Island of a Thousand Mirrors (23 page)

But there is something else also. Shiva’s eyes, his voice in the dark. They bring
back memories. I have to go. Soon. Before our triangle implodes.

*   *   *

Driving back to Colombo, sunburned and sea drenched, we are suddenly surrounded by
a yellow cloud as if the car is being pummeled by handfuls of flung turmeric. We have
wandered into the path of a million suicidal butterflies. Now there is a relentless
shattering of minuscule bodies against the windscreen, until the glass is a thick
sludge through which the wipers barely move. In the front seat, La holds her head
in her hands. Shiva kneads her knee. She says, “Why are they doing this?” in a thick,
strangled voice. And we can only shake our heads, struck dumb by the massacre.

Saraswathi

I am fighting against the Leader’s heavy grip, his tearing hands, throwing my body
from side to side before I wake panting in the heavy, eyeless dark. I lie in my narrow
bed as the first thread of silver dawn arrives and with it the man with the suit.
He leads me into the back room where there are no windows. It is chilly and a single
bulb throws giant crawling insect shadows onto the walls. With eyes averted he asks
me to undress down to my underclothes. Then, with hands as gentle as Amma’s, he pulls
the contraption over my head, snuggles it against my belly, beneath my breasts. The
latex runs down my body like water, all that wiring and hardware fused to my muscle
and sinew seamlessly, the secret mechanisms of it hidden in my now heavily pregnant
stomach.

He kneels before me and holds open the ballooning shalwar pants as if I am a child.
I have to hold on to his shoulder to step into them and then he pulls them up, ties
the cord precisely at my distended belly. I hold my arms up as he pulls the kameez
over my head, smooths it down with his palms. He has done this many times. His fingers
know where to place the latex, where to conceal the wires.

He arranges the wires so that I will be able to reach them swiftly at the prescribed
moment. He makes me repeat the intricacies of our plan one more time, but I am confident,
I could do this in my sleep.

A voice calls for him from the other room. When he leaves, I turn to my reflection
and see what others will see, a young woman, eight months pregnant, green plastic
bangles at her wrists, bright orange cloth hugging her belly. She is a ghost from
a different time and place. Useless to me. Beyond her gaze, I search for my own eyes.
In them I see Hope … and that is Everything.

twelve

Yasodhara

At dusk tomorrow, I fly toward that shambles of a life I left in America. I am at
home today, feigning a cold. I couldn’t bear to go back to the school and face those
kids knowing that I would be abandoning them so soon. It would have weakened my resolve,
and that’s the last thing I need. I am going back to my husband. We will work something
out: some sort of compromise; isn’t that what they all say marriage is about, anyway?
Compromise? Yes, I can do this. He’s going to pick me up from the airport and we’re
going to talk it out. He says he’s left her. I am choosing to believe him.

I go shopping through the dusty and crowded market. I’m going to cook for La and Shiva
in our shared kitchen one last time. In these three months they have become the whole
of my existence, holding my memories in their carefully cupped hands like water to
my parched lips. I will tell them I’m leaving at dinner and hope that the witchery
in my cooking will ease their tongues.

They are both late and some American-accented voice in my head scolds, “Everyone on
this island. Always late! So inconsiderate!” I put away that voice, take out my various
groceries, reveling in the heft of these golden papayas that will split to reveal
ruby flesh, the little fat Bombay onions and feathery greens, the heavy coconut, the
fresh seerfish. I take out my knives, my pots, ladles. These instruments must perform
magic tonight.

Saraswathi

Chandrasekaram will come with me. He will hide in the crowd far enough away to be
safe, and afterward he will take photographs so that the world will see the nature
of our vengeance. We will take the bus and then walk through the crowd so that when
the traitor has arrived, I will be waiting for him. I must wait until he is within
a fingertip’s distance, close enough to touch before I reach beneath my clothes.

Chandrasekaram and I walk together along the lane, past the loud children on their
bicycles, the temple where the
pusari
’s voice rises, the scent of ghee and coconut emerging to wrap insistent fingers around
my face. For a moment I remember Amma, Luxshmi, and Appa. My heart is stabbed. It
is so strange. The last walk of my life and I am here with this man I barely know.
No one I love. No one who will remember me. But I shake my head and the weakness passes.
I laugh at myself. They will remember me. All of them. My portrait, miles high, will
hang everywhere extolling my bravery, the new cadres will come to stand in front of
it, inhale the scent of my jasmine garland, be inspired by my fearlessness, my dedication.
Amma and Appa will be proud. Luxshmi will be the sister of a martyr. She will be honored
by all the rebels for this. I cannot give them more than this.

We wait at the bus stop with all these others, just another husband and his pregnant
wife. After it has happened, they will remember me. Someone will say, “I was so close.
She stood just behind me,” with wonder in his voice. They will be forced to contemplate
my devotion, recognize my faith, and it will make them shudder, will make the hairs
on the backs of their necks rise like electricity. The thought makes me smile, my
hands curved around the roundness of my belly, taut in the orange cloth.

A girl waiting in line with us catches my eye. Sinhala. My age, my height, masses
of hair rising softly on the breeze, big eyes looking as if she wants to ask questions.
She doesn’t belong here. Something in the way she holds her head, even though her
clothes are local, the cut of the long skirt and the T-shirt like everyone else’s,
the bangles sliding on her thin wrist, green plastic like mine. But like me, she is
an imposter from somewhere else.

I can see that she’s in love. It’s shining in her eyes. I can see that she wants the
life she thinks I live. A young husband, and a baby on the way. She wants to lay her
palms against my skin and feel my baby flutter. She wants to look into my eyes and
feel sisterhood. She wants me to smile at her. But she cannot see what is buried in
my heart, or the strange fruit that lies just beneath it. Like the rest of her people,
she sees nothing. I look away.

The bus comes. I grasp the handrails, pull myself up. The suit is heavier than I thought.
It makes me waddle like a pregnant woman onto the bus. A crush of bodies, the sweat
sliding over someone’s arm onto my shoulder. That girl is here, too, her profile so
familiar. The angles of her face, as if I have seen them over and over and over again,
and she must feel this, too, because she looks my way often.

One more stop. Through the filthy windows I see the crowds gathering. I will cause
such mayhem in this mass of bodies. I will cut and lacerate and detonate. I will explode
in a hundred directions, send a thousand pieces of shrapnel to lodge in all this soft,
pliant flesh. I can see them running, screaming, my own head lying trampled under
their feet, my hair dripping pools of oily red, dusty eyes looking skyward. Where
will I be then? What will these eyes be witnessing? Just one more stop …

Loud voices and confusion in the front of the bus. A swarm of soldiers climbing on
board, pushing past bodies. The bus taking off and the smell of them hitting me as
hard as fists. Please please please don’t let them see me.
Tiger bitch
. But here they come, the smash of their boots crashing toward me.
Tiger bitch
. Then they are around me shouting out questions and I am trying to answer.
Tiger bitch.
And Chandrasekaram is nowhere and my mouth is opening, but no words are coming, and
then there are fingers like iron around my wrist—
Tiger bitch
—and the bus lurches to a stop and I am in another place, a bullet-splattered cement
room open to a perfect square of sky, and I cannot tell where the walls end and the
sky begins—
Tiger bitch
—and where the voices begin and the hands end, and where I begin or end, and I am
tearing into shreds and something buried deep is erupting like a land mine, like rage
buried in my flesh, something settled—
Tiger bitch
—and burrowed under my heart like a fetus raising its head.
Tiger bitch Tiger bitch Tiger bitch!

From the corner of my eye, I see the girl start toward me and I know her, but it is
too late and my fingers are reaching down, feeling for the wires, and now it really
is too late.…

*   *   *

Blinding light, cleansing pain, and I am dancing under the mango tree, branches spreading
tenderly over my head, sunshine pouring through the leaves like emerald-flavored rain.
Somewhere, there is anguish, ripping metal, and unbearable shrieking, keening, moaning,
fierce shouting, chaos, and scurrying feet. But here, Amma’s voice is loud and clear.
She calls out the steps to the slap of her fingers on her palm and my feet move. The
Shiva Nataraja is watching and I am dancing, swirling and stamping. My fingers opening
like the petals of the lotus bud. My eyes long and fish tailed. My braid whipping
past me in a blur. I am in motion. Unstoppable and Immaculate.

Yasodhara

I chop garlic, hum along with Asha Bhosle. Delightful Asha, whose voice has reached
across the planet through the throats of all those Bollywood seductresses with their
supple waists and wet saris. Darling Asha, her face gathering life lines, but her
voice preserved perfectly. She sings a song of longing, which, combined with imminent
departures and onion fumes, proves too much for me. I push away tears before they
land on sliced onion, potato, pumpkin. I would not have our last meal salted with
my sadness.

Then there is an altogether different voice on the radio saying, “Central Colombo …
bus bombing…” Metal fingers grasp my heart and squeeze, something biological in me
smashing open, the knife flashing through my fingers, crimson blooming on the floor
as I run heedless to the television, to see … the corpse of a bus, its iron intestines
spilling in cruel cutting ribbons, shards and jagged edges of steel, a confusion of
metal, wires. Dear God, what happens to soft human flesh in the midst of such metallic
rage? A pushing, shoving crowd, gloved policemen laying out large lumpish things on
the side of the road. It takes a moment to recognize blackened flesh, the red showing
in places and seeping onto the ground.

A lady reporter saying, “… detonated on Galle Road at 4:43
P.M
. Twelve people confirmed dead, another twenty-one seriously wounded. Unconfirmed
reports attribute the attack to a female LTTE suicide bomber posing as a pregnant
woman thought to be on her way to the political rally on Galle Face Green. Her target
presumably the moderate Tamil politician, Krishnan Ponniah.” Blood dripping from my
fingers, pooling on the shiny waxed floor next to my bare feet.

And then I am running down the street, pushing into the tumble of Galle Road. A voice
in my head, “Her bus, coming this way, after work.” My slippers slapping against the
pavement, the choking gasping flood of my heart. A car sliding up, Shiva’s voice calling
my name. I crumple into the seat beside him and he says, “You’re bleeding.” He is
staring at the front of my white trousers where deep rust stains have emerged as if
I have started a period or miscarriage, some yet unnoticed female trauma. I remember
the knife, the kitchen, hold up my hand. He sighs in relief, takes my hand, holds
it, fingers pointing skyward. I watch as he reaches into the glove compartment with
his other hand, riffles for a bandage, tears the packet open with his teeth, and binds
my finger, the index of my left hand where the knife slid deep. I work to make my
voice emerge. “There’s been a bomb, a bus bombing … an hour ago … La … She should
have been home ages ago.”

“She isn’t home yet?” Something dangerous in his voice. I shake my head, my bandaged
hand gripped against my chest where my heart is flopping. “Where?” I point toward
Galle Face Green and already he is swinging the car around.

We crawl through traffic toward the police barricades. Park as close as we can, run
toward the wreckage. A line of policemen, terror in their eyes, rifles at their sides,
skittish as blooded sharks. Shiva grabs my hand, pushes past them with the magic words,
“Doctor. I’m a doctor.” My nails dig into his flesh and then before us, the bus. A
leviathan dragged from the depths and destroyed by the unbearable weight of air, its
carapace shattered, iron entrails dragging, blood shining on the cruel jagged edges.

Shiva has let go of my hand, he is kneeling over the pavement where they have lined
up bodies, the less wounded, I think. I leave him tearing cloth, staunching wounds.
I am walking past, my rubber slippers sticking to the ground with every step, gore
holding onto the underside of them like a beloved unwilling to let go, let go, let
go. I am looking for her. Something screams that she was here, that her eyes have
seen this, something feral in me smelling her here.

And then, there it is, a round object, atilt, like a child’s toy carelessly dropped
and forgotten. A woman’s head. On the ground. Trailing tendrils of black hair and
wisps of ribboned flesh. Translucent jellyfish tentacles dripping deepest scarlet,
eyes gazing up into the sunlit sky, dust on her features. I see it all before gloved
fingers reach down to entwine themselves into her tangled hair, lift and lower her,
vanquished Medusa, death dealer, serial killer, into a plastic bag, and the policemen’s
bodies close off my view.