began to heave. Jacob, he thought, busy sucking up to the whites. And Thornton, the empty-headed beauty, what did he care about, except how he looked and what everyone thought of him? Only his mother, thought Christopher, incoherent now, only his mother had understood.
‘Come back,’ he screamed. ‘Come back!’ His voice was whipped by the sea breeze and caught in the roar of the waves. He stood screaming and choking as the seagulls circled the sky. ‘I’m finished,’ he cried. ‘It’s over.’
He had not gone to watch the riots as Jacob suspected, or to join in the demonstration. His thoughts became disjointed. Everything that had followed was blurred. Racked by sobs, broken, desperate, he fell to his knees on the soft white sand. Raising his face towards the sky, he whispered, ‘I can’t go on.’
Only a few hours earlier he had visited Kamala with a heart that brimmed over with hope. Carrying the tenderness that he showed no one else. Kamala had been ill, but seemed to Christopher’s anxious eyes to be much better.
‘You are better,’ he recalled saying fiercely, willing her to be. And Kamala, laughing (he always made her laugh), agreed.
Her father was at his Galle Face stall, selling plastic jewellery. White butterflies trapped in Perspex, flecked with gold, dozens of bangles, pink, yellow and green. There was to be a demonstration tonight, and a march organised by the railway and factory workers. A peaceful march. Christopher met Kamala at the stall.
‘Let’s walk along the beach,’ he had said, for he had brought money with him. ‘I want to buy you some fried crab and Lanka lime. Then we can be happy.’
Yes, that’s what he had said. He remembered it very clearly, being happy was something he could only do with Kamala. As they walked he had talked, as he often did, of his passionate desire for free state education. It was his favourite subject, his dream.
‘It must be offered to everyone,’ he had said. ‘Not just the rich but the coolies, the servants. In any case…’ he paused, while Kamala gazed admiringly at him, ‘why do we need servants anyway?’
Kamala listened not fully understanding, but agreeing with everything. Full of pride. He had told her the Greenwood story again. He was always telling her that story. How many times had she heard it? But on each occasion she listened patiently.
‘By the time it was my turn the money had run out. They gave it all to that fool Thornton. And what did he ever do with it?’ he had fumed, unable to stop himself. He had known Kamala hated to hear him talk about his brother in this way.
‘You mustn’t,’ she had said, earnestly. ‘You mustn’t say these things. Your family is a gift, Chris. It’s bad for you to talk like this.’
It hadn’t stopped him though. He had taken no notice of her. Last night he had begun again, moaning on and on about Thornton and the price of a decent education in this country. Never knowing how he was wasting time. Kamala had pulled his hand and teased him into a better mood.
‘Next year, after my sister’s wedding,’ he told her, ‘we’ll get married. I’ll speak to my mother. Just wait,’ he said, as if it was Kamala and not he who was in a hurry, ‘you’ll see, I will become a journalist.’
He hated to think of Kamala sleeping in the shack with the cajan roof that let in the monsoon.
‘Soon,’ he promised, ‘you’ll sleep on a proper bed in a clean, dry bedroom with a roof made of tiles. Our children will have decent educations. All of them, not just a chosen few.’
He had said all this. Only last night.
The Galle Face had been crowded with people. But Kamala’s father let her take a walk along the beach with Christopher. He knew his daughter’s illness was not curable. It was her karma. So he let them walk together along the seafront, letting them enjoy what brief happiness they could. Two young people with no idea of what their future held, but planning it anyway.
After a while they decided to go back up the hill towards the centre. Someone said there was a street fair and Christopher thought they might try the tombola. He had forgotten about the Tamil strikers’ demonstration. It was Kamala’s father, catching sight of them retracing their footsteps, who remembered. But by the time he had found someone to mind his stall they had vanished from sight. The crowds had grown. Away from the sea breeze the smell of sweaty bodies mixed with the fetid slabs of meat in the market as he hurried through the maze of stalls. An air of nervous tension hung over the neighbourhood. Outside, close to the Fort and behind the market, a few mounted policemen in white uniforms waited expectantly. Most of the shops in this area were shut or closing, there was no sign of the fair, and no sign of Kamala or Christopher. One or two men on bicycles rode by. A few dogs scavenged in the gutters. Kamala’s father quickened his pace.
The whole of this part of the city was in darkness. A muffled sound of voices, the faint throb of a loudspeaker could be heard in the distance, but still he could not see anyone. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a movement, but when he turned there was nothing there. He hurried on knowing he could not leave the stall for long. He needed to find Kamala and Christopher, to warn them to keep away from the demonstration. He was now in St Anthony’s Road and in front of him was the great Roman Catholic cathedral. Close by was Temple Tree Square where the Bo trees were tied with offerings. Kamala’s father breathed more easily, for this was a sacred site with an open aspect and lights. Through the trees, on the other side of the square, he could see the reason for the silence. The demonstrators, with their banners, had gathered together to listen to the speaker. The march had ended peacefully after all and as he approached Kamala’s father saw with relief that Christopher and Kamala were on the edge of the crowd.
‘Kamala,’ he had called. ‘Kamala, Christopher. Come here.’ He waved urgently, becoming suddenly, unaccountably afraid.
Only then did he see the shadow of a saffron robe. Only then did he smell the petrol and see the ragged flames, one after another, until too late, a circle of fire surrounded him. Drawing closer and closer. A Kathakali dance of death.
‘Watch out,’ he had shouted in vain. ‘Be careful. Chris, Chris, take her away.’
They heard him shout but the words were indistinct. Kamala turned and ran towards him. For a brief moment, in the flare of the burning rags, Christopher saw them both clearly, her wide bright eyes reflecting the light, her hair aglow. Then he heard only their screams, father and daughter, mixing and blending together with the sound of his own anguish. Flesh against flesh, ashes to ashes.
The night was nearly over now. For Christopher there would never be such a night again. He stared at his hands. They oozed liquid through the bandages his mother had used. The burns covered both palms, crossing his lifeline, changing it forever. He had heard afterwards, there had been many others. One of them, he had cried, hardly registering the look on his mother’s face, had been the man she knew as Vijay.
The dawn rose, the sun came out. Beach sweepers began clearing the debris from the night before, but still Christopher stood motionless, Kamala’s name tolling a steady refrain in his head. A newspaper seller shouted out the headlines, riots, petrol bombs, fourteen dead, seven injured. The government was to impose a curfew. But Christopher heard none of this. It was the day of the total eclipse.
They found his bicycle first. It was another four days before they found him. He had wandered for miles along the outskirts of the city, without shoes, his bandages torn off, his hands a mass of sores and infected pus, his face covered in insect bites. He did not see the eclipse as the moon slipped slowly over the sun. Or
