Instead he made his way by foot along Lotus Road, where there were enough beggars, sick men, and sellers to step over shoulder by and break past, enough to make a man feel like he was still moving through the world of his own volition. Even a forty-six-year-old grandfather. He walked the same route for two hours, trying to empty all of it there, the worry and the plotting and the outrage over what was asked of him now, from the village, from his sent-off son, from his well-kept walauwa people, from the British when they with their own rage for right numbers would demand why he was returning four prisoners and not six. He pounded out his worry and plotting and outrage through successions of layabouts and eventually curious doormen until enough of them knew to give this mad stomping Mahatteya a wide margin and so Sam Kandy could claim victory, but now there was nothing to do but go to the room and tell her he had to go to the village. Only, she wasn’t there, waiting for him, when he came back.
