Tension
Back at the French Garden, I suddenly felt depressed. The experiences of the past few days were catching up with me. How was it that this holiday had turned into some kind of expedition? Why was I chasing after pipe dreams, unsettling everyone in the process? I should go back to Negombo and stay with my husband and friends and get a grip! Forget about writing. Forget about my quest. The whales are not for me.
I recognized the signs straight away. I was working through some stuff in my head and it was rushing back at me. For the first time in a long while I had taken the initiative, but every pebble I stumbled over seemed to grow into a mountain. It was too much, too soon. I had to apply the breaks and chill.
I showered and changed, then sat on the porch, a breeze blowing from the sea, and read a book, slowly sipping a glass of arrack. Ironically alcohol, which is a depressant, helps to soothe the very condition it can bring about.
Feeling hungry but not much like eating, I unpacked my lunch: a bunch of bananas and a deep-fried patty. All that was missing was some water. In the few seconds it took me to retrieve the water bottle from indoors, a jackdaw fluttered down onto the table and grabbed my lunch. It escaped with its bounty before I could grab it and perched on a rusty fence, shredding my snack with its enormous beak. The wretched bird wasn’t even enjoying it; apparently the chillies were giving it problems as it flayed at the patty, shaking its head and spraying crumbs onto the sand. I glowered at it, picturing a spit-roasted bird slowly rotating over licking flames, then laughed and picked up a banana instead.
Slowly, I began to relax, soaking in the beauty of the beach and the sea which was glittering through the fronds of the palm trees. Whenever the breeze eased, mosquitoes rose in dense clouds from the ditches and lotus ponds in the palm groves where they bred in profusion. Voracious for blood to nurture their developing eggs, they homed in on the porch. Even citronella did not keep them at bay. To my relief it started to rain. You would think the heavy drops would bomb the mozzies right out of the air but they zoomed around them like tiny fighterjets. I lit a coil, which took care of the problem, and enjoyed the cooling effect of the rain from the shelter of the porch. Soon the sky cleared, leaving the air and land refreshed.
Night fell, revealing thousands of stars like pin-pricks in an ink-black sky. I ran onto the beach, listened to the gently rolling ocean and stretched out my arms, soaking up all this magnificence.
Back at the bar, a party was in full swing. Underneath the palm trees, travellers and locals, kids and adults, even the dogs sat entranced as a fire-eater moved through the darkness, flames dancing to the music under the starry sky. I happily joined in — I was back to normal.
The following morning I was due to check out, but I was in no hurry to leave. On my last regretful stroll down the beach in the morning breeze, I discovered that a lot of sea grass had washed ashore during the night, even though the weather had been calm. Some of the plants had been uprooted. Puzzled, I bent down and picked one up. It had toothmarks on it. My heart leapt.
There is a small resident population of dugongs in the waters off Sri Lanka, mostly confined to the Gulf of Mannar which is regarded as their last precarious refuge after they have been hunted to near extinction elsewhere. Their present status is entirely unknown. Shy animals, pressurised by the encroachment of humans, they have taken to feeding only at night in the sea grass beds that are found in the shallow waters offshore. I do not rate their chances. It appears that, in Sri Lanka, as along so many other tropical shores, this is a species which is doomed to go the way of the Dodo before we get a chance to study it properly. But here in Upuveli, a few animals may just be hanging on, perhaps protected by the heavy military presence. Dugongs feed by digging up the seagrass, uprooting many plants in the process. The mess I was surveying was a good indication that they had been feeding nearby.
Over breakfast, rumours were flying about the increased military presence on the streets.
“Eery” somebody commented: “As if someone had poked a wasp’s nest!”
“I hear there was a bomb!” another said.
“Tigers?”
“Nah, muslims”
Spectres of Al Quaeda sprang to mind. There was plenty of scope for unrest as Muslims had been largely excluded from negotiations between the government and the LTTE.
“I haven’t heard anything!”
“Apparently, the bomb did not explode, they found a bomb-making factory”.
And so on. Here on the beach, all that seemed remote even though there was a jeep with armed military personnel parked down the path.
Somebody had left behind an English language newspaper. I picked it up.
“Listen to this,” I read out: “The Venerable Soma Thera died two days ago. Apparently he was an important religious leader. Sri Lanka’s top judicial medical officer determined the cause of death to be a heart attack. The autopsy was conducted in the presence of five of the top consultants in the country. — They suspected foul play!”
There was no mention of any bombs in the paper. We did not elaborate further on the cause of the tension, because at this moment an armed patrol entered the grounds from the beach. The puppies who had been playing under the table did not look up, but an old, scraggy dog immediately jumped to his feet and started barking. As the soldiers approached, he pulled his tail between his legs, turned and limped away, periodically looking back and barking, until he was gone from sight. That dog had seen fighting. Recently. Somehow this, rather than the uniforms and guns, brought home the reality of the troubles this area had experienced.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
Denni