Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje Read Free Book Online

site. A site constantly under government or police supervision.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘And this is a recent skeleton,’ she said firmly. ‘It was buried no more than four to six years ago. What’s it doing here?’
    ‘There are thousands of twentieth-century bodies, Anil. Can you imagine how many murders—’
    ‘But we can prove this, don’t you see? This is an opportunity, it’s traceable. We found him in a place that only a government official could get into.’
    He was tapping his pen on the wooden arm of the chair as she talked.
    ‘We can do palynology tests to identify the type of pollen that fused to the bone, on those parts of him that were not burned. Only the arms and some ribs were burned. Do you have a copy of Wodehouse’s
Pollen Grains
?’
    ‘In my office,’ he said quietly. ‘We need to test for soil extracts.’
    ‘Can you find a forensic geologist?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘No one else.’
    They had been whispering in the dark for almost half an hour since she had walked from the skeleton at the fourth table and given Sarath’s shoulder a little tug, saying, ‘I have to show you something.’ ‘What?’
‘This thing. Listen. . . .’
    They covered Sailor and taped the plastic. ‘Let’s lock up,’ he said. ‘I promised to take you to that temple. In an hour it’s the best time to see it. We’ll catch the dusk drummer.’
    Anil didn’t like the abrupt switch to something aesthetic. ‘You think it’s safe?’
    ‘What do you want to do? Take it wherever you go? Don’t worry about anything. These will be fine here.’
    ‘It’s . . .’
    ‘Leave it.’
    She thought she’d say it right out. At once. ‘I don’t really know, you see, which side you are on—if I can trust you.’
    He began to speak, stopped, then spoke slowly. ‘What would I do?’
    ‘You could make him disappear.’
    He moved out of his stillness and walked to the wall and turned on three lights. ‘Why, Anil?’
    ‘You have a relative in the government, don’t you?’
    ‘I do have one, yes. I hardly ever see him. Perhaps he can help us.’
    ‘Perhaps. Why did you turn on the light?’
    ‘I need to find my pen. What—did you think it was a signal to someone?’
    ‘I don’t know where you stand. I know . . . I know you feel the purpose of truth is more complicated, that it’s sometimes more dangerous here if you tell the truth.’
    ‘Everyone’s scared, Anil. It’s a national disease.’
    ‘There are so many bodies in the ground now, that’s what you said . . . murdered, anonymous. I mean, people don’t even know if they are two hundred years old or two weeks old, they’ve all been through fire. Some people let their ghosts die, some don’t. Sarath, we can do something. . . .’
    ‘You’re six hours away from Colombo and you’re whispering—think about that.’
    ‘I don’t want to go to the temple now.’
    ‘That’s fine. You don’t have to. I’ll go. I’ll see you in the morning.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll turn out the lights,’ he said.
     
     
    W e are often criminals in the eyes of the earth, not only for having committed crimes, but because we know that crimes have been committed.’ Words about a man buried forever in a prison.
El Hombre de la Máscara de Hierro. The Man in the Iron Mask.
Anil needed to comfort herself with old friends, sentences from books, voices she could trust.
‘This is the dead-room,’ said Enjolras.
Who was Enjolras? Someone in
Les Misérables.
A book so much a favourite, so thick with human nature she wished it to accompany her into the afterlife. She was working with a man who was efficient in his privacy, who would never unknot himself for anyone. A paranoid is someone with all the facts, the joke went. Maybe this was the only truth here. In this rest house near Bandarawela with four skeletons.
You’re six hours away from Colombo and you’re whispering—think about that.
    In her years abroad, during her European and North American education, Anil had