The Hungry Ghosts Read Online Free

fall apart on the trip.”
    “Yes,” I said acidly, “I plan to go stark raving mad, tear off my clothes and run around Colombo. You can come and visit me in Angoda when they put me in there with all the other lunatics.”
    “But Shivan, seriously, I am worried that Sri Lanka will disappoint. You have such high hopes pinned on this visit.”
    “And you choose to tell me this now? All the time I was in Vancouver, you didn’t mention it. Instead you go behind my back and talk to Amma. I will never trust you again.”
    “I’m sorry but I was so worried and—”
    “Well, what do you want me to do about it now?” I exclaimed. “Why have you both held off on this until I am here?”
    My sister was silent and my mother watched me with a grimace of pity, sensing the fear behind my anger.
    “Shivan, I’m really sorry I didn’t say any of this before,” Renu replied at last.
    I handed the phone to my mother.
    After the call, she rushed around getting her coat and scarf, checking her hair in the mirror, wretched with failure. To hide my fear I glowered at her. We kissed goodbye tersely, not meeting each other’s eyes.
    “Remember, your task,” she said, pressing my arm.
    I nodded.
    My mother is having problems with cockroaches. In her absence, David will get the house fumigated. All foodstuffs in the kitchen have to be thrown out before we leave, the fridge emptied of anything that will rot.
    Here in Toronto, the melting April snow brings a sense of the world wrung out and parched. It is impossible to believe that, across the country in Vancouver, daffodils bloom and the grass is a summer green. I long for the moist greenness of the city, the jewelled moss on rocks, like gems on a dowager’s gnarled hand. And I am filled with longing for Michael with his tousle of black curls, his way of standing, hands jammed in pockets, neck tilted as if looking over afence, smiling like he is watching children at play. I long for the metallic smell of him in bed; miss, with a tightening at the base of my throat, our apartment on Harwood Street, its minuscule balcony perched like a sparrow’s nest on a corner of the twentieth floor, our morning coffee at the little table there, gazing at the familiar view of English Bay and Stanley Park, the ships ambling along the horizon. I miss our bus ride to the university where we both work, miss how, as the bus crosses the Burrard Bridge, the sea glitters below, sunlight trembling on passing sails.
    That life feels like a distant thing, as if it was not just last night that Michael and I, after dinner, walked down to English Bay as we used to in the early days of our romance. Finding a log to shelter us from the wind, we huddled together under a blanket and sipped brandy from a flask as we talked about our day, Michael chuckling at my sarcastic comments on the people passing by.
    Yet after a while, a silence fell between us, and in the silence I knew we could both feel all the goodness draining away, as it so often does these days. Michael took a swig of brandy and offered the flask to me, but I shook my head and stared out at the sea.
    “You won’t leave me, promise me you won’t, Michael. I know it’s ridiculous but I am so worried, so frightened about this.”
    Our knees were tight together and he ran his hand up and down my shin. “No, I will not leave you,” he said, weary from being asked the same thing so many times in the past weeks.
    “You say that, you say that,” I said, close to tears, “but I feel you will leave me. I deserve to be left.”
    “Shivan,” he said, and forced me to take a long gulp of the brandy.
    I glance at my watch and count back the hours. It is 5 p.m. in Vancouver. Michael has just finished work and will be heading across campus to get the bus into town. He will soon return to our apartment, stopping off at Safeway on Davie Street to get groceries. His kitten, Miss Murasaki, will be waiting for him, paw fluttering under the door, sensing from his