‘You will clean up?’ asked Stanley, wiping his hands with table napkins.
‘Of course, sir,’ said Balal.
‘Don’t mention to the Major, please.’
‘Sir, we did not expect this,’ said Kottu. ‘We only came to kidnap. How to take this body downstairs like this?’
‘I didn’t expect this either,’ said Stanley. ‘He gave me no choice.’
Balal nods and Kottu shakes his head.
‘Sir, it will be a higher cost to take out this garbage.’
‘You can take the money on the table.’
‘In vain, sir. If you had told we would have taken him to a better place.’
‘Goodnight.’
You heard the tread of his polished shoes on the dusty terrace, dragging his feet like his beautiful son. You were blinded and shivering. You waited for your life to flash before you but all you saw was shadow and cloud. All you heard was the voice of the father telling you to put your best foot forward and the mother telling you to stop sulking and the silly boy asking you to speak to his father and the sad girl saying OK. You opened your eyes and you were floating above the terrace and you could see through every floor.
Your vision X-rayed through Hotel Leo’s walls, as if death had turned you into Superman. You saw the gamblers on the fifth floor and the pimps on the fourth and the whores having teas in the mall below and Elsa and Kuga arguing like cousin-brother and sister in the suite on the eighth. And then, on the sixth, you saw two thugs lifting a coiled tyre and hurling it off the edge. Like the tyres that they burned people on, except this tyre uncoiled and revealed itself to be a body. You flew down with it and thought of excuses and reasons and all the people who would never hear them.
As the body banged against the side of the building, it left blotches of crimson and obsidian, of scarlet and ebony, and you felt a thousand screams gushing past you. And you felt something that wasn’t quite comforting but wasn’t all that unpleasant. Something that was invisible and true, the semblance of a microscopic point in this gargantuan waste of space.
You saw DD’s face and how different it was from his father’s and you saw him on a plane landing somewhere sunny and you pictured him purifying poisoned wells and you daydreamed of him smiling. You imagined him lending his life to some pointless cause just like you had and it made you happy. We must all find pointless causes to live for, or why bother with breath?
Because, on reflection, once you have seen your own face and recognised the colour of your eyes, tasted the air and smelled the soil, drunk from the purest fountains and the dirtiest wells, that is the kindest thing you can say about life. It’s not nothing.
When your body hit the tarmac, it made no sound, or at least none that could be heard over the din of the city and the hum at the end of the earth. You felt your self split into the you and the I, and then into the many yous and the infinite Is that you have been before and will be again. You woke to an endless waiting room. You looked around and it was a dream and, for once, you knew it was a dream and you were happy to wait it out. All things passed, especially dreams.
You woke with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer was ‘Yes’. The answer was ‘Just Like There But Worse’. That’s all the insight you had, so you decided to go back to sleep.
THE LIGHT
‘The bees knew it first. Then the ice. Then the trees. Then all the world’s mothers.’
Tess Clare via Twitter
Five Drinks
The water does not hurt your eyes. In fact, it soothes them like a warm towel dipped in lemongrass and cinnamon and served at those hotels down south which you frequented with rich men. The water is not blue or green or blue-green, but white. The same white that a Ladybird book once told you was made from every colour in the spectrum. Though, when you went to art class and mixed every paint you could find, all you got was black.
The water swirls in currents and pulls you to its depths, past shoals of eel, schools of fish and rocks coated in algae. The stones form curious shapes under the water, revealing crevices that hide sources of light. Raindrops pierce the surface above you and send bubbles sinking to the bottom of the pool. You dive deeper and find yourself at the mouth of a cave, shielded by rolling water and jagged rock.
The walls and ceilings and floors are scrambled-egg-yellow and the light widens your eyes. You move forward because it is the only direction. Walls to your sides, a babbling brook at your feet and light ahead. The walls and ceilings become mirrors, each curve reflecting light onto the other. And, if you walk slowly enough and tilt at the right angle, you can catch your reflection. Your eyes go from green to blue to brown. But your ears, they do not change.
‘You made it just in time, Maal,’ says Dr Ranee. ‘Everything has to be last-minute with you, no?’ She is seated at a thin table with crockery on it, as if it were a banquet for one.
‘The Light is just mirrors? Not heaven or God or your mother’s birth canal?’
‘I didn’t think you’d make it, putha,’ she says. ‘It’s good that you’re here.’
‘Now what?’
‘You have to drink.’
‘I’m not thirsty.’
‘Sit.’
You take a seat at the table. There are only cups, each of different size and colour. There are five of them. A teacup with golden liquid, a mug with purple fluid, a shot glass with amber liquor, a king coconut with a straw in it, and a bowl of gotukola porridge, that panacea for colds and coughs, bruises and bugbites, inflicted by many Lankan Ammas on helpless toddlers.
She smiles at you and, for once, she does not raise a clipboard or an eyebrow. ‘The tea is if you wish to forget everything. The Portello is if you wish to remember. The arrack is if you’d like to forgive the world. This I recommend. The thambili is if you’d like to be forgiven. The kola kenda is if you’d like to go where you most belong.’
‘And I suppose taking a sip from each is out of the question?’
‘You suppose correctly.’
‘So, this is it? What if I’m a coffee drinker?’
‘You’re not.’
‘What if I feel like a Portello but I want to be forgiven?’
‘If you wanted to do pros and cons, you shouldn’t have waited till your seventh moon.’
‘I was a pro. My life was a con.’
‘No time for dumb jokes, either.’
‘So, how do I choose?’
‘I think you know.’
You look around at the reflecting mirrors and at the woman in the white robes. You walk to her and you hug her like you never hugged your mother.
‘I hope your children live long lives. And I hope you and your husband are twinned for eternity.’ You don’t know why you say it, only that you mean it.
‘That is very kind, Maal. Now drink.’
You take off your sandal and place it on the floor. You take off the ankh, the Panchayudha and the crumpled capsules in twine and place them on the table. You wipe your camera with your bandanna, which you place next to your chains. Then you put your camera down.
It was never a contest. You have no more time for intoxication and you have no thirst left to slake or sweet tooth to indulge. Fresh kola kenda is indistinguishable from kola kenda gone bad. Old joke. You reach for the slimy green porridge and pour it down your gullet. You close your nose and you hold your breath and wait for it to take you to the place you need to be. Questions
You wake in the presence of the one true God. You recognise her, though you forget her name.
You do not wake and you know not that you do not wake. The sweetest thing about oblivion is it cannot be felt.
You wake in your mother’s birth canal and swim towards the light and when you reach it you scream with disappointment.
You wake naked next to DD and cannot remember what day it is.
None of the above.