The Hungry Ghosts (32 page)

I leaned towards her confidentially. “I am very glad you brought this up, aunty. Perhaps I could persuade Mili to come and study in Toronto. After all, since I am there, it might be an incentive.”

“Ah, son,” she pressed my arm, “if you could only persuade him. My husband and I would be eternally grateful.”

I assured her that I would speak to him the next time I had the chance.

Yet before I could follow up on my promise, the world around us suddenly fell apart.

18
 

T
HE FOLLOWING WEEK
, Mili was supposed to come for dinner one evening but did not show up. I waited on the verandah an hour, then telephoned his home. Mrs. Jayasinghe told me he had been held up at the office, but when I called there the line was constantly busy. I could not keep Rosalind waiting any longer, so I ate with a book propped in front of me. My gaze kept wandering towards the verandah, as if I expected Mili to materialize there.

The phone rang just as I was finishing my meal, and I rushed to get it.

“Shivan,” Mili said curtly, “something has happened. I’m not coming tonight.”

“What is it?” I heard raised voices in the background. “Where are you?”

“At the office. I have to be careful what I say.”

No matter how much I pressed him, he would not tell me any more. The phone, he said, could be tapped.

After he abruptly got off the line, I went to sit on the verandah. Despite what Mili had said, I was still hoping he would come over and tell me what had happened. Finally, Rosalind began to lock up the house, and I went to bed so she could too.

I lay with hands under my neck, staring at the fan’s shifting patterns on the ceiling. A few hours later I was woken up by a soft knocking at my window. Mili stood outside, his face obscured by the dark.

I let myself carefully out a side door, then we walked in silence along the driveway and stopped under the canopy of an araliya tree a good distance from the house. His eyes were jaundiced in the moonlight. He put his arms around me, his body shaking as I held him. Finally he pulled away and lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. After he had taken a few puffs, exhaling deeply, he told me what had happened.

That afternoon, Ranjini had gone home for lunch but not returned to the office. Finally Sri got worried and had one of the secretaries at Kantha call Ranjini’s house. Her mother answered and said she’d assumed Ranjini had eaten at work or gone out with her colleagues. A quiet dread gripped the office. Sriyani left in her car, taking the route Ranjini usually walked home to see if there’d been an accident along the way. Mili and Sri set out on his motorcycle along an alternate route. Someone called the hospitals to find out if she had been admitted.

Then just before the end of the work day, they received a call from a Catholic priest in Negombo. One of his parishioners, a fisherman, had found Ranjini’s body on the beach and brought her purse to him.

I stared at Mili, unable to comprehend his words for a moment. “Are you … are they sure it’s her?”

He nodded. “The priest found some business cards in her purse and contacted Kantha, suspecting she had been killed because of her work.”

After that, the police had moved rapidly. They claimed she was raped and strangled; they knew of her relationship with Sri. He was taken into custody and charged with killing his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy when he found out she was betrothed to her cousin.

“But it doesn’t make sense, Mili,” I whispered. “Why Ranjini?”

“Isn’t it obvious,” he said with irritation. “An example had to be made of someone, and she already had a record with the Special Task Force. Her death is another warning to all of us in human rights. To stop sniffing around.”

The shadows around us seemed to swell, as if a more potent darkness was pouring into them. Some rodent rustled in the bushes nearby.

“I must go,” Mili said.

“Please, you have to give up this work, you have to stop.”

He did not appear to hear me. As he started down the driveway I made to go after him. Not glancing back, he signalled me to stay where I was. Mili disappeared into the shadows and then, as if emerging out of water, hauled himself up the moonlit gate and, careful to avoid the spikes, dropped down the other side.

I barely slept that night and was exhausted by the morning. We were at breakfast when my grandmother peered at her newspaper and gave a small surprised
sound. “Look at this,” she said to Rosalind, who was placing a glass of thambili before her. “See what happens when you disobey your family.”

Rosalind glanced at the paper. “What does it say, Loku Nona?”

“Evidently, this girl was promised to her cousin but having an affair with some Tamil man. When the lover found out about the betrothal, he killed and violated her. Can you imagine? What a state of affairs!”

I picked up a piece of toast, then put it down.

“Aiyo, Loku Nona, what is wrong with the young today?”

My grandmother thrust the article at me. “See, Shivan, see what this girl has come to.”

Ranjini’s bruised and bloated face was like one of those lacquered exorcism masks, eyes bulging, mouth grotesquely misaligned because of a broken jaw, hair a snarl of river snakes.

“Well, she deserved it,” my grandmother declared. “This is what happens when you lose your virtue and carry on like a vesi.”

The bile rose swiftly in me. I pushed back my chair and ran from the table, hand over mouth. I fell to my knees in the bathroom, lifted up the toilet seat just in time and vomited into the commode.

When my stomach had stopped heaving, I sat back on my haunches, breathing harshly.

“Shivan, Puthey, did you eat something bad?” My grandmother hovered in the doorway, our ayah behind her. “Aiyo, I hope you’re not coming down with dysentery. Shall I get Rosalind to mix some lime juice and salt to settle your stomach?”

“Leave me alone,” I yelled at her, “just leave me the hell alone.” Feeling another wave of nausea rising up, I shoved the door shut in her astounded face and threw up again.

I had to go out that morning to see about our Nugegoda property.

The tenant, Miss Balasuriya, was a retired teacher who had taken the bungalow before the steep rise in inflation, and before Nugegoda became a desirable place to live. Because of rent control, my grandmother could not get market value. Whenever she visited, the two women had a row, my grandmother claiming she was being robbed blind, Miss Balasuriya accusing her landlady of not doing repairs in the hope she would be forced to leave. This,
unfortunately, was true. The roof leaked, the floor was pitted and needed a new coat of cement, the toilet was broken and a bucket of water had to be used to flush it. The night before my visit, a beam in the roof that was already cracked had given way. A shower of tiles and dirt had tumbled into the living room, leaving a gaping hole.

All my charm and diplomacy had not softened Miss Balasuriya, a brittle stick of a woman with a lean, sour face and eyes that were permanent slits of dissatisfaction. When I arrived, she rushed out onto the front stoop screaming, “Do you think I am an animal? Is this the Dehiwala zoo? How can a human being live here?”

Usually I would have given her a placating smile and said some soothing words, but today I pushed past and went into the living room. She followed, and as I stood gazing at the broken roof she continued her tirade, calling me a vulture, a hooligan, a slum landlord. Finally I rounded on her and yelled, “Why don’t you shut up, you dried old spinster?”

She was shocked, then rallied herself. “Ah-ah, but look at the way you speak to me. I am a teacher, I am respectable. Who are you? The grandson of a woman who is no better than a Mutwal fishwife.”

“If you don’t like it here, go and find another home.”

“That will never happen. You will have to drag me kicking and screaming from this house.”

“That can be arranged, you know.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Really? All I have to do is give the word to our man.”

“You think this is some banana republic, some Soviet dictatorship? That there is no rule of law in this country?”

“There isn’t,” I cried, my voice splintering, “there isn’t a rule of law.” I laughed. “You claim to be an educated woman, but have you no eyes to see what is going on? Do you think you are living in the old Sri Lanka? That country is no more. This is a banana republic, this is a dictatorship!”

She was gaping at me. I turned away embarrassed and walked towards the front door. Miss Balasuriya followed. As I went down the steps she asked in a tired voice, “So, will you have the problem fixed?”

“Yes,” I said without looking around. “I’ll send a roof-baas this afternoon.”

As the car took me home, we passed a school where the kindergarten was
getting out. Little children in frilly dresses and brightly coloured shorts, handkerchiefs pinned to shirt and blouse fronts, stood with their parents at the bus stop or crowded around an Alerics ice cream cart. In the playground, their delighted shrieks trailed them like ribbons as they chased each other.

The world out there seemed so untroubled, but how swiftly it had changed for me. And yet, remembering the 1983 riots, I was not surprised. Things
did
change swiftly in this country.

“Mahattaya, are you alright?”

The driver was frowning at me in the rear-view mirror. Without realizing it, I had been thumping my head against the window frame.

I found my grandmother and Rosalind in her bedroom going through saris in the almirah, picking out ones for the temple poor.

“Ah, did everything go well with that Balasuriya woman?” my grandmother asked, not looking at me. She was annoyed at my earlier rudeness.

“A roof beam has broken in the living room. There is a hole.”

“Good! Let’s see how long she lasts now, that blood-sucking leech.”

“Actually, I’m going to ask a baas to fix it.”

“Why would you do that? This is a perfect opportunity to get rid of that woman. She can’t last there now.”

“She’s not an animal, you know.” My anger was returning. “She has been a loyal tenant all these years and deserves to be treated better. After all, she is a lady, a teacher.”

My grandmother pressed her lips together. She was going to say something, but I continued, unable to stop myself. “And that girl who was killed, the one in the newspaper, her name is Ranjini. I knew her. And she’s not a vesi,” I added, seeing their shocked looks. “She was not killed by her boyfriend. She’s a human rights worker who had become a nuisance to the government.”

My grandmother took out a sari and passed it to Rosalind, her hands trembling. “She’s a friend of yours?”

“Actually, she’s a friend of Mili’s, a colleague.” Now I was wishing I had kept my mouth shut.

“But how can that be? The papers didn’t mention anything about human rights. Why would they print a lie?” She held on to the bedpost. “This woman,
Ranjini, you said she was a colleague of the Jayasinghe boy? But what is the son of Tudor Jayasinghe doing at this organization? Isn’t he just back from university abroad? Isn’t he working for his father?”

I played with the bunch of keys I was carrying. I’d kept Mili’s work from her so far, knowing she would disapprove. “He works for the human rights organization run by Sriyani Karunaratne.”

“Are you involved with this group?”

“No.”

“Good. Please, Puthey,” her voice cracked with worry, “don’t get involved with those people.”

“Those people are my friends,” I said quietly. “I liked Ranjini so much, and she liked me too. She used to call me Shivan-malli.”

My grandmother gave me a keen look, which I held until she dropped her gaze and returned to sorting saris, her hands still shaking.

“And I am involved, because I care a lot for Mili.”

She didn’t appear to hear me, frowning as if lost in thought.

Mili did not phone the next day, nor return my call. I decided to give him some time to himself and hoped that he would miss me. A part of me was relieved at this break. I was frightened to face him, already sensing what this murder had done to our happiness.

In the days that followed, the government-controlled newspapers reported on Ranjini’s funeral. There was a photograph of her mother, hair let loose to signify her grief, shrieking her anguish to the skies as other weeping women kept her from collapsing. There was also a photograph of the intended bridegroom standing soberly by the grave.

My grandmother was observing me closely, and I avoided being alone with her. Rosalind had stopped putting out an extra place setting at dinner, on her instructions I was sure.

I had nothing to do with my evenings now but sit on the verandah reading a novel. My grandmother gave up going to bed early, so great was her worry. She took to sitting at the other end of the verandah with Rosalind. The ayah massaged her mistress’s feet and they talked about temple affairs—the drunkenness of the podi hamuduruwo, the pettiness and in-fighting on the various committees. Often I would find my eyes had drifted to the front gate and I
was staring broodingly at it. Then I would catch myself and return to my book, aware the women had fallen silent and were watching me.