Funny Boy (15 page)

“Then why was he trying to run away, madam?” he asked.

The boy was looking from Amma to the A.S.P., trying to understand their conversation from the expression on their faces. Now the A.S.P. waved his hand in the direction of the door. “Take him to the station,” he said to the policemen. “We’ll carry on our inquiry there.”

The policemen gripped the boy’s arms. He cried out and dug his heels into the ground. He called to Amma, begging her to save him. She took a step towards him but the A.S.P. put out his hand to stop her. He signalled angrily to the policemen to remove the boy. They tried to make him stand up. In the process his sarong came undone and fell to the floor, entangling his feet. The policemen lifted him above the sarong and dragged him, naked, around the side of the house.

Amma covered her face with her hands and shuddered. I felt my legs become weak and sat down quickly on the side of the bed. “Madam,” the A.S.P. started to say, gently, but she turned away from him. He bowed slightly and left. Amma went to the window and stood there looking out at the sea. We could hear the dog crying forlornly inside the house. After a while she turned to me and said, “I feel that boy is innocent.” I looked at her, surprised by how sure she seemed about this.

“I don’t know how I know, but I just do.” She waved her
hand to encompass all that had just happened. “This whole thing seems wrong.”

In the silence we could hear the sound of the police cars starting up outside. I thought about the A.S.P. and how I had immediately trusted him. He seemed like someone with whom we would associate, like the kind of man with whom my father would be friends. Now I wondered if Amma’s instinct was right and we had been mistaken to trust him.

That evening, my father called us from Europe. I was the one who picked up the phone. The sound of his voice asking how I was brought back all the dread I had felt on the night I had heard Amma and Daryl Uncle arguing. At first I was tongue-tied, too troubled to be able to answer his questions. When I finally forced myself to speak, my voiced sounded stilted, and I was glad to pass the receiver to Amma. I watched her as she spoke to my father. Her face was impassive and her voice normal, as if nothing unusual had happened in our lives.

The next day, when I got into the car after school, Amma told me the A.S.P. had called her that morning. He wanted to see us.

When we arrived at the police station, we were ushered into his office immediately. He rose courteously and smiled, gesturing at some chairs in front of his desk. He rang the bell on his table and the tea-boy arrived with two cups of tea.

The A.S.P. waved his hand and the tea-boy served us.

“You know, madam,” the A.S.P. said, still smiling, “I have discovered a happy coincidence. I actually play squash with your husband from time to time.”

Amma’s teacup rattled slightly.

“I have always known him as Chelva, but never though to connect him with your name. Then I saw your address on the form.”

He looked at us merrily. “Small world, no?”

Amma gave him a faint smile. She put her cup down on the edge of his desk. “What about our friend?” she asked. “Have you been able to locate him?”

The A.S.P. sighed. “Unfortunately not. But we are working on it.”

“Surely it can’t take that long to trace a man who looks like a foreigner.”

The A.S.P. wiped his forehead as if he was tired. “You know how it is, Mrs. Chelvaratnam. What with the terrorist bombings and bank robberies, our forces in Jaffna have their hands full.” He leaned towards us. “They’re trying their best. I have personally asked them to hurry it up a little.”

Amma sighed and her lips became thin with impatience.

The A.S.P. picked up a file from his desk and opened it. “We have questioned the servant boy and I’m afraid to say he did take certain things from your friend’s room.”

“What!” Amma said.

“Evidently,” he continued, “he was right in the middle of ransacking the room when you arrived two days ago. That is why you found it in disarray.”

“What exactly did he steal?” she asked.

“Let’s see,” he said, and rummaged through the file until he found a piece of paper. He began to read from it. “A clock-radio, a watch, a camera, some Australian money, a Parker pen.”

Amma shook her head, as if she could hardly believe what he was saying.

When we got up to leave, the A.S.P. walked us to the door. “By the way,” he said, “that servant boy was a real jobless character. He knew all the comings and goings of your friend.”

Amma straightened up slightly.

He looked at her and smiled. “I will look into your friend’s absence and get back to you.” He opened the door gallantly. “My regards to your husband,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be fascinated by all that’s happened in his absence.”

When we left the building, Amma was furious.

“The bloody cheek of the man,” she cried. “The bloody cheek!”

She pushed the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “Who does he think I am? Some schoolgirl?”

I looked at Amma, worried about what would happen if the A.S.P. did indeed tell my father.

That evening, both Amma and I were very quiet. We joined Neliya Aunty, Sonali, and Diggy in the garden. A monsoon sultriness had settled inside our house, and not even the fans could dispel it. So we sat in the garden, hoping for a slight breeze to cool us down. But there was none. Everything around us, the trees, the bushes, were immobile. The whole world seemed to be braced for some oncoming cataclysm.

When I went to bed, I tried to read
Little Men
, but the book reminded me of the time Daryl Uncle had sat by my bed reading to me. Finally, I put the book down. Only ten days had
passed since I’d last seen him, yet my memory of Daryl Uncle had already blurred.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, the telephone rang. Its shrill sound entered my dream and only after a few moments did I realize its clamour was real. I sat up in bed. In the room next to mine, I could hear Neliya Aunty stirring. Amma went down the hall to the phone. She picked up the receiver and I heard the murmur of her voice. I got out of bed, retied my sarong, and went to my door. Sonali, Diggy, and Neliya Aunty had also come out into the hall. Amma stood by the phone in the darkness, the receiver hanging uselessly in her hand. “Neliya,” she said softly. “Neliya.”

“I’m here,” Neliya Aunty said.

“Oh God, Neliya. They’ve found Daryl’s body.”

In the first light of morning, we waited on the front verandah for the police. Amma and Neliya Aunty had to go and identify the body. I looked around me, at the coffee cups in the tray on the floor, at the sky, a dull silver awning in which streaks of pink and orange were beginning to appear, and was reminded of the times we went on holidays and would awaken before dawn so we could leave before the sun became too fierce. As I drank my coffee, tasting its bittersweet flavour, I tried to tell myself that I was awake this early because Daryl Uncle was dead. I thought of what Amma had told us, how some fishermen had found his body, how it had been washed ashore on the beach of a fishing village. Yet, even while I thought about these realities my heart skipped madly as if joyful at the prospect of a holiday.

The police finally came and took Amma and Neliya Aunty to the morgue. I stood at the front gate and watched the car disappear down the road. The routines of everyday life were beginning to take place around me. Neighbours came onto their verandahs and picked up their papers, servants opened gates and waited for the bread man and the milkman to arrive; in the distance there was the sound of cars on the main road.

As I looked around me, I felt an odd sensation. Our daily routine had been cast away, while the rest of the world was going on as usual. A man I had known, a man who was my mother’s lover, was now dead. I was aware that it was a significant thing, a momentous event in my life even, but, like a newspaper report on an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, it seemed something that happened outside my reality, my world.

After a while, I walked back to the house. Diggy and Sonali were still on the verandah. They looked at me carefully as if hoping I could tell them more about Daryl Uncle’s death. I avoided their gaze and went inside.

When Amma and Neliya Aunty came back from the morgue some time later, the fact of Daryl Uncle’s death finally began to seep into my consciousness. Neliya Aunty’s eyes were swollen and she was crying into her handkerchief. Amma was not crying. Her head was tilted at an angle and there was almost a look of defiance on her face. She kissed each of us on the cheek, greeting us by name. She informed us that Daryl Uncle’s body
was to be cremated and the ashes sent back to Australia, where they would be buried with his parents’. She spoke in a neutral tone, as if she was relaying a piece of unimportant information. Then she went into her room to change her clothes. Neliya Aunty and I followed her. Amma was taking off her sari when we came in, and she looked up. “I still can’t believe he’s dead,” she said after a moment. “I’m sure it’ll hit me later.”

Neliya Aunty nodded.

“He didn’t die by drowning. You know that. He was killed, then thrown into the sea.”

I winced at the directness of her words. Neliya Aunty looked uncomfortable too.

“Of course they have witnesses who saw him go swimming,” she said sarcastically. “They have witnesses for everything these days.” Her sari lay on the floor around her feet. She stepped over it and picked up one end. Then she looked at both of us. “We have to do something. We can’t let this go by.”

“Nalini,” Neliya Aunty said.

“What?” Amma demanded. “You think we shouldn’t do anything?”

Neliya Aunty looked down at the floor. “There’s no point now,” she said. “Nothing you do will bring him back.”

“But something must be done,” Amma cried angrily. She began to fold her sari. “People can’t get away with these things. This is a democracy, for God’s sake.”

Neliya Aunty didn’t reply.

That evening Amma developed such a severe headache that it made her dizzy and she had to lie down. I went into her room
to see how she was. The curtains were drawn and she was lying in bed, her arm over her forehead. Her eyes followed me as I came in. I sat down by her side and we were silent for a moment. Then she said suddenly, “It was horrible. I could hardly recognize him. If they had not found his wallet on him, I would have sworn it was someone else.” She turned towards me. “You don’t think he drowned, do you, son?”

I shook my head.

“I should have done something. I should have found a way to stop him from going. I am to blame.”

“Oh, no, Amma,” I said in protest. “You did what you could.”

“No, no. I should have stopped him
somehow
.’ ”

She propped herself up on her elbows. “Why didn’t I believe him about what was going on there? How could I have thought this government was any better than the last?”

She lay back again. “Things were going so well, I didn’t want to know what was really happening.”

I looked at her. The excited tone of her voice and the bright look in her eyes bothered me. I wished that she had cried. It would have seemed more natural.

“We must do something,” she said, breaking the silence. “We can’t just sit by and act as if nothing happened.” She looked at me. “But where does one turn when the police and the government are the offenders?”

I didn’t answer.

For most of the night I lay awake, thinking about all that had happened. Finally, I fell asleep and dreamt of
Little Women
. This time I was Jo and I was nursing Amma, who was Beth. Then
Beth died and I awoke to find myself crying as, for the first time, the understanding that Daryl Uncle was dead came to me.

The next day, when Amma picked me up from school she had come up with a plan.

“Do you remember Q.C. Appadurai?” she asked, as I got into the car.

I nodded. Q.C. Appadurai, or Q.C. Uncle, as we called him, was a friend of Amma’s late father. He visited our house for our birthdays and we visited him on his birthday and at Christmas. All I knew about Q.C. Uncle was that there was a hint of scandal surrounding him and the servant boy who, since Q.C. Uncle had become feeble, supported him by the arm when he came to our parties.

Amma started up the car. “I made an appointment to see him today.”

As we drove to his house, she explained to me that Q.C. Uncle was a civil rights lawyer and what this meant. Amma felt sure that he would be able to help us find Daryl Uncle’s killers.

Q.C. Uncle lived in a big house near Kynsey Road. When we rang the bell, the servant boy opened the door and ushered us into the drawing room. After a short while, Q.C. Uncle came out of his room, the servant boy helping him. He was a small, dark-skinned man, and he wore a sarong and shirt. On his face was a pair of large, square, black-framed glasses. Amma stood up as he came in. He peered at us but didn’t offer any greeting until he was seated and had stopped panting. Then he
smiled at Amma and said, his voice a little hoarse and wheezy, “Nalini. How wonderful to see you.”

“It’s wonderful to see you, too, Uncle,” Amma replied.

Q.C. Uncle nodded his head and smiled. All his movements were extremely slow and his jaw moved in a chewing motion, despite the fact that he was not eating anything.

“My dear,” he said to Amma, “what can I do for you?”

“I need some advice, Uncle,” Amma said. “It’s about a friend of mine. He went to Jaffna a few weeks ago and …”

“Jaffna,” he exclaimed. Then he indicated for her to continue.

Amma started to tell him what had happened, but when she mentioned Daryl Uncle’s name, Q.C. Uncle interrupted her, saying, “Daryl? Wasn’t that the boy you wanted to marry at one time?”

Amma looked at him and frowned. He didn’t seem to have noticed her look, because he continued with a chuckle of remembrance. “I recall that well. Your parents sent you to holiday with me on my old Kerala estate. Three months you were there.”

“Uncle,” Amma said warningly and looked towards me.

“Yes, yes,” he said, realizing his indiscretion. He waved his hand for Amma to continue. She proceeded with her story, leaving out the details of her relationship with Daryl Uncle. I noticed that Q.C. Uncle watched her with a strange expression.