The Match

by Romesh Gunesekera

  ‘How about an umpire?’ Hector asked. ‘Desai can do that, perhaps.’

  ‘I suppose so. Joyless fellow, but at least the bugger will be sober enough. OK, let’s get him to umpire.’

  Rudolf, who had remained silent since his pronouncement on China, was breathing heavily. He crunched another handful of nuts. ‘I say, you have actually issued the challenge, Lester?’

  The lights flickered as another air-conditioner in the house was switched on.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is the match fixed, is what I mean. Is there a point in expending so much energy on this issue?’ He was nothing if not economical.

  ‘Of course, my dear man. Rudolf, they are definitely on for Good Friday. Perfect day. The Hongs will be ready to flagellate themselves before us on the cricket pitch.’

  ‘Cricket pitch?’

  Nappy clapped his hands happily. ‘I asked my buddy, Gonzales, if we could use his place. He is building a driving range off the South Superhighway. Not far. Just beyond Das Marinas. Real cute area. Bays already put there na, for a number one grandstand.’

  ‘Driving range?’ Rudolf looked grumpier than usual. It was partly because his head sank into his shoulders when he was thinking, but the effect was not pleasant.

  ‘Gonzales is jolly excited. All ready to mark out the boundary and level the pitch. You just tell him the measurements. Guy is one hundred per cent agnostic. He might even make it permanent.’

  ‘Afterwards we can all come back here for a rice and curry.’ Lester added as an all-round inducement.

  Rudolf’s face lightened. ‘Curry?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lester exclaimed. ‘We will have chicken curry, miris-malu, roast lechon, lapu-lapu. An international feast. And, if you do your job, Rudy, and we win, I will even make real Ceylon hoppers for the lot of you.’

  ‘You can do hoppers?’ The proposition of a clutch of curvaceous Sri Lankan pancakes made Rudolf break into a sweat. He mopped his brow with a large yellow duster that he had pocketed by mistake in hunger and fury at home. ‘Nice and lacey?’

  ‘Little crumpets, gossamer thin with frills on the edges, but only if we win, Rudy.’

  Over the next few weeks, Rudolf came by regularly after finishing a day’s dismal calculations at the office to see how Sunny and his father were getting on. He would park his car on the road, well out of range, and walk up the drive a little warily. He’d loosen his tie and try to be friendly, making precise, instructive gestures with a dark, straight open hand.

  ‘Geometry,’ he would exclaim. ‘Attend to the geometry, Lester, and the rest will follow.’

  Junior, Herbie and Robby came to the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The sound of leather on willow, sometimes mediated by a cotton sock, sometimes accompanied by encouragement – good, right – or by gnomic advice – keep your eye on the ball . . . move in, move out – began to fill Sunny’s sense of that world between private fantasy and public communion.

  About ten days before the match he asked his father what he thought about a full team session.

  ‘Good idea.’ Lester put away some papers; he looked preoccupied. There was a smear of blood on the rim of his collar where it had touched the bottom of his jaw.

  ‘Saturday? Or Sunday? It’s the last weekend before Easter.’

  He looked surprised. ‘In that case, we might have to just hope for the best.’

  ‘You mean on the day?’

  Lester tilted his head to one side. ‘There’s a lot going on . . . I think you younger ones are going to have to do the main thing. It is up to you people to help Rudolf pull us through the match. The rest of us will have to do as we remember. You fellows can do it. And that girl of yours, she can win it for us.’ Then he added thoughtfully, as though consulting some ancient revolutionary’s DIY manual. ‘The surprise factor cannot be underestimated.’

  On the big day, despite the aroma of curry leaves, fenugreek and yeast wafting through the house, Lester’s spirits had not lifted.

  At breakfast he sat staring at the morning paper. Sunny didn’t have much of an appetite either; he was imagining the worst. Out for a duck, the team in tatters. A bunch of Hong Kong colonials lording it over his father’s feast.

  ‘Are you worried, Dad?’

  Lester folded his Manila Times into a small square. He had marked out in blue pencil a small item about trouble brewing in Ceylon – a storm in a tea-isle. ‘Not about the game, son.’

  At eight o’clock Lester and Sunny got in the car and set off down the South Superhighway.

  ‘What’s happening? What’s wrong?’ Sunny asked again.

  Lester stared at the road ahead. ‘I think they are unleashing something that will become impossible to control.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Perhaps it is us. We who have become warped by what we fail to do.’ The car picked up speed over the white concrete surface. ‘You see, we, in our generation have never really known what we should do. Wisdom has not come with the years. The government in Ceylon is a so-called left-wing coalition – socialists, Trotskyites – but the youth see only a state that does not work. So now they’ve taken to violence. Twenty-five police stations attacked. Forty of them dead, as far as we know. Forty young rebels.’ He glanced at Sunny, his eyes glistening. ‘Some of them boys not much older than you.’

  The match – single innings each, limited overs – was due to begin at nine to allow for an afternoon kip, or a nip into church for the so inclined. The Thompsons were already there. Martin and Mary had offered to provide the refreshments. She’d made wonky egg sandwiches and a rum punch, while Martin had organized the midday cremation of burgers, sausages and chicken satay. He’d already unpacked a crate of San Miguel into a bucket of ice.

  ‘Ready, mate,’ he said to Lester in an effort at conviviality.

  ‘Ready?’ Lester hesitated, embarrassed.

  The Hong Kong visitors came in a convoy led by Rudolf Navaratnam’s Mercedes. Tina climbed out of the front. She waved at Sunny who lifted his bat, disconcerted by her skimpy tennis kit and fantastic thighs. Then Rudolf appeared, obstructing the view. He came up to Sunny while Tina shepherded the overexcited visitors out of their conference vehicles towards the bunting and flapping parasols. ‘Where’s your lot?’

  Sunny spotted Hector creating a small commotion parking his car. ‘Practising. Gearing up.’

  Rudolf was tense. ‘They have a couple of club players. The bowler, I hear, is a killer.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You better watch out. He will go for your nuts.’

  ‘Bouncer?’

  ‘Nuts.’ Rudolf repeated the word with a meaningful glance at Sunny’s crotch. ‘I hope you are properly protected.’

  Sunny tried to be confident. ‘We are ready.’

  Rudolf lost the toss, but Steve Thompson came up trumps. His very first ball, pitched short, took the opening batsman by surprise. Possibly it was the sight of Tina bending over the ice bucket on the far left, but the man was paralysed. The ball hit the bails and Desai, the umpire, raised his hand and uncurled a finger: Out. By the end of the over a second man had been caught out when the ball dropped into the crook of Hector’s arm.

  Junior quickly rose to the challenge – bowling from the Bonifacio end – determined to get at least one wicket in his over. An unexpected leg-spin did the trick and the visitors were three down for just five runs. Rudolf had never looked so pleased.

  The captain of the other side was a professional and had some solid batsmen at numbers four and five. They stopped the slide and steadied the game. Then they began to clock up the runs. By noon, things were not looking quite so good for the home team. The visitors reached their half-century and play stopped for lunch at 56 for 3.

  Rudolf pulled his team together. ‘I say, fellows, we need a bit of something in the bowling.’

  ‘What about Tina?’ Robby asked.

  ‘She’s the big surprise,’ Junior reminded him. They were playing one short,
keeping her in reserve.

  Before the second session started, Herbie sidled up to Sunny. ‘Forget the oldies, man. It’s up to us to take over the world.’ He had a mischievous grin on his face.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I thought I’d drop a couple of Ricardo’s tabs.’

  ‘You?’

  Herbie smiled smugly. ‘I already have, sunbeam. I thought maybe into the punch.’

  ‘Are you crazy? You don’t know what’ll happen with these guys.’

  Herbie looked crestfallen. ‘Valium, then? Or Seconal?’

  ‘It’s OK, Herbie. Don’t do anything. You don’t know Mary’s punch. There’s enough rum there to pickle the hen that laid the eggs she put into her sandwiches backwards.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Herbie tried to understand. ‘Are they balut sandwiches or something?’

  By the barbecue table Lester was talking to Hector and Nappy about the news he’d heard of the events in Colombo. ‘Mrs B. our lady prime minister says it is an insurgency, backed by, I quote, “big money, diabolical minds and criminal organizers”, unquote.’

  ‘Diabolical, eh?’ Nappy shook his head. ‘Sounds a bit like our Marcos here, no? The language?’

  ‘You know, she made a good proposal in Singapore at that Conference. Turn the Indian Ocean into a nuclear-free-zone. All the old Commonwealth nuclear groupies were miffed by her speech. It is an idea I liked. But who can push it now, with this going on in the backyard? The young wanting to fight; the old wanting to fight back. What happened to Gandhian non-violence?’

  ‘What, you now turning into a peacenik? A little old, na, Lester?’ Nappy laughed.

  Hector stepped in. ‘Why? Why do you say that? You think growing old is about sending the young to die?’

  ‘Hey, just joking only.’

  ‘No joke there.’ Hector snapped. ‘Everyone will rush to aid Ceylon now – China, Britain, the US. Nobody wants an insurrection. But these are just youngsters. What do these kids know? Little red droppings of Mao. Some dross from Moscow. What will happen to the country if a whole generation is wiped out?’

  Lester sighed. ‘I called Ananda to ask for the story, but he says it is impossible to get any more information. Curfew. No one allowed anywhere. Even Rosenblum’s line – the Times man – was cut mid-flow.’

  Then Rudolf joined them. ‘Bad business this. Hector, we might need you to bowl.’

  It was a mistake. When they restarted with Hector, after lunch and the statutory siesta, he was thrashed. Sunny fared no better. He even dropped the easiest catch. Junior came back and just about held the visitors at bay.

  Rudolf called Herbie. ‘Time to try out your googly, boy.’

  Herbie smiled in a worryingly beatific way. ‘Goodle-dee, google-bee, google-lee.’

  Herbie took his first couple of paces towards the crease and was mesmerizing. It was impossible to work out what he was going to do. Herbie himself seemed to be spinning while his face stayed in one place. The ball had a magic all of its own. It did the impossible: bounced, spun, veered and swerved and lifted the bails off the stumps from beneath. The batsman was flummoxed. Herbie giggled. Junior jumped and even Lester seemed to cheer up.

  Herbie was unstoppable. The wickets tumbled: bowled lbw, caught by Nappy, caught by Robby . . . In less than an hour the visitors were all out for eighty-nine.

  Everyone on the home side was cheering. Even Mary Thompson whose son’s star had dimmed. ‘Fantashtic. How does it feel, Herbie, to be so fuckin’ good. Oops.’

  ‘Wild.’ Herbie’s face split into one of his biggest smiles. ‘Wildest trip ever.’

  ‘Have some raisin bread.’ Lester patted Herbie on the head.

  After the break, Sunny went out to face the killer. Rudolf loitered at the other end. He caught Sunny’s eye and lowered his head in a mixture of pity and encouragement. The bowler looked almost a foot taller than Rudolf and twice as fierce. He was a giant who worked in the prison service in Hong Kong. Angrily weighing and rubbing the ball, he walked halfway back to the northern windswept street of his Lancashire home town for his murderous run-up.

  Sunny began to doubt his resolve and cricket started to lose some of its charm.

  The first ball was well wide. The second Sunny managed to nick past the slips. He survived the over with no runs, but no injuries either.

  In the second over Rudolf began to score. Sunny stayed on the defensive while Rudolf gained glory again and again. Then at twenty runs, he fell. Junior came. He hit a boundary, got cocky, and fell too. Steve did better. Got up to thirty before he was lbw’d. Sunny’s score was low, but he hoped that when Tina came in as the last man, they’d make a lovely pair for a brief but brilliant innings. But first Hector was put in. He missed the first two balls; fortunately they missed the wicket too. ‘Take a deep breath and think of your leader,’ Sunny urged him.

  ‘Zaramazov,’ Hector hollered and belted the ball past extra cover, making three. Then Sunny hit a single. The next ball he played ended in a catch and he was out.

  Lester took his son’s place. He survived five balls and made one run, then he was out. Nappy came and Hector went. Then Martin in quick succession. Herbie was hopeless. He had no idea who had the ball and by the time he worked out where it would come from, it had smashed the stumps. ‘Bahala na.’ Robby took his place, looking very vulnerable in a buttoned-up polo shirt. Finally, after Hector fell, Tina made her entry.

  Her bare legs shining behind the strapped pads may have sent the wicketkeeper, the slips, the gully and the short fine leg into a reverie, but they never got near the ball. She smashed it to the right, she smashed it to the left, she cut it, she clipped it, she banged it right out of the field. And Robby, much to Sunny’s envy, gave her every chance to show off her incredible prowess, taking a paltry single each time he was on the receiving end.

  By quarter to six they had reached eighty and were chasing ten to win. The reclaimed swampland had few trees and hardly any birds. When night drew close there were none of the shrieks and caws, the cacophony of parrots and cricket-mad crows that accompanied the end of a match in Colombo or Galle, Karachi or Jaipur. The visiting captain called out to Desai, the umpire. ‘Getting dark?’ Desai looked at the sky, searching it for signs of flapping wings.

  ‘No birds, eh?’ Martin Thompson observed. ‘Bloody Japanese. After the invasion, nothing survived.’

  Rudolf muttered something about the sparrows in China.

  The umpire examined the ball and then chucked it to the wicketkeeper. He caught it.

  Desai pronounced his judgement. ‘Acha, enough light for the last over.’

  ‘Come on, Tina.’ Sunny yelled without thinking.

  The very first ball she hit for a gorgeous six. There were only the ten of them, plus Mary and Anjuli and a small scattering of the curious who had heard of this peculiar passion play, but the cheer could have been that of a hundred thousand. Tina held her bat up in the air like the sword of Boadicea.

  They roared.

  The bowler bowled.

  She missed.

  The next ball, she clipped perfectly – past square leg. Two runs. The fourth did nothing. The fifth ball she snicked past gully, but only made one run. A man appeared from nowhere and stopped it with a slide.

  The last ball, an even score, but Tina was at the wrong end. Robby stood at the crease, trembling. He pushed back his visor as though he’d have preferred baseball, or jousting with dragons. His face was as white as the bowler’s. The run-up could have been on chariots of fire, the ball flew. Sunny’s bat in Robby’s hands met it, shuddered, and sent it straight back with Robby running right behind it. The ball slipped past the bowler – the killer – who wheeled and flipped back. He was flat on the ground, thumping it. Tina and Robby crossed at the halfway point. Their fingers reached for each other, brushing in a swift kiss, as they sped towards each other’s crease. They made it.

  ‘By a nose, eh?’ Hector beamed.

  That night was the saddest night of Sunny’s life in Manila, de
spite the victory. Everyone was in the house by eight o’clock. Both sides, plus a few hangers-on. Tina and Robby were the champions, toasted and fêted, a couple to rival Ferdinand and Imelda in the celebrations in Urdaneta.

  Lester slapped Sunny on the back. ‘Good show,’ he said.

  For the moment he seemed to have put the troubles of Ceylon – like those of Pakistan, the emerging Bangladesh, Mindanao and the rest of the Philippines – out of his mind.

  Sunny opened beer, Coke, 7-Up; poured wine, water, gin and whisky. Rosa fluttered about with a tray of glasses and a bowl of peanuts. Beatriz, in her pinny, danced in the kitchen to a tune of her own.

  Herbie, Junior and Robby sat cross-legged by the pond with Hector. They lit joss sticks and talked cricket like converts. Tina, on the patio, was having a ball with the visiting team who were all agog, now that she’d not only bared her legs but also her shoulders.

  At ten o’clock Lester in his big white chef’s hat got the hopper pans going and the food was served, drawing one or two of the Hong Kong foodies away from Tina’s delectable flesh to the spiced meat of the table. ‘Eat, my friends,’ he grandly declaimed. ‘Let us tonight, at least, forget the rest of the damn world and be a little happy. Para bailar la bamba,’ he sang as Trini Lopez spun on the stereo.

  It occurred to Sunny how much their lives had changed since his mother died. She would not have countenanced such frivolity. He asked his father for a special egg hopper, done hard. Lester turned the thatchiya – his hopper pan – expertly in his hand. ‘There’s one over on the table for you, son.’

  Sunny was too late. Steve was already gobbling it.

  Herbie came up. ‘Hey, Sunny, relax, lang. Man, you look like you really need a bit of happiness, no? Come with us to Baguio tomorrow. You heard about the big Pilipinas Woodstock night? The Family Affair? Ten thousand heads will rock . . .’ He peered into his psychedelic shirt pocket. ‘If you like, you can start the trip now.’

  Sunny didn’t want to listen; he didn’t care about Herbie or the contents of his pocket. He was reeling with the knowledge of the stupid mistakes he’d made and the chances he’d missed. He looked for Tina and saw her on the other side of the room next to Steve. She had a small silver valentine on a chain around her throat. He saw her touch it as she caught Robby’s eye.