Keeping Tabs
On the wall of Mother’s old sewing room hangs an ancient Chinese proverb: The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. On the desk below sits a miniature wooden cabinet. Each drawer has been labelled. The embossed white letters are still legible, but the black vinyl adhesive tape is brittle and cracking.
* * *
The ribbon of glossy tape pushes its way out … click … turn … click … from behind the rotary dial of the latest American labelling machine, just arrived in the country and being demonstrated by the Thrombol haberdashery man who comes to the house once a month with his stack of three round metal tins tied, with a long piece of cloth, on top of his head.
‘We should take one. Good to be able to keep tabs on things,’ says Mother as I sit on the front steps watching her, with my sister and Ayah, as they spend an eternity going through the multicoloured reels of thread, assorted buttons and jars of Johnson’s talcum powder laid out on the verandah. They call to Silent Night to come look, but she just shakes her head and quickens her pace as she crosses the lawn on the way to collect the tiny bantam eggs from the henhouse.
TRINCOMALEE
When I open the top drawer, the odour of decades-old sandalwood chips takes me by surprise. In a lined notebook, I recognise Mother’s handwriting.
Household Wage Expenditure. Trincomalee, 1958.
Ayah 25 Rs
Cookie 20 Rs
Buster 20 Rs
Bobby 15 Rs
Silent Night 15 Rs
Total 95 Rs
Ayah was our nanny, considered almost a member of the family, and the best paid of the servants. Cookie was not a name, but a function—our cook. When original Cookie left some years later, we engaged ‘New Cookie’. Buster was our driver, and Bobby—the dhobi or laundryman. Of course, they would have had Sinhalese or Tamil names too: long, tongue-clicking names like Adhithyasangeraj or Vasanthakumar. For convenience, though, we called them by their functions, or by a pet name of Father’s choosing.
KANDY
The next drawer contains photographs. One is captioned: Christmas Eve, 1949. A group of adults is gathered on the long front verandah of our Kandy house, overlooking the lake. The men recline with legs splayed on planters’ chairs, glasses of arrack balanced on taut shirt fronts. The women purse their lips and smile; one adjusts a curl of lacquered hair pasted to a damp forehead. The flames of oil lamps and the camera’s flash reflect on gold bangles, which slip down elegantly poised forearms.
* * *
She arrives at our Kandy house on Christmas Eve. She is brought by an uncle from Jaffna as a girl of fourteen, maybe fifteen. I am six years old. I peer at her through the carved wood of the dining-room door. She wears a faded crimson hatta and redda, the wrap-around cloth and short-sleeved sari jacket that all the servants wear. She is thin and short, barely taller than my sister, who is only nine. Her hair, tied behind in a plait, reaches past her buttocks. Mother calls me outside to be introduced, but I miss her name, absorbed as I am by her skin: her throat, her forearms, the backs of her hands. She is exceptionally dark, even compared with our Sinhalese servants, even in the bright sunlight. Her skin is the colour of the tamarind pulp that oozes from between Cookie’s stained fingers when she prepares sour fish curry. In the shade of the verandah, she is almost invisible.
That evening, it is her job to move back and forth among the guests dispensing glasses of whisky or gin and tonics or lime juice with sugar, the soles of her bare feet tacky on the blood-red cement floor, or to seek out and serve stray revellers down in the garden, lounging against the trunks of mango trees or under fragrant, fleshy frangipanis.
It is there, down in the garden, hidden in the shadows of the bamboo grove, that she frightens Uncle Bertie half to death. He doesn’t see her approaching. Her skin and hair are invisible against the night. Even the whites of her eyes are hidden beneath lowered lids. Uncle Bertie, who is not really an uncle at all, lets out a falsetto shriek that brings the whole assembly spilling tipsily down the verandah steps and across the lawns to the bench under the stooping bamboo. I follow quietly and watch from behind Father’s white trouser legs.
‘My god, men. She scared the devil out of me! You must hang a bell around her neck.’
‘Hush, Bertie. So crude!’
‘What’s your name, child?’
She hesitates, then answers almost inaudibly.
‘What, child?’
No answer. Eyebrows are raised and indulgent glances exchanged among the ladies.
‘I have it,’ screeches Uncle Bertie.
‘What, what?’
‘We must call her Silent Night.’
‘My god. How fitting.’
‘Silent Night, Holy Night. All is calm. All is bright.’
Choking laughter clambers up the lawn from beneath the bamboo and clatters across the polished cement floor of the deserted verandah. Eventually, the troop drifts back up to resume their pre-entertainment positions. By then, the dark girl with the crimson clothes has disappeared back to the kitchen to fetch another tray of gin and tonics.
COLOMBO
Held together by a bulldog clip are numerous receipts from House of Cargill’s, Colombo Fort. Cookie accompanies Driver on errands to Cargill’s for special purchases, such as sweetened condensed milk, tin kirri, for Mother’s sweet milk tea, and weekly trips to the market for lentils, rice and chillies. But Silent Night does not go with them. She doesn’t even go out to the gate when the fishmonger comes with his two pingo baskets bouncing at either end of a pole. She doesn’t ever go out to buy herself anything. Everything is provided, I suppose.
Her only outing is once a month when Driver takes her into town to deposit her whole wage into an account at the Bank of Ceylon. Otherwise, she stays at the house and works in the kitchen courtyard, assisting Cookie with the more menial tasks, such as pounding the rice to make flour for string hoppers for our breakfast.
* * *
Early one morning, unable to sleep, I am making my way along the side verandah when I glimpse Silent Night in the courtyard outside the kitchen. She is bending to grind cardamom and cumin seeds on the huge grinding stone. Her clothes are grey with ashes from the open hearth and blackened chatties—the earthenware cooking pots in which Cookie prepares our curries. Her hair is tied back in a plait as always, but I notice that it is growing thin on top. It is slick with the king coconut oil she rubs through it every day. She moves to the open hearth and bends over it, stoking the embers. As the heat from the fire grows, the coconut oil in her hair liquefies and runs down the side of her forehead, splashing into the hearth in a tiny fireball.
* * *
At the bottom of the drawer is a doctor’s bill. It is for surgical services rendered in May 1956. The patient’s name is mine.
Mother, Cookie and Driver have gone out to the Wellawatte market, Father is at work, my big sister is at a friend’s house and the other servants are I don’t know where. In any case, I find myself alone at home with Silent Night. I go into Mother’s room to investigate the coloured bottles of nail varnish that she keeps arranged along her dressing table. Having no success opening them, I take one of them to the kitchen to heat it over the new kerosene stove as I have seen Cookie do with jars of honey. I take a tea towel and push a pot of simmering curry slightly to one side, exposing a semicircle of fire, and hold the small glass bottle to the flames. A piercing crack is all I remember, and then the damp coolness of the brick floor against the backs of my calves and palms. My fingertips find the thick shard of glass lodged above my collarbone. I clench my eyelids shut and pull.
When I open my eyes I see, just within my field of vision, the bright red of my own blood squirting rhythmically upwards past my cheek. My eyes slide shut and I feel warm tears pooling in my ears. Through my back I sense a deep rhythmic thumping that I take to be my heart.
I peer through my tear-soaked eyelashes to see Silent Night running in from the courtyard. She is holding a large wad of the
sap that seeps from the machete cuts on the banana palm in our garden when the hands of fruit are hacked off. She moulds the sap and presses it firmly on the cut. She remains kneeling over me on the cool, damp floor of the kitchen, nodding her head and softly repeating a pet name she has heard Ayah calling me—Chicki, Chicki. After some time, she gestures to me to hold the sap in place, wipes the tears from my cheeks with her blood-sticky palms, and leaves.
I learn later that she ran all the way to Wellawatte market to fetch Mother. The doctor who stitched the wound in my neck said that the banana sap had stopped the bleeding as effectively as any means he could have used.
AYAH
The next drawer contains letters and papers, as well as a tortoise-shell comb and a prayer card.
I am in the last year of secondary school when my old ayah suffers a massive stroke. By the time I arrive home, she has been taken to the General Hospital—a ten-minute drive away. Driver and Father follow the ambulance in our car. Mother, my sister and I are waiting at home for Driver to return for us when we receive a phone call from Father to say that Ayah has died. He has sent Driver to her village near Kalutara to inform her family. The next day, Ayah’s sister-in-law and son arrive to collect her body. I hadn’t known until that day that she had a child. He was maybe three or four years older than me.
We send Driver to transport them back to their village. We won’t be attending Ayah’s funeral, it being a family affair.
I go to bed early and weep quietly, eventually drifting into a groggy lull of shallow breathing. I have been lying on my bed like that a long time when I realise someone is in my room. I open my eyes slightly and can make out Silent Night’s silhouette in the doorframe. Her hand is outstretched and I think for a moment that she is going to stroke my hair. I close my eyes as she lowers her hand, but she doesn’t touch me. I wait a few minutes and see the light in the servants’ quarters go out before turning on my bedside lamp. On my pillow she has left a card of the type that are sold outside Hindu temples. It is a copy of a Hindu painting portraying characters of increasing age in various positions on earth and in the heavens, linked by a golden line, representing the endless cycle of death and rebirth. At the bottom of the card is printed a badly spelled English translation of a verse of the Bhagavad-Gita: Just as a man discard worn out clothes and put on new clothes, the soule discard worn out bodys and wears new ones.
I decide against thanking Silent Night for it the next morning. I think she would feel awkward about receiving thanks.
MOUNT LAVINIA
I search through the bills and theatre programs in the drawer until I find a letter addressed to Father in a grey envelope bearing the insignia of the Deputy Inspector General of Police.
One Sunday morning a man comes to see Father at our home in Mount Lavinia to tell him that he intends to marry Silent Night. He has heard about her through a cousin of Driver’s and has visited her several times over the previous month. Silent Night is at first hesitant, but is eventually persuaded into accepting by New Cookie, who thinks she would be mad to pass up the offer, given her age. She must be in her early thirties.
I am home visiting from university when, on the designated day, the man arrives on a pushbike to collect Silent Night. We call her into the front room to say our farewells and give her the presents we’ve prepared. Mother gives her a beautiful silk sari to wear at the wedding ceremony. New Cookie has baked her a Love Cake for good fortune. I give her a Tamil translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, found by chance in the university bookshop. It’s only when she is taking it from my hands that it dawns on me that she almost certainly can’t read. I feel ashamed at the embarrassment I am sure my gesture has caused her. But Silent Night just bows to me and joins her palms in front of her forehead. She then thanks us all in English and carefully wraps the sari and book with the rest of her belongings in an old, faded hatta. She goes outside to her waiting fiancé and places the bundle on the seat of the bicycle, with the Love Cake balanced gingerly on top. Her husband-to-be pushes the cycle along the driveway while she walks behind. We stand on the front steps waving and call out our wishes for happiness. At the front gate, she looks back and smiles, almost apologetically. They turn out of the driveway and are gone. I think it is the only time I have seen her smile.
That evening on the verandah we toast Silent Night and have a good chuckle recalling how Uncle Bertie came to christen her, that Christmas Eve, all those years before in Kandy.
Two weeks later, the Deputy Inspector General, an old university friend of Father’s, calls to inform us that Silent Night’s body has been found floating down the Wellawatte canal. Her husband is nowhere to be found.
Father goes down to the morgue to identify her body, but has to admit that he doesn’t remember her real name, it having been so long and all. The Deputy Inspector General says not to worry. The bank will have records of it.
The next day he calls to let us know that Silent Night’s bank account had been emptied the day before her body was found. It had contained almost three thousand rupees—a fortune for a servant.
We never heard back from the police, although they must have contacted any family she still had in Jaffna. Apparently her husband was never tracked down.
I’m not sure if Father and Mother were ever informed of her real name.
Hundreds and Thousands
He thinks he’s perfected the icing so it shines just like the photos in Nigella’s book, and the unit smells of raspberries and roses.
And hopefully just a small homecoming celebration won’t tire her too much. No family yet. Just the two of them. Faye says her sense of taste is still a little dulled, but she craves his pretty puddings all the same.
Alby goes to the bedroom and gently strokes her hair till she wakes up. She rises, pulls her new dressing-gown close around her, and comes to join him in the kitchen. She feels the cold more now, she says, so Alby moves the chair into a ray of early summer sunshine. He pours her a cup of rosehip tea and sings:
‘Together again, together again
Won’t let you go, no, never again.’
Faye smiles. ‘I’ve missed your cooking.’
Alby’s eyes moisten and he nods. ‘Love Bun, mon amour?’
‘Alright,’ says Faye and pats his hand.
‘Hold on!’ he says, letting the Hundreds and Thousands tumble onto the still-sticky raspberry icing.
‘Voilà!’ he exclaims as he presents the plate. ‘You’ll be as voluptuous as Nigella in no time.’
* * *
The following Sunday, it’s Marmalade Pudding and Molten Chocolate Babycakes for afternoon tea.
‘Must have taken you hours, Alby,’ says Faye.
‘A labour of love,’ he says. ‘You just enjoy it, mon amour. You just enjoy.’
Faye wipes a smear of melted chocolate from her chin. ‘I’ve put a kilo back on already.’
‘The doctor will be pleased,’ says Alby.
‘You’re my knight in shining cake tins.’ She smiles. ‘What would I do without you?’
‘Perish.’ He laughs. ‘The thought, that is.’
* * *
Next weekend, it’s Girdlebuster Pie for elevenses.
‘Goodness me, it’s rich,’ comments Faye. ‘I’ll be busting my girdle again in no time.’
‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ says Alby. ‘Put some meat back on your bones.’
‘Not too much. I quite like the slender new me. Just means I’ll need a whole new wardrobe.’
Alby cuts a slice of pie and sings:
‘Lovely lady looks my way
And my knees begin to sway.’
Five minutes later, Faye throws up in the kitchen sink.
‘Don’t you feel bad,’ she says. ‘They said there’d still be a bit of nausea for a fortnight or so.’
‘I know, I know,’ says Alby, caressing the nape of her neck.
‘But I’m all better. Promise!’ Faye smiles.
‘I know, mon amour.’
‘
Just a bit on the bilious side, that’s all,’ says Faye.
Alby stoops to kiss her forehead. ‘Take the bitter with the better,’ he says softly as he smoothes her wispy white hair.
* * *
Towards the end of January, when Faye’s feeling strong, Alby puts down some late-season zucchini plants in a patch by the front steps, where they’ll get the morning sun. He keeps a bucket in the shower to water them. Faye says there’ll be too many for the two of them.
‘We’ll give them away to the new neighbours,’ he says. ‘They’re from Africa.’
‘Really?’ says Faye.
‘And I’ll make Chocolate Zucchini Cake,’ adds Alby.
‘What?’ Faye laughs. ‘Sounds ghastly!’
‘Just you wait!’ says Alby. ‘You’ll be eating your words.’
* * *
Alby quickly wipes down the benchtop and hands Faye a rose as she walks into the kitchen.
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