The Flower Boy (18 page)

Chandi looked longingly at the king coconut seller, who was walking past with a huge bunch of orange-gold thambilis on his shoulders. He had a sharp knife stuck into the waist of his sarong for cutting them open with.

The king coconut man had seen the white man asking the woman and the child if they had wanted something. He had seen her shake her head. He was upset because he felt they should have said yes, if only to help a fellow countryman.

He eyed them as he walked past and drew his own conclusions about what they were doing there and what their relationship was.

The little boy didn't look half white, he thought. That was good for the mother, less chance of insults and wagging tongues. Bad for the boy though, at least a lighter brown skin might have got him a halfway-decent job when he grew up.

Being a bastard wasn't bad if it got you a decent job.

Chandi watched the thoughts go through the king coconut man's head like a long train thundering through a station. He knew they were about him and his mother and that they were not nice.

Now he was glad Ammi had said no to the thambili man.

After an hour a train came chugging in with the ticket man hot on its heels, but it wasn't the one they wanted.

When the ticket man saw John, he panicked because he thought the railway high-ups had finally caught the station master with his pants down. Metaphorically speaking. Once he wiped the sweat out of his eyes and looked closer, he saw it was the white man from Glencairn and breathed easier. But only slightly.

The ticket man, like a lot of other people, assumed that the white folk all knew one another and spent their time drinking imported whisky and smoking imported cigarettes and talking to one another about their local employees.

Then he spotted Premawathi and Chandi hovering uncertainly behind him and his small eyes gleamed with the same train of thought that had thundered through the king coconut man's mind. Chandi hated him on sight.

The ticket man was a little disappointed when John bought only two tickets, but brightened up once more when he realized they were first-class. He heard the woman make a slight noise of protest, but not so loud that the white man heard, he noted with satisfaction.

Premawathi had started to protest but shut up, realizing the futility of arguing with John. Also because she had seen the knowing look in the ticket man's eyes, the same look she had seen in the king coconut man's eyes.

She moved so she was no longer shielded by John's broad back and stared directly at the ticket man. He felt her gaze and looked up, but quickly looked down again.

John sensed the tension and looked from one to the other. He too had seen the suggestive look the ticket man had given Premawathi but he was used to it. Every time he stopped to talk to one of the younger, more attractive tea pickers, he saw the same look in the eyes of those around him.

People assumed that Englishmen bedded the women who worked for them at some time or another.

Some did.

Others didn't.

And some did once.

The train finally came and Premawathi breathed a sigh of relief. The atmosphere was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

Two people got off the train looking sweaty and sleepy and wrinkled, an old man and his daughter. Or young wife. Who knew these days?

Four people boarded the train. A young couple who ran onto the platform out of nowhere. And Premawathi and Chandi. There was a brief moment of awkwardness just before they boarded. John put out his hand and Premawathi placed hers together at her chest in the traditional farewell. He let his hand fall to Chandi's head and ruffled his hair. Then John pressed something into his hand.

“Take care of your mother,” he said gruffly. Then he turned to Premawathi, who already had one foot on the train step as if she couldn't wait to get away. “Take care of yourself and take whatever time you need.”

She nodded. The train whistled and the engine driver's assistant hung out of the engine and waved his dirty green flag. They got in and the train pulled out. Despite herself, she looked back and saw that he was still standing there.

Remote.

Or was it lonely?

CHANDI LOVED TRAVELING by train. The gentle swaying and the rhythmic chug-chugging were comforting, especially now. His mother had settled into her first-class seat by the window and he was sitting opposite her. She had not spoken since the train started. She was worried about her mother, worried about John, about how Appuhamy would cope in her absence, about Ayah, Krishna and Rose-Lizzie.

It didn't occur to her to be worried about Disneris and the girls.

Chandi watched the expressions crossing her face like the scenery outside and knew what she was thinking. She was looking out the open window but he didn't think she was seeing anything.

Traveling first-class was a new experience for them both. Here, the seats weren't ripped open and dotted with vomit and betel chew. The floors were bare of sticky sweet wrappers and treacherous banana peels. There were no smelly people with live chickens and bad breath who carried on loud conversations with people at the other end of the carriage.

First-class was quite boring really.

He leaned out and watched the hills and people. The steep mountain passes intimidated even experienced engine drivers, so the train moved slowly. Chandi didn't mind because it allowed him a better view of the passing countryside. He wished with all his heart that Rose-Lizzie were there with him. They would have hung out the window and waved at people and hooted in tunnels and run up and down the length of the train, perhaps even navigated the scary parts between the carriages.

He could have done all of that on his own but it wouldn't have been the same.

He wondered what she was doing.

Outside, the green of the tea bushes changed from mountain to mountain. The looming shadows of some mountains fell on other mountains. Patches of sunshine turned square patches of tea into enormous sparkling emeralds, streams into liquid silver.

Old cows grazed contemplatively on tufts of grass between the black wooden railway sleepers and moved lazily away when they heard the shrill whistle of the approaching train. Sleeping fruit bats hung upside down from trees, looking like black fruit among the green leaves.

Bare-bodied farmers in paddy fields dug up the hard earth with their mammoties, and buffalos, and sickle-wielding women harvested the pale-gold paddies. When the train passed, they all stopped and watched it until it slowly lumbered past, then they went back to their digging and cutting.

Like the tea bushes, the paddy fields also varied in color, from the palest mint to the darkest gold, depending on age.

Chandi pulled his head in from the window to look at his mother, but she was still deep in thought, her mouth pursed and her brow furrowed, so he stuck his head out again.

The railway line curved sharply, and from a window of a carriage at the back of the train he saw another head leaning out. Another black, spiky-haired head about the same age as himself. Chandi grinned and waved. A hand waved back.

“Who are you waving at?” his mother asked idly.

He pulled his head in and sat down on the seat, relieved that she was talking again. “A boy at the back of the train,” he said.

She nodded and said “Oh,” and that was all. After five minutes of silence, he stuck his head back out the window and waited for another curve in the rail tracks, but when it came, the head was gone.

Chandi was a little irritated. Boring boy, he thought.

There was nothing to do in first-class. No people to watch, no conversations to listen to, no arguments or excitement.

He wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.

ABOUT AN HOUR after it had left Nuwara Eliya, the train stopped at a station. A few people got in and a few people got out. A few vendors ran up to the train and shouted out their wares. Pineapple. Peanuts. Sherbet. Cutlets. Chandi looked hopefully at his mother but she was staring into space.

He wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.

Then he remembered the something in his hand that the Sudu Mahattaya had given him. He opened his hand and looked. He closed his eyes, shook his head violently and looked again. Two green ten-rupee notes lay there.

For a minute he thought about what this fortune could do for his England fund, but that was the problem. It
was
a fortune. If it had been five rupees, he might have been able to pocket it without too much guilt, but not twenty. Pocketing twenty was robbery, pure and simple.

He reluctantly held it out to her. She stared at it uncomprehendingly.

“The Sudu Mahattaya gave it to us,” he said.

“When?” she asked in confusion.

“When we got on the train,” he said. “Here, take it.”

She took it wordlessly and looked at it.

“You'd better put it away,” he said practically. “Otherwise the train will start and the wind might blow it out of the window.”

She reached into her blouse and withdrew the little straw hambiliya she kept there. She carefully folded the money and placed it with the other ten rupees.

“You shouldn't have taken it,” she said accusingly. “You should have refused.”

“I didn't even know what it was,” he said. “He put it into my hand and then we got on the train.”

“Still,” she said.

Still what? Chandi thought sulkily. She had put it into her hambiliya pretty quickly. If she didn't want it, she could give it back to the Sudu Mahattaya when they got back. Or give it to him.

Fat chance.

The train started again. Chandi returned to the window. The scenery outside the window was even prettier, mountains shrouded in wispy mist. It was like a floaty, slow-moving dream.

Chandi wondered what Rose-Lizzie was doing.

ABOUT HALF AN hour later, the train arrived at the Badulla station.

As it stopped with its usual clanging and banging and screaming brakes, his mother suddenly woke up from her reverie.

“Badulla already,” she said, flustered. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“How was I to know?” Chandi said. “There isn't even a sign and I've never been here before.”

There was no time to argue, so they grabbed their bag and hurried off the train before it could start again.

This station was as busy as the other one, but there was no time to take it all in. They walked outside and handed the ticket man their tickets. He didn't look at the two of them like the ticket man in Nuwara Eliya had. Actually, he didn't look at them at all, only at the tickets, which he tore in one corner and returned to them.

Chandi carefully put them in his pocket to show Rose-Lizzie when they returned to Glencairn.

Badulla was unlike any place Chandi had ever seen. It was crowded and noisy and the streets were full of people and cattle and cars belching thick black fumes and honking rudely. It was all very new and exciting, but he longed for the quiet sounds of Glencairn.

The bus station was even more crowded, with people, vendors, suitcases and boxes. They walked from bus to bus, looking anxiously at name boards until they finally saw one that said DENIYAYA.

There was no one on the bus, not even the driver or ticket conductor, so they sat on the hot wooden bench under the cement shelter to wait. Chandi's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and his neck ached. There was a man selling impossibly colorful sherbet from a small cart. He ran a metal spoon along the line of bottles invitingly, shouting,
“Sherrrrr-bet! Sherrrrr-bet!”

As Chandi watched, a woman walked up and bought a sherbet. The man deftly filled a large glass with red sherbet, added the little black casa-casa and then put in a spoon of crushed ice from the pail next to him. He stirred the lot together noisily and handed it over with a flourish.

The woman drank thirstily, and Chandi watched longingly. She suddenly looked his way and caught him watching. He flushed deeply and looked away, hoping his mother hadn't noticed. She was always telling him not to stare at people. He wished he had kept the twenty rupees.

He spotted a tap a little distance away, murmured something to his mother and went to get a drink of water. Tap water was not better than cold sherbet but it was better than nothing.

He first splashed some on his hot face and sweaty neck, then cupped his hands, put his mouth to them and drank steadily until he felt his thirst slide down his stomach and rest comfortably in his bladder. He wanted to take some water to his mother but there was no container. He urinated onto a small date plant, which nodded happily as urine rained down on it. Maybe it had been thirsty too.

He returned to his mother feeling much better.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“I went to drink some water and do susu,” he said.

“You should have told me. I would have bought us some sherbet,” she said.

He stared at her and then sighed. What was the point?

“There's a tap over there, if you're thirsty,” he said.

He watched her walk over to the tap, stoop and drink, and then walk back. When she wasn't half running, she walked quite nicely, he decided. She swayed gently and he saw two men turn to look at her. Admiring. Not like the ticket man and the thambili man.

The two men turned out to be the bus driver and ticket conductor, and they both looked pleased when Chandi and his mother boarded the bus.

“Sit here in front. Less bumpy,” the ticket conductor said in a friendly voice. They obediently sat on a front seat, Chandi by the window and his mother in the aisle seat.

The driver started the bus and while he warmed up the engine, more passengers arrived. They pulled out jerkily and were finally on the road.

Exhausted by the day and lulled by the rhythm of the bumping, jolting bus, they slept, their heads resting uncomfortably on each other's shoulder.

Halfway to Deniyaya, the bus stopped for a refreshment break at a wayside tea shop.

The bus conductor gently shook Premawathi, leaving his hand on her shoulder a little longer than necessary. It was, after all, a nice shoulder.