PARALLAX

The old man appeared to have made no concession to convention in receiving his guest, with two or three days of grey stubble, and dressed in an old shirt and a sarong that appeared even older. Cyril Dias sat on his verandah gazing out across the hills, not seeing their beauty, wondering why, after these years buried away, he has let the world back in. The financial pressures were real enough, but he might manage, with a few more economies. Is it vanity? No fool like an old fool, he reflected.

Below him, a three wheeled tuk-tuk chugged laboriously up the gradient, weaving its asthmatic way around the worst of the holes in the stony track. Dias watched it approach the house, watched its single passenger disembark and reach back inside for a bag. Slowly he rose and made his way down the steps. The driver was familiar, and the two men exchanged curt greetings. The passenger paid, and as the vehicle moved off, she turned. Younger than I expected, thought Dias, scrutinizing her, can’t be more than 26, almost a child still. Her features looked Sri Lankan, quite light skinned, and she wore her hair long and loose. He noticed her clothes, a bright, frilled top and carefully faded jeans, and decided they were not all that proclaimed her Western background, as even on first glance something in her face and demeanour contributed to the impression.

She gave a warm smile which he didn’t return. ‘Hello, Mr Dias. Dinuka Umashankar. Sorry I’m later than planned. Those last kilometers from the village take a long time, don’t they?’

He said nothing, and gazed beyond her, down the hillside. She continued ‘You’re quite isolated up here, aren’t you?’

He could see no point in replying to these inanities, and muttered a greeting, without enquiry, and indicated she should follow him to the verandah, making no offer to help with the bag. She picked it up, then stumbled awkwardly, wincing, and set it down again. Now he had to take notice.

‘Sorry,’ she explained. ‘Hurt my foot in the village.’ He noticed the amount of blood on her sandals, so, still without enquiry, picked up the bag, but left her to make her own way slowly up to the verandah without his help. Once there she collapsed into a cane chair. The old man stood, and called out ‘Saranga’. A short, broad woman of perhaps 45 appeared, wiping her hands on the sides of her old floral print dress. Realizing the visitor had arrived, she proceeded to scold Dias for not calling her sooner. Then she noticed the young woman’s foot, and immediately fussed around her, keeping up a stream of conversation in Sinhala, little of which Dinuka was able to follow. Dias stood and watched Saranga carefully remove the sandal and examine the foot, and then, with an admonition that Dinuka understood, hurry off. ***

Minutes later she returned with a bowl of water and disinfectant, and a bandage, gently cleaned the wound and dressed it. Unable to communicate much directly, Saranga insisted on his assistance, and a conversation was established. Dinuka explained, a little sheepishly, how, getting down from the bus on arrival in the village she had stepped up on to what passed as a sidewalk, a row of concrete slabs over a roadside culvert, without noticing that one was badly broken, exposing a length of steel bar. Quite how she came to hurt the foot so badly she wasn’t sure, but was anxious at the blood she must have left in the back of the three wheeler.

Saranga asked about doctors and hospital, but their young visitor insisted she was sure there was no fracture, just a long gash, and a twisted ankle. Further treatment could wait. ‘I couldn’t call to let you know,’ she explained. ‘I have no number for you.’

‘Haven’t got one. Saranga can call when I need it.’

How would Dinuka get back to her hotel in the town, Saranga asked; she was barely able to walk.

‘I’ll manage somehow.’

No, Saranga wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Mahataya, she must stay, she is your guest, you have the guest room. She must rest this foot for a while.’

Dias had said little, other than to interpret between the women. As Saranga left to fetch refreshments, Dinuka attempted conversation. ‘A wonderful location, this,’ she began, looking out at the ragged line of thickly forested hills that lay across the valley, receding into the blue distance. Already, by late morning, the land was flooded by a brassy sun of piercing clarity, bringing far crests into focus. At this height the heat was less, but the air sparkled and danced. ‘Quite a stunning view you have. That’s the Knuckles Range?’

‘Mm-hm. That way.’ Dias waved an arm, without turning to look.

‘You must love it here.’

‘I’m used to it.’

‘But it must be difficult for communication, I mean for shopping, or to go anywhere.’

‘I manage.’

Dinuka could see this was going to be tough, that small talk wouldn’t achieve much. She decided to try a change of tack, and cut to the point of the visit.

‘Mr Dias, you know I’ve been in touch with your old publisher, Hoffman Barratt, and we talked of their option on a volume of your work, a collection, or selection.’ He nodded, and waited.

‘They tell me they suggested my name to you as an editor, and you agreed.’

He snorted. ‘Is that what they said? Young lady, let me tell you I gave no indication of approval. Your name was meaningless to me.’ There was a moment of silence, and then he added, more softly, ‘As mine is meaningless to this century.’

‘There’s a growing interest in your work again, you know.’ ‘Really?’ He sounded sceptical. He may not have refused this invasion of his self-imposed isolation, the way he had others, but she thought he was doing all he could to indicate how little he appreciated it.

‘Certainly. I told you in my letter I‘ve written about your old work, from your time in London. My MA thesis was about black and Commonwealth writers in the 1960s. So much attention has been given to white British and American writers and lyricists of the period, nothing near enough to the work of others. Hoffman has seen a copy of the thesis. I have one with me. Would you like to see it?’

‘Why don’t you just tell me about it.’

She decided to begin with her own beginnings, how she had become interested in the burgeoning pop culture of the 1960s, of Swinging London, of protest and music, describing it as a vibrant time. ‘That’s the popular narrative, the one that occupies TV time. But that underplays the sense of a counterculture that I believe was genuinely ground-breaking, a kind of resistance.’

His grunt at this indicated derision, though whether at the notion, or at her, Dinuka couldn’t tell. She continued.

‘And it was also a time when the possibilities of literature were rapidly expanding, when writers in new nation states were finding ways to examine the world beyond the metropolitan shores.’

‘That was your thesis? It sounds very well covered territory.’

‘Probably. My point would be to add to the discussion, to help make people more aware of it.’

‘People? Or your professors?’

‘Oh, sure. Not just one more unread piece of academic writing. That doesn’t matter much to me, in the end. We look back,’ she said, ‘at a time that is gone, at strange clothes and comical hairstyles, the way we look at exhibits in a zoo, vital and breathing perhaps, but tame, captive, impotent. What we have to do requires an investment of imagination, to set aside the distractions of our own time, to see the similarities of experience, if we want to understand the past. People who’ve never experienced that can be guided to it. And our understanding of our own time can only by enriched by better appreciating what it emerged from.’

Dinuka had a list of details to check with him; some answers she thought she knew, but this was a unique chance to verify. He confirmed that he had arrived in London to study law at the Inns of Court School of Law. Training successfully completed, he said, he had undertaken pupillage in Gray’s Inn, but never practiced. ‘Much to my father’s chagrin,’ he added, with a rueful smile. ‘He put a lot of money into my professional education. Didn’t forgive me for a long time.’

Yes, he acknowledged grudgingly, London then had offered multiple distractions in activism and poetry.

She asked about specific references in poems.

‘No idea,’ he would reply. ‘Probably random.’

And people he’d known. He was willing to offer that he’d met some writers she knew of, had known the poet EA Markham and the activist and writer A Sivanandan, and he threw out other names, without elaboration, names unfamiliar to her despite her research.

How did the focus of his work change on return to Sri Lanka? ‘Not at all.’ ‘

You wrote later in national languages. But this selection would be in English only. Unless you have translations?’

‘No.’

‘Could you make any?’

‘No.’

‘Well, perhaps we could arrange for some. I know you continued to write in English, I’ve seen a few pieces in anthologies and magazines. That sequence about a fishing village, Mangoes and Mangroves?’

‘Mm, quite old now.’

‘It should be included. There’s another I’m particularly fond of, that long anti-Vietnam war poem, A Piece of Crushed Silk. I knew the poem, but it was only when I heard it read that I realized the double pun, on ‘peace’, and ‘crushed’, the American woman with her luxury gown, and the Vietnamese woman making the silk. I think it’s a very fine political poem, understated and biting; could stand with anything of the period. That image, wanting a peace that depended on crushing the Vietnamese.’

His expression displayed some pleasure at this, but he remained determinedly tight-lipped.

‘You must include a selection of your later work, of course, but London is where it begins, isn’t it?’ She wanted his opinion.

‘No. It’s all the same.’

He remained quiet, and Dinuka was emboldened. ‘Your work from that time deserves to be revived. Has to be prominent in any retrospective. Don’t you think? Lively, idiomatic, funny. A review in the Times Literary Supplement referred to you as a “firebrand”. You knew about that?’

‘Ha. But now just embers, burnt out.’ He watched her and he waited.

She could hear the strength of feeling behind this remark. Did he feel betrayed by the past, by his own past? ‘I think you should give those London poems pride of place.’

He had listened for the most part in silence, watching her in a detached way, but at this he snapped at her.

‘So you think that’s what I am: a relic of history? A washed up old curio. That’s what you came looking for. You think I’m a fossil, want to make me a museum exhibit.’ He was becoming increasingly agitated as he spoke. ‘What a pity for you I survived. How romantic to have had me starve in a garret, or die of some tawdry 60s drug overdose. “The gifted young poet cut down in his prime, before achieving his etcetera.” Ha.’ ***

He slipped into gloom, and ceased for a while to pay attention. She was asking him about numerous references to a woman, which she assumed referred to the same person. He wouldn’t tell her. Laura was his memory, not to be shared. His thoughts slipped back to those distant days, thinking of Laura when she was this age, 26 or 27, a woman he had loved steadily, with a deep passion never lost. But Laura did not return it, they had remained merely good friends. Her passion

had been for justice, and it inspired energies in the young Cyril Dias. She would pitch herself into a campaign she believed in, and Dias would be swept along.

He came back to the present. The young woman was still talking about old history.

‘Some pieces from those early days were only done as performance, and never published?’

‘Of course. Quite a lot. We weren’t collecting for publication.’

‘You still have them? Would be great to include some.’

‘No. Next question.’

Why should he help her out? She would be expecting some payment from this, or at least prestige; let her work for it. The real work would be his, in any case, hers merely parasitic.

She became exasperated. ‘You used to be a fighter. Why did you give up?’

He was taken aback by the accusation, but would not be drawn. Trying to put her off, he changed the subject. ‘And you?’

He learnt she had recently completed her MA at Durham University. Her parents had never pushed her to specific choices. This was her first visit to Sri Lanka without the family, the first without the usual visiting round of aunts and cousins. Both her Sinhala and Tamil, she said, were poor.

He pressed, interrogating her. ‘Why are you doing this, what do you want out of it?’

‘That’s not easy to answer. I really don’t know about my future.’ She glanced at him, shyly, he thought, and continued. ‘I wanted from my early teens to write, but I can hardly choose to be a writer.’

He should have guessed. ‘No, damn fool idea. No one can decide to “be a writer”. All you can do is write. If you’re any good.’

‘I could teach, but I think, to adapt the old saying, “those who can, write, those who can’t, teach Theory”. I worry about that. I’m sure it wouldn’t suit me. Maybe I’ll go into journalism, I’ve done a little, or TV. Have to make up my mind quickly. I’m not even sure where I want to live: maybe Sri Lanka.’

It seemed obvious to him that she had taken on this project more for lack of idea of what else to do than through belief in his work, and it irritated him profoundly.

‘And your parents still haven’t managed to marry you off? Or will no one have you?’

‘My parents will support me in what I decide to do. And I’ll marry when I want to, not for the family.’ He was watching her, goading her, trying to provoke her, and she showed signs of holding on, determined not to lose patience, to give as good as she got, to defend herself in this struggle, without sacrificing her integrity. He could see she would not easily give in to his condescension.

She asked about old campaigns from his London days, and he brushed away the questions. Then she mentioned one in particular, against the deportation of a young Sri Lankan, Nimal Peiris. He was surprised and amused she knew of it. ‘I did my research.’ He confided the case was a weak one, taken up by a left-wing group because he was a member, but no, he himself had never joined that or any other political group.

‘Some people,’ he said with bitterness, ‘thought simply returning to Sri Lanka a great hardship. Some couldn’t understand why I would choose to come back. Well, I suppose little has changed, except now it’s the young people whose parents quit this country. Those self-proclaimed Lankans who will never come to live here are the ones making all the fuss now.’

This was aimed at her, and he could see she knew it. They argued. Realizing his jibe, she retorted that she was not a supporter of separatism. Her mother, she told him, was Sinhala, and her father Tamil. She did not approve of ethnic politics, which so easily end in authoritarianism and racism, despite commonly-held views among the Tamil diaspora.

‘Say that again.’

‘What? Diaspora?’

‘Mm. Sounds like something we’d use in my family kitchen. The Dias Pourer. Don’t they teach you how to pronounce English these days?’

‘You want me to say “die-ASS-pera”.You’re out of date, old man. Language changes, you know.’

Her defiant tone amused him, but he could tell she was close to losing control, and would press his advantage.

‘Dost think so, milady? Methinks “‘tis not enough no harshness gives offence; the sound must seem an echo to the sense.”’ ***

The man was near impossible, she thought, mocking everything. She had been prepared to make allowances, knowing he rarely received visitors, but for every positive remark she attempted he retained his antagonism. Progress was slow; she had gleaned little about his days in London. Perhaps he would be more communicative about the work he’d done after his return to Sri Lanka. Little of his writing then was known to her. For a time things went more easily. He said he wrote in both Sinhala and Tamil, though his first language, as a Burgher, was English.

‘This country needed some rebirth, a re-evaluation of its rich linguistic heritage. We needed to rid ourselves of the echoes of Tennyson, but sadly they are still present.’

She knew a little of what followed, but was pleased to fill in gaps. He was involved in the setting up of a magazine, and a writers’ cooperative, neither, in his present view, very successful.

‘You have been called a champion of post colonial literature.’

‘I don’t like labels. People went their own ways. It was a time of repression, of war, of upheaval and fear, and not only in the north and east. Difficult, in the 80s.’

‘And then?’ ‘I taught for a while at Ruhuna University. But it wasn’t what I wanted. Then I retired and moved here.’

‘Are you writing now?’

‘What do you expect?’

‘Hope so. I like your writing. And my mother was a fan, which gives me an extra reason.’

‘You know what the critics say? That my writing in English was always better, that I can’t write in local languages. Here, you’ll have to decide.’ He fished a few printed sheets from a drawer and gave them to her, poems of a few years back. ‘These are in Sinhala, but it’s idiomatic, conversational. You’ll approve of that, nothing too intellectual.’

The tone of this she thought bitter, disillusioned, and she took the remark as aimed more at an uncomprehending world than at herself.

‘These are my scarecrow days,’ he murmured, and when she showed she didn’t understand, he added, ‘“An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick”.’

She knew this quote, and was able to complete it. ‘Yeats. You know how it continues, ”…unless, soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress”. Remember?’

He made no reply, but a hand went to his face, pressed at his temples and covered his eyes, and then down, and as it dropped she noticed with surprise that it seemed to take with it a mask; the eyes that a moment before were so cool and distant now betrayed a deep sadness, and an uncertainty. It passed, and he resumed a trace of the haughtiness he had shown throughout their conversation, but Dinuka had seen something, and decided the image he presented, the old curmudgeon, was, after all, a shell. Was it a persona he had carefully cultivated, or a crust that had grown? Would she be able to break through it? The revelation encouraged her to persevere. First, these poems. She asked for a Sinhala dictionary, then left him to work. ***

Saranga said a meal would be ready in an hour. Meanwhile, she showed Dinuka a room, with a freshly made up bed and a shower, and as Dinuka had not arrived equipped for a stay, sought out some clean sarongs and tee shirts. She rested for a time, and spent the hour struggling through the poems, with the aid of the dictionary.

When they met again, she began slowly and tentatively. ‘Well,’ she said, looking at the old man quizzically, and weighing her thoughts, ‘I enjoyed the directness and passion of your early poems, their joyfulness. These … I can’t say they’re not characteristic, though that was my first thought, because of course they’re yours. Just that they’re so unlike those earlier poems. Very harsh. Shocking, even.’

He looked pleased at this; no, the word was smug, she thought. As she spoke she became more animated.

‘The poet as suicide bomber? Is that really an image that appeals to you? And in this country too. You know they say the tactic of suicide bombing was pioneered here. In those old poems you ridiculed pretension, arrogance, made fun of them, and of yourself. There was life in those poems. Now you seem to think a poet should kill indiscriminately? What happened to your sense of humour?’

He smirked, but it was momentary. Dinuka was upset, and his reaction only made things worse. She understood he had set out to shock her by the choice of poems. She could excuse that, but the attitude they displayed, the deep well of bitterness, wasn’t something produced for her visit. Perhaps he believed an artist should employ shock tactics, and felt a need to stir up feelings, perhaps he felt a poet’s voice too often ignored, but she had no sympathy for what she saw as crass brutality. If there was a chance of their working together, she couldn’t leave this unchallenged.

Losing her patience with him, she continued vehemently, ‘You’re so unoriginal. You start out as part Richard de Zoysa, part Adrian Mitchell, you go through your Derek Walcott phase of cultural doubt and recrimination about the so-called colonial language, then in these poems you try to become Lakdasa Wikremesinghe, and finally you turn into JD Salinger and become a recluse.’

He listened to this open-mouthed, then burst out laughing. ‘You forgot Pablo Neruda, I always wanted to be Neruda.’

She leant forward; this was the first genuine warmth she had detected. ‘There, you see, you can still laugh at yourself.’ And she added with a half smile, as she settled back into her chair, ‘Anyway, I don’t know much about Neruda.’

Her outburst, and his reaction, had achieved something. His face relaxed, and he began to talk, less guardedly.

It was difficult, he said, to foster a new tradition. ‘With very few exceptions, we don’t have a current of direct, idiomatic comment in our writing. That playfulness you liked from the old pieces is harder here. People don’t expect complex ideas in simple language, only the most serious. And there’s the added prpblem that if we don’t use English we immediately have to identify through our choice of language with one or other community. You know I’m an outsider to the ethnic divide.’

‘We both are,’ she agreed, ‘but that can be an advantage, surely. Easier to build bridges.’

She was determined to be as optimistic as possible, but was still far from deciding whether she could work with this man. ***

She had not decided later, when she entered the room where he was reading and making notes, with music playing. He looked up as she hobbled in, awkward with his borrowed stick. ‘Hello,’ he greeted her. ‘Excuse me, I like to have music when I’m writing. Curious thing, isn’t it: give part of my attention to something else, helps me focus on what I’m doing. But only certain music, I can be very fussy.’

‘Same for me.’

‘Do you know this?’ He waved a hand towards the speakers.

‘No, I don’t know much about Western classical music. I like to listen, but I’m not at all knowledgeable.’

‘Brahms piano sonatas. I love this. Always feel as though I’m engaged in a stimulating conversation with an intelligent friend, and simultaneously being treated to something beautiful. Listen. That theme, da dum da dum dee. Here it is again, but now it breaks off. It’s a question, you see? You have to provide the answer for yourself, while the piano steps back. Just that simple echo down in the left hand, da dum da dum dee dee.’

He listened for a moment, she watched him, his smile of pleasure, and the fingers of his left hand fluttering as though over a keyboard.

‘Ah, the way he harmonizes that melody line! So simple, but so strong because each note is brought into focus by the counterpoint. No embellishment, just perfectly stated. That’s what I should like to do.’

‘Do you play, then?’

‘Piano? No, not a note. I meant in writing. There, listen, hear that repeated chord? He’s making a clear point, insisting on it. And now he drops back again, and gives you room to think about it before – here it comes – a new idea.’

Dinuka was fascinated, gazing at the old man, while he watched an invisible pianist. She had never listened so closely to music of this kind, and knew from the glow she read in his face that in this exposition he loosened a passion, and was not seeking to impress or instruct her. At last she felt, she was finding the man behind the mask. This was the most relaxed and expansive she had seen him.

‘We should learn the pace and emphasis Brahms understood, when to insist, when to offer suggestions, how to invite people to make questions. Far too much writing is loose, and hammers on with a single pace. But, forgive me talking like this. What do you listen to?’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t know it. Modern Western music mostly. On this.’ She showed him her tablet, with earphones.

‘I’d be interested.’

‘Okay. We can try it through your system.’ ***

He didn’t know how, and watched her as she rigged up a connection through his CD player. Both were quiet as she checked and adjusted cables and settings, and in the lull the image of Dinuka’s face flickered and dissolved and was replaced by an image from the fierce days of his youth, another young woman, Laura, her laughing face, so full of life, all the energy, the purpose she exuded, the certainty of youth, dancing always just beyond his reach, drawing him on, a woman who knew her mind, a face composed of all the youthful things he valued, the way she had of brushing her hair from her eyes, the little frown of concentration as all her attention gathered at a point, that face so loved then, and now, here.

Music swelled from the speakers. He expected something harsh, fast and metallic, and was surprised that her choice was gentle and melodic, with intelligible lyrics that she began to sing along with, moving her head to the rhythm. A richness of texture to the recording, despite the few instruments he could distinguish, and a line of song he couldn’t decide whether carried by a single voice or several. She had slipped back into a chair, and after a minute or two the song rose to a pitch, and she couldn’t resist moving her torso to the rhythm, with smiling eyes, singing the words of a song she evidently loved. He watched, amused, and copied her movements as earnestly as he could manage. The girl before him laughed warmly, and he was encouraged.

Rising, he took her wrist, and pulled her to her feet, in a clear invitation to dance. Her expression registered a moment’s uncertainty, but as he stepped back into the room he tugged her after him, grinning. She took only a step or two before her face was consumed with pain, and her leg crumpled. He had entirely forgotten the wound to her foot, and now she fell. Instinctively he caught her, one arm around her waist, the other taking the arm she had thrown out as she went down. A warm and vulnerable body in his arms, he felt strong, pulled her to him and bent his mouth to hers.

Angrily, she pushed him away, and stumbled back to the chair. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ She glared at him fiercely. ‘Just what do you think I am? You think I came here as some hard-up, literary groupie?’

He tried to mumble some rough apology to deflect the rebuff, but it was shame that caused him to turn away.

‘You think you’re still in the “Swingin’ 60s”? You, you’re old enough to be my grandfather, you know that?’

He was humbled, and realized he had been trying to woo Laura, as he had done so determinedly, so unsuccessfully, so long ago, and for so long. Again he had cause to reflect that there is no fool like an old fool.

What had passed between them gave him plenty to think about. It was ironic, he thought: for him the past was insubstantial, but a living presence for her, while it was her future that was clouded. ‘But I have a map of my future days,’ he thought, ‘and it is brief, simple and clear.’ ***

The next time they met was at breakfast. Saranga, arriving very early as usual, had prepared kiribath with a fresh spicy coconut sambol, and Dinuka enjoyed it, though the coffee and papaya would have sufficed. Saranga had also brought a collection of herbs, seeds and bits of bark which she proceeded to boil together, making a potion which she applied to Dinuka’s ankle. ‘Sinhala behet,’ she explained, Sinhala medicine, which would relieve the ankle.

At breakfast Dias presented her with a book, ‘the Poetry of Pablo Neruda’, a large, comprehensive collection of translations, inside which he had inscribed the first part of one of the poems.

And it was at that age … poetry arrived

searching for me. I don’t know, I don’t know where

it came from, winter or river. I don’t know how or when

no, it wasn’t voices, it wasn’t

words, nor silence

but from the street it called me

from the branches of the night …

Below it he had written a line she recognized as one of his own, from what she thought of as one of his ‘muse’ poems: “Sing, heart, loud as steel; the day will soon be done.”

She was moved by the gift, and willing to accept his apology for the incident of the previous night.

‘I’m sorry, it was inexcusable of me. For a moment or two you reminded me so much of someone … but she’s gone.’ He was quiet for a moment, and Dinuka understood he was referring to the woman of those old poems. It seemed unlikely he would say more to explain, but it was enough.

‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he continued. ‘I think I can be at peace with the past, and if you’re willing to forgive me, I think we can get on with some work.’

She smiled, and replied that she too had been thinking over the previous day, and was happy to work. ‘I guess I might say I’m at peace with the future, with myself. I think this could be fun. And to come up to these hills, as long as I can avoid the broken pavement, well, I’ve never worked in so beautiful a setting. It’s enough for now, whatever will happen later. But we have to include that Vietnam poem, okay?’