The night of the lost pocket knife
Back at Trinco Rest, my unease returned. I did not want to take a precious valium, so I had a drink, chasing one peril with another. Daytime drinking was bad news, but at least it was now late afternoon.
With my funds depleted from my stay at the French Garden and my mental state verging on the precarious, I realized that it was high time to return to Negombo. I would probably have to kiss my trip on the ship good-bye unless valium could be bought over the counter. If so, and if necessary, I could take it over the six days of the journey.
I cursed my bad budgeting. I had been seduced by the comforts of the French Garden and now I was getting low on cash. I am not normally that careless — there can be few situations more daunting than being stuck in a foreign country in a town where the phones don’t work, without any money. That had nearly happened in 1985 in Bhagalpur, North India, where the bank refused to cash my American Express travellers cheques. The clerk presented me with a fax from the AMEX head office in New Delhi instructing the bank not to honour the cheques due to frequent fraud. Thankfully, my friend had Thomas Cook cheques. I had advised him against this because I assumed they would not be so widely recognized. They were not so commonly defrauded, either and the bank accepted them readily. Although we could have bought a first class ticket to Delhi, we travelled on the roof of the train. It had been a lesson that you can get by on very little, but you cannot get by on nothing.
I pondered this as I regarded my last 500 rs note. Just enough for the night’s accommodation and a cheap bus ride back.
It was then that the harbour master rang. He arranged to meet me in Club Oceanic for seven and would not hear otherwise. I phoned John in a near panic and wailed that I had next to no money left. He told me to calm down. Suddenly, I remembered that I had hidden 1000rs in one of the books buried deep in my rucksack. I took my penultimate valium, washed it down with a swig of arrack and went out.
Having a drink at Club Oceanic, for which I never paid, gave me the opportunity to say good-bye to the harbour master in person. He was there as part of a gathering at which several officers were present, including the commander and the captain of the Indian ship which I had not been allowed to board (he was terribly apologetic, insurance reasons). An impressive array of bottles and glasses were lined up on the table; it looked to be quite a night, but I was saved by the Indian captain. He had brought his wife and young children along and when they got up to leave I grabbed the chance to make my exit with good grace.
The next day, I would find out whether I was fit to travel in the state I was in. Being in a crowd could turn out to be dodgy. And so it was. On the bus, I stared fixedly out of the window, taking deep breaths. Luckily it was a minibus, rather than one of the overcrowded government CBT buses. When I had calmed down a little I turned to my travelling companions who were very sweet and kept feeding me apple pieces and sticks of chewing gum. Soon I began to feel better.
The minibus broke down at frequent intervals. Just as we were passing through the Kaudulla National Park, miles from any habitation, the engine gave out its final stutter and died. After half an hour of pacing around, chain-smoking and looking at the local vegetation, I began to wonder whether I should take my leave. I was down to my last sips of water and was getting seriously hungry — at least my appetite had returned. However, leaving my travelling companions made me feel like a rat abandoning a sinking ship. While I dithered, a few men had made calls on their mobiles and were now gathered around the conductor, waving their tickets in the air for a refund. Shortly afterwards, an empty white bus pulled up. We were clearly not going anywhere, these men were bailing out and I was determined to join them. However, when my turn came for a refund, the conductor had run out of change and was unwilling to cash in my ticket. Just then, the white bus drove off. Incensed, I dug in my bag for the appropriate change for the 500 rs note he held in his hand, shoved it at him and practically snatched the thing from between his fingers. Then I walked down the road to hitchhike the hell out of there, abandoning the other passengers to their fate.
I had never seen anybody hitchhike in Sri Lanka, but I did not anticipate any problems. The novelty value alone should ensure that passing vehicles would stop. Around a bend and out of sight of the broken-down bus, I sat down on my rucksack and lit another cigarette. I had seen no sign of elephants which was rather reassuring right then.
After barely ten minutes, a big lorry trundled around the bend and pulled to a stop right in front of me. The driver and his colleague looked at me quizzically. I grinned, indicated the road where they would have passed the broken-down bus and shrugged my shoulders.”Next town?” I asked and they smiled and beckoned me to climb up. The guy in the passenger seat squeezed onto a small bench in the back of the cabin. I shook my head and pointed at where he had sat but he would have none of it, which left me a little self-concious. It was clear that the two were not used to hitch-hikers but they nodded when I explained that I just needed a lift to the next town to get another bus to Colombo. Barely half-an hour later, they dropped me off at Habarana.
I had a leisurely lunch at the Wijesiri Hotel. In Sri Lanka, the ‘hotels’ which line the high street in every town are cheap restaurants, without rooms. They are great places for a quick curry or ‘short eats’, snacks which are presented on a large plate and charged according to how many are consumed. It was the second time that I had eaten there. The Wijesiri was turning into a regular stopover.
The rest of the journey went without further incident. As I walked through the gate back at the house in Negombo, I spotted the beautiful striped cat stretched out languidly on the porch. I was not surprised that A had managed to tame it. She’d named him Gizmo.
I thought I could take it easy once safely back at base, but I was very much mistaken. I had a blazing row with S when he wanted to borrow my pocket knife for cooking. I could not believe that, in all this time, they had not organised any kitchen knives and I am pathologically possessive of my Swiss army knife which forms part of my survival kit. Within minutes, we were shouting at each other and I found out that, while I could sock it to others, I became a shrinking violet when I was on the receiving end. It ended in tears and I stormed out, not looking where I was going and nearly ended up being razed to the ground by a huge lorry at the crossing. I jumped clear in the nick of time. As I sat sniffling in the garden, a bottle of arrack in hand, A’s brother Rob pulled up in his new car with his wife and son. The timing could not have been more cringe-worthy.
S and I made peace soon enough, the whole episode had simply been ridiculous, but I was well shaken. Later in bed John put his foot right in it when he raised the subject of money: “You couldn’t even last a week”, he said: “On 7000 rupees.”
Wordlessly, I got up, threw on a dress, rammed what was left of the arrack into my bag and walked into the night.
I walked for a long time but turned off the road before I got too close to town. In a deserted side alley, I sat down on my backpack, clueless as what to do. It was the middle of the night.
I do not know how long I sat there, drinking steadily. I did not expect to encounter anybody at this hour and in this area, but I became acutely aware that I had no cover. When I heard voices, I quickly gathered my belongings and took out the pocket knife. A gang of men was approaching on the other side of the road. Before I could get up, I was spotted.
“Hello babe,” one of the blokes slurred: “Want some sex?”
I got up sharpish, snarled an unflattering remark and strode off purposefully. By now I was seeing red. I marched home at top speed through an angry fog, all the while knowing what a stupid risk I had taken. I shouted at the neighbour’s guard dog and tore my clothes climbing back through the fence, but if anybody heard the commotion, no-one said a word. Slowly I calmed down and, cursing myself, climbed back into bed. I had seen the posters advertising Western movies, a large proportion with titles such as ‘Perverted Girl (Adults Only)’. The impression most Sri Lankan men have of Western women alone in the street at night would not be a good one. It was a lesson.
And the icing on the cake? I had lost that damn knife to boot.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
Denni