W
ITHIN A YEAR THE GALLERY IN
Calle del Forno offered Rohan a solo show. The demand for his small paintings had grown. The urgency, the intensity of the colour, their size, all added to their odd charm. He had been an abstract painter for years but now slowly he found himself propelled towards empty interiors, furniture and unclothed figures. The rooms he painted were always dark. Wardrobes opened out in them like gaping holes, beds remained unmade, figures were silhouetted against barred windows. And all the time, small glimmers of light escaped through cracks in the canvas.
In the past Rohan had always talked to Giulia about his work. When they lived in Colombo she used to come into his studio at the end of each working day and they would drink tea together. And then they talked. In those days Rohan moved his vast canvases around the room and they would look at them together. He used to do all this energetically. Giulia, given half a chance, would tease him about his seriousness. Afterwards they would go back to the house for dinner. Now all this had changed. Now Rohan did not joke. These days he hardly said
anything. Neither of them could say when it had happened but they had established separate rhythms to their life. Giulia had begun to teach English, making friends with several people in the neighbourhood. And she had taken up her translation work again. Often when Rohan worked late she would have supper with a neighbour. Once or twice she had tried including Rohan in these visits but it had never been successful. Both of them knew they were drifting apart; neither knew how to stop the change. Whenever Giulia attempted to talk about their past, Rohan blocked her. So now they never mentioned Theo or the girl. Their life in Sri Lanka might never have happened. Lying awake at night while he slept, Giulia wondered if this was all they had escaped for, this empty void they called freedom. Months passed. Rohan’s exhibition was mentioned in an Italian newspaper. An unknown critic praised his work. The paintings, he said, reminded him of a shared grief, of dreams vaguely remembered, furniture that served as receptacles of memory. All of human life, in fact, reduced to memory. Rohan walked in to find Giulia reading the review. She was crying.
‘Don’t start,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t start all that again. I paint what I paint. It’s not my fault if they want to interpret it in this obvious, puerile way.’
‘Rohan,’ began Giulia, but then she stopped. What was the use? Grief had solidified into a wall between them; it had hardened and set in stone. There seemed little point to anything. When things were at their worst they had shared everything, every thought, every anxiety. Now all they had was bitterness to drown in. And yet, she thought wistfully, Theo was my friend too, my loss too. And then again, she thought angrily, your country is nothing to do with me. Resentment filled up the cracks. It covered everything they touched in fallout dust.
You
were the one to take me there, remember, thought Giulia, her
eyes following him around the small flat. But she did not say it out loud. She was afraid of damaging what little they had. And she asked herself, has he forgotten my friend, Anna? No one mentions her any more, but I lived through that too. Yet in spite of this, still Giulia was unable to hurt Rohan further. Nor did she tell him that she was toying with the idea of going to London in the spring, to make one last attempt to look for Nulani Mendis. After Christmas, she decided, in the new year, I’ll go over there. Alone.
‘Next year, I’m having a show in Munich,’ was all Rohan said.
Six years is a long time by any standards. Six years is like a steep mountain. Theo Samarajeeva climbed his mountain almost without noticing. He did not set out to do so but he began to write. What else could he do, he was a writer. He had been writing all his life, how could he stop now? At first it could hardly be called writing. At first it was more ramblings. Because his fingers had been broken, he could not type easily. Everything ached. His back, the soles of his feet, his leg. He never went in the water again. He no longer had any desire to swim. Nevertheless, the will to live remained in some strange and unaccountable way. And so he began to write again. Slowly, because he was uncertain, because his fingers were unsteady and the typewriter was too painful to use, he wrote by hand. It was Thercy who had encouraged him. Thercy who still came over to cook for him, walking slowly down the hill with her bunches of greens, her coconut milk and fresh fish. She had become less formal with him and he was no longer frightened of her. She was part of his landscape. Whenever his depression descended on him like a smoky cloud of mosquitoes, it was Thercy who would talk to him, cajoling and distracting him as best she could.
‘You are a writer,’ she would say. ‘So why don’t you write?’
There were things he could not write about, he told her. Thercy did not think this was a problem. She had seen too many things herself to be shocked, she told him. But she could understand, he was not ready to write about his experiences.
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘you will never be ready for that. So write of other things.’
She had only a vague knowledge of his books. It pleased him that she had not seen the film in Colombo. It pleased him that she knew very little about his past. Picking up his notebook he began to write. As always he started with Anna. Nothing could be counted before her. It was she who had led him to the girl. And it had been her voice he heard first.
After a while, unasked, he began to tell Thercy things.
‘I was blindfolded,’ he told her cautiously. ‘And I was hit. Sometimes I was hit so hard that I fell forward. Then they gave me electric shocks. They put chilli inside me. They were laughing. Later, I’m not sure when, but another time I was hit with the butt of a rifle. They broke my fingers. See, three of them are broken! A writer without fingers, they laughed. They found this funny.’
Thercy was polishing the floor with old coconut scrapings. Watching her he felt his heart contract with grief. Sugi had polished the floor in this way.
‘If you have a wound that you can’t heal,’ Thercy said very quietly, not looking at him, ‘it will get bigger. You must try to heal it yourself.’
She no longer called him Sir. In fact, she seldom addressed him in any specific way. But her eyes followed him when he wasn’t looking and she understood his moods. Long ago, she told him, in the early days of the war, she had had a son.
On another occasion, Theo told her, ‘They played psychological games when I was blindfolded. I thought I was standing
at the top of some steps and if I moved forward I might fall. But when they hit me I smashed against the wall instead.’
‘Yes,’ Thercy said. ‘What happened then?’
But he could not say. Later, after she had gone slowly up the hill again, he went back to his notebook.
‘
I have been tortured
,’ he wrote.
He looked at what he had written. The ink was black. Four simple words. Changing a life for ever. He needed to write it in red ink. Who would believe me, he thought, when
I
can hardly believe it happened? But Thercy seemed to believe him, all right. Why should she not? she had asked, surprised. Violence had been done to her, why could it not happen to him?
‘
Self-pity
,’ he wrote, ‘
is all that’s left. When I arrived I brought it with me. And now I’m in possession of it once again
.’
He paused, thinking. And then he wrote again.
Only the girl made a difference, coming back like a stray cat. At first I had no idea why this was so. I was worn out by your death, unable to believe in the future. And suddenly, there she was, appearing day after day. The war, although I didn’t realise it then, was gathering momentum and all she did was draw. Everything made sense by illusion. Fabulously. Stories appearing under her fingers, stories I never knew existed, even. What took me twenty words, she achieved in an unwavering drift of a line. It was astonishing, really.
Thercy brought him some milk rice. It was a
poya
day. She had been to the temple earlier because it was the anniversary of Sugi’s death. She did not tell Theo this but Sugi was on her mind.
‘He was frightened for you,’ she said, chewing on a piece of jaggery. ‘You and Miss Nulani, both.’
They were drinking a cup of tea together. Theo had been writing all morning and he was glad to see her. If she was ever late he became anxious. But Thercy was seldom late.
‘Sugi saw where it could all lead long before I did,’ he agreed. ‘It was only afterwards, after she painted me, that I realised. My wife’s death had left me with a set of beliefs too naive to be of use. Sugi must have known that. He must have watched me and seen what was happening. He didn’t like the way I talked about this country. He wanted me to be more cautious.’
Theo glanced at her. He wasn’t sure how much she understood, but Thercy nodded. He’s better than he used to be, she thought.
‘I had never seen anyone draw as she did,’ Theo said, ‘nor will I again.’
Wondering, how would she draw my life now? That evening, after Thercy went home, he continued to write.
Of course, she was so much younger. I always knew that. Who could say what might have happened had we been together? Perhaps she would have tired of me and found a younger man? After a while I would have become a millstone. You had been my whole life until that moment, Anna. Your death had robbed me of many things, I felt spent, finished, over. And then she arrived. What was I to think? Now of course I see more clearly how great the need was, to fill the gap you left. She was different from you, yet the same. You see, Anna, the truth is, the shameful admission is, that I have always defined myself by someone else. First you, and then the girl. When we met, you and I, I had the strangest feeling that I was enveloped by your identity. Then later I wanted to be supported by her. Can I be brutally honest? I went to her
for the renewal of my courage, and for help with all I had to bear. I was so afraid, so alone, so needing from the outside for the assurance of my own worthiness to exist. There, I have written the shameful truth. Have I given you pain? Is it possible to love again, with a different intensity, without losing what went before? Some would say so. In prison, I was filled with guilt. Each time they beat me, when I could breathe again it was guilt that always rose to the surface.
A little later on he wrote:
In my worst moments I felt as though I had tried to wipe you out with her. So, you see, I deserved to be punished. And now you have both vanished. Although in the end, it is perhaps I who has disappeared.
Alone in the broken beach house, with its blue-faded gate, and its endless glimpses of the sea, silence swooped down on Theo like the seagulls. Time had passed without a sound. Time had gathered in pockets in the landscape but he never noticed. He walked the beach and watched the sea rise and heave unmoved. Like memory, the sea had a life of its own. Sun and rain came and went regardless. Further up the coast, where once a man had been hung, a huge high-rise hotel was going up. Daily it grew, thrusting its scaffolding into the blistering sky. Workmen in hard hats drove on the beach where once army jeeps had patrolled. A beach restaurant was being built, and an oyster-shaped swimming pool with fresh water was planned for those tourists who did not want the sea. International cuisine was all that was needed. New glass-bottomed boats began to appear and old ones were being
painted over. It was many years since the coral reef held such interest. Suddenly paradise was the new currency. The island began to rescue itself, hoping to whitewash its bloody past. Theo Samarajeeva watched from afar. He was writing steadily now, almost all of the time. When he had filled up three notebooks he walked the beach, thinking. He wanted to approach his old agent, he told Thercy, but he was nervous.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Thercy said. ‘Yes, yes, it’s a good idea. I’ve told you. The only way you’ll survive this life is to refuse to let them beat you down.’
Looking at Thercy, he was reminded more and more of the old ayah who had looked after him as a child.
‘But I have nothing more to say about Sri Lanka. Everything has been pushed so far back inside me that I can’t dislodge it. I don’t want to.’
‘So? That’s fine,’ Thercy said firmly. ‘Write about the way we survive then. Tell them how we live. Miss Nulani gave you hope, didn’t she? She showed you that you were still a person, capable of loving, of living. I think she gave you back yourself. What more d’you want?’
She was right. Walking along the beach that evening, he searched the sea for a sign. But the sea could not answer him and the moonlight on the empty beach unrolled silently like a bolt of silk across the sands.
Lately his eyesight was beginning to mist over. He was loath to visit an optician. It would mean another trip to Colombo and he could not face going back. Nor did he want to think of Rohan or Giulia, shying away from the thought that they too might have died because of him. But he had reckoned without Thercy. Insistently, day after day, she cajoled him until at last, reluctantly, he wrote a letter to his agent. He wrote cautiously, taking days to find the right words, hesitating, rewriting it. In
the end, with a sigh, he gave it to Thercy to post. His book was growing and a certain urgency because of his eyes made him write furiously. For the first time he was attempting a book that was not politically driven. He had no more to say about injustice. Having lived it, he saw the hopelessness of defining it. This book, he saw, was about loving. This book was about something he could speak of. Every night he walked the beach, waiting for the monsoons, watching the clouds gather across the sky, seeing a new generation of children fly their box kites. Local people knew him, now. He was that writer fellow, they said, who had once been famous. Once he had been a handsome man who came from the UK to live among his people. But then he had gone away to England and returned mad. He had gone mad for love, they told their children. He was crazy now, they said. Better if he had stayed in England and been happy. Foolish man, coming back to this place! Let this be a warning, the mothers told their children. If you are lucky enough to get to England, stay there. So the village children flew their kites and rode their bicycles, taking care to stay away from the madman in the beach house, careful always to avoid the place after dark.