‘It won’t be tiny. You saw the damage. Anything that big will be trapped.’
‘But what if it is too big to go in? Like a man?’
‘How would a man make those dents? Anyway, if he puts his hand in, it will get scratched. There’d be blood. Even if he gets away, we’ll know more than we know now.’
‘And the decoy? Will it die?’ What did it take to risk so casually a creature you held dear?
‘Think: imagination.’ Jay banged the front of an ancient chest of drawers, a dark piece of furniture that could have come from a pirate ship. The front panels were inlaid with pale elongated star shapes of Dutch cosmology, the bottom drawers heavy and crammed with junk. He rattled them and pulled out a life-size wooden replica of a budgie, painted yellowy green with shivering black lines around its head. ‘Should do the trick, no?’
Downstairs, Marty had gone but I could still smell burnt tobacco in the air, much richer than the girly scent I had detected in Jay’s room.
‘Thank God, he’s buggered off at last.’ Jay pushed aside the empty chair.
‘Your dad sounded concerned.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Just asked what had happened.’
‘Oh, yeah. Like he cares.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t like your budgies much, but he hopes we’ll catch the culprit.’
‘Pater would like them all dead. All he cares about is himself.’
I found the disdain that distorted Marty’s face uncomfortable, yet I did not think he was a bad man, just someone with a lot going on inside that I could not understand. But I was not going to argue with Jay, especially not on the subject of his father. Not now, when things were so fragile.
‘You know what he said when I brought the first pair home?’
‘That he didn’t like budgies?’
‘Said he’d wring their bloody necks if they woke him up in the morning. Can you believe it? That’s why I brought more. And more. To see if he would wring all their bloody necks.’
‘He says that but he’s just joking, no? Pretending. He’s never really done anything like that, has he?’ But I couldn’t stop myself imagining it.
‘He’s always got the air con on full blast anyway. Wouldn’t hear even an elephant on the rampage.’ Jay positioned the trap on a bird table he had put outside the aviary. We started back towards the house, Jay striding ahead continuing an angry argument of his own.
Harsh cawing grew loud above us. ‘Wait.’
A crow swooped down onto the roof of the aviary. Swivelling its large black head, it took stock before dropping down onto the bird table to examine Jay’s trap. Rather than squeeze into the opening Jay had made, it moved to the side closer to the decoy. Its broad, flat back tensed and expanded; then the massive beak plunged at the wooden bird through the wires. Since the decoy did not budge, it turned back to the aviary and arched its wings like a sorcerer; the budgies, clustered at the far end, started to screech. With another sharp cry, the crow took off and rose rapidly in the air, spiralling up as if in the grip of an inner tornado and then folded up into a bullet and hurtled down in a sharp dive at the cage. It banged into the wire mesh, making another dent between the first two, and immediately rose up in the air for the next attack.
‘Jeez,’ Jay whistled. ‘He’s like a Stuka. I’ve got to get that bastard.’
‘So, it is him.’
‘You watch him. I’m going upstairs.’ He dashed back into the house.
The crow dive-bombed again and pounded the mesh, widening the dent. Two more crows circled the cage, cawing. The shrill alarm of the budgies inside rose. Jay had said to watch, so I waited and watched but I didn’t know what I could do if the crow got in.
Then, as the crow reached its high point again, I heard the sharp report of an air rifle. The crow’s wing juddered. The bird veered. Then another shot. This time the crow plummeted straight down and thudded to the ground, a weighted carcass cloaked in unflapping, lifeless, useless black wings. The cawing of its companions intensified. I checked the balcony. Jay was taking aim again. Another shot and a second crow dropped out of the sky with a hole widening in its head.
It frightened me. More crows appeared, circling. Their accusations, calls of retribution, filled the sky.
II
GALLINAGO
3
I didn’t see Jay for a few days. Then one sleepy afternoon, as I lay cloud-watching a snow goose slowly evolve into a hazy white antelope, a bicycle bell rang furiously. Jay, triggerhappy at the gate, his face chock-full and radiant, called up.
‘I’m going fishing. Wanna come?’
‘In the swamp?’
‘Outstation. Tomorrow. Two nights’ rest and reparations at Uncle Elvin’s estate.’
‘Have to ask my parents when they get home.’
‘Ask and come. Spend the night at my house. We shoot off at the crack of dawn.’ He said, ‘crack of dawn’ the way he would if planning a raid. ‘And bring a hat,’ he added. Then he was off, standing on the pedals and whizzing up the road.
Estate. Outstation. Rainbow fish jumping. How could I resist? Only later did it strike me that there might be neither reparations nor recuperation; a fishing trip involved more deliberate deaths, and this time I would be the one doing it. Then the bigger shock: that was the draw.
The recent downpours had not lasted; the town was sweltering. Downstairs, Siripala sat in the backyard chewing betel leaves – a practice expressly forbidden by my mother.
‘You are not allowed that stuff in our house.’
‘This is outside.’ Siripala spat a mouthful of betel juice into the drain. ‘In the village, people are warning of a catastrophe,’ he added implying that was enough to tip the balance of acceptable habits.
‘Is it the election?’ My father had been going on about the possibility as a matter of national anxiety.
‘No, baba, drought is coming.’ He popped another wad of bulath into his mouth and screwed up his face. ‘Little children will die.’
The cracks in his lips widened. Sly warnings and hidden threats bubbled in his reddish spittle.
Father came home before mother. Although there had not been another discussion on the demerits of the Alavises, and my father had not formally rescinded his veto, he had grudgingly accepted the first sleepover; I also knew that my mother had given a favourable report on Jay. So, as soon as he had settled into his armchair with his cup of creamy, sweet tea, I popped the question.
‘Thaththa, can I go on a trip with my friend? Outstation?’
‘Outstation where?’ He put on his reading glasses and peered as if he expected to find the answer printed on my forehead.
‘To Jay’s Uncle Elvin’s estate. Big place with fish and all.’
‘That brown sahib?’
‘Can I, please?’
‘You like to see first-hand what their capitalist system does? How those absentee landlords suck the country dry?’
I couldn’t decipher his expression.
‘His Uncle Elvin is cool.’
‘Is that so?’ My father doubled up his newspaper into an oblong he could hold in one hand, close to his face, thus dispensing with the smears of his spectacles for a moment. The new budget announcements were progressive, he had told my mother in the morning, but the renewed focus on sectarian loyalties dismayed him. I was the least of his worries. ‘Go then with your friend, putha, but never forget: he belongs to a class that only looks after itself. Keep a sharp eye.’
‘I’m learning all the time, Thaththa. Jay is teaching me carpentry, astronomy, zoology.’
‘I suppose you can’t hold a fellow’s breeding against him. After all he didn’t choose his procreant, did he?’ His voice took on a sympathetic lilt that made him appear oddly sanguine as if by yielding to me he had unexpectedly solved a long-standing dilemma.
The small, blue BOAC flight bag that one of my mother’s foreign friends had left at the house proved perfect for the expedition: a towel, spare shorts and shirt. A
change of underwear. Pyjamas. Toothbrush and toothpaste. My green plastic comb. All neatly fitted in. I did not bother with a book. Jay, despite his occasional big words, read only animal tracks, leaf fall and invisible fish trails in laughing water. I was going to be the same.
Then, at the last minute, filial deference mixed with rebel defiance overcame me and I slipped in the thinnest book I could find in the case outside the bathroom: Problems of Life. The blazing red title promised answers I could test out in the field. Although printed in Colombo, it was about life in the Soviet Union: a bonus.
My mother spotted the flight bag by the door as soon as she stepped in: ‘What’s all this about?’
‘Boy is going on a trip.’
‘What trip? He has badminton in the morning and then tuition.’
‘Fishing trip,’ I piped in. ‘No tuition tomorrow. Holidays, no? And badminton doesn’t start again for another week. Thaththa said I can go with Jay and his uncle.’
‘Clarence, are you off your head?’
‘Outstation with that young fellow you were so impressed with, and his uncle. Big trip for the boy. He’ll see how badly the agricultural heart of our land is being squeezed.’ He took a deep breath and steamed into political poetry: ‘The salt of injustice may smart his eyes but it will sharpen the boy’s mind. With luck, provide a very sorely needed political education.’
‘Don’t be an ass. Where is he going? Why? When?’
‘What the hell? A quiz now?’
‘It’s all right, you two. Thaththa said, it will be good for me, no?’ I was becoming an expert at stemming the back and forth of recrimination; born a boy who could be both conduit and valve.
‘Child must know the truth. Understand how those plutocrats control the countryside. This time they escaped sequestration but by the next budget our comrade Krupke will have to go for real land reform, or else he will be out on his ear like a second-rate tsar.’
My mother ignored him and glowered at the flight bag. ‘You have your toothbrush in there?’
‘Have everything.’
‘Will they pick you up?’
‘Easier if I stay at Jay’s house tonight, Ma, and then we can set off at the crack of dawn.’ I looked to my father for backup.
‘Good plan. Your mother can drop you on her way to her pogo club.’
She tensed up, drawing her sharp, troubled head back, perhaps already sensing the false promise of future accords. ‘It’s a dance class, Clarence. We do the cha-cha-cha.’
The gates at Casa Lihiniya gaped open. The porch light fizzed gently, dimming; moths shadow-boxed, a gecko on the wall revolved jerkily in a sporadic tailspin.
‘With all their money, can’t they even fix that bulb?’ My mother raced the engine as if it might energise the fluorescent tube.
I slipped out of the car.
She tapped the inside of the windscreen and mouthed a goodbye. But when I headed for the outside stairs, she quickly stuck her head out of the window. ‘Where are you going? The door is over there, child.’
‘He has his own entrance, Ma.’ I wanted her to notice the shortcomings of our low-grade rental house.
‘There is only one front door. Don’t be slinking around the back.’
Luckily, before another argument spoiled our parting, Jay appeared sweetly sparkling in the full beam of the Anglia’s headlights.
‘Hullo, Auntie. It’s all right. Amma is expecting him. She’s just getting ready.’ Auntie? Amma? He definitely knew the language of charm.
It took the heat out of her face. ‘You boys enjoy your trip then.’ She backed out into the neighbour’s gateway to turn the car around. ‘Don’t be any trouble, Kairo,’ she called out as she stepped on the gas and demolished a knot of wayside kiss-me-quicks.
‘She thinks you are a troublemaker?’ Jay grinned, amused.
‘Her mind is on other things. She’s got a meeting to go to.’
‘I wish she’d take mine also.’
‘Your mind?’
‘My mother you fool.’
I didn’t divulge that it was a dance class. Or say that for me his mother was the top of the tops.
Inside, the centre of the sitting room was filled with camping gear: fishing tackle, pressure-lamps, a picnic hamper, bed rolls, a crate of cans, water bottles, hats.
‘Everything but a tent.’ Perhaps he had a wigwam on the estate, peace pipes, the stuff of a million daydreams.
‘We have a bungalow, but we still have to take a lot of gear with us.’
At the back of the house, a separate building housed a pantry and Aladdin’s store room; shelves and cupboards on every wall packed with tins and cans and boxes: prunes and peaches, spam and corned beef, crushed pineapple and halved apricots, cooked ham and lambs’ tongues, five types of imported jam including raspberry.
‘Early morning, you fill that polystyrene box halfway with ice from the freezer chest and bring to the front. Okay?’
‘How come you have all this stuff here?’
‘My father was in charge of supplies during World War II. You know, after Singapore we might have been the next to fall to the Japanese.’
‘But that was over aeons ago.’
‘Yeah, but you never know when another war might break out.’ His grave tone suggested there might be a greater shadow over his life than mine because he was that much older.
Up in his room, Jay had already organised a spare mattress. I put my bag down next to it. Beyond the sarcophagilike fish tanks out on the balcony, the night grew blacker as though the crows had gathered in force – in their hundreds and thousands – blotting out the stars and preparing to swoop down into the room and exact their revenge. They had Jay marked – and me, the accomplice. Even with a cupboard full of guns, we (and the innocent budgies, and Sunbeam) wouldn’t stand a chance. It would be bloodier than the Alamo.
Jay patted the mattress. ‘Should be more comfortable than the camp bed you had last time.’
From the floor, at the pillow end, I picked up an elasticated cloth band.
‘What’s this for?’
Jay grabbed it. ‘It’s a hair thing.’
‘You can’t put that in your hair.’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s a girl’s hair thing.’
I wanted to ask: how do you find out about girls’ things, but I did not want to reveal the extent of my ignorance. Then I noticed a book by Jay’s bed which surprised me even more than the hairband. A book encased in white leather with a brass zip running around the edges, except for the spine.
‘You reading in bed?’
‘Just looking up the story of a prophet. How he uses magic powers—’
‘To protect the birds?’
‘They’ll be all right. I’ve reinforced the roof with more mesh and told Iris to keep an eye on it. She knows her life will not be worth living if anything happens to them.’
Another lesson on dispensability. I unzipped the Bible; it opened to the Book of Proverbs. ‘ “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out.” ’ The lines were not reassuring. ‘Those crows, are they the same as ravens?’
‘Same family.’
‘You think they’ll come back?’
‘Those buggers?’ Jay rattled a box of lead pellets. ‘No way. Crows understand what a day of reckoning really is – for now.’
I woke at first light, hearing the metal gates shudder open and Elvin’s jeep chug in.
Jay, already downstairs, had begun loading up by the time I brought the ice box to the front. Twenty minutes later everything had been tucked and strapped into place. Elvin reversed the jeep out onto the road and I squeezed in between boxes in the back. Jay shut the gates and took the seat next to Elvin. No one else in the house had stirred.
Within minutes we reached Borella and charged out over the bridge and onto the trunk road heading north. The wayside shops and kiosks, still lidded and boarded, barely blinked. As pale, milky light leaked onto the road,
people began to appear shuffling out of the gauzy mist, wavering on bicycles, nudging wooden carts filled with coconuts or oil cans; some dressed in just a shirt and sarong, others wrapped in shawls as if they had migrated from the land of the dead; a few women, carrying baskets or pots, walked unevenly on the crumbling edge of the tarmac. Uncertain children followed seeking a steady hand. Elvin gunned the engine at each bend in the road and raced the jeep, scattering the last husks of dawn. His long, thin-boned frame shifted and his loose sleeves flapped in the wind; deftly changing gears, he skirted bakery carts, donkey traps, cattle-drawn thirikkal carts. The roadside tea kadés gave way to rice fields and coconut groves. Every so often we passed a team of buffalo ploughing a paddy terrace; squares of newly tilled mud in which a blackstockinged egret flapped its white wings, or a heron bent its pewter head in prayer. I spotted a gibbon scampering for the trees but before I could point it out Jay shouted, ‘Hang on. Bumper-nickel.’
His warning came too late; the jeep hit a rut and bounced us a foot up in the air. Jay hooted, grabbing the dashboard rail.
Where the road divided, one sign pointed straight to Gampaha, another to Veyangoda hung loose on its post. The sun began to blaze. Elvin took the right fork and hammered down the empty road.
Jay handed out Iris’s sandwiches and Elvin got him to steer while he opened his packet and examined the fillings at nearly fifty miles per hour.
‘Are they all egg? What about that damn corned beef your father hoards in his war room?’
‘Iris wouldn’t dare touch those tins.’
‘He really needs to move with the times, you know.’ The wind whipped a scrap of greaseproof paper out of his hands.
My father was wrong to be so critical of Elvin; he was not a throwback. On the contrary, if anyone embodied the modern world of speed and the carefree, Elvin did.
Jay twisted around to hand me another sandwich. For a moment no one held the wheel. ‘Soon you’ll see the river and Lady Cynthia’s del kalava elephants bathing by the rocks.’
He made it sound so normal but nothing that day was normal. Not him, not gleeful Elvin, not the speeding jeep, not the countryside, not the peacocks on the road, not any lady’s elephants at bath time. By my watch, my father would be knotting his tie, listening to the news on medium wave; Ma would be urging him to hurry up. They would leave the house together and he would drop her at the broadcasting house before going to his office. All their oddities that irritated me at home became sadly normal in recollection – almost precious.
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