Meanwhile, these same Englishmen became needful and sudden lovers of true Ceylon notions, for their wives and mothers and mantelpieces. And so, through Sam, British wants and discards met Pettah goods and wants. First, he set up an operation in the seamstress’s stall for fences and buying agents sent to Pettah by native planters and businessmen mad for northern wood and banker’s lamps, heavy desk blotters, music cabinets, Walter Scotts in indigo marbled hardback, country church prints and solemn hunting scenes to hang upon their huna-studded walls. Next, Sam sent word through Pettah and Pettah sent word everywhere: the war British were leaving and did not want to leave empty-handed. An ironworking shop near the quartermaster’s warehouse was cleared out. The lower ranks of the departing English went in for handiwork from the village: devil masks and palm-sized charms that carried pithy biographies of warding off and healing powers, brass ashtrays shaped like coiled cobra tails or held up by trumpeting elephants, cuff-link and earring dishes carried by faceless coolie stickmen or contemplative primates, weak gold chains dangling semi-precious stones for girls to win back, pillboxes made of buffalo horn for wives taking unmentionable medicines. Behind an arched doorway was an anteroom for the officer class. Crate-bottom boards displayed heavy, ornate suriyas dangling from bronze chains that had once dangled from noble necks; boar and leopard pelts awaited unchallengeable stories of their provenance; in a far corner, under sheets sat a stone lion head and cracked free moonstones and assorted segments of stone frieze brought to Colombo from the ruins of the old interior kingdoms, all ideal for English gardens.
A note came from the village once every two months, and Sam would take a taste from his operation and send it there. He never went once to Sudugama himself in the first year of his second marriage. He only sent his driver Joseph with bootloads of canned food, foreign cigarettes, and war-orphaned northern wood and shine, and also with instructions to tour around the old coughing Ralahami as he pleased for one full day before returning. All was sent in answer: to formal word of Arthur’s engagement, and then of Arthur’s marriage, and, seven months later, to word of a new baby. With that third shipment he also sent some leftover tatters from Ivory’s dressmaking, as a welcome to the walauwa’s new servant girl, Pathy. After thirty-seven years Latha had left the walauwa, laughing wildly, the very same day Arthur’s son was born. Sam also sent to the temple for Vesak and, though late, he sent for Hyacinth’s crossing and for her birthday and for the anniversary of the accident, and with every shipment to the village he remembered the Ethiopians for as long as it took to buy six new sets of banyan and sarong, which were also sent, addressed to Arthur. When Joseph returned to the city, Sam asked him how things looked. “Good, sir.” The letters sometimes said otherwise, as when Arthur wrote that his son’s birth had been blighted when Ralahamis from nearby villages, the same villages visited on George’s engagement tour, came to the walauwa demanding justice for their ruined daughters, who were now brides without grooms and mothers to bastard sons. Arthur wrote that Robert was too ill to receive anyone, more ill with the noise of each of these visits, and so Arthur had sent the fathers off with threats and cigarettes and his own metal-benders and could Sam send more cigarettes next time please. Arthur never mentioned the Ethiopians and never asked where was his promised black Morris, and Sam would have worried why the British had not yet come to him for their prisoners, it was war’s end, and why his brother-in-law was not so keenly asking for his promised reward. But Sam Kandy’s going time was better spent going elsewhere.
On the first anniversary of his second marriage, it changed. Sam blamed Latha. The morning of the anniversary he went to the office in Fort to bring something for their dinner, a fading frayed menu card whose items he had copied onto the back years ago in deep incisions. He planned to instruct the hotel to make it, all of it, for them that night. But he never went into the office that morning. Latha was there, waiting for him. Latha, at his office, standing outside the door, squinting in the smudged windowpane light of daybreak in the city, wearing a village sari and flat-as-leaf village sandals and carrying an old Cargill’s shopping bag like she had been cut from the page of one chronicle and child-pasted onto a page from its successor. Not in the walauwa not in the village but in the city in Fort in Prince’s Building in front of his door: Latha. This went against nature itself, as if a tank crocodile had just swooped down from a branch.
“Mokatha?”
“Mokatha? I should speak here for all to hear?” she scoffed back, squinting worse than the last time he had seen her, the handkerchief dabbing her mouth. She was old now, slow, her skin had darkened around her clouding eyes and wattled about her neck and the arms. He followed her chin, which was motioning toward the tall narrow office door.
“Mokatha?”
“Ah. Fine. Why should I think that your new boutique madam would have made your manners any better. You would have me discuss it here so all of Colombo can hear. Right. Your father-inlaw is to die soon.”
“Why did Arthur send you to tell me?”
“Not even your eyes blink to hear it,” Latha said, smiling thinly, as if something was just confirmed. “And Arthur did not send me. Arthur does not know I have come. Arthur is, I am sure, scared to tell.”
“To tell what?”
“You’ve grown fat now, isn’t it! What has she been feeding you?”
“To tell me what? What.”
“Arthur is scared to tell why Ralahami is to die soon. What has happened.”
“But you are not scared.”
“No.” Stooped, swaying, showing her village teeth, she eyed him back.
“So then tell and go.”
“You would have me tell standing here, like this?” She breathed out loudly and bobbled her head. Something else confirmed. “Right. Your father-in-law went for a walk in the high grass behind the walauwa.” She waited, studying him studying her. “He said he wanted to see the first place in the village, the old cave, one last time, and he asked Lalson to help him climb the hill but of course, you know, you know what Lalson said. He said he would not go to the founder’s cave and tried to tell Ralahami not to go either but how can a servant tell such a thing? So Ralahami went, Lalson followed, and when Ralahami reached the cave he saw them. He saw all four of your fellows, fell back, and knocked his head on a rock. Since then he has even stopped coughing and asking for cigarettes. He is on the bed. He is to die soon.”
“Four, you said.”
“Yes, I said the Ralahami your father-in-law is to die soon.”
“But all four, you said.”
“The whole village knows. They have known from the beginning. Other villages even know. Since you came with your new madam and left those fellows in the muspenthu hut.”
“What hut?” Sam asked in a hard voice, but hard the way a bug sounds hard underfoot.
“What hut? Ha. The only hut fit for such devils. Believe it. I know,” said Latha.
They were only two, the rest of the building empty of Royal bells and footfall this early. Latha. After so many years of mocking him by looking only to Alice when he came to the walauwa, she was now standing here and mocking him outright, in his city, in his building, outside his door. Blocking it. Mocking his old misfortunate hut too, if truly so.
“Arthur told me you have left the walauwa,” Sam said. “Why have you come here to tell me about the Ralahami?”
“Because,” but here, suddenly, Latha faltered. Something had been touched by his question and he could tell that if he kept asking the same question she would break and go, but all Sam did was look down while Latha mouthed air at his question, like a fish on sand. She had already said all that she had planned to say to him. She had come to the city after fifty-seven years in the village, thirty-seven serving its highest blood, an omen blood, a dying blood, all of which she had witnessed and so now had dying eyes herself and would serve no more. She had decided to see Sam as her last duty by the walauwa and also because then there would be at least one known face, even his, in the
city, but also because she thought she would have at least some triumph after sixteen years of his devilry. To tell him that she knew, that everyone knew, other villages even, about his black-and-gold padlock men. But here, now, more: from the start of their talking Latha had so wanted him to open the door and let her sit a moment somewhere without rogues and beggars and sick men all walking the same lanes, none giving way. She would even make the tea herself, for both of them, if only he would do the very least for someone from the village, no less someone who had hand-fed his wife from birth and then hand-fed his children the same and never once asked directly for any of his city shine but was now standing before him in need like she never had been before, because she had been standing since coming to the city alone and unknown by every passing face. And all Latha wanted was tea and ten minutes to sit and sip it and then she would go back into the crowds and look for the place called Pettah. She would see what kind of new life could be had for the price of two golden earrings she had long ago decided Alice would have given her anyway.
“But Hyacinth must miss you, no?” Sam asked, looking down. Not the hammer question he had wanted to ask. It was now everything to keep this as only talking. Because suddenly, of all things in the universe, Sam wanted to go to her, to his mother’s old cousin, the walauwa’s eternal governess, the hated old woman. Who in a moment would turn or he would, and then would be gone the last known of the old blood, his blood, however forsaken, however thin, however spat upon, faded, rusted. But he would not. It had to be so, he wanted it that way, he had to: everything done to him and taken from him, everything he had taken and done demanded that it be so. And more: Sam Kandy knew from a year’s worth of prior nights that all would be forgotten by day’s end anyway, those hips, those eyes like quartz.
“Hyacinth is a young lady now,” Latha finally answered. “You will get her a husband soon. There is nothing more that I can do for her.” But there was no venom in her saying it. She was soft from the first true thing Sam Kandy had said in sixteen years, that the girl would miss her. The first kindness too, in his voice, she thought. But in vain. He’d made no move to open his door and give her only ten minutes. Truth, yes, but no cup of tea.
“You have not been to see Arthur’s son, have you,” she said.
“No.”
No tea. No mercy then. “Do you remember George when he was a small fellow? How big he was? Where is George? Where are you keeping him? Under another of your padlocks? He should see the new fellow too, no?”
“Why?” But as he said it he knew why. Sam took a step toward her but then he turned and hammered down the stairs loud enough that he could not tell, no one in the city could tell over such crashing, what Latha was claiming down after him, what words and sounds were her last before she went down into the city herself, where she would never be called by name again.
Sam waved off Joseph and the vehicle. Instead he made his way by foot along Lotus Road, where there were enough beggars, sick men, and sellers to step over shoulder by and break past, enough to make a man feel like he was still moving through the world of his own volition. Even a forty-six-year-old grandfather. He walked the same route for two hours, trying to empty all of it there, the worry and the plotting and the outrage over what was asked of him now, from the village, from his sent-off son, from his well-kept walauwa people, from the British when they with their own rage for right numbers would demand why he was returning four prisoners and not six. He pounded out his worry and plotting and outrage through successions of layabouts and eventually curious doormen until enough of them knew to give this mad stomping Mahatteya a wide margin and so Sam Kandy could claim victory, but now there was nothing to do but go to the room and tell her he had to go to the village.
Only, she wasn’t there, waiting for him, when he came back. He did not know where his wife had been for the middle hours of their anniversary day. And now he did not know what she had been doing for all the middle hours of their first year. But he would not ask because asking meant having to match her answer, meant having to know her as something other than one hundred warm pounds of milk skin without history or family or plans to get either, with only requests that he eat as she asked and go to the toilet when she wanted. A perfect year.
When, endless hours later, she returned, Ivory immediately smiled to see him waiting for her. He asked nothing. He stood and said that he was going to the village the next day, that he had no choice but to go to the village, that his father-in-law was to die. Her face was shocked, then blank.
“But why do you have to go there? Your wife’s father is already dead. You have known this for more than one year now.”
Sam wondered how she could already know, and by the third time she said it, he was certain of the source of her knowing, which also had to be the reason for her absence from the room. It had to be. Ivory must have somehow met Latha in the time it took Sam to walk from Prince’s Building to the Oriental Grand. There could be no other reason, and because he was this certain he would not ask her to deny it and so, instead, they went downstairs for Angels on Horseback, which, silent as a windowpane, she neither touched nor put before him. Back in the room, she didn’t tell him to use the chamberpot either, and so Sam went to bed on his anniversary night expecting nothing. He decided the village would answer for that too.
They lay beside each other like boards until she began asking again and again that one question. Again and again Sam said nothing. Eventually, suddenly, Ivory shot up and shut the light on her side and he did the same on his and in the fan-droning dark he could feel her moving beside him, not onto him yet but all elbows and great pumping legs, like she was a frog swimming for its life. When she stopped, she began to breathe in and out, loud and long like sea blowing, and he went to touch her nightdress and could tell she had shimmied it past her belly and here at last, he thought, was forgiveness, return, obliteration. He touched her cool bared skin, its wonder-bending promises. And so Sam let down his night trouser and waited. But she only kept breathing like sea blowing, like she was a schoolgirl readying to take a jump, and then she reached for him, saying nothing, cupping his face, pulling him closer and she wanted him to climb on her this time and as ever she guided, commanded, but then she pushed down his shoulders and kept pushing and he was too confused then surprised then curious then absolutely shocked and horrified as she held him in place by his hair and after how many minutes she arched and hummed, a long sweet falling note, then let him go, and fell asleep. He sat up and looked sharply for her to stir, like a dog looks to be noticed after a trick, but in vain. Instead, Sam crawled beside her and stared at night shapes until he fell asleep. And in the morning, having studied night shapes for hours, he washed and spat and spat and spat and just as he bent down to tie his shoes, all that new belly folding against his ribs, she asked him again, as if never before, as if nothing had happened, that same question.
“But why do you have to go there? Your wife’s father is already dead. You know your wife’s father is already dead. You have known for more than one year.”
“Mokatha?” Sam finally demanded, walking over to the bed. How could she ask now, after that? How she could she ask anything more of him?
“But why do you have to go there? I know—”
“How do you know he’s already dead?”
“Because he is my father! Because I am your wife now! Because I told you both my parents are dead more than one year ago, before you asked me to marry you, and you tell me she died how many years ago and still you have to go to her village and see to her father. But I AM YOUR WIFE. What you do for your wife you do for me.”
“You are jealous, Ivory,” Sam said slowly, angrily. She was breaking the arrangement. She was showing her blood and history.
“Not jealous. I know I have nothing to be jealous of in that village or in this marriage. I only want what is mine, Sam.”
“When he dies, the walauwa becomes mine and then I am Ralahami and you are—”
“NO. I told you I would n
ever go back. I will never stay there and be some bloody teacup queen of a teacup village. I cannot believe someone like you, dressed as you are, living here, now, speaking English and listening to a music cabinet, even uses those words anymore, let alone makes like you have always wanted it, like you spend days dreaming of it while working the paddy, wearing nothing but the same amude your father and his and his and his wore. Ralahami. Hamine. Walauwa. All old magic, useless tricks. That is not what you should want. That is not what I want. That is not what is mine.”
“What do you want? What do you think is yours?” he asked. Did she really think she could tell him about the village? Did she actually believe centuries of mud and hanged stars could be conquered with English medium and a music cabinet?
“Did you hear me, Sam? Did you? I said I want the same as you do.”
“Ah. Right. You tell me what you think I want.”
“One year married I know, believe it.”
“What?” But his challenge sounded tentative, was too full of immediate longing that all be forgotten and forgiven, if only she show him what they both knew he wanted. She laughed.
“Same as I do.”
“Ivory, this is the last time I shall ask. What? Tell me what you think I want. Tell me what you want.” Desperate hopeful in spite of himself.
“I want more.”
Downstairs, Sam ate breakfast alone, declining the plate of crèmes and jam pastries and feeling wretched and triumphant for it. He told Joseph to take him to his harbour office, where he took a shave from the barber downstairs and paid him to tell anyone who climbed the stairs, whether a white man or a Greek from one of the ships or a brown boy from the village, that he would return and take care of it in two days. He sent Joseph for fresh banyans and sarongs, four this time, and then he went to see the English, to tell them that in two days he would bring the Ethiopians to the harbour as promised. If asked how many prisoners he would have to tell, but otherwise he would gamble that in their packing for home, the prisoner transfer sheet the warden had shown him triumphantly the year before was already at the bottom of some crate at the bottom of some ship already long past Gibraltar. But Sam had no idea just how mad had been their leavetaking. He went into the quartermaster’s building and found nothing, the murky-shaped, ashen nothing of reclaimed space where a week before had been crates full of civilization. And though the grand trident doors were partly open on both sides and it was a bright day without, the emptied warehouse seemed to brown down all light. Now it smelled of old oil and of last night’s cooking fires still smoking, of morning piss, beedis, cold tea thrown at the dogs. Now ragged little men were lying about where once were daily stacked and un-stacked whole economies. There was no one here.
Beggar's Feast Page 19
