By Shirani Rajapakse
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Missing Pieces is a short story from the Short Stories Collection titled Breaking News by Author Shirani Rajapakse.
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There was something very wrong. He knew it the moment his foot touched the ground. His right foot. But he lifted it up anyway. The noise deafened him. It threw him away. Far away. And then he remembered no more. He woke up to a searing pain in his leg. There was nothing where his leg had been, except the pain, incessant, searing, gripping. How could there be pain for something that didn’t exist?
The sun mercilessly sprayed its rays down on him as he lay writhing in a cauldron of pain that seemed to turn and twist him in every direction. He tried to stand but could not. Tried to sit, that too he could not. The others hovered around him, unsure how to react. They were new recruits just like him and although they had gone through the drill, the sudden shock of it all to see one of their fellow travelers going through what they could only imagine made them balk. They stood over him, a human wall surrounding him, watching him helplessly, not sure what to say or do. Then, he heard someone say something that was lost in the howl of his pain. Someone gestured, but that too was lost in the glare of the searing heat. The gesture flapped helplessly in the air and was seemingly lost in the breeze.
They stood around watching him, listening to him, their fear mounting. They were talking among themselves, asking him questions, telling him things, but it was all a whole lot of sounds that flew about the breeze. He heard but didn’t understand. They watched him on the ground. They had no idea what do to. They must have stood there for an eternity. Then someone broke out of the trance and shouted out an order. The others awoke from their daze. Then they bent down to pick him up, whatever was left of him. He waited unmoving except in whatever direction the pain pushed him until someone pulled him up. Someone else picked him up. They dragged him away half crazed, dripping with blood like a carcass of a cow hung up on a hook inside the butchers shop. Except that this was no dead cow but a man screaming to live.
The piece of leg that caught the full impact of the shock had long since disappeared: scattered all around the Vanni like specks of dust. Some had stuck to the leaves and branches of trees while the rest had just melted away, or so it seemed. There was nothing left to take except the remains of the man to which the leg belonged. They half dragged, half carried the now screaming, now fainting man almost half a mile to where the rest were waiting. Into the jeep they threw him, then they all tumbled in after him. He lay groaning, fainting and bleeding, covering the floor of the jeep brown red with his blood.
The engine roared to life and moved through the harsh terrain, retracing its path back to civilization. All the while, he lay there on the floor feeling every movement of the wheels as they moved over rocks and undergrowth and swayed past trees that seemed to appear in their path out of nowhere. Every time the wheels rolled a little closer to the destination, the pain moved a little harder inside him. He blacked out, regained consciousness, only to pass out again as the pain pushed deeper and deeper into him like an electric drill. He didn’t know how many times he must have fainted. Every time he opened his eyes he saw the dark shroud of branches overhead and someone looking down at him with despair.
He made it to the hospital many miles away. He didn’t know how long it took or how far he had travelled. But he got there somehow. They had managed to drive to the hospital without any incident. He was lucky, they said. Others didn’t have it that easy. They sometimes had to wait for days in and out of pain, as progress out of the Vanni was frequently hampered by threats. They were treated by those around them, with whatever they had with them. But this wasn’t always enough. If they were lucky they would make it through with the treatment, but if not, then they left their last breath in the Vanni. He was one of the fortunate ones, or so they said, although he had begun to wonder how he was so.
He woke up to see the bright white coats of the men who pulled him out and dumped him onto a stretcher. And then he blacked out again. He had arrived, but had no recollection of what transpired next. He woke up again to see the bright lights of the ward shining from afar, blinding him yet soothing him at the same time. It was night and he was on a bed. Others like him lay in rows of beds all around him, wounded, recuperating, in pain.
There was noise all around as people talked to each other, to themselves, to no one in particular. There was silence all around as people shut themselves from the world, from the pain, from the here and now. They were together in this, yet also so alone. He too was one of them. He could neither speak nor shout. His silence screamed inside him, yet no words moved out of his mouth. He lay there watching the lights shine brightly, too brightly as if trying to say it was really alright. The mattress was hard. He could feel it, yet sometimes he could not. He lay there staring, staring while his mind screamed.
They told him he was inside the ward. They told him they had cut his leg off above the knee. He had lost the lower portion of his leg. The knee was badly damaged and the doctors had thought it best to sever the part from his thigh. So there he was left with a stump where once a leg stuck out. Bandaged in rolls of white it thrust out from him like a large sore thumb. It hurt him to see it. He lifted his head from the pillow and stared down at the white stump sticking out next to his leg. He could feel his knee, his toes, feel the movement of his ankle the way it moved when he walked. He could even feel his toes as he wriggled them, counted them, one two three four five, yet when he looked down there was nothing. Not a single toe, no ankle no leg. He was feeling something, yet there was nothing. How could he feel nothing?
They had not prepared him for this. They had not said anything that could explain all this to him now. Nothing made sense just as nothing could be felt. Tears welled in his eyes, they poured down his cheeks in unaided streams to flow into the pillow and soak itself in the softness of the cotton therein. No one heard him cry. It was a noiseless sound, gurgling from the depth of his throat to move in silent waves out of his mouth. He cried to himself. He cried for the uselessness of it all. He cried in frustration, in bewilderment, in anguish, and he cried in anger at the man who had made it all happen. The megalomaniac that lived off the living every day; devoured their lives to sustain his dream of building castles in the jungle. Mostly he cried at the helplessness he was feeling, and things to come that he did not know of but could only fathom. There was no one there to care. They were all the same; starting off whole yet ending with missing pieces: sad rejects of a society that needed whole people but had been shortchanged too soon.
He was lying in a room full of people with missing pieces. They were young, yet the one act that had brought them there had changed them overnight. They had grown so old in the space of a few days. Row upon row they lay like rag dolls with broken parts that could not be mended, with missing pieces that could not be found. They had lost them on the way, not of their will but due to someone else’s will: the megalomaniac dressed in stripes who wanted nothing but to kill, to destroy. So he got his boys to lay mines in the ground. Buried them underground and let them bide their time until an unsuspecting foot placed itself on the earth overhead. The mines would then wake up. The hard tread of the heavy booted foot on it was the signal. The moment the foot lifted, it too would lift off, taking with it whatever was in its way. No excuses. No releases. Just plain action. It would rise out of the hardened earth to burst into flame like a Chinese fireworks display shooting off far, far above, defying gravity to reach, reach straight ahead, only to release itself in a voluminous display of colour lighting up the dark night sky. Only this wasn’t a display of Chinese fireworks. There was nothing beautiful in it. Nothing awe inspiring. Just plain ugliness rising up to claim a limb, a life, a loved one, a dream. Soaring up and cracking into pieces, removing flesh, destroying flesh, searing and maiming. Every day it claimed someone and every day the megalomaniac got a little fatter on the blood he had spilt, the flesh he had ripped out.
He lay there for what seemed like an eternity. His family didn’t come to see him. They lived far away, a world away from all that was happening around him. They didn’t know what had happened to him until much later, and even then there was nothing they could do. What was the use? It was too far for them to travel. Too much money to spend on the travel. Where would they stay when they got there? They were poor. They wouldn’t be able to do much for him now. There would be time yet when he returned home. So they made some excuse. Told him over the phone. He understood, yet didn’t quite comprehend.
The people dressed in white took care of him. They bathed and fed him for the first few days. Then when he was able to sit up in bed, they left him to learn to care for himself. They were as patient as they could be. But there wasn’t much they could offer him. There were many others like him waiting for the same. Many, many more forms hovering around waiting for something, for anything. A little sympathy, a little kindness, a little understanding, a little more time to enjoy the luxury of owning a leg. Some were worse than him. But they gave him whatever they could spare of their time, their sympathy and their care. He had to make do with whatever they could give him. There was no choice. Everything was in short supply. Including legs.
After many days a relative came to claim him, whatever was left of him. They had told his family that he was now able to leave. He was sent home. First in a wheelchair that made it up to the entrance of the hospital and from there he made do with a pair of sticks. The awkwardness of walking with sticks, the cushioned handles cutting deep into his armpits. He had to learn to live this way from now on. His stump was healing fast, yet there were hidden spaces that had not even started to heal.
The missing pieces were yet to be understood. The shame of it all. The uselessness of his life. He had lived for twenty two years and had hoped for three times more, but suddenly it all seemed too much. What would he do with all that time? The years seemed to stretch in front of him in an imaginary line that went on and on and on, with no end in sight. It all hit him hard like a hundred and one bullets against his chest. His breath caught in anguish. He wanted to cry but his eyes were parched. He had run out of tears. It seemed that tears too were in short supply, just like legs. His soul had started to bleed but no one seemed to have noticed this nor made an attempt to stem the flow. How could they, those who did not see, did not know.
The folks at home stood aghast when they saw him get out of the vehicle that had been hired to bring him home. They stared at him in horror as he strutted in through the door. One leg. Two sticks. They didn’t know what to do nor how to react. They were embarrassed for him, for them. The silence grew. The pain continued to grow and grow like an unseen extension to his nonexistent leg. They spoke in whispers thinking the noise might disturb him. They had heard that loud noises might bring back the memories, the pain. So they did everything in silence, as much as they could. They were trying to be kind, to empathize as best they could, the only way they knew how. They didn’t realize it, but the silence cut deep into him, much deeper than the noise.
The silence screamed out loud as a large bell deafening him. He screamed out trying to block the silence, but it continued to grow and whisper. His family thought he was mad and reduced the volume of their speech even further. He screamed louder and the wind carried his unintelligible screams across the land. Yet no one cared. There were too many such people screaming to be heard. Their silent screams crisscrossed the length and breadth of the land and disappeared on the air. If someone heard him scream they merely ignored it as the screams of the crazed, just as his family did. His soul bled faster. He wanted to talk to his family, to cry out to them to treat him like they always did, but something stuck in his throat preventing the words from rushing out. They rose up in sentences but the door to his lips held them back. They waited patiently for hours, then tired and returned to their source.
He sat on the cheap red plastic chair near the window and stared out at the garden. It was dried. The flowers wilted. The grass had turned brown in places where the sun scorched down on it. The wind roared overhead. The breezes blew harsh and hot against his skin. There was nothing that could please him. Not inside the house, not outside. Inside the silence grew to an earth shattering scream; outside the ugliness rose to blind him. He heard his mother talking softly to the neighbour across the yellow and green croton fence separating the two compounds.
“We sent him to earn a living; to feed us, clothe us, build this house. He could have waited for at least a year. But look what the fool had to do. Now he’s of no use to anyone.”
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Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet, playwright and fiction writer. She is the author of Breaking News (Vijitha Yapa 2011), a collection of short stories which was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award in 2010.
MS. Shirani’s poetry and short stories have appeared in The Smoking Poet, New Verse News, World Poetry Movement, The Occupy Poetry Project and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology and has been featured on the radio program Verses in Motion._________________________________________________________
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