his back against the windy sea, watching Jacoba scale up the rock towards the ruins. “Come on Amal,” she called to him turning around. She was wearing a cream denim jeans and a white cotton sleeveless top that exposed her navel whenever the wind blew it up. He loved the perfume she emitted, the smell of which brought to him the image of a tulip garden he had seen in the Tamil movie “Anyan,” maybe because he had subconsciously associated Jacoba with the tulip gardens for which her country was famous. Did tulips have a fragrance? He never knew. Probably they didn’t have. Yet that was what her smell brought to his mind. Little did Amal know what tulips actually meant! As he followed her up towards the ruins, Amal remembered that he had been there only once before. That was when he had been a little boy of eight studying in his fourth standard at Deva Matha Convent School, run by Latin Catholic nuns. Sister Bertilla, his class teacher, had taken the entire class one afternoon to see the Portuguese fort, and from there to the light house, which was built by the British. He now had only a faint memory of that afternoon. He could not recollect the frontal view, the view of the fort from the sea side. Instead, he remembered something like a ruined staircase somewhere inside the fort, and Sister Bertilla’s shrill voice crying “Careful... careful don’t fall!” He had the faint memory of their visit to the lighthouse too, that same afternoon. It seemed that the whole class walked the distance from the fort to the lighthouse in Thangasseri. Again he could not recollect the details of the walk. Only that the class had walked in a line, and that Sister Bertilla had a twig she had cut from some branch on the way with which she tried to scare the boys and girls into obeying her, not to get into the middle of the road but to keep to the side. But her efforts had only a funny effect on them, as they laughed at each of her threats. He believed she too was laughing. He also remembered the disappointment they had had, when at the lighthouse they were not allowed entry. He had forgotten why. Jacoba had reached the bottom of the ruins from where rose the high wall whose plaster had come off probably scores of years ago. She lowered herself and extended her arm to him. He felt ashamed to be offered help to climb. Yet, the sight of her naked, white, fleshy, arm that tapered down to the long
Page 38