The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  “I would be honoured if you both came into my home and had a cup of tea. My wife and daughters would be delighted.”

  My grandmother’s silence was eloquent. She opened her purse, drew out a piece of paper as if it were soiled and handed it to him. “Something I need taken care of.”

  “You don’t have to say another word, nona.”

  My grandmother counted out a number of fifty-rupee bills and handed the notes to him with the prim smile of a society hostess proffering refreshments. “I gave you a little extra for doing it so promptly. After all,” she smiled coquettishly, “you’re becoming a big mudalali and everything. Soon I won’t be able to afford you.”

  He blushed as he counted the money, his lips moving as he flipped through the notes. When he was done, he gave her a boyish grin. “Thank you, nona.”

  I had been observing their interaction and the exchange of money, unsure what it was all about. As the car pulled away, my grandmother, aware of my unasked questions, said, “Chandralal is a good man. He works hard to better himself, unlike a lot of our people, who sit in the shade of trees and hope rice will fall from heaven. Yes-yes, he is a good man. Always remember that, Puthey. You can depend on Chandralal. He will always be ready to help you.”

  And just from the way she said this, I finally understood. Our eyes met. My grandmother sighed, fiddled around in her purse, drew out a scented handkerchief and mopped her face. “This heat, when will it let up? Is the monsoon never to arrive?”

  I leaned back against the leather seat, the image of Siriyawathy with me, her bewildered eyes in their deep sockets, her son’s distended belly. Then there was Chandralal, with that knife scar on his face.

  And yet I was not truly surprised at what my grandmother had just set in motion. For by now I knew her well, and this latest action of hers, though more extreme, was like others I had witnessed in the past.

  The next day, after I had returned from school and eaten lunch, my grandmother invited me to come out again with her. I did not want to go, but I could not resist her.

  When we arrived at the Pettah property, Chandralal was waiting astride his scooter, back erect, arms extended to clutch the handlebars as if he were riding a horse. Clustered around him were three men in sarongs, their naked upper bodies brawny and matted with hair, their eyes drug-reddened. As my grandmother got out of the car, Chandralal grinned and saluted, index finger tipping the middle of his forehead. He hopped off his motorcycle and with a bowing gesture ushered us towards the house, grinning like a boy at a cricket match. Furniture was piled in one corner of the verandah, the cracked-open arms and legs revealing the whiteness of the wood under the dark stain, like bone jutting through flesh. The door had been kicked in, a starburst of splinters around the lock. Chandralal had secured it again with a latch and a large padlock. He presented the key to my grandmother gravely.

  The house was bare, yet there were remnants of the life that had been lived here, and as we went from room to room, my grandmother complaining about all the supposed damage Siriyawathy and her family had done, I noticed a few broken toys that had belonged to the son, a woman’s comb lying on the bathroom sink, its middle teeth missing. Later I saw, on the living room floor, the shattered photograph of a man who must have been Siriyawathy’s dead husband, judging from the faded garland of flowers around the frame.

  My grandmother stepped over the photograph as if she had not even noticed it, and I understood that she was so confident of her dominance she did not fear my judgment. Yet she had miscalculated her power over me. For that was the moment, as I now recall it, when my betrayal of her began.

  Tonight, those years of childhood and adolescence with my grandmother are even more on my mind than usual. For tomorrow my mother and I will take a plane to Sri Lanka, then bring my ailing grandmother back here to Toronto; and the life we knew there, the life that has haunted and misshaped us all, will come to a close.

  This finished part of the basement, where I stand looking out at the back garden through the barred window, used to be my bedroom before I moved out of my mother’s home to Vancouver. There have been great changes since I lived here, seven years ago. Gone are the mirrored squares pasted to the far wall—remnants of the previous owner’s bar. Some of the squares were missing, and when I used to get dressed before them, I would see myself in fragments. Gone, too, is my box-spring mattress on the floor and the scratchy, synthetic brown-and-white comforter I sweated under so many nights. In its place is a futon covered in a purple duvet with a pattern of white stars and quarter moons; gone, also, is my rickety table teetering with university textbooks and papers half written. A second-hand sofa with a nice design of lavender flowers has replaced the two tub chairs left by the previous owner (mossy-green monstrosities pocked with cigarette burns). But the biggest change is the odour of the basement. When I lived here, the lime-green carpet would get wet at a certain place whenever the washing machine was on, due to faulty plumbing. Now, grey and white flecked industrial carpeting stretches tight from wall to wall, neatly cut and hammered into place at the baseboards. The smell in the room is no longer musty and waterlogged, but parched, like dust.

  The only item left from my previous life here is the chest of drawers, still full of my old clothes from the mid-1980s, hopelessly out of fashion now, a decade later.

  When my mother led me down here earlier today and I had surveyed all the changes, I said, teasing her, “I see that your friend David has been very busy with his toolbox fixing things up for you.” My mother is shy about this man in her life. Although they have been together for six years, she still refers to him as her friend.

  “David?” my mother replied, face scrunched with mock mystification. “Why would I need David to do this? After all, aren’t I my mother’s daughter?” Then she added in a good imitation of my grandmother, switching to the Sinhala my grandmother always spoke, “I will not let any mason-baas or carpenter-karaya take advantage of me. No, no, I am one step ahead of all those jackals.”

  I nodded, lips pressed together in amusement. But then a silence came between us and my mother went to look with great interest at a book on the shelf.

  Later, before she left to spend the night at David’s, my mother insisted on dishing out the various curries she had bought me at the local Sri Lankan takeout. She rushed back and forth from the kitchen to the dining table, thrusting the plate at me to confirm there was enough of each dish before she put it in the microwave, saying, “I hardly know what you eat anymore, what your likes and dislikes are.” Even though the meal came with rice, she made some more, saying nothing tasted as bland as reheated rice. Once she had put the plate in front of me, she brought down a makeup case from her bedroom and proceeded to do her face in the powder room mirror, an eccentricity she justifies by saying it has the best light. As she put her makeup on, she watched me in the mirror and I could feel the weight of what she wanted to discuss.

  When she was done, she came out of the powder room and declared petulantly, as she had many times in the last hour, “Why on earth doesn’t your sister call us? I can’t stay around forever. Surely to goodness, she must be out of her classes by now?”

  “She’ll call,” I murmured. “You know Renu, she probably got involved in some discussion with her students, or in helping one of them with their essay.”

  Usually, comments like this make my mother smile at the thought of her fierce scholarship-winning daughter, who has just completed her Ph.D. at Cornell. But this time she did not appear to hear me and went to glance out of the back patio doors as if expecting someone.

  “And yes,” she began, as if we were already in the middle of a conversation, “this is a depressing time for us to visit Sri Lanka, it really is.”

  I nodded in agreement. The three-month-old ceasefire between the new government and the separatist Tamil Tigers had just collapsed, with the Tigers bombing two Sri Lankan navy ships and plunging the country back into the brutal civil war that had been raging for the past twelve year
s between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.

  “It’s all so sad, so depressing, I must say,” my mother continued. “We all had such hope for our beloved Sri Lanka.”

  I too had shared her hopes. The new president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, had come into power only a few months ago on a platform of peace, promising the country a new beginning. Sri Lanka had been through what was probably the most savagely violent time in its recent history, with many of the leaders, and the movements, vanishing as if they had not existed. Even the new president had lost her husband to this violence, a much-beloved actor turned politician. She shared his belief in granting the Tamil minority some self-determination, a belief for which he had been assassinated by Sinhala extremists. People trusted she would heal the wounds of war and usher in a new era for Sri Lanka. They had given her an overwhelming majority to do so, and even the Tigers canvassed for her in the Tamil areas. But, last week, the Tigers had declared the president was not really serious about peace talks and commenced hostilities, forcing her into a military offensive which she was now calling a “war for peace.”

  The true bleakness, for me, was seeing a leader with an enlightened vision trapped in a vortex of hatred that was so all-consuming she had no choice but to participate in it. Her situation and the recommencement of the war in this new phase reminded me of those Buddhist tales my grandmother often told, in which a karmic crime travels with characters into their next reincarnations, the same enmities playing out in a new phase, the characters helpless to escape the fruits of their karma.

  “Poor Sri Lanka.” My mother sighed and twitched the sheers closed.

  “I don’t know when we will ever see peace,” I replied to provoke further discussion, wanting to forestall whatever she was preparing herself to say about me or my life.

  “I don’t expect I will see peace in my lifetime.” My mother now fussed with ornaments on the wall unit, still not meeting my eyes.

  “I hope one side wins and ends all this, for the sake of the poor people caught in between,” I declared.

  My mother did not appear to hear me, examining a little ceramic teapot shaped like an elephant as if it were not hers. Then she put it down abruptly and came to stand across the table from me. “Shivan, I’m afraid for you.” She leaned in, palms pressed on the table, near tears. “Your expectations are too high. This trip will not fix your problems.” She nodded at my surprise, “Yes-yes, I know about your problems in Vancouver. Your sister finally broke her silence and told me everything.” She raised her eyebrows to communicate how concerned Renu must have been about this trip to reveal my secrets. “Then, there is this … this saying goodbye to our old house and being back in Colombo, where, you know, all that happened. It will be too much, Shivan. You have been away too long. Seven years since you were last there, for goodness sake.”

  “You’re wrong. I am ready. It will be good for me to do it. I have to make this trip, Amma,” I pleaded, as if she had the power to deny me. “Coming to terms with what happened will help me sort out my life.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I should have said something before you left Vancouver. But you’re so hard to talk to sometimes, son. Everything always ends up in a fight with you and I don’t have the energy to take you on, what with preparing for Aachi’s arrival.”

  Before I could respond, the phone rang and my mother rushed into the kitchen. It was my sister, and my mother spoke to her for a while in a low voice before she signalled me to take the phone.

  “Ah-ah, what’s this I hear?” Renu said trying to affect amusement. “Amma is worried you might fall apart on the trip.”

  “Yes,” I said acidly, “I plan to go stark raving mad, tear off my clothes and run around Colombo. You can come and visit me in Angoda when they put me in there with all the other lunatics.”

  “But Shivan, seriously, I am worried that Sri Lanka will disappoint. You have such high hopes pinned on this visit.”

  “And you choose to tell me this now? All the time I was in Vancouver, you didn’t mention it. Instead you go behind my back and talk to Amma. I will never trust you again.”

  “I’m sorry but I was so worried and—”

  “Well, what do you want me to do about it now?” I exclaimed. “Why have you both held off on this until I am here?”

  My sister was silent and my mother watched me with a grimace of pity, sensing the fear behind my anger.

  “Shivan, I’m really sorry I didn’t say any of this before,” Renu replied at last.

  I handed the phone to my mother.

  After the call, she rushed around getting her coat and scarf, checking her hair in the mirror, wretched with failure. To hide my fear I glowered at her. We kissed goodbye tersely, not meeting each other’s eyes.

  “Remember, your task,” she said, pressing my arm.

  I nodded.

  My mother is having problems with cockroaches. In her absence, David will get the house fumigated. All foodstuffs in the kitchen have to be thrown out before we leave, the fridge emptied of anything that will rot.

  Here in Toronto, the melting April snow brings a sense of the world wrung out and parched. It is impossible to believe that, across the country in Vancouver, daffodils bloom and the grass is a summer green. I long for the moist greenness of the city, the jewelled moss on rocks, like gems on a dowager’s gnarled hand. And I am filled with longing for Michael with his tousle of black curls, his way of standing, hands jammed in pockets, neck tilted as if looking over a fence, smiling like he is watching children at play. I long for the metallic smell of him in bed; miss, with a tightening at the base of my throat, our apartment on Harwood Street, its minuscule balcony perched like a sparrow’s nest on a corner of the twentieth floor, our morning coffee at the little table there, gazing at the familiar view of English Bay and Stanley Park, the ships ambling along the horizon. I miss our bus ride to the university where we both work, miss how, as the bus crosses the Burrard Bridge, the sea glitters below, sunlight trembling on passing sails.

  That life feels like a distant thing, as if it was not just last night that Michael and I, after dinner, walked down to English Bay as we used to in the early days of our romance. Finding a log to shelter us from the wind, we huddled together under a blanket and sipped brandy from a flask as we talked about our day, Michael chuckling at my sarcastic comments on the people passing by.

  Yet after a while, a silence fell between us, and in the silence I knew we could both feel all the goodness draining away, as it so often does these days. Michael took a swig of brandy and offered the flask to me, but I shook my head and stared out at the sea.

  “You won’t leave me, promise me you won’t, Michael. I know it’s ridiculous but I am so worried, so frightened about this.”

  Our knees were tight together and he ran his hand up and down my shin. “No, I will not leave you,” he said, weary from being asked the same thing so many times in the past weeks.

  “You say that, you say that,” I said, close to tears, “but I feel you will leave me. I deserve to be left.”

  “Shivan,” he said, and forced me to take a long gulp of the brandy.

  I glance at my watch and count back the hours. It is 5 p.m. in Vancouver. Michael has just finished work and will be heading across campus to get the bus into town. He will soon return to our apartment, stopping off at Safeway on Davie Street to get groceries. His kitten, Miss Murasaki, will be waiting for him, paw fluttering under the door, sensing from his footsteps down the corridor that it is him. Then, as he prepares dinner, he will be in the quiet centre of himself after a day of department politics and negotiating the entitlement of students and professors. The sounds and smells from the other apartments around him—the scrape of a chair or hum of a vacuum cleaner above, the muted conversation of the French couple next door, the tight vehemence of their language, as if bickering in public, the dog in the apartment on the other side who greets his mistress with a mournful baying—all this will be a cocoon around Michael. And I
feel that he will be relieved I am not there by his side, assisting with dinner; relieved that he is finally at peace.

  I stride over to my chest of drawers, open the top one and stare at the clothes within. A faint smell of the old basement damp rises up. After a moment’s hesitation, I fling garishly patterned sweaters, frayed shorts, acid-washed jeans, worn underpants and skinned-at-the-heel socks onto the floor, emptying drawer after drawer. When I am done, I go into the unfinished part of the basement, take two garbage bags from the shelf above the washing machine and gather the clothes into them.

  I stumble upstairs, leave the bags by the front door, then pour myself a quarter-glass of Scotch from the kitchen cupboard and drift into the living room. On the wall unit, there is a framed photograph of my grandmother. It was taken on the front verandah of our old house, and my grandmother is seated in a wheelchair with my mother standing behind her. I hold the photograph closer to the light and peer at my grandmother’s useless left hand, twisted upwards in her lap like a taxidermied claw, her mouth puckered, the skin on her left cheek stretched. All this is the result of a series of strokes, each one taking a bit of her away. The doctors tell us that she will continue to have these strokes, losing various mental faculties and physical abilities, until finally a great stroke takes her from us.

  The furnace has stopped, and the muted roar of air through the vents slows to a ticking. The ceiling creaks and shifts, as if someone is moving around on the second floor. Right above me is the room prepared for my grandmother. Earlier, when my mother took me around the house to show me all the improvements, she slipped ahead and shut the door to that room, as if worried what the sight of its new furniture might do to me. I have not been in there yet.

  I go into the kitchen and pour myself more Scotch, taking a swift gulp. The rush of heat in my blood has little effect on my mind. I take a second swift gulp, emptying the glass.