When my mother needed to ‘get ready’, it meant she had to dab some powder on her face and pin back her hair. Possibly change out of her beige Kundanmals slacks into a chiffon or georgette sari, depending on whom she was going to meet. I could not imagine what Jay’s mother could do to get more ready than she was, even to woo Hollywood.
‘Why?’ I didn’t mean to be so bold.
‘We’ll have another go next time you come.’ In her lips I could detect some amusement, but her firm jawline quickly stopped the drift. She played a light glissando. ‘For today, just remember the red strings are your anchor lines.’ She pronounced the last two words with difficulty, slowly untangling them in her mouth. Then she stretched up on tiptoe as if she had an irrepressible urge to dance. Pulling a white cotton dustcover over the harp, she glided to the open-stepped ultra-modern staircase. A moment later, she floated up and away, a freed note herself seeking a secret boon I had yet to divine.
Jay, enthroned on a stool inside the aviary, had budgies chirping on his shoulders and knees. On a towel wrapped around his right hand, a large grey parrot balanced, regally rolling its head at him.
I stuck my nearly long fingers into the tiny hexagonal spaces of the mesh. ‘Whatcha doing?’
‘Making friends,’ Jay whispered, lips tight.
‘That’s a massive parrot.’
‘Comes from Kenya via the pet shop near the eye hospital.’
His mother and her harp faded in the echo of Gerry’s injury.
The parrot squawked out a greeting. ‘Hail-lo, Jomo.’
‘He can really talk? I thought that was just in books.’
‘He talks.’
‘Jomo,’ the parrot repeated.
Jay stroked the scalloped grey feathers. The bird lifted its wings and spread them the way my father sometimes rolled his shoulders at the dining table.
‘What’s his name? He should have a name.’
‘Sinbad,’ Jay replied, quick as a flash. ‘Traveller, storyteller and ship’s mate.’
The parrot mimicked him, breaking the name into two: ‘Sin-bad.’
Jay eased the parrot off his arm onto a wooden stand and then slipped out of the enclosure. ‘He’s going to be a good friend.’ The tone of his voice was as much of a blow as the suggestion. ‘Their life span is much the same as ours. And when they mate, it’s for life.’
Up in the sky, I saw the bats had started out in formation. I wanted to tell Jay, but hesitated; things had moved on.
‘Tomorrow I’m going to see a bird breeder,’ Jay added. ‘Wanna come?’
‘To get a mate for him?’
‘To get some info. I don’t even know if he’s really a cock. Could be a hen.’
‘You can’t tell?’
‘It’s not like boy and girl. You can’t just unzip and look.’
‘He must be a he.’
‘Anyway, I’m going in the morning to see one of Channa’s older cousins, an expert. If you wanna come, be here around eleven. Okay?’
‘Channa’s been here already?’ This time the arrow entered my chest and nicked my heart; it hurt even more than the stab I felt every time a red-eyed koha called, whooping like Gerry.
At home my father, obscured by a screen of newsprint, flicked a finger at an item in the international section. ‘I see your Beatles have made a film.’
The idea that popular music had become news both irritated and intrigued him, especially in a world so close to Armageddon, but he must have hoped it might provide a lure.
‘What’s the use? It won’t be at the Majestic for ages. Everything comes here two years after everywhere else in the world.’
He seized the opportunity. ‘You see, son, this is the problem of the economic relationship we have with the capitalist world.’
‘England?’
‘Yes. The Labour party might get in by a whisker at the next election there, in England, but Harold Wilson’s economic programme will not change that much: it is not socialism. It is up to us in the underdeveloped world – the deliberately underdeveloped world – to fight for justice everywhere, including in poor England.’ He folded his newspaper, discreetly hiding the race sheet inside, as he zigzagged from one bee in his bonnet to another.
A car honked outside, alarming the house sparrows bickering in the gutters.
My mother hurried in with a plastic folio case under her arm and clattered up to her room. My father swiftly shoved his betting slips and pencil into the drawer of the bureau and picked up the Ceylon Radio Times.
When she popped back, she announced grimly, ‘The school problem is going to get a lot worse.’
‘Surely, it can’t. Not worse.’
‘Government put out a new plan today.’ Her voice faded. ‘It’s shambolic.’
He chose a mild rebuke over commiseration: ‘Why doesn’t your radio have a proper political debate on air, instead of Poetry for Pleasure every week.’
She did not rise to it; instead, she unveiled her own plan.
‘So, I’ve arranged for a new tuition master for Kairo.’
‘Another one? What on earth for?’
‘The child needs an education, Clarence. That useless fellow you found never turns up. Have you not noticed?’
I had heard her conspiring with her custard-toting friends about how to harness the scarily efficient breed of tutors crawling out of the woodwork as the school system creaked with the weight of progressive reform.
‘There you are, then,’ my father said to me with noticeable relief. ‘Your mother has you sorted.’
‘I’m fine anyway.’
‘Have you even looked at those schoolbooks you got the other day?’
‘Which books?’
‘The Sinhala readers. You really need to get up to speed.’
‘Okay.’ Meaning I knew I needed to, but also, like my father, giving a general positive note that might suggest I had complied without quite fibbing.
‘You start tuition next week with the new tuition master. This one will help you with your Sinhala and your mathematics.’
‘What about geography?’ My father asked. ‘History?’
‘Maybe you should get some tuition too, Clarence. They won’t take excuses forever, you know. All government servants have to pass the national language proficiency test.’
‘Thaththa is always doing maths. Calculating odds, no?’
‘Never mind all that. The point is you too will need to improve your Sinhala, even if your father thinks he can dodge it. You must do well next term in the class tests, or it will be a real mess. You are a big boy now. Time to get serious.’
The afternoon sun splintered in the trees as I cycled down the middle of traffic-free Jawatte Road, side by side with Jay.
‘Your uncle said land reform is what will happen.’ I did not know then what the phrase meant, except that it involved redistributing things with great difficulty and a reconciliation of disparities. ‘My father says it’s like the panacea.’
We were on our way to see Elvin.
This time we strolled in through the front gates and up the long drive with borders of dishevelled hedges and pale, lanky temple trees, circling the large garden sunk in the middle to form a shallow, bare, brown soup bowl. Only the Austin Healey, gleaming under the porch, seemed cherished and poised. I let my hand brush the creamy curved bonnet and absorb some of the sheen from the rubbed wax as we climbed the steps to the long veranda.
Jay led us through an ornate doorway into a vast room of swaddled furniture and muffled chandeliers.
‘Does he live all alone here?’ In Bolshevik Russia a family would be billeted in every corner, easing conscience and muting extravagance.
‘He’s single, but you’ll find all sorts of cadgers dozing about. Hangers-on. He’s a soft touch.’
We cut through to the east wing veranda. Elvin, bent over a wooden table with his back to us, was crooning a Sinatra song to himself.
‘Uncle,’ Jay called out. ‘What’s you doing?’
He did not seem
surprised to hear Jay. ‘Studying, my boy. Studying. That is what you should be doing as well, and your young friend, instead of shooting the staff with bloody arrows.’ A red puddle of tangled fur at his feet erupted and rushed at Jay.
‘But no school, Uncle. It’s the holidays for the rest of the month.’ He gave Garibaldi, twisting and wagging around his legs, a fond slap.
‘With all these bloody socialist strikes, they may never open again.’ He examined me over the tops of his thin hornrimmed spectacles.
‘I have a tuition master,’ I blurted out. ‘For mathematics and Sinhala, and a science book to study, so I’ll be ready for the class tests.’
‘My word, you’re thinking ahead, boy. You tell Tarzan here about the virtues of civilisation. Can’t live in the trees forever, can you? This tutor of yours, good fellow?’
‘Don’t know. Only next week, he’ll come.’
Elvin chuckled. ‘I like it. You reserve your judgement until you see the arse, right?’
‘My father got me a tutor once,’ Jay caught the dog by his snout and massaged his teeth. ‘An idiot. I chased him off.’
‘Shot the fellow in the backside, did you?’
‘That was an accident, Uncle. Anyway, Gerry is always getting himself pipped. Just bounces back.’
‘Not so bouncy this time. Apparently, he still can’t see straight.’
Another hidden layer of conscience prickled. ‘He’s not going to go blind, is he?’
‘His other eye is fine.’
I had stopped believing in God – but not completely. I still found myself praying for sweet dreams and ice cream, and feared at being so selfish. The verse from Proverbs hovered over me.
Jay peered at the paper laid out on the table. ‘Is this your chicken shed, Uncle?’
‘I need a mathematics wizard.’ Elvin pointed a schoolmasterly finger at me. ‘Some serious calculations are required. You see, the recommended size is forty-one foot by four hundred and ninety-three. But that is for America where they can process twenty-five thousand chickens at a go. Here, a mere two thousand will be our target.’
‘Two thousand chickens?’ Jay exploded. ‘You said five hundred last time. Now you want my father to have two thousand chickens in our garden?’
‘No, just five hundred on your site. We have plans for another three locations dotted around in city farms for the initial phase. Two thousand birds total in due course. We intend to supply the top-notch restaurants from the Capri to Mount Lavinia as well as the oven-ready housewife, as it were.’
‘You’ll have them here by the stables also?’
Elvin blinked. ‘Here?’
‘You have the biggest garden in town.’
‘Ah, yes. We’ll have the breeding unit here.’
‘How many birds?’
‘Obviously not as many as in the coops – a hen lays more than one egg, no? – but it will be the central hub with incubators and a nursery for the chicks. Also have to garage a small fleet of vehicles and things of that sort.’
‘Vehicles?’
A small gathering of cross-hatches tugged an eyelid into a sly wink. ‘It’s an elaborate business. The logistics, the buildings, the space. A lot of calculations for our young friend here.’
‘Can’t do x and y, or anything like that.’
‘Don’t undervalue yourself, boy. Modesty is only becoming in a genius.’
Jay flicked through a report on a poultry farming conference in Australia, rust-marked by the staples which had been fastened in three places on the side. ‘What about the slaughtering? Who’ll do that?’
‘Good point, Jay. I’ve asked Sulaiman to look into that. You see, you must have intermediaries and partners. That’s the way business works. You understand, Jay, don’t you? You should. Business is in our blood. This government does not comprehend the real world the way we do.’
‘So, you are helping the government?’
‘For mutual benefit.’ Mischief puckered Elvin’s generous lips. ‘You see, I discovered that as a new commercial enterprise in this field – integral to the government’s modernising programme – we will be allowed to import new vehicles.’
‘Is this whole thing just to get an import permit for another car?’
‘Of course not. I’ve already got a new one coming. I’ve ordered one of those Lotus kits nobody knows how to stop because it is a car you make yourself.’ Elvin stretched out his hands in parallel lines to demonstrate straight-talking seriousness and engineering gravitas. ‘We all deserve decent, nutritional, modern food. And my friend, Wilbur, will provide it. If we can improve the average age of the vehicles going down Galle Road, by the by, what’s the damn harm in that? Can’t leave it just for those ministers to bring in their braggy, bloody Benzes only.’
Jay wasn’t listening. I could see he was figuring out something more important.
‘Uncle, never mind the cars, it’s the land you should be worrying about. Have you not seen the signs?’
‘What signs? You sound like that halfwit Cassandra on Bullers Road spouting doom and gloom like there will be no tomorrow.’
‘Those weird signs popping up in all the empty areas, like near that abandoned golf course and even in front of Kairo’s house, saying trespassers will be prosecuted.’
It was news to me. I didn’t like the idea that he’d passed by without telling me, whether with the girl or not.
‘Well, if it is private property that is perfectly understandable.’
‘Uncle, you gamble, no?’
‘A flutter now and then. On the Grand National for sure. Sometimes the Derby. Some of us still have a soft spot for England.’ Elvin’s stern lips relaxed knowingly. ‘So, what? You are talking in riddles, as usual. Think logically, Jay. And then, once thunk, speak sensibly.’
‘What if I told you some gangsters plan to turn Colombo into Las Vegas?’
‘Flashy Cadillacs and leggy girls?’
I made a mental note to read the article on Las Vegas, the new boom town, that I had seen in my father’s LIFE magazine.
‘Uncle, imagine awful casino joints all over town like they are building in the middle of the racecourse.’
‘Your young friend here assured us that it is a socialist planetarium they are building there. Solemnly scientific, not hedonistic.’
‘Someone is after every plot of unbuilt land.’
‘We must reach for the stars, my boy. You hear that Arthur C. Clarke programme on the radio? Fascinating. Gambol, not gamble, is the name of the game.’ He consulted his watch. ‘I reckon it is about time for a little drinky-poo. A Las Vegas sundowner?’
‘Be serious, Uncle. Soon there will be nowhere in Colombo for the wildlife, Uncle. What’ll happen then?’
‘We’ll have a different kind of wild life?’ He smoothed the papery crinkles around his mouth.
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Tut, tut. You are becoming rather prudish, my boy, at an age when most young lads become rather more lascivious. What does our young Adonis say?’
‘Kairo.’ Growing firm, resolved, I reminded Elvin.
‘Ah, yes. Kairo. Well?’ Elvin pushed back his chair and stretched out, cracking a joint or two magnanimously.
Jay launched in, breathless: ‘You’ve got to move fast. It’s a competition for land, no? You need more than our garden. Get Pater to buy the next-door plot for a future extension. And you, Uncle, buy every other wasteland in the neighbourhood so that the Las Vegas gang can’t grab them. Put broilers in one or two and keep the rest natural for jungle fowl.’
‘Jungle fowl? What on earth for?’
‘For the future. Remember our watchword, “There’ll be no life without wildlife,” Uncle.’
Elvin slipped off his large leather loafers and rubbed his feet together. They were pale and sensitive, rarely used unprotected. ‘And where’s the money, dear boy, for this sudden land grab of yours?’
‘You are rich, no, Uncle?’
‘Rich in character, my boy, but short
of cash. It doesn’t grow on trees.’
‘But it does, Uncle. Coconuts, no? Sulaiman probably nicks half the crop for himself.’
‘Ouch.’ Elvin winced, feigning a hit. ‘I suppose he may be a bit of a thief, but he is a reliable thief. And now he’ll need all the money he can pilfer for that liability of a son – if the bugger really goes half blind. You are also forgetting what the die-hard leftists in charge of this country covet. Owning more land is not sensible in an age of envy, son.’
‘Why?’
‘Soon, they’ll be confiscating private property that exceeds some arbitrary level – no doubt to suit the land minister’s own prime holdings. Luckily, Wilbur’s scheme will circumvent that. You see, son, the thing is to focus on the point of owning the land. The smart move is to exchange it for something less conspicuous. An invisible asset that can generate a profit.’
‘Chicken sheds are hardly invisible.’
‘You have not grasped the nature of the enterprise, Jay. You see, we will not own the sheds, nor indeed the land. The company will take over the lot and build the sheds and do all the stuff to get the thing going with pukka ideological credentials. Manage the whole damn thing as a sort of hybrid cooperative and get all the pesky licences. Your father merely has to exchange a slice of his utterly untended garden for a percentage of thoroughly managed shares – the same as I will.’
‘Pukka what?’
‘It is a tad complicated but, as I told your father, shareholding is the trick. If you study Marx properly, you’ll see he was all for it. There will be no political impediment if the wording is right. Even our cabinet ministers are doing it: look at that textile mill everyone is talking about. Safe shareholdings producing dividends. In our case, chicks and eggs galore until the Day of Judgement – when, by the way, the judge will be an uncle or a nephew of someone we know anyway.’
‘But why does your Wilbur need you? Why doesn’t his company just go buy some land in Kirillapone or somewhere, for next to nothing? He doesn’t need you – or my father.’
‘As a matter of fact, he was on the verge of doing precisely that, but I spotted an opportunity to join in the bonanza. I must say I made rather a good case; convinced him of the economics of proximity – the value of being close to the dining tables that matter. The marketing angle was the clincher: if the fowl come from the best addresses in town, who could resist the snob appeal? It would be like ordering your capons from Kensington Palace.’ He sniffed the air for the aroma of a classy roast, or the sundowner that had not yet appeared. ‘You see, son, you must take advantage of your advantages, otherwise some other blaggard is bound to do it from under your feet. Having a few hectares to spare is no insurance these days. The future will belong to the entrepreneur. We must get your daddy-o on board.’
Suncatcher Page 15
