On Sal Mal Lane (35 page)

There was his home, his family, to consider when all the news from the North came not as information but as incitement, and mobs roamed the streets of every town throughout the island, including this capital city where he lived. To barricade the doors and stay inside, or to go out and confront the thugs? To be a householder or to be a Tamil, that had been the choice. And he had chosen his family. Listening to tales of brutality, of burning temples, burning kovils, of men with shirts tucked in who attacked those whose shirts were untucked, of people running, running, he stayed inside.

When the call to his parents brought the sound of fear and desperation to him over a distance that rendered him impotent, what had he done then? He had made calls to his colleagues in parallel posts, those with last names that were like his and those that were not, in Batticaloa, in Jaffna, asking them for their help, learning that help was not possible, everybody was afraid, everybody was being attacked, when there was both a Hindu temple and the Buddhist Naga Vihara burning, when Sinhalese Marxists lay dead beside Tamil civilians, there was no trust left.

But then he remembered the words he had uttered in 1977, just two years before the Heraths had moved in. And, remembering, Mr. Niles squeezed his eyes shut against the boy sitting before him. He squeezed them and still Nihil remained on his mind, Nihil and his question about war. He had said those words in the quiet of his home,
let us move back where we belong,
but he hadn’t meant them, not the way they had to be meant for his family to uproot themselves and leave with him. He had not been able to say them with enough force, with finality, because the place that he wanted to return to had been tarnished by the murder of Alfred Duraiappah, the mayor of Jaffna, a man he had admired, and the rise of Prabhakaran, a militant he loathed. Everything was muddied, between his anger at the thugs who belonged both to “his” people who were Tamil and “their” people who were Sinhalese, and all the people he loved who crossed between those two categories, the racial distinctions blurring again and again. And as if all that were not enough, his daughter now grown up and unmarried, his wife moving toward reconciliation to that fact, himself sick. Yes, he had sent up that feeble cry, though he had known even then that there was no home left to go back to, his parents gone, his sisters relocated and living in Batticaloa for two decades.

In the end his own answer had been no. He had built a life here in the city and there was no reason to abandon it. But what had he done with those feelings of disquiet? Where had he put them? It agitated him to ponder these questions, to remember such moments, when to answer
no
to moving had not necessarily translated into an
yes
for staying, only an acknowledgment of reality.

“You don’t have war in you either,” Nihil interrupted his thoughts, forcing the answer he wanted Mr. Niles to give him. “If you did, I would know,” he said. Saying the words aloud, Nihil knew they were true and the last remnants of his fears left his body as he uttered them.

Mr. Niles wiped his face, glad that Nihil could not tell that this time he really was crying. He picked up a fresh handkerchief, blew his nose, and said as clearly as he could, “Yes, you would know, Nihil. You would know if I did, that is true.” He remained silent for a while, his eyes closed, slowly turning his back on the upheavals he had just revisited. When he opened his eyes again, Nihil was reading a Hardy Boys book that he had brought with him. Mr. Niles watched him, and as he did so the images in his head receded further in his memory. He was here now, this was his life, the whole and the end of it, in the company of this boy. Nihil, feeling his gaze, looked up.

“Put the book away, Nihil,” Mr. Niles said at last, and Nihil obliged right away. When he was in a talkative mood, Mr. Niles was likely to open yet another window into his life by giving Nihil one thing or another from his past: a silver comb that fit into his pocket, a Parker pen with a bottle of purple-blue ink, and books. Always, books.

But this time, Mr. Niles did not share a memory. He said, “I have something important to discuss with you. We know you don’t have war inside you, so let us see what you do have in you.”

“Nothing,” Nihil said, disappointed, twisting his hands, palms up. “I just study and go to school and come home and play the piano and fly kites even though we don’t fly kites anymore these days because of what happened with Devi’s blue-and-silver one. And I take care of Devi.”

“Ah yes, you take care of Devi.”

The sentence hung in the air between them. Nihil thought about Devi. He did take care of her, but since her stumble and the resulting placement into Mrs. Niles’s arms, he had felt less insecure about her well-being when she came for her piano lessons. Besides, his book of what he knew had remained blank for weeks, except, now and then, something about Uncle Raju. But the something about Uncle Raju was not anything to be taken seriously for, after all, Uncle Raju was everybody’s worry. He was Suren’s worry for fear that their mother would discover that Devi had traipsed all over the neighborhood and ended up in his stinking garage; he was Rashmi’s worry because she didn’t like the way he dressed, though even that had ceased to worry her as much since he began wearing his khakis at all times; and he had always been Nihil’s worry because, well, Raju was Raju. The one person for whom Raju was not a worry was Devi herself.

“I don’t worry about her so much anymore,” Nihil said. “Nothing has come to me recently. Nothing bad is going to happen to her.” He considered that for a moment then added, “Nothing yet,” just in case he was tempting fate by making an all-encompassing statement.

“Then, Nihil, it is time you went back to cricket.” Mr. Niles leaned forward as he said this, then leaned back again and waited to see what effect it would have.

Nihil regarded Mr. Niles in the quiet accented by the piece that Devi was now playing: Bagatelle in A Minor, op. 59, a safely watered-down version of “Für Elise.” This was something he had wanted to bring up with Mr. Niles himself, this matter of going back to cricket. Two of his best friends were now staying after school to practice with the junior team. One cricketer, Ranjan Madugalle, had made the first eleven at the age of fifteen, and he was not only talented but beautiful. Nihil did not feel he was either, though he did think he had some potential on the talent front, certainly more than either of his friends.

“Ranjan Madugalle went on to play for the national team in our first Test match against England,” he said, continuing his thoughts aloud. “Once, when he was playing for Royal, I got his autograph and because he knew my mother, he let me wear his colors cap, just for a few minutes while he was signing autographs for the girls . . .” and he stopped there, adoration for the older cricketer fairly seeping out of his body.

Mr. Niles laced his long fingers together and contemplated Nihil. “Long ago, he was just a boy like you,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Nihil said. “I think he was always a star batsman.”

“Nonsense. Nobody gets to be good without wanting it badly enough. How badly do you want it?”

Nihil flattened his back against the woven cane. How badly did he want it? Had Mr. Niles not heard his footsteps as he bowled while one or the other of the children of Sal Mal Lane waited by a makeshift crease? Had he not heard the children cry out in admiration when he, Nihil, batted? Could he not feel his dreams of not merely driving the ball with such elegance that people would refer to
him
as
a young Madugalle,
but also bowling a fast delivery to a nine-man slip cordon as Australia’s Dennis Lillee had done in 1977 against New Zealand and keeping wickets like England’s Alan Knott and fielding like India’s Sunil Gavaskar, flying through the air to make the game-winning catch? Yes, he had Devi to watch over, but how could Devi compare with
that
moment?

“I was thinking that Devi is probably safe to come here for piano without me,” he breathed out at last, knowing that this was what he needed to say, and this was the person in whose presence he could say those words. Then, caught up in the enthusiasm that followed from Mr. Niles, he forgot entirely that he had come to this decision alone.

“Good!” Mr. Niles fairly shouted as he clapped his hands, once, together, his past with its many capitulations forgotten. “Then next time, you stay at school for practice and she can come alone.”

“Uncle Raju can bring her,” Nihil said, thinking aloud, realizing that neither Rashmi nor Suren was home on Fridays, when he and Devi had their lessons, Rashmi having taken up netball too. “Or Kamala, but I think she would prefer Uncle Raju.”

“Yes, Raju is a good person,” Mr. Niles said. “You know, he and Kala were children together down this lane just like you are now.” His eye began to run again and he paused to rub it with a handkerchief. When he looked up from dropping the cloth into the wicker basket that sat on a stool beside his chair for this purpose, he noticed that Nihil had slumped his shoulders down. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Kala Akki won’t change my lesson, and she can’t move Suren or Rashmi because Suren’s lesson is too long and Rashmi has other activities after school,” he said, his voice, which had taken on a timbre of shy excitement, now flat, “and anyway, Amma will be annoyed if I stop music.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Kala Akki! I will manage her. She will take you on another day, and you can tell your mother that Uncle Niles arranged the whole thing because he thinks you are a good cricketer! No, tell her I
know
that you are going to be a great cricketer!”

“Tha is buying me a leather ball for my birthday when I’m thirteen,” Nihil said. “Next year I’ll get it. I can’t wait to take it to school and show everybody.”

“Well then, young man, there is one more thing you need.”

“What is that?”

“Go quietly past Kala Akki, so you don’t disturb the lesson, go into my room, open the drawer at the bottom of the chest there with all those medicines, and take out your new gloves!”

Nihil jumped up from his chair, ran, screeched to a halt before he opened the connecting door, then tip toed through the rooms that contained so much still air, the Nileses preferring to keep their windows shut against dust and insects. He could smell the mild frankincense scent of the
sambrani
that Mrs. Niles lit each afternoon to keep the mosquitoes away, throwing the crushed resinoid into the coals that glowed in the hand-held metal pan she kept for this purpose. He had some difficulty getting the last drawer opened, the handles having come off. He had to slide his hand underneath the bottom of the chest and ease the drawer out a little bit at a time until he could create enough space on top to grasp it from the front and pull it open.

The gloves were not new, they were white and worn, a little big for his hands, but who cared? He put them on and off a few times, imagining himself putting them on as he walked toward the pitch, his bat tucked under his arm, and taking them off as the crowd cheered when he walked back to the pavilion after. The gloves, with their mix of cloth and cotton and rubber, felt as though they were full of history, full of skill.

When he returned he was grinning, as was Mr. Niles. He felt his heart swell as he looked at the old man; Mr. Niles was more animated than he had ever been during any of their discussions over the past three years. Nihil felt pleased to have brought this much excitement into Mr. Niles’s otherwise calm life. It made the old man seem younger. He looked like he could get up and walk.

“Can you walk?” Nihil asked, a question that he had always wanted to ask before but that had never seemed permissible until today.

“Yes, I walk twice a day, with great difficulty and a lot of help from Aunty and Kala Akki, one on either side. I walk here in the morning and I walk back to my bed at night. Some days I think it would be easier for them if I just stayed here and went to bed, but then I would develop other problems and that would be make life more complicated for them,” he said. “We don’t want that.”

“If I play a game of cricket, will you be able to come to see me?” Nihil asked.

Mr. Niles laughed out loud and ran his fingers through his hair, then stabbed the air with his index finger as he declared, “If you make the team, Nihil, I will make them take me to the car, and I will have them drive me to the Oval and I will sit up in the parked car and watch you smash that ball over the boundary line for a sixer!” He swept his arm over his head, indicating the trajectory of that ball.

Nihil’s smile widened as he listened, seeing everything, the Oval, Mr. Niles in the parked Morris Minor laughing, himself at the wicket holding the pose as the ball lifted away from his bat, higher, higher, out of reach of hands, of legs, far over the looping rope of the boundary where some boy, a boy such as he had once been but was no longer, would leap from the stands to catch it and take it home and dream of glory. He jumped up from his chair and enfolded Mr. Niles in a fierce embrace. “Not the Oval, not yet,” he said, as the old man patted his back and kissed the top of his head, “just the school grounds.”

“Ah, someday it will be the Oval. But you must start next week!”

Just like that, it was decided. Devi would come to her lessons with Raju, Nihil would stay after school for cricket, and the worrying would abate and eventually stop. Nihil lifted his face up to the wind as he walked home with Devi after her lesson that day, feeling euphoric, and Devi, seeing his delight, laughed at his side and lifted her chin up in imitation. They breathed the scent of the sal mal flowers as they went, and though Devi did not yet know the full extent of Nihil’s bliss, they both felt as though they were walking on air.

Except, of course, that nothing is quite so simple. Fears that he had nourished for so long were not going to stay dormant. A curse invoked at birth about a girl, and one so full of fire and spirit as Devi, was unlikely to relinquish its hold. The care and keeping of their younger sister would occupy them all again, but for now Nihil strode onto the pitch wielding his bat like a walking stick, a grown-man tilt to his young-boy head. He was Zaheer Abbas. He was Roy Dias. He was Gary Sobers.