exist only with remembrance—for even the
sloka
s on papyrus and bound
ola
leaves would be eaten by moths and silverfish, dissolved by rainstorms—how only stone and rock could hold one person’s loss and another’s beauty forever.
She took journeys with him—a two-day walk to a chapter house in Mihintale, climbing the 132 steps, clinging to this blind man with her fear when he insisted they go once by bus to Polonnaruwa so he could be in the presence of the Stone Book, his hands upon the ducks—that were for eternity—for the last time. They rode in bullock carts and he would sniff the air or hear the hum within the gum trees and know where he was, would know there was a half-buried temple nearby, and his lean body would be off the cart and she would follow him. ‘We are, and I was, formed by history,’ he would say. ‘But the three places I love escaped it. Arankale. Kaludiya Pokuna. Ritigala.’
So they journeyed south as far as Ritigala, getting rides in slow bullock carts, where she felt safer, and climbed the holy mountain for hours up through the hot forest alongside the noise of cicadas. They came upon the footpath that curved uphill in a giant S. They broke a small branch as the two of them entered the forest and dedicated that as an offering, and took nothing else from there.
Every historical pillar he came to in a field he stood beside and embraced as if it were a person he had known in the past. Most of his life he had found history in stones and carvings. In the last few years he had found the hidden histories, intentionally lost, that altered the perspective and knowledge of earlier times. It was how one hid or wrote the truth when it was necessary to lie.
He had deciphered the shallowly incised lines during lightning, had written them down during rain and thunder. A portable sulphur lamp or a thorn brushfire by the overhang of cave. The dialogue between old and hidden lines, the back-and-forth between what was official and unofficial during solitary field trips, when he spoke to no one for weeks, so that these became his only conversations—an epigraphist studying the specific style of a chisel-cut from the fourth century, then coming across an illegal story, one banned by kings and state and priests, in the interlinear texts. These verses contained the darker proof.
Lakma watched him and listened, never speaking, a silent amanuensis for his whispered histories. He blended fragments of stories so they became a landscape. It did not matter if she could not distinguish between his versions and the truth. She was safe, finally, with him, this man who was her mother’s elder brother. They slept on mats in the leaf hall in the afternoon, within the frames of the
ambalama
at night. As his vision left him he gave more and more of his life to her. The last days of his sight he spent simply gazing at her.
With his blindness she gained the authority he had been unable to give her. She rearranged the paths of the day. What she did in proximity to him was now a part of the invisible world. Her new semi-nakedness in a way represented her state of mind. She wore a sarong as a man would. Palipana would not see this, or her left hand on her pubis tugging the new hair or playing with it while he talked to her. The only governor to her manner was to do with his safety and comfort. She would bound over to him if he was walking towards a root. Every morning she wet his face with water she had boiled over a fire, and then shaved him. They were early risers and early sleepers, aligned to the sun and moon. She was with him this way for two years before the appearance of Sarath and Anil. With their arrival the girl stepped back, although by then they were invading what was her home more than Palipana’s. It was
her
pattern of the day that was broken. If Anil witnessed politeness or kindness in the old man, it was only in his hand gestures and murmurs to Lakma, just loud enough to be heard a step away, so Anil and
sloka
s on papyrus and bound
ola
leaves would be eaten by moths and silverfish, dissolved by rainstorms—how only stone and rock could hold one person’s loss and another’s beauty forever.
She took journeys with him—a two-day walk to a chapter house in Mihintale, climbing the 132 steps, clinging to this blind man with her fear when he insisted they go once by bus to Polonnaruwa so he could be in the presence of the Stone Book, his hands upon the ducks—that were for eternity—for the last time. They rode in bullock carts and he would sniff the air or hear the hum within the gum trees and know where he was, would know there was a half-buried temple nearby, and his lean body would be off the cart and she would follow him. ‘We are, and I was, formed by history,’ he would say. ‘But the three places I love escaped it. Arankale. Kaludiya Pokuna. Ritigala.’
So they journeyed south as far as Ritigala, getting rides in slow bullock carts, where she felt safer, and climbed the holy mountain for hours up through the hot forest alongside the noise of cicadas. They came upon the footpath that curved uphill in a giant S. They broke a small branch as the two of them entered the forest and dedicated that as an offering, and took nothing else from there.
Every historical pillar he came to in a field he stood beside and embraced as if it were a person he had known in the past. Most of his life he had found history in stones and carvings. In the last few years he had found the hidden histories, intentionally lost, that altered the perspective and knowledge of earlier times. It was how one hid or wrote the truth when it was necessary to lie.
He had deciphered the shallowly incised lines during lightning, had written them down during rain and thunder. A portable sulphur lamp or a thorn brushfire by the overhang of cave. The dialogue between old and hidden lines, the back-and-forth between what was official and unofficial during solitary field trips, when he spoke to no one for weeks, so that these became his only conversations—an epigraphist studying the specific style of a chisel-cut from the fourth century, then coming across an illegal story, one banned by kings and state and priests, in the interlinear texts. These verses contained the darker proof.
Lakma watched him and listened, never speaking, a silent amanuensis for his whispered histories. He blended fragments of stories so they became a landscape. It did not matter if she could not distinguish between his versions and the truth. She was safe, finally, with him, this man who was her mother’s elder brother. They slept on mats in the leaf hall in the afternoon, within the frames of the
ambalama
at night. As his vision left him he gave more and more of his life to her. The last days of his sight he spent simply gazing at her.
With his blindness she gained the authority he had been unable to give her. She rearranged the paths of the day. What she did in proximity to him was now a part of the invisible world. Her new semi-nakedness in a way represented her state of mind. She wore a sarong as a man would. Palipana would not see this, or her left hand on her pubis tugging the new hair or playing with it while he talked to her. The only governor to her manner was to do with his safety and comfort. She would bound over to him if he was walking towards a root. Every morning she wet his face with water she had boiled over a fire, and then shaved him. They were early risers and early sleepers, aligned to the sun and moon. She was with him this way for two years before the appearance of Sarath and Anil. With their arrival the girl stepped back, although by then they were invading what was her home more than Palipana’s. It was
her
pattern of the day that was broken. If Anil witnessed politeness or kindness in the old man, it was only in his hand gestures and murmurs to Lakma, just loud enough to be heard a step away, so Anil and
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