by Roma Tearne
Those were his words. I felt them race through me like quicksilver, like the cyanide the boys take when they are caught by the army. Race through me and spill out on to the concrete floor I was standing on. Outside, the bird was still singing and I could hear it through my screams.
‘No, no, no,’ I screamed. ‘No, no, no.’
I wasn’t crying. Tears take time to gather, moments have to pass before they are released from the eyes. Screaming comes first. Had I known what it would be like when they finally came crashing against me, I would have held them off for as long as I could. But I didn’t know.
He kept talking to me. I didn’t understand what he was saying. All I knew was that I was holding the phone but my face was close to the ground. I could see an ant hurrying across by my feet; I could hear a jay in the tree outside. I could hear the man saying my name over and over again.
‘I will ring again in half an hour,’ the man was saying. ‘When your daughter comes. I want to talk to someone who can take down a contact number.’
I don’t really remember what he was saying. I remember the tone of his voice, but that was all. It was how Tara found me, crouched on the ground.’
‘Aunty, what has happened?’ she asked.
I saw her face through a blur; everything was a blur now, everything would be this way, forever. I was saying his name over and over again and she took the phone out of my hand. I could hear her voice rising and falling as she talked and then from nowhere there were other people in the house. That is all I remember for some time.
When I surfaced there were many people in the room. I had no idea who they were. Everyone was talking in subdued voices. I can see it very clearly, the way it all happened, the way I was gripped by grief, the way my mind ripped apart with disbelief and my breathing lowered itself to a pant. I remember crying for someone to take away the pain. It was so physical. It still is, only now it is worse than I believed possible. Now I am charged by invisible forces to keep reliving every detail of that moment. I am charged to tell everyone I meet, everyone who will listen, the details of that day. I am impelled to speak of how those hours slipped away, how rain clouds gathered but did not fall, how the bird that had sung came closer to the house to sing so sweetly and so fearlessly that all in that house of death heard it and marvelled at its song. What I have grown old in possession of was gone. There was nothing else of importance. These are the things I need to talk of, for ever, until the end of my life, to whoever will listen. It is my only task, now, a part of mothering that no mother imagines they will ever do.
Yesterday, when Ria took me for a walk, as we wandered across the town in silence, I saw a woman pushing a small pushchair with a boy in it. The child could not have been more than three; the woman saw me looking at him and she smiled proudly. Ah, I thought, you do not know what things you might have to face. The boy wriggled his legs excitedly, forcing me to think of Ben.
Other people took charge. Other people who were more capable, shocked, yet more detached, intervened. I was incapable. The day turned a sickly green as though I was viewing it from the bottom of a well through the ferns that grow there. When the sedative wore off I found I was still screaming. It is difficult to describe the way in which I cried. Someone said the sound was that of an animal in pain. I heard them talking outside the house in Tamil. Tara was with me all the time. She was crying as well, and in some corner of my mind I was aware that for her, too, the future as she knew it was over. The school teacher came. He talked to the doctor. They were talking about moving me to some other safer place, but I would not move.
‘Amma, we must move from here, in case they start shelling again.’
‘I cannot leave,’ I cried. ‘Go without me.’
I pulled back the curtain into the alcove that had been Ben’s room. The curtain was green; all his books were placed neatly on the shelves he had made. There were pictures of Tara on the wall, pictures of them both. Pictures of them smiling. There was a small statue of the Virgin Mary and next to it was a framed photograph of his father, taken long ago, before Ben was born, before Percy was a father. And at that moment, my heart’s blood ran cold, for there in front of me were the few clothes he had left behind, the T-shirts, the cotton trousers, the trainers with holes in them that he didn’t want to throw away. I had washed and ironed the clothes for his return. Folded and mended the holes in them, cleaned the old trainers. So that everything would be in order for when he needed them. I remember the screaming beginning again. I remember the sight of my son’s clothes was the worst of all. Like a signature, handwriting that could never be erased. And I remembered too that in the roof, on a small ledge, was a trunk with other things from our broken lives, things from his childhood: his toys, his first shoes, his certificates. I turned towards the picture of Our Lord, his heart bleeding, the thorns surrounding him, but the face of Our Lord was turned away from me.
It was at that moment that the darkness descended. Pitilessly, unbending, running through me like poison.
‘Anula?’ Tara said. ‘You knew when he left it was dangerous. You knew, you knew!’
But he had been gone for months. He had survived the journey, he was working, waiting for his papers to come through, he had rung me. I thought I would see him soon. I thought he would send for Tara as we had planned.
‘Be happy, son,’ I had said as I kissed him goodbye. ‘Please, for my sake.’
Grief zig-zagged across my mind. There was so much of it, so many oceans, all surging towards me, it might have been better had I simply given in and drowned. But no, cunningly, I floated in this sea of grief and did not die. I could not drown. Memories rushed forward, rolling and flattening out against my totally lucid brain, giving me word-pictures again and again. So that, even as I struggled to deal with one image, raising my head above the waters, I was knocked back by another. Remember, remember, my mind screamed. My mind had turned into a monster.
We had been planning his departure for a long time. Longer than a year. Ever since his cousin was killed and the army questioned Ben for hours, I been terrified they would kill him too. He had known he would leave one day. He had survived his father’s disappearance and had learnt to live with the fear of losing me. None of this stopped him from working. He was clever, conscientious, and he passionately wanted to practise as a doctor. Jaffna needs doctors, Amma, he used to say.
‘I want to heal people, not kill them!’
That is what my son used to say. He had managed by dint of keeping very quiet (we moved several times to avoid both the Tigers and the army) to survive. We had good friends. Since Percy was taken, there were those who looked out for us. The priest, the school teacher, people who saw Ben as someone who could help give Jaffna a future and therefore wanted him to survive. Yes, there are such people in the world. Even in Jaffna. And so he grew into a tall young man, so like his father that it made my heart swell with pride to look at him. In this way I indulged myself in love in this time of war. But it was obvious to all of us that he would have to go if his life wasn’t to be truncated. Sooner or later he would get caught, sooner or later the army or the Tigers would catch him.
The night he left me was moonless. The smugglers had chosen it carefully. In the darkness wild jasmine bloomed and our sense of smell grew stronger. He would leave in the dead of night, he told me.
‘Don’t get up, Amma,’ he said, and I smiled in spite of my fear.
Did he really think I would not get up! How little do you know me, my son, I thought.
I had made some arpe and vade for the journey. And I had filled a plastic bottle with king coconut juice. I was packing his food as I had done all his life; as if he was going to school. I wrapped a little rice in a plantain leaf, but he looked at the parcel and shook his head.
‘I can’t carry all that,’ he said.
I could see his mind was firmly fixed on other things and not his eventual hunger. All boys are like that. Think only of the moment, deal with the hunger later on, when you get back
home, after class, ravenous, demanding instant food. Again I smiled, remembering. My little swimmer!
We had been busy all day with the preparations for his departure. I had not had a moment for introspection. This trip, this last desperate dash in search of safety, had taken every ounce of energy in planning, every rupee I could muster. I had sold everything: my wedding thora, my remaining bangles, my wedding ring.
‘Don’t do that, Amma,’ Ben had said when he realised what I was planning to do.
He looked at me disapprovingly.
‘It is nothing, Ben,’ I told him. ‘Human life, your life is more important. This jewellery is only a symbol.’
He had been unhappy for days, had begun to mutter that he wouldn’t go, and I had panicked. I knew he was marked. It would be a matter of time before the Tigers hunted him down. Young, fit, intelligent, perfect fodder for their bloody cause. Over my dead body, I thought.
‘Get him out,’ Father Anselm said, ‘as soon as you can.’
So I sold my jewellery, knowing that Percy, had he been with me, would have approved.
Finding the money was the easiest part. The next thing we needed to do was to find a courier who was trustworthy. Father Anselm helped. He knew of a man who was safe and eventually the whole thing was set up. I can’t describe the tension, the bitter-sweet triumph. Enough to say I just handed over the money. It felt as if I was handing over my life. After that, there was nothing more to do except wait for the papers to arrive. A passport—false, of course—an entry visa written in Russian. Was it believable? we wondered, staring at the script. I looked at my son’s curly head as he lay sleeping. He was unfazed by all of it. Having made up his mind that this was what he had to do, he simply got on with the job of preparing to leave. I could not be so calm. I knew that to leave the land where you were born was not a thing to be done lightly.
Father Anselm was my solace, both at that moment of departure, and later too, when everything spiralled into blackness.
‘No, no, Anula.’ He shook his head gently. ‘Don’t think of it in that way. Wherever the moon shines, that is the same world you share with your son.’
Dear Father Anselm. That was what he said. Wherever the moon shines. Father Anselm had been a child during the Second World War. He said there was a song the soldiers sang.
‘I’ll be looking at the moon, and I’ll be thinking of you.’
He sang it sadly for me.
And so, slowly we inched our way towards Ben’s departure and I thought by the time the final morning arrived I was prepared. Everyone we knew had been visiting us in a steady stream for days. In spite of the shelling and the curfews, our visitors arrived to say goodbye to Ben. He was well loved. Many remembered Percy and how he had risked his own life over and over again for others, and Ben was his son. So they came, bringing gifts most of which had to be left behind. I found myself eating vadi for days after. Tara was at our place almost constantly now. Ben would take her into his room behind the green curtain and I could hear them laughing and I would marvel at how the young can live so much in the moment, however dangerous the situation was. This is what it is to be young, I told myself. Neither side in this war could take that away. Youth, I told myself with satisfaction, triumphed, every time.
The day of his departure was interminably long. I was weary of holding together my emotions, feeling the weight in my heart, helplessly, knowing that my grief was in abeyance. Outside the small bungalow the heat expanded in the slow, sad air. Later I realised that the silence was due to the sudden withdrawal of the army. All fighting seemed to have stopped. This is crazy, I thought. Why does he have to leave? The day inched by. Returning exhausted from the well that afternoon, I sat on the step at the back of the kitchen. Ben had gone out on an errand. He had been in and out of the house for most of the day, muttering to himself, distracted, ticking things off on his list. Avoiding my eye. All around the light seemed to be filled with an unbearable poignancy. It was as if what was going on inside me was happening outside too. Everything was holding on, everything trembled with the thought that this was his last day. I rested my back against the hot brick wall and closed my eyes. Flies buzzed. A gecko scratched the air in bursts. I waited. It felt strange to be resting in this way. I could not remember a time when I had sat so still. Never had I missed Percy as I did at that moment, sitting under the green shade of the murunga tree. Everything that has gone before, I thought, was made null and void by this day. I kept going back to the beginning, to that other sunlit day when I left my father’s house to marry Percy. How happy we had been, how we had laughed with the hope we were filled with.
‘Aunty,’ a voice said, breaking into my thoughts.
It was Tara, coming to sit down beside me. She was twisting a thin gold ring that held a garnet, round and round one of her fingers. I didn’t remember seeing it before. Glancing at her I saw she had been crying again.
‘He’s gone to get his shoes from the mender’s,’ Tara said, not looking at me.
‘Are you skipping school today?’ I asked.
Tara was seventeen, tall for a Tamil, beautiful, with sleek, long black hair. She had tied it in a plait that lay neatly along her back. When she finished her exams she had wanted to go to medical school, but unlike Ben the chances of her doing that in today’s climate were slim. She nodded without looking at me. Her eyelashes were wet.
‘School has been cancelled because of a burst water pipe. If everything stays quiet it will be mended by Monday.’
Neither of us said what we were thinking, that by Monday Ben would be gone and our world would be another kind of place. I could feel her shivering slightly.
‘He’ll be fine, Tara. You’ll see. As soon as he gets to England, he’ll write.’
She nodded and I knew that she, too, was thinking of the long journey ahead of him. I felt her terror coming towards me in a wave. Neither of us could speak of it. Long shadows fell across the yard on the dry red earth. Just beyond the trees it was possible to glimpse a burst of yellow flowers from the jacaranda tree. It caught the light at an angle so that it appeared like a wheel of fireworks. I remember looking at it as if for the first time in my life.
Tara stayed with me until Ben returned from his errands. Then before we had our early evening meal she went home.
‘No, no, Aunty, there is food at home for me,’ she lied.
I knew she was giving me the last evening with Ben alone. Ben, too, seemed to have decided. He would walk over to her house after our meal to say goodbye. Everything was ready. His clothes were squeezed into the smallest of rucksacks; his false papers were beside them, along with a pen and a diary. There was a small packet of boiled sweets, the same sweets he used to like in fourth grade. That much hadn’t changed. My face was stiff with self-control. The food I had prepared earlier was simple and his favourite. Some rice, a little fish I had managed to get that morning, a pol-sambol and some curd. I could hardly eat and I suspect he too was struggling. But he hid the fact and pretended to eat with relish. Night had fallen like a stone as we ate. There were three houses on the road where we lived and from the verandah I could see the cautious glow of electric lights.
‘They know I’m leaving so they decided to end the war,’ Ben said, pulling a face, laughing. ‘I’m going to meet Tara, now, Ma.’
‘Be careful,’ I said, uselessly.
He nodded. The soldiers that rode on motorbikes along the main road, their machine guns strapped to their hips, were one of many constant worries. They would suddenly swarm an area, surround a house or a group of people out walking, demand to see their ID, and after that, who knows. If the mood took them, they might put a bullet through your head.
‘Don’t worry.’ Ben grinned. ‘It’s too late for them to get me now!’
We had not talked properly. Communicating with your son is something that is done almost subliminally; anxiety, like love, passes between you without the need for speech. He knew I was frightened of his journey, just as he had known of my consta
nt worry about his safety. To have sons in this part of the country is no longer a blessing. I knew he worried for my safety too, alone without Percy and soon without him, that he was trying not to think about leaving Tara behind. To love is a dangerous thing in Sri Lanka.
While he was gone I started to sew the dress I was making for Tara. It was my secret present for her birthday. Ben had made her a necklace of blown birds’ eggs. They were of mottled browns and reds, all strung together on thread. He had been collecting broken birds eggs for ages with this in mind, I suppose. The necklace was complete and looked very lovely. I was to give it to her when he left. At midnight they both returned to stand in the doorway, silently. Looking up, I had the strangest sense of their completeness and their quiet togetherness. This moment was their best, I thought. They should have got married even though she was still a schoolgirl. Instead he was leaving. Who knew if she would stay faithful to him? But this moment I felt was perfect. Ben must have thought so too, because a moment later he fetched the bird-egg necklace and took it out to her on the verandah. The murmur of their voices was breaking my heart. Later they went into his little alcove and closed the curtain. There were just three hours left. I hoped they would get some sleep. Packing away my things, I went into my room and lay fully clothed on the bed where once Percy and I had slept. It no longer felt like a room for two people.
I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew Ben was shaking my shoulder.
‘It’s a quarter to, Amma,’ he whispered and my heart leapt like a fish.
Tara was standing in the kitchen, subdued again; her dress crumpled, waiting.
‘Do you want some tea?’ I asked, trying to be calm.
We strained our ears. There was the faintest sound, a scraping of something. We froze, but it was only Father Anselm.