Flame Tree Road (7 page)

Biren shook his head. He looked so worried the schoolmaster felt sorry for him.

“This is another matter,” he said shortly. “It has nothing to do with you. Run along now and remember to bring back the answer from your father tomorrow. This is urgent.”

* * *

Biren hopped from one foot to the other as he waited for Father to come home. He desperately wanted to go and meet his boat at the riverbank, but it was too far for Nitin to walk, so Biren had to be content to wait at their usual place down the road. Father was running late. Biren walked up and down while Nitin squatted by the side of the road and pushed ants around with a stick.

“One ant has died, Dada,” Nitin lamented with a woebegone face. “Shall we bury it?” Biren ignored him and gave a small shout when he saw his father turn the corner of the bamboo grove. Now he could see why his father was running late. Shamol held a big bunch of pink and white lilies, the stems wrapped in the pages of an old ledger and tied with a piece of jute string.

“A present for your lovely mother,” Shamol said. “I asked the boatman to stop at the backwaters today. Every day I pass these beautiful lilies and I always forget to bring a small knife to cut the stems. Today I made the boatman do a detour and take me there.”

Biren was not interested in the lilies. “Baba, Mastermoshai sent an urgent note for you. Here it is.” Biren waved the note under his father’s nose. “He said you must read it at once. He needs an answer by tomorrow.”

Shamol glanced briefly at the note. “I see,” he said vaguely. “Hold on to it. I will read it after my tea.”

Biren pulled at his shirtsleeve. “But this is most urgent, Baba. You have to read it now!”

Shamol gave him an amused look. “Is anything going to change between now and when I take my tea? I don’t think so. In any case your mastermoshai needs the answer by tomorrow. So what’s the hurry?” He stopped and turned to see Nitin trying to catch up. “Why have you left your brother behind? Why are his hands so dirty? Hold him by the hand. I can’t because of these flowers.”

Biren gave a noisy sigh, ran back and pulled Nitin by the hand.

“So what do you think the note is about?” he asked, sounding elaborately casual. He jerked Nitin’s hand to hurry him along but it only made him stumble. Nitin gave an indignant howl.

“Careful,” reprimanded his father. He lifted the lilies to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Smell these. They are heavenly.”

“I want to smell!” cried little Nitin.

Shamol bent down and held the lilies under Nitin’s nose. He grinned when Nitin closed his eyes, gave a dreamy sigh and went “aah” in a fitting imitation of Shibani.

Biren twisted a toe in the dirt. There was little he could do to hurry his father and Nitin along. He fingered the note in his pocket and the back of his neck prickled with impatience.

Finally on reaching home, the lily blossoms settled in a brass bowl and his father settled in the courtyard with a cup of tea, it was time to bring out the note again. Biren peered over his father’s shoulder trying to decipher the schoolmaster’s tiny, pristine Bengali script. The letter was full of big words.

“What is it, Baba?” he asked. “What is it? Tell me, quickly.”

“I see. It appears the new boy is your school needs private tuition. Why, is there a new boy in your school who is struggling with his studies? His name is Samir Deb.”

Biren shrugged. Samir Deb’s academic challenges were of little interest to him.

“Who needs tuition?” said Shibani, coming out of the kitchen. She handed her husband a rice crepe with coconut filling. “Try this
patishapta
. I made them today.”

“Samir Deb. The new boy in Biren’s class. The child is falling behind in his studies. His family wants to send him to study in Calcutta. The schoolmaster has recommended me to give him private tuition. I wonder why your mastermoshai does not give the child private tuition himself?”

“Because he is afraid,” Biren blurted out. He remembered how the belligerent ladies had cowed down the poor schoolmaster.

“Afraid?” said Shamol, puzzled. “Afraid of what? I don’t understand.”

“His mother is very...” Biren tried to think of the right word. “Ferocious.”

“Well, I am not worried about his ferocious mother. The problem is I get home too late. I don’t have the time to go to the child’s house but I can tutor him if they send him to our
basha
.”

Biren looked at his father in horror. “But he cannot come to our
basha
, Baba!” he cried.

“And why not?” said his father, mildly surprised.

Biren wanted to say,
Because he wears knee-length socks and cries like a girl. Because he is too rich and we are too poor, because my friends will laugh and everybody will think he is my friend.
But all he could say was, “Because he rides in a palanquin.”

“Why, that’s rather fine,” said his father.

“Like a
girl
,” Biren added, to drive home the point. “Only girls ride in palanquins.”

“I wouldn’t mind riding a palanquin,” said Shibani.

“Someday, my darling,” said his father, “and I will decorate it with sweet-scented lilies for you.” He gave Shibani a long tender look that made her toss her hair back in a girlish way.

Biren tugged his father’s hand. “Baba, what are you going to do?”

“I can offer to teach him at the same time I teach you two. They don’t have to pay me any money for that.”

“But they are rich,” said Biren. “Very rich. He brings new pencils and erasers to school every day.”

Shamol Roy looked at his son sadly. He wished he could buy his wife a palanquin, but she had to be content with a few lilies instead. Here was his boy hankering for a new pencil and all he could afford were the pencil stubs discarded at the office. Biren, dexterous for an eight-year-old, used a razor blade to pare both ends to get maximum usage out of them.

Biren was quick to catch his father’s sadness. “But I like the small pencils much better,” he said brightly. “They are easier to carry around in my pocket and if I lose one I don’t feel so bad because I have many more. Also, you want to know one more thing? Carrying long sharpened pencils in your pocket is very dangerous. If you fall down and get poked in your eye you can become blind. Then you won’t be able to go to school, or read, or...or...even fly a kite. So what’s the use?”

Shamol Roy smiled at his son, the diplomat. Biren was wily with his words, but more important he was a thoughtful, compassionate child. “Bring me one of your pencils,” he said. “Let me write a reply to your mastermoshai.”

“They will pay you lots of good money for the tuition, Baba.” Biren jumped up, dizzy with the vision of new pencils and erasers. Why, they might even be able to afford one of those mechanical pencil sharpeners.

“They may offer to pay me,” said his father. “But I don’t need to accept it.”

“But why not?” Biren was crestfallen. “Samir’s family has lots of money.”

“That is not the point,” said his father. “Do you know the difference between opportunity and advantage,
mia
? An opportunity is something that is offered to you. An advantage is something you take. It would be foolish to miss an opportunity but it is sometimes wise to forgo an advantage.”

“So why are you not taking the money?”

“Because I am not going out of my way to tutor the child. I am not doing anything extra. So why should I charge money for work I have not done? Never mind, don’t worry about it. Go get me a pencil.”

Shamol Roy scribbled a quick reply on the reverse of the schoolmaster’s note and sent it back with Biren.

CHAPTER

11

It was all settled, and Biren was asked to bring Samir home with him. It soon dawned on Biren he would not be taking the boat back to the village with his friends. Instead—to his horror—he was expected to sit in the tasseled palanquin next to Sammy and be carried to his own house. The very thought of it made him wish he had never been born.

He loitered under the tamarind trees in the schoolyard and kicked dirt while furious thoughts raced through his mind.

Finally he approached the palanquin bearers. “My father has strictly forbidden me to ride the palanquin,” he told them in an authoritative voice. “I can show you the way to my house but you will have to follow behind me.”

“But how will you walk? It is too far,” said one of the men. “It is much shorter by boat, we know, but Samir-baba gets nauseous in a boat, which is why we have to carry him everywhere.”

Biren was tempted to say he got nauseous in a palanquin, but that would not work. “What do you think I am? A cripple?” he said loudly, hoping to shame Samir into sending the palanquin home. But Samir was already seated inside sipping sweet
bael
sherbet and eating stuffed dates.

“Just follow behind me,” said Biren abruptly. He marched stoutly ahead and the palanquin bearers, habituated as they were to their own brisk pace, hobbled awkwardly behind him like a broken bullock cart.

After a while Samir got bored and got down from the palanquin and skipped up to Biren.

“Don’t walk with me,” Biren snapped, looking nervously around him. His plan was to pretend the palanquin had nothing to do with him, but to have Samir Deb in his pleated shorts and knee-length socks walk alongside was a dead giveaway.

“Why?” said Samir in a high-pitched whine. “Why don’t you want to walk with me? Why don’t you want to be my friend?”

Biren stopped in his tracks, almost causing the palanquin bearers to bump into him. “Because I don’t,” he said fiercely. “I don’t want to walk with you. I want you to stay two boat lengths behind me, do you understand?”

One of the palanquin bearers gave a snort, which made Samir fly into a rage. He looked like a miniversion of his mother. “Shut up, stupid donkey!” he yelled, kicking a small puff of dust with his shiny black shoe. “And
you
donkeys stay two boat lengths behind me, do you understand?”

And so the strange procession continued, Biren marching briskly ahead, followed by Sammy, two boat lengths behind, rounded up by the miserable palanquin bearers, for whom the lethargic pace was sheer torture.

* * *

When they reached the house, Sammy was hobbling and in tears. He removed his shoes to reveal two small, round blisters sprouted like
batashas
on his heels.

Shibani shush-shushed sympathetically, sat him on her lap, wiped his tears with the end of her sari and made him soak his feet in cool rose water. Just to see Samir with his fat tears wobbling on his chin and being fussed over by Shibani filled Biren with intense disgust. Even three-year-old Nitin had grown past such infantile behavior.

Shibani went into the kitchen to prepare fresh limewater.

“Your mother is so beautiful,” Samir said in a mellifluous voice. He twirled his pink toes in the basin. “I want to marry someone just like her.”

Biren went insane. “Well, you
can’t
!” he said fiercely. “She is already married to my father and she will be married to my father
for the rest of her life
!”

Nitin, who was splashing his hands in the foot basin, looked up with big, scared eyes. He had never seen his brother so angry.

Sammy tilted back his head to admire his toes. “I had an aunt once,” he said conversationally. He splashed a little water at Nitin, who darted away with a shriek, then tiptoed back to be splashed some more. “She used to be so beautiful. She had long black hair like your mother. Then my uncle died and she became very ugly. Nobody goes near her or talks to her anymore. Now she lives with the goats in the back of the house.”

“Who is it, Biren
mia
? Do we have a visitor?” Grandpa, woken up from his nap, called in a cracked sleepy voice from his room. “Bring him to me. Let me see who this is. Oh, my, my, what a fair and handsome fellow! What is your name, young man?”

Samir puffed out his chest. “My name is Samir Kumar Deb. I was born in Calcutta and I have been to London twice,” he said loudly. His eyes drifted lazily across the room, taking in Granny’s faded saris lumped over the clotheshorse and Grandpa’s lopsided clogs, the toes facing in opposite directions.

“London!” cried Grandpa, clapping his hands. “Imagine that! Tell me,
mia
, was it terribly cold? Lots of ice and snow?”

Biren left Samir sitting on Grandpa’s bed telling him all about Big Ben. Even Nitin fingered the fringe of the bedspread and listened with his mouth open. Biren was sick to his stomach. Samir enchanted the whole family. He made Shibani giggle by telling her she was beautiful like a goddess. Granny told them the story of Surparnarekha, the ugly she-demon with her sliced-off nose and used a candle flame to create shadow puppets. Grandpa, not to be outdone, pulled a cowrie out of Samir’s ear and offered it to him.

“No, thank you,” Samir declined politely.

“I’ll take it!” chirped Nitin, holding out his small hand. But Grandpa’s eyes wandered slyly and he put the cowrie away.

When Father came home, he cut a papaya and Biren was secretly pleased to see the wonder on Samir’s face. When Shamol handed him a slice, he wolfed it down wordlessly even before the others had taken a bite of theirs.