Suncatcher

by Romesh Gunesekera

  ‘Okay, okay.’ The big boy lifted his arms. ‘Have the rolypoly. Who cares?’

  The gang edged away.

  Jay told the boy still huddled by the wall: ‘Get dressed, men.’

  The boy pulled up his shorts and fastened the long tongue on the waistband, struggling with the buttonhole.

  ‘You have a bike?’ Jay asked.

  ‘In the shed.’

  ‘I’ll ride with you up to the roundabout, so they don’t jump you.’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’ The boy rocked back on his feet.

  I’d seen him looking lost in the playground during interval but never made any move to speak to him, thinking he must be one of those bussed in from the outer districts who did not speak English, and that we would have nothing in common. Until that day I had never spoken to any boy from the Tamil class. I still don’t know whether that was an unintended consequence, or part of a deliberate policy of separation that would one day create a tragic gulf in our lives.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I tried to reassure him. ‘Jay saved you.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘What’s going on, Kairo?’ my mother asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Some boys bullying the kid,’ Jay told her. ‘It’s all right now.’

  ‘Jay sent them packing. This is Jay, my friend. I told you about him, Ma.’

  She studied the catapult in his hand. ‘Well, you boys look like you could do with an ice cream?’

  A Knickerbocker Glory sounded all wrong after what had happened, so I asked for a float instead. Strawberry. The other two asked for the same. We waited at the table in silence, unsure; the fountain in the garden showered sporadic silver arcs into the blue water of the paddling pool. My mother rummaged in her round handbag and pulled out a long, thin, black address book with a tiny gold-coloured pencil attached to the side. She turned to an empty page at the back and asked the boy his name.

  ‘Channa.’ He hesitated. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Who were those boys?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Have they bullied you before? Are they from your school?’

  Channa’s face tightened. ‘They just came. I was only putting my bike there.’

  ‘I’ve seen them in the upper school, Auntie,’ Jay said. ‘But they won’t bother him again.’

  ‘If they are from the school, they should be reported.’

  ‘No. Please don’t.’

  ‘Why not? Shouldn’t they be punished?’

  The ice creams came, and a lime soda for my mother. Jay leant forwards. ‘What he means is that if you report them, then he’s marked as trouble. Even if it wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘Especially boys like him,’ he added.

  She considered Jay, and wavered. ‘So, what do you think we should do?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll watch out for him. Don’t worry, Auntie.’

  My mother tapped the table with her pencil, assessing the options. ‘You should tell your parents,’ she said to Channa. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘My father is Ronny Kanagaratnam, Auntie.’

  ‘Oh, our master dancer? Mr Cha-cha-cha?’ She inclined her head to mask a smile, charmed by the connection and an echo of Oye Como Va.

  ‘He’s a journalist.’

  ‘I know.’ She tore out a page from her book and scribbled on it. ‘This is my phone number. Tell him he can talk to me about it. Kairo, you finish your ice cream, I need to go now.’

  ‘I’ll get a ride back with Jay.’

  ‘Yes, Auntie. Can go double on my bike.’

  ‘Before it gets dark then. And don’t go anywhere near those scallywags.’

  After she left, Jay let his breath out. ‘No nonsense, no, your mater?’

  ‘She doesn’t like to waste time.’

  Outside, the trees began to fill with birds; the banyan on the other side of the road seemed to grow larger to catch the stragglers lost in the sky.

  Channa drained the last of his float. ‘I’ll go now.’

  ‘Where d’you live?’ I asked.

  ‘Other side of Beira Lake.’

  ‘Stick to the main road,’ Jay said. ‘Those fellows are scaredy-cats but if they see you alone they might try something funny again.’

  ‘They won’t catch me.’

  After Channa had gone, I continued to chew the paper straw of the float, flattening it, rendering it useless. Sweetness all sucked out, the flavour had turned papery.

  ‘Some people are screwed up,’ Jay said. ‘They like to crush anyone who isn’t as strong as them.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘They get a kick out of it. Gives them power.’

  When Jay said it, I saw how those boys pulling Channa’s shorts down, the teachers who caned children any chance they got, Wolfman at the junction, Siripala on a bad day, all shared an anger that gnawed the deepest bones of their being.

  ‘What can you do?’ The last time I had punched Siripala back, it had only spurred another round and he had thumped me even harder than the first time.

  ‘You’ve got to be smarter than them, that’s all.’

  In the days that followed, my father grumbled at everything from the ants in the biscuit tin to the cartoons in the daily paper. I was worried he had gone into a tailspin because my mother had confessed she’d met Jay, but then his friend Abey dropped in and my father was able to give full vent.

  ‘A bloody abomination. Have you seen the newspaper, Abey? It’s not a parliament, it’s a bloody madhouse. Parity of language for Sinhala and Tamil was one of the foundation stones of our party. It goes back to the beginning. That brought everyone, whatever their tune – Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims – together under a socialist banner. Equal status, officially, for both languages.’

  ‘They’ll do that in the North and East at the local level.’ Abey stuck a finger in his ear to mitigate the next blast.

  ‘Why the hell in two regions only? Is the plan to segregate them now?’ My father flung an arm out, emulating an orator on the steps of Caesar’s Forum, but the main repercussion was that he knocked the shade off the standard lamp. Luckily, I was there to catch it. He was chuffed. ‘Nice catch, son.’

  Abey acknowledged my promise as a cricketer too. ‘Good at gully, you’ll be, no?’

  ‘We must rise above communalism, not wallow in it like bloody buffaloes. Look at America: despite everything, at least now they have a Civil Rights Act. But while LBJ and Dr King shake hands, what do we do? Pell-mell in the opposite direction. I tell you, at this rate we are heading for a complete societal breakdown.’ My father took the lampshade from me and carefully placed it back on the metal holder. ‘Sinhala socialism, limited socialism, is a nonsense. There should be no “national”, except in “international”, Abey. Not in today’s world.’

  I took note, but found a greater allure in Jay’s much simpler axiom: no life without wildlife.

  To reinforce the floor of the aviary, we dug out a shallow tray the length and width of the cage and laid the wire mesh Cornelius had provided, covering it with three inches of earth. Floor and sides secure, we added the roof: pitched corrugated metal at the back and mesh for the front slope.

  ‘Truly capacious, huh?’ Jay laughed. ‘Now they need things to do: amusements, playthings, or they’ll go off their heads.’

  ‘Birds don’t go crazy.’

  ‘Oh, yes they do. Any creature can go crazy if it feels trapped. It happens when you have a brain, dodo.’

  ‘Rubber rings are not going to stop anyone from going crazy.’

  ‘Why not? A few rings, some swinging bars, a couple of whalebones.’

  ‘You don’t have whales. The biggest fish you have is that blue gourami.’

  ‘Whalebone is stuff you pick up on the beach. Like clam shells. Birds like to sharpen their beaks on it. You are the book owl, no?’

  ‘Driftwood?’

  ‘For the finishing touch we need a flowering something and a bush with lots of twigs.�
�� He found a dwarf mulberry plant and a forgotten peachy hibiscus on the other side of the garden and moved them in.

  By Sunday afternoon, when I returned, the job was complete. He had even made a pond inside, using a broken butler’s sink which he had half buried in a corner. The sliding door had a hasp fitted.

  ‘Who’s going to be first in?’

  ‘Sunbeam.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  ‘Then the budgies, then bee-eaters and then parakeets.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘And more. I want to get some walkers also. And maybe a couple of Java sparrows.’

  ‘Won’t they fight? All those different types of birds. They can’t all live in the same place, can they?’

  ‘They’ll learn. They live in the same world, don’t they? Lovebirds might teach them something.’

  ‘You said when trapped they go crazy.’

  Jay picked up a stick and drew a square on the ground.

  ‘If they feel trapped and crowded and there’s not enough food, then there’ll be trouble. But if there is enough space, and they have their basics needs met, then they can co-exist.’ He was beginning to sound like my father. ‘It doesn’t matter if they are different species. You just have to make them feel safe.’

  ‘But some birds hurt others. Peck them. Smash their eggs. Animals can be mean. Just like some people are nasty, no?’

  Jay’s face lengthened. The beads of moisture along his upper lip touched each other and broke into rivulets. ‘If some do go like that, then we have to get rid of them: help natural selection make the right choice.’

  Sunbeam was easy to carry in his cage but the budgies had to be gathered, one by one, and put in a large cardboard box to be transported. Jay had cut tiny breathing holes in the lid and a bigger hole in the centre of the box with a sock – toe-end cut off – fixed to it to make a floppy tunnel. He slowly collected each bird and gently transferred it through the sock into the box, making a low whistling sound. They waited for him hypnotised – all twenty-two of them. The last one he gathered was a dark bird with blueblack feathers. He kept that one out in his fist and stroked its head, holding it in such a way that it couldn’t get its beak on him. ‘We’ll let this one see where he is going. He’ll be chief of the tribe.’

  He picked up the sunbird cage with his free hand and asked me to bring the box.

  At the new enclosure he said, ‘Leave the box closed, by the door, and take the cage in. Let Sunbeam out first.’

  ‘Me?’ A sharp needle picked holes in my back and around my knees.

  ‘Go on.’

  Jay murmured softly to the budgie in his hand while I lowered the box and took the birdcage in.

  ‘Hang it on the pole and open the wire door. Then stand back. He’ll come out when he’s ready.’

  ‘The ones in the box must be so scared.’

  ‘Let Sunbeam get settled. He’s got to feel this is his place.’

  ‘But it isn’t just his, is it?’ I could not understand the exhilaration I felt. Was it power over liberty? Or the fact that Jay had offered me this inauguration?

  ‘For the next few minutes he can believe it is his and that’s all that’ll matter.’

  I stepped into the enclosure. The new world. Pristine. Protected. Cared for. Fixed Sunbeam’s cage on the pole as Jay had instructed; lifted the pin on the door and nudged it open. The bird chirped.

  Jay cooed back while still stroking the head of the budgie in his hand. A small smile lifted a corner of his mouth until he tightened his lip and stopped it.

  Then the sunbird flew out, straight for the hibiscus at the far end of the enclosure.

  ‘Attaboy,’ Jay sank down. ‘Watch him. See how he is measuring up the place? Give him a couple of minutes and then we’ll let this one in.’

  The bird in his hand cocked its smooth, priestly head. Apart from the rustling in the box, no other sound disturbed the moment. Then Sunbeam sang out: a sharp high-tailed call.

  ‘Okay. Now, let’s get the others in.’

  Jay stepped into the aviary and released the blue-black budgie from his hand. It fluttered around, almost drowning in the vast free space. Jay made a low, soothing whistling sound again until the bird finally found a perch.

  ‘Bring in the box.’

  I slid the door open just enough to pull the box in. The whole thing was rocking me with contradictory emotions, the earlier exhilaration punctured by spikes of guilt. I could see this was not freedom for the birds; merely the exchange of one cage for a bigger one. The fundamental nature of their lives had not changed. I could see from Jay’s face that he did not share any such doubts; instead, it glowed. I put down the box and pulled open the flaps: all the budgies were huddled together.

  Jay jerked his head at the door. We both slipped out and he slid the door shut.

  ‘They need time. The box would have been scary, like sudden night. And now they have another day. A gift but a shock, no? That one I had in my hand saw there was no eclipse; he’ll get them all adjusted. The light will make them feel safe.’

  Jay was right. The lone budgie took off, making thin, indistinct sounds, and flew above the box in circles until his flight, lassoing the others, raised them, first one by one, and then the whole bunch in a whirl of colour creating a crescendo that seemed to envelop not only the cage but the whole of Casa Lihiniya and beyond.

  By the time the garden darkened and the curving whoops and deep cries of wild birds drowned the sound of those in the aviary, we had dismantled the obsolete budgie cage up on the balcony – one of the first Jay had ever built – and made space for another fish tank.

  Birds down there, fish up here. In Jay’s world, you could pin the sun to a wall, hang the moon from the ceiling. You could make the world a safer place. Nothing was impossible.

  ‘Wanna stay over tonight? Keep watch?’

  I had not dared to hope before and now struggled to find the right balance. ‘I’d have to ask my parents.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Dunno.’ I hadn’t told him about the row with them after the episode with the jeep.

  ‘Call your mother. She’ll be fine about it, I’m sure.’

  After the Channa incident, my mother said that in her opinion Jay was a good friend to have, but for my father, overnighting at the Alavises’ might be close to insurrection. From my mystery books I knew that in England and America kids stayed over at their friends’ houses all the time, but I had never stayed overnight at someone else’s house, except when we visited my father’s lunatic fringe, as mother called them, on the coast near Beruwela.

  Jay showed me the phone downstairs and I picked up the handset, careful not to disturb the arrangement of knick-knacks – a three-inch wooden Pinocchio and a litter of tiny glass dachshunds – on the small table. With every number I dialled I felt I was moving further and further from home, a river winding away from its source. Nothing to hold me back, only the question of how far I could go and the vastness of the ocean. No hint of the danger ahead.

  ‘What?’ My mother seemed to sense another irreversible change in the family constellation.

  I said I was with Jay and would like to stay the night because we had to protect his birds.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At his house. Just off Jawatte Road. Jay, you know, from Fountain Café.’

  There was a pause as more ground shifted. She asked to speak to Jay’s mother. I asked Jay.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’ He shouted for his mother, ‘Telephone.’

  Sonya appeared, shimmering, in a close-fitting maroon dress.

  ‘Who is it, darling? Not that awful Mahinda, I hope.’ She picked out a pair of tweezers from a pearly plastic purse. ‘He’s such a boomerang: every time you chuck him out, he comes back keener than ever.’

  ‘Kairo’s mother. He’s gonna stay over.’

  Her face relaxed. ‘How lovely. For how long?’

  ‘Just tonight. His mother is asking if it is okay.’

  S
he took the telephone and spoke into it as if she was on film, the slender fingers of her other hand playing with the tweezers, wrist on hip.

  ‘Why, of course he can. It would be lovely for the two of them.’ She listened lazily as my mother must have gone through my nightly routine and then ended with a promise to meet up one of these days. She put the clunky handset down airily. ‘There. All done. She was worried your sweetie won’t be able to brush his teeth, but we have plenty of spare toothbrushes, don’t we, darling?’

  ‘I’ll find one.’

  ‘If not, give him one of my cotton pads. He can use his finger like that jungle boy. Now, you ask Iris to make you boys a nice omelette for dinner. I’m going out to the Mascarilla. I don’t know what that father of yours is up to tonight but better stay out of his way. His whiskers have gone droopy and he is limping about like Dracula with a toothache.’ Her lipstick glistened in the soft light of the table lamp as she leant towards me. ‘Now, remember to brush those sweet teeth of yours and don’t let our naughty Jay take you gallivanting over the rooftops instead.’ Then she left, humming Buona Sera lightly to herself, tweezers clicking like tiny castanets in the scented air.

  I asked Jay: ‘Gallivanting over rooftops?’

  ‘I go up to look at the stars. She thinks I’ll fall off one day, but she’s the one who goes gallivanting. Pater’s gonna be furious.’

  ‘Why? Can’t he go to the Mascarilla?’

  ‘You’re a funny fellow.’

  No, I wanted to say. More a bundle of nerves. Afraid to reveal myself. Afraid that the mask I wore could not be peeled off and that therefore I would live my whole life quarantined with my inner core forever knotted. No funnier than a telephone cable.

  Iris was not pleased when Jay asked her to make two omelettes.

  ‘You can’t live on omelette, baba. Growing boys must eat rice. Chicken. Vegetables.’

  ‘Make chicken then, but you’ll have to catch one. We never have anything to eat in this house but eggs.’

  ‘Tell your Amma to put on the order next time. They can bring chicken with her wine any day you like.’

  ‘You are the cook. You tell her what you need.’

  ‘I don’t need anything if in this madhouse people only eat omelette. Any fool can break an egg.’