Swimming in the Monsoon Sea

by Shyam Selvadurai

  Then he recalled what had spurred him on to that final act of anger. It was Mala accusing him of being jealous that Niresh loved her. A thought, a memory, began to come at him from a distance, like an approaching train. It thundered closer and closer and suddenly it was there: that moment, this morning, when Suraj had called him Cassio and asked him if he was waiting for his darling Iago. At the time, Amrith had not paid him any attention, but now he felt a coldness spreading through him as he thought of what Suraj had insinuated. He was referring to Iago’s story of how Cassio, in his sleep, took Iago’s hand in his, held him tight, kissed him hard on the lips over and over again, and pressed his leg over Iago’s thigh.

  With a will of its own, Amrith’s mind slipped back to that night he had lain awake looking at Niresh, how he had rested his thigh against his, the way his body had flamed with desire; and before that, the time he had got an erection after seeing his cousin naked.

  Amrith felt a deep horror seep into him. He loved Niresh in the way a boy loves a girl, or a girl loves a boy. He had been jealous of Mala because of this love and not because Niresh was his cousin. Madam and Fernando had understood the nature of this love; and through them, Suraj, too. People who are “that way inclined” was how Madam had referred to this unnatural defect in him.

  He closed his eyes and drew his knees to his chest. He tried to think if either Niresh or the girls had guessed the nature of his love. The more he thought about it, the more he felt they did not. The girls, when they called him a jealous baby, simply thought he was being overly possessive of his cousin.

  The wind had grown even fiercer, a hollow roar all around him. Looking up, he noticed that one of the sheets of the tin roof had come undone and was beginning to flap up and down dangerously, letting in the rain every time it lifted. Suddenly there was a crash as something slammed into the roof. Amrith yelled out in fear. Another crash followed the first. Amrith cowered in his corner. The wind was beginning to dislodge coconuts from the trees above the kiosk. It was just a matter of time before one fell right through. Amrith knew it could kill him. He struggled to his feet. He had no choice but to leave.

  When he opened the door, he paused to take in the sight before him. The sea was massive and swollen. The waves had almost reached the hut by now. He was leaving just in time. Keeping his head down against the rain, Amrith rushed out and ran towards the rocks that separated the beach from the railway lines. He scrambled up the boulders. The rain had made them slippery and he fell backwards a few times, cutting himself, but he finally reached the railway lines. He looked both ways to see if a train was approaching, but it was impossible to tell because of the sheets of rain. He stood uncertainly, until a crack of lightning made him dart across.

  Once he was on the other side, he hurried along a laneway that ran parallel to the railway lines. Various streets sloped down to this laneway, and so the rainwater had gushed down the roads and gathered in this path. Soon Amrith was knee-deep in water. His nose wrinkled in disgust as plastic bags and cans and other bits of garbage floated around him. Still, he had no choice but to wade through this filth to get to their road. He lost a slipper and he watched as it floated away and then sank. The toes on his bare foot curled as they touched all sorts of things underwater.

  Soon he was past the muddy pool. He hobbled along their road, his bare foot slowing him down. He was halfway up when he heard his name being shouted. He looked ahead and saw Uncle Lucky and his driver, Soma, hurrying down towards him. They were holding pieces of tarp over their heads, which ballooned in the wind like parachutes. When they reached him, Uncle Lucky put his arm around him. “What were you thinking, Amrith?” He led him back towards the house.

  They entered through the gate to find the rest of the family hovering in the front doorway. Aunty Bundle cried out when she saw him and, the moment he was in the living room, she hugged him, getting her blouse wet. “Child, I was frantic with worry.”

  Niresh and the girls crowded around him, too, looking guilty.

  “Hey, buddy, are you okay?”

  “Amrith, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Thank God, you’re safe.”

  He stood shivering, not looking at any of them.

  Jane-Nona rushed out of the pantry with a cup of hot kothamalli and a towel.

  Amrith began to rub himself down, sipping occasionally on the spicy drink of ginger and coriander that was meant to ward off colds.

  Now that Amrith had been found, Aunty Bundle and Uncle Lucky turned on the girls, demanding to know what had happened, why they had deserted him. They stood saying nothing, unable to relive the horrible incident.

  “You had better tell me.” Uncle Lucky eyed them sternly. “Otherwise the consequences will be severe.”

  The girls looked at each other, then Mala burst out, “Why don’t you ask Amrith?” She glared at him. “He’s not a child. Didn’t he see that a storm was coming up? Why did he remain in the sea?”

  Her parents stared at her.

  “Young lady —” Aunty Bundle began, but she was cut short by a mighty roar of wind, followed by a deafening sound above them. They all looked up and there, before their very eyes, tiles began to lift off the roof — the very tiles that had been replaced. With a cry, Aunty Bundle and Jane-Nona ran to get the barrel, and Uncle Lucky, the girls, and Niresh rushed around moving furniture out of the way of the falling rain and dust. In the general commotion, Amrith slipped away.

  The moment he was in his room, he grabbed a pair of clean shorts and underwear from a pile on the bed and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

  He laid his clothes over the towel rail, put down the toilet seat and sat on it, his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered to himself, “I don’t.”

  When he had changed, he came out of the bathroom to find Niresh sitting on the side of the bed. He smiled. “Hey, Amrith.”

  “Um … hi.”

  “Listen,” Niresh said, “let’s make up, okay?”

  Amrith nodded, but he could not meet his cousin’s eyes.

  “You know, I really don’t want us to be mad at each other,” Niresh continued.

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  “Niresh, I said I am not mad at you.”

  “Okay, Amrith. Then we’ve made up?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Niresh looked at him anxiously and Amrith willed himself to smile. His cousin mistook his wan smile for a lack of forgiveness. Without a word, he turned away and began to flip through a book that lay on the bedside table.

  The rain did not let up and, that evening, the family was forced to gather in the library before dinner, as the living room could not be used with the hole in the roof. In the tight confines of the library, the tension between everyone was palpable. Uncle Lucky and Aunty Bundle were still angry at the girls for leaving Amrith behind and the girls were angry at Amrith because he had put them in a spot. At one point, Selvi said, “I suppose we will have to cancel our party now, with this new hole in the roof.” The girls glared at Amrith as if he were responsible.

  He noticed that his cousin continued to watch him, but he simply could not meet his eyes. Every time he looked at Niresh, he writhed inside.

  That night, Amrith immediately fell into a deep sleep and woke late the next morning. Niresh was no longer in the room. He had left a note saying that he had gone with Aunty Bundle to look at another project she was working on. As Amrith lay in his bed, he felt a gray numbness descend over him. His limbs felt heavy, as if he were ill. Looking out into the side garden, he saw that the storm was long over. Everything was lacquered with a harsh late-morning light.

  The tide of his anger had pulled back, leaving him beached and exhausted.

  19

  Amrith Appeals to the Buddha

  The phone rang and rang the next day, and finally Amrith hurried across the courtyard and into the living room to get it. His uncle was calling for Niresh. He went t
o tell his cousin, who had just showered and changed.

  When Niresh came back to the bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring out through the French windows.

  Amrith combed his hair in front of the mirror, pretending not to notice Niresh’s black mood. A great distance had come between Amrith and Niresh, between Amrith and everyone, since he had made that realization about himself, two days ago. He felt as if he were in a pit of darkness and there, above, the world carried on with itself in the sunlight.

  Finally, when his cousin sighed deeply, Amrith felt compelled to say something. “Um … is everything alright?”

  “It’s nothing, Amrith, nothing,” Niresh replied sharply. He grabbed his cigarettes and went across the side garden and up to the terrace.

  When Niresh did not return, Amrith felt obliged to follow him and see what was wrong. He found Niresh leaning on the balustrade. For the first time since his cousin had come to stay, he was smoking within the compound of their home. Amrith stood a little distance from him. Niresh finished his cigarette and threw the butt over the parapet wall. Then, with a quick movement, he put his head in his hands. “Shit.”

  “Niresh,” Amrith said, with concern, forgetting his own troubles.

  “I guess, I guess, talking to my dad, it just hit me. I go back to Canada in three days.” He moved away from Amrith, fumbled for another cigarette, and lit it.

  Amrith looked at him, appalled. In the midst of all that had gone on, he had forgotten Niresh’s imminent departure.

  They went to the National Museum that morning. It was an imposing white colonial building set on vast grounds. At the entrance, there was a limestone Buddha that was over a thousand years old. Near the staircase was a tenth-century rock carving of the Goddess Durga.

  Once they had paid for their tickets and gone into the first gallery — devoted to clothes worn by the ancient aristocracy of Sri Lanka, along with intricately carved stone decorations from the entrances to ancient temples and palaces — they kept away from each other. When they entered a room, they parted company, going around it in opposite directions. In this way, they made their way through the various galleries of bronze statues, lamps, pottery from the third and fourth centuries, wood and ivory carvings of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the ancient guns and swords used by Sinhalese kings. At one point, Amrith turned from looking at the jewel-encrusted throne of the last king of Kandy — staring at it without really taking it in — to find Niresh was gone.

  Amrith found him on a veranda, smoking. He glanced at Amrith and then away. Amrith knew that his cousin would like him to come and sit beside him, but he remained where he was by the veranda post.

  “You know,” Niresh said, “you are right. I am a liar.” He drew on his cigarette deeply and let the smoke escape from his nostrils. “All that stuff I told you about Canada, it was a lie. I don’t belong on the football team, and those guys who were supposedly my best friends,” he made a contemptuous sound, “they would have nothing to do with me.” Niresh gazed out at the garden. “In my school, I am nothing but a freak. A freak and a Paki.” He checked to make sure Amrith understood what “Paki” meant. He did because, on a recent trip to England, Aunty Bundle and Uncle Lucky had been subjected to that word by a group of white thugs.

  “You want to know a popular joke in my school?” Niresh’s mouth twisted bitterly as he spoke, “How do you break a Paki’s neck while he’s drinking? Slam down the toilet seat.”

  Amrith was shocked, but he also realized why Niresh was telling him all this. By offering him the truth about his life in Canada, his cousin was hoping that the chasm between them would disappear. Yet, from the depths of his own darkness, Amrith could not summon up any comfort for Niresh, nor cross the distance between them.

  The day before his cousin was to leave, the family decided to take a trip outstation to Aunty Bundles favorite Buddhist temple. She wanted to show it to Niresh.

  The temple was at the top of a massive rock. A long flight of steps led up to it, flanked by whitewashed balustrades that had pedestals at regular intervals, topped with sculpted lotus pots. Araliya trees spread their branches over the stairs, providing shade. The steps were littered with their crushed blossoms, a strong, sweet smell in the air.

  Amrith walked ahead of everyone. At the top of the stairs, he paused to catch his breath, wipe his face with a handkerchief, and look down the steps. At the very bottom, Uncle Lucky and the girls were at one of the kiosks by the entrance. Mala and Selvi were begging him to buy them some bangles, and he was teasing them by complaining that it was a waste of money. Halfway up the stairs, Aunty Bundle had stopped to tell Niresh about the history of the temple and its style of art and sculpture. “Now, son,” she said, gesturing up the steps, “what we are about to see is a fine example of the Gupta school of art that flourished from the third to the sixth centuries in India and was brought over here. It was an amalgamation of two styles. One from Greece, which came through Afghanistan and which you will see represented in the classical folds of the Buddha’s robes. The other style was borrowed from the Kushan Dynasty of Mathura, from which came the rounded — even slightly female — body of the Buddha, derived from a tradition of male fertility spirits.”

  Niresh listened to Aunty Bundle, enthralled.

  As Amrith gazed at his cousin, a sense of despair took hold. Niresh was leaving tomorrow for Canada, and there was still a great barrier between them. They would part in coldness. Amrith did not know what to do — how to surmount this barrier; how to get past his own shame and reach out to his cousin.

  He passed through an intricately carved portal into the deserted compound of the temple, which was on the plateau of the rock. The ground was mostly stone, with patches of sand. Bo-trees grew from the cracks in the rocks, the ground covered with the crisp crackle of leaves. This was the Dry Zone and there was little other greenery.

  The temple was carved out of a cave and, around its perimeter, there were statues of Hindu deities guarding the Lord Buddha within. Devotees had placed flowers and incense in front of the statues, asking the gods for favors. Amrith could see the massive form of the Lord Buddha in the shrine room, seated in a pose of meditation. A hole in the top of the cave let in a stream of light that lit the face of the statue. It stared out at him, all-seeing, all-encompassing. Amrith, drawn by the power of the Buddha’s gaze, found himself going towards the cave. Before he entered, he removed his shoes as a sign of respect.

  The moment he stepped inside the cave-temple, he was surrounded by a great silence. His breath was magnified, and it echoed off the walls. Once his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he went forward, feeling the cool rock against the soles of his feet. He stopped in front of the statue and stood gazing up at the serenity of its face.

  “Help. Please help me.”

  Amrith had whispered the words before he quite realized it. He started, as his voice echoed sibilantly off the walls and ceiling. When silence had returned, Amrith, taking courage, said again, “Please help me.” This time, strangely, his voice did not echo.

  Outside, he could hear Aunty Bundle talking to Niresh as they came past the portal into the temple grounds, the voices of Uncle Lucky and the girls not far behind.

  Amrith hurriedly left the cave. He slipped into his shoes and walked to the far parapet wall. He stood, gazing down to the plains below. The monsoon had not arrived in this part of the country yet and everything was parched — the paddy fields a rutted gray mud; the trees stunted and gnarled, denuded of their leaves. The barest trickle of a stream ran through the clay-colored sand of a broad riverbed.

  As Amrith looked at the dry landscape, he thought of that story Uncle Lucky had told him about Miss Rani and her connection to his widowed aunt — how the past sometimes offers a way out of a current dilemma. How the past sometimes offers a gift.

  Amrith turned away from the parapet wall. Not far from him, Aunty Bundle was showing Niresh a statue of a Hindu god, explaining the symbolic nature of the objects th
e god carried in his hands. Niresh was listening to her, his mouth open slightly in concentration.

  As Amrith looked at his cousin, he thought of the conflict between Uncle Lucky’s father and brother, and how Uncle Lucky, carrying the scars of that enmity, had denied his aunt the help she needed. Amrith did not want to end up like Uncle Lucky, regretting his actions for years. No, he did not want that. Despite his own despair, he was going to have to save things between himself and Niresh. And he knew what would help him surmount the barrier that stood between them.

  20

  Amrith Accepts the “Gift”

  That night, once Amrith had brushed his teeth and changed into a sarong, he went to his chest of drawers and took out the leather-bound album that contained the photographs of his mother. His cousin was still in the bathroom and so he sat on the bed, waiting for him.

  When Niresh came out, he noticed the album and his eyes widened. Amrith patted the bed next to him.

  Niresh hesitated, then sat down beside him.

  Amrith opened the album to the studio portrait of his mother. “You’re right,” he said, “my mother was beautiful.”

  Then, using the photograph to bolster his resolve, he began to tell Niresh about his life on the tea estate and the arrival of Aunty Bundle. There were things that he did not really know, that he could only guess at. For example, he had no idea what made his mother decide to act. He suspected that once Aunty Bundle found out about his mother’s situation, she had pushed her to make decisions. This was, he felt, the source of Aunty Bundle’s guilt — that, maybe, if she had let things be, at least his mother would be alive today. What Amrith could tell Niresh was the events of that fateful day when he left his mother. He willed himself to do so, to describe, in a shaking voice, the progression of that day.