Amma nudged us and we followed them out. I looked back and saw that Jegan was still sitting on his bed. He had not started to pack the contents of his suitcase.
None of us felt like going to bed, so we went to sit on the patio outside my parents’ room. We had not been there very long before the head housekeeper came looking for my father. Amma told him that my father was at Reception. Instead of going to find him, however, he remained where he was, staring into space.
“What’s wrong?” Amma asked.
“Aiyo, madam,” he said, and then he was silent.
“Tell, will you? What’s wrong?” Chithra Aunty said.
He sighed deeply. “All of us are scared to clean the window. If we do it, we might be in trouble next.”
Amma stood up. “I’ll wash it off, then.” She looked at us and said “One of you come with me.”
I immediately volunteered, and Sonali came along as well.
Jegan was still sitting on the bed, his bag unpacked. Amma looked at him for a long moment and then she went to the window. She examined the writing and turned to the head housekeeper. “Bring me some turpentine and a rag,” she said. He nodded and left.
Once he had gone, Amma turned to Jegan. “It’s not good for the staff to see you like this. They’ll lose respect.”
Jegan made a sound of contempt. “What respect?” he said. “Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before Uncle will have to do the inevitable.”
“What are you talking about?” Amma cried. “We are all upset. This is not the time to babble on about nothing.”
At that moment the head housekeeper knocked. Amma got the rags and turpentine from him and closed the door.
She glanced at Jegan, a troubled look on her face, and went out onto the patio. She poured some turpentine onto the rag and began to clean the writing. After a moment she called to Sonali and me, “Don’t just sit there catching flies. Come and help me.”
That night Sonali was too afraid to sleep alone, so I offered to sleep in her room. We lay awake for a long time, listening to the sound of the waves hurling themselves against the beach.
“What did Jegan mean when he said it was only a matter of time?” Sonali asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
After Sonali had fallen asleep, I lay thinking that something was about to happen, but what it was I couldn’t tell. Tomorrow we would be returning to Colombo after lunch, and for once I was not depressed that our holiday had ended.
My sense of foreboding, that something significant was about to take place, proved to be correct the next morning. We knew something was wrong when we came to breakfast and found our father not there.
“Where is Appa?” Sonali asked.
Amma didn’t answer her. She indicated for us to be seated. She looked very tired, as if she had hardly slept last night. Soon Chithra Aunty, Sena Uncle, and Jegan joined us. They were all very quiet. I looked at Jegan, trying to catch his eye, but he refused to look at any of us. He finished his breakfast quickly, then excused himself and went to continue his inspection with Mr. Samarakoon. Once he had left, the atmosphere became less tense.
“Why don’t we go for a sea bath after breakfast,” Chithra Aunty suggested. “We can all do with some cheering up.”
Amma nodded.
After breakfast, when we went across to our rooms to get changed, we saw our father. He was seated on his patio, and when he saw us he didn’t even acknowledge our presence. As I drew near, I could see that he had a glass of whisky in his hand. I looked at Amma, but she looked down at the sand. Neither she nor Chithra Aunty seemed surprised that he was drinking at this time.
Amma said to me irritably, “Hurry up and get changed.”
When I had changed and come outside, Sonali was waiting for me. “You know what?” she whispered. “I went to Amma’s and Appa’s room to get my swimsuit and I think Amma was crying.”
Before I could say anything, Amma came out onto the patio in her bathing suit, smiling, but I could tell by the redness of her eyes that Sonali had been right.
The sea was beautiful that morning, the sun shimmering off the waves, yet I felt no joy. Amma and Chithra Aunty swam away from us and spent a long time talking to each other. After we had been in the sea a little while, I had to use the toilet, and so I made my way back to the beach.
As I approached my room, which was next to my parents’, I noticed that my father was still sitting where we’d left him, the glass of whisky in his hand.
When I had finished using the toilet and come out into my room, I saw Sena Uncle crossing the sand towards my parents’ patio. My window was open, so I could hear their conversation.
“He’s finished the inspection,” Sena Uncle said. “It’s time to tell him.”
My father was silent.
“Chelva,” Sena Uncle said, “it’s best to get it over with.”
My father sighed deeply. “I can’t.”
“I understand how hard this is for you …”
“No you don’t,” my father cried. “Buddy Parameswaran was my best friend, we made a promise to each other …”
“What’s to be done?” Sena Uncle said gently. “Things can’t continue this way. If they do, the whole business will fall apart.”
“I can’t do it. You do it.”
“No, no, Chelva. You have to do it. He must hear it from you.”
“Please,” my father said. “Please do it for me.”
“We are offering him an alternative,” Sena Uncle said. “What he makes in the Middle East will be twice what we are paying him.”
“Oh God, oh God,” my father said. He put his drink down and I could hear the scraping of the chair as he stood up.
After a few moments, they went across the sand towards the main part of the hotel.
I sat down on my bed. My father and Sena Uncle were going to fire Jegan. Now I understood what he had meant last night about my father having to do the inevitable. Jegan had known since yesterday that this was going to happen. I couldn’t stand to be in the room any more, so I got up and went outside.
I crossed to the edge of the beach, where the green goat’s foot ended and the sand began. Instead of walking on the sand, I made my way through the goat’s foot, feeling the thick leaves crunch under my feet. I could see my family still in the water, but, wanting to be alone, I set off in the opposite direction. I was angry by now, but at whom I didn’t know. I thought about my father, but I couldn’t feel angry at him, because, when I remembered that yellowed piece of paper and the promise he had made to Jegan’s father, I actually felt sorry for him. I thought of the number of times he had abandoned his promise, how he had left Jegan in jail overnight, how he had taken the side of the office peon against him, and I wondered if he had actually had a choice in any of these matters. I thought, too, of how Jegan had said that his father was so proud of my father’s achievements, and I wondered what his father would think if he were alive now and could see what a mess everything had come to.
I stopped walking and stared out at the sea. How could Jegan and I go on being friends after this? Would he become for me what his father had become to my father? A distant memory, so forgotten that even his death would not touch me? No, I would not accept that. The sound of the waves crashing on the beach reminded me of that afternoon Jegan and I had gone for a walk together, how we had sat on a rock and talked for hours. I had never talked to anybody like that before nor had anybody spoken to me with such frankness. I turned around and started to walk towards the hotel.
When I got there, I found Jegan out in front. He was putting the luggage onto the roof rack of the car. He saw me but didn’t greet me. I watched him as he began to pass a rope through his side of the rack. He told me to stand on the other side of the car and help him. I did so.
“How are things?” I finally said.
“ ‘Things’ are fine,” he said.
I threaded the rope through my side of the rack and gave it to him. As he took it, our eyes met for
a moment.
“I guess you heard,” he said.
I nodded.
“Well, it’s not the end of the world.” He shrugged.
“Appa was talking about a job in the Middle East …”
“There are other alternatives,” he said.
I looked at him and felt suddenly afraid. “What do you mean?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He pulled at the rope firmly to hold it in place and then passed it to me.
“You can make a lot of money in the Middle East, you know. Twice what you’d make here,” I said.
“What do you know about it,” he said. “You’re just a boy.”
His words struck me like a physical blow. I looked at him, but he refused to meet my eye. Then I threw the rope at his face. It struck him on the cheek but he didn’t react. He simply picked it up, passed it one last time through his side of the roof rack, and tied it. Without even glancing at me, he turned and walked back to the hotel.
As I watched him go up the steps, I thought bitterly of how wrong I had been to think that friendship was possible between us. I hated Jegan now with a hot, tearful anger.
When we arrived at our house that evening, Jegan went straight to his room. Neliya Aunty had come down the verandah steps to greet us, and she looked after him in surprise. She glanced at Amma inquiringly, but Amma closed her eyes slowly to warn Neliya Aunty not to say anything, that she would tell her later.
The next day, when we came back from school, Amma was at the end of the driveway. She was supervising the gardener and his assistant as they moved the old storeroom things back into Jegan’s room. I stared in dismay as the two men heaved an old almariah up the stairs.
“Jegan has left?” I asked Amma, hardly able to believe that he had.
“What does it look like?” she replied abruptly.
“He’s gone back to Jaffna?”
“Go inside and change out of your uniform,” she said a little more kindly.
“Did he … did he say anything before he left?”
She shook her head.
I watched for a few more minutes as the two men took the almariah through the door into Jegan’s room. Then I turned and went back towards the house, feeling a tightness rise into my throat. Jegan had left without even saying goodbye. I could hardly believe he had done that. Before I went up the verandah steps, I looked down the driveway again at the gardener and his assistant taking furniture up into the room that had belonged to Jegan.
I did not know it at the time, but we would never see Jegan again.
The referendum took place a few weeks after Jegan’s departure. It was a disturbing day. My parents went to the polling booth near us, but they never got a chance to vote. A member of parliament arrived with his thugs, held the voting officials at gunpoint, and then proceeded to stuff the ballot boxes with false ballots.
That evening, we watched the results begin to come in on television, and it was soon clear that the government had won. They would remain in power for another six years.
My father got up and went out into the garden, where Anula had set up his usual cocktail. Only Amma and I followed.
“Chelva …” Amma began, “we need to open our eyes. We need to think about our future.”
My father shook his head. “Never. I will never leave this country,” he said.
Amma tried to persuade him to change his mind and apply to Canada or Australia, but he would not hear of it. Angry and frustrated, she stood up and went back into the house. I stayed behind to keep my father company, and sat on the swing, sharing his silence. The sun was declining and a dark blot seeped across the sky, obliterating shades of red and yellow. I looked at the expression on his face, and I felt I understood what was in his heart.
My father did not come inside for dinner that evening. Instead, he sat on the lawn and drank until long after the sun had set.
THE BEST SCHOOL OF ALL
TOWARDS THE end of the Christmas holiday, we were at dinner one evening when my father put his fork down emphatically on his plate.
“I’ve come to a decision,” he said. Then he looked at me. “I’m transferring you to the Victoria Academy in the new year.”
I stared at him, my fork held in mid air. The Queen Victoria Academy was the school Diggy attended. Why was I being taken out of St. Gabriel’s and sent there?
Nobody else at the table seemed surprised by the news, and I realized that I had been the last to hear of his decision.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because it’s good for you.”
I didn’t like the sound of this.
“What’s wrong with St. Gabriel’s?”
“Nothing. It’s just that the Victoria Academy is better for you.”
My father was being evasive, and this made me even more suspicious.
“Why is it better?”
My father picked up his fork to indicate that the subject was closed. “The Academy will force you to become a man,” he said. Sonali, Amma, and Neliya Aunty smiled at me sympathetically before they continued with their meal. Diggy had a look on his face that told me he understood all the things my father had not said. I decided to corner him that evening and see what I could get out of him.
I found him in the garage, fixing the chain on his bicycle. When I came in, he looked up for a moment, then went on working. I stood by his bicycle and watched him.
“Why am I being transferred to the Victoria Academy?” I asked.
He continued to fiddle with the chain for a moment, then he looked up at me. “Because Appa is worried about you.”
He said this as if I were in some kind of danger.
“Appa is worried about me? What for?”
He didn’t answer. He tested the pedals to see if the chain now worked. Then he straightened up. “He doesn’t want you turning out funny or anything like that.”
I felt a flush rise into my face.
Diggy was looking at me, his eyes slightly narrowed. “You’re not, are you?”
“Not what?” I asked, not meeting his gaze.
He picked up a piece of rag and wiped his greasy fingers.
“Listen,” he said, after a moment, “since you’re coming to the Victoria Academy, I want to warn you about Black Tie.”
“Black Tie?”
“The principal. His real name is Mr. Abeysinghe, but we call him Black Tie because he always wears one. You better watch out for him,” Diggy continued. “Once you get on his bad side, that’s it.” Then he began to detail the punishments one received for getting on his bad side. “Once, he slapped a boy and broke some of his teeth. Another boy in my class got caned so severely his trousers tore. Then he made the boy kneel in the sun until he fainted.”
I was appalled. “What did they do?”
“One of the boys had hair that was too long and he wore his top two shirt buttons open. The other blinked too hard and Black Tie thought he was winking at him.” He leaned towards me. “Never blink too hard in front of him and, most of all, don’t lick your lips. If you do that, for sure, he’ll think you’re trying to mock him.”
This was so preposterous that I wondered if he was exaggerating. I found it difficult to believe that anyone would punish boys so severely for such negligible wrongs. At St. Gabriel’s, the most the fathers would do was give the wrongdoer a smack on the palm with a ruler. Diggy had seen the doubt in my eyes, for he said, “You better believe me. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.”
“Why doesn’t someone do something about it?” I asked.
He laughed. “Like what?”
“Like complain to their parents.”
His eyes grew wide. “Never complain,” he said. “Once you come to The Queen Victoria Academy you are a man. Either you take it like a man or the other boys will look down on you.”
If I had not been pleased with the idea of transferring to the Victoria Academy, I now hated and feared it. I thought of approaching my father, but I knew this would be useless. From the way he had sp
oken at the dinner table, it was clear that his decision was final. The school was two streets away from St. Gabriel’s, on the sea side of Galle Road. I had never actually seen the building; the school hours of both St. Gabriel’s and the Victoria Academy were from 7:30 to 1:30, but I had always been dropped off before Diggy. After school, the car always picked us up in front of St. Gabriel’s gates. All I knew of the Victoria Academy was the older boys. I would watch them from my classroom window as they swaggered along the railway lines or on the beach, their arms around one another. They seemed so grown up in their long pants, and the way they laughed and called to each other, their voices loud and strident, made me a little frightened. Now, their loud confidence seemed a symbol of all the horror that awaited me in the new year.
The remainder of the Christmas holidays was completely ruined for me. I could think only of what lay ahead when school began. Diggy held out one ray of hope, however. Black Tie, he told me, might not be with the school much longer. He had heard this news from one of the prefects.
I learned from my brother that there was a dispute going on between Black Tie and Mr. Lokubandara, the vice principal. Diggy wouldn’t tell me what the conflict was about, but he did inform me that Mr. Lokubandara was a “political appointee,” his cousin being a minister in the cabinet. This meant that, in fact, he had a lot more power than Black Tie, and so Black Tie might well lose the struggle and have to resign.
I was surprised to see that as Diggy related all this he looked worried.
“Does the vice principal give worse punishments than Black Tie?” I asked.
“He’s a snake in the grass,” Diggy replied, but he would not say any more than that.
The Christmas holidays ended all too soon and one morning I woke with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that something terrible awaited me that day. Then I saw my new school uniform over the chair.
The uniform at St. Gabriel’s was shorts and a shirt, and this would be the first time I’d be wearing long trousers to school. Amma and Neliya Aunty oohed and aahed when they saw me in them, saying how quickly time had passed and that it seemed like yesterday they were changing my nappies. I remained untouched by their sentimentality and admiration. All I could think of was the boys in shorts at St. Gabriel’s. I longed to be with them.
Funny Boy Page 17
