Now he was glad Ammi had said no to the thambili man.
After an hour a train came chugging in with the ticket man hot on its heels, but it wasn’t the one they wanted.
When the ticket man saw John, he panicked because he thought the railway high-ups had finally caught the station master with his pants down. Metaphorically speaking. Once he wiped the sweat out of his eyes and looked closer, he saw it was the white man from Glencairn and breathed easier. But only slightly.
The ticket man, like a lot of other people, assumed that the white folk all knew one another and spent their time drinking imported whisky and smoking imported cigarettes and talking to one another about their local employees.
Then he spotted Premawathi and Chandi hovering uncertainly behind him and his small eyes gleamed with the same train of thought that had thundered through the king coconut man’s mind. Chandi hated him on sight.
The ticket man was a little disappointed when John bought only two tickets, but brightened up once more when he realized they were first-class. He heard the woman make a slight noise of protest, but not so loud that the white man heard, he noted with satisfaction.
Premawathi had started to protest but shut up, realizing the futility of arguing with John. Also because she had seen the knowing look in the ticket man’s eyes, the same look she had seen in the king coconut man’s eyes.
She moved so she was no longer shielded by John’s broad back and stared directly at the ticket man. He felt her gaze and looked up, but quickly looked down again.
John sensed the tension and looked from one to the other. He too had seen the suggestive look the ticket man had given Premawathi but he was used to it. Every time he stopped to talk to one of the younger, more attractive tea pickers, he saw the same look in the eyes of those around him.
People assumed that Englishmen bedded the women who worked for them at some time or another.
Some did.
Others didn’t.
And some did once.
The train finally came and Premawathi breathed a sigh of relief. The atmosphere was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Two people got off the train looking sweaty and sleepy and wrinkled, an old man and his daughter. Or young wife. Who knew these days?
Four people boarded the train. A young couple who ran onto the platform out of nowhere. And Premawathi and Chandi. There was a brief moment of awkwardness just before they boarded. John put out his hand and Premawathi placed hers together at her chest in the traditional farewell. He let his hand fall to Chandi’s head and ruffled his hair. Then John pressed something into his hand.
“Take care of your mother,” he said gruffly. Then he turned to Premawathi, who already had one foot on the train step as if she couldn’t wait to get away. “Take care of yourself and take whatever time you need.”
She nodded. The train whistled and the engine driver’s assistant hung out of the engine and waved his dirty green flag. They got in and the train pulled out. Despite herself, she looked back and saw that he was still standing there.
Remote.
Or was it lonely?
CHANDI LOVED TRAVELING by train. The gentle swaying and the rhythmic chug-chugging were comforting, especially now. His mother had settled into her first-class seat by the window and he was sitting opposite her. She had not spoken since the train started. She was worried about her mother, worried about John, about how Appuhamy would cope in her absence, about Ayah, Krishna and Rose-Lizzie.
It didn’t occur to her to be worried about Disneris and the girls.
Chandi watched the expressions crossing her face like the scenery outside and knew what she was thinking. She was looking out the open window but he didn’t think she was seeing anything.
Traveling first-class was a new experience for them both. Here, the seats weren’t ripped open and dotted with vomit and betel chew. The floors were bare of sticky sweet wrappers and treacherous banana peels. There were no smelly people with live chickens and bad breath who carried on loud conversations with people at the other end of the carriage.
First-class was quite boring really.
He leaned out and watched the hills and people. The steep mountain passes intimidated even experienced engine drivers, so the train moved slowly. Chandi didn’t mind because it allowed him a better view of the passing countryside. He wished with all his heart that Rose-Lizzie were there with him. They would have hung out the window and waved at people and hooted in tunnels and run up and down the length of the train, perhaps even navigated the scary parts between the carriages.
He could have done all of that on his own but it wouldn’t have been the same.
He wondered what she was doing.
Outside, the green of the tea bushes changed from mountain to mountain. The looming shadows of some mountains fell on other mountains. Patches of sunshine turned square patches of tea into enormous sparkling emeralds, streams into liquid silver.
Old cows grazed contemplatively on tufts of grass between the black wooden railway sleepers and moved lazily away when they heard the shrill whistle of the approaching train. Sleeping fruit bats hung upside down from trees, looking like black fruit among the green leaves.
Bare-bodied farmers in paddy fields dug up the hard earth with their mammoties, and buffalos, and sickle-wielding women harvested the pale-gold paddies. When the train passed, they all stopped and watched it until it slowly lumbered past, then they went back to their digging and cutting.
Like the tea bushes, the paddy fields also varied in color, from the palest mint to the darkest gold, depending on age.
Chandi pulled his head in from the window to look at his mother, but she was still deep in thought, her mouth pursed and her brow furrowed, so he stuck his head out again.
The railway line curved sharply, and from a window of a carriage at the back of the train he saw another head leaning out. Another black, spiky-haired head about the same age as himself. Chandi grinned and waved. A hand waved back.
“Who are you waving at?” his mother asked idly.
He pulled his head in and sat down on the seat, relieved that she was talking again. “A boy at the back of the train,” he said.
She nodded and said “Oh,” and that was all. After five minutes of silence, he stuck his head back out the window and waited for another curve in the rail tracks, but when it came, the head was gone.
Chandi was a little irritated. Boring boy, he thought.
There was nothing to do in first-class. No people to watch, no conversations to listen to, no arguments or excitement.
He wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.
ABOUT AN HOUR after it had left Nuwara Eliya, the train stopped at a station. A few people got in and a few people got out. A few vendors ran up to the train and shouted out their wares. Pineapple. Peanuts. Sherbet. Cutlets. Chandi looked hopefully at his mother but she was staring into space.
He wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.
Then he remembered the something in his hand that the Sudu Mahattaya had given him. He opened his hand and looked. He closed his eyes, shook his head violently and looked again. Two green ten-rupee notes lay there.
For a minute he thought about what this fortune could do for his England fund, but that was the problem. It was a fortune. If it had been five rupees, he might have been able to pocket it without too much guilt, but not twenty. Pocketing twenty was robbery, pure and simple.
He reluctantly held it out to her. She stared at it uncomprehendingly.
“The Sudu Mahattaya gave it to us,” he said.
“When?” she asked in confusion.
“When we got on the train,” he said. “Here, take it.”
She took it wordlessly and looked at it.
“You’d better put it away,” he said practically. “Otherwise the train will start and the wind might blow it out of the window.”
She reached into her blouse and withdrew the little straw hambiliya she kept there. She carefully folded the
money and placed it with the other ten rupees.
“You shouldn’t have taken it,” she said accusingly. “You should have refused.”
“I didn’t even know what it was,” he said. “He put it into my hand and then we got on the train.”
“Still,” she said.
Still what? Chandi thought sulkily. She had put it into her hambiliya pretty quickly. If she didn’t want it, she could give it back to the Sudu Mahattaya when they got back. Or give it to him.
Fat chance.
The train started again. Chandi returned to the window. The scenery outside the window was even prettier, mountains shrouded in wispy mist. It was like a floaty, slow-moving dream.
Chandi wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.
ABOUT HALF AN hour later, the train arrived at the Badulla station.
As it stopped with its usual clanging and banging and screaming brakes, his mother suddenly woke up from her reverie.
“Badulla already,” she said, flustered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How was I to know?” Chandi said. “There isn’t even a sign and I’ve never been here before.”
There was no time to argue, so they grabbed their bag and hurried off the train before it could start again.
This station was as busy as the other one, but there was no time to take it all in. They walked outside and handed the ticket man their tickets. He didn’t look at the two of them like the ticket man in Nuwara Eliya had. Actually, he didn’t look at them at all, only at the tickets, which he tore in one corner and returned to them.
Chandi carefully put them in his pocket to show Rose-Lizzie when they returned to Glencairn.
Badulla was unlike any place Chandi had ever seen. It was crowded and noisy and the streets were full of people and cattle and cars belching thick black fumes and honking rudely. It was all very new and exciting, but he longed for the quiet sounds of Glencairn.
The bus station was even more crowded, with people, vendors, suitcases and boxes. They walked from bus to bus, looking anxiously at name boards until they finally saw one that said DENIYAYA.
There was no one on the bus, not even the driver or ticket conductor, so they sat on the hot wooden bench under the cement shelter to wait. Chandi’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his neck ached. There was a man selling impossibly colorful sherbet from a small cart. He ran a metal spoon along the line of bottles invitingly, shouting, “Sherrrrr-bet! Sherrrrr-bet!”
As Chandi watched, a woman walked up and bought a sherbet. The man deftly filled a large glass with red sherbet, added the little black casa-casa and then put in a spoon of crushed ice from the pail next to him. He stirred the lot together noisily and handed it over with a flourish.
The woman drank thirstily, and Chandi watched longingly. She suddenly looked his way and caught him watching. He flushed deeply and looked away, hoping his mother hadn’t noticed. She was always telling him not to stare at people. He wished he had kept the twenty rupees.
He spotted a tap a little distance away, murmured something to his mother and went to get a drink of water. Tap water was not better than cold sherbet but it was better than nothing.
He first splashed some on his hot face and sweaty neck, then cupped his hands, put his mouth to them and drank steadily until he felt his thirst slide down his stomach and rest comfortably in his bladder. He wanted to take some water to his mother but there was no container. He urinated onto a small date plant, which nodded happily as urine rained down on it. Maybe it had been thirsty too.
He returned to his mother feeling much better.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I went to drink some water and do susu,” he said.
“You should have told me. I would have bought us some sherbet,” she said.
He stared at her and then sighed. What was the point?
“There’s a tap over there, if you’re thirsty,” he said.
He watched her walk over to the tap, stoop and drink, and then walk back. When she wasn’t half running, she walked quite nicely, he decided. She swayed gently and he saw two men turn to look at her. Admiring. Not like the ticket man and the thambili man.
The two men turned out to be the bus driver and ticket conductor, and they both looked pleased when Chandi and his mother boarded the bus.
“Sit here in front. Less bumpy,” the ticket conductor said in a friendly voice. They obediently sat on a front seat, Chandi by the window and his mother in the aisle seat.
The driver started the bus and while he warmed up the engine, more passengers arrived. They pulled out jerkily and were finally on the road.
Exhausted by the day and lulled by the rhythm of the bumping, jolting bus, they slept, their heads resting uncomfortably on each other’s shoulder.
Halfway to Deniyaya, the bus stopped for a refreshment break at a wayside tea shop.
The bus conductor gently shook Premawathi, leaving his hand on her shoulder a little longer than necessary. It was, after all, a nice shoulder.
She came awake with a start and found his round smiling face peering at her. He had two days’ stubble on his fat cheeks and two chins, a little piece of snot in his left nostril, and large white teeth. Still, he was harmless enough.
She smiled her thanks, but slightly, so he wouldn’t get the wrong impression and think she was encouraging him. He grinned back, encouraged anyway.
“Refreshment break, sister,” he said. “Better get off and stretch your legs. Another two hours to go.”
She looked down at Chandi. He was still sleeping. It had been a long time since she had had the luxury of looking down at her sleeping children. He turned his head and smiled slightly in his sleep. She laid a cool hand on his brow.
“Chandi,” she said softly. “Putha, wake up.” He stirred and then opened his eyes slowly, blinking the sleep away from them. He ran his tongue over his lips as though tasting something. She smiled; he always woke up tentatively like this.
He sat up straighter and ran his fingers through his hair. She did too, smiling as he impatiently shrugged her hand off.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get off for a bit.”
She bought a cool thambili, which they shared. The other passengers were having a drink too. Thambili, tea, and Necto, which made their mouths and tongues red.
Afterward, they walked slowly to the back of the shop where there was an outdoor toilet, a rough structure made of cadjans, woven coconut leaves, with the evening sky for a roof. The door was a separate piece which had to be put in place once you entered. Inside was a deep hole with two foot-shaped mounds on either side. The most basic of toilets. Right now, the most welcome of toilets.
Chandi went first and listened for the faraway sounds of his urine in the deep hole. Premawathi went next, carefully positioning the door closed, and telling Chandi to stand outside in case anyone tried to come in.
When Premawathi emerged, there was a little queue which included the driver and the ticket conductor, who smiled at her. A friendly how-was-thesusu smile. She didn’t smile back and neither did Chandi.
Once everyone had gone to the toilet and got back on the bus, they started off again. Now the same people who had looked curiously and suspiciously at one another during the first half of the journey chatted amiably and exchanged milk toffee and gossip.
Chandi and Premawathi had neither to give, so they sat quietly. Chandi pulled open the stiff, dusty window and stuck his head out. This was not as comfortable as the train though. The window was small and the bus bounced and bucked like a skittish horse, making his head bang more than once against the top of the window frame. Chandi hung on grimly, determined to see all there was to see.
Whereas the view from the train was vast and stretched into the distance, the bus road was narrower, limiting vision to what was immediately on either side. They were now driving through dense jungle and the sky was darkening. It wasn’t the soft darkness of Glencairn but a thick, slightly oppressive darkness.
&nb
sp; Chandi wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.
He fancied he saw glowing eyes in the dark but when he told Ammi, she said it was probably the headlights of the bus. He was sure it was a leopard. Then, suddenly, the bus stopped. Passengers craned their necks and exchanged theories about what was happening. The ticket conductor went up front to investigate and came back with the news of an elephant in the middle of the road.
Chandi went to stand near the driver. He could vaguely make out the huge silent shape blocking the road.
“Will it go soon?” he asked the driver softly.
“I’ll give it a minute or two and then we’ll have to hurry it on its way,” the driver replied laconically.
Two minutes later, he sounded the horn, loud and long. The elephant lifted its head and glared at the bus with baleful eyes. Chandi shivered in unbearable excitement, half hoping it would charge at the bus. He was disappointed when it lumbered to the edge of the road and disappeared into the jungle.
They heard it trumpet complainingly into the distance.
The knot of passengers that had gathered in the front of the bus untied itself.
Chandi returned to his window seat.
BY THE TIME the bus finally chugged into Deniyaya, everyone had relapsed into sleepy and tired silences, and some were snoring loudly. The bus stop after the main Deniyaya junction was their stop. Pallegama.
“Mind how you go!” the overfriendly ticket conductor called out to Premawathi. She smiled back; it was okay now that they were parting company.
But go where?
Chandi stared into the cold darkness and wondered how they were going to cut their way through it. The other passengers had entered it in different directions and they were alone. Premawathi squared her shoulders.
“Come on,” she said and started walking. Chandi followed close behind, wanting badly to take her hand but not wanting to seem like a baby. It was cold and unfamiliar.
He had been one year old when they had left and he remembered nothing.
They were climbing an invisible hill. Although he couldn’t see it, his knees and wobbling legs could feel it. He walked so close to his mother that he bumped into her a few times. The claustrophobic darkness was broken by tiny pinpricks of light from distant lamp-lit homes.
The Flower Boy Page 18
