“You must be delighted at the prospect of being an aunt,” Nancy added.
Annalukshmi shrugged.
“But it is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? A grandchild for your mother, a niece or nephew for you.”
“Yes, indeed. But does it have to consume every conversation a person has, take up every waking moment of my life? After all, village women give birth in the fields and then continue their work, none of this fussing and running around.”
Annalukshmi went back to her cleaning, and thus did not see the headmistress looking at her intently. Nancy, however, observed her doing so.
“Well, do convey my congratulations to your family,” Miss Lawton said. She glanced at a few more letters and discarded them on the floor. “You know, I’ve been thinking, Anna,” she said. “The Ministry of Education has sent around a prospectus asking if there are any teachers who would be interested in taking an enhancement course. It would lead to further qualifications, allow you ultimately to become a senior teacher and instruct upper classes. Would you be interested?”
Annalukshmi turned around. “Yes, indeed I would be very interested.”
“Good,” Miss Lawton said. “I thought you would be. Remind me to get you a form from my office before you leave today.”
Later that day, when Nancy and Annalukshmi were walking across the quadrangle towards the headmistress’s bungalow, she said to her friend, “I’m pleased about this. It will give me something to really look forward to in the coming term. This may be a good opportunity to move up. Perhaps even to the top.”
Nancy looked at her, worried.
“What do you suppose my chances might be of becoming a headmistress some day?” She looked at her friend for support and now saw the reservation on her face.
They had reached a clump of araliya trees and Nancy stopped in the shade. She was silent, looking down at her hands. “I do applaud your ambition, Annalukshmi, and I think that you would make an excellent headmistress. But I think you are forgetting how things are. Being Ceylonese, neither you nor I will get a chance to be headmistress.”
“But surely the world is changing.”
“Is it? Look at the Buddhist and Hindu schools that were started up as a protest against the missionary schools. Even they have hired European headmasters and headmistresses, despite the nationalistic talk of their founders. Ceylonese parents want the prestige of sending their children to schools run by Europeans.”
Annalukshmi felt something beginning to come unravelled in her mind, like a spool of thread that had slipped off a table and was tumbling across the floor. “But things are bound to change,” she said. “And I am sure that Miss Lawton, for example, would support me. I’m sure she would take on the missionary board and Ceylonese parents if she needed to.”
Nancy placed her hand on Annalukshmi’s arm. “Are you so sure, knowing Miss Lawton’s attitudes? Last year, when Miss Blake left the school, she was unable to secure a replacement from England. She could have promoted one of the teachers then. Instead, she hired Vijith as a clerk.”
Annalukshmi looked at her friend. The spool of thread was unravelling faster and faster. Now that Nancy mentioned it, when Miss Lawton had asked her to help with Miss Blake’s duties, there had been no intimation that she, Annalukshmi, might assume the role of assistant headmistress then or ever. She suddenly remembered Miss Lawton’s reply when she had said that she did not know very much about the assistant headmistress’s job. Miss Lawton had replied, “Well, of course I wouldn’t expect you to do all of it. That would be beyond you.”
“I’ve forgotten something in my classroom. Excuse me.” Annalukshmi began to walk away.
Nancy looked after her, troubled, then continued on in the direction of the headmistress’s bungalow.
Annalukshmi walked quickly towards the senior classroom block. Instead of going to her classroom, she found herself in the music room. She shut the door behind her, then walked to the open window from where she had an uninterrupted view of the sea. The rhythmic movement of the waves, crashing against the beach, then receding, the breeze that blew on her face, all had a calming effect on her.
Annalukshmi turned to look around the music room. She remembered an evening when the three of them had come here and played the pianos together, singing along. Her mind drifted to many other moments of pleasure with Miss Lawton and Nancy, the sea baths, the holidays in Nanu Oya, the nights at the headmistress’s bungalow. She could not deny that she had been happy here at the school, that Miss Lawton had been extremely kind to her. Still, she was aware now that those happy times had been lined with the hidden bars of her limitations.
18
The mark of wisdom is to see the reality
Behind each appearance.
– The Tirukkural, verse 355
On the five-day-long voyage from Colombo to Bombay, Balendran paced up and down the steamer deck or leant against the rails going over and over in his mind the appalling situation towards which he was heading, the terrible task he was to perform. He considered not conveying his father’s message. He would simply avoid mentioning the issue at all and tell his father that the family had refused. He pictured his father’s fury and, while he feared it, he felt it would be more tolerable than asking for his brother’s body. Then he recalled his father’s threat to cut off his brother’s allowance. Arul’s death was sure to make his family even more dependent on that allowance. Through no fault of their own, not understanding the reason, they would find themselves destitute. He could not extricate himself from the task. He would have to convey his father’s request, he would have to let them decide what they wished to do.
By the time the shoreline of Bombay was visible, Balendran was exhausted from his ruminations, his nerves on edge.
Bombay. Balendran could already smell it from the railings, a mixture of sewers and sea breeze. The gangway was being lowered. He looked down at the crowd on the jetty and it dawned on him that in all likelihood someone from his brother’s family waited for him. The thought made his hands go cold.
The gangway had been secured and passengers began to disembark. Balendran gathered his things together. Even though the last days on the ship had been difficult, the thought of leaving it was now unpalatable.
When he got down to the jetty, he looked around him.
“Sir, are you Mr. Balendran?”
Balendran turned quickly to find a young man before him.
“Seelan?”
They stood for a moment, staring at each other.
His nephew was fashionably dressed in a double-breasted coat, white trousers, a Trilby hat in one hand, a good walking-stick in the other. Recollecting himself, Balendran quickly extended his hand.
They shook hands.
“It is an honour and pleasure to have you here, sir,” Seelan said.
Balendran was taken aback by his formal, almost oratorical, tone, the British intonation to his voice. “Thank you,” he replied.
Seelan pointed to his bags. “Are these yours?”
He nodded.
Seelan signalled to a couple of porters. He said something to them in what Balendran presumed was Hindi, then he led the way towards their buggy. Balendran followed. He was free to examine his nephew again and he noted that Seelan, at twenty-seven, resembled Arul and had only inherited from his mother her eyes. Yet it had taken him a second look to recognize the similarity, and, after studying his nephew keenly for a moment, he realized why. Though Seelan had his father’s features, their arrangement was completely different. The unruly hair he had inherited from his father had been flattened down with brilliantine. His nephew’s full lips were primly tightened, banishing from his face the expressive energy that had been so much a part of Arul. Balendran inspected his nephew’s clothes again. He knew how to spot a suit made in Europe from one that had been sewn in the East, and Seelan’s was definitely the former. He frowned, puzzled. How could he afford it? He knew that the circumstances they lived in were strained. Seelan’s clothes spo
ke of an affluence that equalled his own or that of any Cinnamon Gardens family. Like the son of a Cinnamon Gardens family, Seelan carried himself with a sense of importance. In fact, Balendran thought, as he looked at the rakish angle of Seelan’s hat, his nephew was quite a dandy and, judging from his British intonation, an anglophile as well. How strange this was, how unexpected.
They had reached the buggy. Balendran got in and waited as Seelan instructed the driver and the porters to tie the bags to the back. Balendran noticed a book lying on the seat next to him and he picked it up. It was Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. He was surprised. He had not expected a love of reading to go hand in hand with his nephew’s foppish ways. Such young men usually preferred cars and racehorses and gramophones.
Seelan got into the buggy. When he saw the book in Balendran’s hands, he looked at him eagerly, as if he expected some comment.
“I see that you like Thomas Hardy.”
“Indeed, sir,” Seelan replied promptly. “Reading is one of my greatest pleasures.”
The buggy had set off and an uneasy silence fell between them.
“How is your appa?” Balendran asked.
A brief sadness crossed his nephew’s face. “I’m afraid in the very last stages, sir. A week or two, at best.”
“But what is the cause?”
“Cancer of the lung, sir.”
“Is he … is he suffering with a lot of pain?”
“Unfortunately, it has spread to the bones. But he’s kept highly sedated. With morphine.”
“Will he recognize me?”
“Oh, indeed, sir.”
This line of conversation had run its course. Balendran stared out at the city around him, feigning interest in it while he tried to think of what to say next. Gradually, he became aware that he was under scrutiny. He turned his head quickly to find his nephew studying him, a curious, almost hungry expression in his eyes. Seelan looked hastily away from him. Balendran, too, averted his eyes, wondering why his nephew had looked at him like that. It was not desire, for that he knew, but something akin to it that he could not quite name. Covetousness was the word that came to mind, but what it had to do with his nephew’s expression he could not discern. Balendran did not want to look at his nephew’s face again, yet he could not stop himself from glancing at Seelan’s hands, which were clasped together tightly, too tightly. Balendran saw that, beneath his formal and confident manner, his nephew was not sure of himself.
They travelled through endless overcrowded and dirty streets. After a while, they turned into an alleyway and the horses slowed to a halt. Balendran looked around in dismay at the filth on the street. A stench rose from an open drain. He had thought they were merely passing through and would ultimately emerge into a better residential area. He turned to Seelan. “Have we arrived?”
The young man blushed. “Yes we have,” he mumbled and hastily got out of the buggy and began to help the driver unload the bags.
Balendran stepped out after him, silently cursing himself for unintentionally embarrassing his nephew. Yet he could hardly stop himself from staring around with shock.
The alleyway ended in a courtyard surrounded on three sides by a two-storey building containing numerous flats. A balcony ran along the second floor, the washing hanging over it obliterating the doors to the flats. The building had, at one time, been whitewashed, but now the dirt and damp had spread black stains over the walls. Refuse was piled in one corner, and a few emaciated stray dogs were nosing their way through it. From the various flats, he could hear a wireless, someone banging something, two women having a fierce argument, a child crying. Balendran shook his head. This was not what he had expected at all. With the allowance and Arul’s salary, he had thought they would live in a small house, not in this terrible squalor.
A woman dressed in a blue sari was walking across the courtyard. He watched her, not sure if it was Pakkiam. Yet she was coming in his direction. It had to be her. Balendran felt his heart beat rapidly. He had never known her as this, his sister-in-law. What was he expected to say? Should he call her anney or akka? What if he slipped up and used the diminutive “you” with her? The insult of that would be unforgivable, especially in the presence of his nephew.
Pakkiam was before him and they stood a moment looking at each other.
The Pakkiam he had known was a girl of seventeen. The woman who stood before him was in her forties. Her features, despite aging, were recognizable. It was her expression that made him feel he was before a stranger. Her eyes, which had always been lively, were now hooded, and when she lifted them to him, he saw that she had been crying. Her mouth that had always been busy with song and later defiance and sarcasm was now firmly held together, as if to keep in her grief.
She bowed slightly and said softly, in Tamil, “Welcome, thambi.”
He bowed back, trying to think of what to say, what words of comfort he could use, but he hardly knew her at all and whatever he said would sound inappropriate and distanced.
Seelan had picked up the bags and he came up to them. “How is Appa?” he asked anxiously.
“He’s having a bad day,” she replied. “He wants another injection but will wait until he has seen his brother.”
Seelan nodded and started to lead the way up the stairs to the second floor of the building, then he remembered himself and stood aside for Balendran to go first. He and Pakkiam followed behind.
As Balendran walked up the stairs, he felt a heaviness build in him that, with each step, he was drawing closer to that moment when he would see his brother.
The flat, in contrast to the outside, was clean. The drawing room also served as the dining room. Balendran noted immediately the signs of poverty in the worn upholstery of the settee, the scarred dining table with a vase of cheap cloth flowers on it, the old dresser with a few plates, the faded curtains that hung in the doorways of the bedrooms. The walls were bare and badly needed a coat of paint.
“Seelan, is that you?” a querulous, tired voice called out from one of the rooms. “Have you all arrived?”
Balendran turned to Pakkiam inquiringly. She nodded to say that it was, indeed, Arul.
“Yes, Appa. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Seelan took the bags towards the bedroom in which Balendran would be staying. He had been given Seelan’s room. Balendran began to follow him, but Pakkiam placed her hand on his arm. “He’s awake now, thambi. It’s best to speak with him before he has another injection.”
Balendran felt a coldness pass down his neck. Pakkiam was waiting. He had no choice but to do as she requested. He crossed the drawing room, drew back the curtain, and went inside.
It took a moment for Balendran’s eyes to adjust to the dim room. Then he saw his brother lying on the bed. Arul had not noticed him enter and his face was turned to one side on the pillow. As Balendran stood in the shadows of the doorway staring at his brother, he realized that he had not prepared himself for this moment, that, even though he knew his brother was dying, he had imagined him with the force of character he had possessed in youth. He remembered that Arul had always been a terrible patient and he had expected to find him bitter, frightened by his death, raging at the slipping away of his life when he was only forty-seven. Instead, the man on the bed looked older than his father, his mouth open as he struggled to breathe, his face so gaunt the outline of his skull was visible, his hair thin and limp. Arul made a noise in his throat, a rasping, rattling sound. Balendran wondered if he should go and fetch Pakkiam. Then he realized that his brother, with the greatest difficulty, was clearing his throat. Balendran’s nervousness fell away, replaced by a terrible sorrow.
Arul had seen him. They were both still a moment, staring at each other. Then Balendran began to walk towards the bed and Arul said softly, “Thambi-boy” and struggled to smile.
Balendran was by the bed now and Arul gestured for him to lean closer, then took his brother’s face in his hands and looked at him for a long time. This close to him, Ba
lendran could smell, beneath the eau de cologne and powder, the odour of decay in his brother, like stagnant water. Arul put his hands down on the bed and made a satisfied grunt. He went through the rattling, rasping effort of clearing his throat. Then he spoke. “You look well,” he said, barely audible. “I am glad.”
“You are looking quite fine –”
Arul waved his hand impatiently to say such niceties were not necessary. “Sit, sit,” he said.
There was a chair in a corner of the room and Balendran brought it over and sat down. They stared at each other again, neither one knowing how to start. Then they both spoke at the same moment.
“Amma sends her –”
“How was your –”
They were silent, each waiting for the other to speak.
“Amma sends her love,” Balendran repeated.
Arul nodded and they were silent again.
From another flat, Balendran could hear a child shrieking, a mother scolding.
Arul was no longer looking at him. His head was turned to the side, as if something else had caught his attention. Balendran could see from the expression on his brother’s face that he was in intense pain.
Balendran noticed a walking-stick leaning up in a corner. It was Arul’s, one he had carved for himself when he was boy. He had a sudden memory of Arul striding ahead of him as they went for a walk, beating at the vegetation with the walking-stick in order to frighten away snakes, singing loudly to himself.
Pakkiam and Seelan came into the room.
“Now you’re happy. Your thambi is here,” Pakkiam said, and propped Arul up with her body as she patted his pillows and turned them over. She smiled as she did so, but Balendran could see she was aware of the distress she was causing her husband. Arul’s face seemed to collapse under the pain, his mouth hanging open. Yet, when she was done, he touched her hand in gratitude.
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