Coming Together: Special Hurricane Relief Edition (36 page)

She
raced after the receding water. The little farmer's houses she passed
were covered in mud and muck; stooped, soaked figures peered
cautiously from the shadows or shouted frantically to one another.
Stilt houses collapsed as she passed them, the uprights giving way as
if exhausted. The neat paddies were seas of wet sand and filthy brown
foam. She didn't stop.

She
ran into the town, past the outer markets, or where they ought to
have been, but now there was nothing but a few shattered sticks in
the ground and piles of debris and overturned furniture, clumps of
seaweed still streaming with water. The water got deeper, ankle deep,
and her bare feet slid and slipped in the pelagic ooze.

Now
the air seemed to come alive. The awful crushing silence of the wave
receded like a giant sucking in his breath, and in the silence she
could hear people screaming, wailing, crying for help, shouting the
names of their gods and loved ones. Ahead of her in the market
squares, car alarms screamed and there was the rumble of masonry
slowly collapsing. She ignored the cries for help, the clutching
hands and the vacant, staring eyes. When she saw a woman's leg
emerging from a pile of sandy muck, she forced herself to keep
running. Kali's family was all safe in their village in the hills; it
was Kumar's family she was worried about.

Around
through the familiar flower market. All that stood now was the old
Colonial Armory—its windows and doors gone and water gushing
from the broken sills—and Sadhu's restaurant, made entirely of
brick, gutted, the tables and chairs all gone. There were fish in the
street and piles of oozing sand and sea wrack. The ornate iron
lampposts leaned crazily; torn bamboo screen and furniture blocked
the seaward exit from the square where the wave had left them behind.
A young girl's body lay atop a tilted table, her doll still clutched
in her hand, her dress filthy with mud and leaves.

Kali
would not let herself look, denied herself permission to feel. She
ran on through the puddles of water, stepping around the broken
glass. Here, closer to the harbor, there were more brick buildings
from the colonial era, and here the streets were scoured free of
debris: everything had been washed out to sea except for piles of
sand and bigger pieces of furniture and trees. Water spilled out from
beneath closed doors and even from second floor verandahs. Kali saw
more bodies now, but they were not easy to see: everything was
slathered with a brownish gray coat of muck. It was the color of the
women's saris that caught her eye.

Never
mind. Don't stop. Samanathi Street then down to Harbor Road where the
wreckage was just shocking. Trees had jammed crossways between the
brick buildings creating dams behind which furniture and trash piled
up: cloth, papers, a television set, even a motorbike and a
refrigerator; the black water was ankle deep and running fast towards
the sea, gurgling like a mountain stream.

Kali
spun round the corner, grabbing on to a lamp post as a pivot to slow
herself. She spun around the corner and stopped dead. Kumar's house
was gone. The entire two stories, gone. Nothing but shards of posts,
splintered and tilted, pipes, a bunch of muddy carpets and a toilet
jammed up against what remained of the seaward wall. A large blue
sofa lie on its back, swollen like a dead thing, covered in sand and
muck. Kali knew that sofa. It had been new just two months ago.

She
looked around in confusion, ignoring the panic in her heart. Across
the street was the family business, the brick garage where Kumar and
his brothers repaired motorcycles and marine engines. The building
was from colonial days and solid as a rock. It still stood, and Kali
splashed towards it across the water streaming through the street.
The doors were pushed inwards, the hasps ripped from the wood, and
Kali forced the door open enough to step into the gloom. Mud and the
overpowering stink of gasoline, wreckage and confusion. Light from
the shattered windows reflected from the moving water on the floor
and cast wavering, undersea patterns on the ceiling.

From
outside came a distant, sustained booming, a sound that shook the
very ground beneath her feet. Kali ignored it.

"Hello?"
she called. "Hello? Kumar? Niddhu? Anyone?"

No
answer, and then she remembered that it was Sunday, and on Sundays
Kumar would be down at the harbor with his brothers working on the
Christian's boat engines.

The
ground was still vibrating beneath her feet but the booming had
stopped, and Kali noticed that that the water was no longer pulling
at her legs as it streamed seaward. It had stopped moving and was
swirling around her feet in confused, lazy eddies, like a serpent
ready to strike. No, it was rising.

She
heard a burst of screaming from outside, the roar of surf and crack
of splitting wood. Another wave! Another wave was coming, had already
hit the shore and was flooding up into the town.

Kali
turned to see a chest-deep wall of water surge into the garage,
flinging the doors off their broken hinges and flooding against her.
Before she had time to think, it was surging around her waist and she
was half-swimming through the oily, debris-strewn water, desperately
trying to reach the stairs in the back. As long as the garage didn't
collapse and crush her to death, the real danger would be in the
suck-back as the wave receded, dragging everything along with it back
down into the sea, herself included.

She
hit her foot on a submerged tire and lost her balance, fell into the
swirling water and got up choking only to be knocked down by another
surge that pushed her back down beneath the surface. She was
frightened now and her fear made her angry, and Kali's anger was
formidable. She jumped up and fought her way to the stairs

The
water was to her chest and still rising by the time she grabbed hold
of the railing and pulled herself out of the flood. She stood on the
stairs coughing, then ran up to the roof where the family had a patio
for eating and relaxing. If any of them had been in the garage and
escaped the first wave, that's where they would be. Kali threw open
the thin wooden door at the top and stepped out onto the roof. She
saw the tables and chairs, cushions and sunshades all in disarray.
She was alone.

The
water was not four feet below her, boiling and swirling and licking
at the roof, filled with bits of wood and leaves and papers. She saw
a child's shoe, a bunch of flowers, magazines swirling in the turbid
and foaming water. She stood up and looked around her and all she saw
were trees and power poles emerging from the foaming broth, not
another structure standing except for the old Government Tariff house
that stood across from the garage and the buildings at the flower
market.

The
city was dissolving around her like a lump of sugar in hot tea:
buildings collapsing, trees and power poles falling over. The air was
filled with the roar of the water and the shouts and screams of
people swept up in the flood, the grinding crash of cars and vehicles
swept along like leaves in a raging river.

The
water peaked and stagnated, then began to recede, tendrils of scum
starting to find direction and race back towards the beach, turning
Harbor Street into a raging torrent as the flood squeezed between the
canyon formed by the garage and the Tariff house and formed a big,
sucking tongue of dirty, debris-laden water. The garage shook as
massive trees and logs slammed into the building. A heavy wooden desk
shot by, bobbing like a sinking boat. Kali ran blindly to the other
edge of the roof and looked for someplace safer to jump to, but all
was submerged.

There
was a massive shuddering crash as an uprooted palm tree lodged itself
crosswise between the two buildings, forming a dam over which the
filthy water frothed and sprayed. Kali turned and was horrified to
see a man clinging to the sodden trunk, arms wrapped around it, chin
just above the flood as the water tore at him with the violence of a
hurricane: a westerner with red hair, shirtless, a big silver watch
on his wrist. He turned his face to Kali and she saw the pure panic
in his eyes as the water spumed over the back of his head.

She
ran to the edge of the roof and held out her hand to him, but he was
too far. If he let go of the trunk he'd be instantly swept away. She
saw him reach his fingers for her, afraid to move his arms, then
there was a massive jolt as something else smashed into the tree,
knocking the far end free. With a horrible creaking groan, the tree
began to pivot, the far end swinging out into the flood.

"Grab
my hand! Take my hand!" Kali screamed.

He
was too far, just out of reach. Kali looked around frantically, then
ripped the tablecloth off the overturned table and threw one end to
him. The man grabbed the cloth and wrapped it around his wrist and
Kali passed the other end behind her back and held on. The water
caught the cloth and yanked her savagely towards the edge, pulling
her over so that she fell on her bottom. She braced her feet against
the roof cornice and pulled with her legs, desperate not to lose him.

The
current was very strong and the man was big, almost twice her size,
but Kali was filled with furious anger and strength now and she would
not lose him. There was nothing she could do about anyone else but
she wouldn't let this pale stranger get away. She swore at him and
leaned against the straining cloth with all her might, and the man
made a desperate lunge for the garage roof. One wet arm grasped the
tile cornice and then a foot. Kali heaved on the wet cloth and the
man slithered over the edge and fell flat onto the roof like a fish,
gasping and choking, the tablecloth still wrapped around his arm.

For
the first time that day Kali felt the blind surge of real fear and
adrenalin. The water was falling rapidly now and as the speed of the
stream diminished, she could make out bodies, bodies being carried
along in the retreating water, limp and twisted, lifeless. She fell
to her knees and covered her face with her hands.

Kumar
gone, his family gone. His grandfather, his grandfather's brothers,
perhaps the girls she'd gone to school with. The entire town
destroyed. She covered her eyes with her hand and fought back tears,
determined not to cry.

The
westerner was saying something behind her. He was up on his hands and
knees, saying something, still coughing. Kali knew little English,
but she didn't have to understand his words to know what he was
saying: thanking her, disbelieving. Through her fingers she could see
the wave receding below them. As it fell below window level, water
began to gush from the empty window frames of the wrecked houses; the
entire town spewing water like a drowned man pulled from the surf.

Kali
pulled herself together. She turned into the man and looked at him.
"Are you hurt?" she asked. "Are you all right?"
But then she realized he couldn't understand Singhalese. She tried to
smile. "Okay?" she asked. "Okay?"

He
nodded. "Okay."

He
was a big man, athletic and beefy, the way most meat-eaters seemed to
her; American or British, possibly Australian but she didn't think
so. Anyhow, it was all the same to her. He wore nothing but a pair of
tan khaki shorts with a leather belt and that large,
expensive-looking watch. She noticed the droplets of water still
clinging to the hair on his thick forearms. There was a ring on the
third finger of his right hand, and seeing that, Kali looked at him
once and then looked away, ashamed to meet his eyes. He had brought
his wife here to her pretty village, and now this.

There
was another rumbling boom and Kali put her hand on his arm to make
him stay. Another wave was coming and she knelt down beside him on
the roof as once again water surged through the streets below, feebly
this time, as if all the fury were spent. The water almost seemed
embarrassed.

His
knee was bleeding but he seemed able to walk all right, so she led
him down the stairs and through the wreckage of the garage and into
the street, which was now filling with noise and commotion, the
sounds of weeping and cries for help. Though it was quite warm, the
man was shaking. He threw the wet tablecloth around his shoulders
like a scarf, like a weight he had to bear.

He
seemed utterly bewildered and Kali really didn't have time to help
him now. She had to get down to the harbor and search for signs of
Kumar and his family, but the man wouldn't leave her side and she
couldn't really tell him to go. Frantic mothers ran past, or wailing
children, everyone muddy and looking like a ghost.

Kali
faced him and searched her mind for the correct English word.
"Hotel?" she asked him. "Hotel? Yes?" If she
could just get him back where he belonged, her obligation to him
would be over. She had to shout at him as if he were a child, and
finally the man seemed to understand.

There
was only one resort hotel in Tengalla, and that was by the harbor.
Kali took his hand and pulled him along after her. The streets were
filled with wreckage, piles of furniture and palm fronds, bamboo
screens and entire tree trunks. Everywhere there were dazed people
wandering around, too shocked to even ask for help. Kali kept on
going. To stop for one meant she'd never get there.