It floated out through the open windows, tripping effortlessly down the steps from the veranda before dispersing into the trees.
‘I’ve been drawing,’ said Nulani, taking out a small notebook from her satchel. ‘Look!’
She moved her chair closer to his, giving him the book. Images rose out of it, they fell hither and thither, marvellously, on to his knees. A man sat under a tamarind tree, another squatted in the narrow spit of shade afforded by a house. A woman stretched out on a makeshift bed staring at the rough edges of a palm roof through the bars of the window. Someone, a middle-aged man, lean legs stretched in front of him, was writing, head bent at a table. He had a cigarette in his left hand and behind him was the blur of tropical trees.
‘This is me, no? When did you do this one?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Nulani, laughing. ‘I was hiding over there, you didn’t see me.’
‘You little pest! Why didn’t you make yourself known? Sugi had made a fine red mullet curry. You could have eaten with me.’
‘You are not angry?’
‘I feel the bushes have eyes,’ he teased her. ‘I shall have to watch everything from now on. No talking to myself any more! But seriously, these are good. Are you going to use them in a painting?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nulani, frowning. ‘Do you really like them?’ And boldly, ‘I want to paint you. But …’
Theo considered her. For a moment he felt lost for words. Nulani Mendis had been visiting him for nearly three months now. It had begun when he had first moved to this part of the island. The convent school had invited him to give a talk on his latest book. He had not long been back from the UK, some perversity making him give up the modest success he enjoyed there. People thought him mad. The Liberation Tigers had been demanding a separate Tamil state for years with no success. Civil unrest grew daily. Then, after Singhala was made the national language, discrimination against the Tamils became commonplace. A potential guerrilla war was simmering. Why did he want to go back to that hell? they asked. Was he off his head? An established writer, with a comfortable life in London, his own flat, his work, what could he want with Colombo? Was it not enough writing books on the impending violence, did he want to live it too? But, he had no ties. Perhaps it was sentimentality in early middle age? Perhaps the terrible events from the past had finally got to him, they said.
Theo could not explain. He himself barely understood this sudden compulsion, this urgency to go home. It was a time when everyone who could was escaping. Perhaps simply because he no longer had anything to escape from, going back was not a problem. So he told his agent he would work better if he had some sun and, putting his flat on the market, he left. The agent said nothing, thinking privately that what Theo really needed was some distraction, danger even. Do him good, thought the agent; add richness to this next book. Other men might have given up writing altogether after what he had been through, but Theo had carried on. He probably needed a complete change of scene, needed to put the past finally behind him. So, with this in mind, the agent encouraged him to go back, for a time at least.
It was 1996. While he had been away Sri Lanka had changed. The change confused Theo. He found himself remembering the liberal atmosphere of his youth. Where was it? In England, whatever corruption there was, was kept discreetly out of sight. Or maybe he was less critical because the British were not his own people. It was a different matter in Colombo where every small injustice, every appalling act of violence seemed a personal affront. The civil unrest he had predicted in his books, the beginnings of rage seemed to have been nurtured in his absence, and spread, like a newly germinated paddy field. He left Colombo, moved to a backwater, and began writing his fourth novel. His second book was being made into a film and an article about him appeared in one of the papers. The local schools, having noticed it and having registered his arrival in the town, asked him to speak to the pupils. At first he had hesitated, worrying. But what was there worth worrying about in these troubled times? People had been garrotted for less outspoken views, so why did he care? His life would go on for as long as it would, or it simply would cease. Why worry? He was no longer a Buddhist, but Buddhism had worked on him like milk and honey nonetheless. He agreed to give two talks, one at the boys’ school and the other at the convent. Nulani Mendis had been one of the students. She had held her hand up and asked him several questions.
‘The girl hardly speaks,’ the teacher had told him afterwards. ‘Since her father was murdered she has become silent. The mother has given up trying to make her talk. All she does is draw, draw, draw.’
But on that day she had spoken to Theo and later, on one of his early-evening walks along the narrow strip of beach behind the house, he saw her again. He had smiled slightly, registering her good looks, and remembering the story of her father, he waved. But she seemed to vanish into the darkness. After that he kept seeing her and he guessed she lived nearby. Then Sugi caught her in the garden. She was drawing his stone lions. Sugi began complaining loudly.
‘Sir, sir, these local children are pests. They’ve started coming into the garden again. We need to get rid of them or they will multiply!’
Surprised, Theo came out and, recognising her, asked her name. Then he invited her, in spite of Sugi’s protest, to come over at any time and draw. This had been nearly three months ago. She never called him anything except Mr Samarajeeva. He supposed, wryly, that this was out of a sense of respect for his age. But she came back, again and again, and, if she did not appear for a few days, he became inclined to drift into bad temper.
‘Can I go now?’ she asked, breaking into his reverie. ‘I want to draw the house from over there.’
She had been with him since breakfast.
‘Won’t you be late for school?’ he asked. ‘Does your mother know you are here?’
‘No,’ she said, disappearing around the side of the house. Her voice reached him from another part of the garden, vague and indistinct. ‘No, she’s out. And I’ve finished the jobs she gave me so I can go straight to school from here.’
Theo shook his head, amused in spite of himself. The manservant gave him a look that said clearly, ‘I told you, these local children are pests.’ But she’s different, thought Theo.
At first she came only once a week, barely speaking, staying further back in the garden. But as she grew bolder she seemed to be there all the time. Then, one day, out of the blue, she showed him her notebook for the first time. The sketches were all of him, delicate, and with a clear unwavering likeness. Startled, he took down his book of Picasso drawings and talked to her about the artist. After that she began to talk to him.
‘I will be seventeen in three months,’ she said.
On another afternoon she told him about her brother Jim. He was only eighteen months younger. She told him, they were not close.
‘It is our karma,’ she said solemnly. ‘We have brought it into this life.’
Their father, she said, had known most of this long before the astrologer came to visit. He told their mother, soon after the birth of Jim, he had seen it in a dream; the children would never be close. He could see it written on their faces, he had said, the girl child, and his infant son. Their mother, hearing this pronouncement, had begun wailing. After all her labours was this the future? But their father told his wife sternly to stop her noise. Be thankful, he said, for the fact that both children were healthy. After puberty, he suspected, after they came of age, they would cross a great expanse of water, leave Sri Lanka. Go to mainland India even. It would be a good thing, he had said, for peace in this country was always uncertain. Thus had her father
