The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (40 page)

I stand at the station entrance, beneath the statue of Henry Olcott, dodging the waves of commuters and ignoring the flies and the dirty children with their palms out. The walls of the station are in need of paint, and aside from a yawning ticket guard and a newspaper-reading security guard, I spy no staff.

‘Let’s go.’

It is neither Sudu nor Chooti, but Kalu Daniel. He is well dressed in cheap clothing. Like an office peon whose wife works in a laundry. His wavy hair is parted and combed. He is clean-shaven.

‘Why so dressed up?’

‘Come. Come,’ says Daniel, pushing me into the streams of people.

Today the blindfold is tighter. It is not an airline sleeping mask, but a black cotton rag that feels cool against my skin. I do not recognise the driver. The van moves a few hundred metres and stops.

‘Is Daniel your real name?’ I ask after ten minutes of silence.

‘Shut up.’

‘In the papers it says your name is Daniel Fonseka.’

‘I’m not going to ask you again.’

‘Because that’s a Sinhala name and I don’t think you’re Sinhala.’

‘I don’t like hitting old men. But if necessary I will do it.’

Then I hear a noise. It is a noise that I feel; it vibrates the van and the air around us and is followed by distant shrieks and screams. Daniel asks the driver to start the engine. The bumpy ride takes place in silence. But for once I hear things outside. The rumbling of the river. Louder than the splutter of a tractor, lower than the growl of a tank. I ask for a cigarette and my request is denied.

When the van takes the now familiar turns, I hear the sound of helicopter blades. I hear another sound, but decipher it I cannot, perhaps a Bawa-designed hovercraft. The blindfold does not come off till I’m up the stairs, through the corridor and seated on the cane chair.

The room is transformed. The TV and its speakers have disappeared. The table is a mess of files and papers. In the corner, Sudu and Chooti are feeding documents into an electric shredder. Kuga is duct-taping some boxes. Everyone is dressed in suits.

On the wall by the window the smiling picture of the Leader of the Opposition has been replaced. Now there is a solemn picture of a man a shade fairer than Kuga, but with a thicker moustache. None other than the Thalaiver, the Tiger General himself.

‘You’ve had another important visitor I see.’

Kuga looks up at me and then at the photo. ‘Ado Daniel, take this down, men! What are y’all doing?’

Kalu Daniel is pouring a Tennessee whisky that shares his surname. He looks annoyed at being interrupted and casts me a grimace.

‘Who is that?’ I ask, pointing to the painting of what looks like a Tamil film star bearing a scimitar.

‘Kalinga Maga. The greatest king of Sri Lanka. Demonised by your Sinhala historians. There were many great Tamil kings. The last king of Kandy …’

‘Who was a paranoid tyrant.’

‘Ellara. The Marcus Aurelius of our nation.’

‘Killed by a minister’s son from the south.’

‘You are a humorous character, Karunasena. But today is not the day, unless you would like to be slapped.’

Kuga finishes the last of his taping and gets up off his knees.

‘Come, Mr Karuna. Let’s go to the balcony.’ To the other three he barks, ‘I’ll be done in half an hour. When I come back, this room must be cleared.’

The three of them glare at me as if it is my fault.

*  *  *

Do you recall mosquitoes being such a problem in the 80s? Or the 70s?

Malaria. DDT …

No. I mean in Colombo. Didn’t you just put your fan on and sleep?

Those days I could sleep anywhere after putting a shot. Fan or no fan.

Today everyone has to light coils, put mats, spray sprays.

Where are you packing and going?

Two large companies came up with a plan to breed mosquitoes along the canals of Colombo in 1986. That was my first freelance assignment.
The papers say …

Today mosquito coils are the second largest selling consumer item in this country, next to cigarettes.

Is the government handing you over to the LTTE?

Let’s just say my position is now … what is the word?

Redundant.

Untenable. Redundant? Mr Karuna. Sri Lanka will always need men like me. I will just be replaced.

So fixing matches and running brothels isn’t your main source of income.

I went to university in Sussex. I did my masters in Toronto. I lost two cousins in ’83. I joined because I had to. When you are young, those things are easy to identify.

Why have you called me?

If you find Pradeepan, I want you to give him this letter.

Will this letter get me killed?

Please see that he gets it.

He wasn’t at his mother’s funeral, chances are I will never see him.

I think you will.

*  *  *

Ari’s sister’s hearing aid was a Siemens Intuit 64, as white and cumbersome as the good lady herself. Patsy Holsinger née Byrd stopped using it after her sister-in-law Manouri took her to a faith healer in Moratuwa who cured her of a chronic ear infection. The same charlatan they tried to inflict on me.

Ari borrowed it to eavesdrop on his daughters’ conversations, though Stephanie, Melissa and even little Aruni were aware of their father’s efforts. Manouri would warn them whenever Ari began pressing the unwieldy white receiver to the wall. One day he told me with delight that all his daughters were virgins who had friends who were boys, but who knew their limits. I remember trying not to smile and being told off.

In return for not wearing headgear, Ari had insisted on taking the hearing aid. I let him even though I could see no point. The contraption was eleven years old and amplified every sound it picked up. In a crowded place like a funeral house, it would be impossible to distinguish any specific conversation with any degree of clarity.

Ari, the gadget man himself, tells me that I am deeply wrong. He shows me old photographs he stole on his way to the Sivanathan bathroom.

‘You stole photos?’

‘Good for your book, no?’

‘How?’

‘I just grabbed the photo album off the piano, took it into the toilet and took a few. There were extras.’

They are shots of a boy that Ari swears is Pradeep Mathew. In a cot, with family, in a junior cricket team. The handful Ari grabbed evidently came from the beginning of the album. I reserve my judgement on both the boy in the photos and my pious friend’s kleptomania.

*  *  *

When the MD walked in, he said, ‘My deepest sympathies, Mrs Amirthalingam.’ She asked him how he knew her mother and he replied that he knew her brother well. Then Sabi said something Ari couldn’t hear because the ladies were jabbering about the rude girl flirting with the old man. Then Sabi raised her voice and asked the MD to leave. Then the MD said her brother stole half a million New Zealand dollars. Then Sabi asked them again to leave and her husband came to the rescue. The MD said that he knew her brother was not dead and that he would find him. Sabi’s husband said he was calling the Minister of Agriculture. To which the MD said, ‘Tell Jeyaraj I said hi,’ and left.

This bit is all according to Ari. Not unlike how this whole book is all according to me.

*  *  *

It’s easy being a soldier. They tell you who your enemy is and all you have to do is aim and shoot.

I think it’s slightly more difficult than that.

In my line of work it’s never clear who your enemy is. I had no problems with my first assignments. Most of the names ended in vowels. I didn’t do it for money. Then the names changed. Amirthalingam. Ponnambalam. Tiruchelvam. I asked myself what I was doing it for. You get older. You realise.

Only then you realised? What about when you were recruiting children, using suicide bombers?

Children? Really? The US army and the British armed forces recruit at sixteen. From schools. And train them to go to the third world and shoot at someone’s mother. You think Tamil parents who wake their children at 5 to study would want them to run around jungles with guns? But after the government has raped and slaughtered those parents, I defy any fourteen-year-old to not pick up a weapon.

Suicide bombing is a cowardly …

Cowardly? Cowardly is when the US sit in an ocean 75 miles from Baghdad and fire smart missiles into the town. Those missiles aren’t very smart. They hit hospitals, schools, shopping malls. With suicide bombing you look into the eyes of the man you kill. You don’t flatten a city to punish a handful.

But you’re killing your younger generation. And you’re not getting international sympathy.

Fuck the international sympathy. The Japs used kamikazes and there was honour in committing hara-kiri for your country. Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’. ‘Into the valley of death, rode the 600, blah, blah.’ In the Crimean War walking into certain death was heroic. Not for our Eelam war? Fucking bullshit.

So why did you leave the LTTE?

No one leaves the LTTE. The Thalaiver runs this country by default. He decides who is elected, who lives. He is no longer a terrorist, he is a multinational CEO. Our Leader has outlasted the Dynasty. He has outlasted the UNP. He will never die.

What if the Sri Lankan government wins the war?

The LTTE have a de facto state. We even get our own diesel shipped from Norway. The Sri Lankan army will not win till they hold the head of the Thalaiver, blood dripping, in front of parliament.

You’re reading too much poetry.

This war will not end. But I have to make my living.

This war will continue for as long as it turns a profit.

That’s bullshit. People think it’s bravery that wins wars. It’s not. It’s cruelty. But even that’s not enough. You need to be cunning.

All our governments have been cruel and cunning.

Not enough. To win wars you need to carpet-bomb civilians. And to get away with carpet-bombing civilians. Believe me, the second part is tougher than the first.

What about negotiation?

Nagasaki. Hiroshima. Gulf. Gaza. Carpet-bomb and then sell the carpet bomb. I’m bored of this. I invited you to talk about cricket.

Cricket then. Was Pradeep happy to fix matches?

He was an honest Tamil boy. He didn’t like it, but what to do? After the rebel South Africa tour failed, he really didn’t have much choice.

Father’s illness?

He was the highest wicket taker in the Asia Cup, but no one took notice, because they believed the matches were fixed. I told him if he was going to suffer the consequences, he might as well do the crime.