Songbirds(55)

Mahesh worked in the mines. He noticed Nisha immediately. He thought her eyes were like yellow sapphires. This is what he said during a lunch break when they sat beneath the canopy of trees drinking hot tea, looking out at the arid land where the mine shafts were, where the workers cleaned the gravel chest-deep in brown water. She laughed at him and told him that his comment was cheesy, but that made him like her even more.

They became frequent lunch companions, and Mahesh told her about the journey down the shaft and along the dark tunnels of the earth, the unbearable heat, the humidity, and the fear he had of being buried alive. He was a small, gentle man with a smile that was bigger than his face. He would sweat in the mines and nearly hyperventilate, but he gritted his teeth and kept going. Nisha admired his strength, his character and determination. She told him this and he’d said that he would remember her words, that they would give him courage. Every morning, from then on, when she saw him descend into the mines, she prayed for him.

He would descend fifteen or so metres beneath Rathnapura, looking for topaz and sapphires. He would push a metal rod into the porous mine walls and listen to the sound it made, try to feel the vibrations of the earth along the rod. He could normally tell when he hit alluvial gravel or sapphire, but sometimes he would inspect the rod after pulling it out as harder gem material would scratch the metal. He was good at his job, fast and agile; he hoisted more sacks full of good, gem-filled gravel than any other worker there.

They were married in Galle some years later and bought a house in Rathnapura, which was bigger than the house she had lived in with her parents.

She loved him with all her heart. He was kind. He never raised his voice, like the neighbour who shouted at his wife day and night. He cleaned his own shoes and always put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. He had a high-pitched laugh that made Nisha laugh. No matter how tired or wary or fed up he became, she could always see the child in his eyes. That was what she liked about him. It is possible to love someone without really liking them, but she liked Mahesh a lot.

Every night he’d have sore, swollen hands. After dinner Nisha would rub them with cream. ‘You don’t have to do that again,’ he would say, with his huge smile. ‘You are tired too. How about I rub your feet?’

But Nisha wouldn’t have it. ‘What, with those crusty things?’ She’d point to his hands and pull a face. ‘Besides, I can rub my own feet. Now lie back and think of the open sky.’ He liked the open sky. It was the opposite of the mines.

He didn’t like coffee, he drank sweet tea. Every Sunday they went down to the market to eat kottu with spicy curry sauce, a flat crispy fried bread made with godamba roti. Some evenings Mahesh would make a delicious green jackfruit curry with pandan leaves and coconut milk. He would climb the tree himself to get fresh coconuts. He was sexy when he chopped vegetables because his thick fringe would flop down over his eyes. Nisha would call him a shaggy dog. He would laugh and lick her face from chin to brow.

When she found out she was pregnant, Mahesh ran around the neighbourhood calling out, ‘I’m going to be a father!’ Then he came home sweating, beaming from ear to ear, pacing the kitchen, making plans.

One day, months later, after she had just given birth to Kumari, Nisha was in the kitchen breastfeeding the baby. Hearing a noise, she looked up and saw someone through the window, running and tripping as she went. It was one of her neighbours, a woman named Shehara, running through the fields, shouting something that at first Nisha could not understand. Then her voice flowed in through the open doors: ‘It has caved in! It has caved in! It has caved in!’

She shouted this over and over again, until the words lost all meaning. It has caved. In it has caved. It has caved in it has caved in it has caved in it has.

Nisha understood immediately what had happened. The very thing her husband had always feared. It was why Nisha had prayed every night from that very first day when they spoke in the shade of the trees. Mahesh was stuck down there in the deep, dank well with no way out. She knew him so well that she could almost hear the beat of his heart, feel the blood pumping in his veins. She could hear the dripping water, see the dripping walls, the shimmering crystals in the light of his head torch. She could smell it – the earth. The earth that produced such beautiful gems, the earth that held such brilliant colours, had now swallowed him up.

*

Nisha stopped her story there. She could not go on. She sat up and began coughing, as if she was the one trapped in the mine, struggling for breath.

I got up and brought her a glass of cold water. She took a few sips and handed it back to me.

‘I can’t tell any more,’ she said, eventually. ‘My tears are going into my throat and choking me.’

It was so hot that night. We were on the bed with the fan blowing on us and the patio doors wide open. Once again, Nisha lay on her back, placing her hands on her stomach. All the lost futures drifted through Nisha into me. I felt sorrow for the lost child. I had a feeling of crying internally; I recognised it from when I was a boy, when my father had returned with blood in his eyes trapped in the visions and sounds of the war, never seeing me again. He made me a desk with fresh oak from the woods. He placed the desk away from the window so that I couldn’t look out. He became obsessed with my education. I was no longer allowed to roam around and look at the birds and wildlife. I could no longer go with them to the market. He wanted me to study. He checked in on me. If he saw me standing by the window, he closed the blinds.