Cinnamon Gardens Page 4

  Inebriated, Balendran suddenly thought. This was what he felt. As if he were back in his college days, intoxicated far quicker than his companions and too proud to admit it. His college days, however, were inextricably bound with the memory of Richard. He hastily tried to recover what his mother had said and make an appropriate reply. “But that’s a pleasant dream, isn’t it? We loved those Jaffna holidays.”

  She shook her head. “But you are forgetting, Keerimalai is the place where we scatter the ashes after the funeral. You walk into the water and release them to the sea.”

  The seriousness with which she had spoken should have made him feel solicitous towards her, instead a silly college drinking song went through his mind. He drew himself together. He had to end this conversation quickly. He patted her knee and stood up. “It’s nothing, Amma. You wait and see.”

  “I wish we had some news of him,” she said, rising too.

  “He no longer exists for Appa,” he reminded her gently. “We have no choice but to obey.”

  “And the boy … his son, Seelan. He must be almost twenty-seven now.”

  “ ‘Laugh at misfortune – nothing so able to triumph over it,’ ” he quoted from the Tirukkural.

  Nalamma sighed and said, “Men don’t understand. The cord may be cut at birth, but the attachment remains.”

  Before Balendran left, his mother gave him some money to put in the offerings box at St. Anthony’s Church in Kochchikade.

  Though a staunch and fervent Hindu, Nalamma, like many Ceylonese, deemed divine favour to exist in all faiths. Thus, she had no compunction about appealing to a Catholic saint or making an offering at a Buddhist shrine, along with her daily pooja to Ganesh.

  Balendran’s car was a black 1910 Model T Ford. It had originally belonged to his father, who, when the “Tin Lizzie” became a common automobile, got tired of it and moved on to a more sleek and expensive car, something he would do every few years. He always offered his son his old cars before selling them off, but Balendran, despite the fact that the Ford had to be hand-started, had always stuck with his “Tin Lizzie.” There was a jauntiness to it that reminded him of nothing so much as an intelligent, alert terrier. He liked its shape, its angles, the brass radiator shell, the broad running boards, the large wheels with fenders raised well above them, which gave the car a buoyant look. The top folded back easily and this allowed Balendran, when he chose, to travel with the wind blowing through his hair. When Balendran was in his car again, he leant back against the seat.

  “To the temple, Sin-Aiyah?” his driver, Joseph, asked.

  “Yes … no …” Balendran tried to decide what he wanted. He needed a place where he could walk and think. “The Galle Face Green,” he finally said. “Take me there.”

  Joseph was looking at him, puzzled. Not wanting his scrutiny, Balendran waved his hand impatiently for him to drive on.

  Once the car started to move, Balendran shut his eyes. He had to think, he had to order his thoughts. Yet his mind had developed a capricious determination of its own and, instead of thinking about Richard’s arrival in two weeks, he found himself fixated on that ridiculous drinking song and, with it, the remembrance of that pub in St. Martin’s Lane, the Salisbury, which he and Richard used to frequent. As the song filled his mind, it brought back the image of Richard standing by the piano, his face flushed with drink and the effort of singing, a lock of his blond hair fallen over his forehead, his hand around Balendran’s waist. As the evening progressed and their inhibitions fell away, Richard’s hand would invariably slip under Balendran’s shirt. He would gently run his fingers up and down Balendran’s spine until Balendran had to lean against the back of the piano so that the other patrons would not notice his arousal. At the thought of Richard’s caress, Balendran felt his blood thud against his temples.

  The Galle Face Green was an open lawn about one mile in length and three hundred yards wide. It was flanked on one side by the sea and the other by Beira Lake. It was a public recreation ground and, of an evening, was always busy with cricketers, football players, kite flyers, horse riders, and strollers. Three roads passed through it: the Esplanade, a perfectly smooth carriage drive and promenade by the sea wall; a similar drive by the lake; and a central road for commercial traffic.

  When the car reached the Galle Face Green, Balendran got out hurriedly, feeling as if he were escaping from some stifling room. He instructed Joseph to park on the side of the central road, then he set out across the nearly deserted green towards the sea wall. He breathed in deeply, the sting of the salty air in his nostrils, the breeze cooling his face. His thoughts felt like the jumble of different-coloured threads in his wife’s sewing box, and he knew he had to unravel them one from the other. The Galle Face Hotel at the other end of the green, however, made him stop. The hotel was a long, rectangular block, three storeys high. End bays and a centre entrance bay had been brought forward to break up the monotony of the façade, an effect further accentuated by the bays being one storey higher and having individual pitched corner roofs. The front porch, at the base of the entrance bay, was a hive of activity as cars and carriages pulled up, deposited guests, and drove away. The very concreteness of the hotel gave a sudden solidity to the notion that Richard would be here in two weeks. There had been no communication between them in more than twenty years. Balendran felt an apprehensiveness rise in him, but he tried to reassure himself it was natural. After all, they had been in love. Like any two people who had been intimately connected in the past, there was bound to be awkwardness at first. After that, the meeting would go smoothly. They already had something to discuss. The Donoughmore Commission would regulate any gaps or bumps in their encounter.

  He stared at the hotel again, imagining their meeting. Richard would step out of the lift and see him sitting on one of those lovely antique ebony sofas in the lounge. They would both raise their hands in greeting. He, Balendran, would stand and straighten his coat, waiting for his friend to come up. They would extend their arms to each other, their hands meeting in a firm clasp. “Bala,” Richard would say, “what a pleasure after so long.” “The pleasure is all mine, old chap,” Balendran would reply.

  The sight of a kite whirling its way drunkenly into the sky momentarily distracted Balendran from his thoughts. Then his mind, the great swindler, summoned up a recollection of Richard. His friend’s freely flowing, instantaneous anger. The way Richard would storm around their flat, slamming doors, banging plates, once even throwing a vase against the wall. Public places were not inviolate either, and Richard would think nothing about yelling the word “bastard” at him on Tottenham Court Road or in Russell Square. Now an alternate scenario of their first meeting presented itself: Richard storming out of the lift and, even before he got to him, letting fly a string of invectives, accusing him of desertion, of cowardliness, of not loving him. Balendran clicked his tongue against his teeth, dismissing his vivid fancy. He turned away from the hotel and began to walk towards the sea wall. “We are both twenty years older,” he told himself. “Much has happened since then.” In fact, Balendran assured himself, such meetings were often painful precisely because both parties found themselves irritated they had actually felt such an intensity of feelings for each other. Bad habits, annoyances would be recollected with a wonder that one had been foolish enough to tolerate them for love.

  Love. He rolled the word around in his mind. He knew that his love for Richard was long dead. The passing of twenty years, a wife whom he loved in his own way, and a son, whom the very thought of filled him with happiness, ensured that. As for the type of love Richard and he had had, he accepted that it was part of his nature. His disposition, like a harsh word spoken, a cruel act done, was regrettably irreversible. Just something he had learnt to live with, a daily impediment, like a pair of spectacles or a badly set fracture.

  “ ‘As one by one we give up, we get freer and freer of pain,’ ” he said, citing to himself that verse from the Tirukkural on renunciation. How often he had rep
eated it during that first year of his marriage, to comfort himself for the anguish he had felt, the suffocation, lying next to his wife, Sonia, at night, unable to sleep. His suffering had been intensified by knowing that she despaired along with him, felt his alienation, almost hatred towards her, without knowing its cause. Yet no life is without its compensations. In the first year of their marriage, two things had happened to counteract their unhappiness with each other. The first, and most important, was the arrival of their son, Lukshman. How quickly that had altered their relations with each other, how easily they had learnt to love through their son. The second had been that his father, after the birth of his son, had finally grown cordial towards him. After a prolonged period of thirst, he had felt the assuaging waters of his father’s love, his restoration as the much beloved son.

  For a moment, Balendran allowed himself to think of that terrible time when the Mudaliyar had come to his flat in London, somehow knowing of his relationship with Richard. Balendran immediately shuddered and turned away, not wishing to dwell on that memory. Instead, he made himself recall his father’s forgiveness. His father, as a gesture of his pardon, had bestowed on him the running of the family rubber estate and the temple, which he now managed and from which he drew his income. The granting of control and responsibility was the way the Mudaliyar expressed his affection.

  Balendran stopped walking, a sudden significant idea before him that he had not thought of before. His father was asking him to renew contact with Richard! This request was not simply about the Donoughmore Commission. It went much deeper than that. His father was saying that he completely trusted him, that anything there was to forgive was forgiven. He recalled the pressure of his father’s hands on his shoulders. They were the clasps on the mantle of societal approbation that Balendran now drew around him. He saw himself as he was. Much adored father of a handsome, intelligent son, their open, equal relationship the envy of all his son’s friends; gallant spouse to a wife who was constantly told by her friends how lucky she was to have such a gentle, humane husband; dutiful, ministering son who eased his parents’ burden in their old age. While other men might have taken these positions for granted, passed them off lightly, for Balendran they had an inestimable value. They were hard won, they had been laboured for, they were the sustenance from which he drew the strength for his daily life. Now the reminder of his charges gave him a mastery over his mind and emotions. Like someone emerging from a fever, he felt exhausted but also a clear-headed relief at being lucid again.

  Balendran had reached the sea wall. He turned around and began to walk back towards the car. The meeting with Richard, which had seemed so earth-shattering a prospect a short while ago, now promised to be curiously banal. Apart from an initial moment of awkwardness, their meeting would be no different from the visit of any of his old London friends passing through Colombo.

  3

  A house divided like a vial and its lid

  Seems one but comes apart.

  – The Tirukkural, verse 887

  The morning Annalukshmi rode her bicycle to school, Louisa was in the garden, supervising Ramu, her odd-job man and gardener. She wore a large straw hat with netting over it, making her look like she was bee-keeping. The hat was to guard her complexion, the netting to protect her from the mosquitoes. She was disturbed from her task by the postman, who stopped outside their gate and rang his bell in that maddeningly prolonged way he had. Louisa shaded her eyes against the sunlight and sent Ramu to fetch the letter the postman was waving at them. When Ramu passed it to her, she saw that the handwriting on the envelope was her husband’s, the address barely legible because of his impatient scrawl. She told Ramu to carry on with his work, then, pushing the netting over her hat, she went up the verandah steps and sat down in one of the wicker chairs.

  “Wife,” the letter began, causing Louisa to frown at its peremptory tone. “Prepare Annalukshmi to get married. The young man in question is Muttiah, my nephew, Parvathy Akka’s son.” Louisa leant forward and went over this sentence again, unable to believe what she had just read.

  “Muttiah has just secured a job,” the letter continued. “He is at the Land Office in Kuala Lumpur on a steady salary and is able to support a wife and family. I have known him these last few years and find him serious and dependable. He fits all my expectations and I am sure will make Annalukshmi very happy. I will notify you of Parvathy Akka and Muttiah’s forthcoming visit to settle the matter.”

  Louisa gasped. She reread the letter, shaking her head, unable to believe its contents. Ramu had stopped work and was watching her. She got up and, with as much calm as she could muster, went inside.

  Once in her bedroom, Louisa removed her hat, sat on the edge of her bed, and stared at the letter again. A myriad of thoughts went through her mind at the same time, but, out of them, one took precedence. Her husband’s nephew was a Hindu.

  It was Murugasu’s reversion to Hinduism that was the final blow to their already crumbling marriage. Louisa, a preacher’s daughter, had been biased against Hinduism anyway. The fact that her husband had forsaken Christianity and returned to Hinduism marked the demise of her own happiness. Now, by Murugasu’s command that Annalukshmi marry Muttiah, a Hindu, her husband was conveying to the world that their marriage held no meaning for him, that he was her husband in name only. “The mockery,” she said to herself. “This is a slap in my face. He might as well take me out into the street by my hair and spit on me, such is the insult.”

  She now thought of Annalukshmi and a dread took hold of her. Louisa could not imagine her daughter, or indeed herself, in that house. Parvathy, her sister-in-law, kept a strict Hindu household, and Annalukshmi would be forced to conform to the ideals of a Hindu wife, cloistered like a nun, her movements restricted, her thoughts and opinions suppressed in favour of her husband. Then there was the groom himself. His physical attributes were not wholly unpleasant, but whatever charm there was in them was completely negated by his clumsy, oafish manner. In fact, when she had first met him, Louisa had wondered if he was a simpleton. She resolved that, come what may, she would not allow her daughter to go through with this.

  Louisa recalled the terrible quarrel between father and daughter that had led her to leave Malaya, fearing for Annalukshmi’s safety. Even now, she could hear Annalukshmi’s scream of pain when Murugasu pulled her by her hair and slapped her. All ostensibly because Annalukshmi had not swept the drawing room. Yet Louisa later found out that the real cause of violence was the severing of the bond between father and daughter ever since Annalukshmi had seen Murugasu coming out of a Hindu temple and known that her parents’ marriage was falling apart. Louisa looked at the letter on the bed and shook her head at the possible havoc this proposal brought with it. She decided to spare her daughter this news. She would handle it herself.

  As well as sealing her daughter’s fate, by this proposal Louisa also saw that her husband was binding her hands, forcing her to support him. If she protested, it would only expose to the world the state of their marriage and bring shame and disgrace to her daughters. Instead, she would have no choice but to support him, to say to her amazed family that she did not see why her daughter should not marry a Hindu. Such marriages, though rare, had happened in the past, some of them very good marriages, all this religious intolerance was ultimately very un-Christian. Louisa lowered her legs over the side of the bed. Somehow this train of events had to be stopped before it led to catastrophe. But who could she appeal to in her predicament?

  Colombo being such a small place, Annalukshmi had, of course, been seen on her bicycle. By no worthier a figure than Louisa’s cousin, Mrs. Philomena Barnett, who was taking her morning constitutional – which in Mrs. Barnett’s case meant collaring some poor rickshaw man to trundle her around Victoria Park. She had seen Annalukshmi riding up Green Path and gasped in astonishment, raising her handkerchief to her mouth. What was Cousin Louisa thinking? Had she completely lost her mind? She signalled to her exhausted rickshaw man to take her h
ome. Philomena had to go to Brighton later this morning to supervise the preparations for the Mudaliyar’s birthday dinner. She vowed to have a talk with Cousin Louisa on the way there.

  Philomena Barnett (whom Annalukshmi referred to as the Devil Incarnate) believed in the notion that a person’s character was in their physiognomy. She herself was respectably stout and plain, the only note of frivolity seen in her garishly patterned saris of flowers, birds, and animals. In her opinion, Louisa’s curvaceous figure could have led to nothing but trouble. Elopement. Even now the word stuck in the back of her throat. How selfish and thoughtless Louisa had been to do that. It had nearly destroyed the impending marriage of Philomena’s sister. The groom’s family, thinking that all the Barnett girls were flighty, had withdrawn their proposal and only the inducement of a larger dowry had mollified them. Philomena thought of her last unmarried daughter, Dolly, and her recent attempts to find a husband for her. Annalukshmi riding the bicycle had to be arrested immediately. She, a widow with scant resources, did not want any scandal spoiling her Dolly’s chances.

  So it was that, later in the morning, Cousin Philomena descended from her rickshaw at Lotus Cottage with a great heaving and panting, climbed laboriously up the verandah steps, and found Louisa sitting on the verandah, gazing dejectedly out into the garden.

  “Cousin,” she cried, “this time you have gone too far.”

  Louisa had been lost in her thoughts and she stood up quickly, confused.

  “Don’t give me that look. I have seen her today on the bicycle.”

  “Annalukshmi? But how did she? I saw her off in the rickshaw.”

  Philomena shook her head. She wiped her brow with her handkerchief and sat down in a chair. “So you didn’t know,” she said. “This is serious, very serious. We all warned you about giving that girl notions that were above her. I have no objection to a girl dabbling in a little teaching, but to go and get a professional certificate! What do you expect after that?”