Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (2 page)

Kuveni had sated herself on papaw and she was perched on a swing, looking at Amrith, her head to one side. His anger flowed towards her. “You’re useless,” he said softly, his eyes narrowed. “I should just release you into the garden and get another mynah that will talk.”

The car was starting up downstairs in the garage. Amrith left the aviary, closing the door behind him and checking the lock twice.

The aviary was a gift from Aunty Bundle, for Amrith’s thirteenth birthday last year. Her close friend and colleague, the famous architect Lucien Lindamulagé, had a giant aviary in his back garden; he was almost as passionate about his birds as he was about his buildings. Amrith, from the time he was little, would spend hours in the old man’s aviary. Aunty Bundle consulted Lucien Lindamulagé on the building of the aviary. She did not allow Uncle Lucky to contribute a cent. It was to be solely her gift. She told Amrith and her two daughters, Selvi and Mala, that construction was going on to turn the terrace into a properly
landscaped roof-garden and that they were forbidden to go up there. Then, on Amrith’s birthday, when he came home from school, Aunty Bundle had taken him by the hand and hurried him through the side garden and up the terrace stairs. He had gasped when he saw the aviary, all the budgerigars twittering and flying around at the sight of humans, whom they associated with food.

As Amrith went down the terrace stairs, he thought of how Aunty Bundle’s generosity always made him feel uneasy. He felt that what she did for him, she did out of guilt. Aunty Bundle blamed herself, to this day, for his mother’s death.

Usually, when Amrith went to church, it was on Sunday for late-morning Mass. The church would be flooded with sunlight through the dome above the altar and the side windows. The various murals — Saint Sebastian, his head lifted in rapture to the heavens, his scantily clad body pierced with a hundred arrows; Mary Magdalene kneeling before Christ, wiping His feet with the veil of her hair; benevolent Saint Anthony — would be clearly visible.

Though Amrith found the Sunday Mass boring, Aunty Bundle’s daughters, Selvi and Mala, were present, and so they ended up having a good time. Selvi, who was plump, pretty, and vivacious like her mother, was frequently in scrapes for being a tomboy. Her goal during Mass was to make Amrith and Mala laugh. When Father Anthony
would say, “Let us stand and bow our heads to receive the word of God, Our Heavenly Father,” Selvi would lean over and whisper “goad,” which was the way the priest pronounced “God.” This would set Amrith off with a snuffle of laughter. Then she would add in a sibilant whisper, “Amrith, Amrith, Amrith, look at Father Anthony’s hair. It’s like an Afro,
nah.”
Amrith’s shoulders would shake uncontrollably and, to push him completely over the edge, Selvi would give a soft wolf-whistle and say,
“Hoo-hoo
, sexy-sexy Disco-Father.” Amrith would almost weep with silent laughter, begging her in a whisper, “Shut up, men, please shut up.”

Even Mala, who had recently become very religious (and who participated in the Mass with fervor, her hands clasped tightly to her chest), would lose her devout expression and start to giggle, which was the ultimate triumph for Selvi.

This Monday morning, however, the church was almost empty. The scattering of worshippers had gathered in the front pews, as the lights and ceiling fans in the rest of the church had been turned off to save electricity. They appeared huddled against the gloom of the church behind them. The darkness of his surroundings seemed to enter Amrith’s very soul as he automatically stood and sat through the recitation of the Mass. To his right, just beyond the pew, was a statue of Our Lady, her arms held out in a gesture of welcome as if beckoning the supplicant to her, the smile on her face gentle and loving. As Amrith gazed at her, his mind, over which he kept such rigid control when it
came to the past, slipped silently away from him, and he was back on that tea estate where he had spent the first six years of his life.

He was coming home from school, so longing to see his mother after their morning separation. He ran through the massive iron gates into the graveled front compound of the estate bungalow and around the side of the house to the back, where a veranda flanked the rear of the house. There, as always, he found his mother. He loved that moment when he turned the corner, dashed up the veranda steps, and saw her sitting in her chair wearing a cream cardigan and cotton trousers. A magenta batik scarf, folded into an Alice band, kept back the frizzy exuberance of her hair. When she held her arms out to him, the bangles on her wrists would tinkle in welcome. He would run to her, snuggling into that familiar smell of eau de cologne.

She always sat in the same cane chair, which had a back shaped like a fanned-out peacock tail. If she was not there when he ran up onto the veranda, he would bury his face in the cushion, breathing in her eau de cologne, not lifting his head until she had come back out to him.

He was six years old by then and he knew that, compared to the fair-skinned, plump female stars of Sinhala and Tamil films, his mother was not considered conventionally beautiful. Her skin was too dark; she was too thin, too awkwardly long-limbed. But he loved her eyes and the way she would look at him mischievously from under her long lashes when they were playing; the way her frizzy hair would burst out all over her face when she released
it from her Alice band. She was, in her own way, beautiful.

Later, after she had fed him his lunch, he would take his afternoon rest on a daybed on the veranda. His mother took her rest on another daybed, a little away from him. He had learnt to judge his mother’s mood by what she did during that time. If she was at ease, she would invite him to lie with her, while she read her
Femina
magazines, one arm around him as he cuddled up against her side.

If his mother was in a low mood, however, she would lie by herself or, most often, go through the French windows into the drawing room. After a moment, Amrith would hear a scratching and hissing before the music started. She played the same two records over and over again: Pat Boone and Nat King Cole, records from her youth. Above the sound of the songs, he would hear her pacing. Sometimes, she strode out onto the veranda, as if she was going somewhere. But when she got to the edge, she stood, her right arm over her stomach, her hand clutching her left elbow. She would stand like that for a long time, occasionally brushing her palm across her cheeks.

Amrith knew the cause of her sorrow. It was his father.

This man was a stranger to Amrith. He had never actually seen him. His father was gone from the house by the time Amrith awoke; his lunch was sent to the office in a tiffin carrier; he had dinner at the club. On Sundays his father stayed home, and then Amrith remained with his ayah, Selamma, in the tea workers’ quarters, until his father left for the club at five. Amrith only knew his father as a sound, a voice shouting in the night.

When he knelt beside his bed to pray each evening, he would repeat the last line of his prayer over and over again as if it was a mantra that would bring peace that night, a mantra that would stop his father’s raging.

When the night sounds did occur, Amrith would sit up in bed, his knees drawn to his chest, his eyes squeezed tight, trying to persuade himself that his father’s shouts were actually sneezes, that the rising inflection of his mother’s voice was tinkling laughter as she tickled his father’s nose with a feather; that their dog, Bhootaya, was baying outside the front door because she had been left out of the fun.

Later, when Amrith was half-asleep, he would feel his bed heave as his mother got in beside him. She would curl around him, her hand slipping into his. The smell of sweat on her was sharp like the Singer oil she used on her sewing machine. Her body would be trembling from trying not to cry.

“Amrith, child.”

He came to himself, to find Aunty Bundle holding out her handkerchief to him. He stared at it for a moment, puzzled, then he felt the wetness on his cheeks. He took the handkerchief, hurriedly turned away, and wiped his face. When he handed it back, he avoided her sympathetic gaze. His anger towards her returned sharply.

The graveyard, where his mother was buried, was in the center of Colombo. Its many acres were divided into different sections for the various religions of Sri Lanka. One part of the graveyard was taken up with crematoriums for the Buddhists and Hindus, who did not bury their dead but rather cremated the bodies and scattered the ashes in the sea or in rivers. The Muslims had their area, as did the numerous Christian sects.

Aunty Bundle’s driver, Mendis, parked the car outside the gate that led into the Christian section, and she and Amrith got out.

There were hawkers in front of the gates selling bunches of flowers, marigold garlands, lotuses, and sticks of incense from their stalls. Aunty Bundle stopped at one of them to buy two bouquets of flowers. She handed one to Amrith and, as he took it, he smelt the sharp odor of carnations, a smell he always associated with death and funerals.

They entered through the gates and made their way among the graves, towards the place where his mother was buried. They were passing through a section of the cemetery that, during the time of colonialism, when the British ruled Sri Lanka, had been White Only. The British had buried their dead in this separate area, apart from the Sri Lankans. It was in a dilapidated state, as the descendants of these dead colonizers were no longer around to keep their ancestors’ graves up. The few tombstones that were still standing were so covered in moss, it was impossible to read the engravings. Most of the stones, however, had disintegrated under the tropical heat and humidity. Just fragments
lay in the tall grass, with surnames like
Smith, Barclay, Woodson
— names that had once belonged to someone’s father or mother or child or sibling. Another fragment had the words
Dearly Beloved
, with an engraving of roses around it. Another fragment, just the word
Mother
. As they made their way through the knee-high grass, Amrith was sure that they were stepping on graves.

When they reached his mother’s grave, the grass and weeds were high on the mound. The flowers Aunty Bundle had laid, when she visited a month ago, were withered and crisped brown. There had been a recent burial in the adjoining plot, the date of death on the tombstone reading
July 1980
. Clods of soil were scattered on his mother’s grave.

“Ttttch.”
Aunty Bundle clicked her tongue against the back of her teeth in annoyance. “I pay that cemetery keeper, and see, nothing has been done.”

She knelt down and began to pull at the weeds and grass. Amrith did not help her. He stood there, his face averted from the grave, wishing that this whole ordeal would end.

Once Aunty Bundle was satisfied with the state of the grave, she indicated for him to kneel beside her and together they said a decade of the rosary. When they were done, Amrith got to his feet and dusted the knees of his white trousers, which were stained with soil.

“Amrith?”

He looked up to see Aunty Bundle regarding him with a mixture of worry and hope. Even before she spoke, he
knew what she was going to say. She asked him the same questions every year.

“Son, don’t you remember your mother at all?”

He shook his head.

“You don’t remember that time, when I visited you at the estate?”

He shook his head again and avoided looking at her.

Later, as they were walking back towards the gate, Amrith kept a few steps behind Aunty Bundle. He felt a curious bitter pleasure in denying her his memories.