Cinnamon Gardens (29 page)

As Balendran’s car left Brighton, he leant back against his seat, exhausted from his long journey but also from the terrible
April heat. He thought of his brother’s marriage to Pakkiam, who had worked as a servant for them. Twenty-eight years had passed since Arul had gone with her to India, and Balendran pondered, as he sometimes did, if there were problems between them, given their differences.

His brother was the son of a rich landowner, educated in English and European culture. He had spent his life in luxury. She was a Koviar, a low caste. As such, Pakkiam belonged to a different world. Before she came to Brighton, she had never seen electric lighting or running water, never sat on a chair, never had more than a single change of clothing. She could not read or write. Had it been a struggle to find a common base on which to build a life?

When Balendran got home, Sonia, now back from England a few weeks, was on the verandah, a troubled look on her face. He remembered immediately the news of his brother.

“Something has happened,” he said as he came up the verandah steps.

She held out a telegram to him. “It’s your brother.”

He took it from her.
FATHER VERY ILL
.
STOP
.
WON
’
T LAST A MONTH
.
STOP
.
WISHES TO SEE YOU
.
STOP
.
AT BOMBAY
.
STOP
.
YOUR NEPHEW
,
SEELAN
.

Balendran felt the blood rush to his head. He sat down in a chair, afraid that his legs would give way under him.

“Are you going to go?” Sonia asked.

“I don’t know,” Balendran said after a moment. “I have to talk to Appa about it.”

“And what if he says no?”

Balendran was silent, not having an answer. His mind was
too confounded by the shocking news. He stood up and straightened his coat. “I’m going back to Brighton,” he said.

He picked up the telegram and went down the steps.

Sonia watched Balendran leave. She hoped he would have the strength to do as his heart wished in this matter and not obey his father’s orders out of a sense of duty. She knew well the sadness of being at a distance when the death of a loved one was impending. Though she had basked in the happiness of her son’s company once again, her time in London had been coloured by some regret. Sonia had not been in London for twenty years, and, despite her regular correspondence with her aunt, Lady Boxton, Sonia felt that they had become strangers to each other. Her aunt’s letters, chatty with news of social events in London, had not conveyed her growing frailty. Sonia, understanding that she might never see her aunt alive again, had endeavoured to bridge the missing years. During their afternoon teas, their mornings together while Lukshman was at his classes, Sonia would try to engage her aunt with stories of her life in Ceylon, but Lady Boxton, though she seemed to take in what Sonia said, appeared to be in the world of her own thoughts. Now Sonia wanted Balendran to have the opportunity to speak with his brother, at least make some attempt to re-establish the bonds that had been broken, before it was too late.

As the car left his house, Balendran looked at the telegram and felt a sense of disbelief that his brother was dying. He had got used to his absence, but, at the same time, he had also got used to the fact of his alternate life in Bombay. This other existence his mother kept alive and, in order to do so, she had involved him in her conspiracy. It was he who had to accompany her to the
temple on his brother’s birthday so she could offer a pooja; he who, after she had an inauspicious dream about Arul, had to instruct the priest to make an offering to Ganesh or go, himself, to St. Anthony’s in Kochchikade. Then there was the son, Seelan. They had been sent a notice of his birth by Arul. A terse, typewritten, unsigned note. Every year, his mother sent a gold sovereign for Seelan’s birthday. She directed it to the bank manager, Mr. Govind, who was responsible for paying the monthly stipend his father allotted Arul. Balendran had been aware of his brother’s life and, in a strange way, had participated in it. Now he found it difficult to imagine that life ending, their connection being completely severed.

He looked at the telegram again, thinking of whether he would go or not. He knew that it depended on his father, but he had to admit that he did not wish to go.

Seven years separated the two brothers. While that gap would be insignificant now, the year Arul had left Brighton with Pakkiam he had been nineteen and Balendran merely twelve. They had never known each other as adults. His brother was, in many ways, a stranger to him. Compounding this alienation was the antagonism between them. Arul, until his relationship with Pakkiam was discovered, had enjoyed his father’s favour. While Balendran spent his leisure time reading or looking after his stamp collection, Arul and his father shared a love of the outdoors. They would go on a shooting trip to Vavuniya or pearl fishing in Mannar and not think to invite Balendran. He had stood little chance against his brother’s forceful personality. Arul’s voice, gestures, actions were all passionate. He could take over a room, a conversation, a holiday. Further, Arul had viewed Balendran with contempt. He had considered Balendran’s love of reading and quiet activities effeminate. He had tormented
Balendran over his inadequacies in sports, mocked his distaste for hunting.

Balendran’s dislike for Arul extended to his wife as well. Pakkiam had come to work for them when she was fifteen. She was beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes, long, glossy black hair, skin the colour of milk tea, and a shapely figure. For the first two years of her time at Brighton, he had hardly noticed her. She had been a pleasant, happy girl, constantly breaking into song while she worked, adorning herself with flowers from their garden. Then, in her last year at Brighton, before she went off to India with Arul, her temperament had changed. She had become rude and aggressive, likely to burst into tears at the slightest reprimand from his mother. Her belligerence had turned against him for reasons he had never understood. She had begun to call out greetings every time she saw him. The words themselves were innocuous, things like “Ah here comes, thambi,” “Good health to you, thambi,” “thambi is looking well today.” Yet her tone had been mocking and cruel, and she would glance at his thin, awkward body and smirk. Though he was the master’s son, he had felt helpless against her aggression. It was never overt enough for him to complain to his mother. Also it would have been a loss of face for him to do so, would have showed that he did not have the manliness to deal with a female servant.

Balendran dated the change in Pakkiam from the time she had begun her relations with Arul. He felt that her familiarity with him was an attempt to lift herself to his level, to be considered his equal now that she was having an affair with his brother.

Though he believed firmly in the rights of the poor, and was concerned about their misery, Balendran did not think that the downtrodden, were they given power, would handle it any more magnanimously than the rich did. Someone like Pakkiam would
not know how to exercise power except in the way she had seen it used against her.

Despite his feelings of dislike for his brother, Balendran was moved to concern for his reduced circumstances. Arul, he knew, worked in a lowly clerical position at the Post Office. Even with the allowance from his father, their circumstances would be difficult. A meagre house with a pocket handkerchief of a garden. They had raised a son. Arul’s inability to provide for him, in a way that befitted what he knew his son could have had in Ceylon, must have eaten away at him.

Balendran folded the telegram and put it away. “It’s too late to mend all that,” Balendran said to himself. “It’s best that I don’t go.” Yet, even as he thought this, he was filled with the discomfort of unfinished business. It was as if he had been called to dinner while in the middle of an irksome accounts problem. A sense of relief to be away from it but, at the same time, an understanding that it was still there to be attended to.

Balendran’s car had turned into Brighton and he glanced ahead of him. His speculations, his desires were unimportant. Ultimately, his father would decide on the matter.

The Mudaliyar hated the unnecessary use of electricity, so Brighton was in darkness except for the lights in his father’s study and his mother’s drawing room. Balendran could hear the faint sound of the piano coming from Lotus Cottage and one of the Kandiah sisters singing along to it. Joseph took him to the back entrance. He went up the steps to the verandah that joined the kitchen to the main part of the house. As he made his way towards the back door, he noticed that a fire had been lit by the servants’ quarters. Their dwellings were screened from the house by trees and, through them, he could make out figures dancing while others sang. He was reminded of the night of his father’s
birthday, twenty-eight years ago, when he had followed his brother out there. It made him shiver now to think of that moment when he had heard his father cry out. He had run towards the quarters, but, as he reached the trees, Pillai had been there. He had struggled, but Pillai, with the help of the two gardeners, had held him tightly, forcing him back across the lawn in the direction of the house. Yet he had seen it, his father with the red stain on his arm and his brother holding the knife. Balendran turned away, not wanting to dwell on that memory, and went into the house.

When Balendran came into the vestibule, he noticed the light spilling onto the stairs from his mother’s drawing room. As he looked up, he felt he should go to her first, and a chill passed through him. He was going up there to tell his mother that her son was dying. He gripped the banister tightly and began to go slowly upstairs.

Nalamma looked up from her sewing and caught her breath as she saw Balendran come up the last few steps. He seemed to rise out of the darkness and she felt a foreboding.

“What is it, mahan?” she asked in fear.

He came forward, took her hands between his and kissed them. Then he knelt in front of her.

She watched him, wanting him to speak and yet afraid that, after he spoke, the world would fall around her.

“It’s as you thought.… Arulanandan,” he said, using his brother’s full name.

A sound escaped from her lips. Then she reached out and drew Balendran tightly to her, arms circling him as if afraid that this son, too, might slip away.

“How long?” Nalamma asked. “How long do we have?”

“About a month, perhaps less.”

She released him. Her face was tear-stained. She stood up. “Come. We must speak to your appa.”

Wiping her face with the edge of her sari palu, she tucked it back into her waist. He followed her as she led the way towards the stairs.

When she got to the vestibule, her courage gave way and she indicated for him to knock on the door.

He did so and, after a moment, his father called out for them to enter. He went first and she followed.

The Mudaliyar was at the window, looking out over the lawn of Brighton. He turned to them.

“Appa,” Balendran said timidly, “I … I received this telegram today.”

He handed it to his father and then watched as he read it, wondering if the pain of his son dying would be too much for him.

The Mudaliyar kept his face inscrutable so that neither his son nor his wife could tell that he was already aware of the telegram’s contents. Even though he had made them swear to have no communication with Arul, he had been unable to cut his son off completely. Along with the monthly allowance he sent Arul, he had arranged for the bank manager, Mr. Govind, to make inquiries about his son and convey the news to him. Mr. Govind had telegraphed him the same information a few hours ago. The Mudaliyar had been pacing his study agitatedly contemplating this terrible news when his son and wife had knocked on the door.

He put down the telegram.

“Appa,” Balendran said, aware of his mother’s eyes on him. “Should I go to him?”

The Mudaliyar had already anticipated this question and had decided that, of course, Balendran should go. Arul was his son and despite the fact that he had disobeyed him and caused him much pain, the Mudaliyar still loved him as he did Balendran. In fact, hardly a week went by when the sight of Balendran or the photograph of Lukshman on his desk did not make him sigh at the loss of that other son and grandson. For they were irrevocably lost to him, his son by his marriage, his grandson by the blood he carried in him. Now that Arul was close to death, the Mudaliyar felt it was absolutely essential Balendran go and convince Arul’s family to send the body back to Ceylon so that his son could be buried in a way that befitted his heritage. In India, there would be no Koviars to bathe the body and accompany it to the cremation grounds, no Parayars to beat their drums, no Pallars to cut the firewood and make the funeral pyre. His son, his oldest son, would be buried like a nameless pauper. It would be a shame on him, an insult to the family name. Silk, as his father used to say, remained silk even if it was torn. His son was still of their blood and should be given a funeral that was worthy of his lineage.

Yet the Mudaliyar was confronted by a dilemma. While he wished to send Balendran, he did not want it to seem that he lightly dismissed the vow he had made his household take at the family shrine. “You know my wishes on this subject and I expect them to be obeyed,” he said and waited for his son’s appeal.

Balendran nodded in acquiesence, relieved that he was not to be sent.

“Is there a reason I should alter my mind?”

Before Balendran could answer, Nalamma burst out, “What reason do you want? Are you a man or a piece of stone?”

She had never spoken like this to her husband. The Mudaliyar straightened up. “Are you forgetting who you are talking to?” he said, his voice awful.

Much to his surprise, Nalamma stared back at him. The Mudaliyar grew furious at her refusal to be penitent, his outrage exacerbated by the tumult over his son’s impending death. “Get out!” he shouted. Nalamma’s gaze wavered. “Get out of my study, you disrespectful woman!”