The forest was so still that Anil heard no sounds until she thought of listening for them. Then she located the noisemakers in the landscape, as if using a sieve in water, catching the calls of orioles and parrots. ‘Those who cannot love make places like this. One needs to be in a stage beyond passion.’ It was practically the only thing Sarath had said that day in Arankale. Most of the time he walked and slept in his own thoughts.
They had wandered within the forest, discovering remnants of sites. A dog followed them and she remembered Tibetans believed that monks who hadn’t meditated properly became dogs in the next life. They circled back to the clearing, a clearing like a
kamatha,
the threshing circle in a paddy field. On a ledge of stone a small statue of the Buddha rested, a cut plantain leaf protected him from glare and rain. The forest towering over them so they felt they were within a deep green well. The corrugated overhang by the cave rattled and shook whenever the wind came down through the trees.
There was no wish in her to step away from this place.
Kings and those who are powerful desire what weighs them to the ground. Historical honour, measured ownership, their sure truths. But in Arankale, Sarath told her, in the last years of the twelfth century, Asanga the Wise and his followers lived for decades in solitude, the world unaware of them. When they died the monastery and then the forest were stilled of humans. And in those uninhabited years the paths were leaf-filled, there was no song of sweeping. No odour of saffron or margosa came from the baths. Arankale perhaps became more beautiful, Anil thought, and more subtle without humans in the structure they had designed when they were no longer in the currents of love.
Four centuries later monks began living again in the caves above what had once been the temple clearing. It had been a long era of humanlessness, religiouslessness. The knowledge of such a monastery had vanished from people’s minds and the site was an abandoned forest sea. What was left of wooden altars was eaten by colonies of insects. Generations of pollen silted the bathing pool and then rough vegetation consumed it, so it was invisible to any passerby who did not know its sudden loose depth, which was a haven for creatures that scurried on the warmth of the cut rock and on unnamed plants in this nocturnal world.
For four hundred years the unheard throat calls of birds. The hum of some medieval bee motoring itself into the air. And in the remnant of the twelfth-century well, under the reflected sky, a twist of something silver in the water.
Sarath said this to her, the night on Galle Face Green:
‘Palipana could move within archaeological sites as if they were his own historical homes from past lives—he was able to guess the existence of a water garden’s location, unearth it, reconstruct its banks, fill it with white lotus. He worked for years on the royal parks around Anuradhapura and Kandy. He’d take one imagined step and be in an earlier century. Standing in the Forest of Kings or at one of the rock structures in the western monasteries, he must have found it difficult to distinguish the present age from ancient times. The
season
was identifiable—temperature, rainfall, humidity, the odour of the grass, its burned colours. But that was all. Nothing else gave away an era. . . . So I can understand what he did. It was just the next step for him—to eliminate the borders and categories, to find everything in one landscape, and so discover the story he hadn’t seen before.
‘Don’t forget, he was going blind. In the last years of partial sight, he thought he finally saw the half-perceived interlinear texts. As letters and words began to disappear under his fingers and from his eyesight, he felt something else, the way those who are colour-blind are used to see through camouflage during war, to see the existing structure of the figure. He was living alone.’
There was a laugh from Gamini, who was also listening.
Sarath paused, then continued. ‘In his youth Palipana was mostly solitary while he learned Pali and other languages.’
‘But he was
very
fond of women,’ Gamini said. ‘One of those men who have three women on three hills. Of course you’re right, he was living alone. . . . You’re probably right.’
Gamini, by repeating the phrase, cancelled out his agreement. He lay back on the grass and looked up. A quiet crash of the combers against the breakwater along Galle Face Green. His brother and the woman had become silent as a result of his interruption, so he went on. ‘This was a civilized country. We had “halls for the sick” four centuries before Christ. There was a beautiful one in Mihintale. Sarath can take you around its ruins. There were dispensaries, maternity hospitals. By the twelfth century, physicians were being dispersed all over the country to be responsible for far-flung villages, even for ascetic monks who lived in caves. That would have been an interesting trek, dealing with those guys. Anyway, the names of doctors appear on some rock inscriptions. There were villages for the blind. There are recorded details of brain operations in the ancient texts. Ayurvedic hospitals were set up that still exist—I’ll take you there and show them to you sometime. Just a short train journey. We were always good with illness and death. We could howl with the best. Now we carry the wounded with no anaesthetic up the stairs because the elevators don’t work.’
‘I think I met you before.’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve never seen you.’
‘Do you remember everyone? You have a black coat.’
He laughed. ‘We don’t have time to remember. Get Sarath to show you Mihintale.’
‘Oh, he did, he showed me a joke there. At the top of that flight of steps leading to the hill temple was a sign in Sinhala that must have once said,
WARNING
:
WHEN IT RAINS
,
THESE STEPS ARE DANGEROUS
. Sarath was laughing at it. Someone had altered one Sinhala syllable on the sign, so it now read,
WARNING
:
WHEN IT RAINS
,
THESE STEPS ARE BEAUTIFUL
.’
‘This is my serious brother? He’s usually the one in our family with historical irony. We are prime examples for him of why cities become ruins. The seven reasons for the fall of Polonnaruwa as a political centre. Twelve reasons why Galle became a major port and survived into the twentieth century. We don’t agree much, my brother and I. He thinks my ex-wife was the best thing that happened to me. He probably wished to fuck her. But didn’t.’
‘Stop it, Gamini.’
‘
I
didn’t, anyway. Not much. I got diverted. The bodies were coming in by truckloads. She didn’t love the smell of scrub lotion on my arms. The fact that I would use medicinal aids during my shifts. So that later I was not fully awake in her company. Not great courtship. I’d get into a bath and pass out. My honeymoon was at a base hospital. The country was falling apart and my wife’s family complained about my unavailability. I was supposed to have my shirt ironed and go to a dinner party, hold her hand as we waited for the car. . . . Maybe I would have laughed if I’d seen that sign about the steps. Dangerous . . . beautiful . . . Lucky for you both to be there. He’—Gamini pointed into the dark—‘took me there when he was studying with Palipana. I liked Palipana. I liked his strictness. He was right in the heart of our age. No small talk. What did he call himself?’
‘An epigraphist,’ Sarath said.
‘A skill . . . to decipher inscriptions. Wonderful! To study history as if it were a body.’
‘Of course your brother does that too.’
‘Of
course.
And then Palipana went mad. What do you say, Sarath?’
‘Hallucinations, perhaps.’
‘He went mad. Those over-interpretations, what we must call lies, over the interlinear stuff.’
‘He isn’t mad.’
‘Okay, then. Same as you and me. But no one in his clique supported him when it was revealed. He was certainly the only great man I met, but he was just never a “sacred” guy for me. You see, in the heart of any faith is a history that teaches us not to trust—’
‘Sarath at least went to see him,’ Anil interrupted.
‘Did he. Did he . . . ?’
‘I didn’t. Not till this last week.’
‘So he’s alone.’ Gamini said. ‘Just his three women on three hills.’
‘He lives with his niece. It’s his sister’s daughter.’
A
nil came out of a deep sleep. Some bird-scramble on the roof or a truck in the distance must have woken her. She removed the silent earphones from her hair, groped for her Prince T-shirt and walked into the courtyard. Four a.m. The beacon from her flashlight went straight towards Sailor’s skeleton. So he was safe. She flicked the light to the chair and saw the head wasn’t there. Sarath must have moved it. What had woken her? Someone with a nightmare? Was it Gamini in his black coat? She’d been dreaming about him. Or perhaps Cullis in the distance. It was about the same hour she had left him wounded in Borrego. Her funny valentine.
The courtyard was a layer lighter.
A wind in the roof tiles, a stronger wind and rustle high in the tall darkness of the trees. She had not brought one picture of him when she packed, was proud of that. She sat down on a step. She thought there had been birdsong and was listening for more of it. Then she heard the gasp and was running to Ananda’s door and pushing it open into the dark.
There were sounds she had never heard before. She ran back for the flashlight, yelled to Sarath and came back in. Ananda was lying against a corner, trying with what energy he had left to stab himself in the throat. The blood on the knife and in his fingers and down his arm. His eyes like a deer in her light. The sound coming from God knows where. Not his throat. It couldn’t be his throat. Not now.
‘How quick were you?’ It was Sarath.
‘Quick. I was outside. Rip some cloth off the bed.’
She moved towards Ananda. The eyes open, not blinking, and she thought he might already be dead. She waited for eye movement, and after what felt like a long time it came. His hand was still half gestured into the air. ‘I need the cloth fast, Sarath.’ ‘Right.’ She tried pulling the knife out of Ananda’s grip but couldn’t, and let it be. The blood coming off his elbow onto her sarong, she was close enough to smell it, the flashlight held between her thighs, aimed up as she crouched there.
Sarath began to tear the pillowcase and passed her strips of cloth, which she wrapped around Ananda’s neck. She put the large flap of skin flat against his neck and bound it tight.
‘I need some antiseptic. Do you know where it is?’ When he brought it she soaked the cloth in it so it would reach the wound. The windpipe was still intact, but she needed to tighten the bandage so less blood would be lost, even though he was having difficulty breathing already. She leaned forward and pressed the wound with her fingers, the knife in his hand now behind her.
‘You need to phone Gamini and get him to send someone.’
‘The cell phone’s dead. I’ll phone from the village. If I can’t get someone, I’ll drive him to Ratnapura.’
‘Light a lamp, will you, for us. Before you go.’
He returned with an oil lamp. It was too bright for them at that hour, and he turned down the wick, because what he could see was terrible.
‘He called forth the dead,’ she whispered.
‘No. He’s just one of those who try to kill themselves because they lost people.’
She caught a waver in the eyes in front of her.
. . .
Anil was not conscious of Sarath’s leaving. She remained with Ananda in the corner of the room, lamplight holding them together. She should have been the one to go. Sarath could talk and calm him. Or did he need silence? Perhaps. Perhaps the presence of a woman helped.
She slipped in the blood getting up from her crouch, went to the bed and tore more strips off the pillowcase. She felt an amulet under the pillow and took it. When she returned, his eyes were wide open, seemed to be swallowing everything. Oh my God—he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t see. She found them on the floor, he had been wearing them when he began to kill himself.
She rubbed the blood on her hands onto her sarong and placed the spectacles on his face. Suddenly, in spite of his wound, in spite of the knife still in his right hand, still a threat, he seemed to be back with her, among the living. She felt she could speak in any language, he would understand the purpose of any gesture. How far back was their moment of connection, when his hand had been on her shoulder? Just a few hours earlier. She put the amulet in his left hand but he could not or would not hold it. He was drifting back into unconsciousness or sleep.
What was an amulet, what was a
baila,
to him now? Or spectacles, or a bond. All that was for her own peace. She had interrupted his death. She was the obstacle to what he wanted. The blood had already filled the bandage. She rose and hurried through the courtyard, along with the random glance of the flashlight, into the kitchen, to their portable icebox. Opened it, and at the back, wrapped in newspaper, found the emergency epinephrine she always carried. Perhaps it would slow the bleeding, constrict the blood vessels and help his blood pressure. She rolled an ampule between her palms to warm it. On her knees, beside him, she sucked the epinephrine up into the syringe. He was looking at her, it felt, from a great distance, with no interest in what she was doing. She put her left hand on his chest to keep him from moving—she was pushing him back, she realized, as far as he would go, to stay secure, into the room’s corner—then stabbed it into the arm. Continuing to hold him with her left hand, she filled the syringe once more, from a second ampule held between her knees, then gave him another injection. When she looked up he was still gazing through her. But when the drug started to influence him, his eyes became endangered. They slipped slowly, as if grasping for a ledge to stay awake on. As if he thought he would die now should he fall back into stillness.
I
t was ten in the morning and she heard the sounds of the foreman arriving as usual on the property. He was there to weigh the tea that had been picked and collected into sacks by seven workers. Anil always went out to watch the ceremony. She was there for a memory she’d held on to since she was a child. She always had loved the thick odour from the leaves, and as for that green leaf she knew there was nothing greener. She remembered entering tea and rubber factories as if they were kingdoms and imagining which of those kingdoms she wished to be a part of when she became an adult. A husband in tea or a husband in rubber. There was no other choice. And their house flung on top of a solitary hill.