Mosquito

‘I have brought an offering for my son,’ she said. ‘He sits his scholarship exam this morning. I think his karma is good but I want to be sure he passes. I don’t want him to join the army. I don’t want him to die like my husband,’ she said, talking too loudly.

Theo looked at the woman with dislike. She had not mentioned her daughter once. Inside the temple it was cool and dark, and further back, out of sight, the monks sat in rows, their chants rising and falling in slow, low folds. The air was crowded with sounds, like the hum of hundreds of invisible birds. It reminded him of his childhood, of his mother. He had not been in a temple for many years. He stood in the coolness, thinking of Mr Mendis, wondering what he might have been like. And then he thought of the girl, wishing he had known her as a small child. Thinking how fleeting glimpses of that lost time often emerged in her mischievous laugh. Certain, too, that her father would always remain within her, however long she lived.

That afternoon, Nulani talked about her brother’s probable departure.

‘I think he will be happier in England,’ she told Theo. ‘And maybe he will come back to see us when the trouble is over.’

By now she was working on the larger portrait. She wanted it to be a surprise, she said. But she was less happy, he saw. Something was ebbing out of her, some vitality moved away leaving her drawn and hurt. Watching this, Theo felt unaccountably depressed.

‘That boy will never come back,’ Sugi said quietly, when he heard. ‘He only thinks about himself. Once he leaves he will forget about them.’

Sugi watched Theo. Although he said very little he knew all the signs were there. If he is not careful, he worried, Sir will get hurt. Why doesn’t he see this? Why, after all he has been through, is he not more careful? He’s a clever man, but … And Sugi shook his head.

‘Maybe,’ Theo said, ‘things will be easier for her when Jim goes. Maybe the mother will care more.’

‘The Mendis woman has only ever cared about the son, I tell you, Sir,’ Sugi said. ‘I know all about her. After the father was murdered, she used to talk to my friend who works in Sumaner House. And it was always the boy she worried about. Lucky Jim! That’s her name for him. She hardly notices her daughter.’

They were sitting on the veranda once again. It was late and the heat had finally moved a little distance away. Most nights now Theo listened to the menace of the garden, the rustlings and unknown creepings that scratched against the trees. He was hardly aware of doing so, but since the intruder, both he and Sugi were watchful.

‘And her father?’ he asked. ‘What was he like?’

‘People used to watch them,’ Sugi remembered. ‘Mr Mendis used to walk with his daughter every evening, up and down the beach. They used to say you could set your clocks watching those two. They always walked at five o’clock, every day, except when the monsoons came. He used to hold her hand. She was devoted to him.’ Sugi’s eyes moved restlessly across the garden. ‘It must have been terrible for her after he died. She must have felt so alone.’

They were both silent. Then Sugi went off for his nightly surveillance of the perimeter walls and gate, testing his barbed wire, wandering silently through the undergrowth. When he was satisfied that everything was in order, he came back and accepted a beer.

‘She needs to go from this place,’ he continued. ‘There is nothing here for her. Her uncle is a very unpleasant man. And, Sir, I know I’ve said it before, but you should be careful with this family. The girl is good but you are a stranger to these parts. Please don’t forget this.’

The night, once again, was quiet. There were no sounds of gunshots or sirens. Nor were there street lights here, for it was too far away from the other houses. The scent of blossom drifted in waves towards them. Occasionally the plaintive, lonely hoot of a train could be heard in the distance, but that was all.

‘You can’t change anything,’ said Sugi. He sounded sad. ‘You are right, things will take longer than we expect. Life is just a continuous cycle. Eventually, of course, at the right time there will be change. But however hard we try to alter things ourselves, what must be will be. Who knows how long it will take, Sir. Sri Lanka is an ancient island. It cannot be hurried.’

Theo watched the headlights of a car disappeared from view. The yellow beam stretched through the trees, bending with the road, piercing the darkness, searching the night. Then it was gone. It occurred to him there had been no car along that particular stretch of road for weeks.

Someone had thrown a plucked chicken over the wall into the garden. They had tossed it over, cleverly missing the barbed wire. It was trussed; legs together, smeared with yellowish powder, a thin red thread wound tightly round its neck. Even though death had come swiftly, leaving traces of blood, staring at it Theo imagined the frenzy of anger that had brought it to this state. A whole pageant of slaughter lay here, he thought, in this one small carcass. Mesmerised, he gazed at a half-remembered history, of sacrifice both ancient and bloodied. The turmeric had given the chicken’s skin the appearance of a threadbare carpet. He touched the bird with his foot; it was so long since he had seen something like this he had almost forgotten what it was meant for. And as he stood gazing at it, he remembered, in a rush of forgotten irritation, the reasons he had never made this country his home. Impatiently, for the waste of energy angered him, he kicked the chicken across the garden, and in doing so crossed a hidden boundary. For in that moment, it seemed to the horrified Sugi looking on, he did what no man should ever do: he tampered with those laws that could not be argued with.

‘Don’t touch it, Sir, for God’s sake,’ implored Sugi, but he was too late. The deed was done.

‘Don’t touch it, Sir, please. I will see to it. Someone is trying to put a curse on this place.’

Theo grinned. He has been away too long, thought Sugi, distressed. He questioned, instead of accepting. Twenty-odd years living away had made Theo forget. He was trying to single-handedly alter the inner structure of life. And seeing this, Sugi was frightened. His fear clung to the barbed wire that was pressed against the garden wall. Fear had been stalking Sugi daily for years.

‘This town is not as it used to be,’ he said. ‘We used to know everyone who lived here. We knew their fathers and their grandfathers too. We knew all the relatives, Sir. Many people have moved into this area, thinking it is safer here. But the trouble is, this has made it less safe. There are thugs in the pay of the authority, and there are thugs working for those who would like to be rid of the authority. Singhalese, Tamils, what does it matter who they are, everyone spies on everyone else.’ A nation’s hatred has split open, he said, like two halves of a coconut. ‘People are angry, Sir. They can barely hide it.’

Theo was silenced. Other people’s jealousies spilled out around him, dismembered bodies, here and there they scattered randomly, saffron yellow and cochineal. He could say nothing in the face of Sugi’s certainty. He did not want to hurt his feelings. Only the girl, arriving soon afterwards, expressed contempt. The dead chicken did not bother her, she said; she had seen so many before. Her father, she told Theo, had laughed at such nonsense. Her father had been full of peace, she told him. He did not believe violence answered anything, and so Nulani Mendis believed this too. She drank the lime juice Sugi had made for her and it was she who tried to reassure him. She was wearing her faded green skirt wrapped even more tightly around her slender waist and her skin appeared flawless through the thin cotton blouse. Sunlight fell in straight sheets behind her, darkening her hair, shadowing her face, making it difficult to read her expression. For a moment she seemed no longer a child. Had she changed since yesterday? puzzled Theo.

When she finished working on her painting she discarded her overall. There were still some slivers of paint in her fingernails. Today they were of a different colour. However hard she scrubbed her hands there was still some paint left, thought Theo amused. The day righted itself. The soft smell of colour still clung to her and seemed to Theo sweeter than all the scent of the frangipani blossoms. The picture was nearly finished, she told him, and she wanted to do another one. She needed one more sketch of him. Would Theo be able to sit still, please? He hid his amusement, noticing she had become a little bossy. Her notebook of drawings had grown and she wanted to use them in one more painting. She wanted to paint Theo in his dining room with its foxed mirrors, its beautiful water glasses, its jugs. She wanted to paint him surrounded by mirror-reflected light. Light that moved, she said. This was what interested her, not the trussed chicken. And no, she did not want him to sneak a look at the portrait, she added, laughing at him.

‘You can see it soon,’ she promised, as though he was the child. ‘When it’s finished.’

For now, she told Theo, he could look at her sketchbook instead. Once again she gave him the fragmented stories she had collected. And again they fell from the pages in a jumble of images.

‘Look,’ she said laughing, ‘my uncle!’

She stood too close, confusing him, making him want to touch her hair. Their conversations were a running stitch across her notebook, holding together all that he could not say.

‘There’s no one at home,’ she volunteered. ‘Jim has gone to Colombo with his teacher and Amma is visiting a friend. So I’m all on my own.’

She did not say it, but it was clear she was free to do what she pleased. How can I encourage her to defy her mother in this way? wondered Theo.

‘Jim has to get all the documents he needs to leave.’ Her brother’s departure was never far from her thoughts.

‘Doesn’t he want to wait?’ asked Theo. ‘Doesn’t he want to be sure he has passed the exam first?’

But, Nulani told him, Jim was certain. His teacher too believed he would pass the examination and be awarded the British Council scholarship. Such certainty, thought Theo, raising an eyebrow. He said nothing, watching as the thought of Jim’s certain departure darted and fluttered across her face.

‘He wants to leave Sri Lanka by October,’ Nulani said. She dared not think what that would mean for her.

For the moment, though, with the absence of her family, something, some unspecified tension seemed to ease up. She would stay late and the mornings were fresh and unhampered by the heat. The days stretched deliciously before them, slipping into an invisible rhythm of its own. By now Theo had become used to her presence, and he worked steadily on his manuscript, distracted only occasionally. Perhaps, he thought, Anna had been right. She had always insisted they needed a child to give purpose to their lives. A child was an anchor. It brought with it the kind of love that settles one, she used to say. When she had died Theo had remembered this, thinking, too, how useless a child would have been when all he wanted had been her. Now he wondered if Anna, wise, lovely Anna, had been right after all.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_b8bb580c-bc5b-5623-be45-bc5b78cae39d)

THERE WERE FLEETS OF ENORMOUS ORANGE MOTHS in Sumaner House where Vikram lived. Moths and antique dust that piled up in small hills behind the coloured-glass doors. The beetles had drilled holes in the fretwork of the frames and sawdust had gathered in small mounds on the ground. It was a useless house really, everything was broken or badly mended, everything was covered in fine sea sand, caked in old sweat and unhappiness. Objectively, it might have made a better relic than a house, but relics were plentiful and houses of this size not easily found. The fact was Sumaner House was huge. Once it must have been splendid. Once, rich Dutch people would have lived in it and crossed the Indian Ocean in big sailing ships, carrying spices and ivory and gold back to their home. Once, too, the filigree shutters, and the newly built verandas, and the black-and-white-tiled floors must have looked splendid. The green glass skylight would have filtered the sun down into the dark interior. But what was the use? Time had passed with steady inevitability, washing away the details of all that had gone before, leaving only small traces of glory. Now the furniture was scratched and full of decay. These days only Vikram and his guardian and the servant woman lived here. Most of the time it was only Vikram and the servant woman who were in the house. She stayed in her quarters, cooking or cleaning, and Vikram came and went as he pleased. There was no one to stop him. No one to ask him questions or argue with him, for Mr Gunadeen, his guardian, was hardly ever present. He was in Malaysia. Why he had ever wanted to be Vikram’s guardian was a mystery. Perhaps he had wanted to protest against the exploitation of child soldiers. Perhaps, he had hoped, that by adopting a Waterlily House orphan he would build up good karma. No one knew, because after that one act of enigmatic charity, Vikram’s guardian went off to work, first in the Middle East and then in Malaysia. Supervising telecommunications systems in other developing countries. Perhaps the war had made him restless, the people in the town said. At least by adopting Vikram he had done something to counteract the work of those murderous Tamil bastards. For, it was said, he was a good Singhala man.

Having picked Vikram more or less randomly from the Waterlily orphanage, Mr Gunadeen put him in the local boys’ school.

‘He needs a good education,’ he told the headmaster privately, without noticing the irony of his words.

The headmaster knew, but chose to forget, that in the wake of independence the Singhalese had slowly denied the Tamils any chance of a decent education. Well, things had changed and these were desperate times. The headmaster knew nothing about child soldiers or their psychological scars. He thought Vikram was an orphan without complications. He knew nothing of his soldiering past.

‘I shall be gone for a few months,’ Vikram’s guardian had said.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the head. ‘He’ll be fine. You’ll notice a change in him when you return, I promise.’

Vikram’s guardian paid him handsomely. Next, Mr Gunadeen instructed the servant woman, Thercy.

‘You know what to do,’ he said. ‘The boy’s a little restless, but just feed him well and make sure he goes to school. I’ll be back in a few months or so.’

And then he went, giving Vikram a contact address and a phone number. He did not think things needed to be any more complicated than that. So Vikram had a home now, a new school and plenty of food. What more could an orphan boy expect? He was far away from the brutal place where they recruited underage children into the military. What more could be done? The people in the town shook their heads in disbelief. What a good man Mr Gunadeen was, they said again, hoping Vikram would be worth the effort put into him. That had been four years ago.

But Vikram seemed not to realise the significance of his good fortune. Right from the very beginning he did not appear to care about anything. At first, when he came to live in Sumaner House, he used to kick the walls, treating the house as though it were a person, scuffing the furniture slyly, gouging holes in the doors when no one was looking, and cracking the fine-coloured glass into as many lines as he could, without breaking it completely. Torturing the house. Only the servant woman knew what he was up to. Thercy the servant woman saw everything that went on.

Then later, as he grew into adolescence, Vikram quietened down. The servant woman noticed this too. Almost overnight Vikram became monosyllabic and secretive. Whenever Thercy looked at him she noticed how expressionless his face was. In the last four years, since the random killings here in the south, the troubles had worsened. Nothing was certain any more but Thercy had learned to keep silent. Privately, she thought Vikram was disturbed. His disturbance, she was certain, lurked, waiting to pounce.

The only person the servant woman trusted in the whole town was Sugi. She knew Sugi was a good man. Often when they met at the market they would walk a little way together (not so far or so often as to attract attention) and exchange news. Thercy often talked to Sugi about the orphan from Waterlily House.

‘He has everything he needs and nothing he wants,’ she liked to say. ‘It’s his karma. To be saved from his fate in the orphanage, and given another sort of fate! But it won’t work,’ she added gloomily.

Sugi would listen, nodding his head worriedly. He had heard all this before. Vikram hadn’t been a child soldier for long but Sugi knew: once a child soldier always a soldier. Why had Vikram’s guardian tampered with the unwritten laws of the universe? What had happened to him was unimaginable and because of this he should have been left alone, in Sugi’s opinion. Thercy had told Sugi the whole sorry story many times and each time Sugi had been convinced, Vikram should not have been brought here. The army entered Vikram’s home in Batticaloa and raped his mother and his sister. They raped them many, many times, Thercy had said, beating the palm of her hand against her forehead as she talked.