Mosquito

by Roma Tearne

  Towards dawn always, after these wanderings, he would return to lie like an emaciated stain on the bed where once his love had slept. Wearing a thin sarong that had belonged to Sugi, two legs placed carefully together, the soles of his feet worn and smashed, his face turning of its own accord to the wall. So that Thercy, coming in to sweep out the night, would stare at the scar across his back and heave another little sigh of pity. And fill a vase with shoe-flowers from the garden, for time, she knew, was what he needed most.

  One day Thercy found the half-finished portrait of Sugi behind the bookshelf.

  ‘Sir,’ she had said, ‘Mr Samarajeeva, I…’

  It had been too much for him, days of bottled-up emotions gushed out.

  ‘All the other paintings she did have gone,’ he said afterwards, when he could speak calmly again. ‘Why would anyone want to steal them?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Thercy suggested, tentatively, ‘maybe your friends in Colombo came and collected them. What d’you think? I heard that someone came to this house after Sugi was gone.’ She frowned, not wanting to be impertinent, but anxious to help. ‘Why don’t you contact your friends? How are they to know you are still alive if you don’t contact them?’

  There, she thought, she had said the thing utmost in her mind. But the idea filled Theo with horror. All day it worked in him, all day he gazed at the painting. And that night, having finished off a whole bottle of arrack, he decided to go for a swim. Throwing off his clothes on the deserted beach, he waded into the water, swimming slowly, thinking he might head out towards the rocks. There had been a storm the day before and the sea was still rough. Within minutes he was out of breath but, deciding to turn back, Theo found he was further away from the shore than he realised and an undercurrent was pulling at him. The harder he swam, the further away from the beach he seemed to get. A train hooted, appearing suddenly around the bay. Theo shouted and waved, but the beach itself was empty. By now he was panting. The alcohol had made him dizzy and his legs were beginning to give out. He realised that unless he could reach the shore soon he would drown. A wave rose and hit him, pushing him further out. He was struggling so much and the roar in his ears was so loud that he did not hear the shout until the catamaran was alongside him and a hand hauled him up and over the side of it. Two pairs of eyes stared at him in the thin light of a lantern.

  ‘There’s no point in drowning,’ a voice chided him sternly. ‘You’ll only have to come back to live another life.’

  ‘It’s a good thing we saw you,’ the second fisherman added. ‘Are you new here, or are you just a fool? This isn’t a place for swimming. The currents are treacherous. You have to go to the next bay if you want to swim.’

  They shook their head in amazement and took him back to find his clothes, joking with him that they would have better fish for sale in the morning. And then they left him, putting out to sea, vanishing into the darkness.

  That night, for the first time in years, he slept uninterrupted and when he woke at last it was from a dream of the girl and their single night together. The mist was already beginning to clear on the horizon and he could hear the ‘malu, malu’ cry of the fishermen in the distance. Thercy stood unsmiling beside his bed, holding out a cup of morning tea.

  ‘I heard what happened to you last night,’ she said, shaking her head.

  She waited while he took a sip of tea.

  ‘I have to say something to you, Mr Samarajeeva. I have said nothing all this time but now I won’t be quiet any longer.’

  She made a small gesture of anger. She was breathing deeply and her voice, when she spoke, was rough and close to tears. It surprised him into listening.

  ‘Sir, you are a clever man,’ said Thercy grimly. ‘Sugi told me all about the books you wrote and your film. Sugi was full of admiration for you. And love. He was my friend, so I knew about the things that were in his heart. And I must tell you, Sir, the fishermen were right. I am sorry, Mr Samarajeeva, you are behaving like a fool! Go and find your friends in Colombo, find out what happened to Miss Nulani. She was a loving girl. I know how you have suffered, how you feel, but can’t you see? She would want to know you are safe. What is wrong with you? At least go and talk to them.’

  Her voice had risen and she was gesticulating wildly. Theo handed her his empty cup.

  ‘Twice in one day,’ he said faintly, with the barest movement of a smile, ‘there must be some truth in it. You are right, Thercy, and thank you for saying it. I must try to overcome this fear. I must stop being a coward. I will go to Colombo. Tomorrow, I’ll go tomorrow and find Rohan and Giulia. I promise. I know that only they can tell me what happened to her in the end.’

  16

  IN COLOMBO THE MOSQUITOES WERE BACK. Thin, fragile and deadly, they coated the walls of buildings in their thousands, filling the waterlogged coconut shells, turning the surfaces of everything they alighted on into a living carpet. They fed on the flesh of rotting fruit, sucking out what remained of the honeydew nectar. Arriving with the mosquitoes was a new breed of women from the north of the island. Like the mosquitoes, they came with the rains. But unlike the mosquitoes, the women were full of a new kind of despair and a frightening rage. Their desire for revenge was greater than their interest in life. They had been trained; a whole army of psychologists working tirelessly on them had shaped their impressionable minds. The female mosquitoes’ purpose in life was the continuation of their species, but the suicide bombers cared nothing for the future. Steadily they changed the shape of the battle lines, appearing everywhere, in government buildings, at army checkpoints, beside long-abandoned sacred sites. They appeared in churches when mass was being said, at roadside shrines and during Buddhist funerals. Neither place nor time mattered much to these women. Nature had not designed their limbs to grow once broken. Killing was what interested them. For these women were the new trailblazers, the world epidemic slipping in unnoticed, just as the malaria season returned.

  Unaware of this and eventually after much procrastination, Theo dragged himself to Colombo. Thercy watched him pocket his reluctance and go, pleased, but saying nothing. She had thought he would change his mind. Thercy understood the shame he felt, she had seen it before in others. She knew what torture did. But she knew also the desire to find the girl and his friends was greater. Speech was not necessary; all he wanted was to catch sight of her. If his karma is good, Thercy thought, then he will.

  ‘She must have a chance to forget me,’ he said out loud. ‘I know my age never worried her but, well, things are different now. Now I am old in an inescapable way.’

  He looked at Thercy but she didn’t seem to be listening. She was cleaning the mirror.

  ‘I have lived on the edge of an abyss for so long that the world and I are separate. I have nothing to offer her, even if she has been waiting for me. Even if she still wanted me I have no more to give.’

  Thercy finished her cleaning and went outside. She knew he liked cut flowers, so she cut some of the jasmine creeper and brought it in. Then she found a vase and trailed the branch in it.

  ‘All I want is the chance to see her from a distance,’ Theo told her, watching her arthritic hands. ‘Out of curiosity really, nothing more. Just to know that she’s happy, that she’s painting. That she has retained her hope.’

  ‘Yes,’ Thercy said.

  The scent from the jasmine began to fill the room.

  ‘After all, I must face reality. Probably she has married, by now. Who knows, she might have several children.’

  The scent filled Theo with unbearable sadness. All gone, he thought. Every single one of them. Thercy looked at him. She pursed her lips and wiped the table. Then she went into the kitchen to make him some tea.

  The train hugged the coastline, running parallel to the road. It was a journey he had made many times before. Wide sandy beaches unfolded before him, a few scattered villages screened by coconut palms. Staring out of the window he saw that nothing had changed; everything was as it had been yesterday. But the m
an who had once rested his eyes on the view had vanished. He had held this view within him during all the terrible years in prison. The girl’s face and the view had been so closely linked, so connected that they had been inseparable in his mind. He had imagined her waiting for him on the brow of the hill and all of this, and Sugi, had been the sum of his hope. Somehow, he realised, he had kept the hope alive. Now at last he was free, and the beach and the sea had waited for him, but the view he had dreamt about in prison was no longer as he imagined. And he was no longer that man who had been able to dream. A sense of loss, terrible in its hopelessness, washed over him. You will not recognise me, he thought, staring at the sea. I have been to places I can no longer describe. And he thought again, no, she must not see me. Better for her to remember me as I was.

  In Colombo there had been a temporary clean-up. During Theo’s imprisonment most of the heaviest fighting had moved away from the capital and was now concentrated elsewhere in the north. Only the suicide bombers operated with a disregard for boundaries. Because of them, the outside world had woken up to what was taking place and had become interested in the country at last. The suicide bombers, it seemed, had started a cult following. Muslims in the Middle East were beginning to follow suit. At last, Sri Lanka was newsworthy. A few days earlier the ex-Governor from Britain had visited briefly. After meeting the Prime Minister he travelled north to shake hands with the head of the insurgents. Peace was a long way away, but it was what he had in mind. The ex-Governor left a trail of bunting behind him. They still lined the streets, while elsewhere, wilted flowers covered up the bullet holes as best they could. Whitewash brightened the bombed-out buildings. All was sunlit activity. Colombo, Theo saw, was like him, struggling with the pretence of normality. But the army was still a presence, and seeing a truck Theo panicked. He rushed into a shop to hide, his heart pounding. No one followed him and gradually he became aware that he was being stared at. Then, as the shopkeeper approached, he ran out. Like a petty thief, he thought, fleetingly, unable to stop himself. He should not have come. Outside in the glaring light, looking around for escape, he became frantic. How long would it be before someone caught up with him? Hurrying across the road he expected a roadblock, or the sound of gunshot, at any moment, but still nothing happened. Forcing himself to calm down, to breathe deeply, he lost his way. He looked at a passing bus, but such was his anxiety that he was unable to read the sign. This, then, was what it meant to be hunted.

  Eventually, he found his bearings. After the near drowning Theo had begun to realise how weak his legs were, yet in spite of this, rather than take a bus and be stared at, he decided to walk. Rohan’s house was fifteen minutes away. Four years and two months away. A lifetime away. Theo walked slowly now, head down against the sun, remembering. The smell of limes and frangipani filled the air. It was five o’clock. Rohan would have finished work. He would be cleaning his brushes, wiping his hands absent-mindedly on a rag, staring at his painting. And Giulia, most probably, would have brought in the tea. Theo would be the last person they would expect to see. Once again he began to wonder at the wisdom of this trip. What if he were not welcome? The idea had not occurred to him before, but time, he knew, changed things. He had changed. What if they had too? As he turned the corner into their road, he hesitated. His bad leg was throbbing and he was shaking all over. What if the girl was there? What if he frightened them? He was no longer as they remembered. And the enormity of what he would need to say to make them understand struck him suddenly and forcefully. He was sweating heavily, partly from the heat but mostly from fear. Maybe, he thought, they would simply not believe him. In Tiger Lily he had written about a man whom no one believed. The man had gone from one village elder to another, telling of atrocities done to him, but no one believed him. In the end, doubting himself, hounded from his home, followed by demons, the man had thrown himself into the river and drowned.

  Feeling unutterably exhausted, Theo walked the length of the road. Rohan’s house was nowhere in sight. Although he peered into gardens, walking halfway along driveways he could not, for the life of him, see the canopied terrace that Giulia had painstakingly made. Rohan’s studio was at the front of the house. In the past, whenever Theo had arrived at their house, Rohan had always been the first to spot him, rushing out with a greeting. But today, although he retraced his steps several times, Theo could no longer see the studio. Perhaps he had mistaken the road, he thought, momentarily distracted. Some construction work was going on nearby. Puzzled, he stood watching the workmen on the scaffolding. A lorry passed through what must have once been a driveway. Theo could have sworn this was where Rohan and Giulia had lived. It dawned on him that they might have moved. Then a black VW Beetle pulled up in the driveway of the house next door.

  ‘Are you looking for someone?’ the driver asked, getting out.

  Theo stared. The man half smiled at him, uncertain. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he asked. ‘Haven’t I met you before?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone by the name of Rohan Fernando,’ Theo said reluctantly. ‘I thought he lived here but…’

  ‘Rohan? You knew Rohan?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘No,’ said Theo.

  ‘You from around here?’

  ‘No,’ said Theo.

  ‘Ah, I see. You’ve been overseas,’ the man said, nodding, understanding.

  Theo nodded too.

  ‘I’m sorry. In that case you wouldn’t have heard. About two years ago, there was a fire in their house, one in Rohan’s studio, and one on their veranda. Two years ago. It tore through their house, men. We were in bed, my wife and I, when we heard it…there was no chance, none whatsoever. I’m sorry to tell you this. You aren’t a close friend, are you? I can’t understand it really. This whole road was puzzled. They were quiet people, and Rohan’s wife wasn’t even Sri Lankan.’ The man shrugged apologetically, his pleasant features puzzled. ‘Things were very bad two years ago, very savage. Now, thank God, this new government is trying to negotiate peace talks. The first in decades. Everyone is hopeful, you know. Now that the ex-Governor has visited. It can only be a good thing. You recently returned?’ he asked.

  And when Theo said nothing, the man continued, pointing at the building site: ‘There, that was where their house stood, over there.’

  17

  WITHIN A YEAR THE GALLERY IN Calle del Forno offered Rohan a solo show. The demand for his small paintings had grown. The urgency, the intensity of the colour, their size, all added to their odd charm. He had been an abstract painter for years but now slowly he found himself propelled towards empty interiors, furniture and unclothed figures. The rooms he painted were always dark. Wardrobes opened out in them like gaping holes, beds remained unmade, figures were silhouetted against barred windows. And all the time, small glimmers of light escaped through cracks in the canvas.

  In the past Rohan had always talked to Giulia about his work. When they lived in Colombo she used to come into his studio at the end of each working day and they would drink tea together. And then they talked. In those days Rohan moved his vast canvases around the room and they would look at them together. He used to do all this energetically. Giulia, given half a chance, would tease him about his seriousness. Afterwards they would go back to the house for dinner. Now all this had changed. Now Rohan did not joke. These days he hardly said anything. Neither of them could say when it had happened but they had established separate rhythms to their life. Giulia had begun to teach English, making friends with several people in the neighbourhood. And she had taken up her translation work again. Often when Rohan worked late she would have supper with a neighbour. Once or twice she had tried including Rohan in these visits but it had never been successful. Both of them knew they were drifting apart; neither knew how to stop the change. Whenever Giulia attempted to talk about their past, Rohan blocked her. So now they never mentioned Theo or the girl. Their life in Sri Lanka might never have happened. Lying awake at
night while he slept, Giulia wondered if this was all they had escaped for, this empty void they called freedom. Months passed. Rohan’s exhibition was mentioned in an Italian newspaper. An unknown critic praised his work. The paintings, he said, reminded him of a shared grief, of dreams vaguely remembered, furniture that served as receptacles of memory. All of human life, in fact, reduced to memory. Rohan walked in to find Giulia reading the review. She was crying.

  ‘Don’t start,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t start all that again. I paint what I paint. It’s not my fault if they want to interpret it in this obvious, puerile way.’

  ‘Rohan,’ began Giulia, but then she stopped. What was the use? Grief had solidified into a wall between them; it had hardened and set in stone. There seemed little point to anything. When things were at their worst they had shared everything, every thought, every anxiety. Now all they had was bitterness to drown in. And yet, she thought wistfully, Theo was my friend too, my loss too. And then again, she thought angrily, your country is nothing to do with me. Resentment filled up the cracks. It covered everything they touched in fallout dust. You were the one to take me there, remember, thought Giulia, her eyes following him around the small flat. But she did not say it out loud. She was afraid of damaging what little they had. And she asked herself, has he forgotten my friend, Anna? No one mentions her any more, but I lived through that too. Yet in spite of this, still Giulia was unable to hurt Rohan further. Nor did she tell him that she was toying with the idea of going to London in the spring, to make one last attempt to look for Nulani Mendis. After Christmas, she decided, in the new year, I’ll go over there. Alone.