Beggar's Feast (32 page)

“I want to see!” she insisted, not just because bankers and speechmakers' sons would be there but also because how she longed for this, for an evening's freedom from these rooms, from Sam Kandy and Madam.

“They are not going just now, Ivory. They have announced they are giving up the island.”

“To who?”

“To Mr. D.S. and the other politics men and their men.”

“And?”

“What?”

“When will there ever be such a night again? And on such a night, you want to wash and have a cup of tea and sleep? Truth?”

“What else do we do at this hour?” He was daring her to correct him, to be the one who started what would have to stop, be stopped.

“I want to see. I want to go. I have to. Don't you?”

“I have to do everything that I do. You don't know. But not this, I don't have to go stand like a street boy and watch old rich men give the island to new rich men. But you want to meet them, right? So go.”

“You would let your wife walk the streets by herself, at this hour?”

“You know the streets well enough, no?” Sam scoffed.

“Which means what?”

The servant girl was standing in the doorway looking at no one.

“I want you to take me,” Ivory said when Sam said nothing.

“Take you how? You mean here, now, in front of her?” Wounded sounding and wretched hopeful but more: forcing, begging her again to start what had to be stopped. Ivory motioned the servant girl out of the room, away from words never meant to be heard by daughters.

“I want you to take me to see the celebrations.”

“Why? Who is out there that you have to see?” he spat, feeling the jealousy juice out at last, fresh life for pent needs beyond its own. “Right. You would like to see him, with me standing there watching.”

“I am not asking you to stand and watch anything. Take me in the vehicle. The whole island is outside while I wait day after day in this cobweb palace, only allowed to go from room to room.”

“I never said you had to stay here. You told me, remember, you told me, from the first, all you wanted was in the room.”

“Yes, and you told me that you would not go back to the village. And that we would stay in the room. That you needed to know nothing of me but what happened in the room, and I needed to know only the same of you.”

“The war is ending, Ivory. Money does not come as it used to. Nothing does. But tell me, are you going to leave me now, unless I do what you want me to do?”

“You do only what you want, Sam.”

“This is not what I want. If I did what I—”

“Aiyo tell.”

“You want me to tell you or show you?”

“I just want you to show me the city. I am not asking you to walk with me. I am only asking that you take me—”

“Wait.” His heart was crashing.

“What?”

“Wait. What do you want me to do?”

“I keep telling you, Sam, I want you to show me the city.”

“You want me to take you in the vehicle?”

“Of course. How else?”

“Because, you say, I am your driver. Say it.”

“You are my husband.”

“No. Tell me I am your driver and I will take you.”

“Sam—”

“No. Right. I am your driver. I will take you.”

His face, his eyes, his words were serene, old since composed in untold history. He did not wait for her to chant it with him. He did not have to. It had already been said. It was already done. Sam took her and went.

He returned the next morning, driving through a city quiet of its revels and waking to a day that looked and felt like any other, only this was the island's first day made its own in any known remembering. He came back with torn knees and salt stains on his shoes like the marks of gone spirits. The hour spent in Puttalam had been unchartable, starless, no moonfall on the black water. Dull as broken bone had been her salt bed. No one could have seen him there, kneeling at his own vengeful penance. But reaching his office, Sam knew God had seen and sent his. Blue Piyal was sleeping against his office door, in certain flesh and blood before him. He was village-dressed but the body and face were the same, the same age even as when the boy had fallen at Dambulla, and when he woke at the sound of Sam's shoes his eyes were just as damning blue.

“Are you Sam Kandy, sir?” the revenant asked, getting up.

“Are you, what are you?” Sam asked, his hand working his downstrike scar.

“I am Henry B. Paulet.”

“No. That cannot be. You are not Henry Paulet. Henry Paulet is dead and gone to England. You are, are you, you are not. Piyal?”

“You are right, actually. I am Henry B. Paulet but I go as Bastian. But where is Piyal-aiya? Achchi told me to ask you, if you were here. You are Sam Kandy, no?”

“Achchi. Who is your achchi?”

“She has lately died. She was called Manel. She said she used to work here and so did you, for the Englishman I was named for, and that you sent her and my ammi to live in Matara when Ammi got sick. Achchi said that when she died too, I was to close up the house and take the money to buy a rail ticket to Colombo and to look for you, starting here, and that you would help me, or Piyalaiya would. Where is he?”

“I don't know.”

“So then you will help me, sir. You are Sam Kandy.”

“What do you want from me? I need no driver. I need nothing.” He was too exhausted to join the universe already laughing at him. He had been made free only for the drive back from Puttalam for the next pull.

“I only want to leave the island.”

“Leave the island?”

“For many years, I have wanted to see the world.” He'd practised on the train. “I am—”

Sam held a hand up, removed a pen from his pocket, took a piece of paper from the boy, and wrote down the name of a rival shipping agent.

“Thank you, sir. I promise I will come back to—”

“Go. Now.”

Their talking brought the servant girl from the rooms, where she had been waiting to hear her mother's step since the night before. She came downstairs and found only Sam standing there, eyes closed, his head against the door.

“Sir,” Mary said. “Sir. Please.”

“What. I don't want tea. I want to sleep.” Eyes still closed. He would sleep right there. He would dream of nothing, no heels hammering down, no known faces.

“No, sir. Please, where is Madam?” Mary asked.

“Madam. Madam?” he said it like a word from a lost age.
What is Madam?

“Yes. Where is she? Where is Mummy?”

Sam went away seeing nothing, hearing nothing of her crying. He felt nothing nothing nothing, wanted needed asked for nothing but what he had just gone to Puttalam and accomplished, become: an island freed from memory and prospect and other such rule. Long waited for and sudden changed and what was before what was now what would be next did not matter because Sam Kandy was already far from all such reach, unbeholden, unjoined, floating out under a moonless, star-gone sky, like a body that would never be found floating in brine and black water.

“But he will return. This is Sam Kandy's village, no?”

The thin men who'd stepped out from work-stalls and sagging awnings to block his way bobbled their heads. He could have revved and gone but instead he cut the engine. They watched him without approaching. He unzipped his leather jacket and stretched his arms, breathing deeply as he turned, considering Sudugama. This was the village always told of under the crow tree, the village long since imagined, from long ago hoped for. Its air was no rivalling oppositions, no rise and fall of enemies, as in the city, but the timeless accord of all living: it was cooking fires and the clarity of recent rain; it was greenness, so much greenness, the spread of paddy and garden things put to dry; everywhere were spearing and curving and hanging-down leaves smattered through with the white light of clear day; in the air was fruit and incense and balm and oil and yes under it all for certain was good dark dirt, the dirt from which all came and to which all goes. All was thriving. This was what he had come back for, from actual Munich's grey air and grey light like the world was always at the end of day. And what he heard while he breathed in Sudugama was likewise hope's reward. Never mind Munich, this was nothing like his boyhood life inland from Matara, his life under the loud Mara tree. Here were troops of sweet birds calling and answering, squirrel and monkey chatter, mothers calling for children answering. The highest sound was no constable's whistle or train shriek but the bronze peal of the temple bell from across the main road; the lowest was not black whispering about his blue eyes and brown skin when he went with his grandmother to the market but the steady thwack of washed clothes on drying rocks, itself a kind of strong pulse. It was a thriving, all of it.

None of the villagers knew where Sam was or when he would return. They did not mind not knowing, because of what had been arranged during his absence years: a doctor now visited fortnightly, smelling of Dettol, not bark and root and the last patient's left-behind betel sheaf. More: Sudugama was soon to have its own government school. There were Poya day deliveries of kerosene for every man with a family, and tins of brick-shaped meat, so pink and modern. Since 1956, an American movie was shown for a day and a night once a month in the Dansala hall. His fine screaming red bike aside, they did not want this fellow, whoever and whatever he was, to ruin all of it. Because if he reached the walauwa and spoke with Arthur, who could tell what Arthur would tell him, or what Arthur, the Ralahami-in-name, would do?

“Then can you tell me who in the village knows when he is coming? The walauwa people must know, no? Wait. You like my bike? Who likes my bike? Who wants to sit?”

The man in the faded yellow hat passed through the gathered crowd just as Bastian was lifting the third beaming boy onto the Heinkel's red leather seat. Hunching forward to take the black handlebars, the boy was smiling and squinting, his glorying mind roaring across endless open road. His father stepped forward to watch within catching range, just as the others had when it was their sons' turns, watching and squinting and smiling just the same as their boys. For going on ten years now Sam Kandy had sent kerosene and American movies, yes, but he'd let a man-eater ride in his motorcar before any village boy.

“Where are you from? Who sent you? What business have you with this village? Who sent you?” asked the man in the yellow hat, who was Arthur's driver and had been named to the position after travelling to Colombo with his son years before, where he had met with Sam Kandy, met him again.

“I am Henry Bastian Paulet. Bastian,” he answered, lifting another boy onto the bike, a boy who at eleven was already a champion tree climber. The boy landed on the red seat in a perfect squat and had already raced past Jaffna town, speeding north by northwest like some kind of machine-age monkey prince jumping islands on his way to conquer India before the man in the yellow hat, Bopea, answered Bastian.

“Who has sent you?”