Adam's Peak (2 page)

“This chap is the best tea taster I've ever encountered.”

“Does he still work here?” Rudy says, standing on tiptoe and craning his neck.

“No, son. He left a long time ago. Long before I became P.D. This was back when I was Tea Maker, in charge of the factory.” Grandpa points again to the photograph. “Amitha Jayasuriya here was my best taster.”

“What happened to him?” Rudy says.

“I had to let him go. He might have gone to another plantation.” Grandpa emits a gravelly sound, like a sigh. “A terrible waste—but the planting life has lost the discipline it had under the British, Rudy. Mental and physical discipline. That's what it takes to make things run.”

Sounds of laughter—Susie's and the girl cousins'—tumble through the shutters, beckoning, but for the moment Grandpa's strange remarks have the stronger hold.

“Who's the other man?” Rudy says.

“That's Ernie. He would have been seventeen or eighteen at that time.”

Rudy wants to ask who Ernie is, but Grandpa has turned to his desk, where he's rummaging under papers, saying “I've got something here I want to read to you.” Edging toward the window, Rudy catches a glimpse of bails and stumps being set up on the lawn.

“Are there mountains in the part of Canada you're going to?” Grandpa asks. He's leaning against his desk, flipping pages of a fat book with a black cover. His pipe lies on the green blotter, smouldering.

Of Canada, Rudy knows only that it will be cold. He shrugs.

“Well,” Grandpa continues, “if there
are
any mountains, I can assure you they won't match up to this peak I'm going to tell you about.” His palm slaps the open book. “Here it is. Come, Rudy. Sit here in the chair. I'm going to read you what I wrote the day after that photograph was taken. It might be a very long time before you have the opportunity to climb Adam's Peak for yourself, so listen closely. This is part of your history.”

While his sister and cousins begin their cricket match, Rudy slips behind the desk and boosts himself into the padded leather seat. Grandpa stands next to the window, his oiled hair catching the sunlight. He runs the heel of his hand down the centre of the book then coughs into his fist.

“Seventh of February, nineteen forty-four,” he begins. “Yesterday took Ernie on the annual pilgrimage to the summit of Adam's Peak. Alec peeved, but still too young to withstand the ordeal, I feel.”

Rudy giggles at the mention of his father's name. Grandpa looks up, makes a sound close to a chuckle, then carries on reading.

“Jayasuriya made it known in his way that he wanted to join us. The chap was certainly deserving of a brief holiday, so I consented. Left early in the day, to be at the base for midnight, the summit by sunrise. The usual mob of devotees made progress slow, but we reached the final ascent in good time. Expected complaints from Ernie, but the boy surprised me this year and proved up to the challenge. Up top he and Jayasuriya went off to look at the footprint, while I repaired to my customary spot to witness the appearance of what I maintain to be the most spectacular vista in this entire country, perhaps the entire world. And here I find myself inspired to quote the words of James Emerson Tennent, who climbed the peak in the last century, before the advent of decent roads and other amenities.”

Rudy stifles a yawn while his grandfather reads on with even greater authority.

“He writes: ‘The panorama from the summit of Adam's Peak is, perhaps, the grandest in the world, as no other mountain, although surpassing it in altitude, presents the same unobstructed view over land and sea. Around it, to the north and east, the traveller looks down on the zone of lofty hills that encircle the Kandyan kingdom, whilst to the westward the eye is carried far over undulating plains, till in the purple distance the glitter of the sunbeams on the sea marks the line of the Indian Ocean.'”

Grandpa pauses, presumably to let the reading sink in. It sounds like a foreign language, but Rudy nods seriously, if only to nudge himself closer to the cricket game on the lawn.

“Moments before the sun lifted off of the horizon,” Grandpa continues, “I went to find Ernie. Wanted him to grasp that the true
grandeur of Adam's Peak has nothing to do with the bloody footprint of Buddha or Shiva or whatever the hell that slab of rock up there is said to be. The greatness of the peak lies in our ability to conquer it, and in so doing to conquer our own weaknesses. The view that Tennent describes is the reward we earn for attaining that goal. This is what I wanted Ernie to understand, but didn't I find—” Grandpa stops reading and coughs into his fist. “Yes, well, you get the idea, son. To climb Adam's Peak is to fight your own demons.”

He closes the book. Rudy imagines a mountain overrun by armies of men doing battle with fearsome demons. Leading this battalion of the Good is his grandfather, silver hair shining in the rising sun. His eyes wander back to the photograph on the wall.

“Do you ring the bell when you win the fight?” he asks.

“What's that?” Grandpa says, then he smiles vaguely. “Well I don't know if the average Sinhalese chap would put it that way, but yes, that's one way of looking at it.”

“Mum is Sinhalese, isn't she, Grandpa?”

“Mmm? Oh, yes. Your mother is high-class Sinhalese. From Kandy. On her mother's side.”

The old man places his book on the desk and rests his fingers on the cover several seconds before reaching for his pipe.

“Why is it called Adam's Peak?” Rudy says. “Who's Adam?”

Grandpa taps the bowl of his pipe into his cupped palm, deposits the powdery mound into the ashtray. “The Adam from the Bible, of course. The British named the peak after him.”

And with those words, the conversation ends. Grandpa waves Rudy off the chair and into the hallway. Following, he shuts the study door with a clunk.

Back out on the lawn, the cricket game has dissolved into squabbles, but the adults are ignoring the ruckus. Dad has set his chair aside from the others and is gazing out at the hilly landscape that surrounds Grandpa's property. He summons Rudy with a sideways tilt of his head. Rudy pulls a face but goes to his father, dragging the tops of his feet across the warm grass. He deposits himself next to the chair, where he silently proceeds to scavenge dirt from between his toes.

After a dreary length of silence, Dad finally clears his throat. “You missed our big news earlier,” he says.

“What news? About Canada?” Rudy says, risking the forbidden word. “I know everything about that already.”

Dad smiles. “Well, it's going to happen
in
Canada.”

Rudy surrenders his toes to the grass. “What is it?”

“You're going to have a new little brother or sister. At the beginning of August.”

Rudy looks up at his father, amazed. Never before has anything he's wished for come to him as quickly as this. Thoughts racing, he imagines himself leading his little brother on expeditions through the Canadian snow, and his whole being sharpens: he is to be an Older Brother, a role no less important in his mind than that of Tea Maker or Plantation Manager.

“We'll be getting him in Canada?” he says.

Dad, elbows resting on the arms of his chair, fingertips pressed together, frowns. “The baby is growing inside your mother's stomach. The doctor will take it out in August. And don't forget, it might be a girl. Susie has her heart set on a little sister.”

This, Rudy knows, will not happen.

“Can I choose his name?” he says.

Dad rises slowly from the chair and presses his palms to his lower back, like an old man.

“And what name would you choose, Rudyard Alexander Van Twest?”

“Adam.”

A telling smile curls one corner of Dad's mouth. “Adam,” he repeats. “The first man ... the first of our family to be born in the new country.” He takes Rudy's head in his hands and tousles his hair. “That's not a bad idea, son. We'll see what your mother thinks of it.”

Over by the murunga tree, Aunty Sheryl is gathering everyone together for one Last Family Photograph. Rudy ducks away from his father's grasp and bounds across the lawn, arms flapping, to join the others.

I
t's a stifling day. They've been running through the sprinkler on the front lawn, Clare and Emma and two of Emma's brothers, and now they're sitting on the wet grass in their bathing suits, watching waves of hot air ripple over Morgan Hill Road. Clare's new one-piece is light blue and has a skirt like a ballerina's. She and Emma are sharing a package of Kool-Aid—dipping their fingers in the orange powder and licking it off. A special treat. Only nothing feels special. It's the kind of day when everything goes in slow motion and nothing ever
happens
.

But then, miraculously, as if God or someone has taken pity on them, something does happen.

From the direction of the Boulevard, the Vantwests' car comes speeding, really speeding, down Morgan Hill Road and into the driveway across the street with a squeal that slices the stale air. Excited, in an uncertain kind of way, Clare sucks her finger while Emma and her brothers shout.

“Whoa! He should get a speeding ticket for sure!”

“Whaddya think's goin' on? D'ya think he's drunk?”

Mr. Vantwest, the driver of the car, gets out and runs to the house.

“Hey, he left the car door open! Someone could steal it!”

“Who's gonna steal it? That's so dumb.”

“He left the front door open too!”

“Maybe there's a burglar in the house, or a murderer, and his wife called him for help.”

“She wouldn't call
him
, you retard. She'd call the police.”

Determined not to say anything that might give Emma's brother reason to call
her
a retard, Clare sits in silence, staring at the house across the street, while the Skinner children keep talking.

“Mom thinks it's weird that people like them have a name like Vantwest. She says it's a Dutch name.”

“So? What's weird about that?”

“Dutch people are
white
, like us.”

“So how did people like them get a white name?”

“Mom says they probably intramarried. Their kids go to the Catholic school.”

Clare wonders if Mrs. Skinner has ever been inside the Vantwests' house. She sells Amway stuff, so it's possible. Sometimes she comes to Clare's house with samples, but her own mother always says “No, thank you,” then talks about something else.

“Hey,” Emma begins, “did you know, at the Catholic school they have to—Oh, look!” She points across the street, where Mr. Vantwest is scooting his son and daughter out the front door. When Mrs. Vantwest appears behind them, Emma squeals. “Whoa! Look at that! I bet she's gonna have her baby!”

It seems Emma may be right. The enormous Mrs. Vantwest is leaning against her slender husband, and the two of them are slowly making their way to the car. Clare dips her finger in the Kool-Aid and sucks distractedly. Emma has told her how babies get out, and even what makes them start growing in the first place, but Clare has never really believed any of it, never believed that
she
could have come to the world that way. For if such horrible and outrageous things were true, then surely her mother would have told her. Now, though, she isn't sure what to think. She wonders if terrible secrets have been kept from
her ... or if, perhaps, her mother would be as astonished as she herself was to hear Emma's explanations. The second possibility seems most likely; still, as Mrs. Vantwest reaches the car door, clutching her belly and squatting awkwardly, Clare looks away.

Off to the right, the Vantwests' son is hauling two small suitcases across the lawn. She fixes her eyes on him. He's a strange-looking boy, like an undersized grown-up, stiff and serious, with his legs poking out from a pair of school uniform shorts like two halves of a yardstick. He goes to Catholic school, whatever that is. To distract herself from Mrs. Vantwest, Clare wonders about the suitcases—what's in them, where the boy is going. She pretends one of them is for her, and that she and the Vantwest boy are going to run away from Morgan Hill Road on an adventure, like the Famous Five. They'll sneak off while Emma and her brothers are watching Mrs. Vantwest, and they'll go to the train station and sneak on a train. She licks her orange fingers. Then the Vantwest boy looks across the street, right at her it seems, and a terrible awkwardness comes over her. She wipes her hand on the wet grass. The Vantwest boy smiles. It looks like he's smiling at her, but that's impossible. It has to be one of Emma's brothers, or Emma herself. Clare gets up and walks back to the sprinkler, shaking out the skirt of her new bathing suit. Standing under the fan of water, she blocks off streams by covering the holes with her big toe.