Dinesh spent the morning oiling and buffing and reoiling the entranceway to the house. He restored the red, glassy polish to the front porch and the walkway that leads to the visiting room. He has spent so many hours in this aging house as a guest, but as he admires his work, he begins to accommodate the feeling of being its new owner rather than just a visitor.
There is an intricate balance to his work on this house. On one hand, he is scrubbing away the old reminders, the ghostly footprints and the stubborn stains of the past. But at the same time, he needs to keep traces of the happiness that was shared within this house’s generous walls—the laughter of shared friendship, meals enjoyed in the company of old friends, family. So while he buffs and polishes away mud stains on the floor and the meandering patterns of mold on the walls, he also makes time to dust off old photographs, trim the overgrown vines of the garden, and arrange the left-behind possessions in a way that will remind them of happier days. A cricket bat is perched along the doorframe. A framed drawing of the old family dog is on the desk. Books are stacked neatly on a new bookshelf. When Dinesh takes a step back and looks at his recent work, he sees the old and the new colliding, memory with the promise of new plans. As he examines one room and the next, he hopes his old friends would approve of the effort he’s put into their home. He believes they would. And so he keeps to his task of welcoming back their daughter, making a new home for her where he can look after their shared memories and make new memories in their life together.
The muscles in Dinesh’s back ache, and he can’t turn his head at all to the left, which he realizes has been making him walk in circles as he examines his progress. When, exactly, did I get so old? he teases himself as he rubs the crink in his neck. He doesn’t notice that he is leaving red fingerprints along his throat and under the collar of his shirt. He backs away from the porch and gazes at the shine of the front steps. Perfect, he compliments himself, and nods at no one. In another few days, the old house will be as good as new, and then he can bring Nilanthi home.
Several weeks ago he decided he would do all the work himself. In that way, he could prove to her the love and care he was prepared to offer her. He imagines leading her up the entranceway with its renewed luster. He will guide her through her mother’s restored garden. Mrs. Thiranagama from next door helped cut back the overreaching vines and the overgrown rhododendrons. She also helped him pot some new white anthuriums that he felt certain gave the garden a fresh, welcoming aura. At least those were the words Mrs. Thiranagama used, and he was confident she knew about such things.
After he and Nilanthi toured the garden, he would show her the kitchen. He kept all her mother’s cookery in place, believing this would soothe her. But he also bought a brand-new gas stove, a rice cooker, and an electric kettle. He compliments himself on these choices now. When he glances over the kitchen things—the old grinding stone and coconut shaver alongside the shining newness of the stove—he hopes he is offering her the right blend of old and new, a respect for the house’s memories as well as a positive look forward into their shared future.
DINESH HAD FIRST visited this house with his wife, his late wife, Suchinta, when he had been transferred to the Bank of Ceylon branch in Batticaloa from Trincomalee, farther north up the coast. The move was a promotion, but Suchinta had been nervous about leaving their home. Their daughter was eight years old, and his wife worried about her having to change schools, leaving behind her friends and the only home she had ever known. Dinesh knew Suchinta was pushing her own anxieties onto their young daughter, but he had promised them both that they would make new friends quickly, that their new home would be bigger and grander than the one they were leaving behind, and that if they ever felt lonely for their old neighborhood, it really wasn’t too far away to make a visit.
And Dinesh had been right. They had made new friends quickly, their first being Dinesh’s coworker Nilan and his wife, Kamala. After Dinesh’s first week at work, Nilan—in his characteristic friendliness and generosity, which Dinesh would grow to depend on over the years—had invited Dinesh’s family over for a Saturday lunch. They had eaten on the porch Dinesh has just finished polishing, in fact, and Kamala had taken the family on a tour through her garden. In those days it was tangled with orchid vines and hibiscus flowers arranged in a sort of canopy that shaded them as they walked under the afternoon sun.
Within a few weeks’ time, Dinesh and Nilan had agreed that one Saturday each month they would take turns hosting lunch. Kamala encouraged Suchinta to join the parents’ club at the local school. Nilan and Kamala’s oldest, Manju, took to chasing their daughter around the gardens, and the two families settled into an easy routine of sharing meals and laughter and plans for the future.
IT IS DIFFICULT for Dinesh to think about these things now. There has been so much loss, so much silence in their two homes since first the mothers disappeared and then the boys. Dinesh rubs at his neck as he struggles out of his memories. He is determined to change things. He will bring love and laughter back into this house, back into his and Nilanthi’s lives. He has promised himself and he has promised Nilanthi. It is a promise he intends to keep.
When she returns and he leads her to the living room, she will see the new Sony television set. It is eighteen inches, color, a deal from a relative who runs a shop in Colombo’s Pettah Market. Alone in this room now, Dinesh presses the remote control and the TV sizzles to life. A Tamil movie takes over the screen. A woman is dancing in the hills under a rainy sky. Her smile is radiant and music fills the living room. Dinesh finds himself meeting the girl’s grin; he nods with the rhythms of her dancing. She is beautiful. There is a man in the distance. He is holding his arms out for the dancing girl and she runs into them.
Dinesh never used to cry, but lately the slightest little emotion brings tears. He is embarrassed about this weakness. He is embarrassed now, even though there is no one to witness his quiet crying. He turns the television off, wipes at his face with the oil rag he has kept tucked into his trousers. The room falls back into silence, and Dinesh crumples on the sofa. He is tired and his body aches. It is easy to drift into sleep.
WHEN DINESH WAKES up, it is late afternoon and the mosquitoes are attacking. He doesn’t know why they are such a nuisance here; they are not nearly as ferocious at his own house, the house that really isn’t his anymore, now that he’s let some of the local soldiers stay there. It was easier than putting up a fight when they came asking. For money, for supplies, for a place to sleep. And really, he was happy to help. He understands that it is a place of transience now, but he is glad that it provides some rest, some peace for the boys who stop on their way from here to there. He hopes that Nilan and Kamala’s boys may be welcomed in the same way wherever they may be.
When he thinks about his house, Dinesh imagines the boys’ sweat seeping into the mattresses, their dirt being scrubbed off in the shower, their blood escaping from haphazard dressings, staining the towels. He has left almost everything that was his and Suchinta’s behind. He has convinced himself he doesn’t need those things anymore. What he needs instead is newness, freshness, things that don’t have such intimate memories attached to them. He has bought new bedsheets, towels, teacups, and plates for Nilan’s house—Dinesh’s new house. He loves that these new things have no smell to them. No stains. No past. He and Nilanthi will mark them up with the future.
Even as he admires these new purchases, he knows Nilanthi may not feel the same way. He senses that, unlike him, she will still need her family close until she comes to share his plans for their future together. It will take time for them to fill the house with hope again. But they will; he believes it and he will convince Nilanthi to feel the same. There will be friends to welcome to their home when Nilanthi gets well, when she is strong again. Perhaps the village will grow as calm as the tamed garden. Perhaps there will be children. There are many things Dinesh hopes for.
Dinesh stretches his legs and groans loudly into the late afternoon light. He had wanted to get more done today. He had planned to replace the shelves in the bedroom wardrobe. He goes there now and opens the windows to let the breeze in, to give the room some air, to upset the dust clinging to the furniture. He has already replaced the old mattress with a new one, a mattress of thick foam that the storekeeper promised would keep its firmness over time and would never, under any circumstances, tear or wear out. The storekeeper had met Dinesh’s gaze playfully when he made this promise, but Dinesh found he could not share in the joke. He regrets some of the past things he has done. He pressured her too soon to see him as a man she could love as a husband. He will have to be gentler from now on, more patient. The first thing will be to get Nilanthi strong and well, to get her to trust him again.
Dinesh has picked out a green and yellow embroidered bedspread. He thinks that these are Nilanthi’s favorite colors. He seems to remember her playing dress-up in her mother’s saris. She used to choose her mother’s green one, he’s fairly certain. But he has to admit that his memories get jumbled from time to time. And there are some memories he’d rather just push away permanently. Sometimes it’s easier for him to push through the days in a determined blankness where he can protect himself from the past’s encroachment. Too often he sees Suchinta’s hand—it is often only her hand he remembers, the left hand with its simple gold band, which had been his mother’s wedding ring. He sees Suchinta’s hand smoothing out the part in their daughter’s hair, or falling across her chest as she sleeps, or reaching out to pat his cheek on his way out the door to work. And then inevitably he sees her hand falling out of the dirty blanket that was covering the rest of her. Her beautiful hand, all those months ago, confirming his worst fears.
DINESH STRAIGHTENS THE pillowcases at the head of the bed and scolds himself, again, for his tears. He cannot keep letting his emotions get the better of him. Nilanthi must see him as strong, confident, certain. How can she put her trust in a man who is always crying like a small child? He looks around the room and tries to decide what else it needs to be welcoming, to be the place where Nilanthi can heal and rest and feel comfortable. He plans to arrange a few vases here and there that he can fill with flowers. There should be a small table at the side of the bed where Nilanthi can keep her books. Again, he has tried to remember her favorites. He brought back a stack from a bookshop in Colombo. A book of poetry by the English Romantics, poems by the Tamil poet Sivasegaram, a mystery novel by a British writer named Highsmith. These and many others. Dinesh is looking forward to watching Nilanthi sort through them. She has always loved books. They all believed she would become an excellent teacher, maybe even a university professor. Even though that cannot come to be any longer, Dinesh hopes the new books will bring back some of her curiosity, some happiness.
THERE ARE ONLY a few people aware of Dinesh’s plans. Mrs. Thiranagama, of course, and her husband. They are his new, closest neighbors and it would have been impossible to keep his recent presence a secret from them anyway. He has asked them to keep his secret to themselves. He has told them he plans to arrange a lavish celebration for Nilanthi’s homecoming, which will be both a celebration of her survival and her strength and a celebration of their wedding day. The Thiranagamas don’t know the details of Nilanthi’s accident. They know that it was Dinesh who found her and took her to the emergency room, but they do not know that she will never speak again; they do not know how determined she was to die.
This is another memory that creeps upon Dinesh and takes hold of him when he rests from his recent tasks or when he drifts into his daydreams. He sees Nilanthi sprawled out on the garden terrace, pinkish foam oozing from her mouth. Her eyes rolling back, white and empty, and a horrible gurgling sound coming from her throat. When he lifted her, she was dead weight, and he was sure she was lost to him. But she survived—she did—he has to keep reminding himself, and in escaping death, she has given them both a second chance.
DINESH HAS MOST of the wedding day planned out. He has done the organizing in Colombo to better keep the festivities a secret. He has hired a Tamil chef who used to work for his cousin’s resort in Tangalle. The chef is planning a feast of dosais and iddli, string hoppers and mutton curry, yogurt salads and stuffed rotis. All the guests will follow Dinesh and Nilanthi, walking in a procession from the temple to the reception hall, whose back doors spill out to the lagoon. They will drink the finest arrack, and the entire village will toast to their happiness. And then and there, Nilanthi will see how happy their lives can be.
On their first night back at the house, Dinesh has decided he will sleep in Manju’s old room. He has already taken it over during these weeks of cleaning and organizing. He packed up Manju’s old things, his university books and pamphlets, his posters and tennis shoes, a badminton racket with broken strings. For now, the room has a placeless feeling to it, an undecorated, impersonal space that has begun to take on Dinesh’s smells. His hair oil. His sweat. The sweetness of his half-drunk glasses of arrack. He sits on Manju’s bed now and pours himself a small drink and then coaxes his sore back, his tired legs, his matted hair, onto the single mattress.
He is extremely tired and feels a soothing, empty exhaustion take hold of him. He has worked hard today; he has earned his rest. If he is lucky, he will have an easy sleep, free from memory and the tugging images that cling while he is awake. The doctors say that Nilanthi will be ready to come home in two more weeks. This house will be ready for her then, and so will he. He will welcome her back to her new old house. He will guide her up the steps. The windows will be open, letting in the breeze. She will recognize this space; she will recognize him as her new home. Dinesh allows himself to imagine a hesitant smile crossing her face. This is the last image he sees as he falls into sleep.