Beggar's Feast (35 page)

“So now you must only have one question left, no?” Bopea asked.

“Yes.”

“So?”

“So answer it.”

Bopea then said what Sam could already tell, could probably have known from that first day they'd fought: that he, Bopea, was a patient man, a very patient man. He asked Sam to think of how many times since Sam's first wedding day he could have told against Sam or told Sam himself, told that he was known and known to have been not just a low-caste paddy worker like the rest of them but low-born right there like the rest of them and not just low-born right there like the rest of them but low-born to such a fellow as his father had been, long since known in the village for only sweating and moving when someone came to his hut to collect.

“Just tell me what you want,” Sam seethed through clenched teeth, clenched fists. Tell how much of what and then stop telling, stop making me want to stand and defend my father's name never worth defending.

“First, do you admit?”

“Tell me who else knows.”

“So you admit?”

“Tell me who else knows.”

“No one else, I swear on my son's life. If everyone knew, then my knowing would be useless, would be just another jungle paper nailed to the jak tree tomorrow morning, no?”

“Then tell. How much.”

“So you admit.”

“
HOW MUCH.
”

“Right. I want nothing like that.”

“Then go to hell.”

“I'll go and come straight away.”

Bopea returned, minutes later, with his son, a thin boy in his early twenties smelling of bay rum and holding a book, always holding a book. While his father was upstairs, he had taken his first proper shave at the barber-stall below. Bopea told Sam that the scholarship examinations were to be held the next day, at the Public Library, Edinburgh Crescent, Colombo 7, that the monk who had long tutored his son at the village temple had told Bopea's son and then Bopea that the Russians were coming to Colombo to give full university scholarships to top-flight boys. The monk said he was certain none of the Royal-Thomian types would sit for anything but Queen's Scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge, let alone go to the Public Library if it wasn't a British Council event. The only thing was to get an admission ticket to the exam, and the monk did not know how an upcountry village boy with only a temple teacher could.

“But I knew straight off who would get him one,” Bopea said, beaming, staring at Sam, his arm around his son. “I knew the most generous man of the village, Sam Kandy, would want to help the smartest boy in the village, no?” Immediately Sam understood the game and he played it well, had to keep playing it after the boy sat for the exam and won the scholarship and needed another ticket, this time a ship berth to Madras and from Madras by train to Calcutta and from Calcutta to Moscow by plane (Dum Dum/ Aspern/Vnukovo) and of course a Parker pen and proper, heavy clothes because no one wears sarong to lectures in the Russian snow. Before the boy left, he wanted to return to the village and tell the monk his results, give the monk alms in his late mother's name, then drink a cup of good heavy milk and break a branch and go. Sam said if Bopea knew to drive or was willing to learn, he could take the boy to the village in Sam's old red Morris, the car that still smelled of Puttalam, of blackwater saltwater, the car that could be Arthur's, and let him paint it black with his money if he wanted. After a driving lesson along Wharf Road, there came their second agreement, which carried across Sam Kandy's absence years: after his son was sent off to his studies, Bopea would become Arthur's driver and Sam's man in the village. He would report only to Sam, meeting him where and when Sam said to and bringing to the walauwa and village what Sam decided to send and telling Sam who if anyone came looking for him and what if ever anything had happened since their last meeting and telling also whenever Sam's name was heard in the walauwa, telling what was said, what was whispered, bought, brought, broken, taken, thrown, coughed at, and cursed. Whenever and whatever, and this bloody motorbike lying in front of them was not grown in any paddy field.

Sam glared at Bopea glaring until they heard the hammering of modern shoes upon the stone steps.

“There. You hear? Your latest blue-eyed fellow is coming. It's his bike.”

Ten years later, thirty years later, the same blue eyes. Sam's mouth opened and closed like a caught fish. But after a few moments he nodded, less at Bastian than at what Bastian's being here now meant, could mean, if not had to mean. Sam nodded more vigorously, taking a new measure of those old jurying stars, of how time and men, time and means, could constellate and shatter and constellate again, and not always forever more against you as Sam Kandy, great shattered shatterer, had long since been certain. What vanity! It was, for now, a freeing thought. And so, after Bastian righted his bike, the two men climbed the stone steps, one in front of the other, and Sam told Bastian to wait on the verandah and he went into the walauwa first, nodding after ten years at Arthur and Thusitha, at Hyacinth, at the servants waiting to the side. They were staring at the floor near his feet. Embarrassed to receive him dressed in their daily sarong and home skirt and blouse, or respectful? Or considering whether to queue and bow low and give ten years' respect? But then he looked down as well, just as a boy, bowing low, started running a die-cast toy car across Sam's black shoes. Running it hard, then looking up and disappearing. This was Dudley, who was called Arthur's son, when in truth or Latha's talking this was Sam's grandson, one of the thirteen George left behind in Ceylon.

“Welcome, Sam-aiya, after so long,” Arthur said, half standing, his voice all boom and quiver. “And where is …” He could have said lawyer George Madam Ethiopian. He said none of it and Sam's face showed none of it, and no one in the room minded the withering away of ten years' fear and curiosity.

“Sam-aiya,” said Thusitha, amazed her husband had not already yielded and called him Ralahami, “you must have had a long journey. Would you like to take a wash? Would you like tea?”

Sam said he would take tea now and take a wash later. And when she asked if tea should be sent down for the driver too Sam said there was no driver, that he had driven himself. And when they asked if Lalson should go down to empty the boot Sam said there was nothing to carry other than one suitcase and a shaving kit. Sam lit a cigarette and told them that he had come to stay. He remained standing. The room wondered if he would motion for Arthur to give up his seat, an oak-panelled armchair that Sam had sent from the city. All of them, Arthur included, wondered if Arthur ought to invite him to sit in one of the other chairs he had sent, for which had been rubbished stools and benches turned out long ago from village wood by village men for village headmen. Sam included, all of them wondered if Sam would accept Arthur's invitation and if so what then, what meaning, whose? Whose victory? He remained standing.

“For how long?” Arthur asked.

Sam said nothing. He was studying Hyacinth. She was not so pretty as Alice had been, but not so proud either. Her face was rounder, fuller, sweeter. His daughter was what, thirty years old now. She was not even a young woman. He had been sending her dollies for thirty years. He nodded at her.

“Appachchi,” she said, coming forward and giving respect. Then she stood, stepped back, and looked at her father. No, she looked just over his shoulder, past him, onto the verandah. Searching to see if he was waiting there with his stupid hope, or had he already gone?

“Shall I have him called in?” Sam asked her, now knowing why Bastian hadn't done anything save righting his bike and following Sam like a tail, then waiting outside just as Sam commanded. Was this what it would mean to have a son-in-law?

“Who?” she answered, her voice high and hollow and everyone listening looked away, pitying the girl, her poor acting, their mouths each whispering
Who
one hundred more believable ways, a roomful of quietly mad owls.

“Right. Who. Right.” Sam finished his cigarette. “Lalson!” he yelled, making all of them start, because Lalson was already in the room, standing within arm's reach. “Bring the betel and then tell the visitor he may come in.” Sam walked to the empty chair beside Arthur's and dragged it across the tiled floor to the centre of the room and there he sat waiting to receive his daughter's suitor, arranging himself like some bemused king.

Thirty minutes later, Bastian stopped telling. He waited for Sam to answer. And he looked over at Hyacinth who, like a proper highborn daughter, would not look back at him but only sidelong at her listening, now considering father, and otherwise at her feet, properly lost in the sylvan inlay of a toe-ring. At thirty, Hyacinth Kandy was long pitied and envied her father's indifference, which some thought came of her looking like her mother, and which others, Hyacinth included, thought was just indifference because she was not her brother and so never once gave Sam, gave anyone really, cause for anything more than that. She did not think this day would have come. She was still unsure whether her father even understood this day had come for her, that she was even in the room and if so, that he, Bastian, was in the room not only to say thank you to him, her father, for his getting him that first passage out of Colombo harbour but also to ask him about her, to ask for her, for her hand. She was and had been for twenty years too old for dollies and at thirty she should have been at least ten years too old to be married. But then this fellow had come and as of today had passed nearly exactly thirty auspicious days in the village, days spent walking with her and always with her nephew near and never but in highest light, listening without looking at him tell of yellow apples and of snow, its bluish colour in a field at night, how it became its own kind of yellow under streetlamps; its sound underfoot like schoolboys grinding their teeth at night. But unlike her mother and brother, Bastian had stayed here
because
of her father. And now it was her father who could give his assent and then horoscopes could be read and a time set and a visit to the chief monk made and then onto the poruwa they could go, and then, then he, Bastian, could stay truly, and Hyacinth Kandy would no longer be the sweet unnoticed girl sitting at other people's meals in her very birth-house.

Sam's ears were burning. Not from the story of going and coming—which Bastian enjoyed telling too much, which he told too much of—or even from hearing in that story the size of the dowry this fellow was going to expect, to keep making as if he were the only blue-eyed brown boy ever to have visited Sudugama. No, Sam's ears were burning from having to hear Bastian's audience make such sounds—pitying, wondering, shocked, worried, confused just as the Munich Tamils had been confused. How many times had they heard it? This latest telling ended with Bastian saying he had come and waited to give Sam his thanks for giving him his start into the world, which made Sam's ears ring, strain to hear more. But that was the only moment in the story that the walauwa people made no noise about.

“So now you have said thank you,” Sam said, finally. “And you have thanked these people, my relations, for letting you wait like this, here, to tell me.”

“Yes. Of course, Mahatteya.” Bastian turned his head. “And thank you, Ralahami.”

Arthur nodded gravely. Sam blackened. Called Mahatteya. Called Ralahami. How stupid. How fatal, to let Arthur be the one to be thanked, to be so named as he was thanked. Had they, Arthur and Bastian, planned this before Sam had come? Would Bastian next ask for a dowry and before Sam could answer Arthur would offer it from his own pettagama and steamer trunks filled by Sam's thirty years' running? And then Arthur would walk to the temple with Bastian to see the chief monk?

“And now that you have said thanks, you shall go,” Sam declared.

“Actually, Mahatteya, there is more,” Bastian answered. He had been practising this speech too, at night, sleeping beside the boy in the back room, across the hall from where, for the rest of his days, he would sleep beside his wife, were it granted that he could stay.

“Right. You say there is more,” Sam answered. Something had to be done. He had been in the village for one hour and already it was upon him to show that what was here was his to give or his to deny, his to defend.

“I also want to say, Mahatteya, that of all the places I have been to, this is the best place. This is the most beautiful place. I would also like to say, Mahatteya, about your daughter—”

“Where is your horoscope?” Sam barked. “Where are your parents?”

“What do you mean?” Bastian asked. “You know—”

“What kind of house do you think this is, what kind of people do you think we are, that you can come and stay and tell grand stories and make like you are something other than a vagabond?” Sam stood and walked across the room, toward him. “And while I have been away you have mooned with your bad omen eyes and fooled these village minds into thinking you have come down from Buckingham Palace itself on the devil's own motorbike to seek my only daughter's hand and when I grant it the morning after the wedding you will be gone and so will every piece of my gold.”