by Roma Tearne
Afterwards Theo Samarajeeva had no idea how many days or nights he spent in that place. Or how often they beat him with the hose, nor how many times he was burned. He did not recall being dragged by his feet to a cell where, semi-naked and bleeding, he was left for dead. Trauma locked his memory out. His hands were almost paralysed and there were great weals across his back. If he had had a wish it was simply to die. That he survived at all was a miracle, for in those lost hours, without pity and without witness, humanity itself was violated and what was left of his spirit was broken. Nothing in ordinary life had prepared him for this journey. Moving in a blur of constant pain to some sealed spot, silent, isolated and alone, he dreamt of the sea. It was blue and huge and the horizon rose before him, moving as one with the sky. Although he was unaware of it his body had finally given way to a fever. He shook uncontrollably, sweat poured from him and he grew weaker. But still, he remained only semiconscious. He had no idea if there were others around; he heard voices but they were indistinct. Lights flickered on and off. Sometimes he dreamt the sea was on fire and he burned alive. And he dreamt of the girl. In his dream she told him her father had burned like a tiger, running through the streets. He saw her face, very serene and certain, her eyes large and very lovely. And he heard her talk to him. Her father, she said, had been running forever. It was time he stopped. And then, she reached down and touched the great wounds on Theo’s body. Screaming, he opened his eyes and found that he was lying on a bed in a white room. The sun had forced its way to the edge of the blinds. It slipped through the veiled slats in the windows and a cool breeze lifted the edges of the sheet. His body ached. Someone, some indistinct figure, stood over him offering him a glass of water. He drank it and the water tasted clean.
‘It was a mistake,’ the figure said. ‘I am sorry to say they got the wrong man. You aren’t one of them. It was a mistake. Some idiot was left in charge. So now, you must rest here and when you are better you will be released.’
The man addressed him in English. A bowl of hot rice was held out to him. Seeing it, Theo felt his stomach contract. He vomited before passing out once more.
It was several days before he was awake enough to understand that he was in a makeshift hospital in Kandy. This time when he woke, it was a different voice that talked to him.
‘We’re sending you to a safe house,’ the voice said. ‘To rest. All you need to do now is rest and eat and not worry. It’s been a bit of a mix-up.’
The voice made it sound very easy. He, it was a man, Theo saw, smiled thinly, showing gold-capped teeth. He told Theo that he had pardoned two other prisoners that very morning.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘It was an unfortunate mistake. You are our guest now. Just ask if there’s anything special you want to eat. We have a very good cook here! Tamil cooks are the best in the world.’
The man laughed good-humouredly. Outside the sun shone tight against the khaki blinds.
‘We are fighting for recognition and freedom,’ the man said, his eyes glazing over. ‘We’re fair-minded people. But sometimes in these troubled times, we make mistakes. It is impossible not to make mistakes during a war. Don’t forget,’ he said as though Theo had argued with him, ‘this is a war brought on by others. But you know all that!’
Two small boys holding Kalashnikovs stood guarding the doorway. They wore camouflage and around their necks were cyanide necklaces.
‘See,’ said the man, ‘they are your personal bodyguards. If there is anything you want just ask them.’
He smiled again and ruffled the heads of the boys, who grinned. Then he left. Theo stared after him, unaware that his face was wet. Outside the Kandyan heat simmered gently. He stared at a patch of uninterrupted sunlight. It was dazzling and very clear and also, for some reason, unbearable and full of life. Then he turned his face to the wall, away from the bright luminous heat outside, folding himself against the cool parts of the bed. Slowly, like the leaves of the nidikumba plant, he closed his eyes.
In Colombo, the dark face of the army was on alert for the beginning of the election campaign. White uniforms paraded the streets. They marched purposefully among the monks, the rickshaws and the propaganda blasting out of loudhailers. Angry mobs formed and re-formed like armies of beetles. Riots were hastily staunched only to spill out in other places. Outside the parliament buildings, and in between the cool water sprays of Cinnamon Gardens, the limousines glided like stately barges.
‘I simply cannot stand this any longer,’ shouted Rohan.
He had not painted for months. He had not stretched a single piece of linen on its frame. His dead friend’s life spilled across every empty canvas. On their return from the beach house, the driver had noticed they were being followed. Later on, someone had tossed the bones of a chicken into the garden. Luckily Rohan had been outside when this had happened and he had managed to remove them before Giulia became aware of anything amiss. Then one morning a roadside spirit offering was left outside the gate. Rice and fish and pineapples were placed in a coconut woven basket, threaded with crimson shoe-flowers. Passers-by crossed the road to avoid it. Later on, Dr Peris came to visit. Two bombs had gone off in his part of town and his days had been spent dealing with the victims. The first blast had been the result of a suicide bomber. Dr Peris had come to talk privately to Rohan.
‘You should leave,’ he said. ‘While you still can. I can get you two tickets. One of my patients has a source…it isn’t safe here for you both.’
He looked meaningfully at the painter. His friend the driver had been watching their house, he said. There might be trouble ahead.
‘My advice is go. While you can.’
Two days later the telephone rang several times in the middle of the night. But when they answered it there was no one there. They had not heard from Nulani again. The post was no longer getting through. Rohan got the tickets. They would fly, via Singapore, to Milan. Then they would take the train to Venice. They had no place to stay in Venice yet, but it no longer mattered. Something would come up.
‘This place has defeated me,’ Rohan said. ‘Ultimately, even I have given up on my country.’
The new year had not brought peace. They were being buried alive. Someone threw a petrol bomb into a crowd and death stalked the city in a monk’s saffron robe. Petrol was in short supply, except when it was needed for random burnings. How had two thousand years of Buddhism come to this? A Cabinet minister was assassinated, seventeen members of the public injured, three killed on a bus. Glass rose like sea spray, shattering everywhere. But the radio stations still played baila music in a pretence of normality although no one knew what was normal any more. They packed. Hastily, frightened to speak of their imminent departure, frightened to use the telephone, frightened to leave the house for long, they packed.
They were to leave at night. But because of the curfew and the unpredictability of the journey they decided to leave in early evening. They hoped there would be less likelihood of ambush if they left while there was still some light. The last of the sun was disappearing rapidly, the evening had a rosy glow, and the air was filled with the distant cry of birds. The plane would take off at midnight. Once in the airport their tension eased slightly. No one knew they were here and for the first time since Theo had gone they felt they were safe. The airport itself was subdued and empty. Security was much heavier since the bombings of eighteen months previously. There was only one flight out of the country and they had hours to wait before they could board the plane. But it was worth it, they told each other. Better than driving through the jungle in the dark, they said. The trip with Nulani had been enough, they added, remembering the last time they had come here. That too was already a lifetime away. And already, Giulia thought sadly, they had accepted Theo’s death.
‘I’ll never return,’ Rohan said with finality. ‘This time I’m finished with this place for good.’
He told her he had worried they would never be able to leave. He had been afraid, he said, that
something would have stopped them, that one of them might have been captured.
‘The house was watched, you know,’ he told her, in the safety of the airport lounge. ‘Every time I went out I knew I was watched and I wondered if I would return home again. Or if you were all right on your own.’
Giulia shivered. Now he tells me, she thought.
‘There was a man on the hill above the bay, watching us through binoculars. I’m not sure if he saw me take the paintings from Theo’s house. Not that I cared. I wanted Nulani to have something of him. But we were followed all the way back to Colombo.’
He did not tell her he had been suspicious of their neighbours too. What was the point in letting her lose all hope in the place? But the cheapness of life in this paradise was more than he could stand any more. At eleven o’clock they were allowed to board the plane. Night had fallen unnoticed while they sat in the airport, and outside the sea moved darkly, for there was no moon tonight. Ten minutes to twelve, thought Giulia. Ten more minutes left, thought Rohan, and still I feel nothing. Theo had been dead for nearly eighteen months.
In the darkness, as the plane began to taxi, in a house that appeared occupied, in a leafy suburb in Colombo, a fire started. It was uncertain what might have caused it. Arson was commonplace enough. The fire rushed through the empty rooms, taking everything in its path. Burning canvas, melting tubes of oil paint, cracking mirrors, incinerating the furniture. It tore through the corridors in a fury of heat; it destroyed pictures and documents, and the paraphernalia of the recently departed. When it had burned itself out, when all that was left was blackened rubble, the fire brigade arrived. And the neighbours came to gaze in awe at all that remained of the house where the painter and his Italian wife once had lived.
13
HE SAW IT ALL IN COLOUR, dark green with a touch of blue. The images fragmented, like rushes from an uncut film, full of light and sharpness. But every time, before his mind could investigate them further, he drifted back into sleep. Whenever he regained consciousness he drank the water that arrived, by mysterious means, in his hand. It was cool and fresh and he drank it without thought or question, without pleasure. He drank it simply because it presented itself. And then he slept again. Something had happened to the seal on his eyelids because all the time the light seeped through to his eyes, so that while he slept he dreamt of sun, dazzling on the sea. He could not have been further from the ocean.
Other things happened while he slept. Voices flitted across his brain, like fruit bats. Words circled him like gulls; words like, ‘in the beginning’, and ‘flailing’, biblical words, words that had no end. In the background was the sound of artillery moving in and out of focus.
At night, the single light bulb, unshaded and comfortless, cast an aching, dull glow. It reflected the slow tortuous routes of the geckos and the cockroaches that crawled past him. He watched them through a curtain of pain and sweat, these routes that crossed and criss-crossed along the wall, passing through imaginary enemy lines. Although they came from the hole in the broken window they never went back that way. They would always disappear from his sight line somewhere to the left of his bed. He never turned his head to find out where they went. He never turned his head for anything. He was simply not interested. Like the beetles, he seemed to have arrived here through a broken skylight, crashing in from some other life, never knowing that this place, this spot, would be where he would land. Here in this bed, with this small pile of sodden cloth, his only possession.
Some time later, he woke once more, to walls that were bare of beetles. The sun was raking long fingers through the blinds and the voices were back.
‘How long has he been this way?’ Gerard asked.
The man in the doorway shrugged. Ten days, two weeks? ‘There’s nothing much the matter with him now. His wounds are healing well. He could walk out of here if he wanted to.’
‘No,’ Gerard said hastily, ‘that’s not what we want. He needs to stay here for a while.’
‘He can’t stay here. The Chief doesn’t want him. You’ll have to move him.’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Gerard. ‘But you’ll have to give me time. I can’t work miracles.’
‘Look, he’s waking again. Now he’ll have a drink of water and stare at the ceiling. Then he’ll go back to sleep. We can’t spare the bed much longer.’
‘OK, OK. I’ll move him.’
They watched curiously as Theo finished drinking. He was unaware of their presence. Secretly, though, Gerard was shocked. The writer had taken a severe beating, far worse than he had expected. The fingernails on both his hands were ripped and blackened and he looked smaller than Gerard remembered. He lay motionless, like a broken fishing boat.
‘Can he hear us, d’you think?’
They moved closer, watching him in silence.
‘Who knows? It was a mistake.’
‘Yes, yes, I know, men.’
‘These things happen. All the time. He’s lucky someone found out before it was too late. He’s lucky they didn’t finish him off.’
Luck, thought Gerard, laughing inwardly. No, you fool, it wasn’t luck. It was my doing. While you rush around in circles with your machine guns, shooting at shadows, I pick up the pieces. Louts in charge won’t make a government. But he said nothing. He wondered if Theo would be useful in the way he had hoped. Would his mind be too damaged to write again? Well, the first thing would be to move him down the valley, into a remote part of the hills and give him some peace. Then we’ll see, thought Gerard. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Let them slaughter each other for a bit longer.
‘OK,’ he said, making up his mind, ‘we’ll move him in the morning.’ And he went out.
The next time Theo looked at the sky it seemed more intensely blue. And the green of the leaves were dark and succulent. As always, the smell of food made him want to vomit. A man came into view.
‘Hello, Theo,’ said Gerard. ‘I’m here to make sure you’re looked after until you get better. You’re in a safe house, now, OK? You’ve nothing to worry about. All you have to do is get better. Do you understand? You’re safe now. We’ve got you away from that place.’
There was a pause. Outside a bird cried harshly and repeatedly.
‘I’m not sure how much he understands,’ said Gerard. Perhaps they went too far, he thought. Perhaps I’m wasting my time. He’s become a cripple, with a cripple’s mind. Broken and rubbish-can empty.
‘I want to sleep,’ said Theo, faintly.
‘That’s OK, men,’ said Gerard heartily. ‘You have a sleep. But you must eat something when you wake up. I shall be gone for a few days, but everyone here will take care of you. And I’ll see you soon. OK?’
There was no reply. Theo had shut his eyes again. He had become a curvature of bones across the bed, bereft of words. Violence had washed away his hope, robbed him of speech.
‘Make sure he eats,’ was all Gerard said. And he left.
Days sifted by. Nights passed without notice. Theo moved uneasily between consciousness and sleep. At night the darkness cocooned him and he hardly stirred, moving from one dream to another. He dreamt as once he had read, sifting through images as once he had turned pages. He was neither happy nor unhappy. Mostly these dreams were nebulous things filled with people he did not know. One in particular repeated itself night after night. He saw himself sitting at a desk beside a long, high window, working. He was writing furiously. In his dream the rain fell heavily from a leaden sky and leaves drifted, like flocks of birds, towards the ground. But he had no idea what he was writing. And the dream never went any further. Then one night, without warning, he saw a face that was vaguely familiar. He was sitting with a woman on the balcony of a funny little flat. The balcony was filled with pots of bright red geraniums. Somehow he knew the flat was in London. He remembered the place being called Shepherd Market. But that was all.
‘Write it down,’ the woman urged him. ‘Write it down, Theo. That way you won’t forget.’
In
the dream, the woman peeled a fruit. He could see the yellow insides of the fruit as she ate. The juice ran down her arm and on to her white dress. He thought he had seen that image somewhere else. The woman frowned and licked her arm, then, seeing him looking at her, she laughed.
‘Why d’you never listen to me?’ Her eyes were sharply focused and very blue. ‘You’re a writer, Theo. You should be writing all of this down.’
He woke feeling agitated and found the sunlight sleeping on him, heavy as a dormant cat. A little later, how much later he couldn’t say, he had the same dream again. And on that same day he remembered the name of the fruit the servant brought him. It was a mango. He must have moved about a little after that, because he began to notice there were other rooms leading on from his. His whole body ached and the wound across his back bled as he walked. The servant woman came and went, nodding at him, occasionally speaking to him. The man he knew was called Gerard visited almost daily. One afternoon he handed Theo an exercise book and a pen.
‘Yes,’ he said, as though he was continuing some previous conversation with Theo, ‘it’s a good idea to try to start writing again.’
A bit later Gerard returned, bringing a doctor with him. Why are you here? Theo wanted to say. But he could not bear to hear the sound of his own voice, so he said nothing. The doctor looked him over. He felt his arms and examined the wound on his back. Theo flinched when he came near him. But the doctor was smiling. Don’t smile, thought Theo. I’d rather you didn’t smile. But again he remained silent. The doctor told him he was fine, his ribs and pelvis were mending, as were his collarbone and arms.