B009Y4I4QU EBOK (3 page)

Anton was also in the waiting room. Each time a truck pulled up, he looked expectant. He rushed out. He went to see if it was bringing his family, or mine. I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to be so quickly disappointed, like Anton was. Always he came back inside within moments, shaking his head. Now and again a child was brought in. These were other
children, not Vik and Mal. I watched as each empty truck drove away. They can’t be alive, they were not even in that one.

The gashes on my ankles hurt. A nurse asked me to come inside and have them cleaned and dressed. I ignored her. Sod off, leave me alone, I thought. Why do these scratches matter? When something this horrendous has happened, I don’t even know what. Anton kept walking around talking to the doctors and nurses. They bandaged the cuts on his toes. He kept praising the hospital staff to me, even with these meager facilities they were coping remarkably well in this chaos. He knew, he was a doctor, he knew they were doing a great job. Like I care, I thought.

Those benches became crowded. It was stuffy and hot. But I had to sit tight, I couldn’t go outside. If I moved, I would lose my space. And I wanted my corner. I could lean against that wall.

I was still wet. The nurse I’d just ignored asked me to change my top. She brought me a T-shirt. I wanted to change, but I couldn’t figure out where to do it. I’m not going into one of those toilets, they’ll stink. I felt nauseated at the thought. So I peeled off my soggy blue shirt right where I was sitting and dropped it on the floor between the bench and the wall. I put on the dry T-shirt. It was purple, and on the front it had a smiling yellow teddy bear.

Some people passing through that waiting room recognized me. Jeep drivers who saw us regularly in
the park, a few waiters from the hotel. They came up to me looking concerned, they asked where my family was, where were my children, hadn’t I seen any one of them yet. I shrugged, shook my head. I wanted them to leave me alone. Each time someone approached me, I was terrified I’d be told that Steve or the boys or my parents were dead.

The man who was the masseur at our hotel walked past my bench. I’d had a massage with him the previous day, a nice Christmas treat. I had it outdoors on the veranda in the heat of the afternoon, a dry breeze blew in from the sea. Vik played with his cricket ball on the side, bowling to a chair standing in for Steve who was having a nap. Malli sipped a Sprite wearing a Santa hat with flashing lights. That tacky hat Steve got from Tally-Ho Discount in North Finchley, knowing that Malli would be impressed. I thought of all this, then quickly shut out these thoughts. I couldn’t think about yesterday now. Not in this madness, not if they were dead. Fucking Tally-Ho Discount, I always hated that shop.

And it irked me when I saw that masseur. He didn’t look injured, he didn’t even look wet. How did he survive? I thought. Vik and Mal probably didn’t, so why did he? Whenever I recognized someone from the hotel, I thought this. Why are they alive, surely that wave should have got them as well. Why aren’t
they
dead?

When Mette turned up at the hospital, I was
thankful to see him. I felt a little safer now. Mette is a jeep driver, and he always drove us on safari in the park. We’d known him a long time. We had said goodbye to him the previous night when he took us back to the hotel. It had been an uneventful safari, only a blur of a bear at dusk. We told him we’d see him again in August, we were leaving the next day. August is not that long to wait, I told Vik, who was always impatient to return. Now Mette was at the hospital because someone had told him that I was here, alone. He sat with me on the bench, he didn’t bother me with any questions. I asked him what time it was. It was around noon.

The vans and trucks stopped coming in through those gates after a while. The waiting room fell silent, it emptied out. I couldn’t take this quiet, it was better with the rushing and shouting and talking. At least something was happening then. I was jittery now, nothing going on, so I asked Mette if he could take me back to Yala. He agreed. I should go back in case they are waiting for me there, I told myself. They won’t be, they won’t be, I know. But still I should go check.

I walked barefoot to Mette’s jeep. The gravel outside was burning hot and the cuts on the soles of my feet stung. We drove through Tissa town. Every shop was shut, but the streets were teeming. I heard voices
on loudspeakers, urgent. People were piled into the trailers of tractors that were speeding this way and that. Mette’s jeep crawled the fifteen or so miles to Yala. When we turned into the road leading to the park entrance, I couldn’t recognize it. This road usually went through scrub jungle. Now on either side was an endless marsh.

There was no one waiting at the ticket office, I could tell as we approached it. One of the park rangers came up to our jeep. Everyone who had been found alive was taken to the hospital, he said. But there were bodies near the hotel, if we wanted to go identify. Mette looked at me, indicating he would do it. But there was no way I would let him. What would I do if I learned they were dead? We turned around to go back to the hospital. It was getting late now, I could feel my hope dissolve.

We stopped at the police station in Tissa on the way, to check if they had a phone that worked. All the phone lines had been down since morning. It was Mette’s idea for me to call someone in Colombo, but I didn’t want to, I couldn’t face telling anyone what had happened. I stayed in the jeep in the front yard of the police station while Mette went inside.

It was cooler now. From the shadows falling long across the paddy fields that surrounded the police station, I knew it was around five o’clock. Five o’clock. This is the time Vik plays cricket with Steve, I thought. I could hear Vik bouncing a ball, throwing
it extra hard onto the ground as he would do, to give himself a difficult catch. He always squinted and smiled while waiting for the ball to drop into his hands. I thought of this but I couldn’t get his face into focus, it was blurred. When I was sitting in the hospital hoping they’d come in, I could see them clearly, but I couldn’t now. Mette returned and told me that even the police didn’t have a phone that worked. That’s a relief, I thought.

There was a child sitting in an ambulance outside the hospital when we returned. A doctor was shouting, does anyone know this child, does this child belong to anyone here? The doctor wanted to send the child to another hospital some distance away. I tottered up to the ambulance. The back doors were open, I looked in. Is this a boy or a girl? I couldn’t say. Is this child older or younger than Malli? I couldn’t say. Is this Malli? I just couldn’t say for sure. It might be. Probably not. People gathered around the ambulance. They looked at me silently. They looked at me trying to decide if this was my son. I touched the child’s leg. Does this feel like Mal? I couldn’t tell. It might be Mal, and they are going to send him away. Then I remembered, Malli had a dark brown birthmark halfway down the outside of his left thigh. A birthspot, he called it. “Mum, do you have a birthspot also?” he would ask.
I could hear his voice now. “It’s on yer bum! Ugh, Dad, look, Mummy’s birthspot is on her bum!” “It’s not
on
my bum, Mal, it’s
near
my bum. It’s on my back.” I looked at the child’s left thigh, and there was no round brown mark. I looked at the right thigh as well, just in case. I went back inside the waiting room and took my place in the corner of that bench, by the wall.

The room filled up again. There were people crying and holding on to each other, some were slumped against pillars, some crouched on the floor with their heads in their hands. The person next to me was pressing on me, there were many more people now squeezed tight on the bench. All around me it reeked of sweat and more sweat. I tried to free myself from the smell by turning my face to the wall. Outside it was dark. When did this happen? I trembled. The light had fled.

The same nurse from the morning saw me and came over. She stroked my head, she knew my children were missing, she said. I stiffened, I didn’t want to see her look sad for me. Now she was going to make me cry, and I didn’t want that. I hadn’t shed a tear all day, and I wasn’t going to. Not with all these people here, not now.

A truck pulled in. Its headlights swung across the front yard of the hospital. They’ve found more
survivors even though it’s late, they are bringing them in. For a moment that’s what I thought. But then it erupted. The scream. In an instant everyone in that room surged to the entrance. They howled in unison, shoving each other, pushing forward, desperate arms stretched out. Some policeman arrived and pushed them back. But the wailing went on. No words, just an unending, rising, screaming scream. Then I knew. This truck was different. It was bodies this truck had brought.

I’d never heard shrieking like this before. So wild, wretched, it frightened me, rattled the wall I was holding on to. This noise was crackling into the numbness in my head. It was blasting the smallest stir of hope in my heart. It was telling me that what had happened was unthinkable, but I didn’t want this confirmed. Not by wailing strangers, I did not.

I pushed my way through the crowd, I had to escape this din, I had to go outside. As I neared the front entrance, a policeman trying to calm the crowd yelled out, “These bodies are not your people, they are only tourists from the hotel.” I didn’t flinch when I heard him. I focused on getting out. I moved through the throng of people as if his words did not matter. I didn’t drop to the ground. I didn’t even whimper, though it was now my turn to scream.

I stumbled into Mette’s jeep, parked under a lamppost by the front gates. It was quiet in there. I sat in the driver’s seat and put my head down on the
steering wheel. The bodies are from the hotel, the policeman said.

Anton found me in the jeep. I still had my head on the steering wheel when I heard his voice. I didn’t grasp what he was saying at first. Then I heard the word mortuary, and I balked. Does he want me to go to the mortuary? He can’t be serious, is he out of his mind? I knew I couldn’t step in there, no way. I couldn’t even think the thought,
What if Vik and Mal are there?
Even though it hovered unformed in my head.

When I finally understood what Anton was asking, I was thrown. He wanted me to push him to the mortuary in a wheelchair. A wheelchair? Then he explained. The wounds on his feet were too painful, he couldn’t walk that far. So could I wheel him there? My mind was mangled. I have to push him through rows of dead people in a wheelchair? I told him I couldn’t do it. He pleaded, and I kept refusing, for a while at least. But I was tired, I was beaten. Any resolve I had quickly waned, and I gave in.

The wheelchair was heavy. I had to maneuver it through the crowd. I was furious at having to do this and rammed it into whoever was in my path. Anton gave me directions, and I pushed him along an open corridor, all the time thinking, this cannot be really happening, it surely cannot. Is this me, with an old blanket around my waist, pushing a wheelchair to a mortuary where my entire family might
be? Then Anton pointed to a room. I’m not going in, I’m not going near the place, I thought. I let go of the wheelchair and saw it roll down the sloped corridor towards the room. I found my way to the jeep and sat in the dark.

Anton came back, I don’t know how much later. He stood by the window of the jeep. He found Orlantha, he told me. He found her, only her. She is not with us anymore, she is gone, he said.

His face was empty. I held his hand. This is getting real now, I thought. Slowly, very slowly, the realness of what was unfolding was seeping into my brain. I knew then I had to go back to Colombo. There will be more trucks coming in through the night, more bodies. I had to get out.

Mette agreed to take me to Colombo. His jeep was too decrepit for the journey, he had to find us a car. He turned on his phone, and for the first time that day there was a signal. He gave me the phone. I rang my mother’s mobile. That’s the first thing I did, still thinking there was a possibility it might ring, that they might even answer. But they did not. There was only that recording in Sinhala, the number you have called is not responding. Mette then suggested I call my aunt’s house. I did so reluctantly, I punched the numbers on the keypad slowly. How do I explain, what do I say? My cousin Krishan
answered. The connection was bad, there was a lot of interference. I mumbled something like, it’s only me who survived, I’m coming back. The phone went dead, again the signal was gone.

Mette took me to his home, which was very near the hospital, on a quiet street. There was a well in his front garden, by the side of a large tree. I could hear splashing in the dark, someone was taking a bath. Mette’s wife and daughter were home. He told them to look after me, he was taking me to Colombo, he was going out to find us a car.

I sat on a brown leather armchair in their living room. The two women sat on the sofa next to me. They offered me food and drink. I said I didn’t want anything. They insisted and brought me a cup of very sweet tea. I sipped it, it tasted nice. I held the cup with both hands, that warmth felt good.

They asked me about what happened. I’d hoped they wouldn’t, but they did. When did we see the wave, where were we then, what did it look like, did it roar, where did I run to, where did I last see my kids. I didn’t reply. There was a big clock on the table across from me. I sat cross-legged on the armchair and ogled that clock. I could see they were shaken and upset for me, these women, but I didn’t want to speak. I wanted to fade into that chair.

The women began to lament my plight. Never in their lives had they heard such a story, everyone dying and just one person left. She’s lost her children,
she’s lost her world, how can she live? And her children, they were so beautiful. If they were me, the women wailed, they wouldn’t be sitting quietly, they’d be out of their minds, most likely they would have died of grief. I said nothing. My eyes clung to that clock.

The front door of the house was open, neighbors and relatives wandered in. They were told about me. Everyone looked at me aghast. She’s lost her children? And her husband and her parents? Some of the visitors left quickly and returned with more people saying, look at this poor lady, isn’t it unbelievable, her whole family is gone. I was slumped in that brown armchair. Is this me they are talking about?