Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (26 page)

When he opened the door, he paused to take in the sight before him. The sea was massive and swollen. The waves had almost reached the hut by now. He was leaving just in time. Keeping his head down against the rain, Amrith rushed out and ran towards the rocks that separated the beach from the railway lines. He scrambled up the boulders. The rain had made them slippery and he fell backwards a few times, cutting himself, but he finally reached the railway lines. He looked both ways to see if a train was approaching, but it was impossible to tell because of the sheets of rain. He stood uncertainly, until a crack of lightning made him dart across.

Once he was on the other side, he hurried along a laneway that ran parallel to the railway lines. Various streets
sloped down to this laneway, and so the rainwater had gushed down the roads and gathered in this path. Soon Amrith was knee-deep in water. His nose wrinkled in disgust as plastic bags and cans and other bits of garbage floated around him. Still, he had no choice but to wade through this filth to get to their road. He lost a slipper and he watched as it floated away and then sank. The toes on his bare foot curled as they touched all sorts of things underwater.

Soon he was past the muddy pool. He hobbled along their road, his bare foot slowing him down. He was halfway up when he heard his name being shouted. He looked ahead and saw Uncle Lucky and his driver, Soma, hurrying down towards him. They were holding pieces of tarp over their heads, which ballooned in the wind like parachutes. When they reached him, Uncle Lucky put his arm around him. “What were you
thinking
, Amrith?” He led him back towards the house.

They entered through the gate to find the rest of the family hovering in the front doorway. Aunty Bundle cried out when she saw him and, the moment he was in the living room, she hugged him, getting her blouse wet. “Child, I was frantic with worry.”

Niresh and the girls crowded around him, too, looking guilty.

“Hey, buddy, are you okay?”

“Amrith, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Thank God, you’re safe.”

He stood shivering, not looking at any of them.

Jane-Nona rushed out of the pantry with a cup of hot kothamalli and a towel.

Amrith began to rub himself down, sipping occasionally on the spicy drink of ginger and coriander that was meant to ward off colds.

Now that Amrith had been found, Aunty Bundle and Uncle Lucky turned on the girls, demanding to know what had happened, why they had deserted him. They stood saying nothing, unable to relive the horrible incident.

“You had better tell me.” Uncle Lucky eyed them sternly. “Otherwise the consequences will be severe.”

The girls looked at each other, then Mala burst out, “Why don’t you ask Amrith?” She glared at him. “He’s not a child. Didn’t he see that a storm was coming up? Why did he remain in the sea?”

Her parents stared at her.

“Young lady —” Aunty Bundle began, but she was cut short by a mighty roar of wind, followed by a deafening sound above them. They all looked up and there, before their very eyes, tiles began to lift off the roof — the very tiles that had been replaced. With a cry, Aunty Bundle and Jane-Nona ran to get the barrel, and Uncle Lucky, the girls, and Niresh rushed around moving furniture out of the way of the falling rain and dust. In the general commotion, Amrith slipped away.

The moment he was in his room, he grabbed a pair of clean shorts and underwear from a pile on the bed and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

He laid his clothes over the towel rail, put down the toilet seat and sat on it, his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered to himself, “I don’t.”

When he had changed, he came out of the bathroom to find Niresh sitting on the side of the bed. He smiled. “Hey, Amrith.”

“Um
 … hi.”

“Listen,” Niresh said, “let’s make up, okay?”

Amrith nodded, but he could not meet his cousin’s eyes.

“You know, I really don’t want us to be mad at each other,” Niresh continued.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Niresh, I said I am not mad at you.”

“Okay, Amrith. Then we’ve made up?”

“Yes, of course.”

Niresh looked at him anxiously and Amrith willed himself to smile. His cousin mistook his wan smile for a lack of forgiveness. Without a word, he turned away and began to flip through a book that lay on the bedside table.

The rain did not let up and, that evening, the family was forced to gather in the library before dinner, as the living room could not be used with the hole in the roof. In the tight confines of the library, the tension between everyone was palpable. Uncle Lucky and Aunty Bundle were still angry at the girls for leaving Amrith behind and the girls were angry at Amrith because he had put them in a spot. At one point, Selvi said, “I suppose we will have to cancel our
party now, with this new hole in the roof.” The girls glared at Amrith as if he were responsible.

He noticed that his cousin continued to watch him, but he simply could not meet his eyes. Every time he looked at Niresh, he writhed inside.

That night, Amrith immediately fell into a deep sleep and woke late the next morning. Niresh was no longer in the room. He had left a note saying that he had gone with Aunty Bundle to look at another project she was working on. As Amrith lay in his bed, he felt a gray numbness descend over him. His limbs felt heavy, as if he were ill. Looking out into the side garden, he saw that the storm was long over. Everything was lacquered with a harsh late-morning light.

The tide of his anger had pulled back, leaving him beached and exhausted.

T
he phone rang and rang the next day, and finally Amrith hurried across the courtyard and into the living room to get it. His uncle was calling for Niresh. He went to tell his cousin, who had just showered and changed.

When Niresh came back to the bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring out through the French windows.

Amrith combed his hair in front of the mirror, pretending not to notice Niresh’s black mood. A great distance had come between Amrith and Niresh, between Amrith and everyone, since he had made that realization about himself, two days ago. He felt as if he were in a pit of darkness and there, above, the world carried on with itself in the sunlight.

Finally, when his cousin sighed deeply, Amrith felt compelled to say something.
“Um
 … is everything alright?”

“It’s nothing, Amrith, nothing,” Niresh replied sharply. He grabbed his cigarettes and went across the side garden and up to the terrace.

When Niresh did not return, Amrith felt obliged to follow him and see what was wrong. He found Niresh leaning on the balustrade. For the first time since his cousin had come to stay, he was smoking within the compound of their home. Amrith stood a little distance from him. Niresh finished his cigarette and threw the butt over the parapet wall. Then, with a quick movement, he put his head in his hands. “Shit.”

“Niresh,” Amrith said, with concern, forgetting his own troubles.

“I guess, I guess, talking to my dad, it just hit me. I go back to Canada in three days.” He moved away from Amrith, fumbled for another cigarette, and lit it.

Amrith looked at him, appalled. In the midst of all that had gone on, he had forgotten Niresh’s imminent departure.

They went to the National Museum that morning. It was an imposing white colonial building set on vast grounds. At the entrance, there was a limestone Buddha that was over a thousand years old. Near the staircase was a tenth-century rock carving of the Goddess Durga.

Once they had paid for their tickets and gone into the first gallery — devoted to clothes worn by the ancient aristocracy of Sri Lanka, along with intricately carved stone decorations from the entrances to ancient temples and palaces — they kept away from each other. When they entered a room, they parted company, going around it in opposite directions. In this way, they made their way through the various galleries of bronze statues, lamps, pottery from the third and fourth centuries, wood and ivory carvings of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the ancient guns and swords used by Sinhalese kings. At one point, Amrith turned from looking at the jewel-encrusted throne of the last king of Kandy — staring at it without really taking it in — to find Niresh was gone.

Amrith found him on a veranda, smoking. He glanced at Amrith and then away. Amrith knew that his cousin would like him to come and sit beside him, but he remained where he was by the veranda post.

“You know,” Niresh said, “you are right. I am a liar.” He drew on his cigarette deeply and let the smoke escape from his nostrils. “All that stuff I told you about Canada, it was a lie. I don’t belong on the football team, and those guys who were supposedly my best friends,” he made a contemptuous sound, “they would have nothing to do with me.” Niresh gazed out at the garden. “In my school, I am nothing but a freak. A freak and a Paki.” He checked to make sure Amrith understood what “Paki” meant. He did because, on a recent trip to England, Aunty Bundle and Uncle Lucky had been subjected to that word by a group of white thugs.

“You want to know a popular joke in my school?” Niresh’s mouth twisted bitterly as he spoke, “How do you break a Paki’s neck while he’s drinking? Slam down the toilet seat.”

Amrith was shocked, but he also realized why Niresh was telling him all this. By offering him the truth about his life in Canada, his cousin was hoping that the chasm between them would disappear. Yet, from the depths of his own darkness, Amrith could not summon up any comfort for Niresh, nor cross the distance between them.

The day before his cousin was to leave, the family decided to take a trip outstation to Aunty Bundles favorite Buddhist temple. She wanted to show it to Niresh.

The temple was at the top of a massive rock. A long flight of steps led up to it, flanked by whitewashed balustrades that had pedestals at regular intervals, topped with sculpted lotus pots. Araliya trees spread their branches over the stairs, providing shade. The steps were littered with their crushed blossoms, a strong, sweet smell in the air.

Amrith walked ahead of everyone. At the top of the stairs, he paused to catch his breath, wipe his face with a handkerchief, and look down the steps. At the very bottom, Uncle Lucky and the girls were at one of the kiosks by the entrance. Mala and Selvi were begging him to buy them some bangles, and he was teasing them by complaining that
it was a waste of money. Halfway up the stairs, Aunty Bundle had stopped to tell Niresh about the history of the temple and its style of art and sculpture. “Now, son,” she said, gesturing up the steps, “what we are about to see is a fine example of the Gupta school of art that flourished from the third to the sixth centuries in India and was brought over here. It was an amalgamation of two styles. One from Greece, which came through Afghanistan and which you will see represented in the classical folds of the Buddha’s robes. The other style was borrowed from the Kushan Dynasty of Mathura, from which came the rounded — even slightly female — body of the Buddha, derived from a tradition of male fertility spirits.”

Niresh listened to Aunty Bundle, enthralled.

As Amrith gazed at his cousin, a sense of despair took hold. Niresh was leaving tomorrow for Canada, and there was still a great barrier between them. They would part in coldness. Amrith did not know what to do — how to surmount this barrier; how to get past his own shame and reach out to his cousin.

He passed through an intricately carved portal into the deserted compound of the temple, which was on the plateau of the rock. The ground was mostly stone, with patches of sand. Bo-trees grew from the cracks in the rocks, the ground covered with the crisp crackle of leaves. This was the Dry Zone and there was little other greenery.

The temple was carved out of a cave and, around its perimeter, there were statues of Hindu deities guarding the
Lord Buddha within. Devotees had placed flowers and incense in front of the statues, asking the gods for favors. Amrith could see the massive form of the Lord Buddha in the shrine room, seated in a pose of meditation. A hole in the top of the cave let in a stream of light that lit the face of the statue. It stared out at him, all-seeing, all-encompassing. Amrith, drawn by the power of the Buddha’s gaze, found himself going towards the cave. Before he entered, he removed his shoes as a sign of respect.