When the river slid into view – a glimmer of brown foam between the trees – things shifted into slow motion. An optical illusion that Jay or Elvin could decode in two ticks, no doubt, but neither of them spoke.
At the iron bridge, Elvin brought the jeep down to a crawl. Two elephants lay in the shallow water below, flapping their ears as mahouts brushed and scrubbed their backs. The bigger one raised his trunk and sprayed the other, seeding the river with what I imagined were its memories of slow migrations and ancient waterways. Clouds turned.
On the other side of the river, we drew up by one of the wooden kiosks lined with glass cases of brightly coloured sweets and roasted gram. Elvin honked the horn in a double burst and an anxious bearded man dashed out, almost tripping on his sarong.
‘Sir, already here? Road repaired now?’
‘Is there a message for me from Mr Tinki?’
He broke into a sweat. ‘Have, sir, have. Will be coming, sir. Twelve thirty p.m. tomorrow. Said coming, for sure.’ The last two words he repeated for emphasis.
A woman with a basket cocked on her hip crossed the road and stopped in front of the jeep fingering the lace on her blouse; her hair was pinned back with elaborate combs. Face bunched in small bundles, she studied the number plate for a full minute before shuffling away.
‘What was she looking at?’ Elvin asked the man.
‘Just Alice, sir.’ He tapped his head knowingly. ‘Mallé pol.’
‘Right, we’ll go then. I’ll need some more ice tomorrow.’
‘No problem. Ice, have lots. On the cycle, kolla will bring.’
Elvin put his foot down and the jeep shot forwards.
The fields of gold swayed. Slow ripples of morning sun skimmed the grain, ripening the rice in waves. A man flailed in the fields, sowing what my father would inflate as small arrears of deferred hope. After a few miles, the paddy strips thinned out. Thick patches of heavy jungle crept up between squares of ranked rubber trees, regimental stripes of white gum flashed. Along the roadside, a narrow stream trickled from one cramped terrace of paddy to the next. Then, at the newly whitewashed stone markers of a culvert, Elvin brought the jeep to a halt.
Jay leapt out. ‘Open sez me.’
Four separate stout bamboo poles, each as thick as a soda bottle, slotted into two posts to form the gate. He pushed the top one through and I did the same with the next, and so on.
‘See you boys up at Villa Agathon.’ Elvin honked the horn and drove in.
A long yodelling hoot rolled down the hill, quickly followed by a closer echo.
Jay replied with his own wild whoop.
The calls bounced back and forth.
‘That’s Gerry,’ Jay grinned, slotting back the poles.
I helped him, marvelling at the balance the big poles seemed to contain in their length and the ease with which he adapted to plantation life. ‘I thought it must be an owl,’ I said, not sure if it foretold good luck or bad to hear one in daytime.
‘No, that’s his war cry, if we are playing Cowboys and Indians. I call him Gerry, for short. Otherwise he can be Cheetah and me Tarzan.’
Even then I felt that was not right, but could not work out what exactly was wrong. So, I said nothing. Jay was the Lone Ranger, I was Tonto. Jay was Batman, I was Robin. In the glorious new universe I’d stepped into, who could tell what was right and what was wrong and why it should be so in one place and not in another? All I knew for sure was that the world had instantly expanded to something much bigger than our small house in Grebe Road, my school, or the tropical seaside town I’d been born in.
A bare-bodied figure leapt over a heap of fallen coconut fronds and ran up, beaming, rising on his toes to sniff the air. He greeted Jay laughing like a child half his age, high and skittish and tumbling with a kind of inane delight. A skinny boy with large expectant eyes. ‘Malu paninava.’ He lifted his hand in a small arc and beamed. Fish are jumping.
Jay pointed at the stream running by the road. ‘That’s where we catch guppies, but those jumpers he’s talkin’ about are in our lake. They are ginormous.’
On the way to the house to pick up the tackle, I carefully avoided the touch-me-nots and sleep-easies and the small scorpion holes on the sand path. Gerry darted ahead, picking mangosteens and tossing them excitedly in the air, juggling one, two or three at a time. The road curved around a pyramid of harvested coconuts before reaching the top of the hill. He sprinted shouting, ‘Shortcut!’ in English and diving through a patch of lime trees.
The only other person to be seen was a man, naked except for a loincloth, prodding a water buffalo down into a patch of mud.
‘That’s Buffalo Bill,’ Jay grinned. ‘Keep out of his way. He’ll come up later for his bounty.’
I had pictured a tall villa with spacious verandas, ornate lattice-work and round red tiles; liveried servants with silver trays and gilded ornaments. Instead we came to a thatched bungalow with wooden shutters at either end and waisthigh whitewashed mud half-walls in the centre. A hushed garden overshadowed by elderly trees stooping to catch the remains of forgotten kernels.
Elvin, settled into a planter’s chair in the garden, his bare feet up on the extended wings that served as leg rests, greeted us.
‘Have a thambili, boys. Straight off the tree.’ He raised his glass at a spidery man standing a few feet away from him.
‘Sulaiman, two more for Jay and his young friend.’
The man, slightly hunched with his hands behind his back, stepped out of the patchwork of a free-flowing bougainvillea. ‘New friend?’
A small square cloth knotted at each corner covered the top of his head as snugly as a cap, but his shirt flapped long and loose over his sarong.
‘First timer,’ Jay told him. ‘Kairo has never been on an estate before.’
‘Ah, welcome to our pol-watte, Master Kairo.’ A surprisingly bluish-grey eye blinked, slotting the parts of the head together again. ‘You like thambili in a glass, or coming natural in the coconut like Jay-baba?’
‘Same, please.’
‘Kolla,’ Sulaiman raised his voice calling Gerry. ‘Two thambili, double quick.’
‘How is your boy getting on?’ Elvin asked as Gerry scampered away.
Sulaiman brought out one of his hands and opened his palm. ‘Enough school. He learnt nothing. So now, only trying to teach him the business, one thing at a time. To count the nuts at the pick, check the trees after harvest, but he has no head for numbers.’
‘I like that voice of his. The way he does that hoo as soon as we turn in.’ Elvin pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He didn’t offer one to Sulaiman.
‘To hoot and sing is all he likes to do.’
‘The yodelling bulbul,’ Elvin whistled a tune. ‘Puccini,’ he winked at me.
Gerry came back carrying an orange king coconut in each hand. He offered one to Jay and the other, shyly, to me. I followed Jay’s example, lifting it high with both hands and glugging from the hole punctured at the top. Afterwards, I put the coconut down on the ground and used the back of my hand to wipe my mouth the way Jay did.
‘Fishing, now?’ Gerry asked, miming the words.
‘Soon,’ Jay replied, while Elvin dropped into a deeper conversation with Sulaiman.
‘He’s scary,’ I whispered to Jay as we wandered down to the jeep.
‘Sulaiman? Harmless, really. He’s the superintendent.’
‘I don’t like police.’
Jay didn’t laugh. He explained that the superintendent was the man who managed the estate for Elvin.
‘You mean because your uncle is usually absent?’ The word was my father’s and smacked of his disapproval.
‘Uncle Elvin comes every month. Sulaiman has his own house in the plot opposite and keeps the place in order day to day. He supervises the labour, like that fellow we saw with the buffalo, and Ivan the Terrible.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘The watcher. Night security.’
To Jay the arrangement was per
fectly natural. I could see how easily he could slip into his uncle’s place one day: inherit this estate and loom over the shorter lives of less favoured people. The word ‘plight’ that my father had also used wriggled uneasily in my mouth.
‘Is Gerry his son?’
‘Yup. But Gerry is really an Apache. He has a cool tomahawk. Let’s go see if he’s found the fishing tackle.’
At the back of the bungalow, Gerry had assembled the rods and set them out. Jay checked the equipment and okayed it.
On our way he told Elvin, ‘We’re off to the wewa. See you later, Uncle.’
‘Good. Will you catch lunch for us then?’
‘No Sulaiman special?’
‘Tomorrow. We have guests coming tomorrow. Feasting will be then. Today we live the simple country life. Red rice and parippu. Fish, if you are lucky.’
Gerry lugged the fishing kit and a small axe in a sling; Jay and I carried army-issue canteens.
‘What d’you reckon?’ Jay asked when we reached the wewa – a large pond at the bottom of the hill. ‘You like it here? That’s huckleberry around the edge. Uncle Elvin brought back the seeds from America.’
‘Cool. You have your own lake to fish in.’
‘Might see a croc even.’
‘What if we catch one? Like if it eats a fish that got hooked on my line?’ From Tarzan’s escapades, I knew that crocodiles have powerful jaws for closing, but weak muscles for opening their mouths. Like a boy Gordon Scott, would I have to hold the snout shut, while Gerry chopped off its vicious tail?
‘That’d be funny.’ Jay turned to Gerry, asking in Sinhala what he would do.
Gerry let out a hoot.
‘Bigger danger is that water buffalo, no?’
At the water’s edge, a white line of froth bubbled but the rest of the surface lay unbroken until the blue flash of a kingfisher skimmed over it. Jay shushed us.
‘Crocs are amazingly good at camouflage,’ he whispered, creeping up to a large spindly tree that had crashed down into the water and whitened like bone. ‘If they are swimming, you’ll see only the eyes. A pair of floating frogs.’
I kept close to him. ‘We should have brought binocs.’
‘Yeah. Next time.’
‘Are we gonna put a line in now?’
‘Sure we are. Jus’ need to keep a lookout. The thing is to weight the line properly and put the cork float so the hook is suspended exactly at the right height for fish, not crocs.’
We searched the water for the arrowhead of a submerged jawbone while Gerry opened a small jar full of yellow jakfruit segments and baited the lines. Done, he crawled over and handed over the rods barely able to hide his pride.
Jay flung his line out. I did the same and watched for the float to bob back up.
After a while, I asked, ‘Can’t we cast the lines farther out towards the middle? Fish will be cruising in the coolest water, no?’
Jay half closed his eyes, head lowered, then abruptly handed over his rod. ‘Hold this. I’ve got an idea.’ He hopped over to the bags that Gerry had hidden by the trees and returned with a coil of rope and his bowie knife. He asked Gerry to find some banana tree trunks.
Gerry’s face lit up.
Jay showed me how to wedge the fishing rods securely while Gerry ran off with his axe.
He returned with a banana log under each arm. Jay lined them up and started to tie them together; Gerry dashed off to get more logs. Jay wanted six in a row. He asked me to hold them in position while he fixed a couple of hardwood branches cross-wise. Gerry fetched several ribbons of tree bark which he used as extra rope. Jay and Gerry had clearly built rafts before and worked like pros, pushing and pulling and securing the platform.
We all stripped off, because Jay said the banana sap mixed with water would ruin our clothes, before pushing the raft out and climbing aboard.
Gerry used a stick to punt the raft out; his thin chest swelled as he pushed, kneeling first then standing nude, not bothering to shield himself. I finally figured out what was meant by the word circumcised.
At the centre of the lake, the air was still. As we drifted dreamily between the occasional puckering in the water, I could make out at least half a dozen birdcalls ricocheting around the periphery, disconnected from the motionless trees, each a song in itself but also part of a larger concord. The three of us, naked on the raft, a similar mix of the isolated and the united. A cormorant skimmed across the water, followed by the kingfisher again, revelling in speed.
‘Anything happening your side?’ Jay asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘You had your eyes closed.’
‘Only half, like you. I was listening.’
‘You can’t hear them bite. Keep your eyes peeled.’
‘Can do it ultra-sonic-ally.’
The cork floats were still bobbing. No crocs. I was beginning to doubt their existence, even the existence of fish; of anything except a stirring of uncertainties and ever larger circles of uncontrollable pretence.
Gerry poked the water with his stick.
‘You really saw them jumping yesterday?’ Jay asked him in Sinhala.
‘Jumping like mad, evening time. What else to do?’
‘Maybe we should leave the lines in the water and come back after lunch,’ I suggested.
‘That’s not sporting. The thing is, if you are here, eye on the line, then it’s like your mind is in the water. It all becomes one thing. You are the line and the fish. If you catch it, you catch yourself.’
Gerry, watching the English language unreel from Jay’s mouth, smiled to himself and scooped up some water to splash his front and drip wantonly down.
‘What about him?’ I wondered whether the three of us were indivisible too, like the fish and the fisher.
‘It is no good just getting Gerry to watch it.’ Jay stretched back and rested on his elbows; he pulled up one leg, raising his knee to make a triangle; his furled penis thickened and rolled sleepily across his other thigh.
‘No. That’s not what I meant.’ I wanted to ask about the girl who had lodged herself on Jay’s bike, between his legs. Would Jay bring her here, too, to float without a stitch of clothing? Could she do that? Then the moment Jay helped me up the ladder onto the roof to see the stars came flooding back.
Outside the bungalow, the garden had been turned into an open-air office: Elvin, primly balanced on the edge of a stern chair, faced down a massive ledger spread across a narrow table, his pen poised, a dart between his thumb and fingers. Sulaiman close by, hands behind his back again, droned out a list from memory weaving a web of monotony beneath the canopy of lilting bird whistles.
‘They don’t look happy,’ I said to Jay as we made our way up the cart track towards them.
‘Estate accounts.’ He grimaced.
Sulaiman saw us and paused.
Elvin looked up in relief. ‘Good catch?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Jay replied.
‘What? All that tackle for nothing?’
‘Fish aren’t hungry at this time of the day.’
‘You fellows are, I bet. Have to wait though. Must finish this damn ledger before we can have lunch.’ He motioned to Sulaiman, urging him to continue.
We deposited our stuff and then Jay took me on a tour: first, to the kitchen with its open stone fire, then the newly built outhouse, the copra pits full of blackened husks giving off an evil smell and finally the cart shed. Behind it a sea of hundreds of fresh green coconuts stretched out: the ‘pick’ that had yet to be counted and recorded.
A hoopoe rolled its soft echoing hoots between the high branches; wagtails and shamas chirped, chivvying each other.
‘I love this estate.’ Jay closed his eyes and let the sounds envelop him. ‘I love coming here.’
But what is it like for Gerry? I wanted to ask. Never able to leave; only ever seeing Jay come and go.
‘How come you didn’t bring the dog?’
‘Garibaldi? He goes wild here. Fights too much with the estat
e dogs.’
By the time the ledger was done and lunch announced, the heat had curled the outer leaves of the pepper vines; the cardamom and turmeric had begun to nod.
Gerry brought a bottle of beer for Elvin and a jug of water for us. Sulaiman supervised the pouring, then stood guard at the far end of the table fanning himself with a brown file while we took our seats.
Lack of success in the fishing expedition did nothing to dampen Jay’s spirits. ‘You should put some game stock in that wewa, Uncle. The fish there are so sleepy.’
‘Fish farming? Me? I should do fish farming?’
‘Not farming. Sporting fish, like the trout upcountry.’
‘The British put them in, no?’ Elvin said.
Sulaiman laughed politely and muttered something about the demise of empire.
I remembered my father going on about fishing and farming being fundamentally in competition with each other and that it had to do with the caste system, a burden from the past; he had not brought the British into it.
‘You’d like fishing, Uncle. We could have a fish-in.’
Elvin sipped his beer, gently rocking to settle the bubbles. ‘You mean like that Marlon Brando business: salmon fishing and treaty rights in America? No thank you. We have quite enough demonstrations as it is in this country.’
‘I meant an anglers club.’
‘Tell you what – you get your father to sign up to my business proposition, and I’ll make an angler’s paradise for you and your young friend here.’
‘Sure, why not? What’s the deal?’
Elvin leant forwards and cupped a hand to the side of his mouth for a stage whisper. ‘A shed full of chickens down the side of Casa Lihiniya.’
‘Chickens? My father? That’s crazy, Uncle.’
Suncatcher Page 9