Swimming in the Monsoon Sea (5 page)

The moment the woman from Australia saw him, she cried out, “But, Bundle, who is this boy? I didn’t know you had a son.”

The other school friend looked disconcerted. She had clearly told this woman exactly who he was. Warned her, Amrith could not help feeling.

Aunty Bundle had also seen through the woman’s charade and her voice was icy as she introduced Amrith — the son of her friend Asha, grandson of the late QC Fonseka, the famous lawyer.

“Aah
, he is just visiting you, then,” the woman from Australia said disingenuously.

“No,” Aunty Bundle replied, with even greater coldness, “Amrith is our son now.”

In all the years Amrith had lived here, there had never been a need to explain his presence. In Sri Lankan society, all such personal information was secretly passed between people to prevent socially awkward situations from arising.

Amrith, having done his social duty, was free to leave, and he went across the courtyard to his bedroom. He did not know why but, once he was in his room, he left his door slightly ajar and stood by it, listening.

After a while, Aunty Bundle went inside to answer a phone call. The moment she left, the other school friend
said to the woman from Australia, “What on earth, Ratna? I already told you about the boy,
nah.”

“Yes-yes,” Ratna replied, “but I just wanted to make my point clear.”

“Which is?”

“That I have brought my teenage daughters back to this country to ensure they meet the right sorts of people, rather than those savage Australians. And I didn’t go through all the trouble of relocating to have them mix with the likes of that boy.”

“But why? He is, after all, the grandson of QC Fonseka, a fine family.”

“Yes, but his relatives have rejected him, so he has no social standing. And don’t forget the scandal surrounding his parents’ death. Would you want something like that trailing your daughter?”

The other woman was silent.

“No, I did not think so,” Ratna continued. “The father was an alcoholic. The boy has probably inherited it. Would you want a drunkard and wife-beater for a future son-in-law?”

Again the other woman was silent.

Amrith stumbled away to his bed and sat down shakily. A feverish heat took hold of him. He had not realized that the circumstances of his parents’ death and his father’s drunkenness were known in their social circle.

Later, once the women had left, Aunty Bundle came to his room. She wandered around aimlessly, tidying up things
on his bookshelf and chest of drawers, before she finally spoke. “Son, you should feel sorry for that woman. The reason she has come back is because her husband has abandoned her for an Australian woman.” She shook her head. “I never liked that Ratna, even as a girl. I hope she doesn’t visit again or try to thrust her daughters at us.”

Aunty Bundle did not look at him while she spoke. She had been confronted, for the first time, by the problem of Amrith’s past and the consequences it might have for his future.

After that, Amrith became conscious that people did look at him oddly, when they thought he was unaware of their gaze. And he also began to notice that mothers tended to be watchful when he was talking to their daughters, at the club or after church. He knew that part of this watchfulness was because he was growing into manhood, and so boundaries needed to be put between the sexes. But he also felt sure that another part of their vigilance had to do with his flawed past. Amrith had no interest in girls, and he had never really thought of marriage before. Yet, it frightened him that his past might prove a barrier, when he did want to get married.

Without realizing it, Amrith had got off his bed and gone to his chest of drawers. Opening the top drawer, he took out a leather-bound photo album. A few years after he came to stay with the Manuel-Pillais, Aunty Bundle had given it to him. It contained all the photographs she had of his mother, in the time they had known each other as girls.

The first page was titled
Asha at 12. Holiday in Galle Fort
, and had photographs of his mother about to bat in a cricket field with ramparts in the distance, his mother leaning on a balustrade with her hand against her cheek, his mother and Aunty Bundle on bicycles in a narrow street with houses on either side that had pillared porches. Another page was titled
Asha at 15. Jaffna Holiday
, and showed his mother and Aunty Bundle in identical sundresses with spaghetti straps and rows of embroidery and piping on their skirts. They stood with their arms around each other, against a stark sandy background with palmyra trees in the distance. On the same page, they were both in bathing suits having a well bath, flinging pails of water at each other. Another page,
Asha at 10. Ballet
, showed his mother in a ballet costume, striking various poses; in yet another —
Asha in Great Expectations
— his mother was dressed as a man with top hat and tails, the other girls in crinolines. The last picture in the album took up the whole page and it had probably been taken not long before his mother eloped with his father, for she looked like the woman he remembered. It was a studio portrait from the chest upwards. She looked vulnerable and beautiful, her chin lifted exposing her bare neck, her head turned slightly to the left, her frizzy hair pushed back behind an ear that had a pearl on it. She was wearing a checked sari and a blouse with short sleeves.

He shut the album, an angry sound escaping from him. He was sick of the past, just sick of it. He drifted to the French windows and stared out into the side garden. The
monsoon shower had abruptly ceased, and there was a silence all around him, broken only by the
drip-drip-dripping
of water from the trees and gutters. In the quiet, he could hear the girls in their bedroom, across the side garden. Amrith put on his rubber slippers. He did not want to be alone with his thoughts anymore.

The girls had seen him coming across the garden, for the moment he stepped in through their French windows, Selvi sprang out from behind the curtains and grabbed him from the rear in a headlock. “What is the password?” she cried, with the glee of an older sister dominating her younger sibling. “You cannot enter without giving the password.”

He tried to struggle out of her grip, but Selvi, who remained a tomboy even though she was almost sixteen, held on with great expertise.

Mala, as usual, leapt to Amrith’s defence. “Sin, men,” she cried at her sister, “leave Amrith alone.” She jumped off her bed and tried to rescue him from Selvi’s grip, which only mortified Amrith even further.

When they were children, he and Selvi would scuffle frequently, rolling on the floor as they tried to get the best of each other, Amrith often losing. Mala hated their fighting and she would stand by, wringing her hands and weeping, begging her sister to stop hurting him.

“Akka!” Mala tried to come between them. “Leave him alone!”

A significant look passed between the sisters. Selvi immediately released her grip on him. “Sorry, Amrith.” She patted his arm. “I forgot that it was —”

A frown from Mala silenced her.

“Forgot what?” Amrith cried, with sudden recklessness. “What did you forget?”

“Nothing,” Selvi mumbled, and went to sit at the foot of Mala’s bed.

Amrith was furious at them for this delicacy around his mother’s death anniversary. He wanted to yell, “Stop pretending this is just another day!” But he could not bring himself to do so.

The girls went back to painting each other’s toenails, which they had been doing before his arrival. Selvi looked a little shamefaced as the sisters sat at either end of Mala’s bed, their feet in each other’s laps.

Looking at them, Amrith felt ragged with envy. It was so unfair that their lives were normal, that nothing stood in the way of their futures. They were free, unshackled by the taint of an awful past. And just by thinking this, a gulf opened up between him and the girls. A gulf that had begun to grow in the last year.

Amrith threw himself down on Selvi’s bed. He lay on his side, his head propped by his elbow. “So-so, Selvi, have you heard of Mala’s latest ambition?”

Mala flushed with dismay. “Amrith!” she cried, “You promised not to tell. It was a secret.”

He could see the hurt flooding her eyes, but he could not stop himself. He wanted to hurt her, as if her pain would bring him relief from his own darkness.

A hideous grin spread across his face. “Guess what our Mala told me?” he said to Selvi.

“What-what?” she asked eagerly.

He paused dramatically. “Our Mala wants to be a nun.”

He waited for his words to have their effect. Selvi’s eyes widened in astonishment, then she fell back on the bed, clutching her sides and hooting with laughter.

“Amrith,” Mala said, close to tears, “I’ll never-ever tell you anything again.”

Amrith tossed his head in contempt. She always confessed her secrets to him and, even though sooner or later he would betray her in this way, it never stopped her from telling him again.

He told Selvi that Sister Dominica, with whom Mala taught English to poor children in their parish, had recently informed Mala that she might have the gift of a vocation bestowed on her by God. Mala, who was always taking up one scheme or another with great fervor, had been thrilled at this new possibility. She now believed that she was destined to be a nun and had told Amrith that she intended to take her vows the moment she finished her A levels.

All this made Selvi laugh even harder.
“Chee,”
she cried at her sister, “why would you want to do something so ghastly as become a nun? Only dried-up spinsters who can’t get married enter the nunnery.”

“There are lots of nuns who
choose
to dedicate their life to God, akka,” Mala said, with an attempt at dignity.

“What nonsense — life of unhappiness.” Selvi tossed her head in disdain.

“I think we should tell Uncle Lucky about Mala’s ambition,” Amrith said. “He’ll be so upset, he’s bound to have a talk with that Sister Dominica.”

“Amrith! Are you mad? Do you want me to die of mortification?” Mala cried.

“Yes-yes,” Selvi said, in her older-sister voice, “Sister Dominica needs a good telling off for leading fourteen-year-old girls like you into a path of such misery. If Amrith doesn’t tell Appa, I’m definitely going to inform him.”

Mala looked from one to the other with such desperation that they burst out laughing again.

“If you become a nun,” Amrith said, “you’ll have to cut your hair short and get up at five every morning for the rest of your life.”

“And sleep on a hard bed in a dormitory full of other nuns. Not to mention lining up for the toilet, which will probably be a squatting pan.” Selvi gestured to the Shaun Cassidy album that lay on Mala’s bed. “No pop music. Only dreary hymns.”

“And you can forget about seeing films, or going out to Flower Drum for dinner.” Amrith, like Selvi, honed in on all the things Mala loved. “No chili crab, anymore.”

Mala tried to look superior, but she was beginning to wilt under the reality of what being a nun would mean.

“But most of all,” Selvi said, grinning at Amrith, “you can never-ever have a boyfriend.”

“Yes-yes,” Amrith chimed in, “no Suraj Wanigasekera for you.”

“Chee
, but what are you both talking about?” Mala cried in horror. “Suraj is going to be a priest. He told me so.”

They shrieked with laughter. Suraj Wanigasekera was one of the unruliest boys in Amrith’s school, always in detention and seated outside the principal’s office.

“Yes,” Mala cried. “At the last Catholic Students’ Union meeting, Suraj told me this.”

“Oh, Mala,” Selvi said, shaking her head, “you’re so gullible. Suraj just said that so you would like him.”

“He did not, he did not.”

They cackled with derision at the thought of Suraj Wanigasekera as a priest.

And yet Amrith, even as he laughed, was beginning to feel bad about what he had done. Though Mala’s ambition was silly, at the same time she had shared a precious dream with him, a dream she was still too shy to share with anyone else. He should have respected her secrecy.

With Selvi, he knew just how far he could go. Being two years older, she looked down on him with the superiority of the senior sister, the akka, and she tried to boss him around. When he resisted, tempers would flare, but a good quarrel would clear the air. Mala, on the other hand, regarded him as an older brother, even though they were the same age. She worshipped him, and he knew that he
had the power to wound her in a way he could never do with Selvi. He frequently took advantage of this power.

Before tea, Amrith gruffly invited Mala up to the terrace to help him feed the birds. She went eagerly, ready as always to forgive him.

That evening, there was a meeting of the Catholic Students’ Union in the courtyard. Boys from Amrith’s school and girls from Mala’s.

As Amrith passed by them on the way to his room, they were making plans for a shramadana at an old folks’ home, which would involve cleaning, gardening, painting, and entertaining the residents. Suraj Wanigasekera was present, of course. He was a few years older than Amrith, stocky and powerfully built. He was popular with the boys for his debonair, don’t-care attitude. As captain of the rugger team, he had scored the winning goal that had garnered for the school the prestigious Sir Hugh Clifford shield.