and he sees another face, another pair of eyes. That little face is white, and the eyes are blue. There is a white child, lying in the earth. This is what scares Kumar, the blue eyes. He steps back, steps away. He walks backward, still staring, and when the African with the long hair reaches him, he is shaking.
“Aw, man,” the African says.
Kumar turns and walks away. No one notices him go. They are all crying because they found the little lost girls. As he walks out of the park, he hears the police sirens. So many, coming in every direction. He stops and watches them descend on the park, halting their cars at angles to the front gates so that cars driving past have to give way to each other. Leaving their doors open and their blue lights circling in the air, the policemen race in like toy men, their arms and legs making clockwork motions. Two men openthe main gate wide, and a police van and an ambulance drive in. He turns away and walks up the hill.
•
He is arrested four months later. It takes four months because there are no records for him. No one could understand why he would work for free: and then the penny drops. They swoop on Shamini’s house in the middle of the night. It is two or three weeks after he has started touching Lolly.
When the police interview him, they ask Shamini to be there to translate. She refuses. She hates him. They call in a Sinhala speaker from the local community, a member of the church one of the detectives attends. He whispers the Sinhala words to Kumar, then speaks the English reply loudly, clearly, as if the interviewer is deaf. Kumar thinks his arrest is because of the wrong he knows he has done to Lolly. When he is asked about the lost girls, he says readily that he found them. He says he walked away because he was scared.
When he is asked why he worked in the park for no money, he replies that he liked working with earth. The translator says, “He is a farmer in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, he planted rice.” This becomes part of his lore, the story the headline writers use. And in prison, they call him Farmer Boy, and Paedo Paddy, and he learns this is a funny joke because only the Irish are called Paddy. They also call him Nonce, and they beat him. Once he is left for dead.
•
No one fights for him, because he never claims his innocence. His English improves, and he learns to read books.He takes courses so he may reduce his sentence and be put in a better place in prison. He learns the rules, he learns whom to trust and whom to work for. He buys cigarettes and chocolate and puts on some weight. He showers daily and shaves. In prison, he becomes somebody.
But he does not forget the moments in the cold box room with Lolly. He lies awake at night and thinks of them, and when he thinks of them, Lolly has blue eyes. He is more scared of this power she and the lost girls have over him than he is of the world outside his door. Prison, in its churning routines, its boredoms and unpredictable violence, becomes—safety. In here, even the rain is safe, even the rain.
•
“In Sri Lanka, the rain falls hard,” Kumar tells his English tutor.
“Write a paragraph about rain,” the man, Jim, says.
Kumar writes about rain filling streets up like taps filling bowls. He writes about rain that batters coconut-matting roofs, until the roofs tumble and people inside the huts look up into the deep sky, as if they could dive into the sky and swim.
“This is good,” Jim says. “Now write about when you were a child. Try to write about how things felt, Kumar, how it felt to be in a monsoon, what you heard, how your skin felt.”
He thinks about how his skin felt. The fingers of water piercing him through, the rattle on the corrugated roofing of the shack.
“I cannot write about
that
,” he says.
“But why?” Jim asks, and Kumar nods his head to andfro, like a nodding dog in the back of a car, Jim thinks. They smile at each other.
Kumar remembers the day he was carried away,
“Aw, man,” the African says.
Kumar turns and walks away. No one notices him go. They are all crying because they found the little lost girls. As he walks out of the park, he hears the police sirens. So many, coming in every direction. He stops and watches them descend on the park, halting their cars at angles to the front gates so that cars driving past have to give way to each other. Leaving their doors open and their blue lights circling in the air, the policemen race in like toy men, their arms and legs making clockwork motions. Two men openthe main gate wide, and a police van and an ambulance drive in. He turns away and walks up the hill.
•
He is arrested four months later. It takes four months because there are no records for him. No one could understand why he would work for free: and then the penny drops. They swoop on Shamini’s house in the middle of the night. It is two or three weeks after he has started touching Lolly.
When the police interview him, they ask Shamini to be there to translate. She refuses. She hates him. They call in a Sinhala speaker from the local community, a member of the church one of the detectives attends. He whispers the Sinhala words to Kumar, then speaks the English reply loudly, clearly, as if the interviewer is deaf. Kumar thinks his arrest is because of the wrong he knows he has done to Lolly. When he is asked about the lost girls, he says readily that he found them. He says he walked away because he was scared.
When he is asked why he worked in the park for no money, he replies that he liked working with earth. The translator says, “He is a farmer in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, he planted rice.” This becomes part of his lore, the story the headline writers use. And in prison, they call him Farmer Boy, and Paedo Paddy, and he learns this is a funny joke because only the Irish are called Paddy. They also call him Nonce, and they beat him. Once he is left for dead.
•
No one fights for him, because he never claims his innocence. His English improves, and he learns to read books.He takes courses so he may reduce his sentence and be put in a better place in prison. He learns the rules, he learns whom to trust and whom to work for. He buys cigarettes and chocolate and puts on some weight. He showers daily and shaves. In prison, he becomes somebody.
But he does not forget the moments in the cold box room with Lolly. He lies awake at night and thinks of them, and when he thinks of them, Lolly has blue eyes. He is more scared of this power she and the lost girls have over him than he is of the world outside his door. Prison, in its churning routines, its boredoms and unpredictable violence, becomes—safety. In here, even the rain is safe, even the rain.
•
“In Sri Lanka, the rain falls hard,” Kumar tells his English tutor.
“Write a paragraph about rain,” the man, Jim, says.
Kumar writes about rain filling streets up like taps filling bowls. He writes about rain that batters coconut-matting roofs, until the roofs tumble and people inside the huts look up into the deep sky, as if they could dive into the sky and swim.
“This is good,” Jim says. “Now write about when you were a child. Try to write about how things felt, Kumar, how it felt to be in a monsoon, what you heard, how your skin felt.”
He thinks about how his skin felt. The fingers of water piercing him through, the rattle on the corrugated roofing of the shack.
“I cannot write about
that
,” he says.
“But why?” Jim asks, and Kumar nods his head to andfro, like a nodding dog in the back of a car, Jim thinks. They smile at each other.
Kumar remembers the day he was carried away,
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