by Roma Tearne
The detour would add half an hour to their journey.
‘There has been an incident,’ the woman soldier continued. ‘It’s over now but it will take some time to clear.’
‘An accident?’ asked Theo.
‘No, an incident,’ she repeated shortly. And then she smiled, a swift flash of uneven white teeth, from some other long-vanished and different kind of life.
‘Look for the ruined city,’ she said abruptly. ‘It’s very beautiful. If you are an artist,’ she glanced briefly at Nulani, nodding her head, ‘you will like it there. You can make a pujas, pray for a safe journey.’
And she waved them on.
Further along the road, about a mile away, the land swept into a wide long bend. A whole stretch of beach lay before them. Then the road forked, turning sharply to the right, heading into the coconut grove; suddenly the roadblock the soldier had promised was in front of them. Two army trucks acted as a barrier. A police car was parked to one side, its light flashing pointlessly. On the edge of the cliff, overlooking the sea, there were two limousines piled into one another. It looked at first as though there had been an accident. But there was no ambulance present. Only uniformed men with sub-machine guns paced the road. In the high bright morning light the dead strewn across the side of the road bore the strangest resemblance to piles of scattered dirty laundry, bundled up and ready for washing. All around was the sweet drenching smell of an invisible blossom. There was, too, a curious dry odour, dead and chemical, which Theo knew could only have come from explosives. He stopped the car and a soldier, a man of about twenty-five, came up to the open window. Theo handed over their documents.
‘What happened?’
His voice, flanked by the waves and the sound of a train rushing suddenly past, seemed to come from a long way away.
‘Open the boot!’
Theo was aware of the girl’s anxiety. All the time he was opening the boot and holding the pictures for the man to see, telling the soldier the paint was not dry and that they were taking them to the university to show Professor Fernando, all that time, while the huge seagulls wheeled overhead, her anxiety drifted towards Theo. When they were finally dismissed, with a sharp movement of a rifle butt, the day itself had acquired a sour hard taste to it. Turning the car into the coconut grove, Theo saw a slender brown arm, fingers curled slightly. It was severed below the rolled-up sleeves of an otherwise clean white shirt. An ordinary white shirt, the sort he owned.
It was another quarter of an hour to the ruined city with its votive dagoba. A woman selling king coconuts stood bare-headed in the burning sun. She knew nothing about the roadblock or the massacre at the crossroads, but the detour meant she had sold nearly all her coconuts even before ten o’clock. They drank the cold coconut water and wandered around the dry earth-caked ruins. Theo watched the girl, a flutter of scarlet cloth against the orange lichen-covered statues. She stood with her head bent, eyes closed, and the sickness and horror and the pity of what he had just seen was touched with the sweetness of her presence, turning slowly within him. They were due at Rohan’s place by eleven.
Through the wing mirror Vikram watched them drive off. He was dismantling a Kalashnikov. Gerard had moved the car to a wooded area not far from the ruined city. Now he rubbed the dust from the wing mirror so he could see the Mendis girl more clearly. He swatted a mosquito on his arm and wiped the blood off.
‘The mosquitoes are back,’ he told Gerard.
Gerard grunted and mopped his brow. They had had a successful morning. Seven dead and the Singhalese army in a quandary. What could be better? Nobody knew there were any Tigers in the locality.
‘They didn’t see us,’ was all he said as the car disappeared round the bend of the road. ‘Now you should go back. Walk around the town, talk to people, let them see you. D’you understand? Vikram, are you paying attention?’ he added sharply.
Gerard was still a little jumpy. He knew he was happiest when he did not have to do the dirty work. But he had not wanted Vikram to tackle it alone. Not this time anyway. Now all he wanted was to get rid of the boy. He was not interested in his chatter. Vikram’s calmness had stunned Gerard. To his astonishment, the boy had hardly batted an eyelid. He’s a tough nut, thought Gerard, tougher than even I expected. Handled properly, he could be quite dangerous. Vikram was nodding. He was vaguely aware that Gerard was nervous but by contrast he felt suddenly exhilarated and ready for more action.
‘It’s important you don’t blow your cover. So make sure as many people as possible see you. Pity you don’t have more friends. Can’t you talk to that Mendis girl?’
‘Maybe,’ said Vikram, instantly scowling.
‘I would take you over to that fellow, you know, Theo Samarajeeva, but the servant is suspicious of me.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ Vikram said, rather too quickly. He did not want Gerard to get involved with the girl.
‘OK, now go,’ said Gerard. ‘I’ll take the gun back to my place. No, Vikram,’ he said firmly, before the boy could protest. ‘It’s for your own safety. You don’t want to get caught carrying a weapon. I’ll see you back at the shop after dark.’ He placed the two dismantled Kalashnikovs in his rucksack. ‘It’ll take you about an hour on foot,’ he said. ‘Take the track through the jungle and go straight to the town and have a beer. I’ll see you later. And, Vikram,’ he added as the boy got out of the car, ‘well done!’
Vikram slunk into the trees. He knew this path well, having gone over it many times with Gerard after dark. He would follow the track until he reached the river and then it would be another quarter of a mile until he reached the outskirts of the town. After he had had his beer he would go and find the shopkeeper’s daughter, and take her to the back of the garages, he decided. The day had left him with an unexpectedly pleasant feeling. He had not lost his nerve and he knew Gerard had been impressed. It was the first time he had used the gun, the first time he had killed anyone. Gerard had looked at him curiously and not without a certain admiration. Once, long ago, Vikram remembered his father looking at him in this way after he had recited some verse he had learned in school. As he hurried through the trees, lowering his eyes to the ground, watching out for snakes, his mind was momentarily caught in a contented daydream. Then he remembered the Mendis girl. What had she been doing in that car just now, so far from home? Why was she always with that old man? He wanted to see her again, for there was something mysterious about her that eluded him. Gerard was right; he should talk to her, although for some reason, not entirely clear, Vikram did not want him to have anything to do with her.
‘Nulani,’ he said, experimentally.
Perhaps, thought Vikram, perhaps I should talk to her uncle. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, he decided. I’ll make friends with the uncle. Then maybe I’ll get invited to the house. Tearing a branch off a tree, clearing a path, he continued on his way.
Rohan was drawing in the garden behind his studio, shaded by a murunga tree.
‘Come in, come in. We have been waiting for you fellows. Giulia is preparing a feast. She has engaged the entire service of the black market in your honour!’
He beamed at them and the girl smiled. Rohan was exactly as Theo had described him.
‘Now then,’ said Theo, watching Nulani, ‘don’t start drawing the poor man yet!’
In the last part of their drive the day had righted itself somehow. The girl’s quiet voice talking lightly about insubstantial things had soothed him. He knew she was talking simply to distract him. He was amazed once again by her intuition and her insight. He knew this quality was also in her work. He hoped Rohan would see it too. Then he caught sight of Giulia hurrying towards them. She was laughing and balancing a tray of soft drinks and ice as she walked. For a second Theo was struck by the returning past. In this way had she come towards him when he had first met her. Again he felt a shift of focus towards all that had gone before, so that the memory of Anna returned to him again. The cuttlefish pasta, the wine, the clove-scented ciga
rettes. He saw, from the outside looking in, all he had denied himself for so long. And in that instant, the many thoughts he had punished himself with smoothed out and became simple and calm. In this way he remembered it, with a sudden rush, sweetly, and without bitterness. Somewhere nearby were the faint cries of seagulls, and he heard these too, coming back to him hauntingly, as though from another, different, Adriatic sky.
‘This is Nulani,’ he said, his hand on the girl’s cool arm, feeling in that instant a poignant sense of belonging.
The afternoon wove around them. After a lunch of fresh crab curry and mallung, brinjal and parippu, of excellent curd and plantain, and beans, after an endlessly long and slow meal filled with banter, Rohan held up his hand.
‘Enough!’ he said, teasingly. ‘This will not do. We have serious business. We are here to look at Nulani’s paintings, you have all talked rubbish for long enough!’
And he covered his ears at their protestations. Sunlight danced on the walls. The war seemed something they had only heard about.
‘I shall clear a space in my studio,’ announced Rohan, handing Theo a cigar.
‘My God!’ said Giulia. ‘It isn’t often I hear him saying anything about clearing his studio. This is your doing, Nulani!’
‘Maybe he has reached a turning point in his career?’ suggested Theo. ‘Come, Giulia, it’s what you’ve been waiting for. Don’t say you’re not excited!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Giulia earnestly. ‘Perhaps meeting Nulani will make him tidy at last!’
‘That’s quite enough from both of you. Come, Nulani, ignore these philistines. Bring your work in.’
‘Well,’ sighed Giulia, ‘I shall make some milk tea, for Theo and myself. It’s clear we’re not wanted by these artists!’
‘And I shall get the paintings out of the boot,’ said Theo. ‘It’s all I’m capable of doing!’
With a flourish of his hand, he held the door open for the girl and they went outside.
‘You’re different today,’ the girl said, laughing up at him.
They walked along the side of the house keeping out of the sun. The air was hot and still.
‘It’s good,’ she said softly, standing close to him. ‘This is the first time you have looked really happy since I met you.’
Theo looked at her. He felt the air, delicate and white, like a gull’s egg, charged with unspoken thoughts. Still and unbearable. The heat balanced precariously on the edge of an unknown precipice, so that, hardly conscious of what he did, he reached out and touched her hair. Crossing some invisible boundary, suspending them both in the moment. And Giulia, glancing up through the curtain of creepers growing outside the window, thought, I have seen that look on his face once, long ago, just before Anna died. Looking at Anna, in just this way. Does he know?
Rohan loved the paintings.
‘Art school isn’t what you need,’ he said. ‘Art school will only spoil what you already have. You already paint from the inside out. No, what you need is simply to paint. All the time, every thing you want to paint, until you have a body of work.’
He paused, staring intensely at the paintings, lost in thought.
‘What you need is discussion about your work. You can have that with me. But most of all you must continue working in this way. And we should try to organise an exhibition for you. Here, and also in England, no? What do you think, putha? Tell me? Would you like that?’
Theo had left them alone to talk, and after he had looked at Nulani’s paintings, Rohan brought out his own work. They were large semi-abstracts in oils. Vast grey canvases. He talked to her of the daily practice of painting.
‘Some say art is our highest form of hope,’ he said absently. ‘Perhaps it’s our only hope. Living has always been a desperate business.’
He paused, thinking of Theo, remembering the time when his friend had been lost to him when Anna had died.
‘Life is full of pointlessness. Not just now there is a war, but always, before. It’s the nature of living. And the wounding of beauty, that’s all part of it, no? First you possess it and then you lose it. Art represents that aesthetically. To a certain extent your paintings are already doing this, you know, Nulani. But still, you must push your boundaries even further. On and on, don’t stop whatever you do; keep looking, always, for the happy accident, for the things that move you. And don’t just paint that bugger Theo, either!’
He smiled at her, for she was so lovely. And so pitifully young. The young, he felt, had little hope in this place. He wanted to give her something to take with her. He knew how hard it would be for her to follow her chosen path. What will she paint in ten years’ time? he wondered. Or twenty? What would her life be like, in this backwater, married off, worn down by poverty and children? If the war doesn’t get to her first, of course. He felt only shame and bitterness for his country. Already he could see she had captured the fragility in Theo, the threads of what he had lost. Already she had achieved something soft and fluid and painterly. If colour does express something of our deepest emotions, then these painstakingly beautiful paintings have begun to touch that mysterious thing, he thought. What other things will age and experience bring to her work?
‘He is a good man,’ he said, suddenly, of his friend. ‘And he has suffered.’
He wondered how much she intuited. Probably she knew, possibly she understood more than Theo himself. Women were quicker, thought Rohan. Especially in this country, they were quicker.
‘So, now you have lifted that greyness from his life. That is all really, and still it’s also everything,’ he said, as though she had replied.
They were silent, preoccupied, while the afternoon moved the light slowly around the huge white room. The smell of thick paint and bitumen was everywhere. Rohan’s studio was cluttered with objects. Many of the things he chose to paint were those from his daily life. An empty carafe that had once held Tuscan wine, a cast-iron bird bath from their small Venetian garden, three shades of grey Fortuny silk, colours from a museum city. A blackened crucifix resting against the whitewashed wall.
‘I myself,’ said Rohan, seeing her look at his props, ‘I myself, love grey. You may say this is a little ridiculous of me. To come all this way back home to paint with grey? But, grey has no agenda. And that’s what really interests me. Its neutrality. Grey has the ability, that no other colour has, to make the invisible visible. So I paint with grey. I need some spirituality to keep going in this place. For, you see, my heart is saddened by what’s happening to our beautiful country.’
He paused, appearing to forget she was in the room. He was thinking he understood what Theo had meant. The girl sat without moving, silently. She had the calmness of an injured bird, he saw. As if some instinct told her, there was no point in struggling. And then Rohan saw that no one had talked to her in this way about painting.
‘They are killing each other,’ he said softly. ‘Day after day. Over which language is more important. Can you credit these stupid bastards!’
Bitterness crossed his face like an ugly scar. The light was fading.
‘Where it gets interesting for us, as painters, is in the absence of language,’ he said a bit later on, getting excited again. ‘You are a good painter. But you know all that, I hardly need to tell you.’
Then he remembered something else.
‘Your notebooks,’ he warned. ‘They should never stop. No matter whatever happens in your life. Remember that. Always, always, no?’
The sun had almost gone, unnoticed by them. Deep shadows fell in through the window. In another part of the garden, Theo sat talking to Giulia. They had been drinking milk tea. Giulia had trained the plants to form a shady covering. She had placed some cane chairs and a small table underneath it. Orange blossom and jasmine tangled together overhead. A hosepipe trailed across the small immaculate lawn and somehow the garden had acquired an Italianate feel to it. Theo paused, looking at the terracotta pots of lilies, the cacti and the pink and white oleanders. It reminded him of
the walled garden in Venice, where he and Anna had been such frequent visitors. How had Giulia managed to bring her home here, into the untamed tropics? He began talking about the girl. Words poured out; he could not stop. It was as if a dam had burst in him.
‘She is very young and with such extraordinary talent. I wish I knew what the future held for her,’ he said.
I have seen this face in so many moods, thought Giulia, marvelling at the flexibility of the human heart. Marvelling that at last the torrent of grief over Anna seemed to have passed. Did he know? Had he any idea at all, of how he had changed?
‘So, my friend,’ Rohan said quietly, some time later, after they had put the paintings back in the car. ‘You look a little better than the last time I saw you. Thank God, no?’ And he placed his arm around Theo’s shoulder, for he had hated the unhappiness and the anger that he had seen for so many years.
It was time for them to leave. Darkness was descending and soon the heat would lessen. Rohan and Giulia leaned against the gate. They stood arm in arm, smiling at Theo, kissing the girl goodbye.
‘Bring her back to us very soon,’ said Rohan. ‘And, Nulani, remember what I said. I want to see some new paintings. But not just paintings of this fellow, you understand!’
They drove along the coast following the perfect disc of the moon. There were no remains from the day’s bloodshed, nothing stirred under the steady beam of the headlights of the car. Theo drove with all thoughts suspended, cocooned within a glow of contentment. Their talk was languid and desultory. In this short intermission between twilight and darkness, a mysterious transformation had occurred. An unusual cast of light made the girl seem both real and yet unbelievable. As they passed along the lonely stretch of road, the sea appeared to drift towards them, so that Theo could not easily distinguish the sound of the water from their voices. A gentle connection seemed to exist between them, invisible until now, yet somehow already present. How this was he could not tell. He heard the girl’s voice rise and fall to the sound of the waves; he heard the rustle of the coconut palms and the rush of cool air as they passed. In that moment of neither night nor day it was as though all of it, the girl, the moon and Theo himself, moved together in some mysterious harmony of their own.