Cinnamon Gardens

by Shyam Selvadurai

  Yet Balendran was far from free of the pain of Richard. During the day, his father’s duties kept him from thinking too much of his friend. In the evenings, however, when he would sit on the front verandah of Brighton and read in the newspapers about the hearings of the commission in various cities, a searing ache would build in his chest. Still, even as he felt the pain of Richard, Balendran would look out at Sonia cutting flowers in the garden alongside his mother, their heads companionably side by side. The look of contentment and serenity on her face made more horrible the thought of discovery.

  His dismay was comforting to him. It questioned the depth of his love for Richard and made him aware that he did love his wife, that she was, in many ways, his dear friend. This understanding made him hopeful that somewhere in the future his love for Richard would diminish or become simply a familiar impediment.

  When the shadows grew long across the lawns of Brighton, Balendran would put down his paper and go out to join his wife. Taking Sonia’s hand in his, they walked around the grounds, reviewing the happenings of the day and examining any changes that had come to the garden.

  15

  Learn well what should be learnt, and then

  Live your learning.

  – The Tirukkural, verse 391

  The Sisler estate bungalow in Nanu Oya was perched along a ridge. There was a semicircular terrace at the back of the bungalow and, from here, the estate sloped sharply down to the valley below, the green of the tea bushes spotted with the brightly clad tea pluckers at work. There was a bench at the edge of the terrace, shaded by a cypress tree. It was here that Annalukshmi spent most of her days, gazing out at the hills, lost in thought. The book she had brought with her lay face down on the bench next to her. Every time she tried to read, she felt vaguely nauseated, in the same way she would if she tried reading with a fever. Her thoughts constantly drifted to what her mother must have felt when she received her letter. She wondered if Louisa had suspected Miss Lawton was involved, if she had confronted the headmistress and demanded the truth from her. Would she, Annalukshmi, look up from her deliberations one day to find her mother standing at the back door of the bungalow, her arms folded in anger? That image made her apprehensive, but it was the thought of her father that truly made her feel terror. Every time she thought of his wrath, she shivered, pacing the terrace to try to dismiss him from her mind. The constant worry soured her stomach, making it difficult for her to eat.

  Her unhappiness had been observed by both Mary Sisler and her cook. They tried in their different ways to remedy it. The cook would approach her each morning and, under the guise of narrating his life history, describe all the delicious meals he had prepared for the various masters and mistresses he had worked for. Annalukshmi, finally taking pity on him, would ask a question about a particular meal, knowing that she would be sure to find it waiting for her at the table. Mary Sisler, a kind but rather shy woman, had her own remedy. Every evening, she would insist that Annalukshmi sit in the drawing room with her husband and her and listen to their Gilbert and Sullivan records. “Nothing like a jolly old tune in the evening,” she would say at the end of every record, and Annalukshmi would nod in agreement.

  Annalukshmi eagerly awaited Miss Lawton and Nancy’s arrival. From Friday afternoon, she went to the top of the driveway every hour or so and scanned the road to see if a taxi was approaching, hoping that, somehow, they had left Colombo earlier.

  As it happened, Annalukshmi missed them when they finally came, having gone into the house briefly. But when she heard a car door slam, she hurried through the drawing room and out to the front. Miss Lawton and Nancy were at the centre of a flurry of activity as the various houseservants handled their luggage, supervised by Mary Sisler. When Miss Lawton and Nancy saw Annalukshmi, they both cried out. Miss Lawton hurried to her and grasped her hands. “Anna, dear Anna, there has been a very, very strange development in Colombo.”

  Miss Lawton put her arm around Annalukshmi’s shoulders. She led her inside to the drawing room and made her sit down in a chair. Then she silently handed her a letter. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I took the liberty of reading it in case there was an emergency that required your return.”

  Annalukshmi opened the letter and recognized Kumudini’s writing.

  Akka,

  I feel that Miss Lawton knows where you are. Hence, I have sent this to her.

  Certain things have happened since you left and, as I am at the centre of them, Manohari and I feel that I should be the one to inform you.

  You can well imagine our panic and horror when you didn’t turn up after school. Parvathy Maamee and Muttiah had already arrived by then. Amma was frantic and was all set to go to the police station when your letter arrived. From all her worry, Amma fainted on the spot. Manohari and I both feel that you should know this. Just to understand the difficulty you have caused her and all of us. It was very selfish and hard of you to subject us to this. Poor Amma, she had to face the terrible, terrible embarrassment of explaining your absence to Parvathy Maamee.

  Now, here is the surprising thing. You know how we have always hated Parvathy Maamee, called her Snotty Mukkuthi and blamed her for Appa becoming a Hindu again. So, naturally, we expected that she would be very angry. Instead, she clapped her hands together, laughing in delight. “Like father, like daughter,” she said. Then she told us how Appa had fled their house in Jaffna in the same way, leaving a note behind. Her kindness and good humour in the face of your inconsideration (don’t forget they travelled for two weeks on deck to get here) completely changed how we felt about her. Since then, we have come to see her for what she might truly be. A kind aunt with a gentle temperament.

  Akka, it is about Muttiah that I now wish to speak. Two days after they arrived, Parvathy Maamee approached Amma with a curious request. Would Amma consent to Muttiah marrying me? Of course Amma was not at all happy about this, as you can imagine, since Muttiah is a Hindu. She graciously but firmly refused, without even consulting me. When I heard about her rejection of their offer, I was not pleased. To tell you the truth, I had noticed, since they arrived, that Muttiah looked at me often. I must confess that, right from the start, I found him very pleasant and handsome too. So I had a long talk with Amma and convinced her to see things differently, that as long as we had a Christian wedding, as long as I remained a Christian and my children too, no harm was done by my marrying Muttiah. Poor Parvathy Maamee. I felt sorry for her that I had to make these conditions. At the same time, I cannot and will not agree to the marriage without these conditions. She finally consented.

  There rests only one further issue and that is your permission. Please think of this carefully before you agree. Promise me you will put yourself first in this matter knowing that, if the marriage goes through, it will place you on the shelf with very little prospect of getting married. Later, it will seem that you were passed over because of some defect – you can only imagine the fabrications that will ensue about your mental state, morals, etc.

  Manohari wishes me to add that you must not be afraid to come home and face Amma. Parvathy Maamee’s good humour in the face of all these difficulties has helped to calm Amma down. However, expect some ranting and raving on Amma’s part.

  I feel confident that this letter will reach you, and I await your reply. Kumu.

  When Annalukshmi finished the letter, questions crowded her mind. One thought, however, dominated. She had to return home. She turned to Miss Lawton. “I must go back,” she said.

  Miss Lawton nodded to say that she had expected she would. “A train leaves from Nanu Oya early tomorrow morning,” she said. “I have already asked Mr. Jayaweera to meet you at the Fort station with a taxi.”

  Nancy offered to accompany Annalukshmi; Miss Lawton, at Mary Sisler’s insistence, would stay the balance of the weekend.

  On the train back to Colombo, Annalukshmi still felt stunned by the contents of Kumudini’s letter, and by her sister’s astonishing decision.

  �
��I don’t understand it at all,” she said at one point. “I fear that Kumudini’s desire to marry Muttiah comes out of desperation.” She told Nancy now about the failure of the Nesiah proposal.

  “I’m not disagreeing that she might feel desperate,” Nancy said, “but on the other hand you can’t ignore the possibility that she might actually like him.”

  Annalukshmi looked out at the green hills of the tea plantations. “I hope she knows what she’s getting into,” she said. “My mother has had such misery in her marriage because of religious differences.” She turned to Nancy. “It was because of those differences and the trouble it caused that we finally came back to Ceylon.”

  Nancy nodded for her to go on.

  “My father and I … at one time, were devoted to each other. People used to say they were sorry for him because he didn’t have a son. But my father said he did not care at all about it, that I was better than a son. He took me with him to the rubber estate, instructed me how to do the accounts, showed me how rubber was made. He even taught me to swim in the river that ran through our estate. He told me that, because there was no son in the family, he was training me to do the job, so that, when he was gone, I would be in charge. Then my Aunt Parvathy arrived in Malaya.”

  Annalukshmi was silent, thinking back to that time. “She brought with her the news that my grandfather had died. This changed my father. He became filled with remorse that he and his father had never reconciled, that he had not been there to do the most important task a son does for his father – light his funeral pyre. I think he began to regret his conversion to Christianity, his marriage to a Christian. My parents had a stormy marriage, always yelling at each other, but it was clear that underneath they loved each other. Now he began to treat my mother with the politeness one uses on strangers. I felt so sad for him because I could tell he was miserable, so I tried to be more affectionate, to do the little things he loved like massage his head with coconut oil. But he slowly began to change towards me too.

  “A few weeks after my aunt arrived, he took us to visit her for the first time. We were sent to the back room where the other women were. Of course, in our house we sat wherever we wanted, so, after some time, without even thinking, I went into the front room to ask him a question. When I walked in, all the men became silent. My father looked away from me as if I had shamed him. On the way home that day he rebuked me. He told me I was uncouth, that he wanted me to learn from my aunt how to behave like a proper Jaffna Tamil woman. When he went to the estate the next time, he took my cousin Muttiah instead. I came back from school to find out that he had gone, without telling me.

  “A few weeks later, my mother sent me to the shop to buy some rice for her. On my way back I took a shortcut that led past the local Hindu temple. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Among the devotees leaving the temple, there was my father. He was furtively wiping the holy ash from his forehead so we wouldn’t see it when he came home. It was at that moment that he looked up and saw me. He turned quickly and walked in the other direction, as if he hadn’t seen me. It was then that I truly knew that the foundation of my parents’ marriage was breaking. From then onwards, my father and I were locked together in this deception. An uneasy silence had fallen between us. Whenever he would try to approach me, to talk to me, ask me to do some chore, I held myself stiffly back. One day, he began to scold me because it was my turn to sweep the drawing room and I had forgotten. I let him go on for a while and then I said very quietly, ‘Don’t try to pretend we didn’t see each other. At least have the decency to respect my intelligence.’ Then he went mad. He grabbed me by the hair and began to hit me on my face and hands and shoulders. If my mother had not come in and stopped it, he might have seriously hurt me. When he finally let me go, my mother said to him, ‘This is enough. I will not let our unhappiness affect the girls.’ A few months later, we came to Ceylon.”

  By now the train had pulled into a station. Both of them watched the activity on the platform, Annalukshmi thinking about that difficult time in Malaya, Nancy considering what her friend had told her.

  Once the train was moving again, Annalukshmi turned to Nancy. “I’ve never talked about this to anyone before.”

  “I, too, have things in my life that I keep hidden from others,” Nancy said. “I have never told you the real story about my own family.

  “My parents did not die of cholera. In fact, they didn’t die of anything.” She looked down at her hands. “They were murdered.”

  Annalukshmi drew in her breath, aghast.

  “During the 1915 riots between the Muslims and Sinhalese.”

  “I … I don’t know much about it. We were in Malaya then.”

  “I was a girl at the time, thirteen years old. A rumour came to our village that Muslims had murdered a Buddhist monk and hanged him from a tree. Of course this was not so at all, as I was to learn later. There had simply been some disagreement between Muslims and Sinhala Buddhists about parades and playing music in front of each other’s places of worship. There was only one Muslim family in our village and they owned the village shop. A group of thugs attacked the shop that night, they looted the goods, then burned it down once they had locked the family inside. It was so terrible. It still comes back to me from time to time, the faces of that family in the window, their cries begging us villagers to unbar the door. But nobody did. The thugs were employed by the village headman who wanted to start up a shop of his own.

  “Our village had just one Muslim family. In others there were many and in the towns whole sections were Muslim. So you can only imagine the carnage. The British, however, misinterpreted the whole thing as being an anti-colonial protest. So they armed British planters with guns and told them to go into the villages and shoot on sight. One night they came to our village.

  “We were awakened by the sound of shouting and then there were shots. My mother immediately pushed me into a large wooden chest that was in our hut and shut the lid. From there I heard it all,” Nancy’s voice shook. “The harsh command of the planter, his servants dragging my parents from the house. Then there was silence and that was followed by gunfire. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I think I fainted at one point, for when the villagers who had survived came to get me, the dawn was already breaking.”

  Annalukshmi placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Nancy. You should have told me before. Does Miss Lawton even know?”

  “Oh, yes,” Nancy said after a moment. “The planter who killed my parents was someone she knew. He felt remorseful, I suppose, and asked her to adopt me. I was always told by Miss Lawton that when people asked me about my parents, in order not to upset myself, or them, it was best to say that they had died of cholera. Why stir up a hornet’s nest, etc. As a young girl, I accepted that Miss Lawton was right. Over the years, I admit I have felt resentful about the lie she asked me to tell.”

  Annalukshmi shook her head, amazed by what her friend was telling her.

  Nancy smiled ruefully. “It’s the British way. I suppose when you think you have the right to rule half the world for its own good, it’s hard to admit that you are capable of making mistakes, that you are sorry and in need of forgiveness.” She turned to Annalukshmi. “Whatever the circumstances, it was an act of benevolence on Miss Lawton’s part. I don’t want you thinking horribly of her, turning on her or something like that. She has loved me almost as she would a daughter. She has never made me feel like an object of charity or a burden. And just think of how my life would have been otherwise. Some poor girl in an orphanage, or sent off to work as a servant in some house.”

  Nancy was silent. “Miss Lawton’s life has had its difficult moments,” she said. “Here she might be a respected and influential figure, but in England, in the little town from which she comes, she is merely the daughter of a poor pastor. And one around whom there was some kind of scandal. It seems there was something to do with improper use of church funds. Though Miss Lawton has never said so directly, I gather he may have
been relieved of his clerical duties. Can you imagine the shame for poor Miss Lawton? A young woman in a small town constantly living with the burden of her father’s mistake. Perhaps this contributed to the reason why she decided to come out here and work in the colonies. Yet the fact is that one day Miss Lawton will have to retire, and if she were to leave Ceylon and return to her town, she would go back to simply being Amelia Lawton, the daughter of Reverend Lawton.”

  Nancy took her friend’s hand. “So you see, Annalukshmi, it’s not often easy to say that a person, be it your father or Miss Lawton or your aunt or your cousin, is simply this or that, bad or good.”

  The train now rounded a sharp bend, making their carriage rock slightly from side to side. They could see the tail end of the train, the passengers in the crowded third class hanging out of the doorways, some even on the roof. The train let out a long, mournful whistle that echoed against the sides of the hills. Annalukshmi glanced at her friend. She realized she would never see Miss Lawton and Nancy the same way again.

  When Annalukshmi alighted from the taxi at Lotus Cottage, she saw Parvathy sitting on the front verandah and she felt her hands go cold. She pushed open the gate and went inside. At the creak of the gate, Parvathy turned to squint down the driveway. Then she rose from her chair in astonishment. “Kadavale!” she cried.

  The sound of her voice brought Louisa and the girls out onto the verandah.

  “Annalukshmi?” Louisa said as if she could not believe it was her daughter standing there at the bottom of the steps.

  Annalukshmi waited, not sure what to expect.

  Louisa recovered. “Do you think this house is a hotel, miss?” she cried. “You think you can come and go as you like?” She shook your finger at her. “You’re lucky that I even let you in through the gate. And that Miss Lawton, I am disappointed that –”