I nodded.
‘Put it to the side, machang. We have a party coming later.’
‘I’ll be gone soon,’ I said.
‘You just brought our army megastar, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be here for a while then. So, move it.’
He seemed too offhand to be running the guest house, but he had a half-cocked swagger that I didn’t want to challenge. Although he was missing a leg, he looked like he was spoiling for a fight. His arms were big and muscly. He was the kind of soldier-in-disguise you find these days who was also near the top of my not-to-argue-with list.
I went out and moved the van. When I came back in, he was seated on the bench looking a bit calmer.
‘So, is he here for like a regular party?’ I asked, trying to be friendly.
‘He’s here to see my mother.’ He nudged the stool my way with his crutch. ‘Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. To repair a mistake takes time, even in the army. You have to go back over it again and again. You understand what I am saying?’
I can understand that a man, even a military man, might prefer the Versace-laced electric funk of a topnotch nightclub to the stink of soldiering in a swamp, but this guest house seemed neither here nor there.
‘Is your mother the Manel of the guest house, or your father?’
‘Not them.’ He pulled out a cigarette from his blue shirt pocket and started chewing the end.
‘It’s not you, is it?’
‘Why not?’
I thought soldiers were trained not to ask questions. Certainly not to answer back. That was the reason half the population of youngsters in these districts were being recruited into the army, wasn’t it? A neat idea for a smooth social system. Or so I figured.
He lit his cigarette and his eyes clouded over. ‘It is my name,’ he said, ‘but this is my mother’s guest house.’
‘I didn’t think you were a hotelier,’ I said. ‘You must be a soldier, no?’
He patted the stump that had been his knee. ‘What? Because of this?’
‘Where’d you lose it?’ I asked as if he’d misplaced his wallet, or I’d lost my marbles.
‘Ask the big man. He can tell you.’ He lit his cigarette and took a couple of rapid puffs. ‘You think it’s true that you can lose your legs smoking this stuff?’ Then he pinched the cigarette out of his mouth and plunged it into my cup of tea.
I didn’t want any more tea anyway. So I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I lost my brother too, in the same hellhole.’ He let out a last lingering trace of smoke. ‘They told our parents that we were both dead. Stupid donkeys. My father . . .’
‘The brigadier?’ For a moment I did wonder if he might be the father.
‘He wasn’t a brigadier then.’ The crutch rose again in his hand and he pointed it towards the sea like some old cannon from the days of the Dutch. ‘My father killed himself last year because he thought he’d lost both of us. My mother is slowly going nuts.’
I like to be able to make sense of the world around me. That is what makes me comfortable. At this moment in history, in this country, perhaps that is a vain hope, but I like to think that if I had been in Moscow at the time of the Russian Revolution, or even in the Gulags of Stalin, I would have had a way, like my father with his ideology, of understanding how it all fitted together. I might have been wrong, and my logic badly mistaken, but it would have made sense to me, for the moment. I don’t have to be right; I just want to be not confused. I am beginning to appreciate that it is a lot to ask for in this world, unless you are a firm religionist, but surely it is not too much?
‘Is it his fault?’ I asked.
Manel’s shoulders dropped as though I had inadvertently released a catch. He looked lost. ‘You can’t tell who will walk in through that door and just wreck your life. You really can’t.’
*
The footsteps coming down the stairs were heavy and deliberate. There was more than weight on the tread, or at least more than the weight of a living body. There was the weight we mean when we talk of things that weigh on your mind. It was a mind that was coming down the stairs. A mind in big black boots. The dancer in him, I guess, wore different shoes.
‘Driver,’ he said when he saw me, ‘you are a lucky man.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. I was no longer the captain of a van. He was no longer a stray pickup.
‘You can take me to Colombo now. You can go home after that.’
‘That is good, sir.’
‘You live in Colombo?’
‘That side,’ I said cagily, but he wasn’t really listening. He was looking at Manel.
‘I hear you got the job.’
Manel put a finger to his ear as if he was blowing his brains out. He wiggled it about. ‘Fish. They want me to count fish for some Teheran company.’
‘Prawns,’ the brigadier corrected him. ‘Crates of tiger prawns.’
‘Right. Tiger fucking prawns. Remember the last time you talked to me about fucking tigers. You didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about, did you?’
‘You are lucky to get any job, if that’s the way you talk.’
‘Lucky to lose a leg as well I suppose.’ He wiped his finger on his pointless knee.
‘You got your compensation. Get over it, boy. Move on. Do your job and look after your mother now.’
Manel pulled in his lips, but couldn’t stop the words from bursting out. ‘I’d like to see you move on, you know. Move on with one fucking leg.’
*
Fish, prawns, tigers are not my business. I carry people. On average about seventy kilos each, given that Mrs Klein in particular compensates for the likes of Vince, Paul and Miss Susila. What they carry on their consciences, in their hearts, guilt or grievance, is not for me to judge. I might sometimes help them unburden, but that is only partly out of curiosity. It is also my service. Same as the barber or the dentist, although with the razor and the drill, they have an advantage that tends to keep their mouths more open than their customers’—talking, I mean. I do it to aerate the van. Keep it bubbling. As far as I am concerned, what we talk about on the road is what we feel deep inside. You don’t get that deep if you just sit still, whatever the yogis, the barbers and the dentists say. You need the sense of motion, your body hurtling through space. Then your thoughts can really move in your head. And if the conversation doesn’t go beyond the parking situation at Odel’s or the price of onions at Food City, well, then that’s just the way you are. It is not that you are trivial, but only that that’s the life you lead.
With the brigadier the possibilities were mind-boggling. I couldn’t predict what would happen. We had a good 47 K to go. If he opened his mouth on this leg, he could spout blood, guts, terror or Tandoori Nights at the Little Hut. It was all there in him, waiting for the right trigger.
We stepped outside and he nodded at the old woman who had reappeared. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go then and come back.’
She cringed and looked up at the window above us. I glanced up too and saw a lady all glammed up behind the glass.
Then the brigadier got inside the van and carefully sat in a different place from where he had been on the way to the guest house. Manel didn’t come out.
‘We’ll go now?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Go, go,’ he said with a hint of some loosish dance-floor rhythm bouncing in his blood.
I backed out of the gate. With an officer like him in my van, what was there to worry about on the road?
Once we were under way, I turned the AC down and tried to keep the engine noise steady. This was a man who could control a six-point spin of a dancing queen with one hand while decimating the most ruthless guerrilla force in the world with the other. I had to let him choose his own pace to speak, and hope for an improvement from the earlier journey. At least I knew that he was not averse to me and my style.
I was right.
‘Driver, you think that boy is missing a screw or something
?’
‘Not mad, sir. Angry, maybe.’
‘It happens with these fellows. Killing men from a war room is not a problem, but when you see them twitch, you know, it is another matter. If you see the face, Tiger or not. Or the body burst when you have pulled the trigger, then your life moves into a different sphere . . .’
‘I think he is upset about himself, sir. His leg is the problem.’
‘He has another.’
‘Also his brother. No other brother. And no father, he said.’
‘The whole family is fucked.’
‘Sir?’ I didn’t know what to make of that, so I pressed the accelerator a bit more. My van sometimes flies like a bird. ‘Which family, sir?’
‘I have a plan,’ he said. ‘I have a plan for fellows like that. They need to be doing something routine, you know. You need a job, otherwise you get disaffected. A disaffected soldier, ex or not, is bad news. Especially if he is hooked to the killing side of things. You see, driver, it can be like a drug. You like a bit of speed, don’t you?’
‘Sir?’
‘Foot on the pedal? A little lift? Well, you’ve never fired a gun, driver, have you?’
‘No, sir. I was only a clerk before.’
‘A bit of recklessness can be very tempting.’
‘When you are driving for a living like me, sir, you cannot give in to recklessness. It is not good for business.’
‘Driver,’ he leant forward and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘You are a very funny man. I like that.’
I tried to work out what was going on in his mind. ‘Big officers are not reckless, are they?’
‘Depends on the result. If things go right, you are seen as smart; if they go wrong, then you are called reckless.’
‘But you, sir, you are the tops.’
‘It also depends on who is looking at the result and where they stand.’
‘Is that the problem with the boy?’ I bit my tongue, too late. Drivers should drive and listen, not shoot off their mouth.
I felt the weight shift in the van. I checked the mirror and saw him smooth his hair. ‘The boy is stuck in the past. You can’t always be looking back. You have to look forward, no? Isn’t that so, driver?’
‘Yes, sir. You have to keep your eyes on the road.’
‘Good. I am glad you understand that. This country needs people like you.’
When we first heard the war was over, we believed a line could be drawn between the mistakes of the past and the promise of the future. One was the place you had been, the other was the place you were going to. We believed there was no need for the two to be connected. But as a driver, I should have known better. To go from one to the other, you need a road. And a road is nothing if it doesn’t connect. A bit like a knee. Bling or not, the brigadier knew that too.
Humbug
‘Would you like one, Vasantha?’ Miss Susila offered me a bag from behind. ‘Sweets from England.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the road. I picked something hard and popped it in my mouth. It was the most peculiar taste I had ever come across.
‘I really like them, but not everyone does. Humbugs. Do you, Vasantha?’
It was difficult to reply. I managed a grunt of appreciation without choking. The peppermint certainly woke me up.
Miss Susila was too young and lovely to call ‘madam’ even though she was married. She handed the bag of sweets to her husband and he put it in a plastic reseal sleeve and pinched the ridges at the edge together. It took him a couple of goes to get the grooves to fit. When it was done, he handed it back to her. It looked to me like the ritual of a much older couple.
‘How much further to the rest house?’ she asked.
‘About twenty minutes,’ I said. ‘We will be there for lunch, no problem.’
‘I’m starving,’ she said.
‘A long cool beer would do me very nicely,’ her husband, Colin, added. He was an Englishman of the long kind. Everything about him was long: long legs, long body, long face, long nose. It was as though he had been modelled by a cartoonist long ago. But he had a very gentle manner and seemed to treat his wife with deference.
The road to Hambantota is very good. The best in the country now. The surface is first-class. It was not always so. There was a time when it was part of the wild country. But then it found political favour. Flavour of the month, year, decade, perhaps century. Now the talk is of highways, ports and airports, but all that is new. Ten years ago, people knew of the nicely situated rest house but not much more. It was the place to stop before you reached Yala and started looking for wild elephants and leopards.
‘I can’t believe we will be there,’ Miss Susila said. ‘For the last two years, I have been reading those pages over and over again.’
‘Well, now you will see what it is really like.’ Her husband’s long pale fingers closed over hers briefly.
‘It won’t be the same. Gihan was saying that nothing much had changed for a hundred years, but then, in the last two or three, everything has changed. It is now the hub.’
‘The sea must be the same.’
‘That’s what I really want. To hear the sea like Woolf did. I love that description he wrote about the surf dropping thud, thud on the beach.’
‘The same sound every day, except the day the tsunami came.’
‘I know. That’s the thing.’
In my mirror I could see her bunch her hair at the back of her head and lift it off her neck and drop it. Her thoughts turning. Thudding.
I put the AC up a notch and took a bend in the road. The sea came leering into view, foaming in the blue bay. The couple in my van this time seemed about as unlikely a pair as you would ever find. Nothing matched except as opposites. Black and white, tall and short, calm and mad. She had a bag of books she wouldn’t let go of, whereas he didn’t even carry a pair of sunglasses. One liked speed, the rush of wind, the other preferred the languid air of a parked car. They were booked in for the night at one of the most expensive hotels, further down the coast, and yet wanted to lunch at the cheapest.
The challenge of my job is to fit these contradictions into one itinerary. A driver has to learn to do that. I haven’t perfected the art yet but it is a lesson we could all do with, including the big honchos in their black Benzes.
*
The Hambantota Rest House was built on a promontory overlooking the bay. In the old days, when it stood alone, it would have been a very impressive building. A low but long, commanding, imperial presence. Now, despite overlooking the bay, the industriousness of the massive building works below it—dams, breakwaters, excavations—threatens to undermine its position. It has become marooned like a castaway on an island of its own.
I parked under the blossom trees and opened the door for Miss Susila.
‘Thank you,’ she said, breathing in the sea air. She jumped out, light as a feather.
Mr Colin unfolded for a minute or two before expanding to full size outside the van. ‘Must have been a fabulous spot when Woolf was here.’
‘The veranda on the other side is good for a cool drink,’ I said. I had been here in 2002, before the tsunami, when the world of this coast was still half asleep from the previous century and before anyone dreamed that Hambantota might become the hub of the southern hemisphere. If she had come then, Miss Susila would have found the rest house just as she had imagined it from the books she had been reading of life in the jungle a hundred years ago. The bay was long and calm. The line of a wave that stretched for miles, rising and falling as regularly and as comfortingly as Mother Nature’s breath. A few fishing boats sailing out, or sailing in. A sense that the growth of the interior had been brought to an abrupt close. At that time you wouldn’t think there were more than a few hundred people dotted around the bay. I certainly could not have imagined 3000 there, and yet 3000 perished when the rogue tide came from the deep to take its toll. Ten times as many died up and down the coast. But now it is as if the town, the whole coastline, is
dressing up for a party. I heard Mr Colin say something about the resilience of the people here. I suppose we must be resilient given all the things that have happened. Or else, it is a kind of scary collective amnesia.
‘Come and join us,’ Mr Colin said to me.
I followed them into the building.
It hadn’t changed since the last time I had come. The same faded armchairs, a long, dark, dusty floor and greying white walls, a few bare tables. All slightly scruffy as one would have at home for want of money. Even the welcome flowers in the vase might have been the same ones dried out from ten years ago.
‘I imagine in Woolf’s day, there’d be more polish about,’ Mr Colin said, looking around.
‘The place would have been gleaming. He would have been a stickler for that kind of thing.’ She gave her husband a telling look.
We walked through a jaded empty dining room to a back veranda that was smaller than I remembered. The long rattan chairs, yellowing and sagging in the middle, really could have been a hundred years old.
Miss Susila was in a dream, turning slow circles as she walked. Her husband followed watching her, and watching out for her, as though she was a child at play. Indulging her but at the ready to reach out if she strayed too close to the cliff, or came close to any danger.
‘Please, sit down,’ I said. ‘I will go and find someone for you.’ It was my duty as the only insomniac in the land of nod.
I went back into the main building. It was very odd that no one had appeared. I looked in the office but there was nobody there. Then I found a handbell that belonged to a ship or something. It looked like the sort of thing you might ring to warn of danger. Storms. Breaching whales. Madmen. Rather than swing it—I would have needed both hands to lift it—I tapped it on the side with my keys. There was no answer.
I went back to my tourists and found that they had had more success without me.
‘This man is the only one here, Vasantha,’ Miss Susila said to me. ‘He says the place is closed.’
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