On the Far Side, There's a Boy

by Coston, Paula

  Next she considered Rosemary, met during teacher training when they both got stuck in a lift – a nightmare for Martine, given her imprisonment years earlier. Rosemary had expertise in the gentle art of rejection, in her case though of men, not foreign boys.

  In the end Martine didn’t consult them, or her current crowd. They’d only have advised her to do whatever felt right. So it was mostly from cowardice that she got out a pen and paper and, sitting at her home desk, wrote Mohan her first letter.

  Weeks later, his reply came.

  ‘To InterRelate parent UK 89375

  From InterRelate sponsored child 88 6502

  15th April 1983

  My good lady Haslett in England

  Thank you for caring of me my sister says sponsoring. My name is Mohan Liyanage. I am living near Maha Nuvara town* in Sri Lanka. I am 5 years old. Here there is a photograph of me with my sister. I am waiting for your letter.

  *Maha Nuvara is Kandy town

  Writing in Sinhala by the boy’s sister, Anupama Liyanage, age 12

  Father: Farm labourer. Mother: Housewife.

  Translating by InterRelate International, Colombo

  Note. We do not showing wrong spellings. We do showing the child’s punctuation.’

  Martine thought, head shaking, smiling at herself, I don’t know children these days. The ones I see are filtered by classroom observation – and they tend to be teenage. Anyway, in school they’re fish in a tank, while this boy’s free in the ocean, a real-life person, in the round.

  She grappled with the photo he’d enclosed. Small and fragile at the corner of a wall, one bare foot covering the other, his face half-turned as if unused to the camera. Spindly arms. A sister of his, Anupama, stood apart, her chin a little down, a slide pinning her hair. Martine had worn them at that age, maybe a few years younger.

  Her eyes skated over the girl’s script of blue biro curlicues filling wide-apart lines, neat but somehow emphatic, energetic. The paper was as meagre as the photo. She propped the photo on her desk. Periodically she scanned it. The pair was unbelievable. Maybe it was the mean photo size, that or the black and white.

  Next time she wrote, she exchanged her pen for typing. Maybe the machine would keep a protective distance.

  ‘My good lady Haslett

  Your letter is nice. You are sounding important. Perhaps you are having a secretary. In Sinhala your talking is funny.

  ‘Anupama has an idea. She can say your photograph is nice. You will smile soon. Your hair is nearly long red or brown and you are having brown dots on the face and on the arms. Did you stay in the sun in your white skin. Your blue sarong is short. Why.

  ‘About my photograph of me. I do not think what you are thinking my face is a heart.

  ‘“It is an upway-down raindrop” my mother is telling me and “Your eyes are large brown like a spotted deer but your arms are long like a grey langur.”

  ‘Anupama has an idea. We can say Hanuman was a langur. He rescued Sita. It is Hindu. The langur is a monkey climbing high trees and I am not. I do not like my mother telling me I am the animals.

  ‘My sister is writing quotation marks. This point is significant. Please notice.

  ‘Please send a photograph of the husband in your house.’

  Martine checked with herself for a minute, assuring herself that she had no aim to find one man. Having photos of no such person, she then wrote back informing Mohan straight that England had different customs, different ways. In fact few of her girlfriends wanted a permanent partner then, or so it seemed to her at the time. They got together and compared work and parties, and buying houses and flats, and commuting and family, and hobbies and love affairs. These were the lovely cogs and pistons to her life that she took for granted. But any point to them – to find a reliable lover, for example – they simply didn’t discuss.

  ‘My Miss Martine Haslett

  I call you the name way you are asking.

  ‘Sorry about there is no photo of your husband in the house. Send a drawing instead. Anupama has an idea and I say she can tell you. I am having two sisters and one brother. Upeksha, Anupama are the sisters and Jayamal the brother. 14, 12 and 8. My father is working hard. Also senior father and junior father and the mothers and five cousins are living by our house not our house but on the side. Anupama tells you the Sri Lankan fathers and mothers are the English uncles and aunties.

  ‘There is a drawing here. It is an old flag. The sun is for the prince. The moon is for the old princess.

  ‘Your question is “What is your village like.”

  ‘Anupama says InterRelate International says I cannot tell you where I live near Kandy. Kandy is a big town. There are hills. They fall down. There is a big lake. By the lake there is a Buddhism temple. Our village is very smaller. It is 40 kilometres from. My father has a bicycle.

  ‘I am waiting for your drawing of your husband.’

  These words, dictated to Mohan’s sister, then translated, then typed up in some Colombo office, probably didn’t even safely carry his voice. The jumpy typing gave the big facts from a life, age, name, large town, and Martine grew jumpy about that, sensing that with each of her letters, too, it was her identity that she was gradually sending. Giving bits of myself away, she blinked, as if such fundamentals aren’t important at all.

  Mohan’s drawings flowed through the post, stuck with numbered labels like used Band-aids; alien objects in wax crayon, oversized, untethered to the page.

  ‘The moon is for the old princess.’

  Martine skimmed over the lunar references, still taking the moon for granted at her dark window. She chucked the pictures in a drawer. The drawer was below another, stuffed with embarrassing soft toy pigs and china pigs and flying pigs and pigs on mobiles and badges and pigs in snowshakers given to her over the years by students and friends who’d discovered, with a relief that she had frailties, her porcine fascination. Stashing the letters and the drawings was another shifty act.

  The boy’s letters mounted up.

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  You are old with no husband in your house. Perhaps you are 30. I am sorry.

  ‘My question is “Why are you having no husband in the house why are you having no children why are you caring of me.” Anupama says sponsoring.’

  Mohan was resisting her brushoff about husbands. She wasn’t sure she wished to answer the question about her sponsorship, either. Gerry Taylor was too personal for a child.

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  I am sorry you are 34 years old.

  ‘My question is “Are you having fathers Anupama says in English uncles.” They may have sons. You can choose one.

  ‘I do not find your answer about why caring of me. Sponsoring my sister says again.

  ‘Yes, my house is big. We have 6 sleeping mats. Good chairs. They are nice white plastic chairs. The food is cooking on a stove and milk on another stove. Anupama asks and I say she can write I am keeping your photo on the wall. I am happy about you like the garden drawing. Yes, it is a king coconut. Yes, there are flowers and other trees with fruits. Father makes many fruits and vegetables. Rice also in our field.’

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  The photograph of your family is nice. Your mother is living far away for you.

  ‘My question is “We have three good brown dogs your mother is having a funny one why.”

  ‘It is small and prickly. It is wearing a red hat and it has a white ball why.

  ‘Tell me about your Christmas Festival.

  ‘Anupama has an idea. I am drawing the harvest festival. It goes to the Temple of the Buddha’s Tooth. The farmers are giving 80 measures of new rice. People are taking it along the path by the lake to the gold shrine. Afterwards we have our village festival.

  ‘You are waiting for a husband very longer than the farmers for the harvest.

  ‘My question is “When you get a husband can some ladies take 80 measures of husbands to say thank you in the temple.”

  An
upama says I am making a good joke but a nonsense.

  ‘Please send your answer about why sponsoring me.’

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  There are no cousins in your family. I am sorry.

  ‘It is my birthday. I am 6. I go to school now. Anupama says we can say only the school is near not the school name not the village name. My blue shorts are nice. My white shirt with a badge is nice.

  ‘Anupama says to me “You wait until you are walking to the bus to big school you will grow even very stronger legs” and I am saying “They are strong now from Jayamal kicking me and me kicking Jayamal.”

  ‘The bus is bringing our letters. Today it went past us then two houses on the snake road then the Post Office. Then Mr Semasinghe the postman is bringing your letters to me. He has new flip-flops because from all the walking to the villages. The bus is bringing any bigger parcels also.’

  Martine was flummoxed by Mohan’s questions; by his pity, too. A hint for a birthday present she thought she detected in the last letter precipitated her to Hamley’s for the best child’s paints and brushes. InterRelate wrote back.

  ‘Dear Miss Haslett

  InterRelate policy with regard to presents for sponsored children

  Please find herewith the set of child’s paints, brushes and paper that you sent us for forwarding to child 88 6502. As explained in the policy document with your initial welcome pack, we are afraid that no such gifts can be sent to children or families within the scheme – any more than we can allow endearments or other familiarities.

  ‘As you know, the main benefits accruing from your charitable giving are those associated with improvements in the welfare of the whole community where your “adopted” child resides: cleaner and more accessible water sources; enhanced hygiene; better health for the sick and frail; higher standards of education; and much more besides. In your case, monthly donations contribute to a local latrine-building scheme. Personalised giving is not compatible with such initiatives.

  ‘I enclose another copy of our policy document, along with our latest brochures.

  ‘We shall explain the situation to the family, just in case the child was indeed expecting a present for some reason.

  ‘Yours sincerely

  Ibrahim Akhtar

  Office Manager, InterRelate International Office, Colombo’

  In her next letter, Martine blocked the slapdown from her mind, giving the laziest of news –‘I have been to a couple of parties…Work is very busy.’

  The boy’s reply seemed obliquely accusing about his birthday.

  ‘Here there is a photo of my birthday. You can see all this family.

  ‘My father is saying you will never send presents and Anupama is saying Buddhists do not need presents only for giving to people needing them.

  ‘My question is “If you send a present what is it.”

  ‘My question is not about I want a present it is about I am interested in everything. Anupama is saying this very strongly and we are telling you that.’

  Still embarrassed at her failure, ‘What would you have liked for a present, supposing I could have sent you one?’ Martine asked in reply, enclosing a list of prompts.

  ‘Dear Miss Martine

  Not a school bag not a cricket bat not paints not a T-shirt not a book telling about London not Kermit a frog. There are frogs here Big Birds also, for example cranes on the paddy.

  ‘My sister Upeksha is telling me “Answer a television a skate-board” but no.

  ‘I can answer “Something for a good boy at school for example pencils a book” but no. Or “A present is my mother to go very more times away of the house” but Upeksha is telling me it is not a present.

  ‘Anupama is saying you may think medicine for amma but the clinic and hospital are free. And I do not think medicine is the need for amma.

  ‘Here there is the answer for your question about what present. To my tatta and amma and sister Upeksha and sister Anupama and brother Jayamal and senior father and junior father and the mothers and cousins and me Mohan. A very bigger cake.’

  Martine read, and gave herself a ticking-off. I mustn’t let a small boy floor me with his impoverished life.

  She stuck to her textbook letters. ‘There are six rooms in my flat…My best friends are Ali and Conrad, Claire, Bernard, Phil and Matthias, as you know, and two men both called Mark…’

  Filling them with small facts that she felt safe to release.

  In early August 1984, Martine met Jonas in a Notting Hill tapas bar, neutral ground, as if he was now wary of meeting her anywhere else.

  The year before, she’d helped get him a job planning kitchens. He’d grudgingly accepted, and moved to London from her mother’s. He seemed happier, if unhappy at the gifting. Between half-brother and -sister it had been differently uneasy since around that time.

  In the bar Jonas twitched at waiters, pretty girls laughing, the street door squeaking shut. Martine tried to stroke him with her voice.

  ‘You’re the spitting image of Dad. Have you seen Mum’s films?’ Her smile felt stuck: she’d been three when Dad had left. ‘The profile and the slouch.’ He scowled, and she teased, ‘You’ve got his scowl as well.’

  ‘Mom has home movies? I guess she hid them. But then, I do know how Dad looks.’

  ‘Whereas I don’t, except from the movies. How’re the flying lessons?’

  ‘Great,’ he said, ‘just great,’ sarcastic for all she knew.

  When the waiter delivered the anchovies and patatas she pushed the dishes at him, sacrificing her growling innards.

  ‘And the dating?’ he grunted, overriding their silence on the subject.

  Once, Martine had seen Gerry Taylor on TV: he was back in Tamil territory, reporting, she’d re-entered the country of blind dating.

  ‘Can I help you someways?’ Jonas mumbled.

  Martine was stung by the banned subject.

  ‘How’s the job?’ she parried, alert too late to the fact that in recent months, he’d used that word ‘help’ often.

  ‘Everything’s great,’ said Jonas, his voice gone dark and muddy.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ they asked together – and at last they grinned because they’d found a common thread of chat.

  They were both in contact with Martine’s mother, just in different ways. Brother and sister nearly, after all.

  Back at home, Martine stared again at the photo: Mohan and Anupama against that foreign wall. There was a tree behind them, its leaves like carnival feathers. From it hung a pimpled, ovoid fruit. Something about it disturbed her.

  Brothers and sisters, she mused. Sharing a space doesn’t ensure a shared thought, a shared feeling, even a shared experience. On separate tracks most of the time, the different engines of our lives bump us along. She wondered how they managed, those two children, how much they truly shared.

  She thought, It should be easy to send out care or interest, at a distance. It was with Jonas, before I met him. And Mohan’s just a new and distant brother. Just not mine.

  4 Anupama

  Monday 4 February 2013

  Mohan’s sister is part of Martine’s tale.

  On Monday 4 February 2013, she’s thinking, He is not here. The posters most definitely state the Sarasavi Bookshop at 10:30 am today, however it is 10:30 am now, and there is no table with a starched tablecloth stacked to the bookshop rafters with Human Rights: Where to, Sri Lanka? No white-haired man with large spectacles and most illustrious smile to autograph my copy, accepting the utmost height of my admiration. K. Sivapalan, Siva for short, where are you?

  ‘Auntie-Uncle Moon, he was a drop of water in my somewhat dry life.’

  The moon receives this lament invisibly; it is currently elsewhere than over Kandy.

  This is the same date, a few hours earlier, that Martine receives the insistent phone call from Jocelyn Teague. Anupama, these days a lean-cheeked, somewhat bulbous forty-something woman, leaves the bookshop amid the buzzing crowds and tuk-tuks along D.S. Senanana
yake Veediya.

  On the first floor of Pizza Hut overlooking the busy street she takes a seat, defying the girl and boy waiters speculating audibly about a local woman of her age eating there alone. It suits her state of mind to rip great chunks with her teeth and hands out of a pizza.

  The disc of tomato craters and cheesy seas is a travesty of Auntie-Uncle Moon, she thinks, but we are connected, the moon and me. We always have been. Originally, it was Martine who caused the link. Yet to Martine she barely existed: barely, still, exists.

  Martine, a continent distant, won’t look into that letter carton, and Anupama, too, tries not to relive her past. But like the moon with its rugged side and its smoother side, life has a symmetry. It obeys the near-law of it. Just as the moon goes about its functions in geometric complement to the sun’s, night and day, day and night, so Martine’s life story has its opposite, and Anupama’s unwittingly provides it.

  * * *

  1983–1984

  It was the girl Anupama, not Mohan, who chose the photograph of the pair of them and the breadfruit tree behind them.

  Mohan simply said, ‘All right.’

  The girl in cotton shorts and T-shirt, her shoulder-length hair held with a slide, twisted their tyre swing round and round, scuffing the cinnamon earth with her big toe. It was dark, soon after school. The crickets’ hissing raked on like nails through gravel.

  She whispered, ‘I wish Miss Martine would write to me. However, I am Mohan’s sister merely, and Mohan is the chosen one.’ She looked up and the moon was there, in its first quarter. She silently addressed it. ‘I cannot make you a penfriend but I shall make you my talk friend. I can even think of a name for you, a name like the Handamama name you had when I was little.