Mosquito (25 page)

A lifetime passed. Objects marked the years on Theo’s table. Each was from another life, each irreversibly linked to the next. They were all his possessions. A penknife from his childhood, that was one. He had been six when he had been given it. Many words had been carved with its blade. An oil lamp, given to him by his mother, left over from the days when he used to visit the temple. He had always taken it on his travels and somehow it had never broken. A small beaded bag belonging to Anna. They had found it on the ground where she had been mugged. He had kept it all these years. Inside was the wedding ring he had taken from her finger before he buried her. A palm leaf,
kept between the pages of a book. He had picked it on a trip down the Nile. A mollusc shell from the Adriatic, indigo blue and black, and pearl white. A rag, moulded and stained with vermilion, and a small hand-sewn notebook, unused and torn.

The agent was astonished to hear from him.

‘For God’s sake, Theo, I thought you were dead. I sent you letter after letter, but you never replied. I tried phoning you but the lines were constantly down. What sort of hole have you been living in?’

Theo laughed. It was the first time he had laughed in years.

‘I’ve been writing,’ he said.

‘Theo,’ said the agent, sounding hysterical, ‘what do you mean? You ring me up after years and tell me you’ve been writing. You can’t do this to me. Do you know the trouble I’ve gone to trying to get hold of you? I even thought of coming out to that wretched place in search of you but the Foreign Office gave out a warning against travel. Your countrymen seemed such bloody savages that I gave up.
Well
, what happened? And another thing,’ the agent rushed on, ‘you’re a rich man now, you know. The film was a runaway success. And did you say you’re writing again? Tell me all about it.’

‘I’ll put it all in a letter,’ Theo said faintly, not wanting to talk.

So Theo wrote to him. For talking wore him out and his own voice could not be trusted. So he wrote.

‘
The book is about hope
,’ he wrote, ‘
and survival. About war, and also indifference. But you’re wrong
,’ he added, surprising himself by the strength of his convictions, ‘
they are not
all
savages here. There are savages everywhere, not just here
.’

Then he sent the agent the first part of his story.

A
FTER HIS SHOW IN
M
UNICH
R
OHAN
had had two more shows in Venice. In the four years since he had started painting again, he had worked with dogged determination, spending all the available hours of daylight possible in his studio. Giulia had begun collecting his reviews in a book. She was glad he was working properly again; glad he had picked up where he had left off in Colombo. It appeared they had shaken off their turbulent years in the tropics, outwardly it might have been said they had recovered. Rohan was mellower, less bad-tempered, and for her part Giulia expected less. Old age had crept up on both of them, she noticed, thinking, too, this suited them in many ways. All in all they were more content these days. Occasionally Giulia even managed to make him socialise with the few friends she had made, and they had stopped sniping at each other as they had when they first arrived in Italy. The difficult patch in their marriage appeared to have passed, but, Giulia saw with sad acceptance, the optimism had gone from it also. They lived quietly, seriously, no longer taking risks and were wary of new things. And the past with all its light and shade was never mentioned. Only in Rohan’s
paintings, strange, elegiac and ghostly, could it be glimpsed. Threadbare like a carpet, all his memories showed in his pictures with a transparency that Giulia found at times unbearable. He was an exile; he would remain an exile always. Once, in a rare moment of admission, he read Giulia a small notice in an English newspaper.

A spate of credit-card crimes involving a gang of Sri Lankans has erupted in London. The Home Office has confirmed that these underaged youths, currently facing trial, could also face deportation back to Sri Lanka despite the spasmodic violence still taking place in some parts of the island. Young Tamil boys, who left their homeland hoping to provide for their impoverished families, could soon be returning in disgrace often to a worse situation than the one they left behind. It is well known that Tamils who evaded the guerrilla army by escaping abroad often face execution on their return.

‘So it goes on,’ Rohan said. ‘Once an outcast, always an outcast. Memory is all we have to rely on. Let’s hope the girl is holding on to hers.’

Reviews of his paintings were appearing with marked regularity in the Italian papers. They spoke of his depiction of loss and alienation, and of warmth remembered. Giulia read them without comment. And so the years had passed. This was their life now, neither so good nor so bad. And at least, they both thought privately, they were free.

One day towards the end of summer Rohan was introduced to an Englishwoman from London. Her name was Alison Fielding, she told him, and she ran a small gallery called London Fields. Having seen his paintings in Art Basel, she contacted him, inviting him to submit slides of current work.

‘London?’ said Giulia, surprised. ‘I thought you didn’t want to show in London?’

He had not been back since that day, seven years ago, when he and Giulia trawled the city looking for Nulani. Giulia too had never returned. Somehow it had never happened. The small difficulties, the shifts and changes in their relationships, all the minutiae of the everyday, had made her reluctant to disturb the past. Too much had been lost, too much remained precarious for either of them to open old wounds. But now, as summer began to recede, before the sharp forerunners of winter winds stirred the leaves, Rohan finally had a reason to visit. Alison Fielding was enthusiastic.

‘
Do come
,’ she wrote. ‘
Bring some work. We can talk it over. I liked your paintings very much
.’

Giulia could not leave her work, so Rohan went alone to a city still basking in an Indian summer. The land was brown through lack of rain and the city glowed with an alert bustle that he had never noticed before. The gallery was smaller than he had expected, tucked away in a corner of Clerkenwell. He almost walked past it. In the window were two paintings, one black on red, thick impasto, marked and stained, and another white as marble. Small numbers were stencilled along the edges of the canvas. Something about them caught Rohan’s eye. He gazed, puzzled.

‘Ah,’ said Alison Fielding, greeting him, smiling. ‘You’ve noticed my other Sri Lankan artist!’

Blue flew out from a canvas. Followed by another, deeper shade, more piercing, hinting gold beneath it and something else, some unidentifiable movement of light. Rohan stared. A line, excavated, as it were, in the dark, seemed slightly muffled, bringing a mysterious sense of intimacy to the whole. Another painting hung alone on a far wall. He found himself thinking
of the inner chamber of ancient, sacred tombs. Stars showed faintly through a midnight sky. The canvases glowed; there was no other way to describe them. They were both luminescent and extraordinarily still. The contradictions of this vast, aerated space within the density of the blues were magical. Darkness and light, together in the most unlikely place of entombment, appeared to sink to the depths of the earth, to the human body itself, metaphorically binding two impossible worlds. The paintings had no names, only numbers. There were more, stacked in corners. Rohan followed them around the room, mesmerised. Downstairs, the images were of carefully drawn objects, glimpsed and then rubbed out even at the moment of recognition; hinting at the ways in which the past inhabits us, shaping us at some level hovering below conscious thought. And all the time anxiety and claustrophobia remained inescapably part of the whole.

‘You like them?’ asked Alison Fielding. Rohan stared.

‘They’re wonderful,’ he said. ‘Did you say…?’

‘Yes, the artist is Sri Lankan. A woman.’

‘There is only one,’ said Rohan slowly, ‘only one Sri Lankan artist that I can think of. Only one who…’ He broke off, unable to go on.

‘Her name is Nulani Mendis,’ said Alison Fielding, smiling broadly. ‘D’you know of her? Good! I was thinking of showing you both together actually. You must meet her. But first, let me see what you have brought me.’

‘And that was how I met her, finally,’ said Rohan.

He was back, with the promise of an exhibition with Nulani. His excitement was infectious. Since he had returned he had been unable to stop smiling. All evening they had sat drinking wine and he had talked non-stop. Giulia could not get a word in edgeways. She felt light-headed, drunk with astonishment
and unanswered questions. When would Giulia see her? How was she? How did she look? What did she say when she met Rohan? Rohan laughed, delighted, remembering.

‘She simply could not believe it when Alison rang her. It was comical really,’ he said, pausing. ‘If it wasn’t so sad,’ he added. ‘Alison picked up the phone and just called her up. “There’s a painter friend of yours from Sri Lanka,” was all she said. Just like that. Can you imagine it? And half an hour later there she was, little Nulani Mendis, changed and yet not so changed, at all. Breathless with shock and beautiful as ever.’ He paused, again. ‘We spent the whole evening together. In the end Alison had to send us tactfully away, so she could shut the gallery.’

They had stepped out into the street. The weather had changed. He had noticed it had been raining. Fine, autumn rain, bringing a few leaves down. The air was edged with a sharp chill, but they had not cared, for home cried out to them. The smell of it, the sounds. It had been a low and haunting call, insistent and lovely, refusing to be ignored. They had gone into a pub and he had bought her a lemonade.

‘She doesn’t drink,’ Rohan said. ‘And she’s very thin, and…’ He hesitated, not knowing how to go on. How to describe the dark eyes that had looked back at him, unfathomable and softened, with a distant cast of pain.

‘She’s a wonderful painter,’ he said instead. ‘Alison’s going to arrange the exhibition. She’ll be in touch soon. And d’you know what her first words were? “Where’s Giulia?”’

He grinned. Tears pricked the back of Giulia’s eyes. Was it really true?

‘So when can I see her?’

‘Whenever you want,’ said Rohan, laughing boyishly. ‘I can’t believe it either. It felt as though we had been talking together
only moments before, as though no time had elapsed at all. Well…’ he hesitated, ‘almost.’

They had gone on in this way all evening, saying everything and nothing. Feeling the slow ebb and flow of memory thread lightly between them, drawing them closer. How had they lost touch? At some point Rohan had sensed she had no desire to go back to her flat. He had asked her about her brother then.

‘Jim?’ asked Giulia. ‘Theo used to call him Lucky Jim.’

Rohan nodded, his face inscrutable. Yes, they had talked about her useless brother.

‘She never sees him. Hardly, anyway. Once a year perhaps.’

And then, he told Giulia, they had alluded to other things; the years that had passed. And Rohan had felt admiration rise up and astonish him and he had understood, perhaps for the first time, her terrible struggles, and the acceptance of what had happened to her life.

‘You were the one who told me to accept,’ she had reminded him. ‘“Like a coconut palm in the monsoon,” you said. “You must bend in the wind.” D’you remember?’

Rohan remembered. Why had he not been able to take his own advice?

‘She’s given me her telephone number,’ he told Giulia. ‘Naturally she’s frightened of losing us again. I said you’d want to ring. I said, knowing you, you’d ring whatever the time was tonight!’

They both laughed and Rohan poured more wine.

‘Oh, it’s good to be back,’ he said, meaning something else entirely.

The air was charged with unspoken things. Refreshed, reborn. They felt alive in ways only dimly remembered.

‘And she’s all right?’ asked Giulia, eventually, as they sat in companionable silence, forgetting to turn the lights on. She did
not want to probe too much, too soon, but the memory of Theo stretched in a long, sorrowful shadow between them. As it always will, reflected Giulia. Rohan sighed deeply. They continued to sit without speaking in this way. At last he stirred himself.

‘Yes and no.’ He was silent for a moment longer. ‘She’s living with some man. It doesn’t sound as if it’s working. She wants to leave. I think. They…haven’t much in common except, she said, maybe a mutual loneliness at the beginning. Anyway, it’s been wrong for some time. They are both aware of this.’

Once again shadows passed between them.

‘But habit has kept them together. For how much longer, who can say?’

‘Like us,’ said Giulia softly, before she could stop herself.

Startled, Rohan glanced sharply at her. Outside the window the twilight was fading fast. Giulia’s face, silhouetted against it, looked tired. She had aged, he saw, but still there was something infinitely lovely about her. Shocked, he looked at her anew and saw the light which once, many years ago, had shone faintly and transparently within her, was now very clear and very pure. As if the shaping and chiselling of all the years of her life was revealed at last, in the many fine lines of her face. Why had he not seen this before? Why had he taken her for granted? And then, with sudden insight, he knew she had very nearly given up. But how long has she looked this way, without me caring? he thought with amazement. They had embarked on a journey together. It had not been easy. Giulia had not been able to have children yet somehow they had weathered
that
storm. And he paused for a moment, head bowed, recalling again the friendship, first with Anna, and later with Theo. Anna’s death, he saw, had been the foreshadow of what was to come. How happy they had been once, he thought, how young! They would never be young again. And in that moment, halfway between evening
and night, with a feeling of great sweetness, he saw, at last, they had reached a different kind of peace. She was his wife. He loved her, still. After all these years, after all they had been through, he could
still
say this and mean it. In the bluish half-light reflecting the surface of the canal water, he reached out and clasped her hand. It was soft and warm and it carried within it a lifetime of touch.

‘No,’ he said at last, his voice firm. ‘Not like us. We have come through this together. What happened to Anna and then to Theo was terrible but I no longer look for explanations. I accept, Giulia. This is life. These are the fruits of war, inescapable and terrible. I see now how important it is to end this struggle, to accept my own helplessness in all that has happened. My problem was that I always thought it was my fault and I carried the burden alone. But,’ he gestured towards his paintings, ‘I can’t do any of this without you, you know. You have borne witness with me. We tell this tale together. You, Giulia, you are the mainstay of my life.’

She smiled at him, and he saw her eyes still shone with the grace he had always associated with her. He saw in that smile, mellow and very wonderful, that she understood. And, he thought with astonishment, she had always understood.

Later she rang the girl. Bridging the years, hearing again the voice that sounded the same, yet was not. Guessing at all the invisible changes that must have taken place. All that probably could never be spoken of now. First excitement gave way to caution.

‘We brought your notebooks,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘We had no address to send them to.’ She paused, waiting.

‘And your paintings, did Rohan tell you?’

And in a rush of emotion, Giulia remembered how she had longed to find her, how the absence had served only to compound the other losses, of Anna and of Theo. Of her own marriage. So many lives unravelled by the chain of terrible
events. So much destroyed by war. They talked for a while longer, laughing, interrupting each other, and slowly, imperceptibly, she began to hear the subtle changes in the girl.

‘She’s grown up,’ she told Rohan afterwards. ‘It isn’t anything she says, specifically. It isn’t
what
she says. More how she says it.’

‘She’s a serious artist, now,’ said Rohan. ‘People have begun to notice her. D’you remember what I told you, on that terrible night? How it would all feed into her work?’

Giulia nodded. How could she forget that night?