The Fountains of Paradise

Watched by the usual inquisitive tourists, a young archaeologist from one of the African countries was searching the wall for inscriptions, with the aid of a powerful oblique light. Rajasinghe felt like warning her that the chance of making a new discovery was virtually zero. Paul Sarath had spent twenty years going over every square millimetre of the surface, and the three-volume Takkagala Graffiti was a monumental work of scholarship which would never be superseded – if only because no other man would ever again be so skilled at reading archaic Taprobani inscriptions. They had both been young men when Paul had begun his life's work. Rajasinghe could remember standing at this very spot while the then Deputy Assistant Epigrapher of the Department of Archaeology had traced out the almost indecipherable marks on the yellow plaster, and translated the poems addressed to the beauties on the rock above. After all these centuries, the lines could still strike echoes in the human heart:

I am Tissa, Captain of the Guard.

I came fifty leagues to see the doe-eyed ones, but they would not speak to me.

Is this kind?

May you remain here for a thousand years, like the hare which the King of the Gods painted on the Moon. I am the priest Mahinda from the vihara of Tuparama.

That hope had been partly fulfilled, partly denied. The ladies of the rock had been standing here for twice the time that the cleric had imagined, and had survived into an age beyond his uttermost dreams. But how few of them were left! Some of the inscriptions referred to "five hundred golden-skinned maidens"; even allowing for considerable poetic licence, it was clear that not one-tenth of the original frescoes had escaped the ravages of time or the malevolence of man. But the twenty that remained were now safe forever, their beauty stored in countless films and tapes and crystals.

Certainly they had outlasted one proud scribe, who had thought it quite unnecessary to give his name:

I ordered the road to be cleared, so that pilgrims could see the fair maidens standing on the mountainside.

I am the King.

Over the years Rajasinghe – himself the bearer of a royal name, and doubtless host to many regal genes – had often thought of those words; they demonstrated so perfectly the ephemeral nature of power, and the futility of ambition. "I am the King." Ah, but which King? The monarch who had stood on these granite flag-stones – scarcely worn then, eighteen hundred years ago – was probably an able and intelligent man; but he failed to conceive that the time could ever come when he would fade into an anonymity as deep as that of his humblest subjects.

The attribution was now lost beyond trace. At least a dozen kings might have inscribed those haughty lines; some had reigned for years, some only for weeks, and few indeed had died peacefully in their beds. No-one would ever know if the king who felt it needless to give his name was Mahatissa II, or Bhatikabhaya, or Vijayakumara III, or Gajabahukagamani, or Candamukhasiva, or Moggallana I, or Kittisena, or Sirisamghabodhi… or some other monarch not even recorded in the long and tangled history of Taprobane.

The attendant operating the little elevator was astonished to see his distinguished visitor, and greeted Rajasinghe deferentially. As the cage slowly ascended the full fifteen metres, he remembered how he would once have spurned it for the spiral stairway, up which Dravindra and Jaya were bounding even now in the thoughtless exuberance of youth.

The elevator clicked to a halt, and he stepped on to the small steel platform built out from the face of the cliff. Below and behind were a hundred metres of empty space, but the strong wire mesh gave ample security; not even the most determined suicide could escape from the cage – large enough to hold a dozen people – clinging to the underside of the eternally breaking wave of stone.

Here in this accidental indentation, where the rock-face formed a shallow cave and so protected them from the elements, were the survivors of the king's heavenly court. Rajasinghe greeted them silently, then sank gratefully into the chair that was offered by the official guide.

"I would like," he said quietly, "to be left alone for ten minutes. Jaya – Dravindra – see if you can head off the tourists."

His companions looked at him doubtfully; so did the guide, who was supposed never to leave the frescoes unguarded. But, as usual, Ambassador Rajasinghe had his way, without even raising his voice.

"Ayu bowan," he greeted the silent figures, when he was alone at last. "I'm sorry to have neglected you for so long."

He waited politely for an answer, but they paid no more attention to him than to all their other admirers for the last twenty centuries. Rajasinghe was not discouraged; he was used to their indifference. Indeed, it added to their charm.