He was a short, thin man, and he had probably only one ally in the building, a young woman pathologist, who, not realizing his reputation, had come to him for help once and thus, by startling him, was befriended. The rest of his colleagues in the building distanced themselves with a tidal wave of anonymous memos and posters. (One poster announced that he was wanted in Glasgow for murder.) Perera’s defense was that the staff was undisciplined, lazy, foolish, unclean and wrongheaded. It was only when he spoke in public that he switched to intellectual and subtle arguments about politics and its link to forensic pathology. His milder twin somehow seemed to have smuggled himself onto the stage.

Anil had heard one of his talks on her second night in Colombo and had been surprised that there were people with his opinions in positions of authority. But now, in the hospital, where she had come to use some equipment, she met the roving snapping dog that was the other side of his nature. She stood there openmouthed while exhausted staff, personnel and workmen and ambling patients veered away from Perera, creating a zone between themselves and this Cerberus.

A young man came up to her.

‘You are Anil Tissera, no?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You won the scholarship to America.’

She didn’t say anything. The foreign celebrity was being pursued.

‘Can you give a small talk, thirty minutes, on poisoning and snakebite?’

They probably knew just as much about snakebite as she did, and she was sure that this choice of subject was intentional-to level the playing field between the foreign-trained and the locally trained.

‘Yes, all right. When?’

‘Tonight?’ the young man said.

She nodded. ‘You contact me at lunch and tell me where.’ She was saying this as she swerved past Dr. Perera.

‘You!’

She turned to face the infamous senior medical officer.

‘You’re the new one, no? Tissera?’

‘Yes, sir. I heard your speech two nights ago. I’m sorry I-’