Malini

by Robert Hillman

Malini handed the phone to Banni. She said, ‘Amma? I want to go home, Amma!’

  Over the phone came wailing, interrupted by the girls’ names being repeated rapidly. Then, ‘I bless all the gods of the world for your safety!’

  Malini allowed her sister to talk to their mother and father for more than a minute – enough time for Banni to mention a few issues she had with being bossed about and to tell her father that their friend Kandan had died. She was about to tell him more about Kandan, but her father said, ‘For your friend, I am sorry. But now, give the phone to Malini.’

  ‘I’m here, Appa.’

  ‘Tell me your situation.’

  ‘Appa, we are walking to find Appappa. We have come a long way. I think we are close now. We have crossed the great highway below the big reservoir at Kantale, I think. If we head west, we will pass north of Galenbindunuwewa and find Ulla Alakana. I hope.’

  ‘Ah, beloved Daughter! Listen, I have little time left to talk. We are in some danger, I must not deceive you about that. Keep to your path. Daughter, you are so brave, my heart is full of pride. Now I must go.’

  ‘Appa!’

  ‘I must go, Daughter. If it is possible, I will call again in three days.’

  The call ended.

  Such a storm of tears overcame Malini! She threw back her head and howled. She had heard the voices of her mother and father, which was ecstasy, and now the voices were gone. Banni tried to console her sister, but it was impossible. Then Nanda and the boys appeared, their expressions full of concern. They circled Malini and touched her face, her arms; they kissed her hands.

  Then the storm passed, and Malini sat in silence, staring at the phone in her hand. Finally, she looked up and smiled and allowed Nanda to dry her tears with the hem of her blouse.

  ‘What a baby I am!’ said Malini. ‘Forgive me, children. I have been speaking to Appa and Amma.’

  Malini was silent again, for minute after minute. Then she said, ‘We will eat something. After we eat, we return to our path.’

  Malini sat with another of Kandan’s maps on her knees and tried to work out the route they would take. What she had told her father was mostly based on guesses. The highway was clear on the map, but with only numbers and symbols to go by, she would have to feel her way to Ulla Alakana: further west was her best estimate, or perhaps slightly north-west. The time would come when she would be compelled to ask for directions.

  They traipsed into the woodland once again. Strangely, the forest on the western side of the highway was not quite the same as the forest on the eastern side. There were many more tall trees. Nanda, who had spent time in orphanage camps surrounded by such trees, told the others their Sinhalese names – rata kekuna, bulu, telamba. The bulus, she said, had magic in them. If you rested beneath one and filled your mind with thoughts of the Buddha, forest animals would come to your feet and offer themselves for your cooking pot. Malini laughed at the story, but Nanda insisted, ‘No, no, it is true!’

  Within an hour, the tall trees thinned out and the ground became level. But then, an obstacle appeared: a very extensive swamp, reeds rising from it for as far as the eye could see.

  Malini gazed at the swamp, wishing she had Kandan with her to walk out and test the depth. Wishing that Kandan was still alive. Wishing many things.

  ‘I am going to see how high the water is,’ she told Banni and Nanda. She handed the phone to Banni, took two steps, three steps, and on the fourth disappeared beneath the water. She surfaced again and struggled back to shore. Gayan and Amal were hooting with laughter.

  Banni was staring at her in fascination and horror. ‘Disgusting.’

  Malini was about to demand exactly what was disgusting when she saw that her hands and arms were covered in leeches. Not the small brown leeches that everyone on the island had to deal with at some time, but fat black monsters, the size of slugs.

  Malini stayed calm. Her father had taught her how to remove leeches.

  ‘Give me the box of matches,’ she said to Banni.

  She lit one match after another, touching the flame to the leeches. Gayan and Amal were thrilled by the spectacle and asked to hold the burning matches. Malini denied them the delight they craved, but allowed Nanda to help. The task repulsed Nanda, but she persisted. At first, the heat of the flame made the leeches bite more deeply, but then they released their grip and dropped off, leaving a bleeding sore. The real danger of a leech bite was not the blood the leech took, but the wound it left, which could easily become infected. Once Malini had burned the leeches from her skin, she rubbed antiseptic powder into the bleeding bites. She said to herself, When you next have an idea, Malini, I want you to store it carefully in your brain, and leave it there. Forever.

  It was difficult to tell whether it would be a shorter journey to skirt the swamp by heading south, or north. In the end, Malini chose to go north, simply for the sake of moving on.

  It wasn’t long before they came upon an old man with his trousers rolled up. All the skin of his legs below his knees was dyed a blue as vivid as the sky. He was using a net attached to a very long bamboo pole to fish leeches from the swamp. On the shore was a large tin, once an engine oil container, its top now removed, and into this tin he dropped the leeches from his net.

  Malini and the children watched the old man at work for a few minutes before he responded to their presence.

  When he turned to face them they saw that he was blind, his eyes covered by pale cataracts. He spoke in Tamil. ‘Far from home, wayfarers!’

  ‘We are, sir,’ said Malini. ‘Sir, might you tell me if we must travel far to get around the swamp?’

  ‘No rooster? Is the hen in charge of the chicken house?’ said the old man, and he let out a cackling laugh. Then he said, ‘You have questions. I can count them. Why are my old legs blue? It is a dye made of herbs that my leech brothers hate. Ha! Let them hate it! Why do I take my leech brothers from their home and put them in my tin? The doctors of our land buy them from me. It is no hardship for the leech brothers. The doctors pamper them and they feast each day on good thick blood. It is a wonder in the world that they do not jump into my net by themselves!’

  Malini said, ‘Sir, is it far from here to the end of the swamp? We wish to go west, but the swamp is in the way.’

  ‘In the way?’ said the old man. ‘Ha! The swamp lived here before your appappa was born. In the way?’

  Banni crept close and looked into the leech gatherer’s tin. It seethed with the fat creatures, and she stepped back quickly.

  The old man said, ‘They frighten you, little one? Not every creature is beautiful.’

  Malini tried again. ‘Sir, my question?’

  ‘Mrs Hen has a question! Do I have an answer for her? No, it is not far. Two days’ walking, then you can go west.’

  ‘Two days!’

  ‘Two if you walk fast. Or three.’

  ‘Sir, that’s a long journey!’

  ‘No, Mrs Hen. From here to the hot sun is a long journey. From here to Lord Shiva’s bower at the centre of the universe is a long journey. Two days is nothing. Or three.’

  Malini thanked the old man, as courtesy demanded, even though he’d left her feeling bleak. Two days or even three just to get back on a westward course!

  A saying that Malini’s father often muttered with a sigh went like this: There are no corners in a round world. What did he mean? That we shouldn’t be looking for good fortune when we turn a corner, but accept what our eyes can see. Malini was repeating those words about corners and a round world to herself as she led her sister and Nanda and the boys along the fringe of the swamp. Her spirits were not so low now; as soon as she thought of the phone inside her sari, and of her father’s promised call, she smiled. At the same time, she would have been very grateful for a corner; very grateful for some good fortune. And somehow, she found it, without any corners in sight.

  From among the reeds that grew tallest here on the shore of the swamp emerged a man dressed in rubber boots that came u
p almost to his armpits. He wore a tightly bound red Tamil turban and grasped in each hand was a writhing eel. He said in Tamil, ‘Adjuna the fisherman is my name to all. What names are you given?’

  Malini rattled off names, steeling herself to stand her ground as the eels thrashed about in the fisherman’s grip.

  Adjuna the fisherman sloshed up onto the bank. ‘Will you say hello?’ he said, and thrust one of the eels towards Gayan, the most alarmed of the children. Gayan let out a shriek and hid himself behind Nanda. Then the man in the strange boots held the eel’s head up to his own face. ‘No friends here, meen!’ he said to the fish. And with that, he lifted the eel to his mouth and bit down hard just behind the head, then did the same to the second eel. He threw both eels to the ground, where they wriggled for a few seconds before falling still.

  Without knowing what she was doing, Malini had taken three or four steps backwards from both the man and the eels. They repulsed her, much more than the leeches, each a metre long and as thick as the fisherman’s wrists. In death, their open mouths revealed rows of small glittering teeth. Was the swamp full of nothing but the most hideous creatures of the island?

  Nanda, however, had crouched down and was prodding the eels with her finger. ‘Fat fish,’ she said in Sinhala. ‘You will do well in the market, sir.’

  ‘Don’t touch them!’ Banni shrieked. ‘Are you mad?’

  Nanda shrugged. ‘I was sent to work in the Tamil fish market of Colombo when I was five,’ she said. ‘I gutted a hundred eels each week. The people who owned me told the market man I was Tamil. I have no fear of eels.’

  And here was the good fortune: the fisherman in the rubber boots that saved him from leech bites, who gave his name as Adjuna, owned a boat, full of freshly killed eels, and told Malini that he would not see her walking for ages to skirt the swamp but would carry her and the children across. ‘Sister,’ he said, ‘would Shiva forgive me if I made you walk, or swim? The eels would eat you.’

  The boat, concealed in the reeds nearby, was long and narrow, designed to push its way through the reeds. It was forced through the water not by oars, but with a long pole.

  More than one trip across the swamp would be needed to carry everyone in Malini’s family to the far shore. She sent the boys and Nanda first, while she waited with Banni. The boys were thrilled to be in the boat, but seeing Malini left behind caused them to wail like frightened cats.

  Malini called out to them, ‘Be brave!’

  The boys called back, ‘Aiee! We will die in the water!’

  Malini and Banni lay down in the grass to wait. They were both so tired from walking that they had forgotten the lesson they had learned as small children: Naga lives in the tall grass and Naga will rise up and strike you dead. Naga was the snake, the cobra, with his flared hood, eyes circled in black and fangs dripping with poison. And Naga was at this moment rearing above Malini and Banni where they lay with their eyes shut in the tall grass.

  Banni opened her eyes first. She yawned, raised herself on one elbow, and froze.

  This Naga was a monster of his tribe, very thick just below his neck and two metres long. His scales were a greyish colour, changing to bronze close to his head. On the back of his flared hood a strange design had been drawn by nature, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

  Naga was flicking his forked tongue rapidly, tasting the scent of human in the air. He weaved his head from side to side as if steadying himself for his lightning-fast thrust. Banni had seen a Naga like this attack a rat under the mango tree in the garden of her parents’ house. The snake had sunk his fangs into the rat’s head, holding on for minute after minute, coiling his body as the rat writhed and squealed. She had seen the rat finally grow still as the deadly venom spread through its veins.

  This Naga was much bigger.

  Banni whispered to Malini, ‘Sister, Naga is here.’

  Malini muttered, ‘What?’

  ‘Sister, Naga is here.’

  Malini opened her eyes. She saw nothing for a moment, then her gaze settled on Naga. Her instinct was to seize her sister and run, but she knew that one sudden movement would be enough to make Naga strike. She stared at the weaving head with its great hood spread wide, at the flicking blue tongue. Naga’s focus was on her sister’s face – that’s where he would sink his fangs. And once he had bitten, he would hold his teeth deep in her flesh, even if she thrashed about and screamed, as she surely would.

  Malini murmured to Banni, ‘Do not move so much as an eyelash.’ Then she prayed silently to Shiva, reminding Him that Banni Ranawana was a moon child recognised by a sadhu, and pleading for intervention.

  Banni stared straight into the eyes of Naga and did not blink.

  A shadow passed over the sisters, and over Naga. The shadow skimmed the reeds of the marsh, then returned.

  Malini, even as she prayed, glanced up at the sky and saw the shape of a serpent eagle – the only bird in Sri Lanka bold enough to attack Naga. Her heart leapt as the eagle wheeled.

  Naga was gone in an instant, slithering into the marsh grass to avoid the talons of his enemy. The eagle did not dive, seeing two humans close to the snake. Within seconds it was high above them again, heading west.

  ‘You are indeed a moon child,’ said Malini, and she took her sister in her arms.

  Adjuna reappeared on the marsh, bending and straightening as he plunged the long pole into the mud. He raised a hand and waved. The sisters stood on the shore and waited for him to glide the bow of the narrow boat almost to their feet.

  ‘So strange, Sister!’ he said. ‘As I was returning, a serpent eagle flew overhead! So beautiful.’

  When they reached the far shore, Adjuna tied his boat to a jetty. The boys were ecstatic to see them.

  Before they parted ways, Malini questioned Adjuna, asking if he knew of a village further west by the name of Ulla Alakana.

  ‘Ulla Alakana, yes,’ said Adjuna. ‘Two days west.’

  ‘Will we meet soldiers?’ said Malini.

  ‘Soldiers, no. Bad people, maybe.’

  ‘Bad people?’

  ‘Bandits who have no gods. They’ll kill you for ten rupees.’

  ‘We have lived through worse,’ said Malini.

  Two days to Ulla Alakana. Malini thought, Surely the gods intend us to arrive at our destination. Surely we would have perished much sooner if that was to be our fate. But she remained wary. She stopped every ten minutes to study the landscape ahead.

  They reached a hilly region, and to the south Malini could see a tea plantation where a small number of Tamil women in blue saris were working. Malini had heard on the news that many of the Tamil tea-pickers had abandoned the plantations of North Central Province. This one was not abandoned, but the war had taken its toll. Normally a hundred or more women and girls would be out picking. Most of Sri Lanka’s tea plantations were owned by Sinhalese corporations, but the tea-pickers themselves were usually Tamil women. This seemed almost too far north and not high enough for growing tea, so the plantation she could see must have been the last and furthermost from Kandy, many kilometres to the south.

  The low hills in the distance were adorned with the white ribbons of narrow waterfalls. From the position of the sun, Malini could see that it would not be necessary to cross those hills. A little further north the land opened into a plateau, and it was beyond that plateau that she would find Ulla Alakana, and her grandfather’s farm.

  Malini called Banni, Nanda and the boys. ‘If we meet with good fortune, we will reach the village in two days,’ she said. ‘The war has moved east from here. We will be safe.’

  She mentioned nothing of bandits. Gayan and Nanda would be alarmed. Amal would probably claim he wanted to find a gun and kill them. When he asked her why she kept stopping to look far ahead, she said, ‘To see if rain is coming.’

  Although the shortest way to the village in the west was across the centre of the plateau, Malini decided it was safer to skirt the edge of the open land by keeping to the for
est fringe.

  ‘Mama! Malini!’ Amal called, and everyone stopped. Amal was not as timid as Gayan, but he was still capable of trembling at anything that reminded him of the war. What he’d seen was the tail of an aeroplane, hanging upside down in the forest canopy. All that could be noticed from where they stood was the tail itself and a patch of fuselage. But when Malini came closer, she could see the entire aircraft.

  It was a plane without markings of any sort. It was impossible to say which side it belonged to: the SLA soldiers or the Tamil air force. It was empty, a burnt-out shell.

  Chattering sparrow-larks gathered above them in the foliage. When they dared, the birds darted down and fed themselves on insects revealed by the moving of the branches. A brown hawk-owl settled in a tree close to the sparrow-larks, waiting to see if a fieldmouse would be spooked into running from the people below. The sparrow-larks, made nervous by the watching owl, set up a great commotion, then flew away altogether.

  Malini wondered if the soldiers from the plane had survived. Then she thought about Kandan. She remembered what her father had said to her about those who died while still young and full of strength. ‘Heaven makes a space in the air for every person born. When someone dies young, they are torn from the living world and it is years before the space heals over. Sometimes as we walk along, we feel a sudden sadness. Do you know what that is? We have come to a space in the air that is still healing.’

  She washed herself in the little stream, dried her face and hands with a towel, closed her eyes for a minute to summon strength, then called Banni, Nanda, Gayan and Amal to start this last stage of the journey to the village of Ulla Alakana. Malini murmured to her appa, far away. ‘Appa, it is Malini talking. Your daughters have kept their space in the air. I pray to Lord Shiva that we find you and Amma and that our family will be strong once more.’ Then to her mother, her amma. ‘I never knew what a burden it is to care for children! I honour your strength, Amma! My children weigh me down.’

  The journey west led them through the sparse forest of the plateau where the trees were low and the ground hard. This was not one of the rich agricultural regions of Sri Lanka; no crops would grow in this arid soil. Here and there on the plain, outcrops of stone reared up in strange shapes, as if they had been sculpted by human hand rather than the wind.