Questions of Travel (42 page)
It was October, therefore a gale was blowing. Laura pushed her way up a hill. Jacarandas were throwing out hints about calm blue fireworks to come, and she didn’t even lift her head. But she reached over palings to steal mock-orange blossoms from a This Garden Uses Gray Water. In the bay window, a vase of waratahs was a warning red hand.
THE EMAIL FROM NADINE
said:
what will says.
The email from Will said:
I can’t figure out how many of HR’s forty-seven core competencies Ravi ticks. I can’t figure out HR full stop. I’d say he’s a nice guy, easy to work with, he’s smart and takes work seriously. It’s been a steep learning curve but his technical and design skills have really improved. But you know how we all spend time doing research online, looking for design inspiration, sussing out cool stuff? Ravi always ends up looking at sites he’s found in some archive like the Wayback Machine. He can’t stay away. It’s not that he lacks concentration or can’t work independently but it’s like there’s a disconnect.
Crystal Bowles said, “Have you noticed his jeans? Kmart! At least Nadine’s cool in that fugly geek-girl way.”
Uninvited in Tyler Dean’s office, Crystal was embroidered all over in a fashion designer’s idea of a peasant’s smock.
Tyler observed that
cool
wasn’t actually a job description.
“Yes it is. Only,” conceded Crystal, “we don’t come right out and say it. But it’s what we do in the ’zone.
Deliver practical and stylish travel content.
Stylish means cool.”
Long after he had got rid of her, the cool thing continued to nag Tyler. He was behind it, in a way. When he had first arrived at Ramsay, he had seen at once that digital publishing lacked prestige—that magic element—in a business oriented towards producing solid objects known as books. Tyler Dean, working at the height of his youthful powers, had set about rebranding the unit. There was nothing to be done about Tech: it was guys with bad hair and poor body shapes who installed your new software and couldn’t explain how to use it. But digital publishing was a whole other ball game. Straight away, Tyler awarded the web unit a new name: the e-zone. The ’zone was übercool, it was the future of Ramsay. Crucially, it was also the company’s past. It was Tyler who first used the phrase
travel content
in a management meeting, explaining that ever since its inception, Ramsay had been
delivering travel content.
The archaic form in which it had been delivered had obscured this, creating the illusion that Ramsay’s core business lay in books. It fell to Tyler, effortlessly aligned on his exercise ball, to point out that a guidebook was only a prototype website: an early trace of what the digital era would perfect. It could finally be seen that like any avant-garde, the web was a culmination that threw fresh light on what had gone before. All along, without realizing it, the whole of Ramsay had been aspiring to the condition of the ’zone.
Circumstances had changed; Tyler Dean’s fortunes had known flux. But with even Cliff Ferrier acknowledging that digital was
now,
the link between cool and the e-zone survived. Tyler had preached it to those who labored electronically there. The e-zone would transform
travel content:
make it snappier, wittier, less brown rice and more sushi, for a global, net-savvy e-generation. Tyler recalled, with a feeling akin to shame, that he had spoken of
deconstructing Ramsay.
What had he meant, exactly? Somehow, years later, it had brought Crystal Bowles into his office to sneer at Ravi Mendis’s jeans.
Now Ravi’s contract was almost up, and the question of whether he was to remain at Ramsay couldn’t be postponed. Across the globe, travel had bounced back—travel always did, it was only destinations that died. Sales were on the up, and Ramsay was hiring again. Tyler, bidding for two new ongoing positions in the e-zone, was confident of success. But Ravi’s official performance review, composed by Will and signed off by Nadine, had been cautious and bland: a sure sign of dissatisfaction. No manager wished to risk coming across as openly negative—that would be inappropriate in a laidback modern workplace like Ramsay. The real assessment made itself known in the casual buzz around an individual. An employee was a Ramsay person or not: like any other essence, it was easy to recognize and hard to describe. It was an aura, it was a vibe. It was Crystal Bowles opening her eyes wide and saying, “The thing is, I find him a bit creepy. Did I tell you about when I sprang him with this photo of a gorgeous little boy on his screen?”
Ravi Mendis just hadn’t worked out quite as Tyler had hoped. He was
a nice guy
but not the right kind of person; could it be that he wasn’t the right kind of refugee? His co-workers had welcomed him with little bouquets of compassion. But the films that were screening in their minds had showed long, dangerous journeys and cyclone wire. Invited to
tell us something about yourself
at his first general meeting, Ravi had spoken of working in aged care. The only person older than fifty-five at Ramsay was Alan. The faces turned towards Ravi suggested that while not personally opposed to old people, his colleagues had expected to hear of suffering. It was the first intimation that Tyler had miscalculated again.
Eleven months later, he had appealed to Nadine and Will for a straight-up, off-the-HR-record appraisal of Ravi. Having read Will’s response a third time, Tyler stuck his head out of his office and saw that Ravi was on the phone. So Tyler emailed him. Clicking send, he thought, This’ll be the end of Damo and me. That was insane! It was also the first glimpse of a country that until that moment had existed only as a legendary, sunless realm, and was now revealed as just another place, stony perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be survived.
On the other end of the phone, Angie Segal said, “Ravi.” He knew at once: it was the only reason she would have called him at work. Invited to attend the handing down of the tribunal’s decision, he had chosen not to go. So now the verdict had been written down and sent to Angie as his authorized representative. Ravi heard her ask whether he wanted her to open the letter, or whether he preferred to come to her office. “Or I could send a courier over, of course.”
It was one thing to imagine leaving and another to be shown the door. As soon as he had heard Angie’s voice, Ravi went to the digital bookmark that brought up Malini’s photo. She looked out at him plainly, plainly courageous. He said, “Please tell me what the letter says.” Tyler’s message—a little unopened envelope—appeared at the bottom of Ravi’s screen.
That afternoon, he wore his Kmart jeans into Tyler’s office. “
Hi,
Ravi,” said Tyler. Leaning from his exercise ball to close the door, he spotted Crystal Bowles. Her eyes watched and smiled. Tyler had once heard Helmut Becker say that a German manager’s notion of earning respect was to keep his office door shut. “You know what is really tragic about this idea? It works.” In Australia, where everyone was equal except for their salaries, managerial doors stood wide. It followed that a closed door switched the office to alert. It was simply amazing, thought Tyler, how often the human factor caused theory to come undone.
“How’s it all going out there in the ’zone?” he asked brightly.
Ravi broadened his smile.
“Done any cool stuff today?”
Ravi thought back to the morning—how many centuries had passed since then?—and came up with an online tutorial in wireframe software.
“Cool!” And as the silence lengthened, “That’s so coo—
great!
”
It was the bit about the Wayback Machine that continued to bother Tyler, as it had bothered Will. A good designer was curious, open-minded, on-trend; Ravi was never going to get there looking over his shoulder. But that morning, Tyler himself had turned to the Wayback Machine and its archived copy of the Sri Lankan website Ravi had developed. If he closed his eyes he could summon it now: clip-arty and ramshackle by today’s standards, sure, but Tyler held to his original evaluation. The design was under-the-radar, piratical, it had verve. It radiated “make” culture—vital in a web designer. Tyler could have sworn that back in the day, Ravi Mendis had been a different person.
He said, “I’m thinking we should maybe talk directions?”
What Ravi could see was that Tyler, mini-bouncing now and then on his exercise ball, needed something from him. Eager to oblige—he liked Tyler, he liked his loose, booming laugh—he could only hope for guidance. To this end, he stared intently at the tiny silver man with his arms outstretched who adorned the tip of Tyler’s ear.
Tyler’s nerve went. “It’s HR, dude. Myself, I’m all for flow,” said Tyler Dean, making it up on the hoof—he shone at “make” culture. “So the thing is, where do we go from here? When your year with us is up?”
Ravi had made an appointment to see Angie Segal the following week; the delay was her idea, he needed time to take things in and think them over, she had said. He offered Tyler the first thing he had offered Angie: “I don’t want to be a tourist in my own country.” It was all that mattered and made crystal sense to him. “I’m going back to Sri Lanka,” Ravi explained.
“Dude!” Tyler’s dismay was heartfelt. He had envisaged Ravi
moving on
—shifting him painlessly to a call center, or was Lonely Planet out of the question?—but this was a return, a loop. The cause was obvious. “They’ve rejected your application. That’s terrible.” The image of a circle persisted behind Tyler’s eyes. He blinked to dismiss it, and the circle morphed into a tire, burning about a man’s neck.
“I’m very lucky,” said Ravi. “I’ve been granted asylum.”
“But that’s awesome! Congratulations!” Tyler paused. “So then…?”
“I prefer to go back.”
“But isn’t it, like, dangerous for you there?”
Ravi might have said, They killed my child and turned my wife into a vase. He might have told Tyler about Varunika and her chipped tooth, adding, I’m like that, frightened of the future, when in fact the worst thing has already happened. Or he might have said, Weren’t you listening? What was the first thing I said?
While he remained silent, three things happened. Tyler told Tyler, Don’t be evil, tell him to apply for one of the ongoing hires—it could make all the difference. Damo asked Tyler, Didn’t you
try
to make him stay? Tell me exactly how this conversation went! And Tyler assured Tyler, Whether he stays in Australia or not, Ravi’ll be happier working somewhere else.
“Thing is,” said Tyler, “what I called you in here to say? You can count on me for a reference if you need one. Any time.”
Ravi seemed to be thinking this over. Then he said, “Everyone here is very kind. It’s a good place. It will be hard for me to leave.” He spoke carefully, as if not to disturb whatever was stirring in his face.
Tyler gave three little bounces to a rhythm: shit, shit, shit. “Theoretically,” he said, “it’s possible things could be opening up a little in the ’zone? Being mindful that at the end of the day, HR hasn’t actually green-lighted anything.”
Tyler couldn’t know that Ravi was looking at a picture of himself from the future. It was 4x6 inches and showed a man with a camera marveling at women grinding chilies, tickled by an ad for soap powder, working out how little to tip. A thought balloon escaped from his baseball cap:
There’s no poverty here.
Tyler’s broad, anxious face intervened. Off to one side hung a tiny metal man whose death leap was forever imminent and suspended. Ravi might have told him, I’m frightened of going back. But I’m frightened of what will happen if I stay in Australia, too.
“I don’t want to be a tourist in my own country,” he repeated.
This time, Tyler remembered an avenue of jacarandas and flame trees. It was getting smaller: all he could do was tilt the rear-vision mirror for a last view. In the backseat, Dean Tyler leaned forward: “Who are you? You look familiar.” Tyler Dean told someone, “I know what you mean, dude.”
After that, it was quickly arranged. A new, short-term contract would cover Ravi until he left—Tyler’s fingers flashed, composing the email to HR at once. When there was nothing left but for Ravi to go away, Tyler sprang from his shining synthetic ball. “Dude, thank you for traveling this road with me.” Crystal Bowles, chancing to stroll past, happening to glance in, saw him fold Ravi in his embrace.
LAURA FRASER WHEELED A
chair over to his desk and sank down. She produced a guide to Sri Lanka and questioned, underlining passages in green. Her ballpoint might have been a supplementary finger with a colored claw. Ravi, brought up to look on books as costly, revered objects, didn’t like to see even a travel guide disfigured like that. Laura was asking whether he would be back in Sri Lanka by Christmas and whether he was really okay about leaving. With the hibiscus eavesdropping in the car park, Ravi had already assured her that he wanted to go home. The truth was that a light-filled hollow opened inside him at the thought, and he was free to assign it any meaning he chose.
Laura’s flight would be getting in two days after his, very early on Christmas Eve. Ravi advised her to get out of Colombo as soon as possible. It was standard wisdom among the foreigners he had met when he was pretending to be a tourist.
Oh yes, there’s nothing there, we got out as soon as possible.
The sentiment had puzzled Ravi at the time. What was wrong with Colombo? Traveling south along Galle Road, if you glanced to the right, a gleaming blue ribbon of sea threaded through all the dusty lanes. But Ravi was trained now; he told Laura, “Colombo is typical and ordinary.” He realized that seeing how local people lived was a myth that lurked like a piece of garden statuary, vaguely ennobling, in the tangle of motives that led to travel. No one on holiday really wanted anything of the kind: ordinary life was what they were on holiday from. That was where RealLanka had erred; its attempt to turn the myth into reality was as mistaken as trying to set marble limbs in motion. He would have to talk all this over with Nimal one day, thought Ravi. To Laura, he spoke of ruins, statues, the beaches of the south, his friend with the Internet cafe: “He will be happy to see you if you go there.” She wrote down everything Ravi suggested on a blank page at the end of her guidebook. In the car park, talking about
getting away
at Christmas, she had clutched a clump of her hair. “I don’t care where I go.” Ravi had remarked that there were plenty of cheap places with great food. Her face told him that he had read her mind.
“I only eat ethical meat,” confided Crystal to her phone. Laura closed her guidebook and went away. A little later, Ravi discovered her pen on his desk. It was Will’s rostered day off, and Nadine was in a meeting. Ravi slid the Bic behind his MAD folder. When Crystal left her work station, he dropped the pen into his pack. His furtiveness was merely automatic; the theft of the Bic seemed no worse to him than destroying a plump orange bud, a natural if depraved action.
He had signed out for the day and was heading for the stairs when Paul Hinkel appeared at his elbow. Paul offered him a lift to St. Peters station—he always did, if they were leaving at the same time. Ravi thanked him, but explained that he had an appointment in the city.
They had reached the landing when Laura Fraser came into view below, her bag over her shoulder. She seemed to have paused on her way out to exchange a few words with the receptionist, but Ravi had the sense—an almost physical awareness—that the beam of her interest was in fact directed at him. At once he understood that Paul Hinkel and Laura Fraser were colluding in his disgrace. Laura would confront him with his theft while Paul prevented him from running away. He would see the contents of his backpack scattered, his guilt displayed before his colleagues streaming down the stairs.
Paul said, “You right, mate?”
Ravi muttered that he’d forgotten something and had to go back.
“See you tomorrow, then. Have a good one.”
Ravi went up the stairs as fast as he could, unshouldering his pack, dodging the downward flow. Passing a cluster of deserted work stations, he scrabbled for the Bic. His flight had carried him, instinctively, away from the e-zone. Hedged with room dividers, this unfamiliar part of the office had the look of a maze. At any moment, Laura Fraser’s rusty eyes might hook into his spine. It took only a couple of seconds to reach around a door into an empty office, place the pen on a desk and move away.
Angie Segal said, “I have to show you this.” She had attended a conference at which a Colombian lawyer delivered a talk, she told Ravi. “It was about the history of human rights abuses in his country. There was a period in Colombia when the military mutilated bodies before dumping them.” A stapled document came across the desk. “Page four.” Ravi glanced at the diagram—briefly. He had never thought of Angie Segal as a cruel person.
Her mobile was playing the little tune that signaled an incoming text. Angie crumpled a fluted paper cup that had held a chocolate: Ravi had stopped off to buy her the biggest and most expensive box he could find. She rose and came around to Ravi’s side of the desk. Her breath smelled of sugar. “What was done to your wife—I don’t want you to leave here thinking that the way she was killed was personal, that someone who knew about that prediction in her horoscope was behind it. Long before she was born, professional murderers were turning people into vases on the other side of the world. All kinds of knowledge travel. Security forces learn from each other.” Angie Segal squared her narrow shoulders: she was a child preparing to recite a lesson. “If you go back, I truly believe you’ll be at risk.”
Earlier she had said, “Going back frightens you. I can see it does.” That was true, so there was no answering it. Ravi knew that everything Angie said was said for the best—it wasn’t her fault that to him the best no longer meant a place where he would be safe. A grave, too, is free of danger. Like Freda, Angie had done whatever she could to help him, and he had behaved badly with both women. Ravi acknowledged it not as self-reproach but as proof that he couldn’t be helped.
He apologized again for wasting Angie’s time. “What about this?” she said. She might have been selecting a chocolate from the assortment, determined to come up with one he would enjoy. “Why don’t you stay long enough to get your residency? You could go home afterwards, see how you find things there, come back if you have concerns.” Ravi saw himself strapped to a seat inside a silver capsule, wafted back and forth across sunsets; a connoisseur of clouds, he belonged nowhere. The suggestion was rational, kind and made no sense. For a start, there was the cost. A child in his country could have told Angie Segal that.
She walked him to the lift. She placed her small, bitten hand in his and produced a last violet-stuck praline. “You might have children one day. The right to live here could be something they’d appreciate.” What Angie hadn’t understood was that some sweets are flavored with ashes.
In the street, sacred ibis were high-stepping through the day’s discards like aristocrats picking their way through filth. When Ravi had called Varunika, she listened to him in silence before saying, “I hope you’re not imagining I’ll cook and clean for you. I’m not coming back to be anyone’s servant.” But Priya, whose reaction to his news Ravi had dreaded, was elated. One of her stepsons had recently announced that he intended to immigrate to Malaysia. Priya, radiating maturity and kindly concern, would now be able to draw his wife aside and say, “You know I never interfere, Sharmala, but I wonder if you have considered every angle? You see, my brother…”
At Circular Quay, the deep blue evening was as large as temptation. Ravi went into the station and up the stairs; a train was just pulling out. What remained was the bridge, the ferries, the opera house: the harbor was a casket lidded with light. How could he have chosen history over that marvel? He asked Malini, Will you be waiting? How will I live? No one answered. Ravi dragged his gaze from the view and saw that he was alone on
the marvelous platform.
But overhead a promise appeared: quite soon now, the train that he needed would arrive.