The Hungry Ghosts (10 page)

Then one day I chose the biography of Montgomery Clift, moved without fully realizing it by the star’s beauty on the cover. Over the next few days, I read with growing wonder about his love of men; read about where such desire led—the soliciting of sex in dark streets and the backrooms of seedy bars, his body pawed over by rough sailors. The star despaired over his homosexuality (a word I had not encountered before) and became addicted to alcohol and pills, finally crashing his car into a telephone pole and ruining his
once-famous beauty. In the last photograph taken before he died of a heart attack, Clift, at forty-six, looked shrivelled and haunted.

I was repelled by the actor’s life. Yet this aversion was surmounted by the momentous discovery that I, too, was a homosexual. And with this realization, vague sexual desires, dreams and furtive masturbation coalesced around that word. The sheer surge of my suppressed adolescent lust swept away shame or guilt or fear, along with the warnings, revealed by the biography, that my life would be miserable.

At school, now, I allowed myself to contemplate how beautiful boys’ necks were when they were thrown back in a laugh, the aching, vulnerable knob of their Adam’s apples; the way beads of sweat trembled in the indentation between their noses and lips, the way thin white cotton trousers pulled tight across thighs when they sat. That easy contact with them caused a constant spilling over of warmth within me—brushing against a classmate’s hips when entering a class, the boy with whom I was sharing a textbook unconsciously pressing his leg against mine, his heady smell of sweat and Lifebuoy soap.

During the interval, I took to standing on the open second-floor corridor watching a rugger game in the quadrangle below, observing the flecks of grass and dried mud on stringy thighs, the glimpse of white underpants when boys were tackled, the sweat that glistened on their collar bones, hair so charmingly slicked across foreheads. I had always been repelled by sports, but now I longed to be down there among my classmates, to grab a boy by the waist and bring him down in a tackle, to lie on top of him, crotch pressed against his crotch or stomach or buttocks; to embrace a boy who had scored a goal, to stand with my arm around the sweaty hot shoulder of a team mate. I’d lean against the balustrade to hide my erection and my head would grow light with desire. Finally, to distract myself, I would tear my eyes away to the sky or the rooftop or the crows along the gutter.

Most of the boys in my school were wealthy and would be going abroad for higher education; most of them had chosen America. During the interval they constantly talked about how America, besides offering a superior education, was a Mecca for sexual adventure, the place where women were for the picking.

The idea of sexual freedom began to take root in me, too. If America offered such opportunity for sex with women, did it not offer similar opportunity for
people like me? I was provided with the answer in that random way one often finds answers—in my dentist’s waiting room, where I read a
Time
magazine article on the gay movement in San Francisco and New York. I smuggled the magazine home and hid it under my mattress, taking it out many nights to read the article again and study the photographs of men holding hands and kissing right there in the street.

I became a member of the American Center Library, housed in a mansion on Flower Road. The library’s ground floor contained a room largely devoted to periodicals and prospectuses for American universities, along with well-thumbed copies of SAT and TOEFL study books. I often ran into boys from my class there, leafing through booklets and taking down information on where to send applications and what scholarships were being offered. As I looked through the prospectuses, I would pause at pictures of students lying in the grass, sun glinting in their hair, or hunched around a cafeteria table in earnest talk, or walking arm in arm down a corridor. I would gaze particularly at the men. Once in America, I told myself, I would become the person I really knew myself to be. In America, I would be popular, I would be gregarious, I would be witty, I would be handsome. In America, the sun would glint in my hair as I lay on manicured university lawns or strode across campus with my new friends. And I would never return to Sri Lanka. The glistening blond wood of the library floor, the faintly chlorinated smell of air conditioning—always a smell of privilege in the tropics—confirmed this promise.

Yet when I left the American Center Library—often having hung around until it closed—and cycled home through the rapidly descending dusk, a clogging misery would spread through me. I was not smart enough to get a scholarship, and my grandmother would never allow me to go abroad to study, even though she could afford the fees. My future had already been decided.

It was at the American Center Library that I first got to know Mili Jayasinghe. I see him, for a moment now, not as the person I would come to know so well, but as the icon he was at that time: captain of the first eleven cricket team, head prefect, son of Tudor Jayasinghe, one of the richest men in Sri Lanka. I see him walking along school corridors with his easy loose-limbed grace, hands in pockets, white shirt and long pants crisply ironed; I see his long, elegant features and his glistening black hair, falling over his forehead to
obscure his burnt-caramel eyes, his skin, from his Burgher mother, the tan of unglazed pots. A coterie of boys was always around him, their worship unstinting, because Mili was easy with his friendship. He did not withhold it, like other popular boys, as a privilege to be earned.

That afternoon at the American Center I was bent over a prospectus for a San Francisco university when I felt someone’s gaze on me. I looked up and saw Mili watching me from across the room. He signalled with two fingers to his lips that he was going outside to smoke and that I should come with him. I gaped, then looked down at the prospectus, sure he must be gesturing to someone else. Though we had been in the same class for years, I had never spoken to him beyond an occasional mumbled greeting. After a moment, his shadow fell across my page. “What, Shivan, are you blind or something? Let’s go out and have a fag.” He smiled with amiable amusement to show he understood my surprise at being selected but thought it silly. I got up and hurried to keep pace with his loping stride, close enough to notice for the first time his scent like sea water.

Mili led me to the shade of an araliya tree. As he leaned back against the trunk, his arched torso strained the gap between his shirt buttons, revealing his navel and the fanning of hairs around it. He drew out a cigarette, lit it, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. For a while he was quiet, enjoying his cigarette, eyes hooded as he gazed into the mid-distance and exhaled smoke. I stood before him, right arm rigid across my stomach, hand clutching my left elbow.

“How is Renu, by the way?”

“My sister?”

“Yes, Renu. Don’t you know I volunteer with her?”

“Volunteer?”

He grinned at my bewilderment. “At Kantha. You know, the women’s organization.”

Kantha was headed by Sriyani Karunaratne, Renu’s history professor at the University of Colombo, which she had entered that year. Karunaratne was a feminist, and Renu’s feelings about men and the power they enjoyed over women—the condition of her own mother; the male students who harassed her because she was more intelligent than they were—had found expression through feminism. My sister approached everything with fervour, and she had
soon become embroiled in fighting for the rights of women employed in the garment factories in the recently opened up free trade zone.

“But why on earth do you volunteer for this organization?” I asked, surprise making me bold.

“Because I want to make a difference in the world. I want Sri Lanka to be a better place.”

I nodded, but was still baffled at Mili Jayasinghe undertaking such work, which was the province of unpopular, sanctimonious, weak, often religious boys in our school.

“What are you planning to take in America?” he asked.

“Um, English literature.” I blushed, caught unawares by his question.

“I’m going to study international development.” He gave me a long but timid look from under his lashes. “Unlike a lot of buggers who are planning to get the hell out of this country and never return, I want to come back and put something into Sri Lanka. I want to make things better for people who are poor and suffering here. I love Sri Lanka, and I’m not going to desert it. And I’m certainly not taking over my pater’s bloody garment factories and exploiting poor women.”

I understood he had asked me what I was going to study so he could tell me about his own plans and hear how his ideas sounded out loud. I was probably the first boy in our school he had confessed them to, and no doubt he’d singled me out because he counted me among the poor and downtrodden, being a charity student. I sensed his vulnerability, his shyness about his ambitions.

“Gosh,” I said, “if you keep this up, you’ll be the Mother Teresa of Sri Lanka.”

He laughed. “That’s good, machan. The Mother Teresa of Sri Lanka.” He tilted his head to one side. “I didn’t know you were such a wit.”

“Yes, yes,” I continued, thrilled at this compliment, “when you come off the plane, freshly returned from America, multitudes will line up to garland you and touch your feet.” He laughed again. “Our very own Sri Lankan Gandhi. You will ride in a bullock cart, to show you are a humble man of the people. Women will let down their hair and swoon when you pass.”

“What else?” He grinned, body tilted back, eyes slightly narrowed, as if appraising an object for purchase.

“Oh, there will be no stopping you.” I was sweating from my desire to impress him. “Soon your teeth will be stained red from chewing bulath. You
will smoke foul-smelling beedies instead of American cigarettes, you will stop using deodorant and be rank with the true odour of Lanka.”

“And what will I wear?”

“Hmm, I was going to say the national costume, but realistically that is no longer the outfit of the common man. You certainly don’t want to go about looking like a politician. No, you will wear a loin cloth and walk around with a scythe over your shoulder to show solidarity with the workers.”

“A loin cloth! But my arse will be on display for everyone to see.”

“Yes, that is why I said women will let down their hair and swoon. At the sight of your hairy backside. And of course chief among your admirers will be my dear sister. Our very own goddess Kali, She Who Is Blacker Than the Night,” I said, shamelessly offering up Renu to get another laugh.

“That is too much, machan,” Mili tittered. He drew on his cigarette and exhaled, dark purple lips parting and pulling down slightly at the corners. He cocked one leg against the tree trunk and his grey jeans pulled tight. I looked away.

“So, are you finished at the library, Shivan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you come back to my house? It’s not far from here. Do you have a bike?”

I nodded.

Mili led the way towards Cinnamon Gardens. The Jayasinghes lived on Horton Place in a three-storey Georgian mansion with a long driveway that curved around an oval of lawn. There were square turrets at either end of the house. When we reached the gate, Mili pointed to one of the turrets. “My room is up there. You’ll like the view, machan.” He grinned. “With binoculars, you won’t believe the Cinnamon Gardens titties I have seen.”

“Ah, the Sex Fiend of Cinnamon Gardens,” I declared, wanting to prevent any serious discussion of women and sex. “The Daring Deviant of the Propertied Classes.”

He nodded to egg me on as we wheeled our bicycles up the driveway.

“Read all about it.” I held up my hand to declaim a headline. “Scion of Noble Family Reveals All about Damsels of Cinnamon Gardens. Find Out Who Has One Tit, Who Has No Tits at All, Who Is Three-titted.”

We were almost at the house now, and I noticed a Mercedes-Benz was parked in the porte cochère, a driver lounging beside it. When he saw the car, Mili halted, frowning. Then he continued up the driveway at a quicker pace, as if he had forgotten I was with him. I followed. Once we reached the house, Mili shoved his bicycle against a wall and said to the driver, “Are they already home from the club?”

The driver nodded. Some silent exchange sent a twitch of alarm over Mili’s face.

He turned to me. “Machan, the pater and mater are home, so maybe another time, ah?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. Yet before I could turn my bicycle around, there was a gabble of voices within and footsteps clattered towards the verandah.

Tudor Jayasinghe strode out of a French door, his bald head bent as if about to charge, Mili’s mother following. Some of the loops in her elaborate hairstyle had come undone and lay in coils about her shoulders. “That’s right, leave, you bloody bastard,” she shrieked. “Run to your bloody whore.” She took off one of her high-heeled shoes and flung it, hitting her husband in the back.

He spun around and moved towards her, fists raised in a boxer’s stance.

“Don’t touch her, you bloody shit.” Mili rushed up to the verandah. He shoved his father away and stood with arms outstretched to protect his mother.

Mr. Jayasinghe looked like he was going to hit Mili, but then his fists fell by his sides. He turned towards the car, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his palm. Mili’s mother collapsed into a chair and began to cry with great choking sobs.

“Amma, Amma, don’t.” Mili knelt to embrace her. “What’s the point in crying?”

She clung to him, still sobbing.

I had already seen more than was decent. Turning my bicycle, I rode down the driveway, wincing at how loudly my tires ground the gravel.

Even if Mili’s mother had not mentioned the “bloody whore,” I would have guessed the cause of the quarrel, for the Jayasinghes were a prominent family and the gossip about them was well known. Mili’s father had a mistress, a famous film star, and the two of them were frequently seen about town at various hotels and clubs. He had even brought the mistress to Nuwara
Eliya for the racing season and set her up in a suite at the Grand Hotel. He would spend days, and sometimes nights, with her, abandoning his wife and son at their holiday chalet. Mrs. Jayasinghe and Mili had become virtual prisoners, unable to attend the races or go into town for fear of meeting the couple in public. I was sure, now, that the real reason Mili had joined Kantha was to rebel against his father. The organization protested against conditions in the very garment factories Tudor Jayasinghe owned. I knew from Renu that people from Kantha frequently went out to the free trade zones to educate women workers about their rights and offer practical help with housing and birth control. By participating, Mili was shaming his father.