On Sal Mal Lane (8 page)

Alice, like her benefactor, was also bow legged; furthermore, she shared Mrs. Ratwatte’s countenance of constant outrage at what the world was perpetrating around them. In Alice’s case, this was a look directed almost exclusively toward her husband, Lucas. If the price of bread rose, it was because he had cast his vote for the new government. If the traffic went too fast for her to cross, it was because he had chosen to accept charity. And so on.

This evening, however, Alice was in high spirits. New people had moved in and with them had come the prospect of an improved hierarchy. The Silvas, whom she had never taken to and who had, in turn, never paid her or her husband any mind, could now be even more pointedly ignored as she, Alice, went in and out of the house next door to the Silvas as, surely, a welcome visitor. Here was a chance to create a whole new tale to explain her circumstances, maybe even employment, if they needed her help, and she felt like being generous. Yes, she might cook for them on occasion, to bail them out in an hour of need when a live-in servant went missing, she might do that. But first, she had to be introduced to them properly, and introductions were best handled by her husband. Already she had cooked three straight meals of rice and sambol, two of those with dried fish, to get him to move. She had also spoken of the matter of solidarity, for they were not simply new but, she had heard, they were Sinhalese Buddhists.

“If you don’t go today, someone else will get to them,” she said, as she squatted by the tap set into the back wall of their dwelling and scrubbed a blackened clay rice pot. “Can’t have some Muslim or Tamil women from the Elakandiya going there and inserting themselves.”

Lucas considered the possibility of one of the slum dwellers offering their services to the Heraths. Unlikely, he thought, the Heraths were far too new. He clucked his back teeth, dismissing his wife’s concerns. “No hurry. Nobody is going there now. The whole family has not even been here a full day,” he said, sitting on their one bench and smoking his
beedi.

Alice sucked at her cheeks in exasperation. Alice had always felt that she had married a fool and that even though his better looks and straight legs evened out the edges of her own less favorable ones, his pedigree could not quite compare with hers.

“You wait then. By tomorrow Silva Madam would have told them a pack of lies and they won’t want to have anything to do with us. You wait,” Alice said. Invoking the specter of gossip was ordinarily sufficient to galvanize Lucas, but this time it took a further statement. “Or, what is worse, the
lansis
will get hold of them and who will be able to help them then?”

At that, Lucas carefully snuffed out his
beedi,
tucked the left over half into the thatch of the roof over their veranda for retrieval later, and left without another word.

And what was it about the Bolling family that so disconcerted both the Silvas and the likes of Lucas and Alice? Poverty, and the shabbiness that went with it, yes, but Francie Bolling, who had once been a movie star, and Jimmy Bolling, a former Mr. Sri Lanka, had done worse: they had not lived up to their potential. The advertisers and pageant officials and film makers had disappeared with the birth of their first child, and, as if to confirm that their day in the sun was most definitely over, a freak accident had left Jimmy Bolling with a twisted left arm that he carried folded across his middle, its strength atrophying each year until it resembled not so much a limb as a gnarled twig. All that remained was the memory of a blessed time and decades of anonymity stretching into the future, years that stood no chance when weighed against what had once been. Jimmy Bolling had hoped that one of his children would repeat the glory that he and his wife had enjoyed, but none had. Sophia had forsworn beauty pageants altogether, Rose and Dolly were plain and built so solidly that it prompted people like Mrs. Silva to liken them to oxen, and, as far as Jimmy Bolling was concerned, Sonna was a good-for-nothing.

Lucas thought about all this as he went, picking his way through the mud and detritus of the compound. Even he, passive though he was, could not stand by and let the Bolling folk ingratiate themselves with the new family. That just would not do. No, these new people needed someone to protect them and obviously it would be up to him, like most things down that particular lane.

Despite his sense of importance, Lucas was a frail man. He was narrow from head to toe, with sparse gray hair on his head and chest, thin long arms and legs, and a scrape to his walk from what Sonna referred to as
lazy leg
whenever he saw Lucas. Furthermore, though he always unfurled his sarong from its half-tie above his knees to its full length down to his ankles as soon as he crossed the main road and set foot on the bottom of Sal Mal Lane, there was no disguising the fact that Lucas was not, in his appearance, the kind of man to be taken seriously by the serious-minded.

Safe in his own perceptions, however, as he tended to his sarong that morning, Lucas enjoyed the unknown quality of the new arrivals; his wife’s concern for them bode well, he felt, since Alice was usually given to letting her own melancholia sweep over and damn everybody she met, assuming that there was a gloomy order to the universe that she had not been capacitated to overcome. He had to wait a long while before he could get across the busy road, but he did not mind. This was actual work; he was going somewhere with a purpose.

“Ai! Mr. Lucas! Where are you going?” Sonna Bolling yelled from his father’s doorway. He had discarded his Sunday church-going clothes and was lounging against the door wearing jeans and suspenders looped and crossed over his bare upper body.

Lucas glanced up as he passed and was startled by what looked like a tattoo that covered the lower part of Sonna’s belly, a fist of writhing snakes, some of whose heads disappeared into his waistband. The tattoo was red and blue. It was not really a tattoo, it was simply colored ink from ballpoint pens with which Sonna had drawn a picture, an artful and very realistic one at that, in his effort to disguise three evenly spaced scars that stretched across his stomach. Seeing the effect it had on the old man, Sonna flexed the muscles on his chest. Lucas shuddered inwardly and kept on walking.

“Goin’ to talk to the new people?” Sonna asked, his tone mocking. He strode up to Lucas and imitated his walk for a few steps, growling softly and grinning all the while.

He might have seemed menacing from afar, a wiry boy closing in on an old man like that, but Lucas paid no heed. He was waiting until he reached the edge of the Silvas’ property with its staked fence and its araliya tree, which is when he usually turned and stamped his good foot and sent Sonna scurrying back to his perch against his father’s fence like a bird who could not fly. This morning, though, he was deprived of this fleeting enjoyment by the arrival of Raju, who appeared out of nowhere at top speed, his hands, attached to the ends of his disproportionately long arms, flapping wildly at his side. Raju usually walked with his head tilted sideways and hanging down as if he was helpfully exposing his neck to a tired executioner, but today he walked proudly, in gray trousers and a red T-shirt, with his head up and fire in his eyes.

“Sonna! Leave that poor man alone!” he shouted imperiously as he neared the group. Sonna stepped out from behind Lucas and confronted Raju, whose usual post-body-wash smell of Lifebuoy soap was now overlaid with far too many splashes of Brut.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” he asked.

Raju, in the full flush of his newfound status as A Friend of the Heraths, stopped a few feet away from them and put his hands on his waist. “Why are you doing this? Look at you. A fine boy. Go and help your father or something instead of disgracing him like this. We’re decent people, no? We Bollings and Josephs? Go!”

Lucas, who was wheezing very gently and balancing on his good foot, had put up one hand to shade his eyes so he could take in this new, authoritative Raju properly. As his eyes met Raju’s, Lucas had a sinking feeling that he had let down his wife: he had tarried too long. “Where are you going, Mr. Raju?” he asked.

“I’m going to get some . . .” Raju paused and his glance flickered to Sonna, who also seemed curious about his uncle’s new sense of purpose. He shuffled in place. “I’m going to get some cigarettes for Mr. Herath,” he said. “He doesn’t know the shops yet.”

They all knew that Raju’s cigarette run had nothing to do with Mr. Herath’s unfamiliarity with the shops; it had to do with Raju’s desire to ingratiate himself with the new people. This was comical to Sonna, who could not imagine any family accepting Raju into their fold as a helper, but it also prickled because, though he wanted to very much, he did not have the guts to approach the new family. He stepped toward Raju and sneered.

“So now you’re the servant boy?” Sonna said. “You have no shame, no? Not like us, respectable Bollings, we won’ go and do
pakkali
service for other people. Do they call you
kolla
?”

“Give the money to me. I will get the cigarettes.” Lucas’s voice cut through the taunts raining down on Raju. “You shouldn’t be doing these things, Mr. Raju,” he added. “You are from a good family, no? You can be their friend. You don’t have to do servant jobs.
I
can do them.
We
are here for that.”

Lucas was hoping to both reclaim the advantage that Raju appeared to have stolen from under his nose, that of liaising between the new family and the bakery, the vegetable sellers, and the cooperative store, and save Raju from his nephew. He only succeeded in one: Raju reached into his pocket and thrust the money into Lucas’s hand at the same time that Sonna put his uncle’s head into a vice. Just then they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. The Silva boys were returning from the store. Jith was carrying a very small bag made of used notebook paper. He held it carefully.

“I like the cloudy ones the best,” they heard Jith say. He glanced toward his brother and then his eyes darted quickly toward the Bollings’ house. He held the bag against his chest with one hand and put his other hand inside to feel the contents. He held up a milky-white marble streaked with pink and yellow and slowed his steps to examine it.

“I like the clear ones,” Mohan said as he reached in and took out two clear marbles, one blue, one green.

Sonna, listening to the irresistible sound of marbles, clamped down harder on Raju, who whimpered in pain. Sonna threw a grimace at Mohan, but he got no response. The Silva boys simply made it a point to walk around the group without making eye contact, quite as though they were stepping around a pile of cow dung, and continued to talk about their marbles as they walked unhurriedly toward their house. Lucas took the money and walked back the way he came, but he stopped at the Bollings’ door and banged on it until Jimmy Bolling yelled from inside.

“Why are you bangin’ on the bloody door, you fool? Come in!”

“It’s me, Lucas, sir,” Lucas shouted.

“Lucas! Open the door and come in!”

Lucas was not going to do that. The last time he had peered around that door, Francie Bolling had been striding about in her underwear, fanning herself with a newspaper. The entire Bolling clan seemed to think nothing of spending their days half naked, but he had always imagined that Francie Bolling was a cut above the rest, which had made the sight doubly distressing.

“Sir,” he said now, raising his voice against the closed door, “the boy . . . your boy is fighting on the road with Mr. Raju, sir.”

Jimmy Bolling let out a curse and Lucas heard the sound of him heaving himself off a chair. He came out in his shorts, his just-softening belly smooth and oddly virile in all its nakedness. He was smoking and his eyes squinted between puffs, and Lucas thought that, if he could overlook the injured arm, Jimmy Bolling, when he smoked, resembled an old actor named Marlon Brando, whose poster had appeared for one night at the Tamil movie theater when they showed an English film. He tried to remember the name of the film but could not, particularly with the sound of Jimmy Bolling hollering so close to his ears.

“Sonna! Get in here. I’m goin’ to belt you if I have to come out there!” This was a threat Jimmy Bolling uttered frequently with great success. It was something he carried out infrequently, his right fist was his usual choice of weapon, but his bulk, his collection of unworn leather belts awaiting some unknown purpose, and his bad temper were enough to dissuade any of his children from testing him. Sonna appeared, casting malevolent looks at Lucas.

“I wasn’ doin’ anythin’, Daddy!” Sonna began.

Jimmy Bolling, who had once taken pleasure in teaching Sonna how to walk and talk like a movie star, now found the sight of his son loathsome. Unspoken disappointments were strung like rain-soaked paper Vesak lanterns between them, and, with no hope of the sun ever coming out to restore the colors, let alone permit the lighting of the candles inside, they were miserably estranged. “Shut up,” he said. “I know what you are up to. Can’ you leave that poor bugger alone?” He looked up the road. Raju was shuffling home, and, farther up the road, Mohan and Jith picked up their pace. “You wan’ to fight? Then go an’ fight with the Silva boys. That’ll toughen you up.”

Sonna hung his head. He would never challenge the Silva boys to anything and his father knew it. The Silva boys were so untouchable his son had never even tried to cast a stray remark their way, let alone a punch. He shook his head in fresh disappointment, nodded to Lucas, and went back to his house.

“Don’t shame your father this way,” Lucas said, riding on the waves of Jimmy Bolling’s strength and Sonna’s crestfallen face. He left him standing there and went to fetch the cigarettes.

Good Cigarettes

At the bottom of Sal Mal Lane, Lucas rolled up his sarong, saluted Mrs. Bin Ahmed, who was sweeping the front of her yard, crossed quickly in front of a 120 bus, and headed for Koralé’s store. This was mostly a wood shop, but the proprietor, Koralé, had decided to expand it and now sold Gold Leaf and Bristol and even a few packets of Marlboro that he bought from one of the workers at the dock who ran a lucrative side business in contraband. He displayed those proudly alongside hand-rolled
beedi
and pink-and-white-striped sugar sticks, exercise books, sticking plasters, and the usual dry goods of rice, lentils, coconuts, canned fish, and spices. It was a good place for Lucas to start. It allowed him to drag out the high of announcing his favored status with the new family.