B009Y4I4QU EBOK Page 2

  They took me to a van, and we drove a short distance. When the van stopped, I knew where I was. We were at the ticket office at the entrance to the national park. I knew this building well. I’d been here hundreds of times, since I was a child, to buy tickets and to pick up a ranger to guide us in the park. Vik and Malli sometimes went into the small museum in this building, at the entrance to it was an enormous pair of elephant tusks.

  The building looked no different now. All intact. No trace of water, no puddles or uprooted trees around it. This dry breeze on my face, it’s a normal breeze.

  The men carried me out of the van and took me inside. I knew several people who worked here, I could see them now, milling around, staring at me, looking concerned. I turned away from them. I didn’t want them to see me like this, shaking, sopping wet.

  I sat on a green concrete bench in the museum, which had half-walls with peeling green paint and thick wooden pillars that held up the roof. I hugged my knees into my chest and stared at the palu trees outside. Was it real, what just happened, that water? My crumpled mind couldn’t tell. And I wanted to stay in the unreal, in the not knowing. So I didn’t speak to anyone, ask them anything. A phone began to ring. No one picked it up, so it rang and rang. It was loud, and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to stay in my stupor, staring into trees.

  But what if they survived, I couldn’t help thinking. Steve might come here with the boys. Maybe someone found all of them, just as they found me. If they are brought here, the boys will be clinging to Steve. Daddy, Daddy. Their shirts would have been torn off, they will be cold. Vik would always be shaking and shivering when he went swimming, the water in the pool was a little bit chilly.

  A white truck pulled up. A young girl was carried out. There were bruises on her face, and twigs and leaves stuck to her hair and clothes. I’d seen this girl before. She was in the room next to us in the hotel with her parents. Vik and Malli will look wet and scared like this girl if they are brought here now. Will they have leaves tangled in their hair? They both had haircuts before we left London. Haircuts. I couldn’t hold the thought of haircuts.

  There was a boy sitting on the same bench as me. He looked about twelve, a little older maybe. This was the boy who called for help just before those men found me. They brought him here with me in that van. This boy wouldn’t stop talking now, shouting. Where are his parents, he wants them, he was having breakfast with them at the hotel, they saw the waves, they ran, he was swept away. He said this over and over, but I ignored him. I didn’t acknowledge his presence or respond to anything he said.

  The boy began to cry now. Are his parents dead? he asked. He was wearing only a pair of shorts, and his body was shaking, and his teeth chattered, and he kept walking around the glass cabinets, which displayed skeletons of marsh crocodiles and pythons. There was also the nest of a weaverbird, which always intrigued Vik. “It’s like a real house, Malli. Can you see the different rooms?”

  The boy kept walking back and forth and crying. I wanted him to stop. Someone brought a large towel and wrapped it around his shoulders. Still the boy sobbed. But I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t try to comfort him. Stop blubbing, I thought, shut up. You only survived because you are fat. That’s why you didn’t die. You stayed alive in that water because you are so fucking fat. Vik and Malli didn’t have a chance. Just shut up.

  I was taken to the hospital in a jeep. The man driving was very agitated. He told me he didn’t know where his family was. He was going to the hospital to look for them. They had been staying at the hotel, same as us. But he went on safari early in the morning. He went alone. He wasn’t at the hotel when the wave struck. He told me this again and again. He spoke too loudly. I sat in the front seat next to him. I didn’t say a word. I shivered and I shook. I stared out of the jeep. The road we were driving on was bordered by thick forest. There was no one on that road but us.

  There was another man sitting at the back of the jeep. I recognized him, he was a waiter in our hotel. The waiter had a mobile phone in his hand, he kept waving it about. He stuck his hand out of the jeep and held the phone up high. He jumped across the seats from side to side. He was trying to get a signal, he said. His movements, I couldn’t stand it, I could feel each thud. Why can’t you just sit still, I kept thinking. I wanted to fling his phone out of that jeep.

  They could already be at the hospital. Steve and the boys. Even Ma and Da. They might have been found and taken there. I kept thinking this, then stifling the thought. I had to stop getting my hopes up. I won’t find them, I must prepare for this. But if they were there, they’d be worried about me. I wished the jeep would speed up.

  When we got to the hospital, it was Anton, Orlantha’s father, who came rushing out. He had no shirt, his trousers were ripped, his toes were bloody. He peered into the jeep, looking confused. Why is Orlantha not with you? Where are Steve and the boys? he asked. He thought this was the same jeep we’d driven off in, leaving him lying on the ground. I told him it wasn’t, that I didn’t know where anyone was. I didn’t tell him I’d hoped they’d be at the hospital. Now that I was sure they were not.

  I dragged myself into the waiting area. My legs felt battered, they were unsteady. I noticed deep scratches on my ankles, they were bleeding, there were cuts on the soles of my feet. What happened? My mind could not sort anything out.

  All around me people were talking. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, so I didn’t look their way. The waiting room was small, but their voices seemed distant, they kept getting softer and trailing off. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a tidal wave, there was a tidal wave, he said. I nodded. I tried to seem casual, as if I’d known all along. But a tidal wave is real. My heart tumbled. I sat down on a wooden bench in a corner, by a wall, facing the entrance to the hospital.

  They might still come. We don’t get tidal waves in Sri Lanka. These people don’t know what they’re talking about. An image of Steve walking in with Vik and Mal kept sparking in my head. All three of them bare-chested, Steve carrying the boys, one on each arm. But they couldn’t have survived, they just couldn’t, I kept warning myself. Yet I silently and hopelessly murmured, there might, might just be the smallest chance.

  Now and then a van or a truck came through the hospital gates. Everything very fast. Doors slammed, there was shouting, people staggered out from the trucks, others were carried, nurses and doctors ran outside clattering stretchers and wheelchairs down a ramp. A woman was brought in and left in front of my bench. She had long hair that was matted, it spread across her face. She was mumbling, but she wasn’t making sense. She was covered with a sheet because she was naked, but her feet stuck out, and they were crusted with mud. I couldn’t stop staring at her. I wondered if it was seaweed, all that slime twisted in her hair.

  Anton was also in the waiting room. Each time a truck pulled up, he looked expectant. He rushed out. He went to see if it was bringing his family, or mine. I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to be so quickly disappointed, like Anton was. Always he came back inside within moments, shaking his head. Now and again a child was brought in. These were other children, not Vik and Mal. I watched as each empty truck drove away. They can’t be alive, they were not even in that one.

  The gashes on my ankles hurt. A nurse asked me to come inside and have them cleaned and dressed. I ignored her. Sod off, leave me alone, I thought. Why do these scratches matter? When something this horrendous has happened, I don’t even know what. Anton kept walking around talking to the doctors and nurses. They bandaged the cuts on his toes. He kept praising the hospital staff to me, even with these meager facilities they were coping remarkably well in this chaos. He knew, he was a doctor, he knew they were doing a great job. Like I care, I thought.

  Those benches became crowded. It was stuffy and hot. But I had to sit tight, I couldn’t go outside. If I moved, I would lose my space. And I wanted my corner. I could lean against that wall.

  I was still wet. The nurse I’d just ignored asked me to change my top
. She brought me a T-shirt. I wanted to change, but I couldn’t figure out where to do it. I’m not going into one of those toilets, they’ll stink. I felt nauseated at the thought. So I peeled off my soggy blue shirt right where I was sitting and dropped it on the floor between the bench and the wall. I put on the dry T-shirt. It was purple, and on the front it had a smiling yellow teddy bear.

  Some people passing through that waiting room recognized me. Jeep drivers who saw us regularly in the park, a few waiters from the hotel. They came up to me looking concerned, they asked where my family was, where were my children, hadn’t I seen any one of them yet. I shrugged, shook my head. I wanted them to leave me alone. Each time someone approached me, I was terrified I’d be told that Steve or the boys or my parents were dead.

  The man who was the masseur at our hotel walked past my bench. I’d had a massage with him the previous day, a nice Christmas treat. I had it outdoors on the veranda in the heat of the afternoon, a dry breeze blew in from the sea. Vik played with his cricket ball on the side, bowling to a chair standing in for Steve who was having a nap. Malli sipped a Sprite wearing a Santa hat with flashing lights. That tacky hat Steve got from Tally-Ho Discount in North Finchley, knowing that Malli would be impressed. I thought of all this, then quickly shut out these thoughts. I couldn’t think about yesterday now. Not in this madness, not if they were dead. Fucking Tally-Ho Discount, I always hated that shop.

  And it irked me when I saw that masseur. He didn’t look injured, he didn’t even look wet. How did he survive? I thought. Vik and Mal probably didn’t, so why did he? Whenever I recognized someone from the hotel, I thought this. Why are they alive, surely that wave should have got them as well. Why aren’t they dead?

  When Mette turned up at the hospital, I was thankful to see him. I felt a little safer now. Mette is a jeep driver, and he always drove us on safari in the park. We’d known him a long time. We had said goodbye to him the previous night when he took us back to the hotel. It had been an uneventful safari, only a blur of a bear at dusk. We told him we’d see him again in August, we were leaving the next day. August is not that long to wait, I told Vik, who was always impatient to return. Now Mette was at the hospital because someone had told him that I was here, alone. He sat with me on the bench, he didn’t bother me with any questions. I asked him what time it was. It was around noon.

  The vans and trucks stopped coming in through those gates after a while. The waiting room fell silent, it emptied out. I couldn’t take this quiet, it was better with the rushing and shouting and talking. At least something was happening then. I was jittery now, nothing going on, so I asked Mette if he could take me back to Yala. He agreed. I should go back in case they are waiting for me there, I told myself. They won’t be, they won’t be, I know. But still I should go check.

  I walked barefoot to Mette’s jeep. The gravel outside was burning hot and the cuts on the soles of my feet stung. We drove through Tissa town. Every shop was shut, but the streets were teeming. I heard voices on loudspeakers, urgent. People were piled into the trailers of tractors that were speeding this way and that. Mette’s jeep crawled the fifteen or so miles to Yala. When we turned into the road leading to the park entrance, I couldn’t recognize it. This road usually went through scrub jungle. Now on either side was an endless marsh.

  There was no one waiting at the ticket office, I could tell as we approached it. One of the park rangers came up to our jeep. Everyone who had been found alive was taken to the hospital, he said. But there were bodies near the hotel, if we wanted to go identify. Mette looked at me, indicating he would do it. But there was no way I would let him. What would I do if I learned they were dead? We turned around to go back to the hospital. It was getting late now, I could feel my hope dissolve.

  We stopped at the police station in Tissa on the way, to check if they had a phone that worked. All the phone lines had been down since morning. It was Mette’s idea for me to call someone in Colombo, but I didn’t want to, I couldn’t face telling anyone what had happened. I stayed in the jeep in the front yard of the police station while Mette went inside.

  It was cooler now. From the shadows falling long across the paddy fields that surrounded the police station, I knew it was around five o’clock. Five o’clock. This is the time Vik plays cricket with Steve, I thought. I could hear Vik bouncing a ball, throwing it extra hard onto the ground as he would do, to give himself a difficult catch. He always squinted and smiled while waiting for the ball to drop into his hands. I thought of this but I couldn’t get his face into focus, it was blurred. When I was sitting in the hospital hoping they’d come in, I could see them clearly, but I couldn’t now. Mette returned and told me that even the police didn’t have a phone that worked. That’s a relief, I thought.

  There was a child sitting in an ambulance outside the hospital when we returned. A doctor was shouting, does anyone know this child, does this child belong to anyone here? The doctor wanted to send the child to another hospital some distance away. I tottered up to the ambulance. The back doors were open, I looked in. Is this a boy or a girl? I couldn’t say. Is this child older or younger than Malli? I couldn’t say. Is this Malli? I just couldn’t say for sure. It might be. Probably not. People gathered around the ambulance. They looked at me silently. They looked at me trying to decide if this was my son. I touched the child’s leg. Does this feel like Mal? I couldn’t tell. It might be Mal, and they are going to send him away. Then I remembered, Malli had a dark brown birthmark halfway down the outside of his left thigh. A birthspot, he called it. “Mum, do you have a birthspot also?” he would ask. I could hear his voice now. “It’s on yer bum! Ugh, Dad, look, Mummy’s birthspot is on her bum!” “It’s not on my bum, Mal, it’s near my bum. It’s on my back.” I looked at the child’s left thigh, and there was no round brown mark. I looked at the right thigh as well, just in case. I went back inside the waiting room and took my place in the corner of that bench, by the wall.

  The room filled up again. There were people crying and holding on to each other, some were slumped against pillars, some crouched on the floor with their heads in their hands. The person next to me was pressing on me, there were many more people now squeezed tight on the bench. All around me it reeked of sweat and more sweat. I tried to free myself from the smell by turning my face to the wall. Outside it was dark. When did this happen? I trembled. The light had fled.

  The same nurse from the morning saw me and came over. She stroked my head, she knew my children were missing, she said. I stiffened, I didn’t want to see her look sad for me. Now she was going to make me cry, and I didn’t want that. I hadn’t shed a tear all day, and I wasn’t going to. Not with all these people here, not now.

  A truck pulled in. Its headlights swung across the front yard of the hospital. They’ve found more survivors even though it’s late, they are bringing them in. For a moment that’s what I thought. But then it erupted. The scream. In an instant everyone in that room surged to the entrance. They howled in unison, shoving each other, pushing forward, desperate arms stretched out. Some policeman arrived and pushed them back. But the wailing went on. No words, just an unending, rising, screaming scream. Then I knew. This truck was different. It was bodies this truck had brought.

  I’d never heard shrieking like this before. So wild, wretched, it frightened me, rattled the wall I was holding on to. This noise was crackling into the numbness in my head. It was blasting the smallest stir of hope in my heart. It was telling me that what had happened was unthinkable, but I didn’t want this confirmed. Not by wailing strangers, I did not.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, I had to escape this din, I had to go outside. As I neared the front entrance, a policeman trying to calm the crowd yelled out, “These bodies are not your people, they are only tourists from the hotel.” I didn’t flinch when I heard him. I focused on getting out. I moved through the throng of people as if his words did not matter. I didn’t drop to the ground. I didn’t even whimper, though it was now my turn
to scream.

  I stumbled into Mette’s jeep, parked under a lamppost by the front gates. It was quiet in there. I sat in the driver’s seat and put my head down on the steering wheel. The bodies are from the hotel, the policeman said.

  Anton found me in the jeep. I still had my head on the steering wheel when I heard his voice. I didn’t grasp what he was saying at first. Then I heard the word mortuary, and I balked. Does he want me to go to the mortuary? He can’t be serious, is he out of his mind? I knew I couldn’t step in there, no way. I couldn’t even think the thought, What if Vik and Mal are there? Even though it hovered unformed in my head.

  When I finally understood what Anton was asking, I was thrown. He wanted me to push him to the mortuary in a wheelchair. A wheelchair? Then he explained. The wounds on his feet were too painful, he couldn’t walk that far. So could I wheel him there? My mind was mangled. I have to push him through rows of dead people in a wheelchair? I told him I couldn’t do it. He pleaded, and I kept refusing, for a while at least. But I was tired, I was beaten. Any resolve I had quickly waned, and I gave in.

  The wheelchair was heavy. I had to maneuver it through the crowd. I was furious at having to do this and rammed it into whoever was in my path. Anton gave me directions, and I pushed him along an open corridor, all the time thinking, this cannot be really happening, it surely cannot. Is this me, with an old blanket around my waist, pushing a wheelchair to a mortuary where my entire family might be? Then Anton pointed to a room. I’m not going in, I’m not going near the place, I thought. I let go of the wheelchair and saw it roll down the sloped corridor towards the room. I found my way to the jeep and sat in the dark.