For that Ranjit had no better response than another “Huh.” They had strolled out into the garden with its frangipani and flowering ginger, and were sitting companionably side by side in a cluster of palms. They were within sight of the Vorhulsts’ vast swimming pool, where a few of Ranjit’s classmates, somehow having obtained the right swimsuits, were playing aquatic volleyball. One of the Vorhulst servants had brought refills of Myra’s champagne and Ranjit’s Coke. Other guests had greeted Myra as they’d strolled past, and one or two had said hello to Ranjit as well. Still, de Soyza showed no interest in ending their tête-à-tête. Ranjit had no interest, either. Which was, he reflected, a bit curious, since he had seldom been willing to protract any other chat with a young woman.
De Soyza, Ranjit discovered, had traveled all over the island of Sri Lanka with her parents, and loved every centimeter of it. And was astonished to hear that Ranjit had seldom been away from Trincomalee, apart from his present time in Colombo and a few school trips. “But you’ve never been to Kandy? Or seen the way the tappers climb the trees to get the palm wine they make toddy from?” And no, in each case the answer was the same. He hadn’t.
At about that time Mevrouw Vorhulst passed by, making the rounds to ensure her guests were well cared for. “You two seem to be doing all right,” she offered, peering in at them. “Is there anything I can get you?”
“Not a thing, Aunt Bea,” de Soyza said. “It’s a fine party.” And then when Mevrouw Vorhulst had moved on, she responded to the question in Ranjit’s look. “Well, all we Burghers know one another, of course, and Aunt Bea really is some kind of a relative. When I was little, I spent about as much time here as I did in my own house, and Joris was the big brother I never had. Made sure I didn’t drown when he took me to the beach, and got me back home in time for my nap.” Then she noticed the signs of puzzlement on Ranjit’s face. “Is something wrong?”
Apologetically he said, “I’m just a little confused. You called her Bea. I thought her name was—what is it?—Mevrouw.”
Myra was polite enough not to smile very much. “Mevrouw just means Mrs. in Dutch. Her name is Beatrix, all right.” Then she glanced at her watch and looked concerned. “But I don’t mean to keep you from your friends. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take a dip in the pool? The Vorhulsts keep a selection of bathing suits in the changing rooms….”
He was sure, no doubt of that. How long they would have gone on talking, Ranjit could not have said. Myra de Soyza didn’t seem in any hurry to terminate it, but that was taken care of, sometime later, by the nearly forgotten Brian Harrigan. He reminded them of his existence by peering into, then entering, their little palm garden. He looked annoyed. “I’ve been all over this place trying to find you,” he told Myra.
She stood up and gave him a smile. “It looked to me as though you had plenty of company,” she said.
“You mean the girl who was showing me around? She was very helpful. It’s a grand old house. Walls three feet thick, all sand and coral and plaster, and what would they need air-conditioning for? But did you forget we had a dinner reservation?”
Myra had forgotten, and apologized for it, and told Ranjit how much she had enjoyed their talk, and was gone.
Ranjit didn’t leave the party. He stayed on, but it didn’t seem to be as much fun as it had been. He considered, and rejected, the idea of a dip in the pool; spent a little time in the cluster of students that had formed around Joris Vorhulst, which was discussing pretty much the whole range of things they had already discussed in class; sat in for a bit with a handful of guests who were watching, and talking about, the news program on the TV in the little tent by the garden wall. The news, of course, wasn’t amusing. In Korea some of those troublesome North Koreans had, apparently deliberately, released a pack of vicious and perhaps rabid dogs near the boundary between north and south. Nobody had been bitten. Three of the dogs died when one stepped on a land mine, and the rest were quickly machine-gunned by a Republic of South Korea guard detachment, and everybody agreed that something needed to be done about North Korea.
Actually, Ranjit found it surprisingly easy to have conversations with these strangers—on the parlous state of the world, on the need for Artsutanov skyhooks to be deployed so ordinary people could have some hope of traveling in space, on what nice people the Vorhulsts were, on a dozen other topics. What finally put an end to it was when the guests began to thin out. Ranjit took that to mean that it was time for him to go as well.
He had enjoyed the party, especially the first part of it, and he had no doubt that what had made it so good was the meeting with Myra de Soyza.
On the way back to the campus Ranjit found himself thinking—not in any boy-girl way, of course—about what an interesting person Myra de Soyza was. And wondering what the best way would be to go about murdering Brian Harrigan.
All the same, Ranjit was glad when he got back to Trincomalee for the summer. Ganesh Subramanian had assumed his son would want to spend the time on fresh attacks on that bafflingly elusive Fermat conundrum. He was only partly right. Ranjit hadn’t forgotten Fermat’s theorem. It kept popping up in his mind at inopportune moments, more often than ever since Myra de Soyza had reawakened the memories. But each time it did, Ranjit did his best to dismiss it. Ranjit Subramanian knew when he was licked.
In any case he had other things to occupy his mind. One of the monks had told him that, down on the beach, where they were refurbishing one of Trincomalee’s older tourist hotels, vacationing college students could get easy jobs that paid good money. Ranjit checked. There were such jobs. He got one, and for the first time in his eighteen-year-old life, Ranjit Subramanian was able to pay his own way in the world.
The job was, as promised, not at all difficult. Its technical title was “supply expediter.” Its duties were, one, to make a note of the contents every time a truckload of material arrived; two, to run and tell the foreman at once if any one of those trucks attempted to leave the premises with part of the goods still on board; and, three, each morning upon arriving at the workplace to quickly scan all the stacks of building material that had arrived the day before to make sure that no large fraction of them had disappeared during the night. The private security guards hired by the hotel corporation had orders to assist him whenever necessary. They were well motivated to do a good job, too, because they had been informed that any losses due to pilfering would come out of their pay.
And Ranjit also had four small but very active assistants of his own.
They weren’t on the hotel company’s payroll, and neither they nor their mother had figured in Ranjit’s plans for the summer. In fact, Ranjit had acquired them one day when old Ganesh Subramanian had given his son a couple of sacks of food that his cook had said would spoil if not eaten soon. “Take them to Mrs. Kanakaratnam,” he said. “You know, Kirthis Kanakaratnam’s wife. You remember Kirthis? He was arrested in Colombo for possession of what they called stolen goods?” Memory refreshed, Ranjit nodded. “I’m afraid the family is having a rather hard time,” his father went on. “I’m letting them use my old guest house. You remember where it is, I’m sure? Well, just drop these off for me, please.”
Ranjit had no objection. Had no trouble finding the place, either. One of his earliest playmates, the son of a railroad engineer who had done odd jobs for the temple, had lived there when Ranjit was small, and Ranjit remembered the house well.
It had not changed much. The little garden the railway man’s wife had kept up in the front yard was now partly used for growing vegetables and partly reverted to weeds. The building itself, Ranjit thought, could use a fresh paint job. It was smaller than Ranjit had remembered, though, three little rooms with a privy out back and a pumped well at the farthest edge of the property.