“A boy shouted for help. They went looking for him. Then they saw you. So it matches your story. He said you were wearing a dark blue top, sleeveless. That’s what you were wearing, no? And he said you had no trousers on.
“But listen. He said you were the strangest sight he’s ever seen. You were covered in black mud. No, listen, it gets weirder. He said you were spinning. Going round and round. Yes, spinning. Like children do when they want to get dizzy and fall. This man, I was talking to him in his office, and he rose from his chair and showed me what you doing. Spinning in that mud. He was so shocked, he said. You wouldn’t stop.
“When he asked you to go with him, you refused. You wouldn’t speak, but you kept shaking your head. He said you just went on spinning.
“One of the men wrapped his shirt around your waist. They dragged you quite a long way and put you in their van. They took you to the ticket office. Then they rushed off, they had to look for any others who might be alive. He said he has often wondered what happened to you.
“Also, listen. He described where he found you. It was not that far from the hotel, by the lagoon, actually. The water went all those miles inland. Then it turned and went back to the sea across the lagoon. So you were carried all the way in and out again. You hung on to that tree just seconds before you would have been washed out to sea.
“That man, he keeps thinking about how you were spinning. Like you were in a trance. Maybe you were spinning in the water and couldn’t stop? I asked him whether he was sure of this. Yes, yes, he kept saying. Karaki karaki hitiya. Imagine.”
Six
On the Interstate 70 from Denver to Snowmass, Anita’s daughter Kristiana asks me what a ghost town is. Her question startles me. For this is how it used to be. Me answering their questions, explaining things to her and Vik. About dung beetles and ant colonies, about capital cities and the rings around Saturn, about duck-billed dinosaurs. Sometimes I’d throw in a silly story to make them laugh. “When I was little, my friend in Sri Lanka ate the ants on her bottle of Orange Crush saying they were full of vitamin C. And they didn’t bite her tongue.” “Did she eat a whole ant colony?” “No, just half of one, I think.” But now when Kristiana asks me about Colorado ghost towns, I offer only a stilted sentence. How can I answer her questions when Vik is not here? When Vik is not here to savor my replies or frown in distrust. How can I bring myself to tell her what I would have told them both? If Vik were here, they would have stories of the gold rush and prospectors, of exploding rocks and of railroads, of blasting tunnels in the mountains to find silver ore.
They were like siblings, Kristiana, her sister, and my boys. The familiarity, the ease, the irritation, the fury, it was all there. Our families had been neighbors in London since Kristiana and Vikram were six months old. Alexandra and Malli didn’t know a world without each other. And over the years, through combat and cooperation, the older two and the younger two became more and more alike, their interests and personalities calibrating to such an extent.
I can see us all on a Friday night. Anita, Agi, Steve, and I are in our kitchen. The table is scattered with bottles of red wine, the smell of the garlic and rosemary that Steve has stuffed into a leg of lamb escapes from the oven, and Abbey Lincoln’s “When the Lights Go on Again” warms us. In the playroom, Vik is reading to Kristiana from A Field Guide to the Birds of Sri Lanka by G. M. Henry, his latest obsession. Sweet-natured as always, she tries to be eager about wingspans and the nesting habits of some obscure bird. The younger duo make regular trips to the toilet, taking turns to crouch and peer while the other does a wee. Their faces are thickly painted with crayons. An overturned sofa is a castle. And as the evening progresses, our conversations in the kitchen are interrupted by the sounds of our children’s mayhem. But the wine is so good that not one of us wants to emerge from our mild stupor to investigate.
And now I am in a trance, traveling in the Colorado Rockies with Anita, Agi, and these girls who are so infused with my boys. Expressions, gestures, mannerisms, pronouncements all overwhelm me, coming at me fast, each a reflection of Vik and Mal. I want to avert my eyes, but I furtively seek them out, hungry for every one. Alexandra watches television, resting her chin on her fists in concentration. That’s just how Malli would sit, and he would glower at me if I entered the room. Leave me alone. Now I see the four of them, rapt in an afternoon TV program, a blue bowl with tangerine pips balancing on the arm of our red sofa.
My mind fumbles. They should all be here. Vik and Malli should have gone skiing with the girls. The boys’ faces should now be flushed from the sun and the wind and from jumping in and out of the hot tub. The four children would often bathe together in Anita’s oversize bath, elbowing each other for a bit more space, soap bubbles popping on their cheeks. I can see it as if it’s happening now. I want to lift Malli out of the tub and smell crayons on his face.
When the girls speak, my heart listens in fear of being blown apart by the knowledge of what would have been. When I project on my own what the boys would be doing now, my thoughts can be as nebulous as I want them to be. Not so with the girls’ chatter, no fog to veil what they say.
One evening we talk a lot about Vik and Malli. We recall amusing incidents. The girls’ faces shine as they speak of how Vik wanted a crow as a pet. I tell them about the three pet terrapins the boys had in Colombo. Malli named one of them Rover because what he really wanted was a dog. And when the terrapins got sick and died, I tell them, Steve and I worried that the boys would be sad, but Vikram fed the dead terrapins to the crows. Vik was so funny, says Alexi. And as her blue eyes flash in remembering, I am made acutely aware that so much of Vik and Malli still remains embedded in these girls. So how can I now want to escape from them? How can I shield my eyes and ears from them, even as they unwittingly send piercing bits of shrapnel my way? It all ended so impossibly for them, too. We went to Sri Lanka for Christmas, as usual, and never returned. Vikram is a good swimmer, he will swim through the wave, Kristiana kept saying in those bewildering early days. That was also when she began bouts of burping, loud and deliberate, something she never did before. It was our Vik who was the maestro of earsplitting burps. It’s like she took on Vikram’s spirit, Anita told me later. The more annoying bits of it, at least.
Kristiana has a stomachache and is asleep on my lap. Vikram would sleep on me like this, the weight sinking into me, the intermittent wriggling to get comfortable. This could be Vik. A strand of hair falls across her face, and I push it back. Her hair is not drenched in sweat. Vik always sweated when he slept on my lap. And now as I sit here and look out at the snow peaks of the Rockies glowing in the lowering sun, the refrain Vikram will never sleep on my lap cinders me. Kristiana stirs, clutches her stomach, and whimpers a little. I run my fingers through her hair to keep her asleep until the Calpol makes her tummy ache better, exactly as I would do with Vikram.
LONDON, 2009
The blackout blinds in the boys’ bedroom never really did their job. They wouldn’t pull all the way down, so in the summer the light came in way too early. A strip of sun stole across the carpet and lit up an open book or made one of yesterday’s green socks glow. That was all it took to stir Vik. In an instant he’d be at the window, telling his brother to wake up quick, the foxes might be in the garden. I’d give up trying to sleep through their shouts of “Fox! Fox!” and stagger downstairs to free them into the glorious morning. Those faulty blinds meant hours of fun before school. Five summers ago, that was, yet it seems like no time at all.