The Flower Boy (5 page)

He didn't bother to reply. They didn't know anything.

Rangi brought him a plate of fish gravy and bread. They both ate in silence, she thinking about school and he trying not to think about it.

Half an hour later, he lay on his mat in the darkness and wondered what he was going to name the baby. It had to be a meaningful name, he thought, with a beautiful sound to it. Not like Chandi.

Rose, he thought dreamily. That was an appropriate name for the best friend of someone in the flower business.

chapter 4

ROSE AND HE WERE RUNNING THROUGH THE TEA BUSHES, PLAYING hide-and-seek. It was her turn to hide. He closed his eyes: “onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten.”

He took his hands away from his eyes and yelled, “I'm coming!”

He could see her yellow dress peeping out from behind the large eucalyptus tree. Even if he hadn't seen her, he would have known she was there because he'd peeked while he was counting. He didn't feel bad about peeking because she did it too. It was okay to peek when you were best friends.

He started walking around, deliberately avoiding the old eucalyptus. He pretended to look behind every tea bush. He heard a giggle.

“I hear something,” he sang out.

The giggle was quickly muffled.

He walked past the tree and suddenly swung around.

“Caught you!” he shouted, grabbing a fistful of yellow cotton.

She squealed, pulled free and ran. He followed her, laughing and out of breath. He felt he had never been so happy in all his life.

His foot caught in the twisted root of a tea bush that snaked into the path and he fell heavily. He got up and looked around. Where was she?

“Rose? Where are you?” he called out.

He heard a faint giggle and he followed it. He heard it again, and sudden dread clutched at his heart.

“Rose!” he called urgently. “Rose, come out, I won't catch you, I promise.”

Then he saw her. She was hiding behind The Tree.

It was a gnarled old tea bush that the Sudu Mahattaya had wanted cut down ages ago. The Kankanipillai had not cut it down for the simple reason that he was too scared. So was everyone else in the area.

The tree had a yakka in it, a demon. And everyone knew that it was pure foolishness to bring the wrath of the yakkas down on themselves by cutting down trees in which they dwelt.

Only old Asilin who lived in the workers' compound had actually seen the yakka. She had been walking home through the estate one night and had been accosted by a huge, hairy man with the head of a bull, who had foamed at the mouth and made bloodcurdling growling noises. That had people so scared they took the other path at night. There were rumors that the yakka came out to forage for humans when it was hungry.

There had even been suggestions that human sacrifices be made to the yakka to appease its anger, but when John Buckwater heard this he had sternly forbidden any such pagan nonsense, promising dire consequences for anyone who even discussed it.

So people gave the tree a wide berth, muttering mantras of protection if they were Buddhists, calling on a plethora of different gods if they were Hindus and crossing themselves hurriedly if they were Christians.

And now Rose was right there.

“Rose!” he screamed. “Rose, come here!”

She didn't answer.

He started running as fast as he could toward her, his heart pounding with terrible fear. He had just found her, this small new best friend of his, and he couldn't bear to think of her becoming an unwilling and Sudu Mahattaya–forbidden sacrifice to the man-eating half-person, half-bull yakka.

He could vaguely hear her voice.

“Chandi, it's time to wake up!”

He came awake with a start and stared in confusion at his mother bending over him. His heart still beat wildly.

“Putha, son, it's time to wake up or you'll be late for school,” she said.

He sat up. A dream, he thought in relief. Rose was safe. Then reality came like the first bucketful of cold well water. A dream, he thought in disgust.

Of
course
it was only a dream. The baby was six months old and she couldn't walk, let alone run. Her name wasn't Rose, either. It was Elizabeth, although they called her Lizzie; she had been named after the King of England's daughter, his mother had told him. He hadn't seen her properly, just glimpses through open windows.

Lizzie, he thought indignantly. What a stupid name. If they had asked him, he would have told them Rose was a far better name. Only they hadn't asked him.

Six months had passed since the day it rained. Less than a week after the baby had arrived, her ayah had arrived. She guarded the baby as effectively as Buster guarded the Sudu Mahattaya's car.

A day or two after the ayah had come, Chandi had seen her with the baby on the veranda. He walked over casually, hoping to establish friendly relations for later visits, but she'd given him a look worse than any his mother had ever given him, and he had retreated quickly.

He'd given up asking to visit; it only made his mother angry with him. It seemed so unfair that everyone else in the house got to see her except her best friend. And only Rangi ever told him anything.

“Is she white, like the Sudu Nona?”

“No, sort of pale pink.”

Perfect for a baby called Rose. If only they'd asked him.

“Is she pretty?”

“Beautiful.”

“What color are her eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Like the Sudu Nona's?”

“No, darker. Like the evening sky.”

“Her hair?”

“Light brown.”

“Silvery brown like the bark of the eucalyptus tree?”

“No, darker.”

“Is it straight like yours and Leela's and Ammi's?”

“No, it's curly. Like passion fruit tendrils.”

They had this conversation at least once a week. Rangi didn't seem to mind him asking over and over again. He tried to draw a picture of her in his head, but it never came out quite right. Sometimes he felt sad that he couldn't see her, but mostly he felt angry.

Sometimes he talked to Rangi about it.

“Rangi, why won't they let me see her? All those people have been coming to visit and they've seen her.”

“I don't know, Chandi. We're only servants, not important people like them.”

“Do you think I should ask Ammi again tomorrow if I can go and see her?”

She looked at him curiously and a little sympathetically. “Malli, why do you want to see the baby so much?”

“I don't know, because I haven't I suppose,” he muttered.

“Wait awhile,” she said. “Perhaps one day they'll let you.”

“When?” he asked hopelessly.

“Soon.” But there was always doubt in her voice.

“CHANDI! GET UP now or you'll be late for school and you'll have to walk alone, because Rangi and Leela are almost ready.”

Chandi looked guiltily at his mother. Being such a busy person herself, she hated to see anyone daydreaming or wasting time. He jumped to his feet and rushed out to wash.

Ten minutes later, he was ready. He had done a haphazard job of washing his face and arms and legs, but the water from the well had been freezing and he was late. He had also skipped brushing his teeth, so he grabbed his old cloth schoolbag and ran out without letting his mother ruffle his hair as she usually did each morning.

She stood there watching him running down the hill, calling out to Rangi and Leela to wait for him. She felt a little hurt by his abrupt departure, and wondered if she'd been too harsh with him this morning.

He was still so little, not yet five. She wished she had more time to spend with him, to listen to his childish chatter, but there was always work to be done. This job had been a blessing. No one else would have taken her three children in, no matter how efficient she was. In fact, it had only been because her uncle worked with Appuhamy's brother in a big house in Colombo that she had this job at all.

chapter 5

SHE HAD BEEN BORN IN A SMALL VILLAGE IN DENIYAYA, WHAT SEEMED to be a couple of lifetimes ago. Her father did odd jobs for people, picking tea, plucking coconuts, helping to harvest vegetables or rice. Sometimes he got paid and sometimes he didn't. Often he'd come home with a couple of coconuts, some vegetables or a small bag of rice as payment for the work he'd done.

Her mother would sigh and raise her eyes heavenward in despair.

Her mother made cutlets.

She woke at three-thirty every morning, lit the fire and set the old tin kettle to boil before she began.

Flake the fish boiled the previous night, throwing the bones out the door, where the cats would be waiting, their eyes like glowing green embers in the predawn darkness. Mash the boiled potatoes and knead them. Mix the two together, wishing she could put in more potatoes because fish was so expensive, but not daring to, in case people complained. Put in the onions, green chilies, karapincha, salt, pepper. Shape the mixture into flat little cakes which she laid carefully on a clean newspaper.

She would pause to make herself a cup of plain tea and find a piece of jaggery to drink it with; sugar was scarce.

Once the cutlets were coated with egg and then with bread crumbs powdered painstakingly in the huge stone mortar outside, she fried them carefully. Kalu Mahattaya didn't accept damaged goods. By five o'clock, she would be finished.

The cutlets would sit in a fragrant golden pile on an old wooden tray, ready to be taken to Kalu Mahattaya's small tea shop down in the valley. By six, workingmen would start to arrive for their usual breakfast of cutlets, fresh bread and tea before catching the bus or cycling on to their various jobs.

The smell of cutlets reminded Premawathi even now of waking up in the half light and watching her mother cooking to survive, while her four young brothers and sisters and their father slept, huddled in an assortment of old sheets, blankets and sweaters. Sometimes, she crawled over to the fire, careful to stay out of range of the popping, spluttering oil, and sat there in companionable, half-asleep silence with her mother. Occasionally, she would be given a cutlet that had burst and could not be sent to the tea shop. She would take tiny bites, blowing at it so she wouldn't burn her tongue, wishing she could have another.

Her mother wore a look of permanent weariness and hardship. Even the money she earned from making cutlets was never enough, and during the day she wove coconut leaves into sheets of roofing for the mud-walled, thatched houses in the area. Sometimes her fingers bled from the sharp spines of the coconut leaves and although she never complained, her mouth was twisted with bitterness and her eyes had lost their life long ago.

But even that was not enough to feed five fast-growing, permanently hungry children. Whatever small valuables they had possessed had been sold or pawned, along with the few saris she had been keeping for Premawathi.

The white missionaries were heaven-sent in more ways than one.

When they came to the little Deniyaya church, talked about Jesus and urged the poverty-stricken people to send their children to the free convent schools where they would be housed, fed and taught the ways of the Christian God, they needed no second bidding. The white missionaries were a little dazed at the response they got.

Premawathi was sent to a convent in Colombo, her brothers and sisters to another one in Galle, farther down the coast. Although she had missed her family and her thatched-roof home and the smell of early morning cutlets, she soon adjusted and spent the next ten years learning Christianity and English in the mornings, and sweeping and cleaning the convent in the afternoons and evenings.

She was allowed to go home once a year for two weeks, and always came back depressed.

On Sunday mornings, they were taken to worship at St. Michael's Church, and it was there that she first met Disneris.

He was the gardener at the church, a handsome, gentle man with a sense of humor. When he began to court Premawathi and she showed interest, the nuns were disappointed. They liked her and had thought she was excellent nun material. But Disneris was a fine upstanding young man and a good Christian, and if she was going to choose man above God, he was at least a good choice.

They got married and moved into a small room in a boardinghouse in Polwatte.

When Premawathi became pregnant with their first child, it was obvious that some changes had to be made. Disneris's meager allowance from the church was hardly enough to feed the two of them. He reluctantly gave up his church job and got another one as a gardener at a British house in Colombo.

Premawathi was hired as kitchen help and they lived there quite happily for the next seven months. When she was in her eight month of pregnancy, Disneris was told there was no room for a child in the servants' quarters.

Although he looked hard, no one wanted to hire a man with a very pregnant wife, no matter how hardworking he appeared to be, so they packed their one battered suitcase and went back to her village in Deniyaya.

He did odd jobs. She made cutlets.

Her now old and half-blind mother would wake up in the faint light of dawn and sit by the fire while Premawathi kneaded and mixed and fried.

The circle was complete.

When the other two children were born, Disneris left for Colombo to find work and finally got a job. On the fifth day of every month, a money order would arrive for Premawathi—Disneris's tiny salary minus his own living expenses. Even with the cutlet money, it wasn't enough. There were times when Premawathi wept herself to sleep, hungry and angry.

When Chandi was a year old, her well-connected uncle had come to Deniyaya to visit, and told her about the vacancy at Glencairn. Two months later, she left Deniyaya with her children, promising to visit and send money every month, neither of which she had been able to do so far.

While she desperately missed Disneris's gentle affection and good humor, she had come to realize that love and laughter could not feed her children. Still, she lived with the hope that one day their fortunes would change and they would be able to live together as a family once more.

Her masters at Glencairn were good to her. They looked after her and put up with her children and paid her salary on time. At least the children were well fed and educated.

She had learned from experience to put aside feelings of bitterness and unfairness at their lot, because they only interfered with her work and made her ill-tempered toward her children.

The nuns in the convent used to say God had a reason for everything He did. Premawathi sometimes wished she knew what it was.

CHANDI RAN DOWN the path feeling bad that he hadn't allowed his mother to ruffle his hair as she did every morning before he left for school. He didn't really like it but she did, so he let her. He called to his sisters to wait for him, but they were late so they only waved and kept going.

He wished he didn't have to go to school. He didn't like waking up early, washing in the freezing well water and putting on his school shorts and shirt, which both scratched from the rice-water starch his mother washed them in. She ironed them every night, and every morning he had to fight to get into them; they felt like paper bags that had been stuck together.

He didn't like his teacher. Leela and Rangi had a lady teacher who wore colorful saris and flowers in her hair. She was pretty, young and fun.

Chandi's teacher looked like Appuhamy, old and faded like the sepia photographs his mother kept inside her battered Bible.

He skipped along, by now having given up all hope of catching up. Ahead, he saw Rangi pause to pick some marigolds to give her teacher. The teacher would probably put them in a jam bottle on her table and be extra nice to Rangi for the rest of the day. Chandi couldn't even think of giving his teacher flowers.

He could see the low brown school building. There were just four classes, of different age groups. The school only taught children up to grade eight. After that, parents who wanted their children to continue their education sent them to the Nuwara Eliya Maha Vidyalaya in town. Not many did, though.

The girls stayed home to help their mothers and the boys went out to work. Education wasn't as important as survival.

When Chandi reached his classroom, he found that although the children were there, Teacher had not yet arrived. He spotted his friend Sunil sitting a few desks away. They usually sat next to each other, but Chandi was late and the best desks in the front were already taken.

A shadow fell across the doorless entrance, and the chatter ceased as a cadaverous gray-haired man in a rumpled national costume walked in, filling his sunken cheeks with air and blowing it out through pursed lips as was his habit. The children took care not to stand too close to him, because the air he blew out usually stank of last night's illicit kassippu.

He was simply called Teacher. They didn't know if he had ever had a real name.

He glanced indifferently over his young charges, who jumped up, put their hands together in the traditional form of greeting and chorused, “Ayubowan Teacher.” Teacher mumbled something back, picked up a piece of chalk and started writing on the blackboard.

It was the same every day. He'd write a sentence or a sum on the board, sit in his chair, place his hands together in a steeple, rest his chin on them and go to sleep.

Often, they wouldn't even know what the lesson was, not that they were really required to. All they were supposed to do was copy it down into their books and take it home.

No questions were asked, because no answers were given.

Teacher took all classes except Religious Education, which was taught by Father Ross, and English, which was taught by Mr. Aloysius, who had recently retired after twenty-five years as a secretary in the railway headquarters in Colombo.

When he was younger, Mr. Aloysius had been a voracious reader and had toyed briefly with the idea of becoming a writer, but harsh reality in the form of his large, domineering wife had fast laid that idea to rest, and he had sadly resigned himself to a life of shorthand and typewriting.

When he finally retired, he resolved to satisfy the yearning in his soul by helping to mold young minds.

He had not exactly had the first grade of the free church school in mind, but apparently they were the only ones to want his somewhat limited teaching skills.

If Chandi was indifferent to Teacher, he was intensely interested in Mr. Aloysius, who took time to explain the intricacies of English grammar, patiently correcting pronunciation, and even telling strange stories of English kings and battles.

Today, he sat patiently through Teacher's lessons, thinking about the dream he'd had. He didn't bother to copy the sum on the blackboard into his book because he had only two more pages left in it, and Teacher had given them the same sum yesterday.

Chandi had written it down then.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice Teacher leave and Mr. Aloysius arrive until the class sprang to its feet.

“Good morning, sir,” they chorused this time. English was the only language spoken in Mr. Aloysius's classroom.

Mr. Aloysius beamed. “Good morning, boys and girls,” he boomed. He had a loud, carrying voice like the siren at the factory.

He was dressed as always: black trousers shiny from too much ironing, a not-quite-white shirt and his usual red bow tie. When he had first come to teach, the children had found the bow tie fascinating. Like a red butterfly sitting at his neck, said some. Like a present all wrapped up, said others. Like a lady, said the young boys, sniggering behind their hands.

Chandi personally thought the bow tie looked very nice, and had long ago resolved to get himself one exactly like it when he went to England.

Mr. Aloysius looked at Teacher's squiggly writing on the board and sighed. In his opinion, Teacher had no business undertaking the task of molding young minds when his own still needed so much molding.

That was, if he didn't die before then, which given his present derelict state was a distinct possibility.

He picked up the duster and wiped the squiggles away, then, in his large rounded handwriting, which looked like perfectly formed curly snails creeping over the blackboard in a military formation, he wrote VERB.

“Who can tell me what a verb is?” he boomed, beaming at the twenty-something earnest faces facing him.

There was a pin-drop silence. No one even dared to cough in case Mr. Aloysius's hopeful gaze zoomed in on him. No one scratched his head or dug his nose in case Mr. Aloysius thought he was raising his hand with the answer. No one wanted to be wrong in front of the rest of the class.

Mr. Aloysius looked at the carefully blank faces and the rigidly clasped hands and sighed. He was aware of what was going through those heads.

“A verb is a
doing
verd,” he said. His Tamil accent became more pronounced with words that began with
w
. He looked at them in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.