by Roma Tearne
Long ago, in the days before the trouble, people from England used to come to see him. They came simply because they knew they could find native colour and because, in this sacred place, even the statues smiled. They did not understand the real meaning of a sacred site. They came for rest, for healing herbs and pungent oils. And sometimes the many-handed god welcomed them, and sometimes he did not. Now that the troubles were here no one came from England. Nothing but a steady stream of hope walked through the jungle to the dagoba. Nothing but despair showed through the brave colours of the processions.
Sugi stood in the crowds watching the festival. He was waiting for his relatives. While he waited he looked around him to see if there were others he knew. He noticed Mrs Mendis. Ah, observed Sugi, she is here for her son Lucky Jim. Born with the kernel of luck that Mrs Mendis protected with the husk of her own life. No doubt she wanted the kernel to grow. She’s a true believer and so she knows, true believers had a better chance. She wants nothing for herself, thought Sugi. But then, he noticed, Mrs Mendis had forgotten about her daughter. Sorrow, like too much sun, has blinded her. Mrs Mendis left her clay curd pots, her crimson flowering pineapple and her kiribath, milk rice, at the feet of the god. Without a doubt, thought Sugi, watching silently, the god will grant her wish. For it must surely have been decided in another life that Jim’s luck could only grow. Then Sugi glanced at Nulani Mendis. The child was lost in thought. What future will she have? he wondered, pity flooding his heart. With a mother like this! Sugi had been watching the girl for months. He was astonished at how she had changed. When she had first come to the beach house she had been silent and unhappy. Then slowly she had begun to blossom. In the beginning, he remembered, her unhappiness had blotted out her light. But gradually she changed. Her eyes shone, she laughed. And she talked all the time. Sometimes she drove Sir mad, Sugi knew. Sometimes they would exchange looks of amusement. And recently, thought Sugi, pensive now, Sir had a different look in his eyes. But Sir himself seemed unaware of this. Only Sugi knew.
A sudden harsh sound in the trees sent a flock of iridescent blue magpies bursting into the sky as though being lifted by a gust of wind. Several people threw themselves to the ground, crying. Was this an ill omen? Sugi looked uneasily around him. There was no wind. Ancient laws were written all over this sacred site. Sugi was a man of simplicity. And he was afraid. He saw the girl ahead of him in the procession look up at the magpies. She was smiling at some secret thought of her own. Yesterday she had let Sugi look at her latest painting. It was nearly finished and was a remarkable painting, of glossy greens and quiet violets. It was full of something else as well, Sugi saw. Something Nulani Mendis had no idea of. Painting was what she had brought into this life, Sugi told himself, watching her now. It was her fate. He knew her talent would never leave her. He watched as she bent her head and prayed. He knew she was praying for her brother. And he knew there were other undiscovered longings in her heart.
The procession had brought all sorts of people out. Some of them were not the kind of people who usually went on pilgrimages. One of the people in the crowd was Vikram. Gerard had told him about the sacred site.
‘Go and see it,’ he had said. ‘Mingle, learn what goes on there. Watch the Buddhist monks and look out for the army checkpoints. You should always talk to the army. Get them used to your face. Could be useful for the future.’
And he winked at Vikram. Then he put his hand on the boy’s shoulders, never noticing how he winced, not realising Vikram did not like being touched.
So Vikram went to the festival. The anniversary of the massacre of his family was approaching. Every year around this time he had nightmares. He would wake up to the sound of grinding teeth and discover they were his own. He would wake with an erection or with his sheet wet. And, always, he would wake with a skullful of anger punctured as though by knives. In the morning he was fine again, back to his usual indifferent self, with all disturbance forgotten. But for a couple of nights, close to the anniversary of the deaths, things were bad. On these occasions, Vikram heard, quite clearly, as if from a distant part of Sumaner House, his mother’s muffled screams, his sister’s voice crying out in Tamil. Why had they cried so much? What had they hoped to achieve? Mercy, perhaps? Had they not realised they were about to die? That no amount of crying would help them in the long dark place they had reached? From where he crouched, rigid under the bed, all Vikram had seen were their hands waving in a gesture of helplessness. The hands that had held him moments before, and had stroked his head, were now waving their goodbye. From his hiding place he could see fingers threshing and flaying the air, engaged in some ancient struggle, and in his dreams, so many years later, it was this image, of those hands forever beating the air, that he still saw. Gerard had reminded Vikram that his family needed to be avenged. They were waiting for the day, Gerard said, when, like a half-finished jigsaw, they would be made whole again.
So Vikram walked through the jungle, following the sound of the drums like everyone else. Thinking his own thoughts. On the way he passed a Coca-Cola lorry and a black Morris Minor. They were tangled and smashed together in a crash. Curious, he stopped to investigate. Bodies were tossed carelessly across the overgrown path, reddish-brown liquid frothed from under the lorry. Just looking at it made Vikram thirsty. Other people had visited the site of the crash before him. They had plundered the victims, taken their money and their jewellery. There was nothing left to take. Vikram stared. One of the bodies was that of a woman. A long deep ridge exposed the tendons and muscles across one part of her face. Bone jutted out. A fountain of blood flowed from her mouth. Her hands moved feebly like an ant on its back, clawing the air. Vikram looked at her impassively. She was beginning to bloat and her lips reminded him of the blood-swollen bellies of mosquitoes he was forever swiping. But, thought Vikram walking on, she did not look in so much pain. How long would it take for her to die? he wondered idly. Would she be dead by the time he had walked two dozen steps, or half a mile? Would she be dead by the time he reached the sacred site? Vikram continued on his way, following the distant noise of drums and the monkeys that swung in front of him from tree to tree. He could hear the bells of the Kathakali dancers somewhere in the distance.
He came to a reservoir. When he had been quite small, his mother had taken him back to the village where she had been born. There had been a reservoir there too. It was so large that Vikram had thought it was the sea. In those days Vikram had not yet seen the sea. There were trees all around the banks of this great stretch of water, frightening jungle vegetation, tangled and ugly. Branches and creepers trailed succulently along the forest floor. Small emerald birds flew harshly about. Vikram was three years old and he had been frightened. His aunt or his sister, he could not remember which, held him up in the water, someone else bathed him. Vikram had cried out. They told him the water was pure and clean. Later, sitting on the steps of a now forgotten house, the same girl, whoever she was, taught him to knit. Knit one, purl one.
‘See,’ she had said, laughing. ‘Look, he has learned to knit. Baby is very clever.’
The sun had beaten down on his head as he sat on the step of the house.
‘I’m thirsty,’ he had said in Tamil and instantly they had brought him a green plastic cup of king coconut juice and held it while he drank thirstily.
They had called him Baby; it was the only word of English they knew and they were proud they too could speak English, even though they had not been to school. Vikram knew they had loved him. Their excited voices had encircled him, round and round, picking him up and kissing him until he laughed with pleasure. He supposed it was pleasure.
The reservoir near his mother’s house was smooth and clean, and aquamarine. A mirror reflecting the sky. The one he was passing now was brown and mostly clogged with weed. There had been no rain here for a long time.
After he had prayed for his sister’s family and for his mother’s health, Sugi took his leave of them. He needed to get back home. His mother, wh
o was old and frailer since he saw her last, kissed him goodbye. She was glad her son was doing so well, working for Theo Samarajeeva. A decent man, she said, a man for the Sri Lankan people, the kind of man that was desperately needed. They had heard all about his books and now there was to be a film too, about the terrible troubles in this place. It was good, she told her son, the world needed to hear about their suffering.
‘But you must be careful, no?’ Sugi’s brother-in-law asked him privately. ‘This man will make enemies too. You must advise him, he will have forgotten how it is here. He has lived in the UK. They are honourable there. And you must be careful. You too will be watched.’
Sugi knew all this. He left his red and silver offerings and his temple blossom for the many-handed god and just as he was about to leave a monk gave him a lighted lamp to carry back in. Perhaps, thought Sugi trustingly, this was a good omen.
Overhead, huge firework flowers and tropical stars filled the heavens as he rode home on his bicycle. Because it was so late, instead of taking the coast road he cut across the outskirts of the jungle. He kept close to the path; in the distance he could see the reservoir gleaming in the moonlight. He passed a largish village on his left. There were green and red lights threaded among the branches of the trees and a small kade was still open selling sherbet and plantains. Because of the festivities there was no curfew here, and people strolled along the street. A smell of gram and hot coconut oil drifted towards him. Children shouted, dogs barked, youths loitered. Had it not been for two army tanks and armed soldiers at either end of the village forming a makeshift checkpoint, it would have been impossible to know there was a war on. Soon Sugi was through the village and heading for home.
Night stretched across the road. The sky glowed like polished glass. He would have been back in less than twenty minutes but for the obstruction. The Coca-Cola lorry no longer frothed liquid; the corpses lay naked and silvery, bathed in moonlight. Everything from the Morris Minor had been stripped bare. Seats, steering wheel, wing mirrors, even the windscreen wipers had gone. All that remained was the skeleton of a car. Suddenly a jeep roared round the bend of the road. Sugi, who had stopped, wheeled his bicycle quickly towards a clump of trees and hid. A soldier leapt down and took out a can. He began to pour petrol over the bodies. Another jeep skidded to a halt and then another. Camouflage soldiers spilled noisily out. Sugi froze. The soldiers poured petrol over the Morris Minor. Someone was shouting orders in Singhala. His face seemed familiar. For a moment Sugi puzzled over this. Then the smell of fuel drifted across the narrow deserted road. It was strong and metallic. In another minute there was an explosion as the Morris Minor blew up. Black smoke choked the edges of the trees. The whole jungle seemed on fire, awash with the sour smells of tamarind and eucalyptus, and something else, something rotten and deep and terrifying. Hiding behind the clump of trees, Sugi recognised the smell. It had never been far from his life since the war had worsened. He waited, knowing there was nothing he could do. He had wanted to see if anyone was, by some miracle, still alive, to raise the alarm if this was so, but he knew now it was an impossibility. The flames would burn for a long time. He felt the heat from where he stood, banking up against him, taut and terrible against his body. Sweat and fear poured down his face and mixed with his despair. There was nothing he could do now. The soldiers stood at a safe distance from the bonfire. For a while they strutted around their vehicles, laughing hollowly, slapping each other on the back. In the moonlight Sugi could see their Kalashnikovs glinting. Then, after what seemed an eternity, they piled into the jeeps and went with a screech of tyres, leaving skid marks on the road, their voices receding swiftly. All that was left were the outstretched arms of the flames, the moon as witness, and an unmarked, communal grave. Far away in the distance he could hear a faint lonely trumpeting. Somewhere, in some impenetrable corner of the jungle, an elephant was preparing to charge. Turning his bicycle towards the road Sugi began to peddle furiously, chasing the moonlight. Carrying his distress with the slapping motion of his sarong, freewheeling down the hill. Silently. Riding his bicycle, accepting his pain. The witness to all that had passed.
The festival was over and the procession had dispersed. The two-toned chanting hung loosely in the air, floating above the white dagoba and away towards the primeval jungle. The monks packed up the many-handed god as though he were a puppet. His anklets made no sound, his paper arms were crushed by the many prayers thrust in them. The monks put away his silver sword. It was time for him to rest. As always after days of observing human nature and all its eternal struggle, the monks were exhausted. Collecting up the prayer papers they packed them into a satinwood box. Then they burned some cinnamon sticks for good luck. The smoke rose thin and beautiful like a mosquito net. Fragments of temple powders and yellow saffron-stained offerings remained on the ground. Somewhere in the forest the devil-bird screeched, but most of the sacred site collapsed like a concertinaed paper lantern, returning to normal. An ordinary village in the jungle; there were so many of them. Overhead, storm clouds walked the telegraph poles, electric blue as magpie wings. As yet nothing happened but the sea currents close by the shore had changed and the fishermen, wisely, did not put out to sea. They were waiting for the storm to arrive.
From his bedroom Theo Samarajeeva had an uninterrupted glimpse of the beach. The wind had begun to die down and although the coconut palms still beat themselves in a frenzy, the sky had changed colour. It was seven o’clock in the morning and a patch of blue had begun to spread across the horizon. While Sugi and the girl had been absent Theo had worked hard on his book. They had seemed to be away for an eternity. Because he had not liked the silence or their absence, he had worked furiously. The book would be finished on time. The girl would come this morning, Theo knew. She would be here soon. Then they would have the great unveiling of the paintings. There were three paintings now. He could hardly wait.
For days after Nulani had left for the festival, the smells of linseed oil and colours had hovered around the house but then it had grown fainter. Theo, remembering once more the loss of other smells, other memories, had buried himself in his work. But then Sugi came back; he had returned late last night. Theo had waited up for him, anxiously, listening out for the squeak of his bicycle brakes and the sound of the gate. He came in and they had shared a beer, although Sugi had seemed exhausted and had not wanted to talk.
‘There are many, many more thugs about now,’ was all he had said when Theo asked him about the festival. ‘Much more than last year. They are all men in the pay of the army. You must not drive out into the jungle.’
‘Did you see anyone you knew? Did you see Nulani?’
‘Yes,’ Sugi had said. He had been unusually silent. ‘I think I saw her uncle too.’
‘What? With her?’ Theo had asked, alarmed. Talk of the uncle always made him uneasy.
‘No, no. I saw him on my way back. He was with other people.’
Sugi had looked strained and unhappy in the light from the veranda. There had been something worn and nervous about him, something hopeless.
‘Are you all right?’ Theo had asked finally, wondering if there was trouble with his family. He had been lonely without him but perhaps Sugi needed some time to himself?
‘Yes. I am fine. A little tired. It was a long ride back. And I am tired with how this country has become.’
Theo had become alarmed, then. Sugi had sounded more than tired. He had sounded depressed. They finished their beer to the plaintive sounds of the geckos and the thin whine of swarming mosquitoes that inhabited the humid night. There was no doubt, a storm had been brewing and so, partly because of this and partly because Sugi clearly was not in a mood to talk, Theo had gone to bed.
Towards dawn it had begun to rain. Hot broken lines of water, clear blue shredded ribbons, curtains of rain. The view from the window was fragmented by it, changed and coloured by the water. Smells like newly opened blossoms rose up and lifted into the air. Here and there they flew, rough earth
and mildew smells, caterpillar green and plantain savoury. The smells woke Theo, who dressed hurriedly, breathing in the scent of gravel and insects, of hot steam and rainy-morning breakfast. Now, sitting out on the veranda, he lit his pipe and the musty smell of pleasure joined the day. He could hear Sugi moving around making egg hoppers. The noise suggested that Sugi was happier this morning. Whatever had bothered him last night had passed. Relieved, Theo listened to the coconut oil sizzling as it rose in clouds above the blackened pan and it seemed to him as though it had been years and years since he had last seen Nulani Mendis. He knew she would not arrive until the rain had stopped.
5
SHE CAME AS SOON AS SHE COULD. It was later than she had meant it to be but the rain, and the news that her brother had won his scholarship, and her uncle’s sharp eyes following her suspiciously, had all contrived to make her late. But she came, with the last of the raindrops trailing the hem of her red dress and her long hair swinging loosely as she hurried. He was out on the veranda, waiting with barely concealed impatience, just as he had told her he would be, smoking his pipe. He watched her as she rushed in through the unlatched gate, caring nothing for the rain drumming the ground or the branches that shook and showered drops of water on her. Her dress was stained with dark patches of water. And she was smiling.