If while reading this story, at some point you find yourself smiling, that means this narrator’s soul is filled with nastiness. Or, you, dear reader who smiled, it is your soul that might be rotten like that. Or perhaps depravity has claimed both our souls.
The current French President Nikolas Sarkozy, in his election speech four years ago, mentioned by name the Parisian suburb of St Droit Moulin and promised to clean it up. I have been living in that region for the last ten years.
In truth, this suburb, with its small patch of woodland filled with tall trees, its large grassy meadows, and the River Seine cutting across, is a beautiful landscape. This is the same area in France crowded with African, Arabian, Sindhi Roma Gypsy and Asian populations. The newspapers have also written up that President Sarkozy was deeply concerned about environmental issues. He must have wanted to protect the woods, the meadows and the River Seine from us. As expected, Sarkozy won the elections. But there was no way to conduct a cleaning of our area like he thought.
Not only Sarkozy. Even if that great warrior Napolean was reborn and came over to our suburb, he wouldn’t be able to even pluck a single strand of pubic hair here. No one in this region accepts any of the laws of the French government. We have come up with our own laws, rules and punishments for ourselves.
When friends who live in Paris ask me, ‘How are you able to tolerate living there?’ I turn back and ask them, ‘How are you able to tolerate living in Paris?’
Those who have become used to living where I live cannot live anywhere else in France. Those who have moved here, unless they die or have been deported out of the country by the police, never leave to go and live elsewhere.
My apartment was on the tenth floor of a thirteen-floor apartment building. There is a small living room and a tiny bedroom. All the apartments in that building were similar. Exactly half of my monthly salary went towards the rent. A similar apartment in the city of Paris would require a donation of my whole month’s salary.
On the days I did not go to work and in the evenings, I would sit on the lower steps of my apartment building. Other young men from the building would also be seated with me. We would talk about everything. There would often be physical scuffles among us too. The animosity would last but a day. The next day, we would shake hands and be fine with each other. At night, we would sit on the steps, and chat and drink. We didn’t need a separate security guard for our neighbourhood. At any time, some of us would be sitting out there. Some would even fall asleep on the steps.
The biggest bother were the police. Suddenly they would surround us and, ordering us to raise our arms high, would place us against the wall and search us. Knives, ganja, false visas, stolen cell phones, or something would fall into their hands. The whole neighbourhood would gather around and scold the police. Once there was an incident when a police vehicle was set on fire. They say that in France, policemen cannot find girlfriends. That is the extent of the hatred folk have for the police here. In our area, forget the girlfriend, we wouldn’t even give a sip of water to a policeman suffering from thirst.
A few days after President Sarkozy said that he was going to clean up our area, a fifty-year-old Tamil woman came to live in my building.
In those days, there had been some Tamil families in my building. As the families grew, they moved out to other houses nearby. But for a while, until this woman arrived, I was the only Tamil living there. That woman moved into number seven on the tenth floor, same as mine. My apartment was number five.
The minute I set eyes on her, I did not have to wonder whether she was a Tamil from Pondicherry or a Sinhala woman. She looked exactly like a fifty-year-old Eelam Tamil woman living in Europe, with their characteristic attire and her hair tied back in the familiar fashion. But her moving in alone and her habit of taking her dog out for a walk like a White woman, threw me into a bit of a confusion. The cute dog was of a breed tiny enough to be cradled within two palms. It was a white dog covered in thick fur. Only its eyes could be seen, always brightly glowing. The woman’s eyes were as dead as those cartoon eyes drawn on false glasses. I have never seen any emotion in her eyes.
We would run into that woman while we were all seated on the steps of the building. When she went past us with her dog, we would call out, ‘Bonjour, Madame,’ in greeting. She would greet us back and continue on her way. Sometimes, she would say a few words, enquiring after our health. Even with those few words, it was obvious that she could speak French like a native. On the ground floor near where we hung out were the mailboxes. Once, after watching her remove her mail from the box, I waited until she left, then went over to the box and read the name on the box. It was ‘Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki’.
I was able to get a chance to speak with Ilankainayaki only a month after she arrived here. While both of us were waiting downstairs for the elevator, I looked at her and smiled. She gave me a slight nod. When we got into the elevator, I pointed at the dog she was carrying and asked, ‘A very pretty dog . . . what’s its name?’
Ilankainayaki said ‘Laila’ with a smile and patted the dog gently.
Would someone name a dog Laila? I thought maybe I hadn’t heard her right. There are those who name their dogs Laika. The first dog that the Soviet scientists sent to space was called Laika. So I said, ‘Is it Laika?’ She opened her mouth wide and pronounced ‘Laila’ clearly, and offered the dog like a baby to me. I patted the dog.
Both of us got off at the tenth floor. I asked Ilankainayaki, ‘Akka, has it been long since you left the country?’
Ilankainayaki looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yes, thambi. In 1980 I left to go to study in London. In 1983 I left there to return to India. Then again I came here in 1986.’
‘Why did you leave London? Your studies were over? Or did you not like London?’
Ilankainayaki, setting the dog on the floor, said, ‘I left London and went to the Movement, thambi.’ Then she began walking towards her door. I had never expected an answer like that. I slowly opened my door and entered my house.
What’s with this woman, to talk like this, I thought. To admit to a stranger that she is from the Movement? There must be some other intent in Ilankainayaki’s words, I thought warily. Was she spying on me? On the other hand, the woman might have spoken openly and truthfully. ‘It is your brain that has become nasty enough to see everything with these suspicious and fearful eyes,’ my mind said.
The next day, when seated on the building steps, I saw Ilankainayaki coming with her dog. I stood up, walked over to the elevator and waited. When she arrived at the elevator, I smiled at her. She gave me a slight nod. After we entered the elevator and the door shut, I asked her, ‘Akka, you said that you went to the Movement. Which Movement did you go to?’ If I did not ask this, I thought my head would burst. Let her answer or not.
Ilankainayaki frowned, bit her lip and looked up. Then, ‘That . . . PLOT or something they called it. I was there to cook,’ she said.
When the elevator’s doors opened, she walked swiftly, taking long strides towards her door without another look at me. I didn’t know what to say. Does Ilankainayaki speak in a way that allows for a conversation? Each time she opens her mouth, a snake drops out and strikes me.
The snake’s poison seemed to have reached my brain. All I could think was that maybe Ilankainayaki was slightly mentally ill. I started getting thoughts of her suddenly, of when we are alone in the elevator, of her trying to kill me with a gun. I began to run various scenarios through my mind—of where she might draw the gun from, how much distance there might be between both of us inside the elevator, how I would grab the gun from her, and after wresting the gun from her, whether I should shoot her. Should I shoot her alone or must I also shoot the dog?
‘What is wrong with you? Why must you kill that beautiful dog, Laila?’ I asked myself. At that point, I remembered that when Trotsky shot the tsar, he also shot the tsar’s dog. In the next few days, I began to observe Ilankainayaki’s activities carefully.
It was not an easy task. She would suddenly come out of her house with her dog. She would walk around our neighbourhood with her dog. She would sit for some time on the benches next to the lawn. It didn’t look like she went anywhere else. When she would come out of the local cheap Chinese supermarket, she would be carrying bags of dog food in her hand. Where she worked, what she ate, where she shopped for food—nothing was clear.
It is not as if there were no problems with my surveillance. On the days I worked, I would leave early in the morning and come back only in the evening. After eight o’ clock at night, I would be so drunk, that I wouldn’t even know if thunder crashed over my head. On the days I didn’t work, I would sleep until midday. But now I was careful to avoid being on the elevator alone with Ilankainayaki.
Soon I found a way to determine whether Ilankainayaki had truly been with the PLOT Movement, or if the woman was delusional or, worse, if the woman was speaking with me with some kind ulterior motive. I went and met Sellathurai. Sellathurai had been a major part of the PLOT Movement. I remember someone saying that he had even been a member of the the core group. He had been with the Movement until PLOT had its field conference in 1986 or 1987, and left after the conference. Now he had no desire for politics. In between, Sellathurai would come to literary meetings. That’s how I knew him.
I met Sellathurai in a café in Paris. ‘Anney, Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki is the name . . . she’s about fifty years old; she says that she came to PLOT in 1983. She is in France now. Do you know this person?’ I asked.
Sellathurai with no hesitation, said, ‘Oh, you mean Comrade Laila?’
‘Anney, Comrade Laila or Laila’s comrade? Please be clear. I’m already suffering from enough confusion.’
‘Her name was Laila within the Movement.’
‘You never named anybody with romantic names like Laila or Majnu in your Movement! You name folk with such terrorizing names like Mendis, Sangili [Chain], or Mokku Moorthy!’
‘You don’t know who Laila was. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization hijacked a plane for the first time, the name of the female militant who carried out that operation was Laila.’
‘Anney, shall we have a beer?’ I asked Sellathurai. ‘My head aches.’ He said that he had diabetes and didn’t want a beer. I ordered a black coffee for him and a beer for myself.
‘Anney, did she come from London to the Movement?’
‘Yes, yes . . . what had happened was that she had gone to London to study. She fell in love with Keerthi master there. Keerthi master was working in London then on behalf of PLOT.
He was a man with a clear understanding of politics. They both left London together. Keerthi master went straight off to Lebanon to train with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Laila came to India. In India, she was at the K.K. Nagar PLOT office for two years.’
‘So this Laila was in an important position within the Movement.’
‘She worked in the office. She was almost like a seceretary to Umamaheswaran. She knew English well. So she did a lot of work with the foreign contacts and with translations. She earned the nickname of “Yellow Bird” there.’
‘What is that – “Yellow Bird”?’
‘She would laugh and talk with men and women without seeing any difference beween them. Even the clothes she wore were in London style. Once even Umamaheswaran scolded her saying, “Don’t show off your London habits here. Discipline is needed.” She had a name for being easy with everyone. Comrade Laila left the Movement before all of us.’
‘Why did she get out of the Movement?’
‘I don’t know that very well. But when the Movement began to split, the clever ones ran and escaped. Laila had a London education, right? . . . those of us who were half-baked dragged it out. All the fools stayed back and died. The Tigers killed half of them . . . our people killed off the other half.’
‘Where is that Keerthi master now?’
‘Who knows? After he went to the PLO, it didn’t look like anyone saw him afterwards. There is a story that he died in action in Lebanon. There is another story that claims that it wasn’t so, that he had a falling out with Manickam in Lebanon and that he came back to India and vanished.’
On my way back after speaking with Sellathurai, the various images involving Ilankainayaki came and went through my mind. But now I felt a little calmer. The next day, I waited downstairs next to the elevator, got into the elevator with her, and smiled at her. As usual, she nodded her head slightly.
As if seeing her for the first time, I watched Ilankainayaki out of the corner of my eyes. Ilankainayaki’s skin was the colour of a ripe lime. Maybe that was how she got the name of Yellow Bird, I thought to myself. A slightly plump body—or she looked plump because she was short. There was not a single grey hair on her head. When the elevator doors opened, she walked away quickly, taking long strides. Back home in the village, a woman who walked like this, with her legs marching in such a fashion, was referred to as a ‘woman who breathes like a man’.
One day, while I was seated on the steps downstairs, the mailwoman came and was putting the mail into the boxes. Suddenly an idea dawned, so I went over and stood next to her and watched to see if any letter had arrived for Ilankainayaki. As it happened, there was a letter for Ilankainayaki that day. When the mailwoman left, after putting it into the box with Ilankainayaki’s name on it, I picked up a long, thin stick from the ground, slid it into the box and slid the letter out. In our apartment complex, there was no need to do this stick sliding business in a hidden fashion. Whether they had a key to the mailbox or not, most people got their mail out by sliding the sticks in. There were always these long sticks lying under the mailboxes.
I took the letter and came up to the tenth floor. Ilankainayaki was living in our building like a painting drawn out of smoke— nothing was known about where she worked, what her income was, what her contacts were like. She gave me no signs to enable me to decipher more about her. My plan was to enter her house under the pretence of delivering this letter, or at least to have a peek into her house when she opened the door to take the letter from me. In truth, I had no business doing this. But my mind ordered me to be wary and treat everyone and everything with suspicion.
I stood in front of number seven and rang the bell, and before I could lift my hand from the bell, the door jerked open.
Ilankainayaki must have been standing at the door. Otherwise, the door could not have opened so quickly. The opened door stayed only four inches open. Running between the door and the jamb, there were not one but two safety chains. The screeching of that dog could be heard. Through the gap of the door, the eyes of Ilankainayaki, covered in reading glasses, peered at me.
‘Excusez-mois Madame, is your name Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki?’
There was no answer from the door gap.
‘A letter addressed to Ilankainayaki was inside my mailbox; the mail-woman must have put it there by mistake,’ I said, holding the letter towards the gap.
‘Go and put it in my mailbox.’ Ilankainayaki’s words came the same moment she shut the door.
One Sunday afternoon when I was napping, my front doorbell rang. It was the first Sunday of the month, the day that boys from the Movement would come to our building to sell news sheets, and collect money. When I got up and opened the door, the two Movement boys shook my hands, came inside and sat down.
‘So tell me, thambis, what’s new in the country?’ I asked them, as I took a seat in front of them.
‘As if you are going to help if we tell you,’ one of them said bitterly, while the other stared at me intensely and said, ‘Annan, all the world is watching our struggle carefully now. The Tamil Eelam government has been formed. We have a tripartite military, a financial administration, a police force, a bank. All we need is for the world to recognize our government. People like you need to offer us your aid now.’
I looked at them and with a pathetic expression on my face said, ‘Thambi, whatever you say, I have no money to give you. I can pay you only for the booklets and papers you give me.’ When they handed me a magazine and a newspaper, I counted out a few coins.
When the boys took the coins and started to leave, that idea suddenly popped into my head. I looked at the boys and said, ‘Thambi, here in apartment seven, new people have moved in. Have you gone there?’ The boys braked to a stop.
‘What is the name?’
‘Ilankainayaki.’
‘Sounds rather like a Sinhala name.’
‘No, thambi, it is Tamil. Ilankainayaki is a Tamil name. If it is a Sinhala name, then it would be Lankarani.’
After the boys went out, I closed the door and watched what was going on outside through the peephole in the door. When the boys went to the number seven door and placed a hand on the bell, the door jerked open. All that could be seen was the boys talking to someone inside. But I was not able to hear what they were saying from where I was. Ilankainayaki’s door was
shut with the same swiftness with which it was opened.
I slowly opened my door, came out and asked, ‘Thambi, what is the woman saying?’
One of the boys, in a complaining voice said, ‘The woman refused to even open the door. When we asked her to buy the Movement newspaper, she said to go put it for sale at the shop and that she would buy it there and that I was not to come to her house.’
The other boy said, ‘Ilankainayaki seems like a fit name for that woman.’
I slowly started losing interest in Ilankainayaki because there were other things going on around me that were much more pressing. Ilankainayajki became just one among the hundred thousand Tamils living in France. If by chance we crossed each other, I greeted her and she nodded at me. I really didn’t know whether she was nodding at my smile or whether it was a part of the caress she gave to the dog she was carrying.
One day when my bell rang and I opened the door, Ilankainayaki was standing there. I said, ‘Come in, Akka,’ and stepped inside the room. She took one step forward, held onto the open door and stood there. My box of cigarettes was lying on the table that was between us. Thinking hard about why she had come to me, I stepped towards the table to get a cigarette when Ilankainayaki hurriedly moved outside the door in a panic. ‘Does she think I am going to rape the Yellow Bird?’ I thought furiously as I took a cigarette, lit it and sat down in a chair. I felt a slight humilation at her panicked move. Once again, Ilankainayaki came forward and gripped the door.
‘Antonythasan, could you do me a favour?’
How does she know my name? . . . right, she too must have checked my mailbox, I thought. ‘Tell me, Akka, what do you want me to do?’
‘I am feeling really sick. I cannot go out. Laila needs food. Could you please buy some?’ When I nodded, she walked in slowly and placed the money and the piece of paper with the details of food to be bought on the edge of the table and left.
When I bought the food for the dog, I kept wondering what Ilankainayaki would eat and whether she needed anything. When I stopped in front of Ilankainayaki’s door and placed my hand on the bell, just as I expected, the door opened immediately. As I passed her each of the packages through the four-inch gap, Ilankainayaki took them from me, one by one. If I had left right then, it would have been dignified. But wishing to drag out a conversation, I asked, ‘So, do you know anything new about what is going on in the country?’
The answer—‘I don’t know anything’—was accompanied by the door clicking shut.
During that time, the war was at its height in Sri Lanka. There was news coming out that Tiger aircraft were bombing Colombo. If I had asked about her health, I might have received an answer, I thought to myself.
It was snowing heavily at that time. All the lawns had been turned into snowscapes. In January, there were reports of the army capturing Killinochi. February, March, April, every month dawned and died with mournful news. By the beginning of May, the cold started to recede. When I was seated on the ground floor steps, I could see Ilankainayaki in the far distance, barely able to carry the heavy bags she was lugging. I got up and walked over to her. Both her hands were filled with bags of sliced bread. Laila was following her slowly. I took the bags from her.
As we were going up in the elevator, I asked, ‘Why so much bread?’ and smiled.
Ilankainayaki wet her lips with her tongue and said, ‘Our children are standing in the cold and struggling. I am going to make sandwiches for them.’
I went up to Ilankainayaki’s door, placed the bags with the bread against the wall. Ilankainayaki waited until I left, then opened her door, dragged the bags inside, and went in. When Laila entered, the door was shut.
The news on television showed Eelam Tamils who had been protesting under Eiffel Tower in Paris continuously for the last forty days. The scene had been filmed from above. There were no less than thirty thousand people there, I think. Then Ilankainayaki appeared on TV. There was a photograph of Prabhakaran in her hands. She spoke in French fluently with the newscaster. ‘Stop the war in Sri Lanka. Stop the killing of Tamils by air raids and cluster bombing. I am asking you as a mother . . . the international world, please save our children.’ Ilankainayaki spoke in a sobbing voice. Her body was shaking. Her hands were agitated and looked as if they might slap the newscaster as they moved up and down. She must have spoken for under a minute. But her passionate cry was certain to rend the souls of the listeners. When Ilankainayaki finished speaking, she raised the picture in her hand high up and cried out, ‘Our leader Prabhakaran.’ Her voice rang out clearly. It was the eighth of May.
A month must have passed. I opened my door one day and walked towards the elevator to find Ilankainayaki already waiting there with her dog. The doors of the elevator closed. Both of us live on the same floor, next door to each other. But our conversations somehow took place in the elevator. Just as the Movement and the government have talks with each other in a third nation, this elevator was our third space.
‘I saw Akka some time ago on the French news.’
Ilankainayaki nodded her head softly. I didn’t know if the nod was for the dog or for me. Staring hard at her face I said, ‘You showed a picture and all, and while speaking you were throwing your hands about as if you would hit somebody.’
Ilankainayaki twisted her lip, and gazing up said, ‘That picture? They said it was Prabhakaran or somebody.’ When the elevator doors opened, Ilanakainayaki with her wide-spaced strides, walked out. The dog ran after her. I was standing still inside the elevator. The elevator doors closed.
Yesterday, I heard loud noises outside. Cursing, ‘They don’t let you sleep in even on holidays,’ I got up from my bed. It was ten in the morning. I opened the door to check what the noise was all about. There was a crowd in front of Ilankainayaki’s apartment. The police had come and were breaking down her door. I asked the African woman living in number six, who was standing there, ‘What is the matter?’ She said that she had thought for the past two or three days that a bad odour was coming from apartment number seven, and when the smell got worse today, she had informed the police. I opened my nostrils wide, took a deep breath and released it. I didn’t smell any bad odour. I couldn’t really remember when I’d last seen Ilankainayaki. But when I realized that I hadn’t seen in her in the last ten or fifteen days, my heart went dry.
When the door was broken open, the police stretched out red plastic tapes so that no one could enter that area. Ilankainayaki’s body was discovered inside. They said that she had died maybe ten days ago. I called out to a policeman and in a soft voice told him, ‘There was a dog also in there. See if it is alive.’
The policeman, who went inside came out, looked me up and down and said, ‘There is no dog inside.’
‘It may have died too,’ I said.
‘Everything has been searched. There is nothing of the sort in there,’ said the policeman.
Ilankainayaki’s body was packed up in a plastic bag and brought out. I shut my eyes tight. There was the sound of her body being placed inside the elevator. When I opened my eyes, the elevator had left. I walked back slowly, opened my door and fell on the bed. For a long while I lay there with my eyes closed.
At around seven in the evening, I once again opened my door and came out to look. Now there was no one in front of Ilankainayaki’s door. When I slowly went over to investigate, I found that her broken door had been sealed shut by the police. Then I smelt the bad odour. I rushed over and knocked at the door of number six. The African woman opened the door and stepped out. ‘Can you smell the bad odour?’ I asked agitatedly.
The woman looked at me sadly and said, ‘They took away the corpse in the morning itself. By now there is no smell.’
‘They took away only one corpse,’ I murmured. That African woman gazed at me with pity and asked, ‘That woman who died, she was from your country?’
I nodded yes.
When the woman asked, ‘What is your country?’ I answered, ‘It is called Sri Lanka or something.’
My brain was filled with thoughts of what might have happened to Laila. I was suddenly struck by the thought that other than Ilankainayaki, no one else would have had a chance to kill or destroy that dog. I began to believe it too. All the doubts and hatred regarding Ilankainayaki that had been at the bottom of my heart from the beginning began to rise up. The Yellow Bird had killed a white dog.
I told you—didn’t I?—at the beginning of the story itself, that this narrator’s heart is filled with nastiness!
Excerpted with permission from The MGR Murder Trial, Shobasakthi, translated from the Tamil by Anushiya Ramaswamy, Penguin Books India.
Shobasakthi lives in France. He is a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee and a former LTTE child-soldier. He has published two novels, a collection of short stories, three plays and many essays. His first novel, translated in English as Gorilla, was published to immense acclaim. For the last 20 years, he has worked as a dishwasher, cook, supermarket shelver, room boy, construction worker and street sweeper, among other things.
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The current French President Nikolas Sarkozy, in his election speech four years ago, mentioned by name the Parisian suburb of St Droit Moulin and promised to clean it up. I have been living in that region for the last ten years.
In truth, this suburb, with its small patch of woodland filled with tall trees, its large grassy meadows, and the River Seine cutting across, is a beautiful landscape. This is the same area in France crowded with African, Arabian, Sindhi Roma Gypsy and Asian populations. The newspapers have also written up that President Sarkozy was deeply concerned about environmental issues. He must have wanted to protect the woods, the meadows and the River Seine from us. As expected, Sarkozy won the elections. But there was no way to conduct a cleaning of our area like he thought.
Not only Sarkozy. Even if that great warrior Napolean was reborn and came over to our suburb, he wouldn’t be able to even pluck a single strand of pubic hair here. No one in this region accepts any of the laws of the French government. We have come up with our own laws, rules and punishments for ourselves.
When friends who live in Paris ask me, ‘How are you able to tolerate living there?’ I turn back and ask them, ‘How are you able to tolerate living in Paris?’
Those who have become used to living where I live cannot live anywhere else in France. Those who have moved here, unless they die or have been deported out of the country by the police, never leave to go and live elsewhere.
My apartment was on the tenth floor of a thirteen-floor apartment building. There is a small living room and a tiny bedroom. All the apartments in that building were similar. Exactly half of my monthly salary went towards the rent. A similar apartment in the city of Paris would require a donation of my whole month’s salary.
On the days I did not go to work and in the evenings, I would sit on the lower steps of my apartment building. Other young men from the building would also be seated with me. We would talk about everything. There would often be physical scuffles among us too. The animosity would last but a day. The next day, we would shake hands and be fine with each other. At night, we would sit on the steps, and chat and drink. We didn’t need a separate security guard for our neighbourhood. At any time, some of us would be sitting out there. Some would even fall asleep on the steps.
The biggest bother were the police. Suddenly they would surround us and, ordering us to raise our arms high, would place us against the wall and search us. Knives, ganja, false visas, stolen cell phones, or something would fall into their hands. The whole neighbourhood would gather around and scold the police. Once there was an incident when a police vehicle was set on fire. They say that in France, policemen cannot find girlfriends. That is the extent of the hatred folk have for the police here. In our area, forget the girlfriend, we wouldn’t even give a sip of water to a policeman suffering from thirst.
A few days after President Sarkozy said that he was going to clean up our area, a fifty-year-old Tamil woman came to live in my building.
In those days, there had been some Tamil families in my building. As the families grew, they moved out to other houses nearby. But for a while, until this woman arrived, I was the only Tamil living there. That woman moved into number seven on the tenth floor, same as mine. My apartment was number five.
The minute I set eyes on her, I did not have to wonder whether she was a Tamil from Pondicherry or a Sinhala woman. She looked exactly like a fifty-year-old Eelam Tamil woman living in Europe, with their characteristic attire and her hair tied back in the familiar fashion. But her moving in alone and her habit of taking her dog out for a walk like a White woman, threw me into a bit of a confusion. The cute dog was of a breed tiny enough to be cradled within two palms. It was a white dog covered in thick fur. Only its eyes could be seen, always brightly glowing. The woman’s eyes were as dead as those cartoon eyes drawn on false glasses. I have never seen any emotion in her eyes.
We would run into that woman while we were all seated on the steps of the building. When she went past us with her dog, we would call out, ‘Bonjour, Madame,’ in greeting. She would greet us back and continue on her way. Sometimes, she would say a few words, enquiring after our health. Even with those few words, it was obvious that she could speak French like a native. On the ground floor near where we hung out were the mailboxes. Once, after watching her remove her mail from the box, I waited until she left, then went over to the box and read the name on the box. It was ‘Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki’.
I was able to get a chance to speak with Ilankainayaki only a month after she arrived here. While both of us were waiting downstairs for the elevator, I looked at her and smiled. She gave me a slight nod. When we got into the elevator, I pointed at the dog she was carrying and asked, ‘A very pretty dog . . . what’s its name?’
Ilankainayaki said ‘Laila’ with a smile and patted the dog gently.
Would someone name a dog Laila? I thought maybe I hadn’t heard her right. There are those who name their dogs Laika. The first dog that the Soviet scientists sent to space was called Laika. So I said, ‘Is it Laika?’ She opened her mouth wide and pronounced ‘Laila’ clearly, and offered the dog like a baby to me. I patted the dog.
Both of us got off at the tenth floor. I asked Ilankainayaki, ‘Akka, has it been long since you left the country?’
Ilankainayaki looked me in the eye and said, ‘Yes, thambi. In 1980 I left to go to study in London. In 1983 I left there to return to India. Then again I came here in 1986.’
‘Why did you leave London? Your studies were over? Or did you not like London?’
Ilankainayaki, setting the dog on the floor, said, ‘I left London and went to the Movement, thambi.’ Then she began walking towards her door. I had never expected an answer like that. I slowly opened my door and entered my house.
What’s with this woman, to talk like this, I thought. To admit to a stranger that she is from the Movement? There must be some other intent in Ilankainayaki’s words, I thought warily. Was she spying on me? On the other hand, the woman might have spoken openly and truthfully. ‘It is your brain that has become nasty enough to see everything with these suspicious and fearful eyes,’ my mind said.
The next day, when seated on the building steps, I saw Ilankainayaki coming with her dog. I stood up, walked over to the elevator and waited. When she arrived at the elevator, I smiled at her. She gave me a slight nod. After we entered the elevator and the door shut, I asked her, ‘Akka, you said that you went to the Movement. Which Movement did you go to?’ If I did not ask this, I thought my head would burst. Let her answer or not.
Ilankainayaki frowned, bit her lip and looked up. Then, ‘That . . . PLOT or something they called it. I was there to cook,’ she said.
When the elevator’s doors opened, she walked swiftly, taking long strides towards her door without another look at me. I didn’t know what to say. Does Ilankainayaki speak in a way that allows for a conversation? Each time she opens her mouth, a snake drops out and strikes me.
The snake’s poison seemed to have reached my brain. All I could think was that maybe Ilankainayaki was slightly mentally ill. I started getting thoughts of her suddenly, of when we are alone in the elevator, of her trying to kill me with a gun. I began to run various scenarios through my mind—of where she might draw the gun from, how much distance there might be between both of us inside the elevator, how I would grab the gun from her, and after wresting the gun from her, whether I should shoot her. Should I shoot her alone or must I also shoot the dog?
‘What is wrong with you? Why must you kill that beautiful dog, Laila?’ I asked myself. At that point, I remembered that when Trotsky shot the tsar, he also shot the tsar’s dog. In the next few days, I began to observe Ilankainayaki’s activities carefully.
It was not an easy task. She would suddenly come out of her house with her dog. She would walk around our neighbourhood with her dog. She would sit for some time on the benches next to the lawn. It didn’t look like she went anywhere else. When she would come out of the local cheap Chinese supermarket, she would be carrying bags of dog food in her hand. Where she worked, what she ate, where she shopped for food—nothing was clear.
It is not as if there were no problems with my surveillance. On the days I worked, I would leave early in the morning and come back only in the evening. After eight o’ clock at night, I would be so drunk, that I wouldn’t even know if thunder crashed over my head. On the days I didn’t work, I would sleep until midday. But now I was careful to avoid being on the elevator alone with Ilankainayaki.
Soon I found a way to determine whether Ilankainayaki had truly been with the PLOT Movement, or if the woman was delusional or, worse, if the woman was speaking with me with some kind ulterior motive. I went and met Sellathurai. Sellathurai had been a major part of the PLOT Movement. I remember someone saying that he had even been a member of the the core group. He had been with the Movement until PLOT had its field conference in 1986 or 1987, and left after the conference. Now he had no desire for politics. In between, Sellathurai would come to literary meetings. That’s how I knew him.
I met Sellathurai in a café in Paris. ‘Anney, Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki is the name . . . she’s about fifty years old; she says that she came to PLOT in 1983. She is in France now. Do you know this person?’ I asked.
Sellathurai with no hesitation, said, ‘Oh, you mean Comrade Laila?’
‘Anney, Comrade Laila or Laila’s comrade? Please be clear. I’m already suffering from enough confusion.’
‘Her name was Laila within the Movement.’
‘You never named anybody with romantic names like Laila or Majnu in your Movement! You name folk with such terrorizing names like Mendis, Sangili [Chain], or Mokku Moorthy!’
‘You don’t know who Laila was. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization hijacked a plane for the first time, the name of the female militant who carried out that operation was Laila.’
‘Anney, shall we have a beer?’ I asked Sellathurai. ‘My head aches.’ He said that he had diabetes and didn’t want a beer. I ordered a black coffee for him and a beer for myself.
‘Anney, did she come from London to the Movement?’
‘Yes, yes . . . what had happened was that she had gone to London to study. She fell in love with Keerthi master there. Keerthi master was working in London then on behalf of PLOT.
He was a man with a clear understanding of politics. They both left London together. Keerthi master went straight off to Lebanon to train with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Laila came to India. In India, she was at the K.K. Nagar PLOT office for two years.’
‘So this Laila was in an important position within the Movement.’
‘She worked in the office. She was almost like a seceretary to Umamaheswaran. She knew English well. So she did a lot of work with the foreign contacts and with translations. She earned the nickname of “Yellow Bird” there.’
‘What is that – “Yellow Bird”?’
‘She would laugh and talk with men and women without seeing any difference beween them. Even the clothes she wore were in London style. Once even Umamaheswaran scolded her saying, “Don’t show off your London habits here. Discipline is needed.” She had a name for being easy with everyone. Comrade Laila left the Movement before all of us.’
‘Why did she get out of the Movement?’
‘I don’t know that very well. But when the Movement began to split, the clever ones ran and escaped. Laila had a London education, right? . . . those of us who were half-baked dragged it out. All the fools stayed back and died. The Tigers killed half of them . . . our people killed off the other half.’
‘Where is that Keerthi master now?’
‘Who knows? After he went to the PLO, it didn’t look like anyone saw him afterwards. There is a story that he died in action in Lebanon. There is another story that claims that it wasn’t so, that he had a falling out with Manickam in Lebanon and that he came back to India and vanished.’
On my way back after speaking with Sellathurai, the various images involving Ilankainayaki came and went through my mind. But now I felt a little calmer. The next day, I waited downstairs next to the elevator, got into the elevator with her, and smiled at her. As usual, she nodded her head slightly.
As if seeing her for the first time, I watched Ilankainayaki out of the corner of my eyes. Ilankainayaki’s skin was the colour of a ripe lime. Maybe that was how she got the name of Yellow Bird, I thought to myself. A slightly plump body—or she looked plump because she was short. There was not a single grey hair on her head. When the elevator doors opened, she walked away quickly, taking long strides. Back home in the village, a woman who walked like this, with her legs marching in such a fashion, was referred to as a ‘woman who breathes like a man’.
One day, while I was seated on the steps downstairs, the mailwoman came and was putting the mail into the boxes. Suddenly an idea dawned, so I went over and stood next to her and watched to see if any letter had arrived for Ilankainayaki. As it happened, there was a letter for Ilankainayaki that day. When the mailwoman left, after putting it into the box with Ilankainayaki’s name on it, I picked up a long, thin stick from the ground, slid it into the box and slid the letter out. In our apartment complex, there was no need to do this stick sliding business in a hidden fashion. Whether they had a key to the mailbox or not, most people got their mail out by sliding the sticks in. There were always these long sticks lying under the mailboxes.
I took the letter and came up to the tenth floor. Ilankainayaki was living in our building like a painting drawn out of smoke— nothing was known about where she worked, what her income was, what her contacts were like. She gave me no signs to enable me to decipher more about her. My plan was to enter her house under the pretence of delivering this letter, or at least to have a peek into her house when she opened the door to take the letter from me. In truth, I had no business doing this. But my mind ordered me to be wary and treat everyone and everything with suspicion.
I stood in front of number seven and rang the bell, and before I could lift my hand from the bell, the door jerked open.
Ilankainayaki must have been standing at the door. Otherwise, the door could not have opened so quickly. The opened door stayed only four inches open. Running between the door and the jamb, there were not one but two safety chains. The screeching of that dog could be heard. Through the gap of the door, the eyes of Ilankainayaki, covered in reading glasses, peered at me.
‘Excusez-mois Madame, is your name Rajarathinam Ilankainayaki?’
There was no answer from the door gap.
‘A letter addressed to Ilankainayaki was inside my mailbox; the mail-woman must have put it there by mistake,’ I said, holding the letter towards the gap.
‘Go and put it in my mailbox.’ Ilankainayaki’s words came the same moment she shut the door.
One Sunday afternoon when I was napping, my front doorbell rang. It was the first Sunday of the month, the day that boys from the Movement would come to our building to sell news sheets, and collect money. When I got up and opened the door, the two Movement boys shook my hands, came inside and sat down.
‘So tell me, thambis, what’s new in the country?’ I asked them, as I took a seat in front of them.
‘As if you are going to help if we tell you,’ one of them said bitterly, while the other stared at me intensely and said, ‘Annan, all the world is watching our struggle carefully now. The Tamil Eelam government has been formed. We have a tripartite military, a financial administration, a police force, a bank. All we need is for the world to recognize our government. People like you need to offer us your aid now.’
I looked at them and with a pathetic expression on my face said, ‘Thambi, whatever you say, I have no money to give you. I can pay you only for the booklets and papers you give me.’ When they handed me a magazine and a newspaper, I counted out a few coins.
When the boys took the coins and started to leave, that idea suddenly popped into my head. I looked at the boys and said, ‘Thambi, here in apartment seven, new people have moved in. Have you gone there?’ The boys braked to a stop.
‘What is the name?’
‘Ilankainayaki.’
‘Sounds rather like a Sinhala name.’
‘No, thambi, it is Tamil. Ilankainayaki is a Tamil name. If it is a Sinhala name, then it would be Lankarani.’
After the boys went out, I closed the door and watched what was going on outside through the peephole in the door. When the boys went to the number seven door and placed a hand on the bell, the door jerked open. All that could be seen was the boys talking to someone inside. But I was not able to hear what they were saying from where I was. Ilankainayaki’s door was
shut with the same swiftness with which it was opened.
I slowly opened my door, came out and asked, ‘Thambi, what is the woman saying?’
One of the boys, in a complaining voice said, ‘The woman refused to even open the door. When we asked her to buy the Movement newspaper, she said to go put it for sale at the shop and that she would buy it there and that I was not to come to her house.’
The other boy said, ‘Ilankainayaki seems like a fit name for that woman.’
I slowly started losing interest in Ilankainayaki because there were other things going on around me that were much more pressing. Ilankainayajki became just one among the hundred thousand Tamils living in France. If by chance we crossed each other, I greeted her and she nodded at me. I really didn’t know whether she was nodding at my smile or whether it was a part of the caress she gave to the dog she was carrying.
One day when my bell rang and I opened the door, Ilankainayaki was standing there. I said, ‘Come in, Akka,’ and stepped inside the room. She took one step forward, held onto the open door and stood there. My box of cigarettes was lying on the table that was between us. Thinking hard about why she had come to me, I stepped towards the table to get a cigarette when Ilankainayaki hurriedly moved outside the door in a panic. ‘Does she think I am going to rape the Yellow Bird?’ I thought furiously as I took a cigarette, lit it and sat down in a chair. I felt a slight humilation at her panicked move. Once again, Ilankainayaki came forward and gripped the door.
‘Antonythasan, could you do me a favour?’
How does she know my name? . . . right, she too must have checked my mailbox, I thought. ‘Tell me, Akka, what do you want me to do?’
‘I am feeling really sick. I cannot go out. Laila needs food. Could you please buy some?’ When I nodded, she walked in slowly and placed the money and the piece of paper with the details of food to be bought on the edge of the table and left.
When I bought the food for the dog, I kept wondering what Ilankainayaki would eat and whether she needed anything. When I stopped in front of Ilankainayaki’s door and placed my hand on the bell, just as I expected, the door opened immediately. As I passed her each of the packages through the four-inch gap, Ilankainayaki took them from me, one by one. If I had left right then, it would have been dignified. But wishing to drag out a conversation, I asked, ‘So, do you know anything new about what is going on in the country?’
The answer—‘I don’t know anything’—was accompanied by the door clicking shut.
During that time, the war was at its height in Sri Lanka. There was news coming out that Tiger aircraft were bombing Colombo. If I had asked about her health, I might have received an answer, I thought to myself.
It was snowing heavily at that time. All the lawns had been turned into snowscapes. In January, there were reports of the army capturing Killinochi. February, March, April, every month dawned and died with mournful news. By the beginning of May, the cold started to recede. When I was seated on the ground floor steps, I could see Ilankainayaki in the far distance, barely able to carry the heavy bags she was lugging. I got up and walked over to her. Both her hands were filled with bags of sliced bread. Laila was following her slowly. I took the bags from her.
As we were going up in the elevator, I asked, ‘Why so much bread?’ and smiled.
Ilankainayaki wet her lips with her tongue and said, ‘Our children are standing in the cold and struggling. I am going to make sandwiches for them.’
I went up to Ilankainayaki’s door, placed the bags with the bread against the wall. Ilankainayaki waited until I left, then opened her door, dragged the bags inside, and went in. When Laila entered, the door was shut.
The news on television showed Eelam Tamils who had been protesting under Eiffel Tower in Paris continuously for the last forty days. The scene had been filmed from above. There were no less than thirty thousand people there, I think. Then Ilankainayaki appeared on TV. There was a photograph of Prabhakaran in her hands. She spoke in French fluently with the newscaster. ‘Stop the war in Sri Lanka. Stop the killing of Tamils by air raids and cluster bombing. I am asking you as a mother . . . the international world, please save our children.’ Ilankainayaki spoke in a sobbing voice. Her body was shaking. Her hands were agitated and looked as if they might slap the newscaster as they moved up and down. She must have spoken for under a minute. But her passionate cry was certain to rend the souls of the listeners. When Ilankainayaki finished speaking, she raised the picture in her hand high up and cried out, ‘Our leader Prabhakaran.’ Her voice rang out clearly. It was the eighth of May.
A month must have passed. I opened my door one day and walked towards the elevator to find Ilankainayaki already waiting there with her dog. The doors of the elevator closed. Both of us live on the same floor, next door to each other. But our conversations somehow took place in the elevator. Just as the Movement and the government have talks with each other in a third nation, this elevator was our third space.
‘I saw Akka some time ago on the French news.’
Ilankainayaki nodded her head softly. I didn’t know if the nod was for the dog or for me. Staring hard at her face I said, ‘You showed a picture and all, and while speaking you were throwing your hands about as if you would hit somebody.’
Ilankainayaki twisted her lip, and gazing up said, ‘That picture? They said it was Prabhakaran or somebody.’ When the elevator doors opened, Ilanakainayaki with her wide-spaced strides, walked out. The dog ran after her. I was standing still inside the elevator. The elevator doors closed.
Yesterday, I heard loud noises outside. Cursing, ‘They don’t let you sleep in even on holidays,’ I got up from my bed. It was ten in the morning. I opened the door to check what the noise was all about. There was a crowd in front of Ilankainayaki’s apartment. The police had come and were breaking down her door. I asked the African woman living in number six, who was standing there, ‘What is the matter?’ She said that she had thought for the past two or three days that a bad odour was coming from apartment number seven, and when the smell got worse today, she had informed the police. I opened my nostrils wide, took a deep breath and released it. I didn’t smell any bad odour. I couldn’t really remember when I’d last seen Ilankainayaki. But when I realized that I hadn’t seen in her in the last ten or fifteen days, my heart went dry.
When the door was broken open, the police stretched out red plastic tapes so that no one could enter that area. Ilankainayaki’s body was discovered inside. They said that she had died maybe ten days ago. I called out to a policeman and in a soft voice told him, ‘There was a dog also in there. See if it is alive.’
The policeman, who went inside came out, looked me up and down and said, ‘There is no dog inside.’
‘It may have died too,’ I said.
‘Everything has been searched. There is nothing of the sort in there,’ said the policeman.
Ilankainayaki’s body was packed up in a plastic bag and brought out. I shut my eyes tight. There was the sound of her body being placed inside the elevator. When I opened my eyes, the elevator had left. I walked back slowly, opened my door and fell on the bed. For a long while I lay there with my eyes closed.
At around seven in the evening, I once again opened my door and came out to look. Now there was no one in front of Ilankainayaki’s door. When I slowly went over to investigate, I found that her broken door had been sealed shut by the police. Then I smelt the bad odour. I rushed over and knocked at the door of number six. The African woman opened the door and stepped out. ‘Can you smell the bad odour?’ I asked agitatedly.
The woman looked at me sadly and said, ‘They took away the corpse in the morning itself. By now there is no smell.’
‘They took away only one corpse,’ I murmured. That African woman gazed at me with pity and asked, ‘That woman who died, she was from your country?’
I nodded yes.
When the woman asked, ‘What is your country?’ I answered, ‘It is called Sri Lanka or something.’
My brain was filled with thoughts of what might have happened to Laila. I was suddenly struck by the thought that other than Ilankainayaki, no one else would have had a chance to kill or destroy that dog. I began to believe it too. All the doubts and hatred regarding Ilankainayaki that had been at the bottom of my heart from the beginning began to rise up. The Yellow Bird had killed a white dog.
I told you—didn’t I?—at the beginning of the story itself, that this narrator’s heart is filled with nastiness!
Excerpted with permission from The MGR Murder Trial, Shobasakthi, translated from the Tamil by Anushiya Ramaswamy, Penguin Books India.
Shobasakthi lives in France. He is a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee and a former LTTE child-soldier. He has published two novels, a collection of short stories, three plays and many essays. His first novel, translated in English as Gorilla, was published to immense acclaim. For the last 20 years, he has worked as a dishwasher, cook, supermarket shelver, room boy, construction worker and street sweeper, among other things.
