mother is wasted?’
‘I will love it,’ he said, certain. ‘No question. I can’t wait. Don’t forget, I saw it when you began. And another thing, while I remember, I want the money to be kept for your work only. Should I tell your mother that?’
She laughed. What did she need the money for? She had wanted only to paint him. It will soon be October, thought Theo. The rains would come then, he knew. When they broke he would be in London. He did not tell her but he no longer wanted to go. The film had no significance for him. It was all part of another life. A life he seemed to have discarded with alarming ease. Living among his own people, here in this amorphous heat, seeing the mysterious and uneasy ways in which one day flowed into another, he felt as though he had never left.
The girl was sitting close to him on the veranda, staring dreamily at the garden. She was so close her arm brushed against his. She had the ways of the very young, he mused. Physical closeness came naturally. He could see the shadows of her breasts, small dark smudges, rising and falling through her thin white blouse. She looked very cool and self-possessed. And she seemed happier. He realised with shock that loneliness had clung to her like fine sea dust when he had first met her. But now she’s content, he thought. Now she is happier.
He wanted to think he had given her something, some comfort for the loss of her father. Even if all he did was offer her a space and encouragement to paint, surely that was better than nothing? He felt a growing certainty in his desire to help her. He felt it rise above the anxieties of this place.
‘You must work here when I am in London,’ he said.
An idea was forming in his mind. He did not know whether to tell her. He wanted to organise an exhibition of her paintings. But she had opened her notebook and was drawing again, her eyes half shut against the glare. Green and red splashed against him, other stories unfolded. He saw she was drawing his outstretched foot.
‘You can’t keep drawing me!’ he said laughing, moving his foot out of sight. ‘Now look, I’ve been thinking, I want to organise an exhibition of your paintings. I can’t do that if you only draw me!’
‘Where? Colombo?’ Her head was bent over her notebook.
‘Yes, maybe,’ he said, suddenly wanting to take her to London with him in October.
Thinking, what was wrong with him that he could not bear to be parted from her? He knew nothing about art but even he could see the astonishing things that were conjured up by her hands. They were the hands of a magician. Like shadow puppets they illuminated other dimensions of the world, probing the edges of things and those corners where drifts of light revealed all that had been concealed from him until now.
‘You must work hard until I get back,’ he said instead, trying to look stern.
So that she threw her head back and burst out laughing. And he saw, how in spite of everything she had been through, her youth could not be contained but was mirrored in her laugh. It was low and filled with happiness. October is still a long way off, he reassured himself. I’ll feel differently then.
The hot season was coming to an end and the full moon was ten days away. Twenty kilometres from the town was a sacred site where the festivities were beginning. It had been at the time of the festival that her father had been murdered, Nulani told him. Just before the water-cutting ceremony, in the build-up to poya, the religious festival on the night of the full moon. All across the town fear mushroomed in polluted clouds, hanging over two thousand years of faith. Fear seemed inseparable from belief. Men with bare feet walked over red-hot coals or swung themselves on metal hooks across the coconut trees. And all the while, interwoven with the sounds of drums and conch shells, the nada filled the air.
‘You must be careful,’ said Sugi. ‘Not everyone is a believer. These are troubled times. And even if,’ he added, ‘even if they are believers, some people still have evil intent.’
Every year Sugi went to the festival. He always met his family there; he had done this for as long as he could remember. But this year he was worried about leaving Theo on his own.
‘This is the time when some people try to put curses on their enemies.’
‘Sugi, for heaven’s sake, what d’you think is going to happen? No one’s interested in me. I’ll be perfectly fine.’
‘But the girl won’t be here either,’ said Sugi worriedly.
Theo laughed. The girl was going with her mother to the festival. They were going to pray for her brother Jim. To be certain he would get the scholarship.
‘Well, I thought you’d be pleased about that,’ he teased, giving Sugi a sly look.
‘Sir!’ said Sugi reproachfully.
‘Oh, Sugi, I’m only pulling your leg. I’m going to work like mad while you’re away. No distractions, no chatting, you know. No stopping for tea. Just work. I shall have most of this next chapter finished by the time you both get back. You’ll see.’
In the now skeleton-staffed Department of Tropical Diseases, a conference, planned two years previously, had to be cancelled because of lack of funds and resources. Many eminent scientists from all over the world, having been invited to give papers, were now told the unstable situation on the island made it impossible to guarantee the safety of their stay. It was a disappointment for all those who had worked tirelessly to eradicate the threat of an epidemic. An article appeared in a scientific journal. ‘No animal on earth has touched so directly and profoundly the lives of so many human beings. For all of history and all over the globe the mosquito has been a nuisance, a pain and the angel of death.’
Deep within the jungle the festival was in progress. A god with many hands sat inside the dagoba. The monks had placed him there, hoping he would give an audience to the crowds. This happened every year; it was the highlight of the festival. People came from far and wide to pray to him. The hands of this many-handed god were empty apart from his spear. He looked neither right nor left. If he heard the prayers of the tormented he gave no sign. There were peacocks at his side and sunlight shone on his burnished anklets. Young girls brought him armfuls of offerings, walking miles in the boiling heat. Young men came carrying hope. He received each of them without a word. All day long the drumming and the sounds of elephant bells filled the air in a frenzy of noise and movement. Trumpeters and acrobats walked the roadsides while men with tridents chalked on their foreheads paid penance for ancient inexplicable sins. Elsewhere the ground was strewn with red and yellow flowers and the heavy smell of cinnamon was underfoot. There were giant mounds of sherbet-pink powders and uncut limes piled up on silver platters everywhere.
The many-handed god watched them all. He watched the backs of the women bent in devotion. Who knew what they prayed for? Was it for abundance in their wombs? Or was it simply peace for the fruits of these same wombs that they desired? The crowds came with their coins tied in cloth, with their ribbons of desires, their cotton-white grief and their food. As night approached a full moon arose across the neon sky silhouetting the dagoba, white and round, with a single spike pointing at the stars. Hundreds of coconut flames fanned an unrelenting heat.
Midnight approached and the temple drums grew louder, announcing the arrival of the Kathakali Man of Dance. The crowds gasped. With his pleated trousers and beaded breastplates, the Kathakali Man pointed his fingers skywards. He seemed to be reaching for the stars. With ancient gesture and sandstone smile, he danced for the gaping, amazed gathering. The Kathakali Man had a many-faceted jewel that gleamed in his navel and a peacock’s cry
