Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

by Shyam Selvadurai

  The graveyard, where his mother was buried, was in the center of Colombo. Its many acres were divided into different sections for the various religions of Sri Lanka. One part of the graveyard was taken up with crematoriums for the Buddhists and Hindus, who did not bury their dead but rather cremated the bodies and scattered the ashes in the sea or in rivers. The Muslims had their area, as did the numerous Christian sects.

  Aunty Bundle’s driver, Mendis, parked the car outside the gate that led into the Christian section, and she and Amrith got out.

  There were hawkers in front of the gates selling bunches of flowers, marigold garlands, lotuses, and sticks of incense from their stalls. Aunty Bundle stopped at one of them to buy two bouquets of flowers. She handed one to Amrith and, as he took it, he smelt the sharp odor of carnations, a smell he always associated with death and funerals.

  They entered through the gates and made their way among the graves, towards the place where his mother was buried. They were passing through a section of the cemetery that, during the time of colonialism, when the British ruled Sri Lanka, had been White Only. The British had buried their dead in this separate area, apart from the Sri Lankans. It was in a dilapidated state, as the descendants of these dead colonizers were no longer around to keep their ancestors’ graves up. The few tombstones that were still standing were so covered in moss, it was impossible to read the engravings. Most of the stones, however, had disintegrated under the tropical heat and humidity. Just fragments lay in the tall grass, with surnames like Smith, Barclay, Woodson — names that had once belonged to someone’s father or mother or child or sibling. Another fragment had the words Dearly Beloved, with an engraving of roses around it. Another fragment, just the word Mother. As they made their way through the knee-high grass, Amrith was sure that they were stepping on graves.

  When they reached his mother’s grave, the grass and weeds were high on the mound. The flowers Aunty Bundle had laid, when she visited a month ago, were withered and crisped brown. There had been a recent burial in the adjoining plot, the date of death on the tombstone reading July 1980. Clods of soil were scattered on his mother’s grave.

  “Ttttch.” Aunty Bundle clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth in annoyance. “I pay that cemetery keeper, and see, nothing has been done.”

  She knelt down and began to pull at the weeds and grass. Amrith did not help her. He stood there, his face averted from the grave, wishing that this whole ordeal would end.

  Once Aunty Bundle was satisfied with the state of the grave, she indicated for him to kneel beside her and together they said a decade of the rosary. When they were done, Amrith got to his feet and dusted the knees of his white trousers, which were stained with soil.

  “Amrith?”

  He looked up to see Aunty Bundle regarding him with a mixture of worry and hope. Even before she spoke, he knew what she was going to say. She asked him the same questions every year.

  “Son, don’t you remember your mother at all?”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t remember that time, when I visited you at the estate?”

  He shook his head again and avoided looking at her.

  Later, as they were walking back towards the gate, Amrith kept a few steps behind Aunty Bundle. He felt a curious bitter pleasure in denying her his memories.

  2

  Aunty Bundle

  And yet Amrith’s mind, his traitorous mind, as if rebelling against such meanness towards Aunty Bundle, came in and swept him away to the memory of the first time he had heard her name.

  He had returned one morning from school to find his mother seated in her usual cane chair, her hands clasped behind her head, looking out at the distant mountains.

  “Amrith.” She lowered her arms and turned to him. “I received a letter today, darling. From an old friend in Colombo.” Picking up a sheet of thin blue paper, she beckoned him forward.

  He peered at the letter, unable to decipher the exuberant scrawl. His mother smiled faintly. “My friend always had the most horrible hand.” She began to read the letter.

  “My dear Asha,

  I am an interior decorator now and work with the well-known architect Lucien Lindamulagé. We are renovating an old estate bungalow into a hotel, not far from where you live. It would be nice to catch up and reminisce about the good old days. I do hope you still remember them. As for me, I have never forgotten. I will be staying at the local rest house and I will wait for you to telephone me before I visit.

  Love

  Bundle”

  Amrith was surprised by the formality of the letter. It was unheard of for someone, particularly an old friend, to wait on a telephone invitation to visit. When people visited, they never called or made an appointment, but usually dropped in casually, unannounced. Then there was her name, the oddity of it. Bundle. Like a bundle of firewood, or a bundle of papers.

  “Ammi, why does she have such a strange name?”

  “Her real name is Beatrice,” his mother said with a smile, “but she was such a happy baby that her parents called her Bundle-of-Joy and then just Bundle.”

  “She sounds like a really jolly person, Ammi. Are you going to phone her?”

  His mother folded up the letter. She picked up his plate of rice and curry, which was lying under a fly-cover on the table, and began to divide it into mouthfuls with her right hand. “Amrith, you are a big boy now, six years old and everything. So there are things I can tell you, things you must understand. Your father … he’s a very jealous man. He does not like people visiting me. He does not like it at all. Soon after we married, I … I broke off contact with Aunty Bundle to please him, even though she was my oldest and dearest friend. Why, Bundle and I were like sisters back then. Our families lived next door to each other and we grew up together. We were inseparable all through —” She gazed into the distance. Her eyes were like those dark wet stones he picked up out of streams.

  Amrith pulled at her sleeve to distract her from her sorrow. “When you were girls, Ammi, what was your favorite thing to do?”

  She thought about his question for a moment. “Our best times together were when we went on vacation to Sanasuma, my family’s holiday home.” She smiled, lost in a memory. “My, what glorious adventures Bundle and I had there. We would pack a picnic lunch and go for long treks up the mountains. When we got too hot, we would put on our bathing suits and swim in some little stream that we had discovered. Sometimes when we were picnicking in a field, deer would come to graze. It was magical. Everything about Sanasuma was magical. The house was perched on a plateau surrounded by mountains. You could see for miles and miles down below. And, right by Sanasuma, a stream made its way down the hillside, forming a waterfall at one point and tumbling into a rock pool at another. We would spend hours in that rock pool.”

  “I would love to see Sanasuma, Ammi.”

  His mother sighed. “Maybe one day, son. Maybe one day.”

  She offered him a mouthful of food.

  Amrith might never have met Aunty Bundle, and his whole life might have been different, if his father had not been called away unexpectedly to Colombo for meetings with the National Tea Board. He would be gone a week.

  Amrith heard the good news from his ayah, Selamma, when she came to pick him up after school. He felt an incredible happiness take hold of him and, when he got home, he ran around the side of the house and found his mother waiting for him by the veranda steps, a look of equal joy on her face.

  “Amrith!” She picked him up, twirled him around, and set him down. “I have a surprise for you.” She grabbed his hand and led him past the veranda.

  Their garden had a narrow shelf of grass from which the land sloped down sharply to the lawn below. In the center of the lawn, Amrith saw that a picnic lunch had been laid out on a mat.

  When they got down the steps that were carved into the slope, Amrith was delighted that, instead of boring rice and curry, they were having boiled eggs, ham sandwiches, lemonade, and — h
e could hardly believe it — chips.

  Once they had finished their lunch, his mother said to him, “Son, what else shall we do, now that, you know, we’re alone?”

  “What shall we do?” He lay with his head in her lap. “What would you like to do, Ammi?”

  She looked down at him and then away. He knew what she was thinking.

  “You should invite her, Ammi. I would really like to meet Aunty Bundle.”

  “I don’t know, son, I just don’t know.”

  Yet, when he came home the next afternoon, there was a car in the driveway. He ran towards the house, around the corner, and up the veranda steps.

  And there she was, Aunty Bundle, alone, seated in his mother’s chair. She was facing away from him, practically hidden by the intricate canework that made up the design of the peacock tail. All that was clearly visible were the ornate leather Indian slippers on her feet, a silver chain around one chubby ankle.

  She made a slight movement, but did not turn around.

  Amrith walked behind the visitor and went to stand by the cane chair on the other side of the table. Across from him was a beautiful woman. She was wearing a blouse of fine white cotton, with lacework on the front and puffed sleeves that ended at her dimpled elbows. Her skirt was an ankle-length sarong of shimmering turquoise, with a thick gold band down the front. Around her plump waist was a delicate and finely filigreed chain-belt. From its clasp, a length of chain hung down her hip, a jeweled peacock at the end. A gold cross on a chain nestled in the indentation of her bosom. Amrith’s gaze traveled up to the woman’s face. He had already learnt from his mother that her friend was half-Dutch Burgher, half-Sinhalese, and so he was not surprised by her light complexion, like milk-tea. She had a heart-shaped dimply face, a turned-up nose, and caramel eyes. Her hair rose out of a widow’s peak and was back-combed.

  Aunty Bundle was regarding him too, her head slightly to one side, her eyes brilliant. “Amrith, dear,” she said, holding out her hand, “I have waited so long to meet you, thought so very much about you.”

  He found himself going to her. It was her voice that drew him, its low murmur like a stream running over pebbles. She put an arm around him and drew him to her. There was a deftness to her touch. She held him but did not confine him in any way. Amrith allowed himself to sink into her, let her stroke his head. Her perfume was sweet but also woody, like freshly cut logs. Bhootaya, their dog, who never trusted strangers, was lying by Aunty Bundle’s chair, her snout on her paws.

  His mother came out onto the veranda. She smiled at him as if to say, “Here is the thing you wanted.”

  He went and hugged her.

  “Now, Asha.” Aunty Bundle stood up, a sudden liveliness entering her voice, her eyes. “Remember, you promised me a tour of the garden.”

  “Yes-yes.” His mother’s face lit up with a girlish vivacity Amrith had never seen before.

  The two women went down the veranda steps, their arms linked. Whatever awkwardness there had been over his mother’s breaking off contact, all those years ago, had been dealt with before Amrith got home.

  When Aunty Bundle was at the top of the slope, looking down to the garden, she cried out, “Ash-a! My, how lovely! The roses, goodness me, I have never seen such a profusion.” She held her arms out to encompass the large roses, riotous on the bushes below, in various shades and colors from golden orange to delicate pink to feathery white to velvety red.

  “Did you do all this yourself?” Aunty Bundle said, turning to his mother.

  She nodded, delighted at her friend’s wonder at the roses, for which she had a great passion.

  “But what talent, Asha, what a marvel!” Aunty Bundle pressed his mother’s arm. “Come-come, I must have a closer look at your talent, nah.”

  His mother glowed from the praise. “There are steps over there to the —”

  “Steps?” Aunty Bundle cried, with a grin. “Ttttch, you may be an old woman but not me, miss.” She had been carrying a white parasol, which she now snapped shut and tucked under her arm. She hitched up her sarong to her knees and kicked off her slippers. “Last one down has to be servant-for-the-day. Come on, Amrith! Now. Ready —” His mother grinned and kicked off her slippers. Amrith took his position on one knee. “— Steady go!”

  They raced down the hill, the women squealing, their arms flailing at their sides like birds that could not fly. Amrith gritted his teeth and beat them both.

  When they reached the bottom, the women plopped down on the grass, laughing. Then Aunty Bundle rose to her feet, snapped her parasol open, and the two of them began a tour of the garden. Amrith sat a little way up the slope, hugging his knees to his chest, watching his mother’s friend.

  He was enchanted with Aunty Bundle. She had brought such immediate happiness. He had never known that his mother’s face could light up in such a way. Amrith could tell, from Aunty Bundle’s jeweled peacock, fine clothes, heavy gold bangles, and silk parasol, that she was much richer than they were. Yet, there was nothing stiff about her at all and, in fact, he felt he had known her for a long time.

  Aunty Bundle stayed for lunch. Later, while Amrith lay on his daybed, the two women had tea and Aunty Bundle talked of her life in Colombo.

  Amrith, listening to their conversation, learnt that Aunty Bundle was married to a man named Lucky (short for Lukshman), whom his mother seemed to know as well, from her earlier life in Colombo. This Lucky, or Uncle Lucky, as Amrith would soon come to call him, was very rich and owned a company called Ceylon Aquariums, which exported exotic fish all over the world. They had a daughter named Mala, whom Aunty Bundle referred to with a fond smile as “a little grandmother,” and another daughter named Selvi, who Aunty Bundle said, with a twinkle in her eye, was “a devilish handful.”

  The world Aunty Bundle spoke of — her family; her house that had been designed by the architect Lucien Lindamulagé and was a good example of something called precolonial architecture; her old ayah, Jane-Nona; her dogs, Eva, Zsa Zsa, and Magda, who were such ugly mongrels that Aunty Bundle, out of pity, had named them after three beautiful Hollywood sisters — all this had seemed so distant, so foreign from Amrith’s own life.

  Lying there on his daybed, listening intently with his mouth agape, he could not have imagined how soon he would be a part of that world; how soon he would become a member of the Manuel-Pillai family.

  3

  Ceylon Aquariums

  Aunty Bundle had a design meeting that morning with Lucien Lindamulagé for a new project they were working on. She dropped Amrith outside the gates of their house and left immediately.

  The compound in which the Manuel-Pillai home stood had a tall parapet wall all around it. The gates opened into an extensive cobbled front courtyard, with a large jak tree growing in the center. The house was at the far end of the courtyard. Double doors led into the living room. It had no rear wall and opened directly onto the back garden, the black-and-white checked tile flooring giving way to squares of dark and light gravel on the patio. There were accordion doors that could be drawn across to cut off the garden during a rainstorm, or at night. To the right of the living room, on a slightly raised level, was the dining room. Two steps led up to it. From the dining room, swinging doors provided an entrance to the pantry and kitchen. To the left of the living room was an antechamber, called the library because of the bookshelves in it. This library had two doors at either end, one leading to the girls’ room and the other to Uncle Lucky and Aunty Bundle’s room. Their bedrooms had French windows that opened into a walled side garden. Amrith’s room was slightly separate from the rest of the house and was reached by a door in what seemed the left boundary wall of the courtyard, but, instead, surprisingly, opened into his bedroom, from which French windows also led to the walled side garden.

  Once Amrith had showered and changed, he went across the front courtyard and into the living room. There was a large barrel now under the hole in the roof to catch rain that fell through. He made his way past the barrel to the di
ning room and then through to the kitchen. Jane-Nona had kept his breakfast under a fly-cover in the pantry. Amrith perched on a tall stool and munched on his cold scrambled eggs and toast, staring out at the kitchen garden. The light that came in through the window puddled and rippled on the fridge and spice cupboard. Selvi and Mala had left for their various activities a while ago, and a quiet reigned throughout the house, broken only by Jane-Nona pounding something in the mortar — a rhythmic thump-thump — followed by the scraping of a metal spoon against stone, before the process was repeated. His holiday stretched before him with nothing to do and a gloom settled over him like a heavy cape.

  The school year, which began in January, was divided into three semesters, separated from one another by month-long holidays in April, August, and December. Of all the holidays, August was the dullest. In April, the hottest month of the year, Amrith and the Manuel-Pillais, like almost everyone else in their social circle, escaped to the chalets and cottages of the cool hill country. In December, there was the excitement of Christmas, with its endless rounds of dinners and social visits. In August, however, there were no such distractions. This vacation was going to be particularly tedious because, due to his and the girls’ schools being used as exam centers, their holiday would stretch to six weeks.

  Amrith sighed. Already, more than half of 1980 was over and, despite his hopes that this first year of the new decade would bring exciting changes to his life, there had been none. Things went on in their boring way. At fourteen, it often seemed to him that his life was already set, with nothing much to look forward to.

  Once he had dawdled over his breakfast, Amrith went to stand at the gate, peering down the deserted road, as if he expected something to materialize beyond the shimmering tar. A group of neighborhood boys came out of a house, on their way to a field nearby. They were carrying cricket bats, wickets, fielding gloves, and a ball. Their voices were raised in gruff competition and two of them were scuffling. Amrith hurried back inside, not wanting them to see him.