arm. His eyes like a deer in her light. The sound coming from God knows where. Not his throat. It couldn’t be his throat. Not now.
‘How quick were you?’ It was Sarath.
‘Quick. I was outside. Rip some cloth off the bed.’
She moved towards Ananda. The eyes open, not blinking, and she thought he might already be dead. She waited for eye movement, and after what felt like a long time it came. His hand was still half gestured into the air. ‘I need the cloth fast, Sarath.’ ‘Right.’ She tried pulling the knife out of Ananda’s grip but couldn’t, and let it be. The blood coming off his elbow onto her sarong, she was close enough to smell it, the flashlight held between her thighs, aimed up as she crouched there.
Sarath began to tear the pillowcase and passed her strips of cloth, which she wrapped around Ananda’s neck. She put the large flap of skin flat against his neck and bound it tight.
‘I need some antiseptic. Do you know where it is?’ When he brought it she soaked the cloth in it so it would reach the wound. The windpipe was still intact, but she needed to tighten the bandage so less blood would be lost, even though he was having difficulty breathing already. She leaned forward and pressed the wound with her fingers, the knife in his hand now behind her.
‘You need to phone Gamini and get him to send someone.’
‘The cell phone’s dead. I’ll phone from the village. If I can’t get someone, I’ll drive him to Ratnapura.’
‘Light a lamp, will you, for us. Before you go.’
He returned with an oil lamp. It was too bright for them at that hour, and he turned down the wick, because what he could see was terrible.
‘He called forth the dead,’ she whispered.
‘No. He’s just one of those who try to kill themselves because they lost people.’
She caught a waver in the eyes in front of her.
. . .
Anil was not conscious of Sarath’s leaving. She remained with Ananda in the corner of the room, lamplight holding them together. She should have been the one to go. Sarath could talk and calm him. Or did he need silence? Perhaps. Perhaps the presence of a woman helped.
She slipped in the blood getting up from her crouch, went to the bed and tore more strips off the pillowcase. She felt an amulet under the pillow and took it. When she returned, his eyes were wide open, seemed to be swallowing everything. Oh my God—he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t see. She found them on the floor, he had been wearing them when he began to kill himself.
She rubbed the blood on her hands onto her sarong and placed the spectacles on his face. Suddenly, in spite of his wound, in spite of the knife still in his right hand, still a threat, he seemed to be back with her, among the living. She felt she could speak in any language, he would understand the purpose of any gesture. How far back was their moment of connection, when his hand had been on her shoulder? Just a few hours earlier. She put the amulet in his left hand but he could not or would not hold it. He was drifting back into unconsciousness or sleep.
What was an amulet, what was a baila, to him now? Or spectacles, or a bond. All that was for her own peace. She had interrupted his death. She was the obstacle to what he wanted. The blood had already filled the bandage. She rose and hurried through the courtyard, along with the random glance of the flashlight, into the kitchen, to their portable icebox. Opened it, and at the back, wrapped in newspaper, found the emergency epinephrine she always carried. Perhaps it would slow the bleeding, constrict the blood vessels and help his blood pressure. She rolled an ampule between her palms to warm it. On her knees, beside him, she sucked the epinephrine up into the syringe. He was looking at her, it felt, from a great distance, with no interest in what she was doing. She put her left hand on his chest to keep him from moving—she was pushing him back, she realized, as far as he would go, to stay secure, into the room’s corner—then stabbed it into the arm. Continuing to hold him with her left hand, she filled the syringe once more, from a second ampule held between her knees, then gave