Soldier of Love – a short story by Gamini Akmeemana

 

Samanalee can't remember if it was raining just as hard when the kitchen wall collapsed. It was during the last monsoon. The walls were wattle and daub, she had helped her father and younger brother to make the clay balls. It felt solid once the walls were dry, and smelled good, too, like the warm earth after a sudden shower. But the rain was too much. It fell like a cascade of nails. The skin hurt wherever the drops fell. The walls were repaired now, this time with ugly cement blocks, and she heard the rain knocking against them along with the hissing wind.

How odd that rain came slashing down on them as Janaka hugged her for the last time. That was five years ago, when she was still a schoolgirl. He had three days leave and was catching the Anuradhapura bus early the next day to reach his camp in Vavuniya on time. "Our corporal's a bastard," she remembered him saying. "He's worse than the Tigers."

“Don’t go,” she told him, her words melting in the rain. They were both soaked to the skin and her breasts looked sculpted in the cloth. He kissed her and pulled away gently, saying:”Go now before they start looking for you.”

He mounted his bicycle and rode away. It was raining hard and he was riding into a dark wall. But the sun behind   clouds lit the distant horizon like a god’s frowning smile, and lit him like an apparition before he disappeared into the dark ness like a magician. That’s the last she saw him. A month later, he wrote from Vavunia. “It’s raining hard. Every night, we expect the Tigers to attack. I’m in one of the forward bunkers. Don’t worry, we can face it.”

Samanalee wrote back to him immediately. She had no idea if he got her reply. The next week, she learnt that his camp and its company of soldiers were overrun by the Tigers. It was at night, when it was raining hard, and there were no survivors. But Janaka and twenty seven others were listed as missing in action because their bodies were never found.

Janaka and Samanalee were in the same class. He stopped schooling after the Ordinary Level exam because his father was ailing, and his elder brother needed help with the paddy.

“I don’t want to be a farmer,” he told her. “But what else can I do?”

“It’s all right,” She consoled him. “I will become a school teacher. We can get a housing loan and have our own house. You do what you like.”

But he joined the army two years later, saying the paddy would go to his brother. It wasn’t big enough for both of them. Quite a few young men from the village had joined the army, and only one had died. She did her best to dissuade him, but he assured her he was going to survive the war.

Janaka’s parents didn’t arrange a funeral. His mother believed her son was a captive of the Tigers.

“I hope they are not maltreating him,” she said again and again. “The government says the Tigers are keeping hundreds of our soldiers as prisoners.”

She looked at her ailing husband, lying on a bed in the verandah. He closed his eyes and said nothing. Both his kidneys were ailing and they knew he didn’t have much longer to live.

Samanalee believed Janaka’s mother. At night, the trees turned into black clumps and owls hooted. When a dog howled far away, she got nervous. She had passed her Advance Level exam well, but fell short of three marks for the university. She could still apply for teaching. But she remained dreaming about Janaka. He had a slim frame, high cheekbones and a wide grin that melted her heart. She looked at his  photograph. It was in colour, taken soon after he joined the army. He was in uniform, wearing  camouflage trousers, polished black boots and a green cap. He tried to look stern in the photo, but she could still see the schoolboy who gave her toffees and scribbled notes.

Would he be able to withstand torture? What were they feeding him? Whenever she woke up at night, she believed he was thinking about her. They were connecting mentally. She turned on her side so that she could see the night sky out of the window. It was clear now and the stars shone like the eyes of those in love. She murmured sweet nothings till she fell asleep.

While sleeping, he would come to her now and then. It was hard to say when, because they lived in separate worlds. But he floated through the darkness at times, and the banyan grove behind the paddies was bathed in a soft light, like it always was after a heavy rain. In the morning, she remembered what he said. But he was no longer there, and she longed for the night so that she might see him again. A night without a dream could so lonely.

“If you don’t want to study further, you should get married,” Samanalee’s mother told her one day. “It’s three years since Janaka died. You can’t mope for ever.”

“I’m not moping,” she said stubbornly. “Why should I? I know he’ll be back.”

“He’s dead and gone, you should make your peace with that.”

“The Tigers are keeping him.”

“What for? The Tigers say they have only five soldiers. That’s all the prisoners they have. Stop dreaming and grow up.”

But she continued to believe he was alive. Another year passed. The thoughts began confusing her. Even if he was dead, she still loved him. That’s why she couldn’t marry anyone else. She remembered the one gift she gave him the day he left to join the army – a collage of dessicated flowers and leaves pasted on white Bristol board. She had no money to buy him anything, and he told her it didn’t matter. Her love was the only gift he wanted.

He had given her an expensive gift – a Chinese DVD player, and brought her music CDs and DVDs each time he came home. The DVD player stopped working last year, but she kept it by her bed, with the CDs packed on top, and the photograph on top of everything, and dusted everything every day. But now here parents were insisting that she should get married. She had no job, she was getting older, and they felt old. There was a  relative, the son of an aunt. The family now lived in the south, and the young man, called Ruwan, had a steady job.

“They have land and he’s building a house. What more can you ask for? We are falling ill, and you waste your life moping about a dead man. At least meet this boy and tell us what you think.”

She refused at first. But even Janaka’s mother, whenever she mentioned him now, would say: “Who knows if the Tigers killed him after some time?”

One day, Samanalee consented to meet Ruwan. He came with his parents and two sisters two weeks later. He was tall and might have been handsome but for that upper lip, which curved up towards the nose at the centre, leaving a small gap which revealed the whiteness of his teeth. That didn’t make him bad looking, though. Ruwan was better looking, but it was his kindness which had drawn her to him at school. He was quick to pick up her pencil or eraser if she dropped anything. Sometimes she dropped them on purpose and he always stopped whatever he was doing to pick them up for her. Such kind men, she reasoned, were not likely to get drunk and beat their wives.

Samanalee had no idea if Ruwan was just as kind. He seemed to be all right, sitting between his parents and eyeing her shyly, which prompted her mother to say: “This bridegroom looks very shy.” It made everyone laugh.

“What do you think?” Samanalee’s mother asked her anxiously when the visitors were gone.

“I don’t know, I think he’s all right,” Samanalee said.

“You mean, you are willing to marry him?”

“As you wish, amma.”

“But what do you think?”

Samanalee went in without replying.  She still kept the CD player by her bed, with the photo on top. Her mother saw it, and said: “Why don’t you throw it away now? You don’t enter a new world with two minds.”

Samanalee couldn’t bring herself to throw away the photo. She gave it to Janaka’s mother, who said: “It’s all right, girl. You can’t wait forever.”

It was a very hot day when they got married. The small reception hall was crowded and she  was soaked with sweat and tired when they finally left for the honeymoon. She had cried before getting into the car. But, the way Janaka kept smiling at her on the way, she began to feel at ease and excited.

That night, as they were making love, Janaka suddenly sat up and looked at her.

“What did you say?” he asked her. Sensing the change in his mood, she felt frightened.

“What did I say?”

“Who’s Janaka?”

“You know about him. We told you. Why do you ask now?”

“You spoke his name just now.”

“Did I?” she asked in wonder. She could not remember anything like that. She touched his shoulder nervously, but he turned away.

She  slipped into her night frock  and stepped into the verandah. There were two chairs and she sat down. The sky dazzled with thousands of stars. It may be that people who died lived over there, beyond the Milky Way.

After a while, Janaka came and sat next to her.

“Why do you still think of him?”

“Thinking is not a crime, is it?” she shot back, her own voice startling her.

“But why now? It’s our wedding night.”

He sounded sad and she felt sorry for him.

“I wasn’t thinking of him now, I swear, and I don’t remember calling his name.”

“Do you still love him?”

“No,” said Samanalee.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Yes.”

“So what if he comes back?”

“But I am your wife now,” she said, smiling. The smile took her by surprise.

“Yes, but….” The way he said, she felt sorry for him.

“Why don’t you stop worrying?” Samanalee soothed him. She laid her head on his shoulder and heard him ask: “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she murmured. She really didn’t know what – if Janaka was still alive, or if he was watching her from the stars, and if she loved them both and not even what love was. But her heart was beating fast and she wasn’t unhappy.

“Let’s go back to bed,” he urged, taking her by the band. She kissed his cheek and got up. After they made love, she cried. He hugged her, saying it was all right, till she fell asleep.

That night, she saw Janaka in a dream. She was waiting by the paddies, and he was standing there, in his uniform. But he looked disheveled and thin. At first, she had mistaken him for a scarecrow because he had his arms spread out. The light was falling and her hair kept getting into the eyes, blurring her vision. She shouted back, but he couldn’t hear her. There were fires in the distance. She couldn’t understand why as the grass was still green and the paddy not yet harvested.

Suddenly, she was hugging him. He brought his lips closer and closer, but the face wasn’t clear. It looked like a hollow in an old, gnarled tree. She woke up with a scream. It was almost dawn and she was hugging Ruwan. If she had screamed, he hadn’t heard because he was sound asleep.

Samanalee took her hand, wedged between his ribs and forearm, and curled it over him, touching his back. She felt strangely comforted as she stroked his skin. At home, she would be up by now to boil some water. But there was no need for that today. Still stroking his skin, she went back to sleep.