Chats with the Dead by Karunatilaka Shehan

Author:Karunatilaka, Shehan [Karunatilaka, Shehan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2020-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Fourth Moon

I’m an angel.

I kill firstborns while their mamas watch.

I turn cities to salt.

I even, when I feel like it,

rip the souls from little girls.

And from now till kingdom come,

the only thing you can count on

in your entire existence

is never understanding why.

Greg Widen

The Prophecy

Curfew

On curfew days, nothing moves except for winds and spirits and the eyes of checkpoint guards. You have spent the night in a tree, staring at the half-moon and the clouds obscuring it. Wondering what the Bodhisattvas and every one of Arthur C.’s thirty ghosts have wondered before. Is it possible to make it all stop?

The first curfews you remember were the ones that followed the 1983 massacre. After that, curfews became as commonplace as Poya holidays. They would follow each burst of violence, like floods follow rains. Down south, up north and right here in the wild, wild west, the government would take people off the pavement, cars off the street, and freedoms off the table.

Jonny once said curfews were there for governments to maintain order, catch bad guys, and ‘do things they couldn’t in broad daylight’.

Your tree gets crowded with suicides muttering. Suicides are the easiest to spot after the pretas, their eyes are yellowy-green, their necks are often broken, and they always chatter, though only to themselves. You let the wind carry you from checkpoint to checkpoint, past empty roads and barren bus stands. Cats patrol the side streets, crows guard the roofs, and creatures without breath walk slower than most.

A lorry rumbles along the main road, a light-blue Ashok Leyland, the first vehicle to appear all morning on what is usually the busiest stretch of Galle Road. It does not slow down at the Bamba checkpoint and the guards do not raise a hand or an eyebrow. A few moments later, a green Toyota is stopped and the driver is pulled out of the vehicle and searched. The man points to the medical sticker on his windshield and is let go.

A second lorry, this one red and wood-panelled, gathers speed at the checkpoint and is waved past by the guards. You hop on its tail as it turns down Bullers Road. The ride is bumpy and the stench magnificent. A lack of nose hasn’t excused you from the fragrance of bodies decomposing.

You are not alone on the roof of this truck. There are other creatures without breath bobbing along with you. The wind rushes through them and makes streaks of their faces. Forgotten smiles and bewildered eyes flutter in the air as the lorry turns into the kanatte.

There are two other vehicles, both trucks, both with their backs open, both with men unloading cargo. The cargo is corpses, unwrapped and limber, some are frozen, others are festering. The air thickens with flies buzzing delight at the buffet before them. The men doing the labour wear thick masks, mostly old sarongs wrapped over mouths and noses, as if they were highwaymen or assassins, which a sizeable bunch of them probably are.

You wish you had your camera, just as you wish you had somewhere to develop negatives and someone to show them to.

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