The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  The official asked my mother a few questions about her work and looked at her qualifications. When he found out my sister and I planned to attend university, he inquired about what we wished to study and recommended some colleges. He kept saying, “When you are in Canada,” until finally my mother leaned forward, fingers knitted. “Sir, you keep saying when we are in Canada. Have we … already passed?”

  “Oh, yes,” the man said, as if surprised we did not know. Then he smiled. “This is just a formality. Of course, you have to get through your medicals and security checks.” He peered at us over the top of his glasses. “I may safely assume that none of you have TB or have engaged in criminal activity?”

  “Oh, no, of course not.” My mother let out a bark of amusement at his lame joke and my sister and I tittered, faces locked in grins.

  The official asked where we wanted to settle, and my mother said Toronto, because that was where other Tamils were planning to go. He half-heartedly suggested Winnipeg, Saskatoon or Calgary, as if he knew we would never go there but considered it his duty to push other parts of Canada.

  We were soon done. The official walked us to the door and shook our hands, his palm cushiony and damp.

  The moment we were outside the gates of the High Commission, my mother let out a shout of happiness and hugged us. Seeing the pleasure on my mother’s and sister’s faces, I felt that the thing I had set in motion was real. It became even more real when our taxi pulled up to the house and I saw my grandmother sitting on the front verandah, reading a newspaper. We glanced at our mother, knowing that because we were in our good clothes our grandmother might ask where we had been.

  “Children,” our mother murmured. There was a new twitch of energy to her. She stepped out of the taxi first and held the door open for us. As I climbed out, I glanced at my grandmother. She had lowered her paper and was studying us, eyes unblinking, face inscrutable.

  My mother led the way up the front steps, head raised, handbag tucked under her arm, high heels castanets against the floor. As we followed her, I jerked at my collar to loosen my tie, frowning with concentration.

  “Shivan,” my grandmother snapped, “come. I want to go and look at a property.”

  “No, Amma, Shivan has just been out,” my mother called over her shoulder as she bustled into the saleya. “I want him to take off his good clothes, have a shower and do his homework.”

  “Come, Shivan, come.” My grandmother gripped my wrist as I made to go by her.

  “Shivan, I want you to come inside and do as I say.” My mother’s voice punched out each word.

  I looked from one to the other, then gently freed myself and continued into the house.

  When I got to my room, I slumped down on my bed, pulse throbbing at the base of my throat. Then, before I knew it, I was clutching my head, whispering, “What have I done? What have I done?”

  My grandmother did not ask where we had been that afternoon. She did not comment on the contest with her daughter and the decision I had made. She acted as if nothing had changed. Over the next days and weeks, as I looked at leaking cisterns and holes in roofs and rotting floors, or sat with her and Sunil Maama going through documents on the verandah, I felt a constant terror. I wanted, for a reason I could not explain, to stop what I had begun.

  Three months later, we received our landed papers. It was my mother who led the way across the saleya to impart the news, eyes sparkling with triumph. My sister and I followed, not looking at each other but our shoulders touching for comfort. My mother, as always, stood before the curtain and called out, “Amma?”

  “Yes? What is it?” my grandmother replied.

  We found her in bed, bolstered by pillows, going through a bank statement. She glared at my mother over her spectacles, rustling the statement to indicate she wished this meeting to be brief. Then she saw my sister and me hovering in the doorway and a stitch plucked its way across her forehead. She sat up a little straighter, hands folded in lap, her face emptied of any emotion. Sweat prickled the back of my neck.

  “Amma,” my mother said, her voice resonant with gloating. “I have some news for you. I want you to know that we, the children and I, have been passed for immigration. To Canada.”

  After a long moment, my grandmother picked up the bank statement again and examined it.

  “We will be leaving in a few weeks, Amma.” My grandmother still did not respond. “Is that alright?”

  “Why do you ask me?” The statement fluttered as if my grandmother had palsy. “It seems I have nothing to do with your decision at all.”

  “Very well.” My mother walked towards the doorway, then stopped, remembering something. “If you wish for us to leave your house, Amma, I have arranged—”

  My grandmother flung down her paper and cried, as if pleading with an invisible person, “Look at the way she talks to me? All these years I have allowed her to live under my roof, all these years I have been a good mother, and see, just see, the way she repays me. Aiyo! What did I do in my past life, to deserve this … this wild bitch of a daughter?”

  My mother’s face flushed. “Eleven years I have lived under your roof, and in all that time you have never sat at the table and had a meal with me.” Her right hand sliced out a rhythm on her left palm. “You call that being a good mother? I have hated every minute in this house and so have my children. Never mind your past life, you will pay for this cruelty in your future life. And no amount of bana and danas and donations for bells and robes at the temple will make up for what you have done.”

  “Get out,” my grandmother whispered through gritted teeth. “Get out.”

  “Are you saying you want me to take the children and leave your house? You only need say the word.”

  My grandmother yelped. She looked around, picked up a paperweight from her side table and flung it at my mother. We cried out as my mother ducked. The paperweight crashed into the wall and shards of glass spattered across the floor.

  Renu rushed to protect our mother, putting an arm around her shoulder, glaring at our grandmother. My mother let out a shuddering breath, and allowed herself be led out by my sister. I made to follow.

  “Stay.”

  My grandmother beckoned me forward and I went to stand by her bed.

  “Ah, Puthey,” she said, her voice sad, “I know you had nothing to do with your mother’s actions.” She held out her hand. I took it, and she pulled me down on the bed beside her. “This must have been so hard to keep to yourself.”

  I gritted my teeth to hold in gulping sobs, but they came.

  “Ah, Puthey, Puthey.” She held my head against her bony chest and I clung to her, crying freely. Soon I felt her chest heaving as she sobbed too. “I am cursed by my karma,” she whispered more to herself than me. “I am that Naked Peréthi. Am I to have no happiness in this life? Is everything I love to be taken from me?”

  Finally, I tore myself away, ran into the saleya, past my mother and sister who stared at me, stricken, and into my room. I went into the bathroom, slammed the door, closed the commode lid and sat on it, sobbing into my hands, unable to stop, unable to understand why I was crying when everything had worked out as I desired.

  My mother and sister did not speak to me about my outburst, but over the next few weeks I caught them observing me, frightened. I spent long hours reading in my bedroom or going for solitary bicycle rides. I was bloated with a new exhaustion and would sleep in the afternoon only to awaken heavy-headed and groggy.

  My grandmother never mentioned our imminent departure and carried on as if nothing had happened. Yet her face was gaunt and empty. I could sense my mother begin to doubt what she had done. When we visited friends or my late grandfather’s relatives to say goodbye, she would insist, as if they had contradicted her, that this was the best decision she had ever made in her life, that she could not wait to wipe her feet of this “godforsaken shipwreck of a country.” Renu and I would often find her in the kitchen, seated on a stool beside Rosalind, peeling onions a
nd garlic or sorting through kankong leaves. Every night, now, Rosalind lay her mat on the floor by my mother’s bed in the way ayahs do with their charges. The murmur of their voices through the wall prevented me from falling asleep.

  When my mother purchased our tickets, she informed my grandmother of our date of departure. That evening, while we were having dinner, my grandmother came out and sat at the table. Rosalind made to bring a plate, but she waved her away. “I have reached a decision. I am going to buy a house in Canada.” She smiled wryly at our stunned faces.

  “But how will you get the money to Canada,” my mother asked, “what with currency restrictions and everything?”

  My grandmother rubbed her forehead. “I have been putting away money over the years, quietly-quietly, in a London account.” She sighed lightly. “Yes, I will buy this house.”

  “I don’t need your house,” my mother said.

  “I’m not buying the house for you. This house is for Shivan.” She looked at me with numb longing. “I need to know my grandson will have something in his new life that will help him.” She grimaced at my mother. “I know that I cannot trust you to take care of my grandson. I shudder to think what ruination you will come to, left to your own devices in a foreign land.”

  My mother flushed and was about to retort, but Renu spoke up. “Take her damn house, Amma. It’s the least the woman owes you, after the terrible way she has treated us. Who cares if it’s in Shivan’s name.”

  My mother turned to me. “Son?”

  I did not know if I wanted this reminder of my grandmother in my new life. Yet, placed on the spot, I found myself nodding to say we would take her gift.

  “Very well,” my mother said. “When I am in Canada, I will open an account and you can transfer the money there.”

  After that, my grandmother contrived to spend as much time with me as possible, and we were frequently out on errands. As I looked at the various problems with her houses or visited banks or sat with her and Sunil Maama, going through documents on the verandah, my life seemed to pass before me as if I were watching it through a train window.

  A few days before our departure, Sriyani Karunaratne, whose husband owned various hotels, invited all the people involved with Kantha to spend the day at a beach resort and bid farewell to Renu. My sister was flattered by the honour and delighted to have this last chance to be with her heroine. She usually did not take much trouble with her appearance, wearing skirts that reached down to her shins, hair tugged back in a plait. Yet that morning of the farewell party she was in a great flurry about what to wear and even borrowed my blow-dryer to tease her hair in a new fashion.

  Renu was not ready when her friends arrived, and much to my annoyance I was sent to tell them she would be a few more minutes. There was a convoy of vehicles waiting outside the gate, and when I stepped out, shielding my eyes against the glare, someone called my name. I peered towards a packed car. In the driver’s seat was a foreign man in his mid-twenties with pale skin reddened by the sun and whitish blond hair so fine his scalp was visible. Mili Jayasinghe sat beside him in the front passenger seat. He waved at me, yanked the door open and got out.

  “Machan,” he cried, as he came up to me. He clapped me on the back. “So, you’re leaving our beloved island.”

  I heard a slight accusation in his tone, and I was suddenly furious at him, standing there so handsome, so confident. “Well, I am sure we Tamils will be missed. After all, who are the Sinhalese going to kill now?” I said “the Sinhalese,” but it was clear I meant “you Sinhalese.”

  Mili was startled. “Yes, of course, Shivan, what choice do most Tamils have?”

  “If we are abandoning Sri Lanka, it’s because Sri Lanka abandoned us first.”

  “Definitely, machan, definitely,” he said, bewildered by my rising voice.

  Before we could say anything further, Renu rushed out, crying, “Aiyo, so sorry, men.” There was a general calling out of greetings and chatter about which car they could squeeze her into.

  “Well, Shivan,” Mili said gently, and held out his hand to me. “I wish you the very best of luck. I wish you much happiness in Canada.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled and shook his hand, ashamed at my outburst and not meeting his gaze.

  The evening before we left, my grandmother took me to the Wellawatte Kovil for a Ganesh pooja. My grandmother, like all Buddhists, turned to the Hindu gods for intervention with life’s daily problems, these being beneath the Lord Buddha, who had transcended all desire. Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, was appealed to in times of crisis and change. The evening Ganesh pooja was always crowded. We took our place at the back, but soon a temple worker beckoned my grandmother forward. She always paid for this privilege, and when the priests opened the inner sanctum doors we were the first to surge forward, pushed by the crowd behind us.

  The prime position was by a series of bells suspended from the ceiling in front of Ganesh. A rope dangled down from each clapper, and my grandmother, as she always did, held on to the upper part of one rope and indicated for me to take the lower end. Soon the windowless chamber was thick with incense, and on a cue from the priests we began to ring the bells. The clanging seemed to bulge the black stone walls outward. As I swayed back and forth with my grandmother, sweat trickling down my face, the boundaries of my body dissolved and melded into the gong of the bells, the reek of incense, the chanting of priests. My grandmother’s hand had slid down over mine. I glanced at her, but she pretended not to notice. Together our hands moved in unison, ringing that bell.

  We were to leave for the airport in the late afternoon, and throughout that last morning my grandmother stayed in her room. My mother, sister and I were acutely aware of her silent presence. I was possessed by the conviction she would make some surprising move that would stop us from going—some plot she would launch at the last minute to prevent my escape. But the morning passed busily, with a stream of visitors coming to say goodbye as we packed.

  My mother had suggested that in anticipation of the long journey we should rest for an hour in the early afternoon. A sudden lull descended on our house, made all the more pronounced by the frantic bustle earlier. Rosalind, who had kept close to us, lay her mat by my mother’s bed, and I could hear their voices and our ayah crying.

  Suddenly there was much activity in my grandmother’s room, followed by the slap of her slippers as she scuttled out into the saleya. “Rosalind,” she called, but without waiting as she usually did for the ayah to appear, she continued on towards the front door. “I’m going out for a few hours. I’ll be home for dinner.”

  I sat up in bed and listened to my grandmother’s footsteps diminish into the distance. The car door slammed and the vehicle trundled down the driveway.

  I could hear the grating call of a crow, the neighbour’s child ringing out the choked sound of her broken tricycle bell.

  “Thank God,” I whispered to myself, “thank God, thank God.”

  And I vowed that I would never return to this house or this country again.

  In the story of the naked peréthi, a poor woman comes upon three drunken men who have fallen into an alcoholic stupor. She steals their clothes and money. A few days later, a monk is passing by her abode and she invites him to stop for a meal. She holds a sunshade above him as he eats, her heart filled with gladness. Because of this meritorious deed, she is reborn in a golden mansion on an island in the middle of the ocean. Yet because she stole from the drunken men, she is naked and hungry. Her wardrobes are full of fine clothes, but if she tries to put them on, they burn her skin like sheets of hot metal and she flings them from her, screaming. Her banquet table is set every day with the most sumptuous meals, but if she tries to eat, the food turns to urine and feces or swarms with maggots.

  One day a storm blows a ship to the shores of her island. The captain and his passengers, upon seeing the naked peréthi, are terrified. But once they hear her story, they are filled with pity and offer any help they can. Among the pass
engers is a lay disciple of the Lord Buddha, and the peréthi says to the captain, “Nothing you can offer will free me. Instead, feed and clothe this lay disciple and transfer the merit to me.” When the captain clothes the lay disciple in golden-threaded garments, the peréthi is immediately adorned in the finest Benares silk; when he feeds the lay disciple, a feast appears before the peréthi and she finds she can eat.

  Many years would pass before I understood that my grandmother saw herself as that naked peréthi, marooned on an island, surrounded by so much that is good in life but unable to enjoy it. Everything she touched, everything she loved, disintegrated in her hands.

  PART TWO

  8

  MY MOTHER’S BACK GARDEN HAS MOUNDS of melting snow in corners, punctured with holes, as if machine-gunned. The cold is bearable because there is no wind. I take a swig from the mickey of Scotch I have brought with me. I can hear our neighbours, despite their tightly sealed doors and windows—the wail of a child, scolded by its mother in some clipped Chinese language, a ribbon of Hindi film music, the sizzle of a late-night dinner, a dog’s staccato bark. Water gurgles and glops in the culvert beyond these back gardens, a steady counterpoint to this human activity. I open our gate and step out onto a narrow strip of grass from which the land slopes down to the channel. The black water is like oil, glinting with shards of light from the surrounding houses and a cluster of apartment buildings on the other side of the culvert. Looking up at these looming towers filled with immigrants, a line from one of my grandmother’s stories comes to me. “They stand at crossroads or even outside the walls of their homes, these silent peréthayas. They are standing at their own gates, wanting to be let in.” I murmur these lines as I begin to clamber down the slope, the water now a roar.