The Flower Boy

by Karen Roberts

  So they finally buried her on an indecently beautiful day. The sun shone down mockingly and the sky wore its best festive blue.

  Before they closed the coffin back in the house, he stood there and looked curiously down at her marble face.

  He heard a sob behind him and turned to see Ayah standing there. “Oh, Chandi,” she murmured brokenly. “Look at your sister.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not Rangi,” he said clearly, and a ripple of consternation went through the little knot of mourners.

  Poor boy, they said sadly. He’s trying to pretend that it’s someone else. Some of the older ones who’d seen a lot of death said they had seen this happen with children, and sometimes they even went a bit funny in the head and never quite recovered. Like Asilin’s niece, remember her? Her brother died of snakebite and all she does now is sing strange songs and talk to herself.

  They had been gazing sorrowfully at Rangi in her coffin.

  Now they all transferred their sorrowful gazes to Chandi.

  Chandi heard them and grimaced, wondering why people were so stupid. He hadn’t meant it like that. The undertaker in Nuwara Eliya had done an awful job and Rangi’s clear pale brown skin was now an unpleasant pink. Her lips were red and looked like Appuhamy’s after he had a betel chew. They hadn’t even got her hands properly around the little rosary she was clutching. They didn’t close.

  The air reeked with the sickly sweet smell of flowers and he longed to throw open a window. Let some fresh air in. Let some death air out.

  Rangi would have hated all this, he thought dismally.

  THE ONLY GOOD thing that came of Rangi’s death was that Leela, with no one to comfort her, turned to Jinadasa. It was his shoulder she wept on. It was his compassionate gaze she sought as her only sister was buried beneath the dark, fertile hill-country soil. It was him she sat silently with afterward. And while Jinadasa’s heart was heavy with her unhappiness, he was happy that she had turned to him.

  PREMAWATHI’S WORDS TO John that fateful day proved prophetic, for just as suddenly as he arrived, Disneris left. Unlike the Sudu Nona’s grand exit, he slipped away quietly one morning, and Premawathi had only known he was going the night before.

  She was sitting on the kitchen step staring into space, as was her habit these days, when he came to sit next to her. She looked up uninterestedly, wondering what he was going to say. He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks.

  “Haminé,” he began. “I will be leaving tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh,” she said, then roused herself to ask, “Where?”

  “Maybe to Colombo or maybe back to my family. I haven’t seen them in a long time. Almost two years.”

  “Will you be coming back?” she inquired distantly.

  “Of course,” he hastened to reassure her. “You see, this tea dust is giving my sinuses trouble. Maybe I’ll find something else, better pay, and then I’ll send for you and the children.”

  “If that’s what you want,” she said.

  He was relieved that it had all gone so smoothly. “Well, I’d better go and pack,” he said, and left her sitting there.

  He left at dawn, while the children were still asleep. Premawathi stood silently at the kitchen door and watched the mist swallow him up.

  O life, she thought tiredly, how many of us do you need before your appetite is finally satisfied? The morning chill settled around her like a somber mood, but she didn’t feel its coldness. What now? she thought. Who next?

  On the morning that Disneris left, Chandi and Leela woke up and looked at each other. They knew he had gone. Unknown to their parents, they had listened to last night’s conversation through the half-open door.

  Premawathi didn’t explain Disneris’s absence to them, nor did they ask.

  In the days that followed, Leela felt as if she were being thrown around in the winds and clung to Jinadasa for support. Chandi personally didn’t feel anything. No sadness, no happiness, nothing. It was a good state to be in, all things considered.

  But just as soon as Glencairn began to settle down, as much as it could given the upheaval of the last few months, the third misfortune struck, proving that trouble did indeed come in threes.

  No one was quite sure if Disneris’s departure was a “misfortune.” There were those like Premawathi who felt relief, John who felt guilty, Rose-Lizzie who was actually quite happy, Chandi who still felt nothing, and Leela who didn’t quite know what she felt. But Disneris had left, and partings were supposed to be sad. Technically, at least.

  And while everyone was trying to decipher their Disneris-departing feelings, the third misfortune crept in like a thief in the night.

  IT WAS IN the night, just six months after the picnic, that Appuhamy’s spirit finally conceded defeat to his tired body, and left for its higher abode.

  He died with a happy sigh, in the middle of a dream where he was once more a young and sprightly butler, proffering a tray of beautifully garnished hors d’oeuvres to a glittering English crowd in tails and tiaras. Even the King and Queen were there.

  That was at about one o’clock in the morning.

  It was eight-thirty before they found him.

  Chandi noticed Appuhamy was missing because Chandi expected him to die soon and was always slightly surprised to see him in the kitchen each morning. This morning, Chandi waited until eight, two hours after Appuhamy usually made his appearance.

  “Ammi,” he informed Premawathi, who was rushing to and fro as usual, although these days she was slower, “Ammi, I think Appuhamy is dead.”

  Premawathi stopped in her tracks. “What?”

  “It’s after eight and he hasn’t come out yet. His door is still closed.”

  “He’s probably still sleeping. He’s not getting younger,” she said.

  “He’s probably dead,” Chandi said.

  Premawathi frowned. “You shouldn’t talk nonsense. And you mustn’t say ‘dead.’ It’s not nice.”

  “What’s nice, then?”

  “You say ‘passed away.’ ”

  “Passed away? Passed away where?” Chandi asked in bewilderment.

  “To the next world,” Premawathi said.

  “Is that where Rangi went?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the next world like, Ammi? Is it hard like this one?”

  She looked at him. He was a child of thirteen and he already knew life was hard. “No,” she said gently. “I don’t think it’s like this at all. I think it must be beautiful and everyone must be happy.”

  “So Appuhamy must be happy there,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s good, because I don’t think he was very happy here.”

  “You don’t even know he’s dead!” she remonstrated.

  “Passed away,” Chandi corrected her. She just shook her head.

  Appuhamy looked as if he were sleeping, only he didn’t get up when Premawathi spoke to him, or even when she shook his shoulder gently. Even through the sheet, she could feel that his body was cold.

  “Ammi, he’s passed away,” Chandi said.

  Premawathi finally covered Appuhamy’s face with his sheet. “He looks happy,” she said sadly. “We’d better go and tell the Sudu Mahattaya.”

  UNLIKE RANGI, APPUHAMY didn’t have a coffin and flowers and people sobbing quietly in the background. He was cremated in the tiny Buddhist cemetery on Glencairn, and the children were not allowed to go. Only Premawathi, Jinadasa, Leela and John stood by, watching the flames feast greedily on his emaciated body.

  Chandi was disappointed but practical.

  “Maybe it’s better that we didn’t go,” he said to Rose-Lizzie. “The wind might have turned and we might have got burned ourselves.”

  But Rose-Lizzie was bitter about having been cheated out of her Buddhist burning and was not to be consoled. “I don’t care,” she said mutinously. “They should have let us go. We were the ones who knew he was going to die and you were the one who first told them. You even found him!”

  “Maybe
it would have smelled bad, the burning meat,” Chandi said, trying to placate her.

  “I wanted to smell it,” she said angrily. “Oh, it’s just not fair. We waited so long for him to die. Years and years.”

  Chandi looked pensive. “Isn’t it funny that someone as old as Appuhamy takes so long to die and someone as young as Rangi dies so soon?” he said.

  Rose-Lizzie looked doubtful. “Is it?” she said. “I don’t know.”

  Chandi looked at her. “Do you think I’ll die soon?”

  “Oh no,” Rose-Lizzie said definitely. “You’ll live for years and years, like Appuhamy.”

  “Well, if they burn me, you can come. I’ll tell them to let you,” he said generously.

  “How will you tell them? You’ll be dead.”

  “I’ll write it down in a book and tell you where the book is, then you can show it to them.”

  “They probably won’t let me go even then,” she said gloomily. “Anyway, it won’t be the same as Appuhamy.”

  “Does it matter? You want to see someone being burned, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but not you!” She was quiet for a bit, then she turned to him. “Chandi, what happened to Rangi?”

  “She passed away.”

  “Passed away where?”

  “To the next world.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But what actually happened to her? I heard Father Ross saying she jumped over the edge,” Rose-Lizzie said, watching him intently.

  “She didn’t jump.” She walked.

  “How do you know? Were you there? I woke up and you were not there with the others, and then they came and said Rangi was gone. Didn’t you see her near the trees?”

  I saw her but I didn’t stop her.

  “Do you think of her?”

  I see her every night, but then she disappears.

  Chandi jumped up to his feet. “Come on,” he said, holding his hand out to pull her up. “Let’s go down to the oya for a walk. All this dying talk is making my head hurt.”

  Rose-Lizzie allowed him to pull her along, but she wondered what had happened that day. Chandi had never been the same. He had tried to fool everyone, including her, but she was his best friend. She knew something more had happened.

  As they walked down the path, Chandi determinedly pushed the memories to the back of his head, which really hurt. He hadn’t been lying about that part.

  He remembered every detail of that afternoon. If he forgot during the day, his dream came back at night to remind him.

  Even now, he couldn’t think of Rangi without feeling a clutch of pain in his heart, and guilt. He often went through the whole scenario in his head and wondered if he might have been able to do something to prevent what had happened from happening. He could have gone to her immediately. He could have run to his mother and told her Rangi had seen and heard everything. He could have followed her faster, held her hand, shouted for help. Something.

  But, every time he thought those things, he knew it wouldn’t have helped. Nothing would have changed. The day might have been different, or the method, but Rangi would have passed away sooner rather than later.

  Perhaps he had always known that, and that was why he had loved her extra. Everyone had loved her extra. Even a little bit. Even Appuhamy, who didn’t love anyone, had loved Rangi just a little. His mother used to laugh and say Appuhamy had a soft spot for Rangi.

  He missed her. She was his sister and she had passed away.

  chapter 25

  ON CHANDI’S AND ROSE-LIZZIE’S NEXT BIRTHDAY, THERE WAS NO PICNIC or party or birthday cake. Nobody felt much like celebrating. But they remembered. Premawathi went to the pola and bought jak fruit, gotukola, drumsticks—vegetables Rangi used to like—and a few chickens, and spent the morning cooking them in huge pots.

  After lunch had been laid out for the family, Premawathi, Leela, Chandi, Jinadasa and Rose-Lizzie, who insisted on coming along, went to the homes of Glencairn’s poor and handed out parcels of food. In Rangi’s memory.

  Chandi enjoyed doing that. He knew Rangi’s soft heart, wherever it had passed away to, would have been touched by the gesture.

  “It’s my daughter’s dana,” Premawathi said, as she handed out the banana-leaf-wrapped parcels. Some people had known Rangi and said a prayer for her soul as they took the food. Others just took it. As they opened the packets, they forgot everything but the food.

  THAT YEAR WAS a year of happenings.

  After six long years, the war finally ended. It took two atom bombs and thousands of lost lives, a high price to pay under any circumstances, but people were weary of the fighting, bombing and rationing. So the war ended without postmortems. Except for the trials of the war criminals, of course.

  Justice was meted out selectively, but apparently satisfactorily.

  On the streets of America, joyful young girls kissed sailors and soldiers.

  London raised itself wearily and began the painstaking task of rebuilding.

  In Germany, people avoided one another’s eyes and struggled with guilt as concentration camps were opened and gas chambers exposed.

  In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people buried their dead amid rubble and radiation.

  At Glencairn, Chandi read the newspapers and remembered.

  He sat on the veranda steps and thought back to their innocence. To that one grand escapade that didn’t even happen properly, but that changed everything. The course of their lives. Their loves.

  LEELA AND JINADASA had announced to Premawathi that they wanted to get married just as soon as the traditional one-year mourning period for Rangi was over, and Premawathi had gladly given her consent. Jinadasa was not only educated, employed and kind; he was also the only eligible young man to cross her daughter’s path. Much as she didn’t want Leela to make a bad marriage, she feared even more that she would end up a spinster. An unmarried daughter was to be pitied far more than an abused wife.

  After they had shyly told her, she had sat Leela down on the kitchen step and talked to her.

  “Be respectful, be loving, be kind. Always have a meal and a smile ready when he comes home from a hard day at work. But remember, he too must be the same to you. When times are bad, be patient. They usually get better soon enough. And if he ever speaks badly to you or, God forbid, lifts his hand to you, leave him immediately and come home.”

  Leela looked at her with wide eyes. “Amma, Jinadasa would never be anything but kind and loving and respectful, and he would never hit me!”

  “People change, my daughter,” Premawathi said, stroking Leela’s glossy hair.

  “Amma, did our father ever hit you?” Leela asked tentatively.

  Premawathi sighed. “No, child, although sometimes I wish he had. At least I would have known he was alive!”

  “Amma!”

  Premawathi laughed. “I know, I know. That sounds silly, but you know what I mean.”

  Leela rested her head on her mother’s lap. “Yes. I think I do,” she said sadly. “Ammi, I wish Rangi was here.”

  Premawathi blinked back her tears. “So do I, Leela, so do I.”

  After a long time, there was a happy occasion at Glencairn. Leela and Jinadasa’s marriage was celebrated simply, but with great joy, because all who knew them could clearly see they loved each other.

  John had given them a prewedding present of fifty rupees, a small fortune that would pay for the wedding and give them something to put away besides. The date was set for June fifteenth, and for a month before, Premawathi indulged in an orgy of planning and shopping and preparation. Her daughter was not going to have a hole-in-the-corner affair, and while Rangi’s recent death and their always precarious financial situation meant they had to keep it simple, she was determined to make it as tasteful as she could.

  Using the precious fifty rupees, she and Leela chose a beautiful white sari with slippers to match. Premawathi bought yards of tulle from the cloth shop in Nuwara Eliya and made Leela’
s veil herself, a long one, held by a coronet of artificial pearls. Luckily, John had given Jinadasa a suit, shirt and shoes, so no money had to be spent there.

  Premawathi dipped into her savings and bought new clothes for Chandi and herself too. Brown long trousers, a white shirt and new shoes for him, and a mint-green sari for herself. Her old slippers would do.

  She had sent Disneris a telegram informing him that his daughter was getting married, but she didn’t really expect him to show up. He didn’t.

  There was the question of the car. She steeled herself to speak to John, but still put it off until the last minute.

  She went to him after dinner, and found him alone on the veranda. Robin Cartwright had retired for the night.

  He looked surprised, for she hardly ever spoke to him anymore. “Yes, Premawathi,” he said gently. “What is it?”

  “Sudu Mahattaya, you know the wedding?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I was wondering, would it be okay if—I mean, could we—”

  “Yes?” he repeated, beginning to look slightly amused.

  “I was wondering if we could borrow your car to take Leela to church,” she said in a rush.

  “Of course,” he said mildly. “But who’s going to drive it?”

  “Oh.” The thought hadn’t occurred to her.

  He laughed. “I’ll drive her, and you too. And Disneris, of course,” he added.

  “He won’t be coming, I don’t think.”

  John’s expression gave nothing away. “Well then, I’ll drive the two of you.”

  She looked uncomfortable and he laughed again. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You want my car but not me, even though there’s no one else to drive you.”

  She knew he was teasing her and she felt herself flush.

  He finally took pity on her. “It’s no problem, Premawathi. In fact, I would be honored to drive Leela to the church and back,” he said quietly.

  She murmured thanks and fled.

  PREMAWATHI FIXED LEELA’S veil on and smiled at her in the mirror. They had been given one of the spare bedrooms to use. “You look so beautiful,” she told her daughter through the hairpins she held between her teeth.