Island of a Thousand Mirrors (15 page)

Amma’s voice gets shrill. She says, “No. It has to end. Someday they will all get
tired of it.” But there is no certainty in her voice. Appa is sad, but he cannot fight
with her. He is too old and sick to leave. His cough in the night sounds like a hundred
soldiers tramping on his chest, and he knows Amma will never leave him alone with
no one to find food or cook for him.

Some days a heavy, ugly smell rises from the fields. Then we know that someone has
been out at night, maybe a child, or an old man. They have stepped on a land mine
that lay buried like a subterranean fruit and now they are in pieces, rotting and
raising this terrible smell. We walk past this place quickly, with a piece of cloth
covering our noses, swallowing our bile, angry at this person who has forgotten the
obvious rules: never step off the roads, never forget what is buried just underfoot.

There are roofless, bombed-out houses with bullet-splattered walls and empty eyeless
rooms everywhere. I hate these houses; they look like dead bodies or like mad people,
laughing through their openmouthed doorways. I want to know what this place looked
like before, when all the houses were whole, when people lived in them and cared about
them and grew vegetables in front of them, flowers even. It’s a time I can’t remember
except for Appa’s words. He says, “Balasingham Uncle used to live there next to the
old post office. He had three sons and a daughter. In the corner house was Ponnambalam
with his wife and children. We used to go there when you were small and play cards
until the sun came up. You were great friends with his little daughter, Janaki. Do
you remember?” I nod my head. But I remember none of these people. I remember nothing
from the time before people started dying.

I haven’t tasted fish for so long that when I remember Amma’s seerfish curry, the
chunks of fish swimming in the creamy, fiery coconut milk, my mouth waters and my
stomach complains like Snowy with the tree squirrels. The fishermen no longer go to
sea because the soldiers arrest anyone found in the water; they are afraid of Sea
Tigers, who load boats with explosives and ram into the navy boats, so there hasn’t
been sea fish in the market for years.

Amma used to scrounge money to buy us lagoon fish. These were thick-fleshed and rubbery
bottom feeders, but Luxshmi and I didn’t care. We just wanted a little fish with our
bit of rice. But these days there are so many bodies rotting and bleeding into the
water that whoever eats lagoon fish gets sick and vomits for days.

When we meet relatives from a far village Appa says, “This is Saraswathi, my eldest
daughter. Clever girl is studying for her teacher’s certificate. A pride and joy in
my old age.” He looks at me with such love that I must look away. The relatives also
look at me, but their eyes are full of weighing and appraising. They have all had
children taken from them by the Tigers or the army or the southern cities. They will
go back to their village and say, “Old man Balakumar is training his daughter to have
airs. Just because their family has had three sons taken. He thinks they will leave
him his daughters?” I beg Appa not to boast about me. But he laughs and says, “If
I can’t be happy about my clever daughter, what is there for me to be happy about?”

*   *   *

Luxshmi and I walk to school, our uniforms glowing in the slanting light, skirts swinging
in unison, the white tip of Snowy’s tail like a flag leading the way. At this hour,
there is a freshness in the air, the day still blooming, a blushing pink that will
unfurl into garnet, amethyst with the sun. High in the sky, the crescent moon hangs
suspended for a few moments longer. Women in saris ride their bicycles along the dirt
road, skillfully swirling their front tires around potholes. I want a bicycle! How
wonderful it would be to ride to school, Luxshmi balanced on the crossbar, both of
us laughing with our braids streaming behind us!

A truck rumbles by. The loudspeaker on its roof listing the virtues of a recent martyr.
She sold her life dearly, it says, taking with her dozens of the enemy in the midst
of Colombo along with a beloved Sinhala politician. No one much listens, we are used
to the death-defying exploits of the Tiger suicide martyrs, their faces tower over
us on billboards, and in posters along the bullet-peppered walls.

Kanahamma sits by the roadside, selling strings of jasmine. I don’t like to pass her.
She is the one who saw the white van come for my brother Kumar. Her wrinkled lizard
face makes me see it, the half-concealed gun, the squealing tires, blood, so I hurry
Luxshmi past her. But as we walk by, we both inhale, catching the fragrance of the
jasmine garlands that unfurls, celestial in our nostrils.

At the junction, a small crowd has gathered. Snowy is growling, urging us the other
way, but Luxshmi, that naughty girl, runs ahead to see what has happened, and I must
push against the hot mass of bodies to find her.

I am overtaken by the smell of shit and death before I see it. A man’s body sagging
forward, held against a lamppost by arms tied behind and a thin piece of wire that
bites into the mottled scarlet skin of his neck. Popeyed, openmouthed, as if he had
been taken by surprise last night, while eating with his family, or maybe later while
walking outside to the toilet.

A wooden tablet balances sideways on his stomach, hung from the knotted black string
around his neck. It lists, in careful chalk letters, the crimes for which this justice
has been enacted. Under that, his intestines burst forth, like an intricate and exuberant
flower. Flies buzz within the coils.

Voices in the crowd: “Bloody traitor, got what he deserved. Must have been informing
the soldiers for a long time. That must be how they knew about the ambush in Vavuniya.”

A woman’s voice calls back, “No, that’s absurd. This man wasn’t an informer. He was
my neighbor. I would know if he was doing such things.”

“Shhhh … stupid woman.”

Luxshmi pushes through bodies to stand next to me. She puts her hand in mine and says,
“Come, let’s go.” But my feet won’t move.

“It’s Yalini’s father,” I say.

I hear her quiet gasp. I make myself look more closely at the slightly squashed tomato
face. It is my friend Yalini’s father. Yalini, who has sat next to me in school since
we were both smaller than Luxshmi. I know that I won’t see her ever again. That even
now, she and whoever’s left of her family are running, out in the open land, like
animals scrabbling for whatever shelter they can find.

Luxshmi grasps my arm, pulls me. We walk away, fast now. As we pass Kanahamma she
calls, “Girls, what is it? What happened over there?” I say nothing, but Luxshmi bursts
out, “It’s Yalini’s father. The Tigers tied him to the lamppost and cut him. Here
and here.” She draws slashing lines with her palms across her stomach. “Because he
was a traitor. He told the soldiers where the Tigers were hiding.

“So the Tigers cut him…” Her voice trails away.

Kanahamma sucks air between her teeth. She gestures at the small pile of flower strings.
“Take one,” she says. “Have something sweet to smell today.” I start to say something,
to explain that we have no money, but she waves away my words. She says, “Take, child.
You must learn to take what is given.” And already Luxshmi is searching for the freshest,
most fragrant string. She holds one up triumphantly and we take turns burying our
faces in the creamy blossoms, inhaling slowly so the thick fragrance drives out all
other thought, a miracle entwined around our fingers.

*   *   *

The schoolroom sits under the banyan tree. I am the oldest girl left. When Miss Rajasingham
comes down the steps from her little house, we fall quiet. She is Colombo returned,
with a university degree. There is nothing I would not do for her.

She walks around the classroom, between the rows of desks. Her braid follows the curve
of her spine and spills down past her bottom. As she moves it sways to her particular
rhythm. In the noon heat, the small hairs escape to snake along the side of her nape.

Today she is wearing her long red skirt, her white short-sleeved blouse, tiny drops
of molten gold in her earlobes. When she is in a particularly good mood, she wears
a light pink sari that I do not like. That color belongs on some pale woman with yellow
hair in a foreign film, not on Miss with her long sharp eyes and the fat black
pottu
between her curved brows.

Sometimes she wears a sari the color of the emerald onion fields, it has a thin gold
border in the shape of swirling peacocks, and then she looks like well water on a
hot day. Some days she wears a chili powder red sari. This is my favorite. It is most
perfectly her.

She lives with her husband in a small house behind the school. On the days she wears
the red sari, he comes often to the school. He comes to check if we are alright, if
there is anything we need. But really he comes to see her. I see him looking at her,
stealing glances from the corner of his eye, and I watch her bend her head, trying
to pretend that she does not notice, but when he goes away I see her turn in his direction
searching for him.

Miss is training me to take her place in front of the blackboard. When I get my teaching
certification, I will live in the small house behind the school, and maybe I also
will have someone who looks at me the way he looks at her. In practice for my Maths
paper, Miss sets me complicated equations. They take a long time to solve, but I love
the long columns of numbers, the need to proceed logically and patiently as the numbers
lead you to the final and inevitable answer. It reminds me of dancing. The way my
shoulders, the tilt of my arms, and angle of my knees must stay within precise formations,
yet also lead where I take them. A sort of freedom that can be attained only within
strict rules.

*   *   *

After school, Amma has made us promise to hurry home. There are soldiers everywhere.
They look at us from under their rounded helmets with eyes that are filled with hate,
but also with fear. They think any of us, man, woman, child, may be bomb strapped,
jiggling with flesh-tearing ball bearings secreted under skirts and shirts. It is
always better to avoid their fearful eyes, to walk quickly past, trying not to betray
our own palpitating terror. I have learned to keep my eyes averted when Luxshmi and
I pass the checkpoint closest to the house, but the soldiers always lean over the
sandbags, call to us in halting Tamil learned on the battlefield.

“Why always in such a big hurry?” they say. “Come and talk to us, we won’t bite,”
and smile, baring their wolfish teeth.

If you are a girl, there is always the chance that the soldiers will spoil you or
that people will say that they did. I don’t know what “spoiled” means exactly, but
it must be something truly terrible. It happened to my friend Parvathi. She was coming
home from school when a soldier grabbed her, dragged her into the chili fields, and
spoiled her. People stopped talking to her as soon as it happened, but they never
stopped talking
about
her.

“Did you hear?” they would press close and whisper when she passed, silent as a ghost
on her mother’s arm, her head drooping like a heavy flower on a fragile stem. And
I wanted to say, “No. What happened to her? Tell me, please.” I wanted them to explain,
because I never understood what it was, what terrifying thing had happened to her
that made everyone so afraid of her. As if she had a disease we could all catch. She
was my friend before. But after it happened, Amma wouldn’t let me go to her house
or even talk to her on the street. One day last year she jumped into a well. When
I heard this in the market after school, I didn’t go home, I went straight to her
house. Her mother was outside making a noise like a wounded dog. Her father, too,
was there, but he was silent, his face a kind of gray that I had never seen on a person’s
face before. There were lots of people standing everywhere, but I pushed through and
I saw her.

They had laid her on the ground. Her face was bloated and waterlogged so that I barely
recognized her. I thought they must have a different girl, a stranger. Her arms were
bent at crazy angles. I realized later they must have broken from the impact of hitting
the sides. I felt something breaking in my chest, a sound rising in my throat, something
inhumane like the sound her mother was making. But then before it could escape from
my throat, Amma was there pulling me to her, pulling me along the road home. Later
when they burned her body, only her mother and two sisters were there. Even her father
refused to go. She was my friend. But now, I dare not even speak her name.

*   *   *

On market days, Amma goes to haggle for what she can get. She sends me to look after
Luxshmi as she plays with the other children by the lagoon. In the sand lie many things
left by the dead: shreds of uniform, ripped flak jackets, hard round helmets like
buried skulls. Sometimes our toes catch on sharp fragments of bone.

I watch them play. They comb the beach for rags, dress themselves in shreds of Tiger
stripes or Army camouflage, don ripped flak jackets that reach their knees and helmets
that cover their eyes. They tie long branches across their backs and crawl along the
sand. Small soldiers fighting small rebels. They lift sticks to their shoulders, make
loud machine gun
rattttattttatttt
sounds before dropping and rolling away. When I get tired of watching this, I get
up, dust off my skirt, and call to Luxshmi. She doesn’t want to come so I must drag
her away, my fingers around her upper arm. These cannot be good games for children
to play. But what else is there now? They are only acting what they have seen.

We sleep with Amma and Appa on either side of us, a deterrent to bad dreams and what
might come in the night. To drown out the machine gun fire in the distance, Appa tells
stories of the time before the soldiers and the Tigers came. He says, “The prawns
in these lagoons were as big as my arm.” He holds up his arm and with the other hand,
between pinkie and thumb, he measures a length from wrist to elbow. “This big. With
huge heads and long falling whiskers. So big, they used to walk along the banks like
tame dogs. In the mornings we used to spread our nets and bring back baskets pouring
over. The export men from Colombo would come to buy. They would send our prawns abroad
where the white people were mad for the taste.” He shakes his head. “Those export
men were crazy. They would drive up from Colombo all night to get the freshest catch.
Sometimes they would stop the cars and fight in the middle of the road about who should
have the first pick.” He laughs at the memory. “Appa would sell most of his catch,
and with the rest Amma would make prawn curry with red chili.”