On Sal Mal Lane (54 page)

Mr. Niles continues to lie in the back of the house and Mrs. Niles tends to him, though Kala Niles has moved to stay with the Tissera family. The Nadesans, too, have returned to their own house.

“There is no way to move him and no place to take him to,” Mr. Herath had said, when asked by his tearful wife how they were supposed to conduct a funeral and
pirith
and an almsgiving in seven days with Mr. Niles lying there. “He will have to stay here.”

From where he lies, Mr. Niles can hear the mourners. He knows when the body is first brought in by the undertakers at A. F. Raymond’s, because the house erupts in fresh tears, and Kamala, who is watching from near the back of the dining room, cries out,
“Aney Devi Baba! Devi Baba genavane!”
And he hears Mrs. Herath cry and cry and cry as people come and she rises up to accept their expressions of sympathy and then stands next to them as they hold her hand and wipe their own tears and she sees again and again and again her daughter as though she is freshly dead, freshly brought into her home in a casket. And he feels the weight on Mr. Herath’s shoulders, the burden of trying to get his family through these rituals, these days, days that no parent knows how to live through and yet does. Sometimes Suren or Rashmi comes and holds his hand or touches his brow as they pass from the living room to the kitchen and back again. But not Nihil. Nihil never comes, and so Mr. Niles lies and grieves for the loss of the girl in the casket and the loss of the boy who lives.

The Composer

Suren knew that it was important, at this moment, for him to hold his brother up, for who had loved Devi more than Nihil did, but he also knew that his concern for Nihil lay over a store of pain that he was trying to hold in check. It was a firstborn, oldest-son time and Suren stepped into the role. He made sure that plain tea with ginger was being made for the mourners who came, and for those who might prefer coffee he made sure there was always a tray of Nescafé—made from the tins that Mrs. Sansoni had brought, a gift from her son, Tony—being offered. At the appropriate time each afternoon of the three days that the body lay in their home, he went to his mother, helped her to her feet, took her to the kitchen, and coaxed her to eat at least half of a sandwich from the stack that the Tissera family sent. He did not offer her the soft vegetable buns that the Silvas had arranged to be sent to their home, buns that arrived by the box from the bakery owned by Jith’s uncle, twice removed. Those buns were served to guests, never to the family, never to the other neighbors, none of whom would partake of anything that could be traced back to the Silvas, though they spoke to them politely as the Silvas, too, took their turn to sit among the mourners through the day. He served his father tea and coffee himself, but he left it to Rashmi to escort Mr. Herath back to the kitchen for food.

It was Suren who consulted with his aunts, and the one surviving grandmother, to arrange for the rituals of cremation. In this work he was assisted by the members of his band and the Bolling girls, who, though they knew nothing of Buddhist rituals, put on their uniforms, the only white dresses they owned, and stayed beside the Herath children, helping where they could. It was Rose and Dolly who joined Jith—but not Mohan—to help hoist the white flags in a zigzag pattern down Sal Mal Lane, one end tied to the largest of the trees in the grove at the top of their road, the other end wrapped around the post of the streetlamp near the Bin Ahmeds’ house. It was Rose who, together with Suren, stood at the bottom, her eyes squinting against the sun, looking up at the banner that fluttered above their heads, the one that announced the death, with Devi’s name and the words
Vayadamma Sankaara
beneath it.

“What does it mean?” Rose asked him.

“Nothing lasts,” he said, simply.

As they went about this work, Suren sometimes stopped to explain to people who asked, people passing by along the main road, that, no, Devi, whose name was shared so elegantly by two races, was not a Tamil child killed during the riots, she was a Sinhalese girl, she was his sister. And when he said this the adults who had asked, whether they were Sinhalese or Tamil, always sighed with relief, which made Suren want to change his answers, to say yes, she did die during the riots, and she did die because of them, for that was the truth of it, but he allowed them their relief and their sympathy and went back to his duties.

Far from all that Suren minded, in the places to which those passersby went, things were discussed in the usual way. The government was blamed by the supporters of the opposition.
The looters had electoral lists with them,
they said, accusing highly placed officials of instigating the riots and, worse, not offering even one word of sympathy after to the Tamil citizenry. The government supporters blamed, alternately, the Left, for stirring discord, and the Tamil leadership that had failed to stop the rise of Prabhakaran. In its own defense, the government listed these things:

That a curfew was imposed immediately to stop the riots.

That it was government property that was attacked first, with trains, buses, and buildings targeted.

That shelter was provided for more than twenty thousand homeless Tamils.

That when that shelter proved inadequate, ships were commissioned to transport to the North those refugees who had families there.

None of the Tamils who were tended to in this manner would credit the government with any good, for how could they when the evil that had happened had occurred on its watch? Some Tamils would eventually leave for Australia, America, and Canada, from whose safety they would prepare to wage a war by proxy, a war that had as much to do with their decision to leave as it had to do with what they had left behind. The poorest Tamils would one day be trapped by Prabhakaran in the North, their lives given over to supporting an unwinnable war. But the largest number remained where they had always been, their lives enmeshed both with the lives of those who had wished them harm and those who had protected them from it.

If it were possible to look down from a great distance and see a pattern rather than individual losses, we could say that more people lived than died, more homes were saved than were burnt, more friendships endured. But at street level they were all irrevocably damaged, and down Sal Mal Lane that sense of devastation was wrapped up around Devi, a death that could be described by one and all as being senseless, a bereavement that served as a touchstone for other losses.

“Tomorrow is the last day,” Rashmi said to Suren the night before the funeral. They were sitting in the front veranda while their parents, alone for the first time, sat with the body. Mr. Tissera and Suren’s bandmates were in the kitchen playing a game of cards to stay awake, the Bolling twins had fallen asleep in Rashmi’s room, and Lucas was keeping vigil on the front steps, talking in low tones with Banda, the driver who had taken Devi and Rashmi to school when they were younger and who had come as soon as he heard about the funeral and not left since.

Suren nodded. It would also be the first day of all the days when there was no dead body before them, no mourners and lamps and no chanting of monks to give purpose to their days.

“Let Nihil sleep tonight,” he said, looking over at their brother who had fallen asleep, seated on a chair, his hands still crossed over his chest.

“What shall we do about Mr. Niles?” Rashmi asked.

Suren watched his sister fiddle with the hem of her white skirt. The threads had come undone and she was tugging at them, unraveling. “Mr. Niles will be carried home after the almsgiving, once the Sansonis and Tisseras have cleaned up the kitchen and the front room,” Suren said, though he knew that was not what his sister was referring to.

“I mean about him and Nihil.”

Suren shrugged. “There is nothing we can do about it. We can talk to Mr. Niles and we can hope that it will be enough to hear from us. We can’t force Nihil to go and talk to him.”

“It was not his fault,” Rashmi said, after a long silence.

“It was not his fault,” Suren repeated, and he was thinking about both Mr. Niles and Nihil. Next to him, Rashmi began to cry. He put his arm around her and rested her head on his shoulder and tried not to think about whose fault it might have been, about whether anybody could be blamed or whether blame was useless, for so long as there was human life, human life would end.

On the day of the funeral, Mrs. Niles and Mrs. Tissera took Mrs. Herath to the back of the house and helped her wash and draped a new white sari on her, though they needed her assistance in draping it in the upcountry Kandyan style. Then they brought her out of the bedroom to sit one last time beside her daughter.

“When are they coming?” she asked, faintly, of no one in particular.

“The priests will be here at three,” Suren told her, and he touched her shoulder so she leaned forward and laid her head against the side of his body and whispered
Aney putha, mage putha,
and he knew she was seeking some strength from him to get through the next few hours, though he had none to offer; everything he had was given to his brother and sister.

“Someone will have to look after Nihil,” Mr. Niles said to Rashmi as she passed by him, dressed, for the first time and with Kamala’s help, in a white sari of her own.

“We will,” Rashmi said, and since she did not have it in her to comfort Mr. Niles just then, she just said that, “We will,” and kept on walking.

Mr. Tissera, who had never spent this much time with the Herath family, and certainly had never spent so much time in their bedrooms and bathrooms, helped Mr. Herath to get ready. He sat him down in the chair next to Mrs. Herath and then walked to the back of the room to wait, Mr. Sansoni and Mr. Silva beside him, their wives with the other women who drifted in and out of the rooms in the house as though no space was sacred anymore.

Mohan and Jith stood with their father. Jith focused on Dolly, looking at her whenever he could, trying to detect if she had changed and in what ways. But Mohan, he had come for Devi. He stared at the rigid stillness of her body as though all the excess of movement that she had been known for had been in anticipation of this day. He kept his eyes on her face, on the fingers arranged with a prayerful serenity she had never displayed in life, on her feet, which were dressed in white socks, but no shoes. He stepped away from his father and the line of men around them, and moved toward the casket. He bent his head and tried to think of some words that would make sense for him to say, even in silence. None came, but when he felt his father’s hand on his arm, tugging him away, he resisted and he continued to stand there, beside the coffin, until the priests arrived.

At three, Mr. Herath said, “It is time,” though he may have been reminding himself, and he helped his wife to her feet and they went forward, the sides of their arms touching, to meet the priests who had arrived with no more than a rustle. Mr. Herath’s brother stepped forward to wash their feet.

Suren waited until the priests had taken their place, and his parents and siblings too, before he sat down behind them, letting his mind settle. In his sermon the chief priest referred to Devi, her youth, her playfulness, and to her death, and reminded her parents and siblings that the body that lay before them was empty, simply a reminder of impermanence, artificially held together, something that must, also, be allowed to leave.

“Why mus’ they talk about all that? So sad!” Rose, sitting right behind Suren, whispered to Dolly, who shrugged, having no response.

“Shh! Listen!” her father said, and maybe he thought at that moment of his own dead son, or considered his wife, who sat beside him now, with whom he had fought and to whom he had denied the burial no matter how much she wept and pleaded, and who had in the end pawned her one pair of gold earrings and given the money to Mr. Bin Ahmed, saying
Please cremate my son’s body and bring the ashes back;
maybe he thought all that though his eyes were dry.

“It is Buddhism, because they are Buddhist,” Mrs. Nadesan said, and because she wasn’t used to whispering, all the Heraths heard her.

Suren thought then that no matter the hymns and the
bhajans,
the religion that informs mourning was probably the religion of the heart.

“Why must we return to life?” the priest asked. “We return to the people who made promises to us, to whom we made promises, and we try, again, to fulfill them, to have those made to us be fulfilled by others.”

Unname udakam vattam yatha ninnam pavattati

evameva ito dinnam petanam upakappati.

Yatha varivaha pura paripurenti sagaram

evameva ito dinnam petanam upakappati.

They were words that the priest had recited at the beginning, words Suren understood as having meaning in his life now, not simply as a recitation in Buddhism class: as water flows from high to low ground, whatever merit is done, through good work, through prayer, through offering, reaches the dead.

Music, Suren thought. For Devi he would compose music, a promise that he had never made but that, surely, he should have, a good work that he could perform on her behalf. He thought then of pieces that would inform the musical arrangements he could make for her. Melodies alternating between longing and foreboding for her friendship with Raju, churning undertones for Nihil’s fears beneath top notes that insist on continuity for the things he could not change, staccato rhythms to depict Devi’s skipping rope and her clapping hands, lighter music for the ride she had longed for on that bicycle, the way she had owned it, the speed, the wind, everything, her spirit journeying alone, somewhere higher than the road, the sensation of observing from below and above, leaving the earth, lingering there unseen. He listened to the priests, but the voices he heard were those of composers: Debussy, “Jimbo’s Lullaby” from
Children’s Corner
Suite, Chopin’s “Ocean Waves” Etude, Brahms’s 8 Pieces, op. 76, Capriccio in B Minor, Camille Saint-Saëns’s
Carnival of the Animals,
and more Debussy, Nocturnes I, “Clouds.” Suren lifted his bent head and turned his face upward, and as he did so he felt that all that was heavy and sad was here, with him, low to the ground, and all that was light was suspended above, in a space that held Devi, a place he could not reach except through his music.