Heaven's Edge
Page 20
When the last glow of the sun receded, I lit a candle at her feet. And then another and another like a belt around us both. As night grew I showed her the new fireflies illuminating the bushes, a handful of old stars crackling through the clouds. We were safe, I said. I was sure. One way or another. In bed we slept within each other’s milky lips, counting the seconds by each other’s heartstops, living and dying one after another, the rifle with its gloaming sights nestled under the net.
‘Last night I dreamt we were back in the jungle. Somebody was hunting us.’ She reached out and touched my face. She had shadows under her eyes but everywhere else were signs of rapid regeneration. A thin wash of gold seeped into the sky. ‘You were younger. There was a roar. I could not hear what you were saying. I saw you slither down a small damp muddy track. I followed you. I saw an arrow in the sky falling. When we reached it, you picked it up. Behind you was the biggest waterfall I have ever seen. The sound of the water was deafening. Across the canyon the river was at our height: a hand gripping a huge black rock, the cascade like its fingers. The water just fell, and fell, unendingly. You were mesmerised. I could feel the spray.’
‘Is that what woke you up?’
‘Why? Was it you?’
I moistened the tendons of her throat; the skin around her Adam’s apple glistened. I wanted only for that moment to last. ‘Water is life, isn’t it? Your dream must have come to restore you.’
‘I remember now. I was hungry. There was a fruit tree but I couldn’t reach the fruit.’
‘Close your eyes,’ I said, and pressed a small, ripe mango to her. ‘You can’t pluck fruit from a dream tree.’ I brushed her roughened nipples with my lips. I kissed her and she kissed me too.
In the garden, I counted the notches I had cut since she had arrived; the next would be our fiftieth.
Early the following morning, I was woken by the insistent song of a bulbul. Uva didn’t stir. The bird seemed to come closer and then go away again. I got out of bed without disturbing the deep sleep she had at last been able to reach. I followed the song down into the garden. I wanted to see our latest arrival; perhaps even catch it for her. I looked for the songster among the orange and pink blossom, the light purple hearts of the sprawling bush by the fence, between the crabclaws and the canebursts. I followed its fletched notes all the way down to the crop garden. But all I ever saw was the movement of small leaves, the spring of a twig as the bird left each temporary perch and slipped further out of sight in a ruffled slipstream of warm air.
Then at the edge of the garden I discovered the remains of a freshly eaten mango, much larger than the one I had picked for her the previous day. The seed had been freshly sucked as I might have sucked it, or she, but neither of us had been to this particular tree for days.
The grass was bent in a trail that petered out and I couldn’t tell what was there and what I imagined to be there. Near the lower branches of the tree there were bootmarks in the earth where someone had jumped. They were not my bootmarks, and Uva had not worn anything but a toe-ring and rubber sandals on her feet since the day she arrived. In one sharp indent I found the crushed remains of a small spotted copper moth.
The blood hurt as it surged inside my chest. It was not fear I felt but the vulnerability of everything I loved. There was no telling where the intruder might be by now. Perhaps even at the house. The shaggy roof, the still, drowsy coconut trees, the splashes of colour around the garden – Uva’s bougainvillaea – and her easily named morning-glory made a peaceful and contented picture. I was sure I’d feel it, if it was already encroached, as she would. So close to the ground we have learnt to live.
I crept back into the house and collected the rifle and a sarong to cover myself.
She was up, uncoupled from the bed. She was taking in the sun on her bare skin to heal the last vestiges of her early wounds.
‘The gun?’ She looked surprised.
‘There’s somebody around,’ I replied, keeping my voice low.
She slipped down, quickly tying a robe around her. ‘Are you sure?’
I told her about the mango seed.
‘Could have been the monkey, no? Where is he anyway?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning. But it wasn’t, I’m sure. I saw the bootmarks. Big dents on the ground where he – or she – had jumped up for it.’
‘If he’s seen the house he’ll know it is inhabited. Since he has not come forward, he has either gone for help, or is scouting some more. Either way he has got to be found.’
‘I know.’ The words seemed more sombre to me than they had ever been before.
Uva went into the kitchen and collected a machete. ‘I’ll take this and my knife, you take the gun.’
‘Are you sure?’
Her face was still. Her head lowered as though with the weight of pain in her hard black eyes. ‘Have you ever used a knife to kill someone?’
I looked back at the garden. ‘I haven’t even used a gun. Not to kill.’ I pulled back the bolt; the first bullet was in the breech. I swallowed hard. The cords in my throat were taut. It seemed at that moment I no longer had a choice.
Uva said she would sweep around the northern edge and that I should follow the path past the fruit trees. ‘We’ll meet where the old river turns. Don’t shoot unless you have to. There may be more than one. We have to be sure to get them all.’ She moved swiftly, barefoot. I would have preferred for us to have gone together, but she was the one who knew how to fight. I was not frightened of who we might find; I feared only my own desire. My desire for our life to be everlasting.
I stole along the wall looking for a sign indicating the direction the intruder might have taken. I wanted my eyes to be hawks. Think as they would, your prey. Uva’s way: be one with the ground, with all that is on it. One earth, one mind. Hunt as you love, bound unto death. We do it because we must. For love as we know it. I circled the garden and tried to imagine the path anyone coming upon the enclosure might take.
By the ironwood tree I stopped. If only the bulbul would fly out, up in the air, and give a signal. The sun seemed to burn in a way it had not done for ages. My whole body was drenched in sweat. I could see our lives in the days to come, the months and years I would measure with notches and crosses, with hand-harvests and orange blossom, full of butterflies and moths, parakeets and pigeons. The earth will be green, the sky blue. We will learn to live with small acts of self-protection, merciless deaths and the troubled acceptance of a price that will sometimes seem too high for true survival. Ours will be a need to forget as much as to remember. My father had returned home. I understood that now. In our ruptured world it was not where I had been, but a place I could only imagine. It was the same for me. I did not want to leave here. I would not cross the sea again.
Ahead, the razor-leaf bamboo by the dry river-bed creaked. I slipped the safety catch off the gun. It felt lighter than before. I moved ahead slowly, crouching, my eye trained on the yellow segments swaying in the warm wind, the stiletto leaves. The clump of bamboo was too thick for anyone to be in it, but beyond, in the dry river-bed, a platoon could be waiting and I would not know it. Death could be there and I would not know it. Let there be light and let our lives be free. Let us not lose more than can ever be gained. Skirting the bamboo, I dropped down through a line of wild coffee shrubs. The berries were hard but still impregnated the air with their pungent smell. I wanted her; nothing else ever. Then, there on the steep ground, I stumbled over a dozing soldier. Jolted out of his slumber, he whined at me. I was too startled to do anything. He was close enough for me to see the furrows streaking his forehead, a small fuzzy dimple quivering under his lower lip. His face dissolved into Nirali’s outside the Palm Beach Hotel. I couldn’t bring the gun to bear. He grovelled before me. Suddenly he struck out and rolled away. Only then did I see the other soldiers in the hollow beyond. Their hands were red with the blood of the monkey they had butchered between them. They had stuck its head on a pole and set fire to its ta
il. They had come to take everything. The captain saw me and began to shout, raising his arms.
I gripped the gun hard. Forgive, forget, I once might have said, flee if we must – but I squeezed the trigger instead and worked the bolt again and again. Gunfire stuttered in my hands killing the captain first and then two more before I saw a figure fly in the air, jerking, twisting and turning like a ribbon. She leapt on the last man with her butterfly knife opening in one hand and a sun-stained machete in the other, swinging low and unremitting, between the hail of my bullets. She slew him as she fell.
Then the whole sky darkened as a legion of trident bats, disturbed from their brooding trees by the gunshots, took to the newly burnt air, drawing a broken eclipse over another fragile world for ever altered; riven.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Alexandra Pringle. Also to Marian McCarthy, Chiki Sarkar, and all the others at Bloomsbury; Bill Hamilton and Sara Fisher at A M Heath; Frances Coady.
I would also like to thank the many people who have shared with me their expertise, their gardens or their houses as I wrote. I am grateful, in particular, to those who offered me the experiences of their pasts, near and far.
Finally, special thanks to Tanisa and Shanthi for music and inspiration, and Helen without whom this book, too, could not be.
A Note on the Author
Romesh Gunesekera grew up in Sri Lanka and lives in London. His first novel Reef was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1994. He is also the author of Monkfish Moon, a collection of short stories and most recently, The Sandglass published in 1998.
By the Same Author
Reef
Monkfish Moon
The Sandglass
Heaven’s Edge
The Prisoner of Paradise
First published in Great Britain 2002
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2002 by Romesh Gunesekera
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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A CIP catalogue record is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 3226 4
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