The Half-Caste by Jason Zeitler

Author:Jason Zeitler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: antisemitism, politics, Buddhism, Judiasm, socialism, fascism, Jazz, classical music, Blackshirts, Sir Oswald Mosley, human evolution, Ceylon, England, Kandy, London, Sri Lanka, South Asia, mixed-race, music, mental illness
Publisher: Jason Zeitler
Published: 2023-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Serendipity

☸

SAUL’S STAY AT ROMESH’S house was not going well. The guestroom had no wardrobe or even a chest of drawers; its ceiling fan was broken; the bed’s mosquito net was moth-eaten, with holes the size of a fist; and the adjoining bathroom did not have running hot water. Then when Romesh came in to put clean linens on the mattress, an intrusion of gigantic cockroaches scurried out from under the bed. Romesh pretended not to notice, muttered enigmatically ‘A bloody curse’, and went about changing the linens while Saul looked on in horror. After Romesh had finished and left the room, Saul was beside himself. He expected to forgo certain creature comforts in Ceylon, but he drew the line at sharing a bed with arthropods.

He needed some air. Rifling through one of his trunks, he pulled out a pair of binoculars and his pipe and tobacco pouch and then hurried outside. It had stopped raining. According to what Romesh said earlier, there was a half-mile-long path that ran from the back of the bungalow down to the Mahaweli River. Saul found the path and set out for the river. The ground was sopping wet, but it was of no consequence because his shoes were already caked with mud from the walk at the railway station.

As soon as he was in the thick of the jungle, he stopped and looked up through the bamboo and the mass of trees: fig and breadfruit and many other species of which he could not identify at a glance. It was still overcast. Crepuscular rays lit up the western sky. He estimated it to be about an hour before sunset.

Continuing on, he listened to the sounds of the jungle. The tree canopy was alive with birdcalls. There were so many of them that, similar to the environs of the railway station, he had difficulty identifying individual birds. Variously he heard chirrups and clucks and screeches and warbles and what sounded like the coos of a dove. And he saw flashes of brilliant-coloured feathers, like the palette of one of Esther’s paintings: reds and yellows and greens and blues. As he approached the river, a pair of yellowish birds flew from tree to tree among the lower branches. One of them alighted on a nearby granite outcrop. Saul felt a rush of exhilaration: he was about to get his first close-up look at a tropical bird. But before he could remove his spectacles and focus the binoculars, the bird was gone.

With the naked eye, Saul stared at the spot where the bird had been. Not all was lost, he thought. Indeed, the bird had given him an idea: he could get a better view of the jungle atop the granite. He hung the binocular strap round his neck and circled the granite until he found its gentlest slope and then clambered up. At the top he could see the river and across it to the opposite bank. The surrounding vegetation was unbelievably luxuriant. He sat

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