwork around it; a stone sculpture of a metamorphosing fish occupied the centre. Out of its lips the black streak of a defunct fountain ran.

  There were stairs at each corner of the quadrangle and right opposite, a glass wall curtained from the inside.

  ‘What a gorgeous curtain.’ Jaz prodded me. ‘Aren’t you just dying to know what’s behind it?’

  I looked at Kris. He bowed.

  The door was secured only by a simple tubular lock; Kris had no trouble opening it. Inside we discovered a dining hall with a dozen polished hardwood tables, each with eight chairs whose spindles seemed to imitate the cosmology of an extinct priesthood. Against one wall a sideboard with glasses and a cutlery box; above these a felt-board with notices pinned to it. Jaz went up to the board and read them out aloud as though they were poems on lentil soup, tofu, and mango mousse. He did an excited flamenco stamp. ‘My God, can we stay, can we stay?’

  Kris nodded. ‘Yes, for now we can all stay. There is nobody to stop us.’

  The far wall, also of glass, was uncurtained. I crossed the polished parquet floor and stepped down into the lower half of the hall. The view of the land below was extraordinarily pastoral: a vale of blond, gently sloping grassland, dotted with small inky tarns of calm water. The higher ground of the hills on the other side was fringed with tufts of matted jungle. The scene was familiar, even though I had never seen it before. Somehow the pastel colour of the grass, the reflective water, the balance of sky, cloud and soft sweeping hillsides each in its own way seemed connected to a faint glimmering inside my head.


  Meanwhile Jaz explored the pantry next door. I heard him open cupboards, larders, eco-fridges and cardboard boxes as if on a shopping spree. ‘Look at this stuff.’ He hauled out pulse packets and grain bags with huge, bounding exclamations. ‘Here.’ He passed around a packet of cereal bars. ‘Something decent to eat at last.’ He crammed a couple, quickly, into his mouth and opened a can of spaghetti hoops.

  Kris went to the sink and tested the taps. They worked. He washed his hands thoroughly and rinsed his forearms several times. He shook the water off in slow, wringing motions.

  Although Kris seemed remarkably at ease, I was not. I shovelled in some food quickly. ‘Why is there no one here?’

  Kris shrugged. ‘There is no one.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘It was locked up. I had to break in. Trust me. We can stay here.’

  I still felt uneasy, but Jaz was delighted. He spooned out more canned slop. ‘Here, have some more. This will have to keep us going until I get a proper meal sorted out. Hey, we can have a real party tonight.’

  ‘But somebody must live here. Look at the way it has been kept.’ I couldn’t understand it.

  ‘This is Farindola,’ Kris explained. ‘It was once a Chief’s retreat but the military have withdrawn. No one will come here now. We can stay. We must stay, until you work out what you want to do next.’

  Of course it could not have been Samandia. There were no coconut trees. In the excitement I’d forgotten Samandia was meant to be in the lower country. Much further on. Kris’s Farindola must be where Eldon used to go hiking as a boy. What he had called the lunar plains.