The Flower Boy (2 page)

But then there was the other funny thing. Ammi (that was what he called his mother because he was only four; Rangi and Leela called her Amma but they were seven and ten), Ammi had made the mulberry jam.

He knew that because he had helped her pick the ripe mulberries from the four trees behind the garage where the Sudu Mahattaya's big silver car reposed in all its splendid, pampered glory. He had seen her cook them in the big pot that she called “my jam pot and let me not catch anyone using it for anything else.”

Since Ammi had picked the mulberries and made the jam, didn't that make it her jam? And since he was her son, didn't that, in a slightly removed way, make it his jam too?

A fierce gust of wind drove a splatter of big, painful raindrops into the shelter and into his face. He shut his eyes and concentrated on finding a logical explanation for this new dilemma.

A drenched frog sat between the drain and Chandi's bare feet and croaked hoarsely, trying to make itself heard above the rain and Chandi's thoughts.

An hour later, Chandi was no closer to an answer, and besides, all this thinking about mulberry jam was making him hungry again.

He wondered how long it took for a baby to be born.

chapter 2

FROM THE MOMENT HE HAD WOKEN THIS MORNING, HE HAD KNOWN something was up. Even before he had sat up on his mat and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, he had felt the feeling.

He had lain there listening for the familiar sounds of pots and pans and running water and Ammi's voice raised in exasperation as she berated Krishna for dragging his feet, and other kitchen sounds he had heard every morning since he was old enough to hear kitchen sounds.

He had sniffed the air for the smells of wood burning and baking bread and the faint odor of Krishna the servant boy's sweat that permeated everything. The smells were there, but the sounds were not. Instead there had been a breathless hush, like the expectant pause before a loud belch.

When he wandered outside into the big kitchen and stood there surveying the scene, he was sure something unusual was happening.

On the surface, everything looked normal enough.

The gray cement floors had been scrubbed that morning, the two sets of windows were thrown open, the hearth which ran like a shelf along the length of the far wall had been swept and the three wood fires were burning, the firewood had been brought in and sat in neat stacks under the hearth and the variety of soot-blackened pots and pans lay neatly on the shelf above the long kitchen table.

But it wasn't normal.

Krishna leaned against the kitchen doorjamb lazily scratching his armpit, while Ammi rushed past without stopping to twist his ear and hiss, “You lazy hog, there's work to be done,” like she usually did.

She didn't stop to say Happy Birthday either.

He went out into the backyard and urinated into the drain, swinging from side to side, trying to wet as much of the dry concrete as he could.

The sky was a sullen gray, heavy with unfallen rain. The birds knew something was up because they were silent. The few that dared to sing sang quietly, as if they were afraid of waking the sleeping stillness. Even the leaves were still.

Chandi wondered if he could get away without brushing his teeth this morning. He hated the taste and feel of ground charcoal in his mouth, and didn't really believe his teeth would fall out if he didn't brush them every day, although he didn't say anything to Ammi when she told him so.
She
obviously believed they would, so who was he to disillusion her? He was only four years old. Today.

He went back inside and immediately bumped into his mother, who was hurrying past with the mulberry jam to set on the dining table. “Chandi, not now!” she said impatiently. “I have so much to do! Don't get in my way!”

She had been in
his
way. Not the other way about. But he said nothing. Five minutes later, she rushed in, pushed a plate of roti and jam into his hands.

That was when she had said, “Eat it quickly before someone comes in. One day I'll get into trouble because of you! Jam! What next!”

He sat down and ate.

When the last bit of mulberry jam had been wiped up by the last piece of roti, he took his plate over to the sink.

The sink was a cemented square pit set into the floor, with an outlet for water and a tap in the wall above it. He had strict instructions not to go near it so he set his plate down and waited for someone to come along and open the tap so he could wash his mulberry-jammy hands.

When someone finally came along, it was his sister Rangi. Rangi was his favorite. She walked to school with him, sometimes holding his hand and swinging it gently. His other sister, Leela, never had time for him. She never walked. She rushed, like Ammi.

Chandi could share his secrets with Rangi. He showed her his collection of stones from the spot in the garden where the overhead gutter leaked, his onion plant which he had grown himself, and he even let her feed his guppy, who lived in a jam bottle in a corner of their room.

Rangi teased him and tickled him until fat tears of laughter ran down his face. Then she would gently wipe them away and brush her nose against his. His heart would swell with love, and for the rest of the day he would follow her around with doglike devotion, knowing she would not get exasperated or impatient like Leela did.

HE WASHED HIS hands and splashed cold water on his face.

Rangi looked at him. “Aren't you forgetting something?”

He looked innocently at her. “What?”

She tweaked his nose. “You'd better brush your teeth or Amma will get angry. And it's not a very good idea to make her angry today.”

“Why not?” he asked, hoping he was finally going to get an explanation for the strange goings-on. He wasn't disappointed.

“Sudu Nona is having her baby today,” she whispered. “That's why Amma is so busy. But she will notice if you don't brush your teeth.”

“Isn't she going to the hospital?” he asked. He knew that people had babies in hospitals because that was where Ammi had had him.

“They were going to, but there's been a landslide farther down the road. They won't be able to take the car past it. And the doctor can't come here either.”

Chandi was momentarily distracted by the news of the landslide. Today was Sunday so there was no school, which was a pity since landslides usually meant staying home on school days. How come landslides never happened on school days? He brought his thoughts back to the present.

“What are they going to do?” he asked.

“Have it in the house maybe. I don't know. You'd better stay out of Amma's way though. Especially if you're not going to brush your teeth.”

“Rangi, can we go and watch?” he asked hopefully.

She laughed. “You're so funny.” He didn't see anything funny in what he had said. But then, he was only four.

As soon as Rangi left, he ran down the corridor to see if the baby had arrived, and cannoned into the last person he wanted to see.

“Where do you think you're going?” his mother demanded suspiciously.

“Rangi said Sudu Nona's baby was coming, so I thought I'd go and say hello, since I'm older,” he replied grandly.

She dragged him back to the kitchen by his ear, ignoring his howls of protest. She pushed him outside and said, “Go and play, and don't let me see you or hear you for the rest of the day!” She went back down the corridor muttering to herself.

Although forcibly ejected from the house, he viewed the prospect of a whole day outdoors with anticipation. The gardens were huge and there were always interesting things to see and do.

Then it started to rain.

Now, chilled by the drop in temperature and more than a little afraid of his mother's anger, Chandi sat huddled inside his tomato and spinach house.

The rain was still coming down fast and furiously. Beyond the house, it soaked the hills. Mountain paths became treacherous, fast-flowing streams of mud, trickling waterfalls became roaring monsters and placid mountain pools turned into churning masses of contained fury.

And landslides slid.

USUALLY, THE TEA slopes were dotted with the colorful figures of the tea pickers, the bright oranges and reds of their saris standing out like bold, happy flags in the turquoise tea. Although the huge wicker baskets hanging from their heads were heavy, they were always cheerful, making ribald jokes with one another in Tamil while their nimble fingers flew from one bush to the next.

Today, the hills were empty. The landslide had made it impossible for most of them to work. The few who had braved the storm had found shelter in the factory.

Even the Kankanipillai, the superintendent, who was known to be the worst kind of slave driver, could not ask them to go out in this kind of weather. He had already lost a few of his pickers to pneumonia and he couldn't afford to lose any more.

His immediate concern, however, was not work, but how to remove the workers from where they had taken shelter just inside the main entrance. They were dripping water everywhere.

The factory, normally a hive of activity and tea dust, wore a slightly haunted look. Most of the machines and fans had not even been started that morning.

From the outside, it looked like an English boarding school, surrounded by rolling green hills and sprawling homes.

The closest was the Sudu Mahattaya's place, Glencairn.

The Sudu Mahattaya's real name was John Buckwater, although nobody called him that. Sudu Mahattaya meant “white gentleman” in Sinhalese and that, after all, was what he was.

He was a brusque man, short in speech and economical in gesture, but kind nonetheless. When Sinnathamby, whose father worked at the factory, had fallen into a well and drowned, he had given the family an extra week's wages. And when Nariamma had slipped down a path and broken her ankle, he had driven her to the Nuwara Eliya hospital himself, and had kept paying her wages even though she hadn't been able to work for six weeks.

The women were safe, too, for unlike some other planters, John didn't force his attentions on them. There were no light-skinned, blue-eyed children on Glencairn other than those given to him by his English wife.

He went around the factory every morning and then set out on his daily inspection of the plantation. He was a remote but familiar figure in his crisp white bush shirt and starched khaki shorts, ivory-handled walking stick in one hand, and his bad-tempered dog, Buster, on a leash in the other.

He didn't bark like Buster.

He just didn't say very much.

In comparison, the Sudu Nona talked a lot. No one knew her name and she knew no one's name. Those who had seen her said she was beautiful, like an angel, with delicate white skin and long golden hair that she wore in a knot at the top of her head. Those who had heard her speak said she sounded like a Pentecostal magpie, speaking in tongues.

She didn't like Ceylon, didn't like having to move herself and her family from England to this strange, untamed place full of unfamiliar people and smells. She did, however, like the role of lady of the manor and the small army of servants that was hers to command if she wished, which she didn't.

She left it to Chandi's mother, Premawathi, to run the place, and spent her days drifting aimlessly through the manicured gardens, reading three-month-old British magazines and drinking the excellent tea her husband's factory produced.

And since Jonathan, her only son, had been sent away to an English boarding school last year, she seemed to have lost interest in even these few pursuits, preferring to sit around and mope.

He was only ten, far too young, in her opinion, to leave his darling mother.

At seven, her daughter Anne wore the slightly condescending air of a child who knew she was more intelligent than her mother. Which in fact she was.

Anne adored her father, and emerged from her room only if he was around. She went to the little school reserved exclusively for British children, and returned home to her room and books.

At mealtimes, she ate and talked sparingly, showing signs of animation only when directly addressed by her father.

It wasn't that she didn't love her mother. She just didn't seem to have too much in common with her.

Since the lady of the house had become pregnant, it seemed that the entire house was expecting. She was querulous and complained incessantly, because this pregnancy had come as an unpleasant surprise.

She had Jonathan and Anne, one of each gender, which had been quite adequate. Now she felt cheated by Mother Nature and couldn't help wondering why she, of all the women in the world, had been chosen to bear once again the task of perpetuating the human race, which she didn't much care for anyway.

So they lived side by side, John Buckwater's little family in the main bungalow, and the little family of staff in a small set of rooms off the kitchen.

Although the family was scrupulously polite to the help, there existed a yawning chasm between them. The family had never had servants in England. Most of the servants had never worked for white people before. Neither knew quite how to treat the other, and however hard they tried, they never seemed to get it right.

And so the relationship, if it was even that, stumbled on dotted with misunderstandings, reprimands and sullen silences. It was colored by gratitude and servility on one side and almost impossibly high expectations on the other.

WHEN JOHN BUCKWATER had first arrived in Ceylon some three years ago, it had been to a vast bungalow, a fully equipped tea factory and a thriving tea plantation.

He had spent a few months out in India some years before, but hadn't really stayed long enough to learn very much. In India, he had visited friends in the governor's office and vaguely considered taking up a job there. This was his first shot at being a tea planter.

Other than Appuhamy, who came with the bungalow, and the Kankanipillai, who came with the factory, there had been no workers or servants. He had left it to the Kankanipillai, who knew the area and the people, to hire factory workers and tea pickers. He tried in vain to interest his wife in hiring her household staff, but she had languidly said, “Darling, Appuhamy knows best.”