The nuns in the convent used to say God had a reason for everything He did. Premawathi sometimes wished she knew what it was.
CHANDI RAN DOWN the path feeling bad that he hadn’t allowed his mother to ruffle his hair as she did every morning before he left for school. He didn’t really like it but she did, so he let her. He called to his sisters to wait for him, but they were late so they only waved and kept going.
He wished he didn’t have to go to school. He didn’t like waking up early, washing in the freezing well water and putting on his school shorts and shirt, which both scratched from the rice-water starch his mother washed them in. She ironed them every night, and every morning he had to fight to get into them; they felt like paper bags that had been stuck together.
He didn’t like his teacher. Leela and Rangi had a lady teacher who wore colorful saris and flowers in her hair. She was pretty, young and fun.
Chandi’s teacher looked like Appuhamy, old and faded like the sepia photographs his mother kept inside her battered Bible.
He skipped along, by now having given up all hope of catching up. Ahead, he saw Rangi pause to pick some marigolds to give her teacher. The teacher would probably put them in a jam bottle on her table and be extra nice to Rangi for the rest of the day. Chandi couldn’t even think of giving his teacher flowers.
He could see the low brown school building. There were just four classes, of different age groups. The school only taught children up to grade eight. After that, parents who wanted their children to continue their education sent them to the Nuwara Eliya Maha Vidyalaya in town. Not many did, though.
The girls stayed home to help their mothers and the boys went out to work. Education wasn’t as important as survival.
When Chandi reached his classroom, he found that although the children were there, Teacher had not yet arrived. He spotted his friend Sunil sitting a few desks away. They usually sat next to each other, but Chandi was late and the best desks in the front were already taken.
A shadow fell across the doorless entrance, and the chatter ceased as a cadaverous gray-haired man in a rumpled national costume walked in, filling his sunken cheeks with air and blowing it out through pursed lips as was his habit. The children took care not to stand too close to him, because the air he blew out usually stank of last night’s illicit kassippu.
He was simply called Teacher. They didn’t know if he had ever had a real name.
He glanced indifferently over his young charges, who jumped up, put their hands together in the traditional form of greeting and chorused, “Ayubowan Teacher.” Teacher mumbled something back, picked up a piece of chalk and started writing on the blackboard.
It was the same every day. He’d write a sentence or a sum on the board, sit in his chair, place his hands together in a steeple, rest his chin on them and go to sleep.
Often, they wouldn’t even know what the lesson was, not that they were really required to. All they were supposed to do was copy it down into their books and take it home.
No questions were asked, because no answers were given.
Teacher took all classes except Religious Education, which was taught by Father Ross, and English, which was taught by Mr. Aloysius, who had recently retired after twenty-five years as a secretary in the railway headquarters in Colombo.
When he was younger, Mr. Aloysius had been a voracious reader and had toyed briefly with the idea of becoming a writer, but harsh reality in the form of his large, domineering wife had fast laid that idea to rest, and he had sadly resigned himself to a life of shorthand and typewriting.
When he finally retired, he resolved to satisfy the yearning in his soul by helping to mold young minds.
He had not exactly had the first grade of the free church school in mind, but apparently they were the only ones to want his somewhat limited teaching skills.
If Chandi was indifferent to Teacher, he was intensely interested in Mr. Aloysius, who took time to explain the intricacies of English grammar, patiently correcting pronunciation, and even telling strange stories of English kings and battles.
Today, he sat patiently through Teacher’s lessons, thinking about the dream he’d had. He didn’t bother to copy the sum on the blackboard into his book because he had only two more pages left in it, and Teacher had given them the same sum yesterday.
Chandi had written it down then.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Teacher leave and Mr. Aloysius arrive until the class sprang to its feet.
“Good morning, sir,” they chorused this time. English was the only language spoken in Mr. Aloysius’s classroom.
Mr. Aloysius beamed. “Good morning, boys and girls,” he boomed. He had a loud, carrying voice like the siren at the factory.
He was dressed as always: black trousers shiny from too much ironing, a not-quite-white shirt and his usual red bow tie. When he had first come to teach, the children had found the bow tie fascinating. Like a red butterfly sitting at his neck, said some. Like a present all wrapped up, said others. Like a lady, said the young boys, sniggering behind their hands.
Chandi personally thought the bow tie looked very nice, and had long ago resolved to get himself one exactly like it when he went to England.
Mr. Aloysius looked at Teacher’s squiggly writing on the board and sighed. In his opinion, Teacher had no business undertaking the task of molding young minds when his own still needed so much molding.
That was, if he didn’t die before then, which given his present derelict state was a distinct possibility.
He picked up the duster and wiped the squiggles away, then, in his large rounded handwriting, which looked like perfectly formed curly snails creeping over the blackboard in a military formation, he wrote VERB.
“Who can tell me what a verb is?” he boomed, beaming at the twenty-something earnest faces facing him.
There was a pin-drop silence. No one even dared to cough in case Mr. Aloysius’s hopeful gaze zoomed in on him. No one scratched his head or dug his nose in case Mr. Aloysius thought he was raising his hand with the answer. No one wanted to be wrong in front of the rest of the class.
Mr. Aloysius looked at the carefully blank faces and the rigidly clasped hands and sighed. He was aware of what was going through those heads.
“A verb is a doing verd,” he said. His Tamil accent became more pronounced with words that began with w. He looked at them in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.
“Who can give me an example of a verb?” he asked. In his eagerness to share his accumulated and hitherto useless knowledge with this young band of moldable minds, he sometimes forgot that they were four- to eight-year-olds who didn’t know what the word example meant, let alone verb. He also had a tendency to forget his audience and wax eloquently on and on, until the school bell cut him short with cruel suddenness.
“Skip, jump, talk, cry, eat, drink, valk!” he boomed suddenly, making the class jump. “These are verbs, children, verds used to describe doing things.”
They grinned and giggled, hugely enjoying the show. At the back of the class, Chandi silently drank in every word and verb.
“Who can make a sentence with a verb?” said Mr. Aloysius, by now not even waiting for the answers that wouldn’t come anyway. “The boys jumps, the girl eats, the crow flies, the dog barks, the child skips, the voman valks,” he bawled, mopping his sweating head with his large red cotton handkerchief, which matched his red bow tie. He perspired a lot.
Chandi stared intently, fascinated by the ring of curling gray hair that surrounded the moonlike smoothness of his bald head, like Caesar’s laurel wreath. Hair grew out of his ears too, gray tufts that stuck straight out.
He wondered if Ariyasena, the barber in Nuwara Eliya town, charged extra for cutting ear hair. He absently probed his own ears with his little finger, trying to see if any had started there. He found a tiny lump of red-brown wax which he rubbed on a page in his exercise book and made a streak like the tail of a comet, but thankfully no hair. At least not y
et.
When the final bell finally rang, he shoved his books into their cloth bag, and joined the streaming flow of children rushing out of the door and down the path. He looked around for Sunil but couldn’t see him. He had probably already run down the path to the workers’ compound where he lived with his family.
Chandi was disappointed because Sunil was fun to walk with.
Sunil believed anything Chandi told him, because Chandi lived at the bungalow where everyone knew anything could happen. He believed Chandi when he told him that he had seen the new Sudu Baby being born. He believed that Chandi had got to name the new Sudu Baby, although he didn’t think much of the name Elizabeth, mostly because he couldn’t pronounce it. He hadn’t said anything to Chandi though.
He believed Chandi when he told him that the Sudu Mahattaya had taken him for a drive in the big silver car. Everyone had seen the car at some time, and Sunil was delighted that someone he knew and actually talked to had been in it. And when Chandi told him about the time he’d gone with the family for a picnic at Victoria Park, it was then that Sunil had started to hero-worship Chandi.
Chandi wasn’t really lying, not the way liars lie anyway. He just chose to believe nicer things than actually happened. He had long ago discovered that it was pleasanter that way.
“Chandi, wait for me!”
Chandi stopped and waited for Sunil, who was running breathlessly down the hill. When Sunil caught up with him, they linked arms and walked slowly, like a solemn bride and groom.
“Something happened yesterday,” he said casually to Sunil.
Sunil caught his breath.
“Yesterday, I played with the Sudu Baby in the tea bushes.”
Sunil’s breath escaped with a little whoosh.
“Isn’t she too small to play with you?” he asked tentatively, not wanting to offend his hero.
“Oh no,” Chandi declared airily. “She can crawl, can’t she? So I did too. We played hide-and-seek and she wore a dress with sunflowers on it, but then she went behind the yakka tree—” He broke off.
“No!” Sunil breathed.
“Yes,” Chandi said, “but I rescued her and the Sudu Nona was so pleased with me that she asked me to come and play in the house with them.”
“Did you?” asked Sunil in wonder.
“No. My mother wouldn’t let me. She was probably jealous, or maybe she didn’t want Leela and Rangi to get jealous. Anyway, I didn’t yesterday but maybe I will today.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. Sunil’s silence was loud with admiration and just a little whisper of envy. Chandi’s was like an empty room where echoes happen.
At the bottom of the hill, near the white-painted wooden arrow-shaped sign that said GLENCAIRN, they went their separate ways, Sunil to his two-roomed home in the workers’ compound, and Chandi to his one-roomed home in the big bungalow.
HE COULDN’T SEE his sisters, behind him or ahead. They had either gone home or stayed back because it was their turn to clean the classroom. Not that it mattered much to him, because he liked walking by himself. It was far better than having to hurry to keep up with them.
They walked fast. He supposed they had got that from Ammi.
He walked slowly, dreamily. He didn’t know who he got that from.
He left the mountain road and took the shortcut along the little oya that burbled its way past Glencairn.
Up ahead he could see the bungalow. It looked like a white cake sitting on a green carpet. Although the sun was warm, the air was crisp and cool. Not cool enough for a sweater, though.
His own burgundy woollen one was tied around his waist.
He had to remember to untie it before he reached the house; Ammi had scolded him for tying it, telling him to think of the less fortunate children who didn’t have sweaters to wear. He tried to, but he couldn’t think of anyone except the Sudu Nona’s son, who had been the original owner of the sweater, and who was definitely more fortunate than he was. He had scores of sweaters and besides, he was in England while Chandi was only in a sad imitation.
He saw something shiny in the stream and stopped to look, hoping it was a fish. It was only a rusty Heinz tin, probably tossed in there by one of the more fortunate, besweatered children.
He reached the main gate, and was about to turn left toward the kitchen entrance when he saw something that made his heart start to gallop.
A pink baby pram sat under the shady canopy of the jacaranda tree. It was turned away from him so he couldn’t see if She was in it. At the far end of the driveway, which was at least thirty feet from where he stood, he could see the ayah engaged in vivacious conversation with the firewood man.
He dropped his bag, opened the gate just enough to slip through and ran across the lawn toward the pram, keeping to the hedge. It briefly occurred to him that he’d been running along a lot of edges and hedges lately.
He reached the pram, inched his way around it and stopped. After more than six months of waiting, the moment was upon him. He was gripped by sudden panic. What if she were ugly and nasty and didn’t want to be his best friend?
She was asleep, her hands curled into fists and her eyelashes fanned out on her flushed pink cheeks. She was wearing white, not yellow like in the dream, but he didn’t care. He smiled slowly—she was beautiful.
Rose, he thought, and as if she heard him, she opened her eyes.
For what seemed like an eternity, they regarded each other solemnly. Then she smiled, displaying two perfect white teeth that looked like pieces of coconut, pursed up her lips and blew a spit bubble at him. He felt encouraged.
“Hello,” he said in his best British accent.
He was rewarded with another spit bubble.
“My name is Chandi,” he said, frantically searching his brain for all the English phrases he’d learned from Mr. Aloysius and kept stored for just this moment. But his brain had gone blank, so he just stood there and grinned foolishly, like a new father meeting his baby for the first time.
He held his hand out to her. She grabbed his finger and held on to it. He laughed.
“Rose,” he said experimentally, tasting the name.
She laughed.
“Best friend,” he said.
She laughed louder and tightened her grip on his finger.
Rose had chosen.
So that was that, he thought triumphantly.
That would show them. Ammi and Rangi and Leela and Ayah—he heard her laugh. He turned and saw her walking slowly down the driveway with the firewood man, who was pulling his firewood cart with more enthusiasm than Chandi had ever seen. Chandi realized he had to get out of there fast.
“I’ll come back and see you soon, Rose,” he promised her in Sinhalese, and tried to withdraw his finger. She held on with grim determination. “Soon, Rose, maybe tomorrow,” he said, trying to pull away. She laughed and gurgled and blew spit bubbles and hung on. The voices were close now and he was frantic.
“Rose,” he whispered urgently. “If you don’t let go of my finger they will see me and Ammi will whip me for sure.”
She let go at last.
He crawled on his belly as fast as he could, trying to get to the gate before they did. He would have gone down the passage that ran around the house, but his schoolbag was just outside the gate. He grabbed it and ran.
“Chandi! What happened to you?” His mother stood there wiping her hands on her reddha. He looked down. His white school shirt was streaked with grass stains.
“I fell,” he mumbled, and went indoors.
chapter 6
IN DEFERENCE TO HER REAL NAME, HE DECIDED TO CALL HER ROSE-LIZZIE. And although he didn’t see Rose-Lizzie again for another month, he hugged those five minutes to himself.
It kept him warmer than any burgundy sweater could have during the freezing Nuwara Eliya nights, when the temperature slipped right down and a thin film of frost covered the grass, turning it to silver.
It helped him get through chilly mornings listening to
Teacher’s loud disjointed snores. It made him pay even more attention to Mr. Aloysius’s soliloquies, and made his brain take note of and file away even more words and phrases.
It was like a happy spell he could summon up whenever the need arose.
And the need frequently arose.
He stopped hovering around the front garden hoping for a glimpse of Rose-Lizzie; he had already had one. He stopped pestering the unpesterable Rangi with questions about what the not-so-new-by-now baby looked like; he already knew.
Other people noticed the change in him. Ammi with slanting looks of concern, soon forgotten by work to be done. Leela with direct stares of suspicion, and suspicious questions. Rangi with happiness, because he was happy. She wasn’t really interested in knowing why.
In his newfound state of happiness, Chandi sang Christmas songs because Christmas was coming. He’d already seen two Christmases at the bungalow, but this one was different. There had been no Rose-Lizzie then.
Already preparations were under way in the house. A huge spruce was currently lying in the side veranda, its trunk in an old tin bath full of water.
Appuhamy could be seen teetering on ladders as he searched cupboards for Christmas decorations and fabric-covered pelmets for cobwebs.
All through the year, he faded in and out of rooms and days like a sad ghost, but at Christmas he came alive, as if he had been conserving his strength throughout the year just for these two weeks.
Premawathi too was infected by the Christmas fever, hurrying back and forth even faster than usual. Thanks to her years at the convent and countless Christmas fairs to raise money for the Wanathamulla poor, she was a skilled Christmas cook.
In these weeks and days leading up to the (other) big birth, she baked scores of mince pies and breudhers from old Dutch recipes. She iced countless Yule Logs and chopped thousands of nuts, sultanas, crystallized ginger, pumpkin preserve and other things for the Christmas cake.
While Appuhamy shone in the house, Premawathi shone in the kitchen, looking for all the world like a typical English housewife preparing for a typically English celebration.
The Flower Boy Page 5