The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  They made it only as far as the middle of the courtyard before the women charged out, some with rifles, others holding up lamps, accompanied by male servants with sticks and scythes. Thushara Nanda had a torch. Its beam swept the courtyard and caught my grandmother and Charles. The long sigh of waves against the shore could be heard in the silence. Her nightgown was torn at the neckline, she realized, from the brief scuffle with Charles.

  The women converged from all directions until they were a circle around Charles and Daya. Her mother, her aunts, her cousins, were ghostly in the lamplight. Charles pushed past the women with a cry of despair and ran to his room. My grandmother was left alone, the women staring at her as if she were a stranger. “Amma,” she whispered, and held out her hands. But she might as well have been invisible to her mother. She turned to her aunts and cousins. Some averted their faces, others backed away.

  Rosalind came forward and put her arms around my grandmother, who had begun to shake, her breath stuttering. It was the ayah who led her mistress to their house, the other women following behind in silence as if trailing a hearse, my great-grandmother weeping softly.

  After that my grandmother became a spectral thing who stayed in her room or the back garden of her parents’ house. She was their only child, and they alternately wept and railed at her. “No one would listen to me, Shivan. No one would let me tell my story. It did not matter. The damage had been done. Because, by the next morning, our servants had spread the word throughout the village. The marriage prospects of my unmarried cousins were in jeopardy.”

  So my grandmother lived like this, in seclusion. Sometimes she would stare at herself in the mirror feeling as if she had been hollowed out, no longer a young woman but a ghost.

  Then about four months after Charles had left, Mr. Ariyasinghe came to call on the family. The story of what happened had somehow reached their family in Colombo. He did not mention what version they had heard, and referred to the whole thing diplomatically as “that regrettable incident.” He told my great-grandparents that after Charles’s humiliation in England he’d had “difficulties” involving unsavoury new friends and opiate addiction. “This is not a young man in charge of all his faculties,” Mr. Ariyasinghe said, wiping his glasses and speaking in his measured, kindly way, as if in court. It was clear he felt Charles was more to blame than Daya.

  “What good does telling us this achieve?” my great-grandfather asked bitterly.

  Mr. Ariyasinghe nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said evenly. From where he sat on the verandah, he was the only one who could see my grandmother standing inside by the threshold of the front door. Half glancing at the parents, half glancing at her, he informed my great-grandfather that he was a childless widower and would be “honoured and delighted” to marry his daughter. My great-grandfather did not ask if he wanted to see his future bride, nor even what her expectations might be.

  “He was a good, kind husband, Shivan,” my grandmother said to me. “He never treated me as if I were soiled. Yet he never asked what happened. In our time, those were not things people discussed, not even husbands and wives. And living each day with that unspoken thing, the daily knowledge that to my family and the world I was guilty of something I did not do, corroded me. And so I was never happy; that is, until you came into my life. When I looked up and saw you standing in my room, sniffling, my heart broke with happiness. You were like rain soaking a parched land.”

  She had finished her story and was waiting now for my judgment. I could not bear to look at her. By offering this secret she was hoping to tie us close again. But all I wanted was to be free of the suffocating weight of our past together.

  “Why are you telling me all this now?” I asked harshly. “It’s too late. Nothing you can do or say will fix what has happened.”

  “Ah, Puthey,” she said softly, holding out her hands to me, palms cupped as if to receive a gift.

  I could feel my throat constricting. To escape her, I had to deliver a fatal blow. “There is something you should know, something I have been meaning to tell you.” I turned to her with a thin smile. “It wasn’t Amma’s idea we go to Canada. It was mine.” She dropped her hands in shock. “It was me, Aacho, who went to the Canadian embassy and got that form. I begged and pleaded until Amma gave in and filled it out.”

  She searched my face in the hope I was lying, but I held her gaze. An ancient tired expression came over her. She stood up and hobbled towards the door. She held on to the door jamb for a moment to steady herself, then continued out to the saleya.

  Another of my grandmother’s stories, “The Demoness Kali,” begins with this line: As a forest fire raging out of control only stops when it reaches a lake or river, so hatred and vengeance can only be quenched by the waters of compassion.

  In the household of a rich merchant, the senior wife, who is barren, discovers one day that the junior wife is pregnant. Overcome with jealousy and fear for her status, she poisons the junior wife, killing the unborn child in the process. In her death throes, the junior wife makes a fervent wish for her next birth, “May I be reborn to devour your children,” thus unleashing a bad karma that follows the two women through many lives. They are reincarnated as cat and hen, tigress and doe, the two women taking turns as aggressor, the stronger animal consuming the weaker one’s offspring each time, the distraught mother making a fervent wish to be reborn to devour the other’s young. Finally, after many life cycles, the senior wife is born as a noblewoman and the junior wife as the Demoness Kali. In disguise, Kali insinuates herself into the household of the noble-woman and twice eats her children, gobbling them up like plates of rice. The noblewoman gives birth again, and one day she is bathing in a river near the Devram Vehera monastery when she sees the demoness approaching without her disguise. She snatches up her child, who is sleeping on the riverbank, and flees. Kali gives chase, and since she has supernatural power she soon catches up, just as they reach the gates of the monastery. The demoness grabs on to the edge of her victim’s sari, but the noblewoman rips herself away and rushes inside the gates with her baby. The demoness cannot follow, because the god Saman guards the entrance and will not let her pass.

  In the monastery a great throng is gathered in the audience hall, because the Lord Buddha is giving a sermon. The noblewoman pushes her way through the crowd, and interrupting the Tathagata shouts, “Lord, you alone can save my child.” She lays him at the Buddha’s feet. The Tathagata sends a monk to fetch the demoness, and when she is before him he asks the cause of her anger.

  She tells him of their previous rebirths. The Lord Buddha says to her, “Listen, demoness, if your body is unclean with spit and phlegm and snot, can you use more spit and phlegm and snot to clean it? In the same way, you cannot use vengeance to cleanse a past wrong. No, it is only the waters of compassion that can cleanse your past enmities.”

  The Lord Buddha instructs the noblewoman to place her child in the arms of the demoness. She refuses at first, but then finds the enormous faith to pick up her boy and put him in the hands of her enemy. The demoness hugs and caresses the child as if he is her own, rocking him in her arms. She begins to weep thinking of the two children she has already eaten. “My lord,” she cries to the Buddha, “how shall I live now?”

  The Tathagata preaches the Dhamma to her and she enters the first stage of enlightenment, becoming a stream-enterer. He instructs the noblewoman to take the demoness home with her. “Give her the first serving of whatever you make and look after her well.”

  The story doesn’t end there, for denouements are often long in Buddhist stories and are, in fact, the point of the tale: Actions are easy to perform, but working off the karmic effects of those actions takes a long time.

  So the noblewoman invites Kali into her home and places her in the rafters. But when the noblewoman pounds rice with her long wooden pestle, the top keeps hitting the demoness in the eye. “Oh, sister, I am in pain, this resting place brings no comfort. Move me somewhere else,” she cries. The noble-
woman carries the demoness and places her in a corner of the room where the pestles are kept, but every time a pestle is thrown into the corner it strikes her on the head. “Oh, sister, I am in pain, this resting place brings no comfort. Move me somewhere else,” the demoness cries again. The noblewoman moves the demoness to the end of the hall where the water barrels stand, but when little boys rinse their mouths from the barrels, they spit dirty water on the demoness’s head. She is moved to the hearth, but the dogs huddle there, leaving dirty fur and ticks on her body; she is moved to a corner by the eaves, but little boys urinate and defecate around her, fouling the air she breathes; she is put in the village compound by the garbage heap, but villagers empty their refuse on her head; she is placed at the entrance to the village, but little boys practise with their bows and arrows there, using her as a target.

  Finally, the noblewoman takes the demoness from the village and places her under a tree at a spot that is between the village, where everyday life happens, and the forest, where the ascetics live. Here, she finally finds rest. The village prospers from her knowledge and advice about when to cultivate grains and when there will be rains. Through her good deeds, over time, the demoness changes into Bhadra Kali, Goddess Kali, the merciful.

  PART FOUR

  24

  THE GARBAGE BAGS STAND READY IN THE HALLWAY. My mother’s kitchen is bare of all food, her draining rack so swarmed with empty spice bottles and Tupperware containers some must dry upside down on the counter. They drip in the exhausted way of leaves after a storm.

  I have gone further than my mother asked, have taken out each shelf in the fridge and scrubbed it, removed food spills in the freezer with boiling water. I’ve also moved the fridge, swept and mopped up years of dirt and dried-up old bits of food underneath, then done the same for the stove. I have taken apart each element and made sure there are no scraps below it, made sure not a crumb remains on any cupboard shelf. It is long work, removing all traces of food from a kitchen.

  I see from the microwave clock that it is now two in the morning and so eleven in Vancouver. If I am going to telephone Michael, I must do it now, as he will soon go to bed. I have been avoiding this call, pretending not to notice the passing of time.

  I dial our number from the kitchen phone, but when it starts to ring I slam the receiver down. Lowering myself shakily onto the stool by the phone, I lean my head back against the wall, waiting for my breath to calm.

  Michael, before he left for work this morning, was oddly distant, not meeting my eye as he rushed about the apartment. He looked gaunt and severe with his wet curls flattened against his skull and glistening. As he slapped bread onto the cutting board in the kitchen, spread mustard, scrambled through the fridge for deli meat, he kept up a steady murmur of endearment towards his kitten, who had got onto the counter to watch, this hum of affection tightening to a snap if she tried to sniff his sandwich. I sat on the couch pretending to read the newspaper, my fear draining the words of their meaning. After a time of sweetness between us, he had fallen back into his grim mood. Finally, there was the roar of his blow dryer, then his verbena cologne opening like a flower in our apartment. He put on his coat and tied his scarf, and I went to stand by the door. Only when he had scooped up his keys from the hall table did he meet my gaze. “Well,” he said, with a curiously wry expression, “be safe in Sri Lanka.” He gripped the side of my neck with one hand, drew me forward for a quick kiss, then left.

  I followed him out, bewildered by this goodbye, and watched from our apartment doorway as he waited for the elevator. He kept his face averted so I couldn’t read his mood, couldn’t tell if he was angry again. After a moment, he let out a strangled sob. “Michael,” I cried and started forward. The elevator door opened. He lifted his hand, holding me off as he disappeared inside.

  In our goodbye, we made no arrangement to talk, and seated by the phone now, arms folded, I understand that if I don’t telephone him he won’t call me. After tapping my fingers against my elbows for a moment, I pick up the receiver and thump in the numbers.

  “Did you just ring?” he asks, when he comes on the line.

  “Yes, but I got cut off.”

  “Huh, strange. And how are you?”

  “Drunk.”

  In the silence that swells between us, I can hear the scratched notes of Noriko Awaya, the old Japanese queen of the blues, for whom Michael has a fondness. “How come?”

  “I don’t know, Michael. I’m just drunk, you know. D-R-U-N-K.”

  He doesn’t respond to my irritation but asks in a pleasant tone, “How is your mother?”

  I tell him she is fine and, to keep the silence from separating us again, describe all the changes to the house, how the old carpeting on the ground floor has been replaced by hardwood flooring, how the kitchen and hallway are newly tiled and the kitchen cupboards fitted with new doors. I am in the middle of my narrative when his breath changes rhythm.

  “Michael?”

  He begins to cry freely.

  “Michael, what’s wrong? What is happening?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I … I started this morning and can’t stop. They sent me home from work … I was useless.”

  “But why? Are you so sad I’m going? It’s only three weeks.”

  “No, no, it’s not that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  I want to ask, as I’ve wanted to ask so many times in the last few days, “Are you planning to leave me? Don’t you love me anymore?” But this is not the right time.

  He calms down and blows his nose. “Look, it’s getting late. I have to work tomorrow.”

  “I can’t let you go when you’re like this.”

  “Well, what do you want to do about it, Shivan? There is nothing to be done. I’m just crying. Is it really that surprising, given all the shit in our lives?”

  “I will really miss you,” I say, humbled, frightened. “It feels like I’m going for much longer than just three weeks.”

  “The time will pass.”

  I want to hear that he will miss me, too, that the three weeks will seem longer for him as well. But he says “Love you” and rings off.

  I stand by the phone, knowing he will not call me back yet paralyzed by hope, knowing also that this crying all day is just another form of anger, even if Michael doesn’t know it. Finally, I tug at the cuffs of my sweater, then go to get my jacket as I need a walk. All the plastic bags full of old clothes and food have to be taken down to the garbage hut. Once I pull on my jacket, I fumble with the zipper because my hands are cold. A chill has spread its way to my bones in the last hours, my muscles involuntarily stiffened to prevent heat escaping. There is nothing I can do about this coldness, though I have tried holding my fingers above an element on the cooker. I reach in from the hallway and pluck the garbage-hut key from a hook by the telephone. Then, clutching two bags in each hand, I stumble out the door. A thin film of ice has formed on the walkway. It rustles under my feet.

  “Michael, Michael,” I silently beg as I stagger towards the garbage hut, “where are we these days? Why are we caught in this strange tussle?”

  My flight back from Sri Lanka, that summer of 1988, arrived in Toronto just past sunset. I had an aisle seat, so couldn’t see our descent over the city. I did not particularly care and kept my eyes closed, feeling that awful dullness which sets in once the sharp shock of a tragedy is past and you are confronted with the mundane day to day in which you must participate, dragging along your heavy pain. The thought of getting off the plane, going through immigration, finding my bags, seemed impossibly exhausting.

  The wheels touched the tarmac and the plane shuddered. We hurtled forward at a fierce speed, then the aircraft slowed to an amble and stopped. The seat belt sign pinged off, there was a scramble to retrieve bags and jostle into line, then an interminable wait until the doors opened. I remained seated through all this, eyes still closed. Once the plane emptied, I took down my knapsack.r />
  The grey corridor along which I walked was glass on one side, giving a view of the runway. Beyond it, the airport scrubland had that late-summer bedraggled look, the brown grass heaving and settling as planes came and went as if fur on the rump of some sleeping beast.

  When I came out the sliding doors into the arrivals lounge, Renu and my mother were waiting. There was a stillness to them, as if prepared for the worst.

  “Ah, son.” My mother took my face in her hands. “You look so tired. Your eyes, they’re so old.” Her own eyes glistened as she drew me close and held me fiercely. “You’re trembling,” she said after a moment.

  “Am I?” I asked into her shoulder.

  Renu gave me a quick angular embrace and a fervent look. Then she grabbed my cart and wheeled it towards the elevator. My mother took my arm and we followed. When we were out in the parking lot, she pointed at a rather worn-looking red Honda Civic. “We bought a second-hand car.”

  Once on the highway, my mother driving, I leant back in my seat and stared out at the relentless ranks of squat grey buildings, their ugliness only emphasized by large, colourful billboards on their gravelled roofs. Grass growing in the highway medians accentuated the filthy rails and ponderous pocked overpasses. I gazed at the other motorists, jarred by the fact that they were mostly white. Soon, the effort of just looking was too much and I closed my eyes.

  When we turned into Melsetter Boulevard and pulled up in our driveway, I said to myself, I am home, but no feeling arose in me.