Cinnamon Gardens

by Shyam Selvadurai

  When Balendran came into the vestibule, he noticed the light spilling onto the stairs from his mother’s drawing room. As he looked up, he felt he should go to her first, and a chill passed through him. He was going up there to tell his mother that her son was dying. He gripped the banister tightly and began to go slowly upstairs.

  Nalamma looked up from her sewing and caught her breath as she saw Balendran come up the last few steps. He seemed to rise out of the darkness and she felt a foreboding.

  “What is it, mahan?” she asked in fear.

  He came forward, took her hands between his and kissed them. Then he knelt in front of her.

  She watched him, wanting him to speak and yet afraid that, after he spoke, the world would fall around her.

  “It’s as you thought.… Arulanandan,” he said, using his brother’s full name.

  A sound escaped from her lips. Then she reached out and drew Balendran tightly to her, arms circling him as if afraid that this son, too, might slip away.

  “How long?” Nalamma asked. “How long do we have?”

  “About a month, perhaps less.”

  She released him. Her face was tear-stained. She stood up. “Come. We must speak to your appa.”

  Wiping her face with the edge of her sari palu, she tucked it back into her waist. He followed her as she led the way towards the stairs.

  When she got to the vestibule, her courage gave way and she indicated for him to knock on the door.

  He did so and, after a moment, his father called out for them to enter. He went first and she followed.

  The Mudaliyar was at the window, looking out over the lawn of Brighton. He turned to them.

  “Appa,” Balendran said timidly, “I … I received this telegram today.”

  He handed it to his father and then watched as he read it, wondering if the pain of his son dying would be too much for him.

  The Mudaliyar kept his face inscrutable so that neither his son nor his wife could tell that he was already aware of the telegram’s contents. Even though he had made them swear to have no communication with Arul, he had been unable to cut his son off completely. Along with the monthly allowance he sent Arul, he had arranged for the bank manager, Mr. Govind, to make inquiries about his son and convey the news to him. Mr. Govind had telegraphed him the same information a few hours ago. The Mudaliyar had been pacing his study agitatedly contemplating this terrible news when his son and wife had knocked on the door.

  He put down the telegram.

  “Appa,” Balendran said, aware of his mother’s eyes on him. “Should I go to him?”

  The Mudaliyar had already anticipated this question and had decided that, of course, Balendran should go. Arul was his son and despite the fact that he had disobeyed him and caused him much pain, the Mudaliyar still loved him as he did Balendran. In fact, hardly a week went by when the sight of Balendran or the photograph of Lukshman on his desk did not make him sigh at the loss of that other son and grandson. For they were irrevocably lost to him, his son by his marriage, his grandson by the blood he carried in him. Now that Arul was close to death, the Mudaliyar felt it was absolutely essential Balendran go and convince Arul’s family to send the body back to Ceylon so that his son could be buried in a way that befitted his heritage. In India, there would be no Koviars to bathe the body and accompany it to the cremation grounds, no Parayars to beat their drums, no Pallars to cut the firewood and make the funeral pyre. His son, his oldest son, would be buried like a nameless pauper. It would be a shame on him, an insult to the family name. Silk, as his father used to say, remained silk even if it was torn. His son was still of their blood and should be given a funeral that was worthy of his lineage.

  Yet the Mudaliyar was confronted by a dilemma. While he wished to send Balendran, he did not want it to seem that he lightly dismissed the vow he had made his household take at the family shrine. “You know my wishes on this subject and I expect them to be obeyed,” he said and waited for his son’s appeal.

  Balendran nodded in acquiesence, relieved that he was not to be sent.

  “Is there a reason I should alter my mind?”

  Before Balendran could answer, Nalamma burst out, “What reason do you want? Are you a man or a piece of stone?”

  She had never spoken like this to her husband. The Mudaliyar straightened up. “Are you forgetting who you are talking to?” he said, his voice awful.

  Much to his surprise, Nalamma stared back at him. The Mudaliyar grew furious at her refusal to be penitent, his outrage exacerbated by the tumult over his son’s impending death. “Get out!” he shouted. Nalamma’s gaze wavered. “Get out of my study, you disrespectful woman!”

  “Take her away,” the Mudaliyar said to Balendran. “There is nothing more to be said.”

  Once his wife and son had gone, and the door was closed, the Mudaliyar hit the table with his palm. He began to pace the room, cursing his wife for interrupting and thus preventing his son from begging his permission to go to Bombay.

  When Balendran and his mother reached the top of the stairs, she let go of his arm.

  “I can go by myself.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “There is something you must do. Go to the vellakari.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. “Miss Adamson?”

  She looked away from him, but not before he saw the expression on her face – a mixture of uneasiness and cunning.

  “She exerts great influence over him,” she said. “You know how he is about Europeans. Anything they say, he will believe.” She pushed at him gently. “Go now.”

  “But, Amma, this is a family matter. We can’t drag a stranger into it.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Nalamma cried. “I am your mother. Do as I say.”

  Balendran sighed. There was no point arguing with either of his parents when they were in this state. He turned and went down the stairs.

  Miss Adamson’s bedroom was along the passage behind the stairs. He stood for a moment outside the door, listening to her moving around inside, then he knocked.

  “Who is it?” she called out softly.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s Balendran.”

  She came to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out at him.

  “I wonder if I could speak with you,” he said, feeling as if he were intruding on her privacy.

  She bowed her head in acquiescence. “If you could give me a moment.” She shut the door.

  He waited in the passage, feeling irritable. Why had he agreed to this damn-fool mission? His father had expressed his wish and that was that. There was no point approaching this woman who was a stranger, who knew nothing about their family.

  Miss Adamson finally emerged from her room and Balendran signalled for them to walk down the passage to the dining room. She was wearing a long silk housecoat and kept her hand at her throat to prevent the neckline from opening up. Her hair was in a plait down her back and she kept her head bent demurely. Balendran thought this was the first time he had seen her look what she was – a Western woman. Seeing her in these clothes that belonged to her earlier life, he thought how incongruent the sari really was on her.

  When they reached the dining room, he stood aside so she could enter, then followed her in. He reached to turn on the light, but she said softly, “The master will not like it.”

  He paused awkwardly, then lowered his hand to his side.

  “I have asked to speak with you alone about a private matter … a family matter,” he began, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

  She waited, her head bent.

  “I don’t know if you are aware that I have an older brother. Who lives in India.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you know the circumstances surrounding his going to India?”

  “A marriage that the master didn’t approve of.”

  Balendran nodded. “Now my brother is dying and it is important that someone from the family goes to him. Unfortunately
, my father has forbidden it.”

  He paused again, finding it very difficult to continue. “My mother feels that you exert an influence over him … some good influence.”

  He stopped, as Miss Adamson had moved slightly.

  “Do you think this is so?” he asked. “Do you think you could get him to change his mind?”

  Miss Adamson released the neckline of her gown. She crossed her arms. He thought she looked strangely troubled.

  “Do you think this would be possible?” he asked again.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Your mother exaggerates my influence over the master. But I will try. I will talk to him.”

  He bowed slightly and left the room.

  As Balendran’s car left Brighton, he glanced back at his father’s study window. The memory of that terrible night Arul had used a knife on his father came back to him again. How much havoc and shame Arul had caused their family.

  Balendran knew that, to his father, caste differences were as real as the earth being flat and inhabited by spirits had been to his forebears. One’s birth, one’s caste were tangible, as if these differences were manifest in the blood in one’s veins, one’s ligaments, the very smell of one’s sweat. His father had a story that he often told of how, unknowingly, he had drunk from the cup of an untouchable and had spontaneously vomited. His body, aware of the very poison, had rejected it. Balendran did not agree with his father at all, but he would have taken his father’s feelings into consideration if he had been in Arul’s position. His brother, in his characteristically single-minded fashion, had not only refused to see things from his father’s perspective but had been enraged with him. But what had been his father’s crime? After all, his father had reacted to the affair in the same way any parent of their peers might. He had ordered Pakkiam to return to her village. And for that his brother had stabbed him. Balendran remembered shuddering when he thought about what would have happened if his brother had killed his father – not just the loss of his father but also the scandal, the shame, that would have haunted them the rest of their lives. As it was, it had been very hard.

  Their family doctor had been discreet and kept the stabbing to himself. After Arul left for India, however, his marriage to Pakkiam became public knowledge. Balendran had suffered at school because of it. His schoolmates had taunted him, never allowing a woman labourer to pass without calling Balendran’s attention to his future wife. Once, he had seen a schoolmate surreptitiously wipe something he had handled, as if Pakkiam’s untouchability had affected him too. His father’s blood pressure had soared, and he had been compelled to take to bed for a month. His mother had been forced to endure visits from relatives and other “well wishers” who had come to find out what they could and spread it around. The first time they had gone into public as a family, at an at-home given by F. C. Wijewardena’s parents, a hush had fallen on the room as they entered. They had spent most of the evening shunned by the other people.

  Still, his father had arranged for Arul to have a monthly allowance. For that, Balendran admired him.

  The next morning, Balendran received a summons from his father. He arrived at the appointed time and found his father pacing up and down his study. When the Mudaliyar saw him, he stopped and waited for him to approach.

  “I have decided that you must go,” the Mudaliyar said. “We don’t know how long your brother has. Therefore, you must leave tomorrow evening.”

  Balendran stared at him in astonishment.

  The Mudaliyar held out the ticket for his passage to Bombay. “I want you to speak to his family and arrange for the body to be brought back here,” the Mudaliyar continued. “He must be buried with full honours in Jaffna. If they refuse, threaten to cut off their allowance.”

  As his father spoke, Balendran half listened. He was looking at Miss Adamson, who sat at her table attending to the correspondence, seemingly oblivious to what was going on. He felt not so much respect or gratitude, but rather confirmation of her significance in this, his father’s house.

  In a few days, Balendran would be seeing Arul, and now, as his car took him home, the reality of his brother’s death was before him. He felt for the first time sorrow, like a hardness in his chest. How devastating it was, how terrible for Arul to have his life cut down like this when it had only half run its course. He could only imagine how Arul must agonize over his wife and son, wonder how they would survive without him. Balendran thought of this sad reunion with Arul, after all these years of absence. To meet now, in the face of death, was almost unbearable. What would he say to Arul after all this time? The long absence had made them strangers to each other. Seelan. He would be twenty-seven years old now. What would he have to say to him? Would his nephew resent the fact that he had been deprived of his heritage? Would he hate Balendran? All the time he had known Pakkiam she had been a servant in his house. Now she was his sister-in-law. Though he had every intention of treating her with the due respect of a sister-in-law, it would sit awkwardly on both of them.

  Then there was his father’s order to bring Arul’s body back so that it could be cremated in Ceylon. Balendran sat up in his seat. While his father had spoken, this had not sunk in. Now the full significance of his father’s command was before him. He was going to meet his brother and his family and ask for the return of his brother’s body. Arul had a temper to match their father’s, even exceed it. His anger had, after all, made him stab his own father. He imagined telling Arul of their father’s request and he felt himself wither at the tirade that would be unleashed against him. Pakkiam and Seelan would support Arul too. He would not have a hope against them. Pakkiam would never let Arul be buried away from them. Seelan would never allow anyone else to light the funeral pyre. It was the most important duty a son ever performed for his father! But the Mudaliyar was determined to see his beloved son, even if only in his death, determined to give him the honours he deserved as a member of their family.

  Balendran wiped the sweat off his face with his handkerchief and sighed at the task before him.

  17

  Friendship curbs wrong, guides right,

  And shares distress.

  – The Tirukkural, verse 787

  April was the hottest month of the year. Despite Colombo’s proximity to the sea and the presence of Beira Lake, an inert sultriness hung over the city. On the tree-shaded streets, a shimmering heat seemed to have become trapped between the canopy of dusty leaves overhead and the tarred road. Even the nights were sweltering, and one went to sleep on a warm mattress, tossing and turning through uneasy dreams only to wake in a sweat. It was a time when tempers, both public and private, were frayed. The year of 1928 was no exception, for April had brought with it the murmuring of Labour Union unrest. Taxi drivers of the Minerva Hiring Company had taken a vote to join the Labour Union, but the company had refused to recognize unionism by its employees. The owner had dismissed the driver who was the union representative, telling him to get out as he did not want his “damned union.” Discontent was brewing amongst the other drivers.

  A deserted air hung over Cinnamon Gardens as most of its residents had fled to the cooler climate of the hill country, to the town of Nuwara Eliya, a hill station once the exclusive domain of the British but now increasingly populated by wealthy Ceylonese, many of whom owned cottages there. In April, Cinnamon Gardens resembled a ghost town. This impression was enhanced by the fact that the scores of servants, who were so present everywhere, had also departed. They had gone to their villages for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. Those occupants of Cinnamon Gardens who remained could not help but be possessed by a feeling of melancholy, a sense of being abandoned.

  Since schools were closed for the April holidays, Annalukshmi had gone back to the Sisler estate with Miss Lawton and Nancy. But deprived of Letchumi and Ramu, and with Kumudini married and in Malaya, Louisa asked Annalukshmi to come home after only a week, to help with the numerous domestic chores that had fallen on her shoulders.

  As one unbearab
ly hot day gave way to another, Annalukshmi found herself restless and pensive as she ground the spices for the curry, stood over steaming pots in the stifling kitchen, swept the verandah, or watered the garden.

  After her sister’s marriage, she had thrown herself with increased vigour into her teaching. Besides paying more attention to her classes, she had taken time after school hours to tutor the weaker students. She had also volunteered her services to direct the school’s drama society for the forthcoming inter-school Shakespeare competition in June, in which they would be performing an act from As You Like It. She had tried to schedule some rehearsals for the April holidays, but the girls had all rebelled against the idea, most of them having plans to spend the month in Nuwara Eliya.

  Annalukshmi found herself longing for the end of the April holidays or at least the return of her friends from Nanu Oya.

  To add to Annalukshmi’s irritations, her Aunt Philomena, who was also deprived of domestic help, had taken to dropping in too often. Her visits were conveniently engineered to coincide with meals and, over lunch or dinner, the residents of Lotus Cottage had to put up with a litany of their faults, particularly the new thorn they had pierced in Philomena’s side, this marriage of Kumudini to a Hindu (even though wild dogs could not have kept Philomena away from the wedding).

  One morning, Philomena Barnett arrived at the gates of Lotus Cottage. She walked up the front path with a bustle and energy that was unusual for her at this time of year. She came up the verandah steps, an expression of sly pleasure on her face.