Adam's Peak

by Heather Burt

  He went to his desk and fished the students’ essays from his knapsack. When everyone had set to work and he was left with Kanda’s paper in his hand, he sat down heavily. He picked up a pen and turned to the last page, determined to say something more to the boy, but before he could begin, a line of students formed next to him.

  “You asked me to see you, sir,” said the first in line, holding out his essay, and Rudy recalled with a sigh that he’d given the same instruction to most of them.

  He set aside Kanda’s essay and took the one being offered him. The lineup at his desk persisted throughout the class, with several students returning more than once, and as he coached and coaxed and repeated explanations, he resigned himself to the idea that these dull but manageable essay-writing skills would be more beneficial—certainly more appreciated—than his half-baked political debate. It was an interesting idea, he consoled himself, but inappropriate. Maybe even outdated. There were many who believed the government had finally brought the Tamil situation under control.

  About five minutes before the bell, he approved Rajan Sivamohan’s thesis statement, wiped his face with his handkerchief, shook out his shirt, and began to anticipate the pot of strong coffee that Mrs. Da Silva would have ready in the teachers’ lounge. He waited for Rajan to collect his papers and step aside, then, prompting himself to take one more student, maybe two, he directed his attention to the next in line.

  It was Kanda.

  “Sorry I’m late, sir,” he announced. “I’ll do the revision tonight.”

  Rudy gestured the boy and girl behind him back to their seats.

  “Where have you been?” he said. He looked for a late slip but saw none.

  “I didn’t know you had returned. I would have come if I knew.”

  Rudy frowned. “What do you mean? You’re supposed to be here whether I’m here or not.”

  Though he kept his voice low, it was terse and accusing. Kanda, however, didn’t flinch.

  “I came to Mr. Muller’s class last week, but we only wasted our time. He thought you would be away another week, so I decided to study by myself.”

  “Dr. Muller had no reason for saying that,” Rudy blurted, the inappropriateness of his own remark fuelling his irritation.

  Kanda shrugged. “He said you didn’t sound well.”

  “Never mind that; it’s not important. So you cut class today?”

  “I went to my first class. I missed this one only.”

  “You didn’t think you’d be missing anything important?”

  Again Kanda shrugged. “I assumed Dr. Muller would be here, and I didn’t find his lessons helpful. We only listened to him reading the poems and talking about his studies at Cambridge.” He held up a library book, Essays on Romanticism. “I was reading this, then I saw Dr. Muller in the library, so I came here.”

  Rudy massaged his forehead. He wished the content of their exchange could justify his anger. That a bright, motivated student should find the headmaster’s lessons a waste of time made perfect sense. That he should bother teaching himself the material more than made up for his absence. Still, he couldn’t let Kanda off the hook.

  He checked the clock and turned to the class. “The bell’s going to go any second. You can pack up your stuff, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Essay rewrites are due Friday.” He paused as the bell rang. To Kanda he then said, “Have a seat. You’re spending the break in here.”

  Kanda held his gaze a moment longer then made his way silently through the clamour and sat down. The others eyed him as they passed but didn’t speak to him. When the room had cleared, Rudy pushed his chair back and picked up Kanda’s essay. The proper thing, he knew, would be to talk to the boy. To let him know in some subtle way that he understood, even sympathized. That his anger wasn’t as banal or authoritarian as it seemed. And if he got that far, the next step would be to tell Kanda that he’d wanted him in class for a special reason, needed him there. Not just for the debate.

  For an instant he saw his brother, and his hand clenched. Pretending to scan the essay, he crossed the room.

  “I’d like you to work on your rewrite,” he said blandly and placed the paper in front of Kanda. “You need to incorporate the suggestions I’ve made in my comments.”

  He returned to his desk, oppressed for the first time that morning by the intensity of the heat. He was sweating, and missing his coffee break, and though the situation was entirely his own doing, he blamed Kanda. He sat in front of his daybook and turned to Tuesday’s page. In the block of space reserved for English 12, he wrote “Debate” and underlined it twice. He stared at the word, its bubbly shape evoking for him all the phony “real life” activities he used to concoct for his students in Toronto, then he crossed it out. Leaning back in his chair, he took the unused lesson plan from his pocket. He tore the paper into small pieces and released them over the metal rubbish bin like a handful of white petals.

  Across the room, Kanda was staring out the window. It wasn’t defiance, Rudy guessed—not yet—for he had a pen in one hand, while the other hand drummed a silent, regular beat on the edge of his desk. The silence was as oppressive as the languid air.

  “Do you need any help?” Rudy ventured.

  Kanda turned to him. “No, sir.”

  He mopped his face. Had it been any other student, he would have given the help whether it was wanted or not. Then, after assigning a couple of punitive homework exercises, he would have dismissed the offender early and hurried to the teachers’ lounge for his coffee. But the comparison was hardly valid. No other student would have boycotted a class because he found it too easy. And no other student’s absence, Rudy had to allow, would have bothered him at all in the first place.

  He watched Kanda turn to a middle page of his essay and begin writing in the margin. He showed up for me, he then thought, and the realization filled him with sudden humility.

  He stood and cleared his throat. “Hang on, Kanda. I’d like you to do something different.”

  Kanda looked up from his work. Rudy crossed the room and sat on the desk next to the boy’s, affecting casualness.

  “Your essay’s fine the way it is, technically. You don’t need to rewrite it. I want you to do a different essay.” Kanda said nothing, so he carried on, awkwardly. “I think I wrote in my comments that it would be worthwhile considering the other side of the argument. In your case, that would most clearly be the Sinhalese side.” Like the word Canada, so many years ago on Grandpa’s tea estate, Sinhalese had a taboo ring in Kanda’s presence. But still the boy said nothing. Rudy continued. “You’ve written an essay that begins to explain how you think the country’s political tensions should be dealt with, and you’ve written it from a Tamil perspective. Well, from an LTTE perspective—which is fine. What I’d like you to do now is to write a similar kind of essay—how the country’s problems should be solved—but from a Sinhalese perspective.”

  Kanda stared. Rudy wished he would complain, or argue—something, in any case, that he could respond to. He glanced at the essay, recalling his first reading of it—the desire it provoked in him to prove its author wrong—and realized he’d been counting on the classroom debate to do his work for him.

  “Do you understand the assignment?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any questions? Anything you want to talk about before you begin?”

  “No.”

  Rudy lowered his feet to the floor. “Well, get a start on it then. You can leave in five minutes.” He felt cowardly, pathetic. He took three steps toward his desk then turned around. “Actually, you can leave now. Turn it in on Friday.”

  Unhurried, Kanda collected his things and left. Rudy wandered to the open windows and rested his forearms on the wooden frame of one of the drawbridge-style panes. Below him, on the school’s manicured lawn, several boys drifted, jostling each other distractedly as they walked. A few of them had clearly snuck past the gates at the start of the break, for they carried bags of chips and bot
tles of pop, badly hidden inside their blazers. Eyeing the group directly under his window, Rudy considered sending them to the office, then he dismissed the idea, finding it suddenly offensive.

  THAT NIGHT HE DREAMED ABOUT KANDA. The boy appeared on Aunty’s doorstep, demanding to be let in. He wore combat fatigues and spoke with a heavy accent. Rudy looked around frantically for his aunt, then remembered that she’d gone back to Montreal. Kanda ducked through the doorway—he was huge—and blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke that filled the sitting room (not really the sitting room, more a cave, with stone walls). In his thick-soled leather boots, he stalked across the floor to the painting of Adam’s Peak. Like Kanda himself, the painting had grown enormous and terrifying. The mountain was a lurid scarlet, with a blazing orange sun overhead. Kanda frowned at it. “This is crap,” he said, then he leaned back against the canvas and sank slowly to the floor. He was crying, blubbering snottily like a young child, and his body was no longer huge. Rudy crouched next to him and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder until the crying subsided.

  He woke at the edge of his bed. The sheets were damp, and as he rolled onto his back, the details of the dream rapidly evaporating, he felt only a vague sense of relief that he’d been sleeping alone.

  10

  SHORTLY BEFORE SHE and her mother were due at the Vantwests’ for tea, Clare overheard Isobel on the phone with Ted, the carpet installer. The call lasted no more than five minutes and consisted, on Isobel’s part, of a string of businesslike queries, mm-hms, and thank yous. When it ended, Clare felt that a small but annoying weight had been lifted from her. She was flopped on the loveseat, reading Clarissa, but when the weight lifted, she sat up, restless, the walls of her studio too close. There were still what-ifs circling her head, but for the moment they seemed slow and benign. With a purposeful breath, she picked up her phone and dialed the music shop’s number. Peter answered, and while he went to find Markus, Clare drummed her fingers against her thigh and tried to think well of her boss. For if Markus was incapable of asserting himself in the world, she reasoned, what did his failings have to do with her?

  He came to the phone and cleared his throat. “Hello? Clare?”

  “Hi. I hope I’m not interrupting you.”

  “No ... no. How are things?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “Have you had any news about your neighbour?”

  He was very decent; she had to give him that.

  “Not much. My mother and I are having tea with his family this afternoon.”

  “Really? Well, I guess they don’t know me, but you could tell them I hope everything’ll be okay. Or ...”

  “Sure.” Clare glanced at the massive novel beside her on the loveseat—over a thousand pages of Clarissa Harlowe’s meditations and agonies, recommended by Markus. Anxious to be done with the call, she turned the book face down. “Listen, Markus, I was wondering if I could talk to you, on Friday. After I finish work.”

  “Friday?”

  “If that’s okay with you.” Her hand clenched.

  “Sure ... I’ll be in tomorrow, if you ...”

  “Friday would be better.”

  It was two days away—long enough to decide what she would say to him, not so long that the urgency to do something would fizzle.

  “Uh, okay.” He sounded puzzled. But he wouldn’t press the matter. “So ... where would you like to talk?”

  “Your office should be fine.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Great. Well, I’d better get going. I’m due at the neighbours’ soon.”

  “Okay. Well, have a good visit.”

  Clare slid one arm out of Adam’s jacket. “I’ll try.”

  THEY LEFT AT FOUR, Isobel reporting as they crossed the street that she’d booked Ted’s brother-in-law to repaint the entire house. Clare mumbled a reply, but her attention was on the Vantwests’ front door.

  This time, the aunt answered right away, smiling eagerly.

  “Ah, it’s good of you both to come back. Come in. Alec! Our guests are here.”

  Entering the vestibule, Clare looked down the hall at the door behind which Mr. Vantwest had sequestered himself the time before. It was wide open. The light in the room was promptly turned out, and Mr. Vantwest emerged, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. His navy cardigan and white polo shirt looked like part of a school uniform. His grey pants added to the effect, though they were a little too long and flopped over the sides of his corduroy slippers.

  “Mrs. Fraser,” he said, extending his hand to Isobel. “Thank you for coming. I must apologize to you for Sunday. I—”

  Clare anticipated her mother’s interruption.

  “Please, call me Isobel. And please don’t worry about the other day at all. It was perfectly understandable that you’d be ... distracted. We really should have called first, but we were so shocked to hear about Adam’s accident.”

  “The boy loved his motorbike,” Mr. Vantwest said flatly. “I suspect he was reckless with it. That is his character.”

  The words echoed in Clare’s head. That is his character. An extraordinary thing to say. But, then, Mr. Vantwest seemed an extraordinary sort of man. He stepped aside as the aunt, offering Isobel a hanger, fired him a look.

  “Tea will be ready soon,” she said. “Alec, show these people in.”

  Mr. Vantwest extended his arm toward the living room. Then, as Clare and her mother seated themselves once again on the burgundy chesterfield, he stationed himself in front of them, hands clasped behind his back, and cleared his throat.

  “I hope you won’t be inconvenienced,” he said, turning to Clare for the first time. “I realize the main purpose of your visit was to offer your sympathy, but I’d be grateful if we didn’t discuss my son this afternoon. His condition is stable for now, and the doctors are hopeful. That’s really all I can say.” He offered no further explanation, and in the silence that followed he kept his eyes on Clare.

  She clenched her hands between her knees. “It’s okay. We can talk about something else.”

  Mr. Vantwest nodded, nudged his glasses, then sat down in the armchair opposite the chesterfield. “Well,” he said, amicably, and the tension in the room gave way a little. “It’s been some time since we last spoke.” His attention was now back on Isobel, who, nodding emphatically, seemed ready to begin making up for that time.

  “Too long, I’m afraid. Was it summer that I last saw you? I remember you were out front trimming that beautiful lilac of yours. Did it bloom well?”

  Mr. Vantwest craned his neck toward the window behind the chesterfield. “Not bad. It should fare better this year. You should take some cuttings when the time comes. They give a good fragrance in the house.” He crossed his legs and the corduroy slipper of his dangling foot dropped away from his heel. “Strong though,” he added. “Too overpowering for some.”

  In the kitchen, cups and saucers clattered. Clare’s eyes drifted to the photographs on the record player cabinet, to Adam in his jaunty mortarboard. I’m in a coma and all you guys can talk about is lilac cuttings, she imagined him saying.

  The aunt came in, carrying her loaded silver tray, which she rested on the coffee table.

  “There now,” she said. “I heard you all talking about the lilac tree and I was reminded of those flowers. I don’t think we have them in Sri Lanka. They’re very exquisite, no?”

  Clare glanced at the crocodile lamp and wondered how anything from a Morgan Hill front yard could seem exquisite in the Vantwests’ eyes. Then she marvelled at the entire conversation, at the capacity of these neighbour-strangers to connect themselves, obligate themselves to each other, with the flimsiest of threads. Awaiting a suitable pause, she stirred her tea and prepared something to say. When the lilac exchange had more or less petered out, she turned to the aunt.

  “What kinds of plants do you have in Sri Lanka?” she said.

  The aunt handed her brother his cup. “Ah, my garden at home is quite lush,�
�� she began, spooning sugar into her own cup. “There is no flower bed like we have here, but I have several fruit trees. Mango, tamarind, banana, custard apple, jack fruit, of course.”

  “What do you mean ‘of course’?” Mr. Vantwest said, his tone musing but subtly reproachful. “People in Canada wouldn’t assume you have a jack tree.” He got up for a slice of cake. “Even Sri Lankans wouldn’t assume this.”

  “Alec, your sugar,” the aunt said.

  Mr. Vantwest made a low hissing noise and rested the cake on the edge of his saucer.

  “I only meant,” the aunt continued, “that the jack fruit is very useful. So many dishes we can make from that one fruit. Even the seeds are made into a delicious curry.” She flapped her hand over her steaming tea. “If ever the troubles back home get so bad that I can’t go to the shops, I know I can survive on my jack fruit. The rest is all surplus.”

  “It must be lovely having all those fruits right there,” Isobel said, apparently taking no note of the troubles the aunt had mentioned.

  Clare tried to imagine them herself. She scanned the photos on the record player cabinet, searching for hints, but with the exception of Rudy’s graduation photo, in which he wore a dark, brooding expression, the faces in the pictures seemed to deny the existence, anywhere in their world, of troubles that could prevent an aging aunty from going to the shops.

  She turned back to the conversation. Mr. Vantwest was asking her mother if she’d done any travelling.

  “Europe?” he said. “The British Isles?”

  Isobel laughed and rested her cup on her saucer. “I grew up in Scotland. A small town south of Glasgow.”

  Mr. Vantwest looked flustered. He slapped his brow and shook his head rapidly. “Of course, of course. I should have known that.” Sighing, he added, “I see we’re both a long way from home then.”