On Sal Mal Lane

by Ru Freeman

  “We have to get you out of here, Raju,” Jimmy Bolling said. “Get your mother an’ come, we’ll go to my house.”

  Raju, his shirt stuck to his body with sweat, his face a mix of pride and fear, tried to resist. “I have to stay and guard the house,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll take everything.”

  “There’ll be no use for the things in the house if you’re dead, you idiot, go!” And Jimmy Bolling shoved Raju toward the gate to his house. “They’ll be comin’ back to look for you after what you did to them. Go now. Fill a bag with a few things an’ come.”

  And though Raju resisted as much as he could, citing first his previous success at saving the Nileses’ house and then the rebuttal of this second attack, in the end, Jimmy Bolling took Old Mrs. Joseph and Raju as well as their servant girl to his house, barricaded them and his whole family, except for Sonna, who was nowhere to be found, behind his doors, and sat outside his aluminum fence with Sonna’s old bat, which was child sized, a knife, and two of his belts. He held those weapons and he thought that if his oldest son showed up from wherever he had gone to, he would be the first to beat him, for Jimmy Bolling knew without a doubt that Sonna was in the thick of looting. From outside, he listened to his aunt talk bitterly about terrorists and the prevention of terrorism and Where, she asked, Where were the people to arrest the terrorists who were terrorizing people in the full light of day? He listened to his wife stirring sugar into glasses of plain tea, and he listened to Rose and Dolly relating, yet again, the difficulties they had experienced trying to get home from school.

  When Mr. Bin Ahmed came, carrying a suitcase containing irreplaceable documents, photographs, jewelry, and the two trophies his daughter had won for debating, as a child, a suitcase he had packed months ago, during a time when nobody on Sal Mal Lane had expected any disturbances, and when he said, “Mr. Bolling, can we also come and stay in your house? My wife and daughter are very scared. We are right by the road and thugs are going up and down, please Mr. Bolling,” Jimmy Bolling yelled at his wife to open the door and shoved them inside. Francie Bolling gave them Sonna’s room, and although the Bin Ahmeds had always lived in an impeccably kept house, for as long as they sat there they saw nothing of the grime and mess, their minds entirely on safety.

  Lucas and Alice went to Mrs. Ratwatte’s house and sat on a bench in her back veranda, alternately mourning the events of the day and talking about the families on Sal Mal Lane, about who among them might be safe, who protected and who betrayed. Of one thing they were sure: Raju and Jimmy Bolling would be able to look after their own houses. It was the Niles family that they worried about the most, even Alice, who, in the face of all that was happening, abandoned the harmless antipathies with which she had entertained herself for most of her adult life.

  As the day wore on and the sounds of rioting grew louder, the Nadesans called out to Mrs. Herath from the other side of their half-green wall. Their two servants had climbed to the top of the wall using a ladder and were crouching there, looking terrified.

  “Amma! Nadesans are coming,” Devi cried, running to her mother when she saw them.

  “Open the gate, quick!” her mother replied.

  “Not at the gate, over the wall behind,” Nihil said, and ran to open the back door. “My mother is coming, don’t worry,” he said to the Nadesans.

  Mr. and Mrs. Herath came out, along with Kamala and the rest of the children, and the Nadesans, dressed as usual in their formal clothes, he in his pressed shirt and khaki trousers, she in a deeply colored sari, a red pottu in the part of her hair, were helped down the Heraths’ side of the wall by Suren and Mr. and Mrs. Herath, who stood on chairs, all of them turning their faces away to spare Mrs. Nadesan, who was attempting to hold her sari wrapped close around her legs as she struggled in their various arms. The Nadesans filed wordlessly into the Heraths’ house and were shown to Rashmi and Devi’s room, where they sat, silent and still, their eyes on the floor. They had brought nothing but their national identification cards, their checkbooks, and their passports.

  At last Nihil was allowed to leave, and he ran to Mr. Niles’s house, Suren close on his heels. “We have to take Uncle to our house,” he said, bursting in through the doors that Kala Niles only opened after she heard Suren’s voice.

  “All of you must come,” Suren said.

  Kala Niles rubbed her shoulders repeatedly as though she were cold, paced back and forth, and began to cry. “I can’t go anywhere. I can’t leave my piano. Take Mama and Papa. I will stay here and save my piano.”

  Nihil went over to Mr. Niles and took his hand, seeing that he was far too agitated to speak. He tried to comfort him, saying, “Raju and my father and Uncle Jimmy are all going to look after the lane,” but Mr. Niles shook his head, no, so Nihil fell silent. Instead, he reached up and stroked Mr. Niles’s head. He was struck by how clean that hair felt, silken and soothing to his touch, something soft in the midst of all that was going on. He continued to run his fingers through Mr. Niles’s hair, half mesmerized, half hoping that his presence would be enough to calm the old man.

  Behind him, Nihil heard Suren reassuring Kala Niles. He said, “Don’t worry, Kala Akki, we will find a house that has no piano and move your piano there,” and he turned and ran and went from house to house asking which family might make room for the piano. And Suren, being Suren, included the Silvas in his rounds.

  The door to the Silvas’ house was shut and it took a long while for them to come to the door though he could hear them whispering on the other side. Finally Suren yelled, “Mohan! Jith! Open the door!”

  Mr. Silva opened the door when he heard Suren’s voice. “Can we bring Kala Akki’s piano here? The mobs might come back and if they do they might destroy it,” Suren explained.

  Mrs. Silva, listening from inside, walked to the door and stood beside her husband. She looked scared. “My god! We can’t take the piano, Suren. If they see that piano here they will know we are helping Tamil people. Might come and loot our house too! We are just going to shut our door and stay inside. You had better do the same. I don’t know what your parents are doing, letting you run around like this!” And Mrs. Silva began to shut the door.

  Jith stepped forward. “Are the Bollings okay?” he asked Suren in as low a voice as he could manage while still being audible.

  “I don’t know. I think so. Yes,” Suren said.

  “Get inside!” Mrs. Silva said, the fear gone from her voice. She grabbed Jith by his arm and yanked him inside. Before the door shut, Suren caught sight of Mohan, and in his eyes Suren saw all the threatening remarks that Mohan had ever made to him, about wars and his inability to help anybody, including his sisters, all condensed into this one moment. He turned around and ran with renewed resolve. Mohan was wrong. He could do something.

  The Sansonis and Heraths already had pianos. He found that the Bollings’ house was far too full, and besides it was too close to the main road and visible to any of the thugs still roaming the streets. That left only the Tissera family, who, after some initial consternation—Would the mobs come while they were in the middle of the move? Would they come to their house too?—began to make room for the piano.

  “Uncle Raju,” Suren said, after he’d knocked on Jimmy Bolling’s door and been let in by Rose, “we’re going to need your help. We need to get Kala Akki’s piano to the Tisseras’ place.”

  Raju, who had spent his time pacing this way and that in the Bollings’ dining area, shuffled into his slippers and marched out with purpose. “I need to go and help the Heraths,” he said to his cousin as he passed him. “They need my help,” he added, in case this had not been made clear enough. Jimmy Bolling nodded and kept on walking; he was already on his way to join in the effort.

  It was a sight to behold, that piano being moved with such care from Kala Niles’s house to the Tissera house. For several minutes, while the people on all sides caught their breath, Suren and Mr. Tissera and Raju on one end and Mr. Herath and Jimmy Bolling and Rash
mi and Nihil on the other, that piano sat, for all the world as though there was no better place on earth to be but right in the middle of a curving road under skies graying with the smell of loss, and it seemed as though if Suren had sat on the piano bench and begun to play the saddest piece of music he had ever heard, Chopin’s Nocturne no. 21 in C Minor, nobody would have asked him to stop, they would have all simply sunk to their knees and let the whole world burn.

  Kala Niles did not know that the piano would take a long time to return to her home, but then, nobody was thinking beyond that evening.

  “We have to carry Papa,” Kala Niles said, once the piano was safely situated against the living room wall of the Tissera household as though music was a part of their daily lives, not something of which they partook by standing outside their neighbors’ houses, and after her record player had been taken to the Heraths’ house. “He stays on that bed now, so we will have to carry the whole bed.”

  Once more the neighbors gathered, and Jimmy Bolling delayed returning to his post to help carry the old man, who was disappearing into the thin mattress that topped the plank of wood on which he now spent every moment of every day, being turned and moved by others, never of his own volition. They carried him down the street but held low, unlike a coffin, down and in through the gates to the Heraths’ house and all the way through it to the dining room next to the kitchen, which was the only place where such a long bed would fit.

  As he was moved down that road, Mr. Niles looked up at the sky. He looked up and he said, “The last time I saw that sky was when I watched Nihil play his cricket match.” He said that and he began to cry and he said nothing for a long time after, not even when Nihil spoke to him.

  Fire

  The third mob arrived just after sunset. Kamala and Rashmi were busy trying to make their guests comfortable when they stopped, cups of plain tea and towels in hand, words fading on their lips at the sound of the men moving inexorably up their road. Perhaps they stopped at Jimmy Bolling’s house, for there was a change in the sound made by their feet and voices, a pause of some sort before they resumed their march up the road.

  Devi, still small enough to creep through a bathroom window, was just returning from rescuing Mrs. Nadesan’s gold wedding necklace from her almirah. After climbing back onto the top of the wall, on Suren’s instructions, she pushed the ladder away from the wall so nobody would know that the Nadesans were hiding with her family. She climbed down along the ivy, her body light enough to be held by the still-young roots. She heard the first voices as she began her descent and it made her scramble and slip and scrape herself until she fell into Suren’s arms. She gave the necklace to Rashmi, then ran to find Nihil and put her arms around him.

  “I’m scared!” she said.

  “Don’t be scared, they’re not coming here.”

  “How do you know?” she asked. She pressed her face against his chest. She could hear the beat of his heart and it was too loud and too fast for her to be reassured by his words.

  “I know,” he said, and he was filled with a feeling of remorse, for he did know, now, why they would not stop at his house and that Mohan had been right all along, the war had come. He removed Devi’s arms from around his body, but he took her hand and went to join Rashmi and Suren, who were standing at the front window watching their parents, who were now outside their gate.

  “What are you doing?” Mr. Herath shouted, pushing at some of the men advancing up the road. “Stop this! These are innocent people, they are our neighbors!”

  The children saw a member of the mob break away and come toward their father. The man wore a peacock-blue sari around his neck. The man grabbed their father by the front of his shirt and shook him. They saw their mother plead with the man, her palms together, and they heard her woman’s voice high over the others as she turned away from them and called out to the Silvas. They heard their father again, his words, uttered in a familiar voice, clear. “I will not let you do this!” He raised his voice louder and called for help, “Raju! Jimmy!” even though neither of them could have heard him over the sound of the mob.

  Nihil, his fists clenched, said, “I can run and get them!” He started for the door, but Suren pulled him back, saying no, he would not be allowed past the gate anyway.

  The man shouted something else at their parents and they could not hear what was being said in all the commotion, but they could see the expression on his face; a look of such deep scorn that Nihil felt ashamed for his family. Whatever the man said seemed to take the fight out of their father and they watched as the man pushed him and he did not stand his ground, so he fell against their mother, who pulled him away from the road and shut the gate with a padlock. They listened as each member of the mob outside rattled their gate as they passed, some so fiercely they were sure it would come off its hinges, the air rent with the sound it made, like a giant cymbal beating time. They watched their mother run her hand over and over down their father’s back as he leaned against the wall, his face turned to it.

  Suren closed his eyes for a few moments as if he were reaching deep within himself for something, understanding, wisdom, anything that would tell him how to help his parents and siblings. When he opened his eyes, he turned to Rashmi and said, “Rashmi, go and make sure the Nadesans and the Nileses are okay.” Then he turned to Nihil and asked him to check on Mr. Niles. Devi, he dispatchd to the kitchen, to ask Kamala to make some ginger tea.

  Rashmi went and found Mrs. Nadesan rocking back and forth, talking softly in Tamil, her face wet.

  “Don’t worry, Aunty,” she said, “you’ll be safe here. Devi brought your thali, see?” and she drew the heavy gold necklace out of her pocket and fastened it around Mrs. Nadesan’s neck, all the time trying not to hear the sounds outside, of shattering glass and voices lifted in triumph. Mrs. Nadesan only rocked faster.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Mr. Nadesan said, and Rashmi knew that they would prefer to be left alone, so she went to check on Mrs. Niles instead.

  Nothing in the boys’ room was rumpled or disturbed. The beds, made by Kamala just that morning, were still neat and creased, the floors swept, the curtains drawn against the heat. It was a serenity that startled Rashmi, who was, herself, in a state of deep agitation though she tried to hide it with a calm expression, the one she felt was required of her at this moment. Mrs. Niles was reciting a rosary, her eyes shut, her mouth moving, her fingers caressing each clear bead, the silver cross resting in her other hand. She looked odd sitting there, bolt upright on Suren’s bed as if she were merely visiting, even as she mouthed her prayers.

  “Rashmi, tell me, what is happening?” Kala Niles asked, her eyes full of concern.

  “Don’t worry, Kala Akki,” Rashmi said, “you’re safe.”

  Kala Niles nodded and was quiet for a few moments. Rashmi sat down next to her on Nihil’s bed. They both listened to the mob outside. There was something particularly wrong, Rashmi thought, with a room that could be this quiet, prayerful thoughts releasing into it, while a few yards away bedlam reigned.

  As they listened there was a long series of crashes and Rashmi winced and drew closer to Kala Niles, who said, “Everything will be lost.”

  Rashmi composed herself. “The piano will be safe,” she said, softly. “The record player will be safe. And you are safe.”

  Kala Niles took Rashmi’s hand in hers and stroked it. She tried to imagine if this was true, if the piano, the record player, her parents, herself, if these were the only things that could be lost. She tried to make the guarantee of their safety loosen the tightness in her chest. It did not. For she knew that across the street, what was being erased was the conduct of their lives, and who could ever bring that back?

  Rashmi listened to the sound of Nihil’s voice as he talked to Mr. Niles, explaining, as though he hadn’t done this already, that he would be safe there, that his parents would look after him.

  “We will say you are our grandfather,” she heard Nihil say, and she wondered if Nihil
only cared about Mr. Niles, whether he had forgotten all the other people they were sheltering. She hoped that none of those others were listening to Nihil and was glad when she heard his quick footsteps pass by the door on his way to some other part of the house.

  The Heraths, the Tisseras, the Sansonis, Jimmy Bolling, and the Silvas, each family in their own house, listened to the sound of looting. Nihil joined Suren to stand together by the window closest to the Nadesans’ house, as though their nearness could provide comfort to the house itself. They stood, their bodies tense, their ears alert, trying to separate the sounds they could hear, one from the other. Voices carried over walls. Voices rejoicing in some particularly precious item, an especially heavy sari rich with embroidery, a set of glass bangles, voices warning each other to watch out, there was broken glass there, step back, be careful. There was no fear in those voices.

  Nihil, grown wiser, said, “Sonna could stop these people. He could control them. He’s the one who knows them.”

  “Maybe,” Suren said, thinking about the last time he had seen Sonna, earlier that day, at the center of a mob just like this one, “but he’s not here.”

  They continued to listen to the sounds around them, the tinny crash of ornaments hitting the floor, the thud of furniture pushed over, the sound of breaking crockery. These were the types of sounds that ordinarily would have startled them, made the adults around them take a sharp breath before scolding them for being careless. Now Nihil and Suren stood, unable in the excess of sounds to pick out one whose making they could regret in greater measure.

  A man called out that he had found two sets of silver knives, did the other men want some? Nihil leaned forward and gripped the bars of the window, the skin on his knuckles tight. “Do you think if we had the Silvas’ guns, we could stop them?” Nihil asked.