Anil's Ghost - By Michael Ondaatje Page 0,6

only person who taught her real things as a child.

‘She brought all of us up,’ the granddaughter said.

‘Your brother, what does he—’

‘He’s quite a famous pop singer!’

‘And you work in the camps . . .’

‘Four years now.’

When they turned back to her, they saw Lalitha had fallen asleep.

She entered Kynsey Road Hospital and in the main hall found herself surrounded by hammering and yelling. They were breaking up the concrete floors in order to put down new tiles. Students and faculty rushed past her. No one appeared to be concerned that these sounds might be terrifying or exhausting to patients brought in to have wounds dressed or receive stabilizing drugs. Even worse was the voice of the senior medical officer, Dr. Perera, yelling to doctors and assistants, calling them devils for not keeping the building clean. It was so continuous, this yelling, that it seemed to go unheard by most who worked there.

He was a short, thin man, and he had probably only one ally in the building, a young woman pathologist, who, not realizing his reputation, had come to him for help once and thus, by startling him, was befriended. The rest of his colleagues in the building distanced themselves with a tidal wave of anonymous memos and posters. (One poster announced that he was wanted in Glasgow for murder.) Perera’s defense was that the staff was undisciplined, lazy, foolish, unclean and wrongheaded. It was only when he spoke in public that he switched to intellectual and subtle arguments about politics and its link to forensic pathology. His milder twin somehow seemed to have smuggled himself onto the stage.

Anil had heard one of his talks on her second night in Colombo and had been surprised that there were people with his opinions in positions of authority. But now, in the hospital, where she had come to use some equipment, she met the roving snapping dog that was the other side of his nature. She stood there openmouthed while exhausted staff, personnel and workmen and ambling patients veered away from Perera, creating a zone between themselves and this Cerberus.

A young man came up to her.

‘You are Anil Tissera, no?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You won the scholarship to America.’

She didn’t say anything. The foreign celebrity was being pursued.

‘Can you give a small talk, thirty minutes, on poisoning and snakebite?’

They probably knew just as much about snakebite as she did, and she was sure that this choice of subject was intentional—to level the playing field between the foreign-trained and the locally trained.

‘Yes, all right. When?’

‘Tonight?’ the young man said.

She nodded. ‘You contact me at lunch and tell me where.’ She was saying this as she swerved past Dr. Perera.

‘You!’

She turned to face the infamous senior medical officer.

‘You’re the new one, no? Tissera?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard your speech two nights ago. I’m sorry I—’

‘Your father was . . . this thing . . . right?’

‘What . . .’

‘Your father was Nelson K. Tissera?’

‘Yes.’

‘I worked with him at Spittel’s Hospital.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘Look at those padayas. Look—the rubbish here in the halls. This is a hospital, no? Bloody bastards, like a latrine. You are busy now?’

She was busy though she could have changed her plans. She was eager to speak to Dr. Perera and reminisce about her father, but she wanted to do so when he was decaffeinated, calm and alone, not in the midst of a fury. ‘I’ve got a government appointment, I’m afraid, sir. But I’m in Colombo for a while. I hope we can meet.’

‘Your dress is Western, I see.’

‘It’s a habit.’

‘You’re the swimmer, no?’

She walked away, nodding exaggeratedly.

Sarath was reading her postcard upside down as he sat across the desk from her. An unconscious curiosity on his part. He was a man used to cuneiform, faded texts in stone. Even in the shadowed light of the Archaeological Offices this was an easy translation for him.

The sound in the offices was mostly that of the careful pecking of typewriters. Anil had been given the desk by the copy machine, around which there was a permanent tone of complaint, for it never worked properly.

‘Gopal,’ Sarath said, slightly louder than usual, and one of his assistants came to his desk.

‘Two teas. Bullmilk.’

‘Yessir.’

Anil laughed.

‘It’s a Wednesday. Your malaria pill.’

‘Took it.’ She was surprised by Sarath’s concern.

The tea arrived with the condensed milk already in it. Anil picked up her cup and decided to push it.

‘To the comfort of servants. A vainglorious government. Every political opinion supported by its own army.’

‘You talk like a visiting journalist.’

‘I can’t ignore