Anil and Sarath
The person Anil has the most contact with in the main plot of the novel is Sarath Diyasena. Her relationship with him goes through several stages as the story goes on. At the beginning, she is very suspicious of him, because he works for the government. During her first days in Sri Lanka, she reflects on him: “Was the partner assigned to her neutral in this war? Was he just an archaeologist who loved his work?” (29) and later, she asks him directly: “‘I don’t really know, you see, which side you are on–if I can trust you.’” (53).
The narrator plays with Anil’s uncertainty about Sarath. The reader always has, for example, less knowledge about Anil’s lovers than Anil herself: in the case of her husband, he does not get to know his name; in the case of Cullis and Leaf, he is told about the circumstances of their relationships with Anil only some time into the book. With Sarath, on the other hand, things are different, as we can see at his first appearance:
As she entered the Archaeological Offices she heard his voice.
‘So–you are the swimmer!’ A broad-chested man in his late forties was approaching her casually, with his hand out. She hoped this wasn’t Mr. Sarath Diyasena, but it was. (16)
Sarath is right away described by his looks and his age and is named by his full name. While Anil knows his detailed personal data, she does not know his character, his intentions, and most importantly whether he is trustworthy or not. At the end of the novel, during the hearing at the Armoury Auditorium, the reader knows even more about him than Anil, because he is told Sarath’s thoughts: “But now they were in danger. He sensed the hostility in the room. Only he was not against her” (272).
In the course of time, Anil and Sarath like each other more and more and there is even an erotic tension that develops between the two of them. While Anil is sick, she has a feverish dream in which she is almost naked, lies down on the floor and Sarath traces the shape of her body with a pen (cf. 61f). Sarath has rather caring feelings for Anil. He reminds her of her malaria pill (cf. 27) and lies awake because he hears Anil weeping in the room next to his (63).
There are also a few rare occasions of physical contact between Anil and Sarath. “Sarath reached his hand across the breakfast plates and held Anil’s wrist. His thumb on her pulse” (63). It gets more intimate when Sarath returns from taking Ananda to hospital:
She opened her eyes in the afternoon and Sarath was there.
‘He will be all right.’
‘Oh,’ she murmured. She pressed Sarath’s hand to the side of her face. (200)
At that time, the reader probably thinks that Anil trusts Sarath and is surprised at the fact that she does not wait for him at the walawwa after they have identified Sailor, but instead contacts Dr. Perera (cf. 270). Anil believes that her suspicion was justified when Sarath exposes her in the Armoury Auditorium. Only on the last page that Anil appears on is Sarath’s real plan revealed and we can only assume that she follows his instructions, but we are not told her feelings about him at that moment.
The relationship between Anil and Sarath can be seen as a symbol for the encounter of the west and the east. As I have demonstrated in chapter 2. 4., Anil has turned towards western culture during her time in America. When she arrives in Sri Lanka, she still sees herself as a westerner. She behaves in a western way and actively seeks connections to western culture, as it can be seen in this excerpt, which accumulates western things, just like the scene analysed in 2. 4.:
One postcard from Leaf. One American bird. She pulled some cutlets and a beer out of the fridge. There would be a book to read, a shower to take. Later she might go to Galle Face Green and have a drink at one of the newer hotels, watch the drunk members of a touring English cricket team sing karaoke. (29)
But she is seen as a westerner, too. Sarath tells her “‘You know, I’d believe your arguments more if you lived here,’ he said. ‘You can’t just slip in, make a discovery and leave.’” (44) and Chitra identifies her as “the woman from Geneva” (71).
Sarath, on the other hand, represents the east. Just after Anil’s above-quoted longing for the west, we observe Sarath’s behaviour from Anil’s point of view, which creates an antithesis to her western behaviour.
The day before [...] he had shown her a few temples and then, passing some of his students working in a historic area, had joyfully joined them and was soon collecting slivers of mica, telling them where they were likely to find fragments of iron in the ground, as if he were a gifted and natural finder of things. Most of what Sarath wished to know was in some way linked to the earth. (29)
While Anil is drawn towards western civilization in the forms of cooled beer, luxury hotels and cricket teams, Sarath favours being surrounded by nature. Educated in the west, Anil also uses different methods in her work. David Farrier calls Anil an “expert in the analysis of the contemporary”, whereas “Sarath understands the island through its histories”. He argues that his “training enables him to fathom, to examine the depths for traces of a far more intimate knowledge” (2005, 85). Sarath might have more understanding of the nature around him and also of Sri Lanka’s culture, but we should not forget that in the end they reach their goal, the identification of Sailor, together. Anil comes up with the idea that Sailor must have worked as a miner (cf. 179), Sarath concludes that it might have been a plumbago mine (cf. 204).
Anil’s and Sarath’s relationship moves from suspicion to respect, to disappointment and suspicion again on Anil’s side, until she eventually finds out that Sarath did not betray her but lived up to his standard: “As an archaeologist Sarath believed in truth as a principle. That is, he would have given his life for the truth if the truth were of any use” (157). Ultimately, he does give his life for the truth and to save Anil.