The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  My sister had written to her old history professor, Sriyani Karunaratne, and asked her to please look out for me. “She’s really nice, Shivan,” Renu said as she gave me the professor’s phone number the day before I left and made me promise to call. “Being a feminist, she’s gay-positive. I’m sure you could use someone like that in homophobic old Sri Lanka.”

  During the bus ride to the airport, my mother looked out the window and didn’t speak to Renu or me. Once I had got my boarding pass and was ready to go through Security, she held my arms and said in the tone of a prepared speech, “Shivan, your life is here now. I want you to remember that. You’re only going for four weeks, and you’re not to let her convince you otherwise.”

  “No, Amma,” I said, bewildered. “Of course I’m coming back.”

  “She will try and persuade you, I know her. I’m frightened for you, Shivan, I am. I feel this trip is inauspicious.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Amma,” Renu said, rolling her eyes at me, “what a way to say goodbye. Inauspicious!”

  I laughed uneasily, then gave my mother an angular embrace. “I must go.”

  After I went through Security, I looked back at my mother, with her handbag clutched under her arm, and I felt disturbed, as if what she had said was a truth I had not yet considered.

  There is a tale called “The Naga King Manikantha and the Hermit” that must have inspired my unsettling dream about the lover who visited me in a cave. In the story, two brothers take up the monk’s life, living as hermits far from each other in grottoes along a riverbank. The Naga king, Manikantha, is swimming by one day when he spots the younger brother and takes an immediate liking to him. He begins to visit every day, and soon the two are close friends. Manikantha takes a human shape when he visits but, before he leaves, always reassumes his serpent form and embraces the hermit, coiling himself around his body. Even though he loves Manikantha, the hermit is terrified at this transformation and grows thin and pale, the veins standing out on his skin. His older brother comes to visit and inquires about the reason for his poor condition. The brother advises the hermit to ask three times for the jewel the Naga king wears on his forehead. The hermit does so, and on the third occasion Manikantha leaves him forever. But the hermit grows even more pale and thin because he now pines for his friend. His older brother comes to visit again, and discovering the reason for his worsened state, says, “Importune not a man whose love you prize, for begging makes you hateful in his eyes.”

  The final lines of that strangely inconclusive tale make me think of Mili Jayasinghe the first time I saw him after my return to Sri Lanka, waiting for me outside my grandmother’s gate, grinning with shy delight as he stood beside his motorcycle, the sun shining in his hair.

  PART THREE

  12

  I HAVE FINALLY REACHED MELSETTER BOULEVARD, but when I turn onto it, I stop. My mother’s car is parked in the driveway. Pushing my hands in my coat pockets, I hurry towards the house, panicked at how I left it—sliding doors unlocked, empty glass smelling of Scotch on the counter, my grandmother’s photograph abandoned on the dining table.

  My mother is at the kitchen window peering out, arms crossed over stomach. When she sees me hurrying up the front path, she rushes to open the door, for I have forgotten to take a key.

  “I tried calling, but you did not pick up.”

  “Just went out for a walk.” I turn away and take off my shoes.

  “I finally came over because I was so worried.”

  Glancing at her, I am taken aback at the way she looks. I was so lost in my memories I expected to find her as she was then—hair sheared short, face sharp. Instead, her hair is now in waves to her shoulders with silver streaks enhancing the dark tan of her skin, her face full and heart-shaped. She wears a garnet brooch at the neck of her soft pink silk blouse, both gifts from David.

  “Son, where have you been?” The question is heavy with how she found the house in my absence. I am suddenly very conscious of the whisky bottle bulging in my inner pocket.

  “Why do you worry so much?” I demand. “You could have tried phoning again.”

  “I did,” she says quietly.

  I go into the kitchen and she follows me. The glass has been washed and put in the drying rack, my grandmother’s photograph is back in place.

  “Perhaps … perhaps I should stay home tonight.”

  “What? Why? You don’t need to be here. Stay with David.” The thought of her being with me is unbearable.

  “But there is so much to get done.” She gives me a significant look.

  I regard her blankly, then turn quickly away. But she has seen that I’ve forgotten the task I promised to do of emptying the kitchen of all perishables, so the house can be fumigated.

  My mother opens a drawer and pulls out a garbage bag.

  “Amma, I will do it. I … I just felt like a little fresh air.”

  I go to take the bag and she winces at the alcohol on my breath. I step back, ashamed.

  “Shivan,” she says, trying to be stern but sounding helpless. After a moment I reach into my inner coat pocket and put the mickey of Scotch on the counter. When she sees how much I have drunk, her face crumples, then becomes impassive. “I will stay tonight.”

  “No, no,” I say, louder than I intended, my nerves stretched to the breaking point.

  “Oh, Shivan,” she says, near tears, “I wish I had stopped you earlier from this plan to go back for your grandmother. You are so unhappy, son, so troubled. I don’t think you can take anything more. And I worry about the effect of Sri Lanka on you. Then there is your aachi …” She gives me a miserable look to convey what I have already guessed. She has not told my grandmother about my impending arrival.

  “The truth is I’ve been too frightened to tell her,” she says quietly. She begins to remove her coat.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t start the kitchen before,” I say. “I promise, I will do this.”

  I watch the struggle on her face, as if she were listening to another voice within her. She pulls her coat back on. “I suppose no one can take another person’s journey. It is the hardest thing about being a mother.” She glances quickly at the Scotch. I can tell she wants to take the bottle with her and has to force herself not to do so.

  “Please don’t go out again,” she says, as if this one assurance will fix her worries.

  Following her out into the hallway, I promise I won’t.

  She points to the garbage bags. “Why are you throwing out all these clothes?”

  “They’re old and out of fashion. Most of them are slightly mouldy.”

  She is not paying attention, frowning as she buttons her coat and searches for gloves in her pockets. “And this news from Sri Lanka. The closer I get to arriving there, the more it depresses me, this endless hatred and enmity. Why did the Tigers have to break the truce, why? And why did Chandrika respond with violence too and not try to get them back to the table? Her husband Vijaya would never have done that.”

  “It’s not so easy, Amma. Her hands are tied. All actions are compromised, tainted, in Sri Lanka.”

  “War for peace. How can she describe war in this cynical way?” My mother lets out a sad laugh as she slips her gloves on. “I feel ashamed that David is reading such things. What must Canadians think of us?”

  “I didn’t know that David takes an interest.”

  She gives me a look that says I am being an idiot. “Of course he takes an interest, Shivan.” There is a small proud smile on her face; David loves her, he will fret while she is away.

  “You … you shouldn’t keep David waiting.” I am suddenly desolate.

  She kisses me distractedly and leaves.

  I watch her go down the driveway to the car. A few snowflakes have begun to fall, and a wind has suddenly picked up. As she opens her car door, my mother tugs her scarf into place and glances crossly at the sky. She looks small but capable, a woman in control of her life. This battered old red Honda Civic is an emblem of her ac
complishments. She will not let David drive her around, a trait he finds both endearing and exasperating. After six years, she still won’t move in with him. She will not give up this house.

  The moment her car leaves, I shut the door and lean against it, closing my eyes for a moment. Then I begin to pull things out of the kitchen cabinets with frantic, trembling hands, throwing packets of tea and biscuits, tins of cocoa, coffee and Ovaltine, bags of raisins, peanuts, salt, pepper into the garbage bag my mother left on the counter.

  My arrival in Sri Lanka that spring of 1988 came upon me suddenly. I had taken a sleeping pill to make time pass faster on the tedious plane journey and was awakened by the bustle of passengers standing up, stretching, hauling down bags to look for combs, brushes and compacts. The flight attendants were coming around clearing away the last glasses of juice and alcohol, folding up newspapers. Then the pilot announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we can now see Sri Lanka,” and there was a rustle of excitement as people craned over fellow passengers for a view.

  Out my window were dense clouds. Then we were through the clouds and below us was the sea, golden pink in the dawn light, its waves seemingly frozen from up here, like scallops along the edge of some giant seashell. A sweep of beach was bordered by acres of coconut trees, the mound of a dagoba rising out of this greenery like a boulder, its whitewashed surface also pink in the dawn light. It seemed unreal to be seeing Sri Lanka after all this time. There, there it was, lying below me, yet I could not imagine landing, could not imagine looking up at those coconut trees and smelling the ocean. I felt suddenly like a foreigner about to enter a strange land, this plane the last point of familiarity from which I would be ejected into a chaotic, frightening world. I shook my head to chase away the thought, trying to take comfort, as the plane landed and hurtled along the tarmac, at how normal everything looked, the shuttle buses going to and fro, other planes coming in and taking off in an orderly way, the airport building in the distance newly painted. As we came off the plane and were ushered to the shuttle buses, I smelt that odour of Sri Lanka, like the inside of a dry clay pot, an odour I had never really noticed when I lived here, but which now, because of my long absence, my foreignness, I recognized as the smell of home.

  My grandmother was sending her car, and since it was so early in the morning, I expected to find the driver waiting as I came out of Customs into the arrivals lounge. A mass of German tourists teemed confusedly beyond the exit, calling to each other like lost birds, a Sri Lankan guide trying to shepherd them to the currency exchange booths and the waiting bus outside. They finally moved on and I saw my grandmother seated at the far end of the lounge. She raised her hand briefly and I began to wheel my cart towards her.

  My memories of her, I was realizing, had been from a child’s point of view and I was struck by how small she was amidst the bustle of activity. When I reached her, we were still, gazing at each other. Her face was thinner and more lined, and the stroke had puckered her right cheek upwards. There was a walking stick beside her seat. My grandmother nodded to say, yes, she had changed. “Ah, Puthey.” She indicated for me to bend towards her. She took my face in her hands and kissed my cheeks. “You have come back. I have so longed to see your face.” Her speech was slightly slurred, the right corner of her lower lip stretched tight and glistening.

  A warmth flooded through me at the love in her eyes. “Ah, it’s so good to be back home, Aacho.”

  Our old driver, Soma, appeared with a porter in tow. “You took your time coming.” She glared at her driver, who was grinning with delight at seeing me. She transferred her glare to the porter. “How much do you want? We are not foreigners.”

  He named his price in a wheedling tone and there was some fierce bargaining before my grandmother brought him down to half what he had asked. As he took my cart, she said to me, “Foreigners are ruining these fellows. Giving them tips-tips and everything.”

  She reached for her walking stick. I offered my hand, but she waved it away and, using the stick, levered herself from the chair. Now she did grip my arm, and we began to walk along an open-air corridor that led to the chaos of cars, vans and buses parked outside the building.

  “How is your mother?” she asked, and then sighed. “Her error has trailed her, nah? If she had listened to me, she could have had a very different life.” Seeing my discomfort, she added, “Anyway, what is to be done? We must all live out our karma.”

  By the time we got to the car, her breath had taken on an irregular flutter and sweat beaded her forehead. She leaned back in the seat, eyes closed as the porter loaded the trunk. When he came around to her window to collect his fee, she shoved the money at him, muttering about rogues and scoundrels.

  As we drove towards Colombo, I looked out at the world we were passing. Children in starched white uniforms and ties stood at bus stops, cloth bags slung over their shoulders. Early office workers waited alongside them, the men in slacks and white shirts, the women in saris clutching handbags. The workers mopped their brows with handkerchiefs, laughing and talking with each other. Bicyclists rode by, one with a huge bunch of bananas strapped to his rear carrier, another transporting his entire family, the wife perched sidesaddle on the back rack, two little girls on the cross bar. In roadside restaurants, little more than shacks with roofs of rusting takaran, hoppers were being cooked on kerosene burners, vadais fried in vats of oil. I glimpsed people at trestle tables with banana leaves before them piled with idli, thosai, or string hoppers, onto which bare-chested little boys in soiled shorts dolloped soupy sambar out of metal buckets. Then there were the hundreds of pariah dogs in that easy cohabitation with humans, some sitting outside the restaurants, quivering for any scraps that might be thrown at them, others lying on the road, ambling out of the way as approaching vehicles blasted their horns. The garden walls, whose lower ends were stained with brownish-red dust, had bougainvillea spilling their abundance over the tops. Araliya trees were in full bloom, their fallen petals lying in the dirt; huge tamarind trees spread their canopies over the road. Everything about the landscape was familiar and strange at the same time; that odd disjunction of coming home to a place that was not home anymore.

  As we drew closer to Colombo, large billboards appeared for things I had not eaten in five years, whose taste I knew so well—Lemon Puffs, Marie biscuits, Glucorasa, Kandos chocolates—and promoting these products were the same cricket players and actors and former Miss Sri Lankas. A cinema poster announced a new film starring Gamini Fonseka and Geetha Kumarasinghe, and as I read the Sinhalese lettering, I felt the delight of rediscovering that other language which had lain submerged within me for half a decade.

  The car arrived at my grandmother’s house, and some moments after the driver pressed his horn, Rosalind pulled back the gates, craning her neck to see me.

  “Ah, yes,” my grandmother said, gesturing at the ayah as we passed her, “prepare yourself for a monsoon of tears.”

  The house, like my grandmother, was smaller than I remembered. In honour of my visit, no doubt, she’d had it recently whitewashed, the red tiles and wooden fretwork replaced or mended.

  When I stepped out of the air-conditioned car, the air was loud with the rasping of crows, the blare of traffic on the street, a koel shrilly winding up its notes in the mango tree. And now the heat, which I had not been so aware of, pressed its weight against my skin.

  Rosalind was hurrying up the front path, and when she reached me she started to cry, taking my hand, touching my face, saying those same words she had spoken to my mother all those years ago. “Aiyo, baba, the gods have been good to allow me this sight of you before I die. I never thought I would see you again.”

  My eyes started to well up too, and I hugged her, something I had never done before.

  My grandmother hobbled around the car to us. “Ah-ah, have you got the breakfast ready?” She did not approve of my show of affection and blamed Rosalind for it.

  I protested that I was not hungry, but my grandmother waved her ha
nd. “Of course you are. You don’t want to disappoint our Rosalind. She has been up from four o’clock cooking. Now go and wash.”

  In my room, everything was exactly as I had left it—the blue curtains with green polka dots, my light-blue coverlet, its nubbles worn with age and washing, the picture above my bed of a boy in a field of poppies. The shallow slot on my white wooden table contained my old Parker fountain pen and a few yellow pencils, half used. My old sarong was hanging over the chair, worn Bata slippers beside my bed. The almirah released a swell of camphor when I opened it. My clothes were neatly folded, shirts on hangers. I went over to the bookshelf and knelt, hands on knees, staring at the Famous Fives, the Secret Sevens, various Agatha Christies, my copies of War and Peace and Pride and Prejudice, numerous Jeeves and Woosters. I drew out The Magic Faraway Tree, sat on the edge of my bed and read the first page, remembering what joy it was to lie in bed, the fan grating above me, lost in the world of these books. Every so often, I recalled, I would surface from the fictional realm to take a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk mixed with chopped bananas from a bowl beside my bed. Forgotten was my guilt about acquiring these books and how I had kept them hidden from my mother.

  “I sometimes come in here and sit. It brings me comfort.” My grandmother had been standing in the doorway, watching me. She waved her hand. “Go, go, wash quickly. Rosalind is beginning to complain the food is getting cold.”

  My old towel was over the rack in the bathroom. As I splashed my face and rubbed the familiar sandalwood soap into my skin, I felt as if I were washing away not just my journey but also the past five years.

  In honour of my arrival Rosalind had made the auspicious breakfast of the Sinhala New Year—kiribath, ambul thiyal, katta and seeni sambol, beef curry, kavum, kokis, lavariya and ambul bananas. She stood behind my grandmother, who was seated on one side of the table. The only other place setting was to my grandmother’s right, at the head. “Aacho—” I began, but she waved me to the chair, saying, “Come-come.”