Coming Together: Special Hurricane Relief Edition (37 page)

It
was obvious long before they reached the harbor that it was hopeless.
They started passing boats piled up like children's toys in the
street, great mangled sections of wharf tossed about like playing
cards. Kali recognized some of the boats. To see them leaning crazily
against wrecked houses and offices was horrifying.

When
they got to High Street she could stand it no longer. There was no
sense in going on: the harbor was just gone. The docks, the boats and
warehouses, the piers and wharfs, the very shoreline were all gone,
wiped from the face of the earth. She dropped to her haunches and hid
her face in her arms and wept.

She
hated tears. She hated tears and she hated grief and she wept she
screamed at the world in anger for making her feel this way

The
man touched her shoulder, but how could Kali tell him what had
happened, what had been lost? She could see the harbor as it had
been, as she'd known it since childhood, and then she could see the
towering wave striking the flat beach, ripping the boats from the
moorings and washing them up into the town, the docks collapsing and
breaking up, the people swept away like froth on the wave, slammed
and tumbled about and then sucked back out to sea, battered by
floating debris, pulled down by the undertow. It was horrifying,
unimaginable.

Was
Kumar still alive? It was impossible to say. It would be a matter of
luck, nothing more. As for everything else, all was gone. It hardly
seemed to matter if one more person lived or died. Her life was gone,
her world washed away.

Kali
felt a rising wave of panic and despair so thick and fetid that it
threatened to strangle her with grief, but she would not let herself
fall into it. She swore once, one wild and bitter shriek of rage,
then she stood up and turned her back on the harbor. She looked down
and saw her pretty osariya soaked in dirty water and she let the
tears come, hating the feeling.

"Come
with me," she said to the man in her language. Of course he
didn't understand but she took his arm and pulled him along as if he
were a child. "Come on. If your wife is still alive, she'll come
to the hotel. Everyone goes to the hotel."

But
when they got to the hotel it was no better. It still stood, but the
entire first floor had been gutted, the furniture gone, all the
windows smashed. The big swimming pool was awash in sand and mud.
There was no water, no electricity. Survivors walked around dazed and
bewildered or shaking with grief, wailing out the names of their
loved ones and missing family members. There were few westerners, and
apparently none that the man recognized. There was no wife.

His
apathy grew worse, and Kali wondered whether he might already be
falling in to that state of helpless grief she had seen so often
before. She desperately wanted to get back to the harbor but she
couldn't leave him alone like this. Perhaps it had been a mistake to
bring him back here. She told him to wait while she found someone in
charge, someone who could help. He stared at her dumbly, but seemed
too confused to resist.

There
was no one in charge. There were three hotel employees screaming into
cell phones and a crowd of frightened and nearly hysterical people,
and Kali gave up her search. She came back to the man to tell him she
was leaving, and was surprised to find him standing up and ripping
strips from the wet table cloth. A teenaged boy sat at his feet,
bleeding badly from his head, and the man was tearing the cloth for
bandages, wiping the blood away and talking to the boy. He was
working quickly and surely, but having trouble with the long strips
of bandage. Kali watched him for a long moment, then took the cloth
from his hand and began tearing off more usable strips, cutting the
cloth with her teeth.

The
boy's injuries were bloody but not severe, and by the time the man
gave him a cloth to hold against his head, other people were
approaching, injured and bleeding themselves, or helping others, or
just stunned and bewildered, drawn by the man's efficiency and sense
of purpose. He seemed to come alive as he helped them, examining them
quickly and directing the less injured to wait while he saw to the
more seriously wounded. Those not too badly hurt or bereaved stayed
to help, and soon they had a small emergency clinic set up outside
the wreckage of the lobby. Someone came down from an upper floor with
a pile of sheets and they ripped those into bandages, doing what they
could.

As
the crowd grew, Kali took charge, acting as the man's nurse and
coordinator. He worked quickly and efficiently, and though they
couldn't understand each other, Kali was comforted by the man's
knowledge and expertise. Here was someone who knew what he was doing,
who had a sense of purpose. She forgot about Kumar and the harbor.
She was needed here.

They
worked into the night as the flood's survivors emerged like ghosts
from the wreckage. They bandaged and splinted, comforted and soothed
as best they could. They laid the dead and the dying along the deck
of the pool, and when Kali saw a familiar face she looked away. There
would be time for that later.

The
moon came out and from someone's radio they heard the first news of
the extent of the damage. Kali hardly listened. She wanted to stay
busy and not think, and yet as the night came on, the number of
patients decreased and dwindled until there was nothing more to be
done. She heard the sounds of helicopters over the ocean, and wearily
she walked across what had been the pool deck and stopped near the
beach. A helicopter was playing its searchlight over the water,
searching for survivors, but Kali knew none would be found.

The
sea was calm, and the night was as clear and beautiful as any she
could remember. The mild and steady surf beat upon the wreckage of
the shoreline, the wind sighed through the trees on the steep hills
behind them, hills that had gone untouched by the wave's fury. Kali
thought about her family in their village in the hills and wondered
whether they were worrying about her. They must have heard by now.
The entire world must have heard.

The
helicopter banked low and flew off, and in the quiet she heard the
steady, reassuring sound of the surf on the shore. She saw the man
sitting at the foot of the broken stairs, Singhalese fashion, his
elbows on his knees, his head down. He seemed exhausted, and Kali
remembered the ring on his finger.

She
walked down the stairs and stood by him, and when he looked up she
said the only thing she knew how to say: "Okay?"

The
man had been crying. His eyes were red and still wet, but he smiled
now at her attempt at English. "Okay," he said.

Kali
dropped down into the sand next to him. She didn't want to leave him
alone. She wanted to talk to him, to comfort him and even apologize
and explain, but she didn't have the words. She wanted to tell him
that it was a tsunami, a tidal wave, a freak of nature, and that it
could have happened at any time. They'd had them before in Tangalla,
though not like this—nothing like this. It was part of the
price they paid for living here.

Kali
was an educated woman. She knew that these waves were the results of
earthquakes and massive shifts in the earth's crust, and she knew
that she and all she loved lived a most precarious life on the thin
shell of a hot and violent planet. The very ground they walked on
rested on a vast sea of molten rock and melted iron, and the earth
was an incendiary ball that cared nothing for people and their dreams
and prayers.

She
wanted to tell him that there were forces in the deep, forces that
could travel thousands of miles through the depths of the sea and
rear up and tear their fragile worlds to pieces and there was nothing
they could do about it. She wanted to tell him that even now the
souls of the dead who were swept out to sea were rising for their
journey to heaven, where they'd stay but briefly before they were
reassigned to new bodies back here on this wild and suffering planet.

Kali
believed all this. She knew it was true, and yet still—the
sadness, the horror, the grief. With no cause, with no reason.

She
wanted to tell him all these things, but she had no words, and
sitting next to this foreigner whose life she'd saved, sitting amidst
the wreckage of everything she knew, Kali began to cry. Her tears
came fast and unbidden from a place deep inside her, bitter and
frightened, and when he reached out to touch her shoulder she pushed
his hand away angrily, turned her streaming eyes to him and then
threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her
face in his chest, crying as if she'd never stop.

She
hated crying and she hated herself for doing it and for clinging to
him. He put his arms around her and held her as she fought to make
herself stop. Gradually she gained control. The tears stopped, and
were replaced by a burning anger and desire.

She
stood up and tried to pull him to his feet. Her eyes were clear now,
"Come with me," she said, although she knew he wouldn't
understand. "Come with me. You have to come."

He
got to his feet and let himself be led. She led him back over the
ruined pool deck and into the wrecked hotel where men stood around
with flashlights and kerosene lanterns trying to get a generator to
work. No one noticed as she led him up the darkened staircase where
the stairs still reeked of seawater and wet carpet, and up to the
second floor.

The
hotel was empty and totally dark except for the moonlight that came
in through the windows. With no air conditioning, the air was close
and humid. Kali led him down the dark hallway and into a room whose
door stood open. She closed it behind them.

He
stood uncertainly in the moonlit darkness, and she knew that what he
needed was more than she could possibly give him, but it was what she
needed that concerned her now. She had never done anything like this
before, and she didn't know how to start.

From
the window of the room, the rest of the town was dark. The moon was
unusually bright, a soft, buttery white. There was no other light.
Kali stepped into the light with him and took his hand, hoping he'd
understand. He seemed to be about to say something, but then he gave
up, not knowing her language and knowing she didn't know his. Instead
he just pointed at the sky. "Moon," he said.

Kali
smiled. "Chandra."

He
smiled back, and Kali repeated, "Moon." She liked the way
the word felt on her lips. She stepped closer. "Moon," she
said again, and then she kissed him.

He
didn't return her kiss at first, but that didn't bother her. She knew
he didn't know what he wanted. He couldn't possibly know, but she
wanted it enough for the both of them. She wanted it like she had
never wanted anything before in her life, and she pressed her small
body against him with surprising strength and an eagerness that left
no doubt as to what she wanted.

Kali
reached up and pulled the comb from her long, black hair. She reached
up for his mouth and took it with the ferociousness of a tiger,
standing on tiptoes to reach him, and she kissed him with a hunger
that shocked and inflamed her as much as it did him. His big hands
were on her shoulders, and as they kissed they slid around her back
and he squeezed, holding her, his grip increasing as he felt the
force of her desire. His hand went to her face and he held her still
as he looked at her in the moonlight. Then he crushed her to him and
drank from her mouth.

It
all came out then: his anguish and sorrow and fury, all borne on a
sudden flood of overwhelming need. It was just what Kali wanted, to
be pawed and squeezed and used, consumed by a man's mindless passion,
beyond thought, beyond grief. He kissed her: her face, her mouth, her
neck and shoulders. She stood there as his mouth consumed her as if
under the roar of a mountain stream, letting his desire spill over
her and wash her clean.

She
wanted his lust and his strength, and when she pushed herself away
from him and untied her osariyah, she did it slowly so he could see,
her fingers shaking as she studied his face. She was a beautiful
girl, smaller than him but entirely feminine, with the high,
perfectly round breasts of her people, long legs and generous hips.
She felt raw excitement surge in her belly as he looked at her. She'd
never felt so female in her life: utterly and primordially female,
like a force of nature.

She
went to him again and he seized her hungrily, bending her head back
for his kiss. She pressed her naked breasts against his chest and her
hands went to his shorts, fumbling with the buttons. He realized what
she wanted and stepped back, peeled his shorts off and let them fall,
and Kali looked at him with undisguised lust. He was hard and erect,
not as big as Kumar but thicker, and she'd never seen a man's cock
look so terribly eager, standing straight out from his body and
arching up like a wild horse straining to run free. He was primeval
too, a force of nature in his own right.