The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  “What has Sriyani said, though?” Dilan asked.

  “Not much,” said Dharshini. “Just that Mili asked to use the beach house.”

  They began to talk about various incidents from the time they had known Mili. I nodded and smiled, trying to appear interested, yet all the while suffocating under my secret knowledge and wishing I had not come. At one point, Dharshini turned to me. “But you must also have some wonderful memories from your school days, nah, Shivan? I hear Mili was a real rioter then.” There was something too light in her tone.

  The others all turned to me, smiling in a fixed way. “Tell us some of those stories,” Jagath said in that same light, careful way.

  They were trying to draw me in without acknowledging the nature of my relationship with Mili. “Yes,” I said with a thin harsh smile, “lots of memories.” I was furious at them for failing even to hint that my suffering might be keener for having been in love with him. As soon as I could I walked away.

  A group of boys from our old school stopped me and shook my hand, expressing their sadness at Mili’s death, reminiscing about “the good old days.” Some of them had grown portly already, their faces jowly, even though we were just twenty-three. They spoke in that ringing way of young men who are moving into their years of power and privilege. I stood among them dumbly, then excused myself and went to pay my condolences to Mili’s parents before I left.

  This home, which I had come to know so well, seemed a foreign place because of all the strangers pressed together inside, shuffling sideways to get in or out and pass each other. Charlotte Jayasinghe was seated on the sofa, a dull, distant look on her face, hands folded in her lap, palms turned upwards. Tudor Jayasinghe stood by the sofa and a line had formed to shake the parents’ hands. Sriyani was a little ahead. Once she paid her respects and turned to leave, she saw me. I could not stop myself from looking away. She patted my shoulder as she passed and I nodded, frightened I would start crying if I met her gaze.

  Soon it was my turn before the Jayasinghes. “Ah, son,” Mili’s father said, as I proffered my hand silently, “how good of you to come.” When I offered my hand to his mother, she looked up blankly as if she did not know me and murmured, “Thank you for coming.”

  As I moved around the sofa, I saw that the curtain to Mili’s room had been drawn back. There was the bed we had made love in, there his motorcycle helmets on the side table. One of them probably still smelt of my hair gel and cologne. People bumped into me as they passed, and finally I tore my eyes away from these last vestiges of Mili and left.

  The evening before my departure, I returned to my grandmother’s house to get a few things I had left behind. I called Rosalind to tell her I would come when my grandmother was at the temple. A taxi dropped me outside the house. I did not ring the bell or open the gate, feeling I had lost some right to do so. Like my mother all those years ago, I waited until Rosalind came around the side of the house, saw me and made her way down the driveway. She walked in a cautious manner, as if she were nervous of me and doubted my sanity. When she let me in, her eyes scoured my face to see how I was and what had changed in the last few days. She reached silently for the empty knapsack on my shoulder, but I would not let her carry it.

  When I reached the carport and saw my grandmother seated on the verandah, I understood Rosalind’s nervousness. The ayah had informed her of my visit. Rather than rage, I felt sadness well up at the sight of her, a barbed thing swelling my throat. I nodded in greeting, my lips pressed together. Then I went past her into the house.

  I was on my knees in front of the bed, examining the items I’d left behind and now laid out on my coverlet, when my grandmother came to stand in the doorway. I glanced at her, then started to stuff my possessions into my knapsack. I could hear Rosalind watering the plants outside my window, the scouring sound of the hose dragging in the gravel. Sinhala film music drifted in from another house, a koel trilled dramatically in the mango tree. The sun had set and dusk was spreading rapidly across my room.

  “I don’t have a choice, you understand.” I turned away to take my travel alarm and stuff it in my knapsack. “I must go.”

  “But why must you go? Chandralal has guaranteed your safety.”

  “It’s not about his guaranteeing anything. It would be intolerable to stay. In the last few days, I have become a stranger in this country. And you have made this happen. You have made me hate my country. Everything is ruined now, everything is ruined for me here.”

  “If you leave, you will never return,” she said with a quiet certainty.

  I glanced at her, and for a moment I was moved by her desolation.

  I continued to pack and she continued to stand there. It was nearly too dark to see what I was doing, but I did not want to turn on a light, I did not want to see in her face the tearing of the last threads between us.

  But my grandmother was not willing to give up that easily. When the silence had grown heavy, she began to speak. “That man, Charles, my cousin, whom everyone said I loved, whom everyone said I compromised myself with, the story was not like that at all.”

  Then she told me the secret that had contorted her life.

  23

  “I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED, SHIVAN,” my grandmother said, as she came to sit on my bed in the darkening room. “And why I was so helpless to do anything about it.” Her voice throbbed with appeal, a modern day Scheherazade who hoped telling her story would keep at bay the death my departure would bring. And her desperation brought a great clarity about herself—that lucidity we always seem to find when at the end of our rope.

  So my grandmother, gesticulating with her hands as if I was a child again and she hoped to win me over with a tale, brought alive that vast family compound of her youth, perched on top of a hill overlooking the sea: red-roofed bungalows around a common paved courtyard, each with its carved teak verandah posts; coconut-frond mats on cool polished floors where the women sat to sew or pick stones out of rice or crochet the famous Galle lace. She described, with a swell of longing in her voice, that large, fat clan of aunts and married cousins, her beloved soft-spoken mother, all led by the matriarch, Thushara Nanda; the way those women travelled in a group, their parasols flapping in the sea breeze, half-moons of perspiration in the armpits of their white lace-edged blouses, brightly coloured sarongs wrapping ample hips.

  The men were away working mostly as civil servants, except for my great-grandfather, who ran a thriving dry goods and hardware store in the town of Galle. The boys were in boarding schools. So my grandmother, Daya, enjoyed great freedom in this world ruled by women. Her wildness was encouraged by the aunts, who dared her to climb the roof and walk along its ridge, or sent her up a mango tree to throw down ripe fruit to them, which they caught in woven baskets. Then there were those nights in the hot season, when my grandmother would creep out of her house, go down the winding path to the main road and across to the beach. There, she would strip off her nightgown and swim to the reef in her underwear, then squat on the honeycomb of coral shelf to examine shells, or stare at the blinking lights on the horizon, arms dangling between her legs, swayed by the waves breaking around her, as she dreamed of where the passing steamers were going.

  Into this world Charles arrived from abroad, hungry for happiness, for belonging. One morning, the women had gone to Galle on a shopping expedition, and they returned in their bullock carts to find a young man seated on a bench in the courtyard. His clothes immediately gave him away as a foreigner. Instead of the light-coloured linen or cotton coats their men wore over sarongs or pants, he was dressed in a double-breasted brown pinstripe suit with padded shoulders. His tie had broad maroon and blue stripes and he wore a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. He clutched a fedora in his hand. As the carts came to a halt in the courtyard, he rose slowly from the bench, squinting up at the women, fingers plucking nervously at his hatband.

  Thushara Nanda descended first from the cart. She asked the man who he was. “I’m sorry
,” he replied in a crisp British accent, “I don’t speak Sinhala.”

  My grandmother and her cousins, who had been educated to some extent in English, glanced at each other.

  “I am your nephew, Charles,” he said, speaking slowly and loudly. “I am the son of your sister, Visaka.”

  Hearing her name, the women let out little cries of wonder, “Visaka Nangi” passing among them like a breeze. Their sister had married into a Colombo family, and a year later died giving birth. Her husband, fulfilling a lifelong dream, had taken his infant son to England. That was the last they had heard of Charles, though my grandmother and her cousins were aware he existed. As if to confirm his lineage, Charles reached in his jacket pocket and produced a slightly faded and creased photograph of his mother. Everyone crowded around to look at it. Some of the aunts began the ritual sniffling and weeping for a sister they had mostly forgotten.

  My grandmother, under the guise of examining the photograph, drew near to take a closer look at this cousin. He was petite and fine-boned, wrists no wider than her own. His face was long, delicate and clean shaven, unlike the men in their family, who sported bristling moustaches and goatees. This hairlessness made him look vulnerable and feminine. His most distinguishing feature was his eyes—large and slightly protruding, the yellow irises and black pupils like a cat’s. He had noticed her staring and smiled hesitantly. She glanced away.

  A nervous jocularity had spread among the older women and they began to push various younger married nieces and daughters forward, saying, “Come-come, all those English classes and English convent school. Speak to the young man.” The women resisted, making a pretence of modesty. My grandmother, embarrassed by their silliness, blurted out in English, “You are coming directly-directly from England?”

  He leant forward eagerly towards her, “Yes, that is right. I came last week.”

  Her aunts and mother made little discreet noises to warn my grandmother. It was improper for an unmarried woman to address a strange man, even though he was her cousin. “And … and why are you coming now to Ceylon?” she continued, ignoring them, drawn by his beautiful, strange eyes.

  “I want to meet my family and get to know them. I want to know who I am, where I come from.” Defensiveness had crept into his voice; an edge of rawness, some wild sadness. The women saw this and their faces turned neutral and guarded.

  My grandmother knew Charles would never get what he wanted. He had been away too long to establish the connection he sought. He should not even stay amongst these women.

  My great-grandfather was sent for. Thushara Nanda and my great-grandmother wanted him to take Charles back to Galle, but my great-grandfather pointed out he slept on a cot in the rear of the shop. It was not a place for a young gentleman. They were stuck with him. Asking a guest to leave flouted conventions of hospitality; doing so brought serious consequences in a future birth.

  In the weeks that passed, Charles became a disconcerting presence in their lives. He seemed to spend a lot of time sleeping in the men’s quarters of Thushara Nanda’s house, where he was billeted. When he was awake he would sit sprawled out on the verandah, his moody gaze following the women as they came and went in the courtyard. He was always polite when addressed, standing up respectfully. Yet he was stiff and shy around them, and because they did not speak the same language the women could not communicate much with him. When he occasionally went down to the beach and swam, a flutter of relief would pass among them at his temporary absence.

  “Like a peréthaya,” Thushara Nanda would later declare of Charles, “come to haunt us with his silent, starving presence.” That was how they would speak of him later in their hatred.

  My grandmother was the only one who felt sorry for him, and he must have sensed this, because he watched her attentively whenever she passed. If she caught his eye, he would smile and sit up, nodding in a friendly manner. Finally, one day, he asked where she was going with the basket under her arm and if he might come along. My grandmother assented. Rosalind was with her and would be chaperone.

  They had hardly spoken to each other before and walked apart towards the vegetable garden. My grandmother finally asked shyly, “England is very nice?”

  “Oh, yes,” he declared, “it’s the best place on earth.” Seeing she was ready to be impressed by this mythical place studied in school, he began to tell her about the marvels of London and how he had seen the king, and about the wonders of the 1938 Empire Exhibition that he had seen in Scotland last year.

  Of course, when they returned from the garden, both her mother and Thushara Nanda had a talk with my grandmother. She argued back, telling them they were being rude and unkind to their visitor. Charles was a nephew. This inhospitality was a shame to their dead sister’s memory. Did Charles hear the argument and understand its meaning, even though he did not speak Sinhala? Or did he just sense the tension between the older women and his cousin? He began to waylay my grandmother as she passed, asking questions about the village and the world around them. He went with her and Rosalind about their tasks, rolling up his sleeves to dig the ground so they could retrieve yams, going up a tree to throw fruit down to them, carrying their heavy baskets. In the evenings, he began to drop by her house to talk about England, to show her picture postcards he had brought of London.

  Did my grandmother fall in love with him? In recounting her story, she claimed all she felt was sorry for him. “I was stupid, Shivan, just stupid. I should have been more careful and listened to my mother and aunts. I should not have ignored that craving in him to belong.”

  In the midst of all the tension his presence brought, my grandmother kept up her nightly swims to the reef. It was as if the hand of karma guided her down to the beach at night as the moon grew increasingly full, her near-nakedness more and more visible.

  One afternoon, my grandmother returned from an errand with Charles and Rosalind to find a gentleman in his forties having tea with the older women on Thushara Nanda’s verandah. The buttons of his white linen coat strained against his rotundity, his cheeks flushed from the heat, round glasses perched on the edge of his nose. His bald head was shiny with sweat, a raw rim where his solar topee had sat, the hat now on the table before him.

  Something had changed in Daya’s aunts and mother. They were looking at their nephew with sympathy and curiosity.

  Charles’s face reddened. He took off his fedora and held it to his stomach like a shield.

  This gentleman, Mr. Ariyasinghe, addressed Charles in a mild tone that was slightly jocular to hide his discomfort. “It’s nice to find you hale and hearty, young man. Your father’s relatives in Colombo were wondering what had happened to their nephew. They wish you back with them.”

  Charles flicked his hat against his stomach and scowled into the distance, ignoring my grandmother’s surprise at these other relatives he had not mentioned.

  “It has been delightful having young Charles,” Thushara Nanda said, beaming at Mr. Ariyasinghe, who was cousin to Charles’s father. “But we must not take your foreign relative over in this way. It is important he spends some time with his paternal family as well.” The other women nodded, trying to hide their relief behind pious expressions.

  Later that evening, Rosalind, who had heard from other servants, told my grandmother the reason Charles had left England. According to Mr. Ariyasinghe, Charles had been in love with an English woman who had led him on to amuse her friends, all of them entertained by the temerity of this dark colonial. Finally, there had been a public humiliation at a dance.

  Mr. Ariyasinghe, a judge on circuit, would pick Charles up in a week on his way back to Colombo. The older women became very hospitable and gracious towards Charles. But he grew increasingly sullen and dismissive of their cordiality, guessing they were sorry for him but also relieved he was going. My grandmother would find her cousin sitting in a secluded corner of the garden, lips twitching as if carrying on a conversation with himself, or pacing the road that led to the family compound. She wanted
to express her sympathy, to promise she would write to him, but there was a wild speculation when he looked at her that warned her to stay away.

  A few nights after Mr. Ariyasinghe’s visit, Daya returned from the reef to find her cousin waiting on the beach. She let out a small cry and clutched at her wet underwear to cover as much of her body as she could. “I … I’m sorry.” He backed away. “I didn’t mean to offend you.” He turned to give her privacy. My grandmother grabbed her nightgown off the rock where she had left it and wriggled into it.

  “Cousin Charles,” she said softly, struggling to communicate in a language that was not her own, “you are not being seen here with me. It will only bring trouble for a young girl seen such with a man.”

  “Daya, Daya,” he whispered, coming to her, taking her cold wet hands in his, “I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  “Ah, no, Cousin Charles.” She gently pulled her hands away. “That is not to be. I am not feeling for that.”

  “Do you not love me?” he demanded tearfully.

  “But you are not loving me,” she said, and touched his arm out of sympathy. “You are wanting to belong and be like us. But marrying will not make it so. Only, it will make you unhappy, living-living with country folk. You will be missing your other life soon and then hating your wife.”

  “No! I will not miss that other life. I am nothing there, nothing.”

  My grandmother made her way up the beach, lurching as her feet sank into the sand. She was afraid of his appeal, afraid of her sympathy. But also, perhaps, afraid she did love him and that such love would only lead to misery.

  Charles must have sensed her feelings, because he followed, importuning her all the way up the steep road, my grandmother saying, “No, no, it is not to be.” When they were at the gate to the compound, he grabbed her shoulders and tried to kiss her. For a moment their lips met, then she broke away with a cry. The dogs in the compound heard her distress. They began to bark, the alarm spreading from dog to dog on each verandah. Lights in the houses flickered on as lamps were lit; the alarmed voices of her relatives and their servants warbled as they struggled out of sleep. My grandmother lifted the hem of her nightgown and darted towards her house, hoping to slip in through the back before she was discovered. Charles hurried after her.