On Sal Mal Lane (50 page)

“Why are you going home, Sonna Sir?” the man asked, keeping pace, “there’s work to be done.”

“I have done enough. I have to go and see if my family is okay.”

The man stopped. “Why would your family not be okay? Aren’t they Burgher?”

“Yes, Burgher, but my father’s aunt, others down the road—”

“Then you come with us when we go there to get rid of them,” the man said, resuming his jog, his rolled-up sarong bouncing against his thighs as he ran.

Sonna left Kalu Aiyya behind and ran faster until he came to the front of the group. “Stop!” he said, holding up his arms. “Stop!”

The men bumped into each other as they came to a slow stop. Around them other smaller groups of men and some women were tearing through the streets. There were no Tamils to be seen on the streets now; they had all gone into hiding or run away or were trapped in their homes. An egg-shaped van came speeding up the road and one of the men pulled another away from its path, his arm around his shoulder. Both men shouted at the driver to watch where he was going, couldn’t he see he could kill somebody driving like that?

“What, Sonna Sir? What? Tell quickly!” one of the men shouted. One of his forearms sparkled with several gold bangles and he had a peacock-blue silk sari wrapped around his neck. His pockets bulged.

Sonna looked around. The rest of them, too, were carrying their loot upon their bodies, in their clothes. One man kept patting his shirt pocket, which was filled with hair clips and ribbons for some beloved female in his life. Another had a child’s yellow-and-green drink bottle slung around his neck. A third had dressed himself in shirts and women’s blouses to the point that the upper half of his body seemed bloated in contrast to his thin legs. In one corner there was a man who was using the edge of a sleeve to wipe the blood off a young boy who had suffered some injury along the way. He spat into the shirt and wiped again, then pressed the shirt into the wound. The boy grimaced in pain and the man uttered some soothing words. None of them carried weapons. Weapons, Sonna supposed, were always easy to find. They lay in every house so long as the inhabitants were too scared to pick them up themselves. Any chair, any knife, any bat, any bar in any window. That and the power of numbers. He shuddered.

“What?” the same man yelled. “If there’s nothing to say, let us keep going. We’re wasting time.”

“My lane, Sal Mal Lane, must not be touched,” Sonna said, making his voice as powerful as he could, some of the depth of his father’s voice suddenly coming out of his mouth.

The men started shouting, arguing. “What is so great about your Tamils? You have Tamils, they must also go,” one said. He had sat down on a suitcase stuffed with stolen goods, saris, cutlery, picture frames, even a bell that he had yanked off a tricycle.

“My family is there,” Sonna said. “I don’t want my family harmed. And there are Sinhalese families there. Tisseras, Silvas, Heraths.” He paused and drew a deep breath, “Heraths specially, they will be helping Tamils. They must be safe.”

“Who is this Herath fucker?” one man asked, spitting. “Who is this
huththa
who is helping Tamils?”

“He deserves to burn,” said another, a man who looked eminently decent except for the dirt and sweat on his khaki trousers and white shirt, someone who obviously held a desk job. Sonna wondered how he had got involved with this particular group.

“We should burn the whole lane,” a teenaged boy said. His voice cracked in the middle of the sentence and he finished on a high whine. He glanced at Sonna and added, “Except Sonna Sir’s house. He’s with us.”

“Are you with us?” the man with the sari around his neck asked Sonna. “Because if you aren’t with us then you must be like this Herath fool. Helping Tamils. Sounds like that is what is happening here.” He used the edge of the sari to wipe the sweat, ash, and dirt off his face, and the blue sari came away creased and grimed.

Another man spoke up. “Sonna Sir has always been with us. If he’s asking, we should listen.”

The men broke into argument again, some wanting to forget Kalyani Avenue and go straight to Sal Mal Lane to torch all the houses, others saying no, there was more to be done on Kalyani Avenue, those Indian Tamils who thought they were too good for everybody, and what kind of barbarians would burn the houses of Sinhalese people? Their own race? No, this was a time to protect
our
people, wives, children, homes, this was a time to make it clear that not one more Sinhalese soldier would ever be touched by those Tamil devils in Jaffna. If any of the men remembered an attenuating fact, some kindness done or received, some sweet shared, some marriage made within their families with the Tamils, not in faraway Jaffna, which none of them had ever visited, but those who lived among them, they did not mention it. This was a time of just deserts and lessons taught and believing without a shadow of doubt that whatever was done was deserved.

Sonna listened, his whole body alert. If the men decided to turn toward Sal Mal Lane, he would have to outrun them. He did not know what he would do when he got there. Mohan’s guns came to mind. If he could reach Mohan, the two of them could get those guns and stand at the bottom of the road. None of the marauding crowds had that kind of weapon. He could keep the lane safe. His father might join them. His heart lifted then resettled at this prospect. He thought of Devi, Rashmi, Nihil, how grateful they would be that he had saved not just one house but the whole lane. He could taste it, that moment, it was so close. He braced himself to start running.

Then the leader of the group, a man who had suffered burns over most of his body as a child, and whose limbs were covered in large patches of pink flesh, and who was, on account, called Sudhu Aiyya, spoke. “You come with us to Kalyani Avenue,” he said. “After that we will have to go to Sal Mal Lane. We can’t leave out certain Tamils like you are saying. No, listen! Listen!” he said, as Sonna protested. “We will go to Sal Mal Lane but we will not touch the Tamils.” A dissatisfied murmur rose up. “All of you listen to me,” he yelled. “We will not touch them, but we will have to destroy their houses, there’s no help for that. That son of a whore Prabhakaran asked for this, killing our soldiers. Now, they will get it.”

“I’m asking for a favor, Sudhu Aiyya,” Sonna said, his voice lower now, the threat gone out of it. “Please, you can take everything from Kalyani Avenue—”

“
Oy!
Sudhu Aiyya has decided, didn’t you hear?” The man nearest to him pushed Sonna in the chest.

“I will do anything,” Sonna begged, “I will burn every house on Kalyani Avenue, anything, but please save Sal Mal Lane.”

“Enough!” Sudhu Aiyya said. “You want to burn houses? You tell us which houses to burn. Pick two.”

“On Kalyani Avenue?” Sonna asked. “Burn everything! Give me the kerosene and I will burn them!”

“No, on Sal Mal Lane. Pick two.”

Sonna felt the world tip and blur before his eyes. Pick two? Which two houses could he pick? What right had he to pick any? If the men were unwilling to leave his lane alone, what hope was there that once they got there they wouldn’t attack his mother and sisters, the Heraths, everybody?

Sonna calculated quickly. Raju, how he hated him, how he hated the way he fraternized with the Herath children, the way he held himself straight and seemed to have a purpose in his life. How he hated that he had competed in that weight-lifting tournament even if he had lost. And the Niles family. What was the appeal of a family like that to all of the children, including Rose and Dolly? Had they invited him to come to the variety show? Had they asked if he might like to sing? No, they hadn’t. They had left him out as if he was just a mangy stray, unwanted and despised by everyone. But even they had room for Raju. And the Nadesans, who had never spoken a single word to him in their life, who did they think they were? Indian Tamils, they called themselves, high caste, better even than Raju’s mother. What right did they have to treat him that way? Did they talk to his sisters? To the Heraths? He did not know. As far as he knew, they spoke to nobody. And yet. Their house sat next door to the Heraths’. If it burned, so would the Herath home. He pictured it, the flames leaping over that wall, setting everything alight. He pictured the children screaming, running out onto the street. He pictured Rashmi. He pictured Nihil. He made up his mind.

“Then burn Raju’s house and the Niles house, the two houses past my father’s house,” he said. “Burn those. Leave the others alone. Leave the people alone. They will all be in the Herath house. Do not touch them.” He said this last with a dark passion that seemed to convince the men that he knew what he was asking and what he was willing to sacrifice to make sure they listened.

They turned away more quietly and walked in silence for a while, but when they got to Kalyani Avenue they found their voices again. Sonna did not have to join them in burning the houses down that road. When they got there, the entire street was already on fire. Sonna stood before it and the fear he had for Sal Mal Lane drained out of him. There was nothing he could do to stop any of it.
Eht yob,
he whispered.
Eht yob, eht yob.

The Day That Followed

There was no need to read newspapers. What was happening was happening to them.

In the late hours of that first night, Mr. Herath, Mr. Sansoni, and Mr. Tissera walked silently down the street. Their footsteps were recorded as they went, traced into the thin layer of ash and dirt that covered the lane in places. Nothing stirred though all around them they could feel alertness, everybody listening, watching, waiting behind closed doors and latched gates. A curfew had been imposed and so they moved quickly and did not speak to each other as they walked under cover of darkness, past Jimmy Bolling, who had fallen asleep still seated in his chair, the belts fallen to the ground beside him. They crossed the road, slipped behind the barbed wire around his property, and knocked on Koralé’s back door.

“We need to buy rice,” Mr. Tissera said. The Tisseras’ house, too, now held its own refugee, the Tamil wife of the editor of a Communist newspaper, who had arrived hiding her face under a helmet and seated on the back of a motorbike driven by a friend. Ever a fearful man, Mr. Tissera had insisted that he would stay up all night playing carrom with his son to keep watch, but had abandoned this post to his wife at Mr. Herath’s request.

Koralé poured the rice into three bags and then added tins of canned fish though nobody had asked him for that. No money was taken, though Mr. Sansoni offered and Mr. Herath insisted and Mr. Tissera nodded.

“No, no,” he said, pushing the money away. “Not for this.”

They thanked him and went back the way they had come, though their first attempt was aborted when an army truck came patrolling slowly down the streets, the soldiers inside looking more scared than any they had ever seen. They stopped beside Jimmy Bolling, hushing him quickly when he cursed at them, startled out of his sleep. They gave him a bag of rice and fish, which he stood up to take. As they walked on they heard him rap on the door to his compound, the sound carrying clear down the silent road, and all three men looked back the way they had come. The other bags of rice and fish were taken to Mr. Herath’s house and given to Mrs. Herath, who had made plain ginger tea for them all. After she left, carrying two cups of tea for Mrs. Niles and Kala Niles, who were still up, the men huddled in the kitchen. Mr. Sansoni was given a chair on account of his age and girth, but Mr. Herath leaned on the table on which their gas cooker sat, and Mr. Tissera crouched on a low stool. Kamala, not knowing what to do if she was not needed in the kitchen while food and drink were being prepared, took a broom and began to sweep the veranda, even though it was now close to midnight, pausing every few steps to stamp lightly on the floor to dust off her bare feet.

It was Mr. Sansoni who said it: “We will have to set up a neighborhood watch.” And that was what was discussed in whispers in the kitchen whose light would not reach the road outside, but whose light and the whispers did reach the ears of Mr. Niles, who lay far from repose in the area just outside. If he was inclined to talk, Mr. Niles may have asked what they were planning to protect, but Mr. Tissera did that for him.

“Everything is looted, and the houses are damaged. What is there to protect now?” He turned up his palms. “Maybe only our own houses. They may come back for us.”

“We have to protect whatever is left,” Mr. Sansoni said, running his fingers through the gray curls on his head. He hadn’t washed since morning and he could smell the sweat on himself.

“In other places, people have been killed. Our neighbors are still here with us. We have to protect them,” Mr. Herath said. “Not only from the thugs who come from outside,” he added.

Nobody said anything further as they all sipped their tea and considered this. And if, in ostracizing that family, these neighbors could set themselves apart from the things that the Silvas had encouraged, then let us allow them this relief, for it would not last; deep down, they knew that the Silvas were no more wholly guilty than they themselves were wholly innocent, for guilt and innocence lived within them all, even their guests.

The next morning the children came out of hiding, and because their lane was so small, a dead end after all, and their lives so tight, they were allowed to walk outside as a group, and walk they did, marveling at what had taken place, awe as much a part of their impression as horror. They passed beneath the sal mal trees, whose lower branches were laden with singed leaves and flowers as though a fall season the tropical island had never known had chanced upon them. Their lane was littered with items that had been dropped or abandoned, skeins of embroidery threads, aluminum molds for making string-hoppers, even an upholstered chair that they did not recognize.

“Must ’ave been the Nadesans’,” Rose said.

Suren picked it up and tried to forced the top of the backrest together, but try as he might he could not make it look whole again and he had to leave it lying on its side exactly as they had found it. He said, “We can try to clean Kala Akki’s house,” and everybody fell in line with him, sweeping charred bits of this and that to the side of the road with their rubber slippers as they walked.