To the place where we live and wild hyacinths grow.
The hyacinths sang and we drank of their message
Until we were full and fluent in their song.
Then all the world round us joined in with their singing
Yet rising above them, one voice sang out strong
And that voice that was yours, Josh, the man that I love.
I listened to your voice as it called me and called me
Drawing me to you, out into the light.
I looked at you then and I watched your words forming
And smelt your soft hair as your arms held me tight.
Then I knew that I loved you, as I love you now.
As my gaze lifted further I looked in your eyes.
There, in the depth of your beautiful eyes,
there, in the heaven of your beautiful eyes,
there, where I turn for my reason for living
that’s where my God lies and I choose to be.
When I am dust my love will call to you
When I am dust I will lie next to you.
In death as in this life a mirror to your being,
Asking God to protect you, Om Sahana Vavatu.
As we lie side by side in the God that we know.
Well, it would hardly match the Shakespearean sonnet, would it? But it was the best I could do. Is love a form of suffering, a denial of faith? I don’t think so. I never did discuss that with Mahendra. There was no point in doing so. You don’t tell a wild hyacinth to stop being blue – or pink for that matter.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Planning our next move took a lot of time and filled our lives for days… weeks…after that discussion. It became my next obsession, something that I wanted to discuss with Josh constantly. I know that I was difficult to live with during that time but, in the end, that’s when we fixed on the idea of going to Lulea.
Sweden, itself, was a much bigger issue than I had realised at first. To begin with Josh really remained unsure if he wanted to go back to his home country any more than I would have wanted to go back to mine and he took a lot of persuading that I would cope with life there.
‘What about our faith? Can we really hold on to it in a very different community? Will it just get lost?’ That was part of the big issue that we had to face. Josh was afraid that, if he went back to Sweden, our faith would not be supported in the way that it is here. Here our faith is treated as being perfectly normal, there we would be outsiders. Two men in a same sex relationship in Sweden, practising a form of Buddhism in a predominantly Christian community. One of them, me, a foreigner. Neither of them having any social connections.
‘Sweden will not be easy. It is nowhere near as tolerant as you may think. Believe me.’
But eventually he accepted from me that, wherever we went, we would both have to see how things worked out and, if we weren’t happy, we could always move again.
‘Intolerance is everywhere. Name me one country where there is no element of discrimination.’ Josh was insistent about dispelling any image of Sweden as a country abounding in liberalism.
‘It depends on what we make of it.’ That was my line. ‘I know you will look after me, protect me…as I will you.’ I think he needed to hear me say that.
Once we had decided on Sweden, we then played a game of negatives – eliminating places and areas with the options moving further and further north as we did so. Lulea became the obvious place for us to go. We couldn’t go to Stockholm because that is where Josh had lived and worked and we wanted a fresh start even though it is a big place. His parents live in Malmo and he had worked in Göteborg as a chaplain. We couldn’t go anywhere near Halmstad, where his mother’s large family live.
For us to make a truly fresh start meant all those places were out of the question and so we decided to keep away from the south of the country altogether and anywhere that was in easy travelling distance of where he had been before. That’s pretty much how we fixed on the far north. Lulea is about 900 miles from Malmo and about 550 miles from Stockholm so we would not be on his family patch and the climate sounds appealing; it is said to be almost continental – reasonably warm, albeit short, summers and long cold winters. Moving there would also have been a big change for Josh and also hard for him, so it had a feel of a joint adventure. I used to think of it as being as different as moving from the south coast of England to the very north of Scotland. We spent hours and hours researching it on the internet and I feel that I know the place pretty well even though I have never been there and, now, never will.
Lulea is not a large city. It has a population of only about 75,000 but it has a respected university of technology, a hospital and a cathedral. We knew that employment is not easy to find there but, with Josh’s skills, we were confident that he would be able to find some sort of work. It was then that I started to study Swedish properly, as a prelude to seeking work there myself. Josh started to give me homework, as we called it, by which I had to learn ten words a day in Swedish.
Money was easy – Josh still had plenty of the stuff in Sweden and I still had over £500,000 in bank accounts in England so we knew that we wouldn’t starve. I haven’t spent much money over the past four years, despite helping with the hotel. We decided that we would get to Lulea first and then decide what we were going to do but we knew that the university in Lulea offers courses on business administration in English and, if all went well, I planned to do that so that we could set ourselves up in business later, if we chose.
The biggest issue to begin with was when. Once we knew where we were going my reaction was to rush ahead, to snatch at the move. Josh was more subtle and certainly more laid back.
‘There’s no rush’ – that was his line.
‘But your visa runs out at the end of March.’
‘So what?’
‘How do you mean, so what, Josh?’
‘We won’t be anywhere near ready to leave by then and what’s the worst that can happen if we overstay on our visas?’
‘We get booted out of the country. Fine for us, I suppose. But what about Raja? Does he get prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants? And what if Sunil picks up on the fact that we should not be here, how anxious will he feel?’ ‘Not as anxious as he will feel if we leave in a hurry.’
‘Well, we will need to talk about this with Raja.’
‘Absolut.’ That was Josh trying to be annoying. It was not a good conversation.
‘Please don’t let’s do it in that way, Josh.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Absolut. It’s what you say when you think I’m being a dick.’
There was a pause. Josh looked down. ‘I’m sorry. We promised each other we wouldn’t do that. I’m really sorry.’
Josh and I talked more about timing and decided that, for us, another year would be ideal. It would give us time to unwind ourselves from the life we had been living and to plan properly about the future.
I got the impression that Raja was relieved when I got round to speaking to him and realised that he had been wanting to find a way of raising the issue of how long we were staying himself. It was difficult for the guy; a lot had happened between us over the two years since we had met but he also needed to think about the future. What is more, he didn’t want to get into trouble by employing foreigners who had overstayed their visas.
I explained the problem to him and what we hoped for.
‘Leave it to me,’ Raja said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Raja put his bureaucratic wizardry into effect and, eventually, got our visas extended for the extra year. That’s how we set the end of February 2008 as the date for our departure.
I cannot adequately explain the excitement I felt when everything was in place. It wasn’t like leaving London; that had been running away on my own, this was pouring every bit of my life into a joint adventure. I felt that I knew where I was going. I even found myself drawn back to the song that I heard Catherine sing - Cangiò d�
�aspetto - by Handel and I listened to it repeatedly. ‘How changed the vision now dawning o’er me. A smiling future doth shine before me. A bright young joy’ and, by introducing Josh to it, I laid another ghost to rest.
So, by the end of February 2007 we were sorted. We just had to break the news to Sunil.
We agreed with Raja that we wouldn’t say anything to Sunil for a while, until our plans were clear and Raja had thought through what would happen after we had left. Then the three of us sat down together with him and told him – it must have been at about the end of March 2007.
Sunil’s immediate reaction was to walk off. When I called after him as he went down the beach he turned and said ‘go away.’ He was eleven by then and I thought the best thing was to leave him for a while as he had asked. After about half an hour I went to find him. He was sitting by the edge of the sea throwing stones into the water.
‘I’m sorry, Sunil.’
‘No, you always said that you would go sometime. It’s just...I don’t know.’
I sat down beside him and put my arm round him. He nudged his head into my side. I stroked his hair with my hand and just kept saying ‘I’m sorry.’ After a bit he wiped his eyes and blew his nose with his fingers.
‘Come on, let’s go down the beach for a walk.’
We walked along the sand, hand in hand, with Sunil looking up at me from time to time for reassurance.
‘Will I ever see you and Josh again after you’ve left?’
‘Of course you will.’ I told him that. ‘If Uncle Raja is OK about it you might even be able to see us in Sweden.’
And now? Well, I’ve lied, haven’t I? Now, I’m going to break my word, I know. I am so sorry. More pages deleted. Right now, I don’t want to think about that.
It took some weeks for Sunil to settle into the idea that we would have to leave and we both realised how right it had been to delay our leaving for so long. At times Sunil was clingy and at other times angry – there was one time when he flung a stone at me, seemingly in play, but it hit me in the head. Raja really piled in the support for Sunil, though, and seemed to welcome the chance to show how well he could look after Sunil on his own as we gradually pulled back. By the end of April we felt able to go off travelling, just the two of us.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Because the monsoon does not hit the east of the island until November we decided to start our travels by going to Arugam Bay, which is just south of Pottuvil, on the south east coast. The beach there is a long sweep of sand and there is good surfing on the southerly end of the bay. On our way we went to the Yala Park and did some leopard spotting but getting stuck in jeeps with camera waving tourists was really not what we were about.
Pottuvil was as far into the east of the island as we wanted to go. 2007 was the year in which the government forces took control of the eastern province and Pottuvil is at the southern extreme of the province, just under a hundred miles south from the big and then conflicted city of Batticaloa. So, although it was pretty safe by the time we got there, we did not venture further north. Eight months on there was still a lot of talk about a massacre that had happened on 18 September 2006 when ten Muslim civilians were killed while clearing the nearby Rattal Kulam reservoir - according to the one survivor by LTTE soldiers, but, who knows? The somewhat hushed discussions about what had happened served as a reminder of the undertow of aggression and discounted lives that lay behind the society around us.
We found a cabana overlooking the bay in a hotel run by people who could not have been kinder to us and who left us pretty much to our devices, realising that we wanted to be on our own. We stayed there for two months then; it was the first time that we had been alone together without commitments to other people and I remember saying to Josh after a couple of weeks: ‘Do you know, this is the first time in my life that I can remember being truly relaxed.’ That is exactly how I felt. Josh took to it all, straightaway, not so much like a duck to water, more like the eagles we watched soaring effortlessly over the lagoon. I took longer to settle but made it eventually.
It was a time of happiness, for us at least, despite the civil war which rumbled like thunder in the distance. A happiness that made everything slower, everything softer. It made my bones feel numb and I kept finding that I had an inane grin on my face. I said things that were trite and repetitive and kept looking at Josh and smiling, taking his hand, walking so our shoulders touched.
The evenings were the best part of the day for us both. We would sit on the veranda watching the sea as the light faded, listening to the buzz around us and talking quietly, reading or drawing, your hand resting on my thigh, my hand resting on yours. That was the highlight of our days. Melting into you.
Before we went out on to the veranda we always spent an hour every day in the room, settling each other into meditation before sitting in quiet reflection, in silence, before sometimes moving on to shared meditation. I had bought two prayer mats when we were in Galle one time. They were beautifully ornate, made of silk and depicted the tree of life. Other than rings, the bike and the gear that went with it, the mats were our only luxury. I bought them because we needed symbols of space within a relationship where we lived on top of each other. The shack was tiny and our lives so intricately combined that, I realised, we could easily have slipped away from our faith – so easily have become like the rest.
And the more I reflected, the more I meditated while sitting on my ornate, silk rug in silence, so the more my thoughts took me to you. And, as they did, they cleared my mind enough so that I could see everything that you had done for me. I came to know you as my saviour, you know that. That’s where my mind took me. Of course it did. You were my saviour. And everything that I have written here, stuck in these hotels on my own, all of it explains why I know that is so. It’s what I think now.
And you? What did you think? Well, all I can do now is to carve into this unduly lengthy headstone of yours – and mine now, I suppose - a conversation we had after one of our periods of reflection. This is what happened.
You ended the silence. I could tell that something was coming because you kept shifting on the mat. ‘Simon…’ You did that brief, hesitant, look down. You stepped back and looked at me, raising your right index finger to your lips.
‘Simon, you saved my soul.’ Nothing else, just ‘you saved my soul.’ Then you put your open hand onto my back and we went out to sit on the veranda and sat in silence. I was not going to blurt out a response, to say something to keep my end up in a conversation, a game, of mutual compliments. To do an ‘I love you, too’ act. You knew that I was thinking about what you had said and left my mind clear to take it in. Then I did tell you what I thought, what I think.
‘Josh, I have not saved your soul. You saved your own soul. It is just that you allowed me to see it and to learn that your soul is the most beautiful thing I could ever know.’
I did not save Josh’s soul. It was always there. A soul is the person that you are, the distillation of yourself. With Josh that soul, that beautiful soul, that drive for goodness and understanding had always been there. Throughout his childhood, throughout his difficult period of transition into adulthood and then during adulthood itself. Always there. It’s just that he didn’t know it and could not show it. I did nothing more than allow him to uncover it. There is no way, no way at all, that I can take credit for your soul and I will not do so. You know, and I know, that my story was different from yours. If you think about everything I have written, how can I pretend to a soul that matches yours? Well, I don’t. Any quality that I have found, in God, in truth, in purpose, any foundation, rests with you. The poem said it, sickly sweet or not.
You were my saviour. You didn’t just save my soul. You defined it. And I think that is what redemption means. Sin is not about murder, theft, coveting your neighbour’s donkey and, as to graven images, why not, if it helps? Sin is about emptiness, not fulfilling what you’ve got, not contributing to God. Being a waste of space. Not being
rightful as a human being. You took me away from all that. And yes, I am saying that you are my redeemer. And, do you know what? I am also saying that you gave your life for me, instinctively, and I am going to explain how. And so yes, I am drawing parallels that are too obvious to spell out. That’s how much you mean to me.
I will protect you, Josh. I will protect you in any way I can. I will protect you and your memory with every word I can find. I just don’t really know how to do it. I have tried to do that by writing this. Goodness knows if I have achieved it. I don’t think that any writing would be good enough.
What have I done to honour that since you died? Well, I have written all this but so what? You gave me your soul to share and I don’t know what to do about it, because nothing is equal to that.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
So, sometimes in the evenings at Arugam Bay we played the game, telling each other how we felt. But we developed the rules, made it exciting, risky. We would each describe how our bodies felt, starting from the soles of our feet, each moving up through every part of the body and only then speaking of what we could hear, smell, taste, what we thought. How open could we be? Well, very, I suppose is the answer to that.
‘I want to describe how you’re feeling.’ That was me…that was even more risky. And exciting. So I moved from Josh’s toes, inch by inch up his body, saying what I thought he was feeling, what he was sensing. No touching. Just words. It was also somewhat explosive.
And by nine o’clock we usually went to bed.
It took me quite a few days to break the habit of getting up at six o’clock, but there were compensations for that. The sunrise over Arugam Bay is spectacular, full of pinks and reds as the sun lifts itself beyond the clouds on the horizon; our veranda faced the bay and the bay faces due east, so the view was uninterrupted. I would watch as the early morning fishing boats sailed slowly across the sparkling mirror of the sea in front of me, drawing my eyes to the silhouettes of the fishermen that strove to make a living from it as best they could. I even managed to get a somewhat disgruntled Josh out of bed to see it on a few occasions. Then it was back to bed before we surfaced from our room, rarely before nine o’clock, often even later. We turned everything in on ourselves, showing each other that we could build a life together in the future, that we could move on, just the two of us. We had all the time in the world.
The Water Is Warm Page 33