Free The Luminist by David Rocklin Page B

he’d learned that
Mary had a caustic tongue and the arrogance of the all-seeing unnoticed. Ewen was a blur of childish need. The memsa’ab was yet unknown to him, but through others’ eyes came the vague shape of a woman spoken of only at a distance. The sa’ab of this house was a man to be pitied.
    Yet it was the barest of looks from Julia that needled his heart and made him want to walk away from here even as the world whispered consequences: Gita, bathed in another of her inevitable red fevers.
    He set to work.
    The water could not simply be spirited away. What was needed was what he’d watched Matara’s men create, to drain the village of rain and refuse. A catch basin.
    He found some planks the storm had pulled free from Holland House and plunged them into the water until they stood like the headstones behind the Galle Face. Then he dug at the accumulated mud while across from him, Ewen chased after a small peacock. Its wings bent at the water as its childish tormentor drove it from the banks into the brackish eddies.
    Over three hours while his dam took form, the yard still remained underwater. Miserable, he considered the immensity of the task before him and could think only of his hunger. What kinds of food lay in the main house? He wagered that the feeble sa’ab sat before a feast of fowl and good bread, and fruit carted in from the recesses of the country where the rains fell most sparingly. Money was no object to a director. The Colebrooks’ table was certain to be piled high with excess. What was hunger to them? Something for the servants to remedy when summoned, something that a child could endure until the last peacock was rousted.
    He worked deep into the day, through dizziness and cramps that doubled him over. All the while the rain fell, making a fool of him. Julia watched from the interior of the gazebo, paper tablet in her lap.
    Under his incessant labor, a ditch formed that split the yard
in half. He caught his breath while tracing the falling rain in the water ’s reflection, from the ashen sky down to him. As the funereal afternoon light waned, Mary called to him from the veranda. “There’s food, if you’ ve a need.”
    He climbed out of the flood and ran down the planks to the house. Clots of wet mud slid from his body. He held his crusted hands in the rain, letting the storm wash them clean, then accepted Mary ’s offering. Coconuts, sliced mango, some bread; all showing their age. Nothing that couldn’t be gleaned from the land surrounding the house. He hid his disappointment and ate. When he finished, he took some more bread and wrapped it in his tunic. Looking up, he saw Catherine at the window of the house, watching him.
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    SHE WAITED UNTIL the sun fell below the cradle of trees before emerging. Through the afternoon, she’d watched him work. Charles had asked for tea and she’d bade Mary to respond. Julia sought respite from Ewen’s ever-presence and she’d shooed them away. Nothing else beckoned to her as this, the hope that Holland House might be reclaimed by the boy who left the confines of the day she’d first seen him, to turn up before her eyes once again.
    Crossing the walkway, she stood above the waves pulling against Eligius’ dams. Mary saw her and ran down the planks. “ Is this what you call work?” she shouted. Ewen pulled up short at her tone.
    Julia set her paper down. She watched implacably.
    â€œ You’ ve done nothing! If anything, the Colebrooks’ home drowns in deeper water.”
    Eligius waded to the gate and his second dam. His legs burned. His back felt as if it had been hollowed and filled with molten iron.
    â€œ Mary,” Catherine said, “enough.”
    â€œ Your memsahib is doubtless very angry – ”
    He pulled the wood slats from the ground. The waters
rushed to the gate, now the low point in the yard. Their flow became a flood; the trapped