B009Y4I4QU EBOK (2 page)

If this is not a dream, I must be dying. It can be nothing else, this terrible pain. That jeep turned over, and now something is killing me. But how can I be dying? Just now I was in our hotel room. Just now I was with the boys. My boys. My mind shook itself, it tried to focus. Vik and Malli. I
can’t
die. For them, I have to stay alive.

It was too ferocious, though, the force on my chest. I only wanted for it to stop. If I am dying, please, hurry up.

But I don’t want to die, our life is good, I thought. I don’t want it to be over, we have much more to do, so much. Yet I had to surrender to this unknown chaos. I could sense that. I am going to
die, I am nothing against whatever it is that has me in its grip. What to do, it’s over, finished. I gave up. But as I went whirling in the water, I did feel disappointed that my life had to end.

This cannot be happening. Only now I was standing by the door, I was talking to Orlantha. And what was that she said? A
dream
? What you guys have is a dream. That’s what she said. Her words came back to me now, I cursed her for saying that.

All at once I saw brown water. No more smoky gray, but billowing brown water, way into the distance, as far as I could see. My head was above the water now. Still I was being swept along at such a speed. There was nothing I could hold. I flung about. There are trees swirling around me. What
is
this about? I was with Vik, in our room. He wants to wear his new England cricket shirt, we are driving back to Colombo soon. I’ve put the shirt out on the bed. This has to be a dream, I thought. I tasted salt. Water battered my face, it went up my nose, it burned my brain. For a long while I didn’t realize that the pain in my chest had stopped.

I was floating on my back. A blue spotless sky. A flock of storks was flying above me, in formation, necks stretched out. These birds were flying in the same direction that the water was taking me. Painted storks, I thought. A flight of painted storks
across a Yala sky, I’d seen this thousands of times. A sight so familiar, it took me out of the mad water. Watching storks with Vik, laughing with him about their pterodactyl-like flight, for a moment or two that’s where I was.

Vik and Malli, I thought again. I can’t let myself die here in whatever this is. My boys.

A child was floating towards me. A boy. His head was above the water, he was screaming. Daddy, Daddy. He was clinging to something. It looked like the broken seat of a car, there was yellow foam or rubber inside. He was lying on top of it, as if he was body-boarding. From a distance, I thought this boy was Malli. I tried to reach him. The water slammed into my face and pushed me back, but I managed to get nearer to the boy. Come to Mummy, I said out loud. Then I saw his face up close. He wasn’t Mal. The next instant I was knocked sideways, and the boy was gone.

I was falling through rapids. The water was plummeting. There was a man, he was being tossed about in this torrent. He was facing downwards. He had a black T-shirt on, only that. Is that Steve, I wondered, maybe it’s Steve, his sarong’s come off. I thought this calmly at first, and then I panicked. No, it can’t be Steve. Don’t let it be him.

There was a branch hanging over the water. I was floating towards it, on my back. I have to clutch that branch, I told myself, somehow I must. I knew
I’d go racing under it, so I had to lift up my arms in time to have any chance of catching it. The water thrashed my face, but I tried to keep my eyes fixed on that branch. Then I was under it, and I reached out, but the branch was nearly behind me. I threw my arms back a little and grabbed, holding on.

My feet were on the ground.

My eyes couldn’t focus. But I saw then the toppled trees everywhere, I could make those out, trees on the ground with their roots sticking up. What is this, a swamp? I was in an immense bog-land. Everything was one color, brown, reaching far. This didn’t look like Yala, where the ground is dry and cracked and covered in green shrub. What is this knocked-down world? The end of time?

I was bent double, I couldn’t straighten. I held my knees, I was panting hard, choking. There was sand in my mouth. I wretched and coughed up blood. I kept spitting and spitting. So much salt. My body felt very heavy. My trousers, they are weighing me down, I thought. I took them off. What happened to those waves? There are pools of still water around me, but no waves. Are these lakes or lagoons?

I couldn’t keep steady. My feet sank in sludge. I stared into this unknown landscape, still wondering if I was dreaming, but fearing, almost knowing, I was not.

It was only then that I wondered what happened
to everyone. Could they be dead? They must be. They must be dead. What am I going to do without them, I thought. Still panting, still spitting. I couldn’t keep balance, I was sliding in mud.

I heard voices. Distant at first, then close. It was a group of men, shouting to each other in Sinhala. They couldn’t see me, or me them. One of them said, “
Muhuda goda gahala. Mahasona avilla
.” The ocean has flooded. Mahasona is here. Mahasona. I knew the word, but what was he saying? I had last heard that word when I was a child and our nanny told us stories about ghouls and demons. Mahasona, he is the demon of graveyards. Even in my complete bewilderment, I understood. Something dreadful had happened, there was death everywhere, that’s what the man was shouting about.

That voice called out again. “Is anyone here, you can come out now, the water’s gone, we are here to help.” I didn’t budge or make a sound. I felt too exhausted to speak. Then a child’s voice, “Help me. Save me. I was washed away.” I heard the men come closer to find the child. I stayed silent. Bent over, holding my knees.

The men spotted me and ran over. They spoke to me, but I didn’t reply. They said I should go with them, we must hurry, there could be another wave. I kept shaking my head and refusing. I was too tired. And without my boys, how could I leave? What if they’d survived? They might be near here somewhere,
I couldn’t leave them behind. But I couldn’t say this out loud. I couldn’t ask these men to search for them. I couldn’t tell them that we had been thrown out of the jeep into that water. Telling them would make it too real.

The men were impatient. They talked among themselves. They couldn’t leave me here. “But we can’t take her like this,” one of them said. “She has no trousers on.” What? I thought. He took off his shirt and tied it around my waist. They pulled me along, I still felt heavy, my legs dragged through mud. It was deep, knee-high slime. A few times I fell over, and they hauled me up.

We saw a man lying under a bush. He was wearing only a loincloth. One of the men with me went up to him. He’s dead, he came back and said. He mentioned a name, and I recognized it. He was a fisherman who lived in a small hut on the beach by the hotel. Steve and I would talk to him, he would try to sell conch shells to the boys, they’d press those shells against their ears to listen to the hum of the ocean. I looked away from this man, now motionless in the sand. I didn’t want to see anyone dead.

They took me to a van, and we drove a short distance. When the van stopped, I knew where I was. We were at the ticket office at the entrance to the national park. I knew this building well. I’d been here hundreds of times, since I was a child, to buy tickets and to pick up a ranger to guide us in the
park. Vik and Malli sometimes went into the small museum in this building, at the entrance to it was an enormous pair of elephant tusks.

The building looked no different now. All intact. No trace of water, no puddles or uprooted trees around it. This dry breeze on my face, it’s a normal breeze.

The men carried me out of the van and took me inside. I knew several people who worked here, I could see them now, milling around, staring at me, looking concerned. I turned away from them. I didn’t want them to see me like this, shaking, sopping wet.

I sat on a green concrete bench in the museum, which had half-walls with peeling green paint and thick wooden pillars that held up the roof. I hugged my knees into my chest and stared at the
palu
trees outside. Was it real, what just happened, that water? My crumpled mind couldn’t tell. And I wanted to stay in the unreal, in the not knowing. So I didn’t speak to anyone, ask them anything. A phone began to ring. No one picked it up, so it rang and rang. It was loud, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to stay in my stupor, staring into trees.

But what if they survived, I couldn’t help thinking. Steve might come here with the boys. Maybe someone found all of them, just as they found me. If they are brought here, the boys will be clinging to Steve. Daddy, Daddy. Their shirts would have
been torn off, they will be cold. Vik would always be shaking and shivering when he went swimming, the water in the pool was a little bit chilly.

A white truck pulled up. A young girl was carried out. There were bruises on her face, and twigs and leaves stuck to her hair and clothes. I’d seen this girl before. She was in the room next to us in the hotel with her parents. Vik and Malli will look wet and scared like this girl if they are brought here now. Will they have leaves tangled in their hair? They both had haircuts before we left London. Haircuts. I couldn’t hold the thought of haircuts.

There was a boy sitting on the same bench as me. He looked about twelve, a little older maybe. This was the boy who called for help just before those men found me. They brought him here with me in that van. This boy wouldn’t stop talking now, shouting. Where are his parents, he wants them, he was having breakfast with them at the hotel, they saw the waves, they ran, he was swept away. He said this over and over, but I ignored him. I didn’t acknowledge his presence or respond to anything he said.

The boy began to cry now. Are his parents dead? he asked. He was wearing only a pair of shorts, and his body was shaking, and his teeth chattered, and he kept walking around the glass cabinets, which displayed skeletons of marsh crocodiles and pythons. There was also the nest of a weaverbird,
which always intrigued Vik. “It’s like a real house, Malli. Can you see the different rooms?”

The boy kept walking back and forth and crying. I wanted him to stop. Someone brought a large towel and wrapped it around his shoulders. Still the boy sobbed. But I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t try to comfort him. Stop blubbing, I thought, shut up. You only survived because you are fat. That’s why you didn’t die. You stayed alive in that water because you are so fucking fat. Vik and Malli didn’t have a chance. Just shut up.

I
was taken to the hospital in a jeep. The man driving was very agitated. He told me he didn’t know where his family was. He was going to the hospital to look for them. They had been staying at the hotel, same as us. But he went on safari early in the morning. He went alone. He wasn’t at the hotel when the wave struck. He told me this again and again. He spoke too loudly. I sat in the front seat next to him. I didn’t say a word. I shivered and I shook. I stared out of the jeep. The road we were driving on was bordered by thick forest. There was no one on that road but us.

There was another man sitting at the back of the jeep. I recognized him, he was a waiter in our hotel. The waiter had a mobile phone in his hand, he kept waving it about. He stuck his hand out of the jeep and held the phone up high. He jumped across the seats from side to side. He was trying to get a signal, he said. His movements, I couldn’t stand it, I could feel each thud. Why can’t you just sit still, I kept thinking. I wanted to fling his phone out of that jeep.

They could already be at the hospital. Steve and the boys. Even Ma and Da. They might have been found and taken there. I kept thinking this, then stifling the thought. I had to stop getting my hopes up. I won’t find them, I must prepare for this. But if
they
were
there, they’d be worried about me. I wished the jeep would speed up.

When we got to the hospital, it was Anton, Orlantha’s father, who came rushing out. He had no shirt, his trousers were ripped, his toes were bloody. He peered into the jeep, looking confused. Why is Orlantha not with you? Where are Steve and the boys? he asked. He thought this was the same jeep we’d driven off in, leaving him lying on the ground. I told him it wasn’t, that I didn’t know where anyone was. I didn’t tell him I’d hoped they’d be at the hospital. Now that I was sure they were not.

I dragged myself into the waiting area. My legs felt battered, they were unsteady. I noticed deep scratches on my ankles, they were bleeding, there were cuts on the soles of my feet. What happened? My mind could not sort anything out.

All around me people were talking. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, so I didn’t look their way. The waiting room was small, but their voices seemed distant, they kept getting softer and trailing off. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a tidal wave, there was a tidal wave, he said. I nodded. I tried to seem casual, as if I’d known all along. But a tidal wave is real. My heart tumbled. I sat down on a wooden bench in a corner, by a wall, facing the entrance to the hospital.

They might still come. We don’t get tidal waves
in Sri Lanka. These people don’t know what they’re talking about. An image of Steve walking in with Vik and Mal kept sparking in my head. All three of them bare-chested, Steve carrying the boys, one on each arm. But they couldn’t have survived, they just couldn’t, I kept warning myself. Yet I silently and hopelessly murmured, there might,
might
just be the smallest chance.

Now and then a van or a truck came through the hospital gates. Everything very fast. Doors slammed, there was shouting, people staggered out from the trucks, others were carried, nurses and doctors ran outside clattering stretchers and wheelchairs down a ramp. A woman was brought in and left in front of my bench. She had long hair that was matted, it spread across her face. She was mumbling, but she wasn’t making sense. She was covered with a sheet because she was naked, but her feet stuck out, and they were crusted with mud. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I wondered if it was seaweed, all that slime twisted in her hair.