Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost

They taped down sheets from the Sunday Observer so the pages covered the floor. You have the felt pen? Yes. She began removing her clothes, her back to him, then lay down next to the skeleton of Sailor. She was wearing just her red knickers, silk ones she usually put on with irony. She hadn’t imagined them for public consumption. She looked up at the ceiling, her hands on her breasts. Her body felt good against the hard floor, the coolness of the polished concrete through the newspaper, the same firmness she had felt as a child sleeping on mats.

He was using the felt marker to trace her shape. You will have to put your arms down for a moment. She could feel the pen move around her hands and alongside her waist, then down her legs, both sides, so he linked the blue lines at the base of her heels.

She rose out of the outline, turned back and saw he had drawn outlines of the four skeletons as well.

There was a knocking and she roused herself. She hadn’t moved. All evening she kept discovering herself stilled, unable to think. Even reading she’d gotten entangled sleepily in the arms of paragraphs that wouldn’t let her go. Something about the phrasing of Ava Gardner’s complaint about Sinatra held her. Wrapped in a sheet she opened the door. Sarath passed her the bulb and disappeared from sight. He had been in a shirt and sarong. She was going to ask him to… She pulled the table to the centre of the room, switched the light off. She used the sheet to unscrew the hot bulb. She feared wild electricity somewhere in the wire. She could hear the noise of the waves outside. With effort she lifted her head and screwed the bulb Sarath had brought into the socket. Everything was suddenly heavy and slowed down.

She lay flat on the bed, cold once more, shivering, a moan in her mouth. She rummaged through her bag and found two small bottles of scotch she had taken from the plane. Sarath had taken off her clothes and traced her outline. Had he done that?

The telephone rang. It was America. A woman’s voice.

‘Hello? Hello? Leaf? God it’s you! You got my message.’

‘You’ve picked up an accent already.’

‘No, I- Is this a legal call?’

‘Your voice is all up and down.’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you okay, Anil?’

‘I’m sick. It’s very late. No, no. It’s fine. I’ve been waiting for you. It’s just I’m sick and it makes me feel even further away from everybody. Leaf? Are you well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me. How well?’

There was silence. ‘I’m not remembering. I’m forgetting your face.’

Anil could hardly breathe. She turned from the phone to wipe her cheek on the pillow. ‘Are you there? Leaf?’ She heard the noise of great distances on the line between them. ‘Is your sister with you?’

‘My sister?’ Leaf said.

‘Leaf, listen, remember-who killed Cherry Valance?’

Crackle and silence as she held the phone tight to her ear.

In the next room Sarath had his eyes open, unable to escape the sound of Anil’s weeping.

Sarath reached his hand across the breakfast plates and held Anil’s wrist. His thumb on her pulse. ‘We’ll get to Colombo this afternoon. We can work on the skeleton in the ship lab.’

‘And keep the skeleton with us, whatever happens,’ she said.

‘We keep all four. A unit. A disguise. We claim they’re all ancient. Your fever is down.’

She pulled her hand away. ‘I’ll remove a chip from Sailor’s heel-to have a private ID.’

‘If we take more pollen and earth samples, we can find out where he was buried first. Then do the study on the boat.’

‘There’s a woman who has been working on pupae around here,’ Anil said. ‘I read an article. I’m sure she was from Colombo. It was a very good junior thesis.’

He looked at her quizzically. ‘Don’t know. Try the young faculty when you’re at the hospital.’

They sat facing each other in silence.

‘I said to my girlfriend Leaf before I came here, Perhaps I’ll meet the man who is going to ruin me. Can I trust you?’

‘You have to trust me.’

They were at the Mutwal docks in Colombo by early evening. She helped him carry the four skeletons into the lab on board the Oronsay.

‘Take tomorrow off,’ he said. ‘I have to find more equipment, so I’ll need a day.’

Anil remained on the ship after he left, wanting to work for a while. She walked down the stairs and entered the lab, picked up the metal pole they kept by the door and began banging on the walls. Scurrying. Eventually the darkness was silent. She struck a match and walked with it held out in front of her. She pulled down the lever of the generator and soon there was a shaky hum and electricity emerged slowly into the room.

She sat there watching him. The fever was starting to leave and she was feeling lighter. She began to examine the skeleton again under sulphur light, summarizing the facts of his death so far, the permanent truths, same for Colombo as for Troy. One forearm broken. Partial burning. Vertebrae damage in the neck. The possibility of a small bullet wound in the skull. Entrance and exit.

She could read Sailor’s last actions by knowing the wounds on bone. He puts his arms up over his face to protect himself from the blow. He is shot with a rifle, the bullet going through his arm, then into the neck. While he’s on the ground, they come up and kill him.

Coup de grace. The smallest, cheapest bullet. A.22’s path that her ballpoint pen could slide through. Then they attempt to set fire to him and begin to dig his grave in this burning light.

Anil entered Kynsey Road Hospital and passed the sign by the chief medical officer’s door.

Let conversations cease.

Let laughter flee.

This is the place where Death

Delights to help the living.

It was printed in Latin, Sinhala and English. Once in the laboratory, where she worked now and then in order to use better equipment, she could relax, alone in the large room. God, she loved a lab. The stools always had a slight rake so you sat in a lean. There would always be that earnest tilt forward. On the perimeter, along the walls, were the bottles that held beet-coloured liquids. She could walk around the table watching a body from the corner of her eye, then sit on the stool and time would be forgotten. No hunger or thirst or desire for a friend or lover’s company. Just an awareness of someone in the distance hammering a floor, banging through ancient concrete with a mallet as if to reach the truth.

She stood against the table and it nestled into her hipbones. She slid her fingers along the dark wood to feel for any grain of sand, any chip or crumb or stickiness. In her solitude. Her arms dark as the table, no jewellery except the bangle that would click as she lay her wrist down gently. No other sound as Anil thought through the silence in front of her.

These buildings were her home. In the five or six houses of her adult life, her rule and habit was always to live below her means. She had never bought a house and kept her rented apartments sparse. Though in her present rooms in Colombo there was a small pool cut into the floor for floating flowers. It was a luxury to her. Something to confuse a thief in the dark. At night, returning from work, Anil would slip out of her sandals and stand in the shallow water, her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her. She would stand there for a while, then walk wet-footed to bed.

She knew herself to be, and was known to others as, a determined creature. Her name had not always been Anil. She had been given two entirely inappropriate names and very early began to desire ‘Anil,’ which was her brother’s unused second name. She had tried to buy it from him when she was twelve years old, offering to support him in all family arguments. He would not commit himself to the trade though he knew she wanted the name more than anything else.