Mosquito

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Again the day seemed suffused by an inexplicable green lightness, of the kind he remembered in other times, in other places. Maybe there will be rain later, thought Theo, confused.

She had begun to paint him against a curtain of foliage. There were creases in his white shirt, purple shadows along one arm. She had given his eyes a reflective quality that hinted at other colours beyond the darkness of the pupils. Was this him, really? Was this what she saw? In the painting he paused as he wrote, looking into the distance. Aspects of him emerged from the canvas, making certain things crystal clear.

‘You were looking at me,’ she said laughing, pointing to one of the drawings.

He did not know what to say. Her directness left him helpless. Perhaps it was this simplicity that he needed in his new book. Once he had been able to deal with all kinds of issues swiftly, cut to the heart of the matter. Now for some reason it seemed impossible for him to think in this way. Had fear and hurt and self-pity done all this to him? Or was this the uncertainty of middle age? Suddenly he felt small and ashamed. He stood looking at the painting and at the girl framed by the curtain of green light, aware vaguely that she was still smiling at him. He stood staring at her until Sugi called out that lunch was ready.

‘Tell me about Anna,’ she demanded, over lunch. ‘I have been looking at all the pictures of her. They are very beautiful.’

So he told her something about Anna.

‘I used to see her every morning in a little café where I went for breakfast.’

‘In London?’

‘No, in Venice. She was Italian. We used to glance at each other without speaking. It was bitterly cold that winter. The apartment I was renting was so cold that I would go to this little dark café for breakfast. And I would drink a grappa,’ he said smiling, remembering.

‘What happened then?’

‘One day she came in with some other people. Two women and a man. The man was clearly interested in her.’

‘So what did you do?’

Theo smiled, shaking his head. ‘Nothing. What could I do? My Italian was not very good in those days. But then she turned and waved at me. Asked me if I would like to join them. I was astonished, astonished that she should notice me.’

‘But you said you used to look at each other every morning.’

‘Yes,’ said Theo. ‘I suppose I mean I was surprised she noticed me enough to want to talk to me.’

He was silent again, thinking of the fluidity of their lives afterwards, the passion that never seemed to diminish as they travelled through Europe. Then he described the high tall house in London with the mirrors and the blousy crimson peonies she loved to buy. He spoke of the books they had both written, so different yet one feeding off the other.

‘She was very beautiful,’ he said, unaware of the change in his voice. ‘Now she was someone you should have drawn.’

Nulani was listening intensely. He became aware of her curious dark eyes fixed on him. He did not know how much she understood. What could Europe mean to her?

‘My brother Jim wants to go to Europe,’ she said at last. ‘He says, when he is in England studying it will be easy to travel.’

‘And you? What about you?’

But he knew the answer even before she told him. Who would take her? What would she make of Paris. And Venice?

‘I will go one day,’ she said as though reading his mind. ‘Maybe we will go together.’

He felt his chest tighten unaccountably, and he wondered what her father had been like. What would he have made of this beautiful daughter of his, had he lived? Nulani had told him he had been a poet. She remembered him, she told Theo, but only as a dreamer. Always making her mother angry as she, Nulani, did now. What fragile balance in their family had been upset by his death? The afternoon had moved on but the heat showed no sign of letting up. The sun had moved to another place.

‘You should go home,’ he said, suddenly anxious, not wishing to keep her out too late. ‘I’ll get Sugi to walk you home.’

But she would have none of it; standing close to him holding her paints, so close he could smell the faint perfume that was her skin, mixing with the oils.

‘Thank you,’ she said and she went, a splash of red against the sea-faded blue gate, and then through the trees, and then taking in glimpses of road and bougainvillea before she disappeared from view around the bend of the hot empty road. Taking with her all the myriad, unresolved hues of the day, shimmering into the distance.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_f7890486-09ed-5d96-8fc0-585583942d2e)

THEO HAD NOT SEEN THE GIRL for five days. He waited, watching the geckos climbing haltingly across the lime-washed walls. He walked on the beach most evenings, much to Sugi’s alarm, ignoring the curfews, hoping she might be doing the same. He sat on the veranda smoking; he wandered into the room strewn with her paints. The smell of turpentine and oil remained as strong as ever. It was the way of smells, he knew. It had been this way when Anna had died. All the smells of beeswax and red peonies, of lavender-washed cotton and typewriter ribbon had gathered together, bringing her back to him in small concentrated fragments. So he knew about smells, the way they tumbled into the air, falling softly again, here and there, like confetti without the bride. The sunlight seemed suddenly to have lost its brilliance. His old anger returned. He had thought he was over it, but bitterness attacked him in waves. Ugliness remembered. Sugi watched him surreptitiously, serving his meals, bringing a tray of morning tea, cooking a redfish curry in the way he liked it. The fans had stopped working again and the lights often failed at night. Sugi watched him in the light of the coconut-oil lamps. There did not seem to be much evidence of Sir working. Across the garden Theo felt the silence stretch into eternity. The leaves on the pawpaw tree looked large and malevolent.

‘Sir,’ said Sugi finally, ‘Sir, why are you not writing?’

Beyond the light from the veranda the undergrowth rustled vaguely. Two mosquito coils burned into insubstantial columns. A black-spotted moth circled the lamps, mesmerised. Sugi looked at Theo. This is a fine state of affairs, he thought. It was as well he was here.

‘Maybe there is trouble at her house, no?’ he ventured tentatively. ‘Shall I go and find out?’

‘No,’ said Theo quickly.

Such an intrusion was unbearable and he could not allow it. Sugi fell silent again. Maybe he should talk about something else instead. Sir was a grown man after all. He had lived all over the world. Given the things he had been through, his innocence was surprising.

‘There is a shortage of food in the market this week,’ Sugi said. ‘I don’t know why. I could only get river cress, a coconut and a bunch of shrivelled radishes.’

It was true. The rice was appalling too, and there were no fresh vegetables to be had.

‘Of all the places on this island,’ he continued, complaining loudly, hoping to distract Theo, ‘this should be the place for fresh fish. But the day’s catch had vanished by the time I got into the town. There’s been some kind of trouble further along the coast; maybe that’s got something to do with it. Someone told me the army drove their jeeps on to the sands, chasing a group of men. And then they shot them. They were all young, Sir. Nobody knows what they had done.’

He spread his hands helplessly in front of him.

‘The army left the bodies on the beach, and the local people cleared up the mess. There is always someone prepared to clean up after them. Either a Buddhist or a Christian. They will always find someone to do the dirty work.’

Theo shifted uneasily in his chair. Sugi’s anxiety was different from his.

On the fifth evening of Nulani’s absence, in spite of Sugi’s entreaties, Theo decided to walk along the beach again.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘nothing can happen to me. It’s not people like me that interest them. I’m too well known. I’m safe.’

And he went out. A full moon spilled a continuous stream of silver on to the water. An express train hooted its way along the coast, rushing towards Colombo. But there was no sign of the girl on the empty beach. What is the matter with me, he thought, exasperated. Am I going mad? She’s probably busy, helping her mother, sewing, being seventeen. And she never said when she would be back, he reasoned silently. He was puzzled by this disturbance to his equilibrium. Time was passing, in a few months it would be winter in England. His agent would not wait for ever. He had not written much. As he watched, the moon spread its phosphorescent glow into the sea.

‘Look,’ Sugi said when he returned.

He held out a piece of paper. Thick heady blossoms glowed white under the lamplight while Theo unfolded it quickly. It was from the girl. She had drawn a picture of a man. The man was sitting on one of the cane chairs on her veranda. There was a cup of tea on the table beside him; it was placed on a heavily embroidered cloth. The man’s face was in profile, but still, it was possible to see the fine lines of dissatisfaction and anger and suppressed cruelty. It was possible to see all this on the small piece of paper, clearly marked by the stub of a pencil.

‘It’s her uncle, Sir,’ said Sugi when Theo showed him. ‘I know this man. He is a bad man. The talk is he betrayed Mr Mendis. That it was because of him, the thugs came. He never liked his sister’s choice of husband. There are seven brothers in that family, you know, and they like their women to do as they are told.’

Theo felt anger tighten its belt around him. His anxiety for the girl intensified.

‘I think I’ll take a walk over to Mrs Mendis’s house,’ he said.

But Sugi was alarmed. He would not let Theo be so foolish.

‘Are you crazy, Sir? Leave that family alone, for God’s sake. I’m telling you, you don’t understand the people here. You must not meddle with things in this place. Please, Mr Samarajeeva, this isn’t England. The girl will be OK. It’s her family, and she is no fool. She will come here, tomorrow or the next day, you’ll see.’

He sounded like a parent, quietening a restless child. In spite of his anger another part of Theo saw this and felt glad. He was amazed at the easy affection between them. They had slipped into a friendship, Sugi and he, in spite of the rising tide of anxiety around them, perhaps because of it.

‘Sugi,’ he said softly into the darkness, feeling a sudden sharp sense of belonging. ‘You are my good friend, you know. I feel as if I have known you for ever.’

He hesitated. He would have liked to say something more. Moved by their growing affection for each other, he would have liked to speak of it. But he could not think of the right way to express himself. Sugi, too, seemed to hesitate, as though he understood. So Theo said nothing and instead poured them both a beer. But the warmth between them would not go away, settling down quietly, curling up like a contented animal. He looked at the note again. Underneath the drawing Nulani had captioned it with two exclamation marks. What did that mean?

‘I told you, Sir, the girl understands her family better than you. She is probably laughing at her uncle right now. You must not worry so much. She’ll be able to take care of herself. And tomorrow she will be back, you’ll see,’ he added, cheerfully, for he could see that Theo was less worried now. ‘I’ll squeeze some limes and make a redfish curry. Tomorrow.’

‘I would have liked children, Sugi,’ Theo said later on, calmer now than he had been for days.

Sugi nodded, serious. ‘Children are a blessing, Sir, but they are endless trouble as well. In this country we seem to have children only to carry on our suffering. In this country it’s only one endless cycle of pain for us. Some terrible curse has fallen on us since we became greedy.’

Startled, Theo looked sharply at him. He had forgotten the slow and inevitable philosophy of his countrymen. But before he could speak, Sugi put his hand out to silence him. The moon had retreated behind a cloud and a slight breeze moved the leaves. It reminded Theo of other balmy nights long ago with Anna, spent in the fishing ports along the South of France. Something rustled in the undergrowth; Sugi disappeared silently along the side of the house. Thinking he heard the gate creak Theo stood up. A moment later there was a muffled grunt, the sound of a scuffle and Sugi reappeared, emerging through the bushes, pushing a boy of about fourteen in front of him. He had twisted the boy’s arm behind his back and was gripping him hard. In the light of the returning moon a knife glinted in his hand.

‘He was trying to break in, Sir, from the back. With this,’ he added grimly.

And he held up the knife. He pushed the boy roughly towards Theo, speaking to him in Singhalese.

‘He says he was only doing what he was told.’

‘What were you trying to steal?’ Theo asked him, also in Singhalese.

But the boy would not reply. In another moment, with a swift jerk of his elbow he broke free and vaulted over the garden wall, vanishing into the night. And although they ran out into the darkened road there was no sign of him anywhere. Sugi began bolting the windows and checking the side of the house, shining a torch on the dense mass of vegetation.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, shaking his head, looking worried, ‘I will cut some of it back.’

Tomorrow he would rig up a garden light to surprise any further intruders. The boy was probably just a petty thief, stealing things to sell in order to buy drugs. But still, one could not be too careful. Tomorrow he would make some enquiries in the town. Meanwhile, Sir should go to bed.

After he had lit another mosquito coil and closed the net around himself, just at the point of sleep, Theo realised he had forgotten to ask Sugi who had delivered the drawing from the girl. And he thought with certainty, Sugi was probably right; the girl would reappear in the morning.

She was waiting for him the next morning in her usual spot on the veranda, drawing his lounge-backed cane chair.

‘So,’ he said sitting down, filling her view, smiling, ‘so, welcome back!’

And he seemed to hear the faintest flutter of wings. Small banana-green parrots hopped restlessly in the trees, music floated out from the house, and the air was filled with beginnings and murmurings. Last night seemed not to have happened at all. Her uncle had just left, she said. It was Saturday; there was no school so she had escaped from home. She wanted to work on the painting. Too much time had been wasted by her uncle’s visit. He had come to discuss Jim’s future. The days had been filled with squabbling and the thin raised voice of her mother. Her uncle had not cared about his sister’s distress. He merely wanted Jim to join the organisation he ran.

‘It’s something to do with the military,’ Nulani said scornfully. ‘I think they spy on people, for the army. My uncle said Jim is old enough and it was time for him to give up his studies. He said there’s no time for studying right now, when Sri Lanka needs him.’

‘What?’ said Theo. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, but Amma does not want this kind of future for her son. She is frightened, she has lost my father, she does not want to lose a son as well.’

Sooner or later, Nulani’s uncle had told them, sooner or later Lucky Jim’s luck would run out. Then what would he do? Better to start now, show which side of the fence he was on. Before questions were asked.

‘So he was threatening your brother?’ Theo asked.

‘Yes, but Amma will not allow it. So they were fighting.’

Sugi brought out a dish of pawpaw. He had been preparing the table for breakfast. He covered it with an indigo cloth. Then he brought out some freshly made egg hoppers and some seeni sambol. And a small jug of boiled milk with the tea. A band of sunlight had escaped from the roof and bent across the table, stretching across the floor. Theo went inside to turn the record over.

‘And you? What did your uncle have to say to you,’ he asked, coming back.

Nulani pulled a face, laughing up at him. ‘I dropped two dishes yesterday,’ she said. ‘I was in a hurry. I thought if I cleared up quickly I might be able to come here. But then I dropped the dishes and Amma shouted at me. So I couldn’t escape.’

‘What happened then? Were you punished or something?’ It all sounded ludicrous.

Nulani shrugged. ‘No. Amma just said, “ What’s wrong with the girl? ” and that started my uncle off again, only this time he began to shout at me. He said I hadn’t been trained properly and I needed a husband!’

‘What?’ asked Theo in alarm.

‘Oh, he’s full of talk,’ Nulani said dismissively. ‘He can’t do anything. And I just ignore him anyway. He told Amma he would find someone suitable for me to marry, but Amma was too angry about what he had said to Jim to worry about me.’

The sky seemed cloudless and suddenly overbright.

‘I don’t have to do what he tells me,’ said Nulani. ‘My father hated him.’

But her father could no longer help her, Theo thought uneasily. Thinking also, in spite of this new threat from the uncle, how glad he was she was here now, and how empty the days had been while she had stayed away, wondering too, what he might do that would be of any help to her. Wondering if the chasm of age and life and experience left room for giving her anything on his part.

‘I haven’t seen you for five days,’ she said, suddenly, and in that moment, it seemed to Theo, the sky had changed and was now the timeless blue of the tea-country lakes.

‘But I have been drawing you from memory. Look, they’re nearly perfect,’ she told him, moving her chair closer and handing him her book. Once again images rose from the pages, tossed carelessly out, those aspects of himself that he barely intuited. There he was smiling, pensive, staring owlishly into the distance, cleaning his glasses. Oh Christ, he thought, Christ! What was this? He looked at the drawings helplessly, feeling his heart contract painfully. Lighting his pipe he drank his tea in silence. Then he stood up and held the door of her new studio open, smiling down at her.

‘Work,’ he said firmly, wanting for some aching, unaccountable reason to touch her long dark hair.

What remained of the morning was spent in this way. Nulani worked on the two canvases that would eventually be the portraits of Theo. The smell of her colours, mixed with the turpentine, filling the house. Outside a monkey screamed and screamed again. The heat draped itself like a heavy leaded curtain across the veranda. They would have to take their lunch indoors. Somewhere in the kitchen Sugi was scraping coconuts. Theo had so far written two sentences towards his new book. The image of the girl wove into his thoughts; it ran with the sound of the piano music from the record, it merged confusingly with the heat outside. Why had he ever imagined he could work in this place? I need the cold, he thought, restlessness stirring in him. He thought of the muffled noise of traffic rising up towards the tops of the plane trees in Kensington. A memory of his wide airy flat returned to him with the mirrors and the pale duck-egg walls, broken by patches of Kandyan red and orange cloth. Once he had been able to work among all that elegance, once he had had another life. Perhaps, thought Theo, perhaps I have no more to say; perhaps this latest book is doomed? Perhaps the sun has sapped my inspiration?

But then he went to get the girl, for the lunch was ready, and he saw the light flickering against the walls of the room where she worked. Her small face was smudged with paint, and it struck him forcefully that no, his book was not doomed at all. For the early-afternoon sun seemed to turn and pivot on a new axis of optimism. Sugi too seemed to have excelled himself with the lunch. All he said was that the market had been good as he set the jug of lime juice down and brought in the curries; murunga, bitter-gourd, brinjal, fish and boiled rice. He was smiling broadly and his previous disapproval of the girl seemed to have evaporated. Nulani, unaware of any difference, chattered happily with him as he brought in the food. But he would not stay while they ate, shyly asking instead if he might take a look at the painting of Sir.

‘Yes, yes,’ the girl said delighted. ‘But Mr Samarajeeva must not see it yet.’

‘Will you stop calling me that!’ Theo laughed. ‘Come back and tell me what you think.’

But Sugi could not be persuaded. He had work to do, he said. He was going to put barbed wire over the back-garden wall, whether Sir liked it or not.

So that it wasn’t until much later, when they were alone and he smoked his cigarette on the veranda with Theo, that he said, ‘She is very talented, Sir.’

They sat for a moment in companiable silence.

‘And she has become too attached to you,’ Sugi said.

All afternoon he had been working on the garden. The heat had eased off slightly, and then the girl, having cleared up her paints, had gone home. Huge tropical stars appeared between the leaves of the plantain trees. The garden was as secure as it was possible to make it, he told Theo. It had not been easy to get barbed wire; in the end, hoping no one had seen him, Sugi had picked up what had been lying around the beach. He was still worried about the boy from the night before, he told Theo.

‘You worry too much,’ said Theo, smiling at him. His affection felt clumsy. Again he recognised his own inability to speak of the growing bond between them.

He is like a brother to me, he thought with amazement. If I believed in it, I would say we had known one another in a previous life. It occurred to him that he would like to give Sugi something to mark his feelings, some tangible thing, a talisman for the future that was nothing to do with payments or employment. But he did not know how, or even what. And then, once more, he found himself thinking of the girl and her extraordinary quiet ability to make sense of all she saw, with delicate pencil lines overlaying more lines. The evening, and the night ahead, seemed suddenly interminably long until the morning. He hoped she had reached her home safely. He worried that she let neither Sugi nor him walk her back. He worried that her uncle was waiting for her. What on earth is wrong with me, he muttered, half exasperated, half amused at himself. I’m acting like her mother. And then he thought, Am I simply being sentimental? Perhaps this is what middle age is about. As he lit the mosquito coil, before he got under the net, he remembered again that he had forgotten to ask Sugi who had delivered Nulani’s drawing the night before.

One morning, some weeks later, Theo decided to visit the temple on the hill. The girl had told him it was very beautiful.

‘You should go,’ she had said. ‘We held my father’s funeral there.’

He had sensed she wanted him to go for this reason and he thought of the irony of it. Burning the man who had already been burned. Mrs Mendis was leaving the temple as he entered. He heard her calling him and looked around for an escape but there was none.