by Roma Tearne
In another part of the island, in Colombo 10, a woman screams. It is an old familiar scream, primeval and ancient, travelling down the corridors of centuries. In this darkening hour, in the brief southern twilight, the woman screams again, this time more urgently. A child wants to be born. Nothing can stop the need, the desire to exist. Nothing, not the Colombo express rushing past, nor the poya moon gliding tissue-paper-thin across the fine tropical sky can stop it. The child is coming before its time; its clothes, lovingly embroidered, are piled inside a shoe-box in the woman’s house. The clothes are small enough to make this possible. Blue; most of the fine lawn clothes are as blue as the sky, for the woman is hoping for a son. She has already decided on a name. For months now she has been saying the name to herself in a whisper.
‘Ravi,’ she says, ‘Ravi.’
She speaks softly for fear of the evil eye. But now she is in pain, three weeks too early, and here in the government hospital. It is late. Too late to inform her mother. Or her sister. Her husband has been sent home, told to return in the morning. This is women’s business, the nurse tells him.
‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse says. ‘Three weeks is only a little early. And Doctor will be here shortly.’
So the husband goes, the sounds of his wife’s whimpers resounding uneasily in his ears.
The carousel has stopped. Alice and May stagger down the steps with shaky feet, fresh sea air cool in their faces. They are still laughing. The puppet master has begun his show. Beside him is a huge neon-coloured inflatable man who sways in the sea breeze. The monkey screams in terror. Namil buys them all an ice cream, but Alice can hardly eat it she is so excited. She can’t decide what to look at first. The world is a spinning, rocking, top of sparkling lights. Someone has climbed the tallest coconut tree and strung the coloured bulbs amongst the branches. The carousel starts up again. Alice watches as the lights swing across her face. Her grandfather, yawning, has gone home, leaving her with her aunt. May stands close to Namil and watches the carousel begin again slowly at first and then gathering speed. She smiles a secret smile, thinking about her wedding. Not long now, she thinks. There will be lights threaded across the trees in the garden for the wedding party, just like these at the fair. They will serve iced coffee, May tells her niece. And wedding cake.
‘It will be the height of sophistication,’ May says, laughing.
Esther, strolling by, hears of it and stops, impressed. Esther has won a baby doll at the coconut shy. As she’s too old for dolls, she gives it to Alice, but Alice isn’t really interested.
‘Give it to the new baby, when it’s born,’ Esther suggests.
‘What if it’s a boy?’ Alice asks.
Esther shrugs; she is already bored with the conversation. There is a boy called Anton in the crowd. He is here with his school friends. They are from the boys’ school and Esther thinks he likes her. She would like to borrow Alice to go with her to the lady card-reader’s tent.
‘Don’t be long,’ Aunty May warns. ‘We’ll wait here.’
The lady card-reader’s tent is occupied. Esther takes some money out of her purse. Then she sees the boy called Anton.
‘Here,’ she says, thrusting the money into Alice’s hand. ‘You go in, instead. I’ll stay here. I want to talk to someone. Go on, I’ll wait here for you.’
Alice doesn’t want to go. She can’t comprehend something as vast as the future, but Esther and the fairground atmosphere are too insistent.
‘Go on,’ Esther urges impatiently. ‘You can ask her anything. Ask if you are going to have a brother or sister.’
The customer inside the tent has come out now and there is no excuse. Esther pushes her inside the tent, nodding encouragingly.
‘I’ll wait here,’ she promises.
The tent is dark with a small glow from a red-shaded lamp. The lady card-reader sitting at the table points to the chair beside her.
‘How old are you?’ she asks in Singhalese.
Alice tells her. It is her birthday today, she says and the woman moves her head as though she wants her to stop talking now. Then she begins to lay the cards out on the table. They aren’t the same cards that Alice has seen the servant boy playing with. These cards have pictures. The lady card reader uncovers three sevens.
‘Not so good,’ she observes. ‘Can you swim?’
Alice can swim, although her grandmother doesn’t like her to go into the water here because of the strong currents. And all because once a servant had remarked she could drown if she weren’t careful. The servant had seen how Alice’s hair grew at the back of her head in a whirlpool. Ever since then her grandmother had been frightened of the sea. Nothing her grandfather could say or do could take away this fear. But yes, Alice tells the lady card reader, she can swim. The woman stares at her for a moment. Then she nods, satisfied.
‘I see lots of water,’ she says. ‘Cold water, grey faraway skies. And you have a good memory. Don’t forget anything. One day you will find happiness, so don’t give up.’
She looks at Alice and hesitates. Then she holds out her hand for the money. When Alice gives it to her, she stands up.
‘You are very talented,’ she says. ‘So do the best you can. It won’t be easy’ And then she holds open the curtain.
‘What on earth were you doing in there?’ Esther greets her crossly. ‘You’ve been ages. Your aunty’s going to be worried.’
‘Did you see Anton?’
Esther nods.
‘Well, are you going to have a brother or a sister?’
‘I forgot to ask,’ Alice tells her.
‘Idiot!’ Esther bursts out laughing at her.
In the bright heart of the fair the carousel is still turning and blasting loud music as the two girls walk back, carrying their thoughts with them.
The doctor is drunk. His breath smells as he squints at the notes the nurse gives him.
‘What?’ he asks in high-pitched Singhalese. ‘You called me in just for this Tamil woman?’
‘She isn’t Tamil, sir,’ the nurse tells him. ‘Just the husband.’ ‘Exactly!’ the doctor says, trying not to belch but without success.
‘That’s my point. Why should we help breed more Tamils? As if this country hasn’t enough already!’
Outside, the trees rustle in the slight breeze. Tonight is quiet, no drums, no police sirens, no sudden violence. A perfect night on which to be born.
‘All right,’ the doctor says, bored. ‘Take me to her.’
The woman lies groaning in a pool of sweat. Moonlight falls on the ripeness of her belly. Catching sight of the doctor, she begs him for something to relieve the pain. She speaks in perfect, old-fashioned Singhalese. The nurse bends and wipes her face and offers her a sip of water.
‘Give her some quinine,’ the doctor tells the nurse.
Then he examines the woman. Because he is drunk, because he has driven here in haste, leaving his dinner guests still at the table, he has forgotten his glasses. Roughly he inserts two fingers into her dilating uterus and the woman screams. The doctor tells her sharply to be quiet, and stepping back half loses his balance. The nurse glances at him, alarmed.
‘Sir?’ she asks tentatively.
The doctor does not know that this nurse is still a student. She should not be here alone, but the midwife has been called out on an emergency. The student nurse thinks this is an emergency too, but she doesn’t know what she could say. She is frightened. The doctor prods the woman, ignoring her screams, then, having satisfied himself that all is well, leans over the bed.
‘Do you understand English?’ he asks slowly.
It is important he does not slur his speech.
‘Yes,’ the woman says faintly, in Singhalese. ‘I do.’
‘Good. Then you will understand when I tell you these pains are perfectly normal. They are just called Braxton Hicks contractions. The baby will turn soon and then you’ll go into labour. It may take a few hours; you just have to be patient. Nothing to worry about. It’s a pe
rfectly normal process. You Tamil women have been doing this for centuries!’
And he laughs, washing his hands.
‘The nurse will take care of you,’ he says, gesturing to the nurse to give the woman the quinine. ‘This will calm you down. I’ll be back later.’
The woman, feeling another contraction coming towards her in a wave, tries to ride it and begins to cry out again. The nurse holds her head and she drinks the quinine, the bitterness hardly registering on her. The doe-eyed nurse wipes her face again and follows the doctor out.
‘Don’t bother calling me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. She’ll be fine till then,’ he says.
‘But, sir, I think it’s a breach,’ the nurse says tentatively.
She isn’t sure, of course, and doesn’t want to look foolish in front of this famous consultant.
‘Nonsense,’ the doctor tells her. ‘Do you think I don’t know a breach when I see one!’
Again he laughs in a high-pitched manner, peering at this pretty girl’s anxious face.
‘What’s a nice girl like you doing here?’ he asks.
He has a sudden urge to run his hand across her back and further down. He begins to imagine the places his hand might reach.
‘You should be in my nursing home,’ he says, a little unsteadily.
The nurse, her dark eyes made darker by tiredness, smiles a little.
‘We must see what we can do,’ promises the doctor, thinking how good it would be to have such a lovely face at his private clinic.
And then he goes out into the car park and towards his Mercedes, parked sleekly beside the stephanotis bush, back to his lighted house and his dinner guests.
‘Just one more ride,’ Alice pleads.
She feels as though they have only just got here. The puppet master is beginning another show and the Kathakali Man of Dance can be heard beating his drum. Alice does not want to miss anything. May and Namil hold hands in the darkness, swaying in time to the music as though they were one person and not two. Namil has brought May some bangles that glitter and jangle as she moves. Alice notices her aunt has some jasmine in her hair and her eyes are shining. She thinks May looks even more beautiful than usual. Namil is looking at her solemnly.
All right,’ May says, smiling at them both.
She can hardly keep still; the music makes her want to dance.
‘One more, then we go, no?’
This time Alice goes on the merry-go-round on her own. Slowly her eyes adjust to the faint line of sea and sky as she rides, swaying to the music. Is this what flying is like? Alice wants to move through the night forever, swooping down from the tops of the trees, scooping up the dark water below the cliffs. She can no longer see the faces standing below; all is a blur of rhythm and bright light. Everything reduced to sensation.
The woman screams. She is pleading. The baby inside her struggles, it turns and turns again. In the darkness she sees her stomach heave and rise up in another wave. It turns into a shape too grotesque to be normal. The woman is petrified, she doesn’t recognise her own body. It has become something separate from her, dragging her along into an unknown place. She screams, not wanting to go.
‘Please, please,’ she cries.
Even as she watches, her stomach lurches in a landslide movement to one side of the bed. The nurse who has been holding her is terrified.
‘Wait, I’ll get someone,’ she says. ‘Wait, hold on.’
The young, sweet nurse is crying too in great gasping sobs of panic.
But the woman is past listening. Her cries have changed. They pierce the air, becoming something other than despair, sounding inhuman. They are the cries of an unseen child. The child she once used to be, the child inside her, maybe. In the darkness outside, jasmine flowers open, bursting their pouches of scent. Large spiders move haltingly amongst the leaves of the creepers that grow against the whitewashed wall. This is the tropics; insects and reptilian life flourish. A drum is beating in the distance, its regular beat out of step with the cries of the woman in the hospital bed. The spiders and the snakes move relentlessly through the long grass, deaf to the fact that she is pleading for her life now.
They walk back down the hill carrying their prizes. The moon paints a long silver strip across the ground. The road has been recently tarred and the smell of hot bitumen mixes with the smell of the sea. Alice breathes it in deeply. The fair is following them home in magical bursts of heady lights and smells and cries, and the faint jaunty sound of music. She dances ahead of her aunt, waving her thin arms in the air. The moon picks up her shadow and throws it on to the empty road, turning her into a child on stilts.
Ts this child not tired yet!’ sighs May, pretending despair.
She is swinging Namil’s hand as she walks. She too takes little dancing steps.
‘I’m not a bit,’ Alice sings out in time to the music. I’m never going to be tired because I’m nine today!’
They all laugh. They are still laughing as they reach the house. Bee, who has been working in his studio, comes out to greet the revellers. Kamala is shaking her head and trying to look stern.
‘Come, come, Putha, it’s very late,’ she tells Alice. ‘You must have a wash and go to bed,’ she says, giving the little girl a hug.
Amma, she still has bags of energy,’ May cries in mock complaint. ‘Namil and I have been trying to wear her out with no success!’ she adds, kicking off her sandals and throwing herself down on one of the many planter’s chairs that dot the verandah.
‘Well, I’m taking her to the beach early tomorrow morning, so she’d better get some sleep or she won’t be able to wake,’ Bee tells her slyly.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Alice says, knowing when she is beaten.
Everyone laughs and she follows the servant in, the faint music from the hill still luring her like the tune of the pied piper.
In the last hour, the darkest moment of the night, just before dawn breaks, a doctor hurries into the room. He is a different, younger doctor. He too is a Singhalese; a family man, a father. Capable of hiding his feelings under a mask of professionalism. The woman on the bed has bled so much she is only semi-conscious, and the doctor knows he has not got much time. The baby, the girl child, he knows, is already dead. Later he will fill out the death certificate. Still birth, he will write. And although no one will be watching, his hand will have the faintest tremor; his jaw will tighten imperceptibly with anger. That will be all.
Later, in disgust, he will apply to leave his wretched country, unable to stomach what he has always known. For he, more than anyone, knows that life is cheap in this Third World paradise. It comes and goes like waves on its many beaches. But all of this will happen later. On this long, solitary night the doctor will do his job and deliver another dead child. He will see the baby’s soft downy hair as it comes away on his hands, when he lifts the body out of this woman. The woman, herself semi-conscious now, far beyond tears, has one last request.
‘Let me see her. Please, let me see her,’ she begs.
But the doctor, his face softened by pity, his heart filled with pain, shakes his head. The woman sees the compassion in his face in the growing light of the new day.
‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ the doctor says.
It is his only mistake that night.
2
DAWN WAS STILL AN HOUR AWAY. The caravan of delights had packed up its brightly coloured lanterns. Dulith the puppet man, long fingers drumming against the side of his truck, headed for the coast road. He was followed by a trailer carrying the carousel horses and another with the stilt-man at the wheel, trailing tinsel through the window. The clowns slept, chuckling softly, traces of make-up still on their grimy faces; and the helter-skelter men, having concertinaed the helter-skelter down to almost nothing, moved their trailer with hardly a sound. Leaving in silence was what they always aimed to do, waking no one, refusing to disturb the children and their dreams. The monkey lay sleeping beside the lion tame
r, exhausted and dour, and the lady card reader, having taken his wig off, urinated on to the road from his moving caravan. It was all part of the fun of the fair. It was all part of life for the fire-eater and the shadow dancer and the inflatable man. Another town, another crowd, another group of noisy punters eating freshly spun candyfloss. All in a day’s work; here today, gone tomorrow, with no time for regrets. The sea rose and fell as they hit the coast road, heading north. They would be back in a year; same time, same place, right here on the hill where the short, rough grass would have grown over the chalk numbers that had marked the positions of the rides.
Alice stirred. A telephone was ringing in her dream. It rang and rang again insistently, pushing against the carousel that played out its tune in her head. The feet running across the coconut-polished floors sounded like a thousand galloping horses. It was still dark, the sun had not risen; the mosquito net around her cot was undisturbed. Opening her eyes, Alice saw the sky on the point of being punctured by light. Her dream fled the room, leaving behind a puzzling echo. She frowned, trying to recall the music that played on the merry-go-round, but it evaded her. Nothing moved. Even the sap, bluish-white as mother’s milk, had stopped dripping from the rubber trees in the plantation nearby. But something had disturbed Alice. The edges of a peculiar awareness nudged her gently, like an old shell murmuring, insisting she awoke. She sat up, fully awake, alert now. She was hot and the flower-scented garden was calling out to her, so in a swift movement she threw off the mosquito net, stood on the low window sill beside her bed and launched herself on to the gravel below. It was the water pump dripping outside the gate that had woken her, she decided. Someone had forgotten to turn it off. Further along the garden a long beam of light extended across the ground. With one blow it cleft the garden into two. She saw with surprise that her grandfather was up and working in his studio. Alice hesitated, wondering whether to disturb him. Overhead, the beginnings of dawn poked a hole in the sky. Faint rose-pink light flooded out, spreading across the horizon, seeping into the sea. The air was filled with a selection of newly unwrapped scents from the Jacaranda tree. Alice crossed the gravel in her bare feet and stood on the empty coconut oil drum near the window of the studio. Her grandfather had his back turned to her. He was bent over his etching press, but the studio looked tidy, not at all as it usually did. Black scrim hung neatly on their nails, stiff with dry ink; his cleaned rollers were stacked on shelves above his head and none of his copper plates were in sight. Alice craned her head. What was her grandfather doing at this hour? Something about the angle of his body bothered her and she hesitated for a moment longer, not knowing whether she should disturb him. Bird-arias exploded into the morning. She heard a soft, puzzling sound and then she froze in terror as Bee sunk slowly to his knees. The next instance she toppled over and crashed down into the gravel.