by Ru Freeman
Also by Ru Freeman
A Disobedient Girl
On Sal Mal Lane
· A Novel ·
RU FREEMAN
Copyright © 2013 Ru Freeman
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First published in the United States of America in 2013 by Graywolf Press.
This edition published in 2013 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801
Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4
Tel. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.houseofanansi.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.
This book is made possible through a partnership with the College of Saint Bendict and honours the legacy of S. Mariella Gable, a distinguished teacher at the College. Support has been provided by the Manitou Fund as part of the Warner Reading Program.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Freeman, Ru
On Sal Mal Lane / Ru Freeman.
Electronic monograph issued in HTML format.
Also issued in print format.
ISBN: 978-1-77089-356-6
I. Title.
PS3606.R446O5 2013 813’.6 C2012-907161-7
Cover design: Kimberly Glyder Design
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
For my brothers, Arjuna & Malinda:
Loka, who provided the music of our childhood,
and Puncha, who kept me as safe as he could.
“Neither a person entirely broken
nor one entirely whole can speak.
In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.”
—Jane Hirshfield, “In Praise of Coldness” from Given Sugar, Given Salt
“‘I get down on my knees and do what must be done
and kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’”
—Michael Longley, from “Ceasefire”
The Families of Sal Mal Lane
The Heraths
Suren
Rashmi
Nihil
Devi
Mr. & Mrs. Herath (parents)
The Bollings
Sonna
Rose
Dolly
Sophia
Francie & Jimmy Bolling (parents)
The Silvas
Mohan
Jith
Mr. & Mrs. Silva (parents)
Other families
Old Mrs. Joseph and her son, Raju
Mr. & Mrs. Niles and their daughter, Kala Niles, the piano teacher
Mr. & Mrs. Nadesan
Mr. & Mrs. Tissera and their son, Ranil
Mr. & Mrs. Bin Ahmed and their daughter
Mr. & Mrs. Sansoni and their son, Tony
Alice & Lucas
Contents
Prologue
· 1979 ·
The Listeners
Raju
Sonna’s Sisters Pay a Visit
Telling Secrets
The Keeper of Sal Mal Lane
Good Cigarettes
Piano Lessons
Speaking the Truth
· 1980 ·
Elsewhere
The Musician
Not Only the Piano
Nihil’s Secret
The Magic of the Stolen Guitar
A Visit to the Accident Service
Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows
Devi’s Report Card
Raju Refuses to Be Demoted
Tigers
Sonna Remembers Everything and Nothing
· 1981 ·
Blue and Gold
Raju’s Gift
An Odd Alliance and a Little Romance
Old Mrs. Joseph’s Triumph
Kite Season
A Night of Rain and Talk
Ramazan: Before and After
Sonna’s Birthday Party
· 1982 ·
The Cricketer and the Old Man Talk of War
Out of the Blue, a Variety Show
Changes
An Election
Devi’s Secret
Revenge
Mohan and Jith Are Punished
· 1983 ·
The Last Perfect Day
The People Who Stayed Home
May Day
July
Home
Fire
Where Sonna Went
The Day That Followed
Ash
Flight
If Only
The Composer
An Embroidered Shirt
A Small Boy, an Old Man
Glossary
Acknowledgments
On Sal Mal Lane
Prologue
In 1976, on the fifth day of the month of May, a month during which most of the people who lived in the country celebrated the birth, death, and attainment of nirvana of the Lord Buddha, with paper lanterns, fragrant incense, fresh flowers, and prayers mingling with temple bells late into the night, in the remote jungles of Jaffna, in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, a man stood before a group of youth and launched a war that, he promised, would bring his people, the Tamil people, a state of their own. The year before, this man had shot another Tamil man just as that other man, the mayor of Jaffna, was about to enter a Hindu temple in Ponnalai, desecrating the temple and the minds of the faithful alike. Therefore, nobody saw fit to contradict what he had to say on that day, that fifth day of the month of May in the year 1976.
Before that day this island country had withstood a steady march of unwelcome visitors. Invaders from the land that came to be known as India were followed by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally, British governors, who deemed that the best way to rule this new colony was to elevate the minority over the majority, to favor the mostly Hindu Tamils over the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese. To the untrained eye, the physical distinction between the Sinhalese and the Tamil races was so subtle that only the natives could distinguish one from the other, pointing to the drape of a sari, the cheekbones on a face, the scent of hair oil to clarify. But distinctions there were, and the natural order of things would eventually come to pass: resentment would grow, the majority would reclaim their country.
So it was that after the British had left the country behind, when what was said of them was that there was no commonwealth, there was only a common thief, the left-behind majority decided to restore pride of place to the language of the majority, which, among other things, meant that all children would be instructed in their mother tongue: the Sinhalese in Sinhala, the Tamils, Muslims, and Burghers in their language of choice but, in the end, not English, not the language of colonialism, which would now be taught only as a second language. And this policy, along with the corresponding policy of conducting all national business in Sinhala, with translations offered in the newly demoted English and the official Tamil language, created a disruption of order that would forever be known as the Language Po
licy. As though the Language Policy was itself a period of time and not a policy, debatable, mutable, and man-made, unlike time, which merely came and went no matter what was done in its presence.
If the policies of the British and the politics of language were the kindling, then rumor was the match that was used by men who wanted war to set them ablaze. These rumors were always the same: pregnant women split open, children snapped like dry branches, rape, looting, arson, mass graves, night raids, and other atrocities all happening “before their eyes,” that is, “before the eyes of sister, brother, father, wife.” The kinds of eyes that ought to be blinded before having to see such things. The kind of sight that once heard of necessitates an equivalent list of atrocities to be committed, in turn, before other sets of eyes. Eyes that also deserved no such sight, for who did? Which of us, taken aside, asked privately, would believe it not only possible but practical and desirable that any other of us ought to witness such acts?
Yes, a man addressed a gathering of young men and women on May 5, 1976. And though the clearing in which he stood was two hundred miles away from the neighborhood where our events take place and its people, his story would become their story, his war, theirs.
Everyone who lived on Sal Mal Lane was implicated in what happened, including Lucas and Alice, who had no last names nor professed religious affiliations, the Tamil Catholics and Hindus, the Burgher Catholics, the Muslims, and the Sinhalese, both Catholic and Buddhist. Their lives were unfolding against a backdrop of conflict that would span decades involving intermarriage, national language policies, births, deaths, marriages, and affairs—never divorces—subletting, cricket matches, water cuts, power outages, curfews, riots, and the occasional bomb. And while this story is about small people, we must consider the fact that their history is long and accord them, too, a story equal to their past.
And who, you might ask, am I? I am nothing more than the air that passed through these homes, lingering in the verandas where husbands and wives revisited their days and examined their prospects in comparison to those of their neighbors. I am the road itself, upon whose bosom the children played French cricket with their knees locked together, their bare feet burning as they scored runs with the aid of a short plank of wood, playing chicken with the rare vehicle that came speeding up my quarter-mile curved spine. I am a composite of dreams, the busy rushing ones that seek their hosts by night and day, and the quiet ones that have just bid farewell to move on to other streets, other countries, an afterlife. I am all those thoughts, the fractious, the lush, the desolate, the ones that are created from small apprehensions to those built block by block from the intimations of tragedy, the ones that spin upward with determined exuberance or trill in low notes with small joys. To tell a story about divergent lives, the storyteller must be everything and nothing. I am that.
If at times you detect some subtle preference, an undeserved generosity toward someone, a boy child, perhaps, or an old man, forgive me. It is far easier to be everything and nothing than it is to conceal love.
.....1979
The Listeners
God was not responsible for what came to pass. People said it was karma, punishment in this life for past sins, fate. People said that no beauty was permitted in the world without some accompanying darkness to balance it out, and, surely, these children were beautiful. But what people said was unimportant; what befell them befell us all.
The Herath children were different from all the others who had come and stayed for a while on Sal Mal Lane. It was not simply the neatness of their clothes, washed, sun-dried, and ironed for them by the live-in servant, or their clean fingernails, or the middle parting on their heads for the girls, on the side for the boys, or their broad foreheads and wise eyes, or even the fact that they didn’t smile very often, some inner disquiet keeping their features still. It wasn’t their music-making or their devout following of deities of all faiths who came and went through their house with the predictability of monsoon rains. It was the way they stood together even when they were apart. There was never a single Herath child in a conversation, there were four; every word uttered, every challenge made, every secret kept, together.
These things, discovered as the months wore on, came to bear upon a day of loss, a day crystallized into a moment that the whole neighborhood, yes, even those who had encouraged such a day, would have done anything to take back, a day that defined and sundered all of their lives. But let us return to the beginning, to the year when, in a pillared parliamentary building that had been constructed overlooking a wind-nudged blue ocean, a measure was passed under the title the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It was an act that built upon a previous one, an act declaring a State of Emergency, the kind of declaration that made adults skittish, elevated small quarrels into full-blown hatreds, and scuttled the best of intentions, for how could goodwill exist under such preparedness for chaos, such expectations of anarchy? The only goodwill to be had was among children unaware of such declarations, children like the ones on Sal Mal Lane, children moving into a new home that brought with it the possibility of new friends. Let us return then to the first days of that year, the days that filled so many people with hope for what the new family would bring to them. Let us pay attention to their words, to the way they enter this house, alone and together, close or from a distance, intent and wish inseparable. Let us return to observe the very first day that foretold all the days that followed.
On the day that the Heraths moved in to the last empty house on Sal Mal Lane, the one located exactly at the center where the broad road angled, slightly, to continue uphill, the Herath children happened to be learning hymns and hallelujahs from their mother. The children’s mother, Mrs. Herath, herself a staunch Buddhist, was given to taking on other faiths based solely on the musicality of their songs, faiths of which she partook like others tasted of side dishes, little plates piled high with crispy fish cutlets and vegetable patties. Right now she was going through a Jesus phase, having not yet discovered the chants of the modern Hindu sage Sathya Sai Baba. On the very first afternoon, even before she tended to her anthuriums and pride of Japans and other potted plants that had been brought over in an old borrowed Citroën, she sat at their piano and played while her sons and daughters, two of each, belted out “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” in perfect harmony.
In the house across the street, an old man, Mr. Niles, long confined to spending his days reclining in his armchair in languorous apathy, stirred. With some degree of exertion he pulled himself up to a sitting position and listened. Although he was, himself, raised in the Catholic tradition, it was not the familiar hymns that moved him, but the voices. He tilted his face this way and that, trying to untangle them, one from the other. He picked out four distinct voices: one imbued with refinement, the word endings clear and elegant, the notes held to beat; another sensitive and rich, the melody heroic; and a third that did not seem to care for timing and so was lifted with a too-soon, too-late delight that was refreshing. The last, a boy’s voice, he could not place. It seemed both dogged and resigned. Earnest, as though he wanted to please, yet not entirely committed to this particular form of pleasing, it wavered between ardent expression and the mere articulation of melancholy words set to music. Mr. Niles listened more intently to that voice, which spoke of a spirit that required soothing, curious as to what could trouble a boy so young. Unseen by anybody, not even his wife and daughter, each busy with her own weekend preoccupations, he listened through that afternoon, piecing together the unuttered feelings that lay beneath those angelic voices, conjuring up an image of each child and imagining a life for them in the house into which they had moved.
This house was very much like every other house down Sal Mal Lane, rudimentary if with a little style added by the verandas at the front and the back, both shaded by crisscross wooden half trellises, and the bordering hedges that rimmed all but two of the front gardens. At its heart was a large open space that Mrs. Herath had turned into a sitting room and whose focus was
the upright piano. At the back of the house, Mrs. Herath had chosen to install her dining room, which, therefore, sat right next to the kitchen in defiance of the centuries-long tradition that dictated a dining table never to recall the kitchen in which food is prepared. The children shared two rooms, she and Mr. Herath shared a third, and the live-in servant, Kamala, was given the store room tucked next to a garage for which Mrs. Herath had found no good use since they did not own a car. Nobody down Sal Mal Lane, a dead end traversed almost exclusively by people on foot, owned a car except for Mr. Niles, who could no longer drive it, but this did not matter since all the neighbors felt able to ask for its use when necessary, and all the neighbors glanced with distant possessiveness at their empty garages and contemplated a future date on which they might convert them into fee-charging flats.
The real reason that Mrs. Herath had wanted this particular house, however, was the potential for a real garden that would meander wide on three sides around her home, the fourth side dedicated to a shared driveway. Unlike her neighbors’ properties, which were graced by plumes of dancing hibiscus, bunches of creamy gardenias, and bold thrusts of anthuriums, her own, untended for many years by a previous owner, seemed barren. In little more than a year Mrs. Herath’s garden would become a showpiece, decked with ferns, flowering bushes, and fragrant varieties of orchids that many of her neighbors had not heard of, she would become an authority on landscaping, and all the little flower thieves who lived down other lanes would flock to her garden in the early-morning hours and reach for her flowers like large butterflies. Today, however, her garden was depleted and the one person staring at it as he stood, hatless and scorched in the still, noon day heat, wondered why the children who had come to inhabit it, smartly dressed as they were, did not seem less pleased with their surroundings.
Sonna, the Bollings’ son, fourteen years of age, had spent the day leaning against his uncle’s gate, watching the activity across the street. He had arrived that morning dressed in his Sunday church going clothes, though if someone had pointed out that he was trying to present himself at his best, he would have denied it. Sonna had come to assess potential, which, in his mind, meant one of two things: the ability to bully others or being susceptible to bullying. He had watched the children all day, his face arranged in an expression between scorn and disinterest, trying to gauge to which category they belonged. So far he had not been able to tell, and not even his uncle, Raju, who peered over the gate with him, had a definite opinion.