Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost

He was thirty-four years old then. Things would get worse. By the time he was thirty-six, he was working in Accident Services Hospital in Colombo. ‘Gunshot Services,’ they called it. But he remembered the pediatric wards in the North Central Province, the blue light above that jaundiced child which somehow also comforted him, its specific frequency of 470 to 490 nanometres that all night kept breaking down the yellow pigment. He remembered the books, the four essential medical texts and the stories he never finished reading though he kept them in his hands for hours as he sat in the cane chair trying to rest, trying to come down to some kind of human order, but instead only darkness came down on him in the room, his eyes peering at the pages while his brain stared past them to the truth of their times.

It was one a.m. when Sarath and Anil arrived in the centre of Colombo, having driven through the city’s empty grey streets. As they got to Emergency Services, she said, ‘Is it okay? Us moving him like this?’

‘It’s okay. We’re taking him to my brother. With luck he’ll be somewhere there in Emergency.’

‘You have a brother here?’

Sarath parked and was still for a moment. ‘God, I’m exhausted.’

‘Do you want to stay here and sleep? I can take him in.’

‘It’s okay. I’d better talk to my brother anyway. If he’s there.’

Gunesena was asleep and they woke him and walked him between them into the building. Sarath spoke to someone at the desk and the three of them sat down to wait, Gunesena’s hands on his lap like a boxer’s. There was a daylight sense of work going on around Admissions, though everyone moved in slow motion and quietly. A man in a striped shirt came towards them and chatted with Sarath.

‘This is Anil.’

The man in the striped shirt nodded at her.

‘My brother, Gamini.’

‘Right,’ she said, flatly.

‘He’s my younger brother-he’s our doctor.’

There had been no touching between him and Sarath, not a handshake.

‘Come-’ Gamini helped Gunesena to his feet and they all followed him into a small room. Gamini unstoppered a bottle and began swabbing the man’s palms. She noticed he wasn’t wearing gloves, not even a lab coat. It looked as if he had just come from an interrupted card game. He injected the anaesthetic into the man’s hands.

‘I didn’t know he had a brother,’ she said, breaking the silence.

‘Oh, we don’t see much of each other. I don’t speak of him either, you know. We go our own way.’

‘He knew you were here, though, and what shift you were on.’

‘I suppose so.’

They were both intentionally excluding Sarath from their conversation.

‘How long have you been working with him?’ Gamini now asked.

She said, ‘Three weeks.’

‘Your hands-they are steady,’ Sarath said. ‘Have you recovered?’

‘Yes.’ Gamini turned to Anil. ‘I’m the family secret.’

He pulled the bridge nails from Gunesena’s anaesthetized hands. Then he washed them with Betalima, a crimson sudsing fluid that he squirted out of a plastic bottle. He dressed the wounds and talked quietly to his patient. He was very gentle, which for some reason surprised her. He pulled open a drawer, got another disposable needle and gave him a tetanus shot. ‘You owe the hospital two needles,’ he murmured to Sarath. ‘There’s a shop on the corner. You should get them while I sign out.’ He led Sarath and Anil out of the room, leaving the patient behind.

‘There are no beds left here tonight. Not for this level of injury. See, even crucifixion isn’t a major assault nowadays… If you can’t take him home I’ll find someone to watch him while he sleeps out in Admissions-I’ll okay it, I mean.’

‘He can come with us,’ Sarath said. ‘If he wants I’ll get him a job as a driver.’

‘You better replace those needles. I’m going off duty soon. Do you want to eat? Along the Galle Face?’ He was talking again to Anil.

‘It’s two in the morning!’ Sarath said.

She spoke up. ‘Yes. Sure.’

He nodded at her.

Gamini pulled open the passenger-side door and got in beside his brother, which left Anil in the back seat with Gunesena. Well, she’d have a better view of both of them.

The streets were empty save for a silent patrol of military moving under the arch of trees along Solomon Dias Mawatha. They were stopped at a roadblock and asked for their passes. A half-mile beyond that they came to a food stall and Gamini got out and bought them all something to eat. On the road the younger brother looked thin as his shadow, feral.

They left Gunesena sleeping in the car and walked onto Galle Face Green and sat near the breakwater by the darkness of the sea. While Gamini unwrapped his spoils, Anil lit a cigarette. She was not hungry, but Gamini would in the next hour consume several packets of lamprais, a startling amount for someone she considered slight and bony. She noticed him palm a pill and swill it down with Orange Crush.

‘We get a lot like this one…’

‘Nails in hands?’ She realized she sounded horrified.

‘Nowadays we get everything. It’s almost a relief to find a common builder’s nail as a weapon. Screws, bolts-they pack their bombs with everything to make sure you get gangrene from explosions.’

He unwrapped the leaf of another lamprais and ate with his fingers. ‘… Thank God it’s not a full moon. Poya days are the worst. Everyone thinks they can see. They go out and step on something. Are you the team working on the new skeletons?’

‘How do you know about that?’ She was suddenly tense.

‘It’s the wrong time for unburials. They don’t want results. They’re fighting a war on two sides now, the government. They don’t need more criticism.’

‘I understand that,’ Sarath said.

‘But does she?’ Gamini paused. ‘Just be careful. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s right. And too many people know about your investigation. There is always someone paying attention.’

There was a short silence. Then Sarath asked his brother what else he was doing.

‘Just sleep and work,’ Gamini yawned. ‘Nothing else. My marriage disappeared. All that ceremony-and then it evaporated in a couple of months. I was too intense then. I’m probably another example of trauma, you see. That happens when there is no other life. What the fuck do my marriage and your damn research mean. And those armchair rebels living abroad with their ideas of justice-nothing against their principles, but I wish they were here. They should come and visit me in surgery.’

He leaned forward to take one of Anil’s cigarettes. She lit it and he nodded.

‘I mean, I know everything about blast weaponry. Mortars, Claymore mines, antipersonnel mines which contain gelignite and trinitrotoluen. And I’m the doctor! That last one results in amputations below the knee. They lose consciousness and the blood pressure falls. You do a tomography of the brain and brain stem, and it shows haemorrhages and edema. We use dexamethasone and mechanical ventilation for this-it means we have to open the skull up. Mostly it’s hideous mutilation, and we just keep arresting the haemorrhages… They come in all the time. You find mud, grass, metal, the remnants of a leg and boot all blasted up into the thigh and genitals when the bomb they stepped on went off. So if you plan to walk in mined areas, it’s better to wear tennis shoes. Safer than combat boots. Anyway, these guys who are setting off the bombs are who the Western press calls freedom fighters… And you want to investigate the government?’

‘There are innocent Tamils in the south being killed too,’ Sarath said. ‘Terrible killings. You should read the reports.’

‘I get the reports.’ Gamini laid his head back. It was resting against her thigh but he seemed unaware of this. ‘We’re all fucked, aren’t we. We don’t know what to do about it. We just throw ourselves into it. Just no more high horses, please. This is a war on foot.’