Anil's Ghost Read Free Page A

noise echoed into the dark space, and when it died down everything became silent.
    ‘Close your eyes,’ he said. ‘I’ll light a sulphur lamp.’ But Anil had worked in night quarries alongside sulphur brightness, or in basements made naked by it. The porous light revealed a large room, the remnants of a toppled saloon counter in the corner, behind which she later would find a chandelier. This was to be their storage space and work lab, claustrophobic, the odour of Lysol in the air.
    She noticed Sarath had already begun using the space to store some of his archaeological findings. There were rock and bone fragments wrapped in clear plastic all over the floor, crates roped tight. Well, she hadn’t come here to deal with the Middle Ages.
    He was saying something she could not hear, while unlocking boxes, bringing out the results of a recent dig.
    ‘. . . mostly sixth century. We think it was a sacred grave for monks, near Bandarawela.’
    ‘Were any skeletons found?’
    ‘So far three of them. And some fossilized wood pots of the same period. Everything fits into the same time pattern.’
    She pulled her gloves on and lifted an old bone to test the weight. The dating seemed right.
    ‘The skeletons were wrapped in leaves, then cloth,’ he told her. ‘Then stones were placed on top of them, which slid down later through the rib cage into the chest area.’
    Years after a body was buried there would be a small shift on the surface of the earth. Then a falling of that stone into the space left by decayed flesh, as if signalling the departure of a spirit. This was a ceremony of nature that always affected her. As a child in Kuttapitiya Anil had once stepped on the shallow grave of a recently buried chicken, her weight driving the air in the dead body out through its beak—there was a muffled squawk, and she’d leapt back with fear, her soul jostled, then clawed earth away, terrified she would see the creature blink. But it was dead, sand in its eyes. Anil was still haunted by what had occurred that afternoon. She had buried it once more and walked backwards away from the grave.
    Now she picked a fragment of bone from the detritus pile and rubbed it. ‘This is from the same place? It doesn’t seem sixth-century.’
    ‘All this material comes from the monks’ burial midden, in the government archaeological preserve. Nobody else gets in.’
    ‘But this bone—it doesn’t come from that time.’
    He had stopped what he was doing and was watching her.
    ‘It’s a government-protected zone. The skeletons were interred in natural hollows near the Bandarawela caves. Skeletons and loose bones. It’s unlikely you’d find anything from another era.’
    ‘Can we go there?’
    ‘I suppose so. Let me try and get a permit.’
     
    They climbed back up onto the deck of the ship, into sunlight and noise. They could hear powerboats in the main channel of Colombo harbour, megaphones shouting out over the crowded waterways.
     
     
    O n her first weekend, Anil borrowed a car and drove to a village a mile beyond Rajagiriya. She parked by a lot tucked away behind trees, so small she could not believe a house existed there. Large speckled leaves of crotons spilled into the courtyard. There seemed to be no one at home.
    The day after she arrived in Colombo Anil had sent a letter but there had been no reply. So she didn’t know if this would be a wasted trip, whether the silence meant acceptance or the address she had was extinct. She knocked, then looked through the bars of the window, turning around quickly as she heard someone come out onto the porch. Anil could hardly recognize the tiny aged woman. They stood facing each other. Anil stepped forward to embrace her. Just then a young woman walked out and watched them without a smile. Anil was aware of the stern eyes that were taking in this sentimental moment.
    When Anil leaned back the old woman was weeping; she put her hands out and ran them over Anil’s hair. Anil held her