Suncatcher

by Romesh Gunesekera

  I followed his instructions, learning the way Jay said was best: watching someone who knew what to do and then trying to do it better.

  When Elvin returned, I hopped out and he climbed in.

  ‘Like to take the wheel, son?’ A sleepy grin spread across his face.

  ‘It’d be the best thing.’

  ‘Our friend here will teach you, I’m sure.’

  Jay brushed aside a leaf that dropped on the dash. ‘Just need one of your cars, Uncle, and he could be an ace in no time.’

  Before we set off, Elvin asked Jay to put the roof on. ‘So bloody hot already.’

  Jay unrolled the canvas and showed me how to fix it. We kept the sides open.

  ‘All sorted?’ Jay asked his uncle.

  ‘What?’

  ‘With those two.’

  Elvin’s eyes drooped. ‘These chaps these days, they want so much and they always want it straightaway.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Never mind what they want, what they need is patience.’ He jerked the jeep into gear and took the turn out of the drive slowly. The jeep drifted over to the other side of the road where a massive lorry was looming. He heaved the wheel and swerved back just in time. ‘Damn lorries,’ he swore. The oncoming traffic swung in and out of the way but Elvin did not notice. He hung on to the huge steering wheel and moved his body before his hands whenever he took a bend. Within half an hour, his head was dipping regularly. Jay asked him more questions, cajoling him, prodding him.

  ‘Wake up, Uncle Elvin, wake up.’

  ‘I’m awake. Don’t worry, son. I can drive this bloody thing with my eyes closed.’

  He gave the jeep another spurt of juice. Even on a straight road the vehicle kept veering from side to side like a drunk in search of a wall, scaring the occasional cyclist that had to wobble out of the way, or a dog that would retreat, barking crazily. Luckily, the number of big, bushy hay lorries had dwindled. But at the point where Elvin woke himself up with a snore, Jay insisted he stop the jeep.

  ‘All right, we’ll stop. We’ll stop. You drive then. Let me close my eyes for a tick.’

  Jay took control of the wheel and steered the jeep to the side. He pulled the handbrake to bring the jeep to a halt. We moved Elvin across and Jay took his place. Only then, with Jay back in the driving seat, did the muscles in my chest finally loosen; the breath I had been holding in eased out in relief.

  III

  LIHINIYA

  4

  At our house, we never ate meals together as a family: breakfast rumbled in shifts, lunch drew pairs at best, and dinner became a series of tumbled snacks between six and nine, snatched after a shot or two of liquor at the sports club in my father’s case, or an excursion to a dancing class in my mother’s crammed timetable.

  So it did not bother me that neither parent was in when Jay dropped me home after we had unloaded the jeep at his house. The front door had its usual cloth-covered brick propping it open; the disruptions were all in myself, not my surroundings. Having had nothing to eat since the stop at the rest house, I headed straight for the kitchen.

  The larder boasted only a can of pilchards and a tin of peaches but the kitchen reeked of oil; the wall near the cooker shone, coated like flypaper, usually an indication that Siripala was currying favour and his fried tin-fish cutlis were in the offing.

  ‘Ko cutlis? Where?’ I called out. A gecko chuckled.

  Siripala peeped in. ‘Cooling. Your thaththa likes them cold, no?’

  I found the bowl of small, oval fishcakes, crusted in golden breadcrumbs, hidden behind a lump of hardened Gouda and a bowl of cemented tapioca in the fridge.

  Siripala brought a plate. ‘Two cutlis, baba?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Stringhoppers also? Pol sambol?’ My father’s comfort food.

  ‘Is Thaththa in a mood?’

  ‘He put another bet and the horse came first. So now, everything tops.’

  ‘Got his winnings this time, did he? So, why stringhoppers and all?’

  ‘Have to build up merit when you can, baba.’

  Some would be handy for me, too, having been out with the enemy. I took the plate and plonked down on a footstool to eat.

  My father came rolling in, head full of cheers from the club. ‘Did the nobs not feed you in their dacha then?’

  Siripala panicked and asked whether he should put the stringhoppers out on the dining table. Mollified by the prospect, my father cocked his head, weighing the options. Then, remembering a parent’s obligation, he ignored the servant and asked, more solicitously: ‘So, what did you learn from your trip, son?’

  ‘Not a school trip. Went just to see—’

  ‘I know, I know. With our very own Oblomov. So, what did you discover about the landed sloths of this country?’

  ‘We went fishing.’

  ‘Ha! You had to fish for your supper?’

  ‘Caught guppies for the tank. Jay has an aquarium in his house. Lots of tanks. Angel fish even.’

  ‘My God.’ He struck his forehead. ‘What a world we live in.’ He turned to Siripala. ‘You made fish cutlis also, no?’

  Siripala unveiled the bowl.

  ‘Not guppies, I hope.’

  I washed my hands and started for the stairs.

  ‘What’s he got out there, your Lord Elvin? Some big walauwa mansion?’ He tried again, doing his best to show a genuine interest and rein in his instinct to mock.

  My mind raced between the urge to retreat to the pile of comfort books upstairs and the chance to challenge my father’s prejudices. With all that had happened on the estate, I had hoped the gap between us might be lessening, but now found I had to defend Elvin and Jay from his jibes instead. I had no wish to diminish him; I wanted him to know more about the wider world and not be misled by ignorance.

  ‘Not a big house.’ I swung the kitchen door back and forth, a punkah heralding the winds of a rebellion or, at least, a shift in perspective. ‘Only a mud hut.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘A bungalow. Jus’ two rooms to sleep in and an open veranda-like thing to sit. No electricity or anything. Not even tap water.’

  My father gasped, acting appalled. ‘What? He hasn’t even brought electricity to the area? Thoroughly useless fellow. Does he have no sense of responsibility? Land reform doesn’t go far enough. It should reduce estates to fifty acres, not two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘I read your book.’

  That stopped him. ‘Which one? When?’

  ‘I took the one called Problems of Life to read on the estate.’ The words gushed to mask any misdemeanour.

  ‘Translated from Russian.’

  ‘My Trotsky?’ The news pleased him. ‘Why didn’t you ask me, son? I could have guided you to something more fitting for the trip.’

  ‘Was fitting, Thaththa.’ I squeezed another drop of boyish bravado out. ‘I read the whole thing in one go.’ Skimmed it, I should have said, skipping from one spotlit passage to another.

  ‘Good. We must study the good comrade’s words together then.’ He allowed some levity to creep in, hoping, I suppose, to draw me closer. ‘Tell me, what other mischief did you get up to besides reading misappropriated books and fishing for your dinner?’

  ‘Played this and that.’

  ‘This and what?’

  ‘Cowboys and Indians.’

  ‘With coconuts?’

  ‘Guns and bows and black bears…’ I hesitated, unsure how much to reveal of what had happened. Luckily, he returned to his hobby-horse warnings.

  ‘Actually, not cowboys but landlords are the problem in our country. The poor peasant cannot survive because the bosses sit in Colombo creaming profits from the countryside.’

  ‘Sulaiman is the boss and he lives there. The biggest worry is the drought – he says it is sure to come.’

  ‘What boss?’

  ‘Superintendent.’

  ‘A minor member of the petty bourgeoisie, son.’ He ran his fingers through h
is thin hair, evidently thinking thoughts too complicated to explain in one breath. ‘Drought is not what they really fear. Disorder, a dent in profits, possible revolution – these are the things that your dubious friends are anxious to prevent.’

  The next day, I cycled over to the milk bar imagining not the deserts of Arizona, or the cacti of New Mexico, but cinnamon gardens and coconut groves instead; rain-filled ponds and muddy rivers where dashing brown-skin warriors courted gold-tinged princesses with lances and poetry. A fantasia where Gerry, healed, comes to the city for the first time and is bewildered by the mansions and stately boulevards, the racecourse, the radio station, the milk bar, the garden enclaves where the poor and destitute only encroached in single file. I would be the one to show him around then; I’d become the guide, rather than the guided.

  But it wasn’t a star-struck Gerry that I found at the milk bar; instead, the boy from Fountain Café, hunched over an upended bike, spinning the back wheel and trying to refit the chain. I had not spoken to him again since that day he’d been cornered; the barrier between the language streams at school – Tamil, Sinhala, English – may not have been physical, but it might as well have been. I should have tried harder to cross the divide, but at the time it had not struck me as important; there were gulfs between me and all my classmates, none of which I had any desire to cross. The only chasm that mattered to me was the one that might open between Jay and me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Keeps coming off.’ He bent the metal chain guard and moved the pedal backwards slowly.

  ‘This isn’t a garage, boys.’ Mahela leant forwards across the counter. ‘Don’t crowd out the place. Need customers, not grease monkeys, no?’

  ‘How’s about a Chocolac?’ I replied and peered at the upturned bike. ‘Nice machine. Is it new?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have this problem.’ The boy turned the pedal again and demonstrated how the chain scraped the blue metal guard.

  ‘Can’t you shift that piece?’

  Then Jay swooped in, a rush of feathers, wind-borne, ringing his bell. ‘Channa, no?’ he asked, coming to a stop inches away.

  Channa let a small smile escape, pleased to be recognised. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, what’s the problem?’

  ‘Chain trouble,’ I intervened.

  ‘Those new bikes from that Kelani factory – one knock and completely out of alignment. Dodgy Soviet machinery, I bet.’ Jay undid the small toolkit that hung behind his saddle and picked out a spanner which he used to loosen one of the nuts. ‘Now, do your side, then tap the spindle in.’

  When Channa had done that, Jay gave him a washer to fit before tightening it up again. After both sides were done, Jay told him to turn the bike the right way up and lift the back wheel off the ground. He worked the pedal; the chain moved smoothly.

  As Channa climbed onto the saddle, a sleek black Wolseley pulled up. A man smoking in the back seat put a hand out and tapped a slug of ash off a cigarette. His thick finger summoned Channa. ‘Oi, come here. Ronny Kanagaratnam’s boy, right?’

  Channa slipped off his bike but stayed put.

  ‘You tell your damn father to be careful, stop poking around.’

  The man puffed out some smoke. Then he addressed Jay. ‘You should know better than to hang around with his kind.’

  Jay moved in front of Channa. I wasn’t sure what to do. A milk delivery truck turned in and stopped right in front of the car. The Wolseley driver gave a blast with his horn. Mahela shouted, ‘Reverse.’ Engines raced, more honking and protest. Mahela came out weighing a wet sponge in his hand. The man in the back seat of the car quickly rolled up the window. As the argument between the drivers heated up, Channa slipped round to the rear of the car. His expression – pulsing between pity and cunning – made me think we should scram before things got a lot worse, but then the car, revving up, backed out and with a wild swerve took off down the road.

  ‘What have they got against your father?’ Jay asked.

  ‘Writes for a paper, no. Right now, a good journalist has enemies everywhere.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows? My father says everyone is against him: government, the big newspaper bosses, the monks, the gangsters, the unions.’

  ‘Should have ripped his tyres whoever that man was.’

  ‘He won’t get far.’ With a bashful smile, Channa lifted his plastic water canteen. ‘In the rumpus, I emptied this into the petrol tank.’

  ‘Attaboy!’ Jay put out his fist into the centre between the three of us; we two instinctively did the same and all our fists met.

  ‘The three musketeers,’ I murmured. I had never been in a gang before.

  ‘Right.’ Channa stepped back, lowering his head.

  ‘You don’t know the musketeers?’

  ‘Sure, I do.’ His mouth turned firmly down at the ends.

  ‘You boys want your Chocolacs? Fresh batch.’ Mahela slid the milk drinks to the edge of the counter. ‘Or back in the cooler they go.’

  ‘Now, now.’ We trooped over.

  Mahela laughed, back in his role of milkman. ‘So, now you are three?’

  ‘Yeah, three for one, one for three,’ Jay chanted. ‘We are the brotherhood.’

  ‘All for one, one for all.’ I couldn’t help correcting Jay on the crucial point of allegiance.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘D’Artagnan says it. He’s like the fourth Musketeer but it becomes their motto.’

  ‘Okay. So, now it will be ours.’

  ‘Motto?’ Mahela asked.

  ‘We will be inseparable,’ Jay explained. ‘Bound together in one endeavour.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Mahela collected the empties. ‘Good if you boys can stick together.’

  ‘All for one, one for all,’ Jay repeated.

  ‘Who is the one?’ Channa asked, glancing at us.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You tell,’ Jay said.

  ‘We have to defend each other.’ I spoke solemnly, passing a flattened hand in front of me like a noble blade. ‘Look out for each other. If anyone thumps one of us, then it is the same as all of us being hit. Together we are always stronger than we would be on our own. We all take the rap for what happens to any one of us. It’s like… equality.’

  Channa shook off his Batas and drew a circle on the ground with his bare toe; a faint, uneven, doubtful circle.

  That evening, at home, my misgivings grew. Could we really stick to the motto, if we had not all been thrilled by the book, or the film? Could we be inseparable, if our fathers lived in such separate worlds? If Gerry, surely a musketeer too, could so easily be abandoned?

  In the late afternoon, the leafy trees on the lane leading to Casa Lihiniya wilted a little, listless from the long heat; the occasional gust from the ocean stirred the suburbs with brackish air but offered no relief. I chucked a stone at a marooned lizard, hoping to see it scuttle. The future for all of us seemed fraught to me, but the slogans on Galle Face Green and the communal chants on the perimeter of Beira Lake of recent days, which bothered my father so much, did not disturb the grand house at the end.

  The gates and the glass doors beyond were open. Music tinkled out. Inside, Sonya plucked at a harp lodged between her knees, her slender hands rose and fell and the flight of notes formed what could be a sonata for the moonlight to come, or a falling star. Her eyes firmly closed, she eased her head, crowned with a hive of curls, from side to side, lapped by the rising melody.

  When she opened her eyes, her lips, bubblegum-pink, also parted: ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  The simplest of words failed me.

  ‘You like the harp? Come, I’ll show you how to play it.’

  A fragrant soda, sharper than perfume, laced her clothes. Her hands – frighteningly frail – moved lightly across the perpendicular strings, nearly vanishing with the music despite their smooth, manicured physicality. I could not understand how such slender fingers could thrum the strings so effortlessly and cause such tremo
rs in me.

  ‘Do you play an instrument?’

  I made a weak, sorrowful croak and watched the veins on the back of her hand rise and mark the delicate, cinnamony flesh.

  ‘Would you like to learn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, it is a beautiful thing to be able to make a sound that pleases the heart and soothes the soul.’

  She could do that without moving a finger.

  ‘Can Jay?’ I asked, finally stringing two words together.

  ‘Not Harpo, is he? I wish he’d learn the violin, I’m sure he’d love it. Can’t you just see him standing tall and handsome and playing Carnegie Hall one day, but he won’t even try a note. All he likes is to play with his bow and arrow.’ She released another string of notes, pleased with her cupid joke.

  ‘We have no instruments in our house,’ I confessed, embarrassed. ‘Only a record player.’

  ‘Maybe you should try the violin. You’d need to practise regularly, but you could do that here. We must have Jay’s Strad somewhere around – just a copy, you know. He’d be pleased to see you playing it.’ She patted the divan. ‘Sit next to me, darling. I don’t bite.’

  I perched on the edge and gripped the firm piping on the velvet cushion.

  She took my right hand and placed my fingers on the strings. Her curved glossy nails scraped only the uppermost layer of my knuckles but it felt as though the whorls of my fingertips themselves shifted as a result, like the contours of the earth after an eruption. ‘Use the first three fingers. Try.’

  I managed to twang the burning strings, one after the other, and smiled at her in surprise.

  ‘Lovely. You’ll have long, strong fingers when you grow up. Perfect hands.’

  Enthralled, I plucked the strings again. How could Jay not wish to learn from his mother?

  ‘Now, run along and find your friend. He’s hiding in that zoo of his.’

  I wanted to ask when we could have another lesson, but she was already distracted by some other murmuring in her head. Swallowing hard, I added, ‘Aren’t you going to play some more?’

  ‘Not now, darling. I have to get ready to go out.’