On Sal Mal Lane

by Ru Freeman

  In Old Mrs. Joseph’s house they found a wedding photograph in which she looked surprised and delighted. They found silver spoons engraved with the letter J and a rubber-corked bottle in which was preserved the appendix that had been removed from Raju when he was nine, a fact only clear from the labeling. Inexplicably, both by virtue of its having survived the looting and its very presence, they found a gift-wrapped box of watercolor paints. Every now and then, Devi picked up a playing card with a picture of the Indian Pacific train on the back of it and she began collecting these as though they were treasures, her eyes searching for them alone and skipping over everything else.

  In the Nadesans’ house, to which they all went later in the day, they found nothing that made them pause because, while they had shared celebrations, they had never spent much time inside this home. They moved quickly through it, replacing what was fallen, sweeping what was broken and irreparable, organizing on the table those things that were clearly personal, folding saris and shirts. Suren stacked all the family pictures from the living room on the dining table, then systematically shook out the cracked glass from each frame into a wide-mouthed pot. When he had finished, he called Rose and Devi over to show them how much glass there was in the pot and the girls took turns shaking it to listen to the sound it made. And if during all of this work not one of the children, not even Devi, suffered from a wound, a finger cut on a bit of broken glass, a foot pierced by a nail, it was perhaps because they moved through the houses slowly, as through in a trance, the frivolity and foolish haste of the days past suddenly and utterly beyond their reach.

  Later that day, while the others continued in these activities, moving back and forth between houses, Nihil was selected by Mr. Herath to accompany him on visits that he made by walking and taking the bus, to check on their friends in other places. The roads they took were mostly empty, the usual collection of dropped bus tickets and receipts, fly-away paper bags and discarded newspapers augmented manifold by the debris of hurried departures, open suitcases and boxes, not all of them empty, even the occasional abandoned bicycle, the handlebars or tires twisted as though by force to prevent escape. One thing had returned to normal: the smell of the city’s air, the ocean breezes, undisturbed in their routines by the events of the previous days, having blown away the evidence of fire.

  Mr. Herath took Nihil first to the Hindu kovil in Colombo 4, which had been set up as a refugee center, to see the Selvadurai family, who huddled in a square of space in the far corner of a room filled end to end with people sitting, bewildered, among their possessions. When the Heraths reached them, Mrs. Selvadurai clutched Mr. Herath’s hand and asked him if he would take a note to his wife.

  “Our children were visiting Sinhalese friends in Nuwara Eliya,” she said. “I need to let them know we are safe.” She searched in a bag for a piece of paper and wrote a note that Nihil read as he walked beside his father to their next stop.

  Dearest Savi, Please call our children and tell them we are safe. The number to the place they are staying (Seneviratne) is 0945793. Here, in case you need them, are the national ID numbers for Murugan and for me. 367521974 V (Murugan), 383311907 V (me). I give them to you because I do not know what will happen now and you are my closest friend. —Sylvia

  “Why would we need their identity card numbers?” Nihil asked.

  “For identifying them, to say they are citizens,” Mr. Herath said.

  “But if they have their cards can’t they just show them?”

  “She is worried that the cards will be stolen,” Mr. Herath said, and he did not tell Nihil that Mrs. Selvadurai feared more bloodshed, that their property would be seized, that their children would be orphaned and hosts of other things that he couldn’t even comprehend, and that she was simply sharing the one thing that she had to share, the numbers that proved that she existed, that she belonged.

  They went to Joseph Lane, where Mr. Vaseeharan, Suren’s advanced maths teacher, lived. He was standing near his gate with his head bandaged.

  “I told those bloody thugs—they were about to hit me with a broomstick—I told them to find a more noble implement for their brutality,” he said, touching his head with pride though his voice shook. Mr. Herath nodded and patted him on the back and they talked at some length about the events of that day. As they walked away, Mr. Herath explained to Nihil that Vaseeharan was the son of the Tamil leader who had first called for separatism, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam.

  “The good son,” he said, “the brother, Chelva’s other son, Chandrahasan, is not a good person.” Mr. Herath, as was his practice, looked down as he walked.

  “Are we going to see the brother?” Nihil asked, his eyes meeting the eyes of strangers as he went, a trait he shared with his mother. “If they beat up this son, then the other son, the bad one, must be really suffering.”

  “No, I only wanted to make sure that Vaseeharan is being looked after. Chandrahasan will be fine. He has friends.” And Mr. Herath said no more about why he cared about one son, not the other, and why the one who was bad had suffered less than the one who was good, and Nihil himself did not know what questions to pose, in a situation where two brothers could evoke such different sympathies in his father. He walked beside him with many a backward glance at the man he would come to refer to as the Good Son, who waved each time Nihil turned around.

  That night, the Herath girls participated in cooking dinner for the first time, using the Nadesans’ pots. In the kitchen they peeled and chopped onions and garlic, they learned how to use the tin cutter to open the tins of fish, they were shown how to scrape coconut and how to make two kinds of milk with it, one thin, one thick, and in what order, exactly, to add the spices to the curries that were being prepared by Kamala.

  For a second night in a row they served their quiet neighbors, whose diminishment was so apparent, whose anger there was no space for, and whose sadness they could not ameliorate. For a second night, Mr. Herath, Mr. Sansoni, and Mr. Tissera walked up and down the street in turn, torch in hand, waiting for daybreak.

  And, for a second night in a row, Nihil sat beside Mr. Niles, with Devi for company, and the two of them talked about the things that Nihil had seen that day, but he would not let Devi say anything about the houses down their lane or what everything looked like outside the walls of their own home, its quiet and its regrets.

  Ash

  On the third day, Lucas came up the street to say that he had heard that Tigers had infiltrated the city of Colombo and though none of the families down Sal Mal Lane wanted to believe such tales, they discussed strategies and posted Mr. Jimmy Bolling, Mr. Tissera, and Mr. Sansoni at the bottom of the lane while Mr. Herath went to find out the truth.

  There was no truth to be had. There were only rumors that nobody could verify or deny: riots in prisons where Sinhalese prisoners were murdering Tamil prisoners; riots in northern towns where Sinhalese women were being murdered by Tamil villagers; disturbances in the southern towns of Matara and Galle and the hill country towns of Gampola and Badulla and even in the holy city of Anuradhapura. Some told him there were nearly three hundred people dead, while others said there were nearly a thousand people dead. Everybody talked about the numbers and the importance of the correct numbers as though that, the correct number, would explain everything. Nobody spoke of the numbers of Sinhalese who had helped, not harmed, their Tamil neighbors, not even they themselves. It was as though the work of a few had polluted them all, as if taking the blame for the acts of others might help dilute their shame. All it takes is a drop of cow dung to ruin a pot of pure curd, they murmured to themselves, wondering if it would ever be possible to purify that which had been so badly fouled.

  And because the adults who cared for them were preoccupied with the violence of this new day, the children were left alone.

  “Has Sonna come home?” Nihil asked, as they sat at the top of the lane in the shade of the sal mal trees.

  Unlike the trees down the road, those within the grove were unharmed, and
if they sat facing away from the lane on which they lived, they could pretend that nothing had changed. The ropy new branches wrapped and twisted around the trunks as they always had, and though most of the blooms were gone, the scent of those that were still decaying underfoot let them pretend that the grove was flowering. But none of them could turn their back on the road except for Devi, and she only did so because she had never been able to sit still and, even now, flitted from one tree to the other ducking under low-hanging branches and skipping around the trees as she listened to them talk.

  “Lucas told Tha that he thought he had seen Sonna hanging around with some men from the Elakandiya,” Suren said.

  Rose, who was leaning on the trunk of the tree directly across from Suren, said, “Don’ know what has happened on Kalyani Avenue. All Tamil houses. Who is there to save?”

  “Some Tamils mus’ be bad men,” Dolly said, but she said this sullenly, “otherwise how come riots?” She got to her feet and dusted off the back of her skirt, leaning forward and twisting around to make sure it was clean.

  “You’ll get it from Daddy if you talk like that,” Rose said, and at this Dolly fell silent; she had witnessed the beatings Sonna had received, for the raised voice, the misplaced word, the lack of speed in bringing something her father called for, and she knew what it meant to get it from their father.

  “Where do you think he’s gone?” Suren asked.

  “Still don’ know. Daddy says lootin’ somewhere. Daddy says he won’ let him come back to the house. Ever again, he said.” Rose was glad as she said this that Sonna was not home but was, rather, safe somewhere far away from their father, for Jimmy Bolling’s mood had been so dark for so long that she knew Sonna would not fare well at his hands.

  And since this kind of rupture between father and son was foreign even to Suren, who certainly had accumulated his share of grievances, as all sons did, against his own father, he suggested that they go to Kalyani Avenue, where, if they were fortunate, Sonna could be found, as Raju had once been found.

  Imagine a place isolated by design, nobody there to cry out to for help. Imagine fires unhurriedly set at two ends and a neighborhood uncomplicated by difference left to burn. Imagine a ghost town constructed entirely of ash. Imagine houses, still standing, but not one among them that displays signs of human struggle or salvage. Houses whose walls are entirely gray, full of form yet without substance, for if the children touched one thing, a fence post, a door, it disappeared with soft relief like dreams that fade into the dawn, barely a sound that rose like a sob and enveloped the children in gray powder. Imagine the road itself, covered with blown ash, and their footsteps falling in clear outlines as they walk down the road that no one has visited except, for a last time, with fire. Nothing here has been taken. Everything remains as was, the tables upright, the chairs too, the windows opened, lunch boxes packed, handbags on bureaus, suitcases under beds, all of it either burnt through, as far as the fire could go until there was nothing left to feed it, or covered in ash. Imagine all this, then listen to the voices of these children.

  “Where did the people go?” Devi asked for them all.

  “The people must have gone before they came,” Nihil said, and they all knew who that they were.

  “Were the people saved?” Devi pressed on.

  “How would we know?” Suren asked.

  “The people were saved,” Rashmi said, deciding for them all on a version of a tale that they could live with. “They left and they took nothing, so they must be safe.”

  None of them could know for sure if this was true, whether the inhabitants of Kalyani Avenue, just up the road from theirs, with nobody to speak for them, had survived, whether all of them were hiding in one of the houses into which they had not gone, or crouching in heaps on the floors of the refugee camps they had been told were set up in government buildings and schools and all the places of worship, the temples, mosques, churches, and kovils. They clumped together in a circle, their backs to each other as though they were under siege from all sides. While they stood there, each of them trying to convince themselves of an everything-is-all-right in the face of nothing-is-as-it-should-be, they were startled by the sound of a dog, its bark unnaturally alive in the midst of the destruction around them.

  “Sounds like a small dog,” Rose said, as they listened.

  “Yes, but from where is it coming? Can’t be a house. There isn’t even one that is not burnt,” Rashmi said, and they all looked down the part of the street they had just walked, and up the next section of it, which went, equally straight, in an L shape.

  The dog was found in the very last house, and it was a Pomeranian, formerly white, now singed and covered with ash. A dog that was both scared and happy to see them. A stainless steel bowl was found and washed and filled with water for it, but when they tried to coax the dog to come with them, it refused to go, scampering out of one set of arms after another, yelping. So, to the routine of cleaning houses and cooking, it seemed, the same food over and over again, was added a visit to Kalyani Avenue in between curfews, a visit they undertook as a group that on two occasions even included Jith, to feed the Pomeranian, which waited for them and welcomed them and partook of their offerings but would not leave the house, not even to relieve itself, until one day, when they arrived, they found it lying on its side, dead.

  “How could he have died?” Rashmi asked. “Of what?”

  Suren wanted to tell them that the dog died of a kind of heartache, but even he could not find a way to say those words without placing some of the blame on themselves, so he let the question remained unanswered.

  At the back of the house, Nihil and Dolly, the most determined two of the group, squatted and began digging a hole with nothing more than spoons, pausing to wipe the sweat off their faces and necks. Though the others joined them eventually, it took them over an hour to make a hole wide enough and deep enough for the dead Pomeranian, which they wrapped in one of Mrs. Herath’s old saris that they took without bothering to ask.

  “Good dog,” Suren said, as they stood over the grave, which they had marked by pressing the stainless steel bowl into the soft, loamy earth under a charred guava tree. None of the other children said anything, for what was there to say? Nothing had been saved, not even the last creature left alive down that road, not even when they had done their best to try to make it stay. They walked home silently and did not visit Kalyani Avenue again until, eventually, the ash blew over and covered their footprints too.

  Because there was no more to do, nothing more to be cleaned or kept, nothing more that could be said or done, and because all that remained was an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, and because, of all of them, it was Devi who understood the least, she finally went to see Raju. She did not ask for permission to go, for she knew, having asked before, that she would be denied for reasons nobody would share with her.

  Raju had not been seen for several days because Jimmy Bolling would not permit him to leave the house. Jimmy Bolling believed that if he did let Raju leave, Raju would walk down to his own house and see what had been done to it and he would tell his mother, Old Mrs. Joseph, and Jimmy Bolling could not have that, not until he could fix up the place a little. That was what he thought. He had not bargained for Devi.

  “I need to talk to Uncle Raju,” she said, her hair still dripping wet after a bath, the back of her dress damp from it. “I want to see how he is doing.”

  “He is fine,” Jimmy Bolling said, “we are looking after him well.”

  “I want to see him,” she persisted.

  “Daddy, she can come an’ see,” Rose said.

  “Nothin’ wrong with comin’ and talkin’,” Dolly added. “All these days they wouldn’ let her come.”

  Devi felt a surge of affection for Dolly who had suffered the loss of Jith, who was no longer permitted to speak to her after Mrs. Silva had discovered that he had joined them to visit Kalyani Avenue. Nobody spoke of or to the other Silvas, who remained indoors except for whe
n Mohan, never Jith, was sent to buy bread or rice, and when he went, he avoided eye contact.

  “I can give a message to Jith,” Devi offered, when Jimmy Bolling finally let her in.

  Dolly only smiled and said, “No, it’s okay. Better like this. Daddy doesn’ like.”

  And Devi might have spent some time talking to Dolly about Jith and her father and all the things that had changed but there was her friend running out from Jimmy Bolling’s bedroom, a wide grin on his face.

  “Devi! I thought nobody would come to see Uncle Raju! To see how Uncle Raju is doing! Every day even Rose and Dolly kept going out with you Herath children. I thought everybody had forgotten us!” He would have enfolded her in an embrace but for the fact that he was not given to doing that sort of thing, his sense of propriety too well hewn now, so Raju contented himself with flapping his monkey-long arms and pacing and being now cheerful, now sad as he asked for news from the outside.

  “What is happening outside, Devi? My cousin Jimmy won’t let me go out. He won’t tell me, girls won’t tell me, nobody will talk. Bin Ahmeds also want to know. We have been sitting here for so many days now, listening, smelled smoke even, but nobody will talk!”

  And Devi, because she was a child, told him.

  And because Raju was, himself, a child, he ran sobbing to his mother and told her, cursing his cousin for having lied to him, for having answered, repeatedly, Only the Nileses’ house was burnt, when he had asked if their house had been safe from the fires he knew had been set down that lane, he knew it.