a human shape. He found comfort in seeing his dark flesh against it. This was his pleasure. Not conversation or the education of others or power, but simply to place his hand against a gal vihara, a living stone whose temperature was dependent on the hour, whose look of porousness would change depending on rain or a quick twilight.
This rock hand could have been his wife’s hand. It had a similar darkness and age to it, a familiar softness. And with ease he could have re-created her life, their years together, with the remaining fragments of her room. Two pencils and a shawl would have been enough to mark and recall her world. But their life remained buried. Whatever motives she had for leaving him, whatever vices and faults and lack he had within him that drove her away had remained unsought by Sarath. He was a man who could walk past a stretch of field and imagine a meeting hall that had been burned to the ground there six hundred years before; he could turn to that absence and with a smoke smudge, a fingerprint, re-create the light and the postures of those sitting there during an evening’s ceremony. But he would unearth nothing of Ravina. This was not caused by any anger towards her, he was just unable to step back to the trauma of that place when he had talked in darkness, pretending there was light. But now, this afternoon, he had returned to the intricacies of the public world, with its various truths. He had acted in such a light. He knew he would not be forgiven that.
He and Gunesena pushed the trolley against the incline. There was hardly any air in the tunnel. Sarath put on the brake.
‘Get some water, Gunesena.’
Gunesena nodded. There was irritation in the formal gesture. He went off, leaving Sarath in the half-dark, and returned five minutes later with a beaker of water.
‘Was it boiled?’
Again Gunesena nodded. Sarath drank it and then got off the floor where he had been sitting. ‘I’m sorry, I was feeling faint.’
‘Yes, sir. I had a tumbler too.’
‘Good.’
He remembered Gunesena drinking the remnant of cordial, Anil holding the bottle, the night they had picked him up on the Kandy road.
They continued a while longer with the trolley. Pushed the double swing doors and broke out into daylight.
The noise and sun almost made him step back. They had come out into the officers’ parking lot. A few drivers stood in the shade of the one tree. Others remained within their cars, the air-conditioning purring. Sarath looked towards the main entrance but couldn’t see her. He was no longer sure she would make it out. The van that was to carry the skeleton they were going to give Anil pulled up beside them and Sarath supervised the loading. The young soldiers wanted to know everything that was going on. It had nothing to do with suspicion, they were just curious. Sarath desired some pause or quiet but he knew he would not get it. The questions were personal not official. Where was he from? How long had he been . . . ? The only way he could escape them was to answer. When they began asking about the figure on the trolley, he waved his hands in front of his face and left Gunesena with them.
She hadn’t come out of the building. He knew, whatever had happened, he couldn’t go in looking for her. She would have to go through the hurdles of insult and humiliation and embarrassments on her own. It was almost an hour since he had last seen her.
He needed to keep busy. Beyond the fence a man was selling sliced pineapple so Sarath bought some through the barbed wire and sprinkled the salt-and-pepper mixture on it. A rupee for two slices. He could go into the lobby, out of the sunlight, but he didn’t know whether he could trust her not to lose her temper and endanger herself more.
An hour and a half now. When he turned and looked back for the fourth time he saw her at the doors. Just standing there, not moving, not knowing where she was or what she was supposed to do.
He came towards her, his fist clenched, his mind swirling.
‘Are you all right?’
She looked down, away from him.
‘Anil.’
She pulled her arm from him. He noticed she was carrying no briefcase. No papers. No forensic equipment. He put his hand on her chest to feel for the small