Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost

‘An epigraphist,’ Sarath said.

‘A skill… to decipher inscriptions. Wonderful! To study history as if it were a body.’

‘Of course your brother does that too.’

‘Of course. And then Palipana went mad. What do you say, Sarath?’

‘Hallucinations, perhaps.’

‘He went mad. Those over-interpretations, what we must call lies, over the interlinear stuff.’

‘He isn’t mad.’

‘Okay, then. Same as you and me. But no one in his clique supported him when it was revealed. He was certainly the only great man I met, but he was just never a “sacred” guy for me. You see, in the heart of any faith is a history that teaches us not to trust-’

‘Sarath at least went to see him,’ Anil interrupted.

‘Did he. Did he…?’

‘I didn’t. Not till this last week.’

‘So he’s alone.’ Gamini said. ‘Just his three women on three hills.’

‘He lives with his niece. It’s his sister’s daughter.’

Anil came out of a deep sleep. Some bird-scramble on the roof or a truck in the distance must have woken her. She removed the silent earphones from her hair, groped for her Prince T-shirt and walked into the courtyard. Four a.m. The beacon from her flashlight went straight towards Sailor’s skeleton. So he was safe. She flicked the light to the chair and saw the head wasn’t there. Sarath must have moved it. What had woken her? Someone with a nightmare? Was it Gamini in his black coat? She’d been dreaming about him. Or perhaps Cullis in the distance. It was about the same hour she had left him wounded in Borrego. Her funny valentine.

The courtyard was a layer lighter.

A wind in the roof tiles, a stronger wind and rustle high in the tall darkness of the trees. She had not brought one picture of him when she packed, was proud of that. She sat down on a step. She thought there had been birdsong and was listening for more of it. Then she heard the gasp and was running to Ananda’s door and pushing it open into the dark.

There were sounds she had never heard before. She ran back for the flashlight, yelled to Sarath and came back in. Ananda was lying against a corner, trying with what energy he had left to stab himself in the throat. The blood on the knife and in his fingers and down his arm. His eyes like a deer in her light. The sound coming from God knows where. Not his throat. It couldn’t be his throat. Not now.

‘How quick were you?’ It was Sarath.

‘Quick. I was outside. Rip some cloth off the bed.’

She moved towards Ananda. The eyes open, not blinking, and she thought he might already be dead. She waited for eye movement, and after what felt like a long time it came. His hand was still half gestured into the air. ‘I need the cloth fast, Sarath.’ ‘Right.’ She tried pulling the knife out of Ananda’s grip but couldn’t, and let it be. The blood coming off his elbow onto her sarong, she was close enough to smell it, the flashlight held between her thighs, aimed up as she crouched there.

Sarath began to tear the pillowcase and passed her strips of cloth, which she wrapped around Ananda’s neck. She put the large flap of skin flat against his neck and bound it tight.

‘I need some antiseptic. Do you know where it is?’ When he brought it she soaked the cloth in it so it would reach the wound. The windpipe was still intact, but she needed to tighten the bandage so less blood would be lost, even though he was having difficulty breathing already. She leaned forward and pressed the wound with her fingers, the knife in his hand now behind her.

‘You need to phone Gamini and get him to send someone.’

‘The cell phone’s dead. I’ll phone from the village. If I can’t get someone, I’ll drive him to Ratnapura.’

‘Light a lamp, will you, for us. Before you go.’

He returned with an oil lamp. It was too bright for them at that hour, and he turned down the wick, because what he could see was terrible.

‘He called forth the dead,’ she whispered.

‘No. He’s just one of those who try to kill themselves because they lost people.’

She caught a waver in the eyes in front of her.

…

Anil was not conscious of Sarath’s leaving. She remained with Ananda in the corner of the room, lamplight holding them together. She should have been the one to go. Sarath could talk and calm him. Or did he need silence? Perhaps. Perhaps the presence of a woman helped.

She slipped in the blood getting up from her crouch, went to the bed and tore more strips off the pillowcase. She felt an amulet under the pillow and took it. When she returned, his eyes were wide open, seemed to be swallowing everything. Oh my God-he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t see. She found them on the floor, he had been wearing them when he began to kill himself.

She rubbed the blood on her hands onto her sarong and placed the spectacles on his face. Suddenly, in spite of his wound, in spite of the knife still in his right hand, still a threat, he seemed to be back with her, among the living. She felt she could speak in any language, he would understand the purpose of any gesture. How far back was their moment of connection, when his hand had been on her shoulder? Just a few hours earlier. She put the amulet in his left hand but he could not or would not hold it. He was drifting back into unconsciousness or sleep.

What was an amulet, what was a baila, to him now? Or spectacles, or a bond. All that was for her own peace. She had interrupted his death. She was the obstacle to what he wanted. The blood had already filled the bandage. She rose and hurried through the courtyard, along with the random glance of the flashlight, into the kitchen, to their portable icebox. Opened it, and at the back, wrapped in newspaper, found the emergency epinephrine she always carried. Perhaps it would slow the bleeding, constrict the blood vessels and help his blood pressure. She rolled an ampule between her palms to warm it. On her knees, beside him, she sucked the epinephrine up into the syringe. He was looking at her, it felt, from a great distance, with no interest in what she was doing. She put her left hand on his chest to keep him from moving-she was pushing him back, she realized, as far as he would go, to stay secure, into the room’s corner-then stabbed it into the arm. Continuing to hold him with her left hand, she filled the syringe once more, from a second ampule held between her knees, then gave him another injection. When she looked up he was still gazing through her. But when the drug started to influence him, his eyes became endangered. They slipped slowly, as if grasping for a ledge to stay awake on. As if he thought he would die now should he fall back into stillness.

It was ten in the morning and she heard the sounds of the foreman arriving as usual on the property. He was there to weigh the tea that had been picked and collected into sacks by seven workers. Anil always went out to watch the ceremony. She was there for a memory she’d held on to since she was a child. She always had loved the thick odour from the leaves, and as for that green leaf she knew there was nothing greener. She remembered entering tea and rubber factories as if they were kingdoms and imagining which of those kingdoms she wished to be a part of when she became an adult. A husband in tea or a husband in rubber. There was no other choice. And their house flung on top of a solitary hill.

Sarath had not been able to locate his brother and so had driven Ananda to Ratnapura Hospital. He was still not back. She stood by the neighbouring shed where the weigh-scales were, and when the tea pluckers had gone she stepped onto the platform’s wobble, bent down and took a few small green leaves.

Before going to bed the previous night, she’d carried a bucket of water into the room and scrubbed the floor on her hands and knees. She had wanted to do it then, while he was still alive. If he died in the night she could not face going in there again. She worked for half an hour. The blood looked black in that light. Later, in the courtyard, she stripped off her T-shirt and sarong and washed them. And only then began to bathe herself-every inch of skin where she could sense the dried blood, every strand of her thin dark hair. She removed her bangle and scrubbed her wrist, then dropped the bangle into the bucket and washed that too. Several more times she jerked the full bucket up out of the well and poured water over herself. She felt manically awake, shivering, she wanted to talk. She left the clothes by the well and walked to her room and tried to disappear into sleep. She could feel the coldness of the well water reaching her in her exhaustion, knew it had entered her bones. She was with Sarath and Ananda, citizened by their friendship-the two of them in the car, the two of them in the hospital while a stranger attempted to save Ananda. Her hands were at her sides, she was barely able to reach for a sheet to cover herself. It was almost morning and light was in the room with her. Only then did she drift off, believing that the good stranger would save Ananda.