Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

by Shyam Selvadurai

  Amrith had to pay attention to where he was going, and he hurried to keep up with Uncle Lucky, who strode along as if there was no one in his way.

  So, by the time Amrith was aware of the man and boy, he had already passed them and found himself turning to look at them. They were wearing shorts, which immediately marked them as foreigners, Sri Lankan foreigners in this case. They had stopped, or rather the boy, who appeared about Amrith’s age but was much taller, had made the man stop so they could look at some garishly painted wooden elephants. Amrith, who still walked on even as he looked back, bumped right into Uncle Lucky. He, too, had come to a standstill and was staring at the man and boy.

  The foreigners had lost interest in the elephants. They continued on and were immediately lost in the swell of pedestrians.

  “Oh, ah,” Uncle Lucky pressed Amrith’s shoulder, not taking his eyes off the crowd. “Amrith, just … stand over there by the entrance to Cargil’s. A client … I must go.”

  With that, Uncle Lucky, in a manner that was so uncharacteristic of him, practically ran after the foreigners.

  It was some time before he came back. He was sweating. “A client, from Singapore. Good thing I caught him, as he was on his way to my office.” Uncle Lucky took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “Come,” he said, gesturing towards the cool interior of Cargil’s, “let’s go and have a glass of passion fruit cordial.”

  Amrith followed him, puzzled by Uncle Lucky’s strange behavior, the agitated look on his face.

  They were standing by the refreshment counter, sipping their drinks through straws, when, without any preamble, Uncle Lucky said, “Yes-yes, you children are very blessed not to be poor like I was at your age.”

  Uncle Lucky’s teenage years — they had risen to mythical status in his narration of the terrible poverty he and his mother had endured after his father died. More marvelous than the martyrdoms of Aunty Bundle’s saints. How poor Uncle Lucky, at the tender age of fifteen, had to give up his schooling, his dream of being an engineer, and go out to work. The sheer luxury of one egg a week; the eating of every unwanted part of a cow; the fact that he did not taste chicken until he was nineteen years old; the one office shirt, which was washed every evening by his mother, and which, during the monsoon, he sometimes wore damp to work the next day. The list was endless, but the ultimate goal of this litany was always the same — a reminder to the children of how fortunate they were to have a father like him; how very lucky they were to have an Uncle Lucky.

  So, Amrith waited for the recital with a mental rolling of his eyes. Instead, Uncle Lucky stared into the distance for a while. “My father, you know, had quite a decent civil service job. We should not have been so poor after his death. He had this brother, you see. Their parents had left them a piece of land in Jaffna, to be equally divided, but the brother simply took it for himself. After all, it made sense — he was the one living up there in Jaffna and my father was here in Colombo. But my father would not see it that way. He took his own brother to court. Ttttch, sadly not an uncommon practice among our Sri Lankans. People say family-family, but the courts are jam-packed with children suing parents, brothers suing sisters, sisters suing brothers. Disgusting. And all the disputes are over dowry and property. That’s why I’m not giving a dowry to my girls. And you too, no property. I’ll give you all a good foreign university education, but that’s that. Much better than this dowry rubbish.”

  Uncle Lucky was on yet another familiar tangent. He cut himself short. “Anyway, this court case dragged on for years and years. My father lost-lost-lost, but he simply would not give up. All our money was siphoned off to pay dishonest lawyers. My father was in debt and still continued this dispute. In the end, the pressure got to him. He had a heart attack. He was my age, forty-four, can you imagine?” Uncle Lucky took a long slurp through his straw. “Years later, when I was more on my feet, I went to see this piece of land that had ruined my father, my mother, our life.” He shook his head. “You won’t believe it. Nothing! A piece of dry scrubland, the worst lime-filled sandy soil, a few thorny shrubs, and some palmyra trees. This was the thing my father had destroyed his life over?” He looked hard at Amrith. “Families hold on to things for too long, nurse grievances until they corrode their hearts and ruin their lives. How much better it is to forgive old wrongs, to let things go. It frees you up to get on with your life. My father should have just let his brother have that damn land.”

  When they left Cargil’s and continued on towards the bank, Amrith found himself looking at Uncle Lucky. He wondered why he had kept this story from them all these years. And why had he chosen to tell Amrith now? For it was clear to him that the lesson about families forgetting old wrongs and not nursing grievances was, in some way, directed at him.

  The next morning, Amrith was at work on his typing exercises when the foreign man he had seen in the arcade came into the office.

  Miss Rani went to greet the stranger, her countenance questioning but deferential. The man said a few words to her and she ushered him towards Uncle Lucky’s office. Amrith had a better chance to look at the foreigner. He was only Amrith’s height, about five feet, six inches, with a bony chest, skinny arms and legs, knobby knees visible below his shorts. The man’s batik shirt was open at the collar, exposing a wiry tuft of hair, and his Adam’s apple bounced up and down as if in nervousness. His face was bony, with thin lips and a prominent forehead, made even more pronounced by his receding hairline. There was a look of petulance, of dissatisfaction, on his face.

  After a discreet knock, Miss Rani opened the cubicle door. Amrith heard the rapid scraping of a chair as Uncle Lucky rose to his feet. There was a moment of silence, then a murmured greeting. Both men sat down. Miss Rani closed the door. People often came to see Uncle Lucky on business, sometimes foreigners, so Amrith did not think any more about it.

  As he typed away, however, it came to him that something was not quite as it should be. He paused to move the carriage back into position and listened. The men were talking in fits and starts, with long silences and much clearing of throats.

  After a while, the foreigner came out alone. As he started towards the entrance, he turned to look at Amrith. When their eyes met, his expression was irritated yet apprehensive. And suddenly a suspicion began to open up in Amrith’s mind, fueled by Uncle Lucky’s story yesterday about family grievances.

  Uncle Lucky stepped out of his office and signaled to Amrith. His face was stern. As Amrith got up from his chair and approached him, his legs were trembling.

  Uncle Lucky gestured to one of the stuffed leather chairs by his desk.

  Amrith sat down.

  Uncle Lucky went to stand at the window, looking onto Chatham Street. “The thing is, son,” he said, turning to Amrith, “that man who came into my office. He’s not a client from Singapore. He’s your … your Canadian uncle. Your mother’s brother.”

  Amrith gasped — not so much from surprise, but rather at this confirmation of what he had already suspected.

  Uncle Lucky crossed the room and sat in the chair next to him. “Are you alright, son?”

  Amrith nodded. His throat was dry. He swallowed. Outside on Chatham Street, he could hear the rushing of traffic, the blaring of horns, the singing of a beggar, concrete girders crashing into place on a construction site.

  Uncle Lucky pressed his arm. “Your cousin, Niresh, did not know you existed. He did not even know his father had a sister. The first time he found out was yesterday, when I accidentally let the cat out of the bag. Niresh really wants to meet you. He has been pestering-pestering-pestering his father. Your uncle, because of his animosity towards your mother, is not very keen for this meeting. But he has finally given in. They are staying at the Mount Lavinia Hotel. We are to visit them tomorrow, before lunch.”

  Amrith could not look at Uncle Lucky. There was such a welling up of emotion in him, he was frightened he would start to cry.

  That afternoon, as he lay on his bed, Amrith contemplated this
momentous turn of events. His uncle and cousin from Canada were here. Tomorrow afternoon, by now, he would have met them.

  His mother had told him about these Canadian relatives, but she had not mentioned the bitter conflict with her brother. After his mother’s funeral, Aunty Bundle went to great effort and expense to track down his uncle. She had made numerous calls to Sri Lankans in Canada and finally secured an address for him. She had sent a telegram, followed by an express-post letter, telling him about his sister’s death, that Amrith was living with them. She had asked nothing of him; she merely wanted to give him a chance to connect with his nephew, to put an end to past hostilities. His uncle had never called, never written. Amrith remembered the look of sadness and anger on Aunty Bundle’s face when she got a letter from her contact in Canada, confirming that his uncle had, indeed, received the dispatches.

  At that time, Amrith was still in shock from his parents’ death and he felt little emotion about the rejection. In fact, he was not very surprised by it. His father’s family had already disowned him, and he had even been prevented from attending his father’s funeral at the family ancestral home, in Kurunegela. His father had been expected to marry for wealth and provide dowries for his sisters. By marrying his mother, who came with nothing, he had brought financial hardship to his family and forced his sisters into a life of spinsterhood. These relatives bore a great hatred towards his son.

  Amrith went to his chest of drawers, took out the leather-bound photo album, and turned the pages to the photograph of his mother as an adult. As he gazed at it, he found himself thinking of how, when he was twelve, Aunty Bundle and Uncle Lucky had taken him to lunch in the Rainbow Room at the Grand Oriental Hotel. Once they had ordered, Uncle Lucky had leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped on the linen tablecloth, and said, “Amrith, I do not believe in our Sri Lankan habit of shoo-shoo-boo-boo. Hiding things.”

  And so Amrith had been told the details of his mother’s family life and the cause of her bitter conflict with her brother.

  His grandmother had been a sickly and gentle woman who had died not long after his mother was born. His grandfather, a prominent lawyer, had been a terror in court and at home. The only one exempt from his cruelty was his son, Mervin. From the beginning, he adored his boy and spared him nothing. In contrast, he despised his daughter. He nicknamed her loris, after that thin lizard with a spindly body, large head, and bulging-out eyes. Mervin, too, was unkind to his sister. He ordered her around like a servant and, if she refused his slightest wish, he would tell his father. Then his sister would be called to the study and his father would beat her with his belt.

  A year after Amrith’s uncle had gone to study law in England, his grandfather developed an eye disease that would soon make him blind. The old man had expected his daughter would take care of him but, by then, she had met Amrith’s father. When she ran away and got married, his grandfather promptly disowned her. He called on his son to look after him, asking him to return and complete his studies in Sri Lanka. But his son never responded to his pleas. It was too much for the old man. His blood pressure rose and, one day, a servant found him dead in his study. Only then did his son come back to Sri Lanka. He went around telling everyone that his sister had killed their father with her selfishness and he forbade her to attend the funeral. He made a big show of sorrow at the funeral but, all the while, he had hired a matchmaker to find him a bride. He met his future wife, Therese, the day after he buried his father. She was from Kalutara gentry, but her family had fallen on hard times and was so poor they lived in the back room of a relative’s house. She was a very beautiful woman. Within a week, his uncle had married her and they went back to England. Later, they moved to Canada.

  When Amrith had heard all this, he felt as if the ground had opened up under him and he was falling through darkness, helpless in the face of this past, about which he could do nothing.

  Now that very same darkness engulfed him. He put away the album and went to lie on his bed, turned on a side, his legs drawn up to his chest.

  Uncle Lucky, wanting to give Amrith some time to take in the news, was only going to tell the rest of the family when they sat out in the courtyard before dinner.

  That evening, while Amrith played a game of Chinese Checkers with the sisters, he listened to the voices of the adults at the other end of the courtyard. He felt like there was a lump of ice in his chest that sent little rivulets of coldness up and down his arms and legs. He was dreading this announcement, as if something shameful about himself was going to be revealed. He was particularly dreading Aunty Bundle’s reaction.

  “Amrith,” Selvi nudged him, “how long are you going to stare at that board, men?”

  “Akka, let him take his time,” Mala said, coming to Amrith’s defense. “What is your big hurry?”

  Amrith had not realized it was his turn. He moved a piece without much thought.

  Selvi, with a triumphant “Lovely,” took three of his pieces.

  He barely noticed for, at that moment, Uncle Lucky said something and Aunty Bundle exclaimed as if she had been stung.

  The girls straightened up from their Checkers game and looked across the courtyard.

  Uncle Lucky continued on in a steady murmur.

  “Mervin is here, from Canada?” Aunty Bundle cried incredulously.

  Mala and Selvi knew about his Canadian relatives and they stared at Amrith.

  “Your uncle is here?” Selvi demanded.

  Amrith looked away.

  Selvi jumped to her feet and hurried across the courtyard, ignoring Mala calling her to come back … that it was none of their business. Mala went after her sister. Despite her reticence, she, too, was eager to know more about this news.

  Amrith felt he had no choice but to join the rest of the family. He got up reluctantly and went over to them.

  “Appa, Amrith’s uncle is here?” Selvi stood beside his chair.

  Uncle Lucky nodded. “His cousin, too. We are to meet them tomorrow.”

  The girls drew in their breath.

  Amrith had come up to them and he could feel Aunty Bundle’s gaze. He lifted his eyes to her. She looked stricken and, seeing the pain in her eyes, a corresponding anguish began to open up in him.

  Mala had seen her mother’s and Amrith’s suffering, but Selvi, oblivious to it, began to ply Uncle Lucky with questions. Amrith slipped away to his room.

  A few minutes later, Selvi barged in without knocking, followed by a reluctant Mala.

  He was at his almirah, putting away a pile of clean clothes that Jane-Nona had left on a chair. He did not look around.

  “My God, Amrith, what a thing, nah.” Selvi threw herself on his bed.

  Mala sat beside her sister. “Amrith, are you alright?”

  “What did your cousin look like?” Selvi demanded.

  “Um … I don’t remember.” Which was partially true. He recalled that his cousin had been very tall and perhaps dark-skinned, but that was all.

  “Ca-na-da. Mala, what do you know about Canada?” Selvi asked.

  Mala frowned. “It’s cold there, akka, freezing.”

  “Yes-yes, we all know that. But what else? Do you think it’s like America? Would they have malls and up-to-date films and music?”

  “Ttttch, of course, akka. Ah, but I just remembered something!”

  “What-what?”

  “Anne Murray comes from Canada.”

  “Yes! And Anne of Green Gables, too.”

  But besides the two Annes, they were stumped when it came to Canada.

  There was a knock on the door and Aunty Bundle came in. “Amrith, I want to speak to you. Alone.” She had been crying, her eyes red.

  “Come, akka, let’s go,” Mala whispered to Selvi, “I told you we should have left Amrith alone.” They got off the bed. Selvi looked guilty, aware she had been insensitive.

  Mala smiled at Amrith. “I’m sure your cousin will be very nice.”

  “Yes-yes,” Selvi nodded, “I’m sure you’l
l really like him.”

  They left, closing the door softly behind them.

  “Amrith,” Aunty Bundle began, resting her hand on the bedpost. “You must go and meet your cousin tomorrow. But I … I don’t want anything to do with your uncle and his family. Because of your mother. You understand, son, don’t you? I couldn’t stand to see him.”

  The return of his uncle had brought back the pain of his mother’s death to Aunty Bundle. Looking at her tear-streaked face, he felt a bitter anger take hold. He turned away and stood, his hands clenched by his sides.

  She was waiting for him to respond, but when he would not do so, she left with a sigh.

  The moment she was gone, he breathed out and sat down on the bed. He put his head in his hands. “I hate her,” he whispered between clenched teeth, “I just hate her.”

  That night, Amrith dreamt about his mother. It was a dream he often had. He was running along the road that led to the estate bungalow, in a panic He raced through the gate, up the driveway, and around the side of the house. He rushed onto the veranda and then stopped, a terror taking hold. His mother’s chair was empty. He had arrived too late. He had failed to save her from a terrible fate.

  Amrith, as he always did, woke at this point with a gasp. A sense of menace was palpable all around him. Even after he had switched on the bedside lamp, his fear did not abate. The threat just withdrew beyond his door and lurked in the courtyard and side garden.

  8

  The Canadian Cousin

  Even before he met his relatives the next day, Amrith had already heard news about them. That morning, they were in the middle of breakfast when Aunt Wilhelmina hurried in after her game of tennis, crying, “Bun-dle, Bun-dle.” She was dressed all in white, wearing linen slacks, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat — clothes that were ridiculously warm for sports, but that kept her European skin immaculate.