Evening Is the Whole Day

by Preeta Samarasan

  "What about a chauffeur, then?" Amma says. "Shall I tell Mat Din he'll be dividing his time starting next month?"

  "Er, I'll see what I can do, yes," Uncle Ballroom says, as though Amma hasn't spoken. Just as he expects, Appa doesn't pressure him into fixing a date for this mutton dinner that will—they both know—never take place.

  On Uncle Ballroom's second Sunday at the Big House, Appa comes home from the market with (in one hand) half a dozen live crabs in a basket and (in the other) a fat tilapia breathing its last in its newspaper wrapping. No sooner has he slipped his shoes off at the front door than he booms, "Eh Balu! Look what I found for you! Still a big fan of crabs or not?"

  But before Uncle Ballroom can make his way along his dim corridor and down the stairs to prostrate himself before his brother's generosity and thereby mask all lingering odors of unpleasantness, Amma has met Appa at the door.

  "Aren't you getting tired of fish?" she says to him.

  "What?"

  "Didn't you have fish just last night? Maybe steamed with ginger, just the way you like it? I suppose I can ask Lourdesmary to fry this one."

  Appa brushes past her, past Aasha, who is standing in the dining room archway, past Suresh, who is standing right behind her, and into the kitchen, where he frees the tilapia from its newspaper and lays it on the draining board. Aasha watches it flip over into the sink with a taily thwack. Glinting scales, writhing tail, bulging eye about to die. In and out, in and out goes that eye, like a red button someone should push to stop the show.

  Uncle Ballroom appears in the dining room just in time to see Appa wash his hands and smile broadly at Amma. "Go ahead," he says, "send your wretched little maidservant after me with a tape recorder and a camera, if she has nothing better to do with her time. Or why don't the whole lot of you charter a bus and follow me around all day? It's quite gratifying, I must say, that my dreary daily routine engenders such lively interest. I feel like quite the celebrity. A flim star, just like our dear daughter is going to be someday."

  Engenders such lively interest flourishes its gaudy tail in Amma's face until she looks away.

  Later that afternoon, through the window above the back landing, Uncle Ballroom sees Suresh corner Chellam in the outdoor kitchen, where she's scrubbing the piss out of Paati's petticoats. "Chellam," Suresh says, gritting his teeth so that Uncle Ballroom can make out his words only by leaning precariously out the window, "why can't you mind your own business?" He pinches her elbow, twisting the loose skin between thumb and forefinger.

  "Ai! Ai! You crazy boy!" shrieks Chellam, pulling away and then laughing, screwing up her face at what she thinks is an innocent but silly game.

  Again that weak wave of sympathy laps at Uncle Ballroom's steeled spirit; again he wills it still.

  But in the end Chellam's father's monthly performance wears Uncle Ballroom's once bitten shyness down.

  Uncle Ballroom has been at the Big House for two weeks before the servants' payday rolls around, and a plaintive mewling at the gate interrupts his concentrated consumption of soft-boiled eggs and toast.

  "Saar! Maddam!" the voice cries. "Tell my daughter that her brothers and sisters haven't eaten for three days! And one has a fever, but how can we bring him to the doctor with no money? Tell my daughter that, and see if she can live with her conscience! Tell her and see what she says!"

  Egg spoon just inches from his mouth, Uncle Ballroom looks around him. Appa, absorbed in the New Straits Times, appears to have heard nothing. Suresh and Aasha are smiling enigmatically at each other. Amma may or may not be reading the back of Appa's newspaper (evidence in favor of this hypothesis: her eyes have been on it for the past fifteen minutes; evidence against: it's the sports page).

  Uncle Ballroom hazards an interruption. "I think," he says, "there may be someone at the—"

  "It's Chellam's delightful old man," Appa says. "Muniandy. Here for his monthly collection."

  "He has another six children at home," Amma says. "Can't put food in their mouths without our help."

  Appa sighs. He knows how attached Amma is to her version of events; she would like to think of their handouts to Muniandy as charity. It's for this very reason that he now speaks the stripped truth, not in allegiance to any lofty principles of his home. Just to spoil the pleasure Amma derives from floating above everyone else on the white wings of noblesse oblige. Outside, Muniandy continues to caterwaul.

  "Actually," Appa says, "it's Chellam who's helping out her family, and not so willingly at that. She refuses to go out and talk to her father, so the only way we've seen to get rid of him is to give him her wages every month."

  "Oh," says Uncle Ballroom. And his surprise burbles, unchecked, out through his eggy mouth. "Ah. But—but then, if her wages go to him—does she—I mean, doesn't she—"

  "For five days the boy's fever has lasted!" wails Muniandy. "Who knows what's wrong with him? How can people like us afford doctors?"

  "Well done, Balu," Appa says. "I'm pleased to see you're capable of at least some elementary mathematics despite all those bright red marks in your report cards. Fifty ringgit for Chellam minus fifty ring-git for her father equals zero ringgit for Chellam, yes. But not quite, you see, because you're forgetting room and board. Three square meals a day and a cushy bed in a room of her own is a fair sight better than what she got from her last employer, who happens to be a good friend of mine. Let alone what she'd be getting at home."

  "Hmm, hmm," Uncle Ballroom says. And to himself: Of course, of course, Raju, her life would be nasty, brutish, and short if not for you. Then he shovels the rest of his egg down his throat as fast as he can without choking, gulps down his lukewarm tea, and excuses himself from the table. It's a Saturday; he has nowhere to go, but the falling frangipani blossoms outside his window are far less challenging to his conscience than Muniandy's dirge.

  But in the afternoon, as he tiptoes down the corridor on a mission to find an unclaimed newspaper, he bumps into Chellam crying into her sleeves. She jumps when she hears him approach; for a moment he does nothing but smile weakly at her tear-stained face. And then something in the way she backs away from him, making room, allowing him to pass untroubled by her petty woes, like the lord and master he is, stops him short. Good God, he thinks, am I that much of a coward? What's happening to me? What the blazes am I so afraid of? Already he's digging in his pockets, which are not all that heavy with cash. Sure, yes, he should credit what he has to his business capital account so he has something good to report when his would-be partner (the mysterious chap from Shoreditch) next inquires about his money-rolling progress. But if there's not much he can do for anyone else, can't he at least help out this miserable girl? A small act of kindness to someone who needs it so badly—what harm could that possibly do?

  "Sorry, sorry," he says as he hands her a five-ringgit note. Earnest, contrite. He has so much to apologize for: not just the thoughtless sins of his brother and sister-in-law, but what he himself was almost willing to become in exchange for his brother's neon-lit hospitality. "I know it's not much, but—"

  She looks from the bank note in his hand to his face. Her red-rimmed eyes are slightly out of focus.

  "Go on," he urges, "at least buy yourself some biscuits or a magazine."

  He's sure she's going to scurry away in that terrified manner the poor have when sojourning in the world of the rich: afraid of being caught turning the wrong doorknob, or polishing the wrong table, or looking as if they might be thinking about stealing. But at the last minute, just as he's about to give up and put the money back in his pocket, she takes it. "ThankyouverymuchMasterthankyou," she says, and to her narrow back he mutters, "Don't mention it." It occurs to him that it's the first time he's meant this figure of speech so literally: he really doesn't want her to mention it, not to the other servants, not to the children, not to their parents, and he doesn't know why, apart from his determination not to be seen minding anything that could in any way be construed as someone else's business. True, he mus
t not repeat past mistakes, but surely no one would care if he chose to condemn himself to destitution through imprudent alms-giving? Has Chellam's servile paranoia infected him? Has the dimness of the corridor lent the transaction a shameful flavor?

  Whatever it is, Uncle Ballroom takes to lurking in doorways and around corners to bestow his continued kindnesses upon Chellam, and he notices that her eyes dart like minnows when she receives, just as his do when he gives. He keeps his offerings small: five ring-git and a bag of kacang puteh purchased at the bus station one afternoon, two ringgit and a vadai gone soft in the humid air another. As he earns her trust, she grows more chatty: "Thank you, Master Ballroom," she whispers after he pays her the third or fourth such assignment. "I keeping for buying spectacles."

  "Spectacles?" he repeats. "You mean you don't see well?"

  "What, Master?"

  He pantomimes shortsightedness, peering all around him, drawing the palm of his hand closer and closer to his squinting eyes as if it were a book. "You cannot see? No glasses, cannot see? Kannu—"

  Her face lights up. "Yes Master! Cannot see. I want buying spectacles, but my Appa every time coming, every time taking money."

  "Ah, yes, I see. Well, save that money, then." He points at the ten-ringgit note still clutched in her fist. "Keep that money to buy your spectacles."

  After Uncle Ballroom learns about the unfortunate Spectacles Account, he finds additional ways to fatten its balance. Chellam, he calculates, is only ninety-six percent devoted to his mother, after all. He's revised his original estimate of ninety-eight percent: also subtracting from Paati's percentage are the mysterious, fragile longings of Aasha and her brave-faced brother, who have (quickly, and for purely practical reasons) learned to depend more on Chellam than on their oldest-eldest sister for their education and entertainment; who follow Chellam around at a safe, shy distance; who badger and ferret and weasel their way, when their mother's not looking, into Chellam's routines and her affections. So, figuring that another two or three percent won't matter, he brings her, one Sunday afternoon, a shirt whose collar is stained with the blackest sweat-ring she's ever seen. "Please," he says, "scrub scrub scrub. Take it off. Ten ringgit." And when that shirt is scrubbed, another is missing a button; and when the button's been sewn on, he breaks the zipper of his favorite grey trousers. She doesn't tell anyone about these assignments, of course, doesn't mention it (he never thought she would), and yet a new sense of purpose settles on her skin like a smell. She hums as she brews Paati's morning coffee. She walks briskly up and down the corridors now, with none of the mousy shuffling and slipper-dragging the children have come to expect.

  "Chellamservant," Suresh says one day, "why you so action-action now? All the time whistling and singing like a film star? Got boyfriend somewhere, is it?"

  She presses the tip of her tongue to a corner of her mouth, shy as an eight-year-old. "No lah," she says. "Where I got boyfriend?"

  "Action-action only this Chellam," Suresh tells Aasha behind Chellam's back. "Look at her, walking with her nose in the air. Just a rubber-estate girl but she thinks she's the president of America or something."

  At the sight of Suresh mimicking her confident stride, Chellam shrieks with glee, and when Aasha bids her teach them the words of her song, she obliges:

  Darling darling darling,

  I love you love you love you.

  Yennai vittu pogaadhe. (Don't leave me.)

  "Darling darling darling," Suresh echoes, "and you trying to tell us you got no boyfriend?"

  Encouraged by the disproportionate influence of a little pocket change on Chellam's spirits, Uncle Ballroom sets loftier goals for himself. On his way to the bus stop on the first of March, he spies Chellam's father coming the other way. He's a familiar sight to Uncle Ballroom by now, though they've never met. Today, for the first time since his arrival, Uncle Ballroom has a Saturday engagement in town: an appointment with a loan shark who operates out of a spice mill on Belfield Street. He's in sprightly spirits as he sets out, hopeful about the appointment, proud of the difference he's made in Chellam's life. From a good thirty yards away, he sees that Muniandy's topless except for the stained sweat-rag thrown over his shoulder. The old man's stumbling gait suggests that he's come straight from the toddy shop once again. In front of the Malay house he hitches up his dhoti to his hips and urinates on the grass verge. Uncle Ballroom senses doors shutting and curtains stirring around him, as if some shared radar system has picked up the approach of the pauper, as if every housewife on Kingfisher Lane is worried that one of these days, turned away by Appa, this black scarecrow of a man in his rotting Japanese slippers and his threadbare dhoti will come to sing his liquored lament at her front gate. And sensing this, Uncle Ballroom is at once lifted a whole foot off the lane by his resolution to be a better man than all these hypocrites, these holier-than-thou brown sahibs and memsahibs behind their lace curtains. He sees no reason why he should not do better than his handouts to Chellam, why he should not double or triple his beneficence by attacking the problem at the source, which may not be so difficult. Very likely, he says to himself, no one's ever tried to talk to this Muniandy chap man to man. I won't reform him in a single morning, but I might talk some sense into him. Thus fortified with missionary zeal, he quickens his step.

  At nine in the morning, Muniandy's vision is already fogged over by a couple of hours' drinking of cheap samsu. This is what he sees, far up Kingfisher Lane: a blur of white, a bigger blur of white, a blur of white and grey—no, white and khaki, white and khaki and a red bit—white, khaki, red, shiny black shoes, and now, finally, a rich man in a spotless white shirt and pleated pants of the sort he hasn't seen since his childhood on an Englishman's rubber estate.

  "Saar," he says, deciding on the spot to try his luck with this spiffily rigged-out stranger, "saar, two dollars? Three days I haven't eaten," he says in Tamil, for he can see enough now to tell that this is no Englishman but a fellow Indian of the worst kind: more English than the English, probably about to pretend he doesn't speak Tamil.

  He's wrong: "Muniandy," the man says in Tamil (an odd, ducklame Tamil it is, but still recognizably Tamil), "you know how hard your daughter works in that house, never to get a cent at the end of the month? You think she's got no better use for the money than your drink? If you'd just let her save it for you, Muniandy, she'd do a far better job than you, and when you really need something for doctors' bills babies' milk schoolbooks children's shoes whatever you really need, Muniandy, whatever your six starving children really need, but not samsu you badava rascal—" He stops here, because Muniandy has just turned away to hawk loudly and spit onto the grass verge, and he begins to suspect that only a bribe will open the man's ears to what he has to say. He reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out a five-ringgit note. "Here, you want something for yourself, take this. Now leave your daughter alone and go home like a good man. Just this once."

  But Muniandy, far from grabbing the money the way Uncle Ballroom expects him to, steps back. "Oho!" he cries. "Oho! What a great man you are, saar!" He works another load of saliva into his mouth and aims it, this time, at those shiny black shoes. He misses; his spittle hits the dusty ground two inches from Uncle Ballroom's feet. "What a great man, telling me what I can and can't ask my daughter to do! You rich people think you know everything. Even how to raise our children you'll decide for us."

  Faces stir behind curtained windows; whispers float into the slowly heating morning. A child's footsteps skitter away from the front door of the Malay house. "Ee, keling mabuk," the little girl tells her carrot-peeling mother in the kitchen. An Indian drunkard in the street, pissing and spitting and shouting just like they do. "Close the door," her mother clucks. "Close it and lock it and keep quiet. You can't be too careful with those people."

  "Let me tell you something," Muniandy continues, for nothing will abate his ire now, neither Uncle Ballroom's restraining hand on his elbow nor his pacific okayokays. "Let me tell you what you can do with that
money that comes so easily to you. You can take it and use it to buy off some other man, okay, because you can't buy my daughter from me for five dollars. Understand?"

  Uncle Ballroom releases Muniandy's elbow and stands there for five full seconds, during which Muniandy clears his throat and begins to work his mouth again, as if preparing to spit once more. What on earth is the man thinking? No no, he wants to say, you've misunderstood, that's not why I'm giving you this money. I'm not trying to pay you off; there's nothing going on between me and your daughter. Sometimes charity really does come without strings attached. But the shock paralyzes him: greater than the shock of the accusation itself, which Uncle Ballroom brushes aside (who in his right mind would believe a slander so ludicrous?), is the shock of Muniandy's secret lucidity and eloquence, of how straight the man can actually stand, how crisply he can form his words, and how misguided he, Balu, has been in his do-gooding faith that Muniandy would be touched—no, honored—by his man-to-man frankness. And under this shock, a fine, crack-in-the-heart sadness at the assumptions people like Muniandy must make if they are to survive. Or maybe, in your world, it doesn't come without strings attached. Does it, Muniandy?

  In the end, Uncle Ballroom can bring himself to say none of these things. He shakes his head as if to expel water from his ears. "Fine, then, do what you want," he says, but the cocksure cadence is gone from his voice. "Go to the Big House and do as you wish." As they part ways, Chellam's father expels the spittle he's collected onto Mrs. Malhotra's culvert.

  At the bus stop, Uncle Ballroom boards the number 22, on which, at ten o'clock sharp, a fourteen-year-old boy filches Shamsuddin bin Yusof's blue identity card. Had Uncle Ballroom witnessed this sleight of hand, he would've stood up and waved his arms frantically and yelled Thief, thief, in English, after trying unsuccessfully to dredge up the Malay word from the depths of his memory. But having got on near the beginning of the route, he has managed to snag the back seat, from where he sees only the bottoms and hips and bellies of those who pile themselves into the bus after the seats have all been filled. As for those who do see the pickpocket's skilled work, they say nothing, for they've been trained, during Uncle Ballroom's long expatriation, to close one eye or both to Fact's grimaces and Rumor's goading; they've learned to sit tight on their hands to avoid action; they've cultivated the patriotic skills of selective blindness, deafness, and muteness.