‘Stop this!’ you shout. ‘Stop this now!’
‘What are you doing, Mr Maali?’ Sena emerges from behind the curtain. He casts a glance at the Minister’s Demon, who is now snoring in rhythm to the Beauty Queen’s song.
‘There are people downstairs. Office workers. Three floors of them. There is the secretary with a picture of three children on her table. There is my friend’s father downstairs. Who is a pompous idiot, but has no part in this. And then there’s this deluded fool,’ you say, pointing at Drivermalli. ‘How many will die today? Did you count?’
Sena charges at you and pushes you to the wall. ‘We are about to end this war, and you are worried about civil servants? They stamp the paper that keeps these monsters in power. Fuck. Them.’
‘You said no innocents would die.’
‘There is no one innocent in this building. Not even your boy’s daddy. If they work for the system, they deserve their fate.’
‘Sir, I am hearing voices,’ confesses Drivermalli, though no one hears him.
At 5 p.m., every government office evacuates as part of a daily drill to beat the rush hour, regardless of what is on their table and what needs doing. Even the ones without suicide bombers on their top floor will shut their shops at five on the dot.
The more you stall, the less the casualties. Sometimes it’s not the bet you lay, but how long you take to lay it.
You and Sena trade barbs, while Drivermalli mutters to himself in words you cannot decipher.
You feel a fist in your spine and a knife at your throat.
‘Enough baila, Mr Maali. The Mahakali says you have one whisper left. You better deliver. Now.’
‘I used up my three already.’
‘Mahakali says only two were heard. Use your whisper now.’
‘What about the secretaries and accountants downstairs? How different is this from the LTTE bombing civilians? Or the government butchering JVP? What will this nonsense achieve?’
Sena pushes you in front of Drivermalli and the spirits in the room chant, ‘Do it now!’
You look Drivermalli in the scars on his face. Will this be the last thing you do before the Mahakali swallows all that is left of you? You ponder photography and journalism and the whole goddamn mess. In the end, was any of it really worth doing?
The answer may likely be no, and yet you decide, at the eleventh hour of your seventh moon, to use whatever’s left of your voice. ‘Drivermalli. I have travelled with you and seen who you are. I have been where you have. You know me.’
Drivermalli looks up for a moment and then looks down at his feet.
‘You see me not, but I know you hear. These men deserve to die. But does the woman outside who just made you tea? Do all those people downstairs? Do you?’
‘What are you doing?’ Sena looks horrified. A few of his followers try to lance you with their spears. In the corner behind the snoring demon, the Mahakali breathes in shadow. The faces on its skin have turned into crosses and arrowheads.
‘We send pawns to kill kings. But bad kings get replaced by worse kings, and more pawns get sent to die.’ You address your comments to every creature in the room.
Drivermalli is sweating and shuddering. He tries to ignore the voices swirling around him and the kilos of wire bearing weight on his good leg. He recites a line fed to him by IE Kugarajah, memorised while he fed his squirrels.
‘All enemy combatants are complicit. All deserve death.’
‘These are not combatants, malli. Boys like you blow themselves up. And what changes? Is your life worth sacrificing, even for this scum? Is hers? Are theirs?’
Sena spits venom in your face. He pulls you by the neck and carries you towards the Mahakali. ‘That was your last chance, Mr Maali. The Mahakali will have you for a thousand moons.’
But his curses are drowned out by the commotion at the door. The cheap plywood swings on its hinges and the spirits in the room jump.
‘Chantal!’ snaps the Minister. ‘You don’t knock?’
But it is not Cyril Wijeratne’s secretary who enters the room. It is Stanley Dharmendran.
The afternoon light silhouettes him in the doorway. His puffed shoulders and measured stride remind you of his son. Until he starts to speak.
‘Minister. I need a word. Now.’
‘We are busy, Dharmendran…’
‘My sister’s daughter. Was taken to the Palace. I demand an explanation.’
The Minister and the Major look shocked and glare at the Mask. The Mask shakes his head and looks to ASP Ranchagoda in the corridor.
The attention of the squad and the spirits scatter from the boy with the bomb, who sweats and shivers alone.
‘’We have to question everybody, Dharmendran,’ says the Minister. ‘Can’t exempt those with connections.’
‘So you. Bring her. To the Palace?’
‘I am sorry Dharmendran, but this is not the time…’
Sena tightens his grip. You push at him and bite his wrist. The knife hits the ground. You aim with your bare foot and kick it like you did when you played rugger for five minutes. Unlike then, this time your aim is true and your target is hit. The knife goes flying and its blunt handle hits the Minister’s Demon in the belly. He groans and wakes with a growl.
The spirits gasp and Sena yells and the Mahakali floats by the window, eyes blazing and faces awake. Drivermalli speaks for everyone in the room to hear. ‘The answer to your question is… I do not know. I have thought long and there are no answers. There is only this. There is only now.’
The room holds its breath. The Minster’s demon leaps to where his master sits in slow motion. Drivermalli repeats his line and finishes his thought.
‘All enemy combatants are complicit. All deserve death. Perhaps my worthless life will finally be worth something. Otherwise, what was the point?’
And with that, he puts both his hands in his pockets. A Thousand Moons
All the most powerful forces are invisible. Love, electricity, wind. And the waves following a bomb blast. First the blast wave, where the air is compressed to breaking point and pockets of wind push outwards, travelling faster than sound and smashing everything in the way. This wave snaps the Major in three and dashes the interrogator against the wall, granting them both the instant death denied to their many victims.
Then come the shock waves. These are supersonic and carry more energy than the sound of the blast, which is still yet to arrive. These pierce Ranchagoda and impale him on the door.
The building feels its ground shake and its walls crack. The stairwells fill with panicked civil servants pushing each other out of the building. The drivers and guards in the car park hear the blast and look up at smoke bursting from the fifth floor window.
The waves turn the room’s furniture into flying clubs and daggers which bludgeon Stanley’s cowering body. Drivermalli’s skull lands on the floor in the bathroom while the rest of him is sprayed on the walls. And then the room catches fire and blast winds pull at the windows. They shift fans from ceilings and concrete from walls.
In the floor below, paperweights and filing trays become grenades and mortar shells, as foundations rumble and the air fills with smoke and roars of terror. You watch the car park fill with frantic people. The first to exit are howling and holding their bags, the second are caked in dust and blood, the third have to be carried by others.
The blast winds scatter the spirits, who are thrown from the room into the corridor. They dust themselves off, break into cheers and dance on the flames. The Dead Tigers shake hands with the Slain JVP-ers. They squat by the lift and watch the smoke escaping the office and they wait.
Inside the room, the fire creeps towards the windows and leaves the bathroom and kitchen unsinged. Coughing in the tub with a fractured elbow is Minister Cyril Wijeratne. All he remembers is leaping into the bathroom when the driver started speaking. He tells himself that he saw something in Drivermalli’s eyes, but deep down in a place that itches he knows that he was pushed into the bathroom by a force that was not human.