The Flower Boy (26 page)

At eleven, when the sun was up and the mist had cleared, they walked to World's End, and came upon it suddenly. Only a few large, flat stones marked it.

One moment there was grass underfoot and grass ahead.

The next moment there was rock underfoot and nothing ahead.

John warned them all to approach slowly, because people were known to get dizzy from the thin air. The children were made to creep forward on their bellies, with their feet held firmly by John. Rangi went first and wriggled back looking vaguely depressed. Premawathi asked her if she felt sick but she didn't reply. They wriggled forward one by one, and when Chandi's turn came, he didn't know what all the fuss was about because all he could see was a sea of misty clouds below. No tiny villages, no sparkling ocean and no broken bodies.

He wriggled back and waited patiently for Rose-Lizzie to have a look and when she wriggled back, equally disappointed, they ran off to play, not at all impressed with World's End.

Lunch was devoured no sooner than it was laid out, the cake was cut and eaten, and afterward everyone stretched out on the grass, some sleeping, some talking, some just enjoying the cool breeze and birdsong.

CHANDI MUST HAVE fallen asleep, for a bee buzzing irritatingly around his nose woke him up. He looked around. Robin Cartwright was sketching, Ayah, Anne and Rose-Lizzie were still sleeping, Jinadasa and Leela were talking quietly together, without arguing he hoped, Rangi had disappeared and so had his mother and John. He got to his feet and started walking.

Beyond the stone slabs that marked World's End were more trees and a rough path leading to a tiny hamlet. He wondered if they had gone to explore it, Ammi, John and Rangi. Somehow, he didn't think so.

Part of him didn't want to find them, and part of him wanted to.

The trees grew close, and his footsteps were muffled by the bed of dry leaves and wet ferns that carpeted the forest floor. The silence was eerie and he almost turned back, but by now curiosity had a hold of him. He yielded to its insidious pull.

He remembered a conversation between Jinadasa and John at lunchtime.

“There used to be lots of deer in these parts, but now most of them have moved on, so the leopards are always hungry,” Jinadasa had said.

“But will they attack for no reason?” John asked.

“Hunger is reason enough,” Jinadasa had said soberly.

His steps quickened.

He heard voices and went forward slowly, slipping from tree to tree. Then he saw them. His mother was standing with her back to a tree and John was facing her. Although they were speaking softly, he heard everything.

“Why did you follow me here?”

“I wanted to make sure you wouldn't get lost or—”

“Or jump off?”

“No, I didn't think you were going to jump off. I was more worried about the animals.”

“I'm not afraid of them. I can take care of myself.”

“Yes, you can, can't you?”

“So go now. You can see I'm fine.”

“Not unless you come back with me.”

She shook her head stubbornly. John moved closer and she shrank against the tree trunk. “Why do you keep doing that? Do you think I'm going to pounce on you like some, some—Krishna? I know you're married, for God's sake!” he said savagely.

She lifted her eyes to him. “Oh, you don't have to worry about that anymore,” she said dispiritedly.

“What do you mean?”

“Disneris is going soon,” she said, looking away. “He doesn't know it yet, but it's only a matter of time. One of these days, he'll come to me and say, ‘Haminé, there are better jobs in Colombo and we're not really saving anything here,' and pack his bags and go. He won't have the courage to tell me the real reason and that this time he won't be back.” She sagged against the tree.

“What is it? The real reason?”

“Me,” she said baldly, then buried her face in her hands and wept as if her heart was breaking.

“Don't cry,” he said urgently. “I'll talk to him. Perhaps he'll change his mind and stay.”

She took her hands away from her tear-streaked face and looked despairingly at him. “But don't you understand? That's just it. I don't want him to stay.”

Chandi's heart pounded as John enfolded his mother in his arms and held her gently as she cried. He smoothed her hair and murmured things Chandi couldn't hear.

As he stood there dumbly, he saw a movement among the trees. He stiffened, thinking it was a deer or, worse still, someone from their party come to find them.

Then he saw Rangi.

Even from this distance, he could see her white, dazed face and her trembling mouth. He was filled with fear. Rangi was not strong and he shuddered to think of what this would do to her.

He made to go to her and then stopped. If he moved, they would see him and he didn't want to be seen. He wouldn't know what to say. What to do. As he stood there furiously trying to organize his thoughts, he saw Rangi move away jerkily, like an automaton, and disappear into the trees.

The wheels of fate, already in full motion, turned triumphantly in their preplanned course, creaking with glee.

SHE WALKED STEADILY. Tears blurred her vision, making her stumble over fallen branches and hidden roots. The pain in her head almost paralyzed her, fogging her mind over as if the low-lying mist had somehow managed to penetrate it. Through it, she saw her mother's face. Heard her mother's words. The futility. The impossibility of it all. A sob escaped her and her breath came in huge, painful gasps. Then suddenly, thankfully, the fog in her head thickened, the pain dulled and her steps slowed. Her bare feet felt cold and she looked down. Stone slabs. Like the slabs of a tomb. As she stood there, the stone grew warmer, more welcoming. She tentatively stepped forward.

At the very edge she paused.

At the very last moment, a shaft of reasoning struggled to make its way through the blanket in her head, but it hurt too much, so she let go of it and watched it drift dreamily downward. The wind caught it and it soared and tipped like a bird.

Free at last.

chapter 24

IN THE AFTERMATH OF RANGI'S SUICIDE, THE GENERAL STATE WAS ONE of chaos. The general feeling, one of incomprehension.

People cupped their chins in their hands, shook their heads and asked “Why?” through their tears. Why would a lovely girl like Rangi have wanted to take her own life? A life that hadn't begun properly yet?

A dozen different theories were aired. Some said maybe she had slipped and fallen, some said maybe she had experienced a mental breakdown after hearing stories of lovers jumping to their deaths. Some even said that the tormented spirits of the unhappy lovers had reached up and pulled her down to them, a virgin sacrifice, which would free their trapped souls. Others said that perhaps she had been a little soft in the head to start with. People nodded wisely. She had been different. Sort of—fey.

Disneris wore his grief like a shroud and wielded his anger like a weapon. He blamed Premawathi for everything, saying that if she hadn't agreed to go, then perhaps none of them would have gone and their beloved daughter would still be with them. Not lying dead in a coffin.

Premawathi didn't defend herself, for she had yet to speak after that first long lingering wail of discovery.

Neither of them had any answers for the questioning mourners.

Only Chandi knew why.

He never told anyone.

Not immediately.

Not afterward.

Not during the long, long night that followed.

Not during the three days and nights when he sat by her coffin.

Not during the funeral, when broken Rangi was smothered by flowers and covered by earth.

Not even now.

Chandi roamed the gardens until late at night and no one asked him to go inside or go to bed. Everyone was grieving in his or her own way and people thought that roaming the garden was his way. After all, who had slept these last few days?

The reason was quite different. For three days after Rangi's death, he sat dry-eyed and awake, next to the polished coffin that had been placed in the living room. He watched the long white candles flickering and listened to Rangi's voice as she talked to him. She told him the story of the ambitious milkmaid, the one he loved to hear. He laughed aloud, as he always had, when she came to the part where the milkmaid trips over the stone and spills her milk and watches her dreams flow into the ground. And Rangi chided him gently, as she always had, for laughing over spilled milk. She said you were supposed to cry over it. Not laugh.

On the fourth day, she was lowered into the ground, accompanied by flowers and people weeping and Father Ross praying, and the stories came to an abrupt end.

That night he went to sleep, and that night, the nightmares began.

IT WAS THE same dream every night.

He was running frantically through the trees. Skidding to a halt at the stone slabs. The sudden clutch of fear that made his heart stop. His mother emerging from the trees, pausing guiltily when she saw him. Her sharp questions—What are you doing here? Are you alone? Where's Lizzie Baby? Where are the others? His hand lifting all by itself and pointing in the general direction of the picnic scene. Him following her, willing Rangi to be there with the others. People noticing Rangi's absence. Looking for her, calling her name through the trees. Beating through the bushes with sticks. His mother's mounting panic. John crawling forward on his belly to look over the edge and looking back with horror in his eyes. His mother's scream echoing through the trees and hills and plains, scattering birds, monkeys and butterflies. Even hungry leopards.

In his dream, he turned around and saw Rangi standing there behind a tree, looking at the people looking down at her. He rushed toward her, with a smile of relief and arms outstretched, but just as he reached her, she disappeared.

He woke up immediately and could never fall asleep afterward.

THE STEEP DROP had made it very difficult to pull Rangi's body up. Although John had tried to make Premawathi leave, she had insisted on staying. He had looked at her stony face and let her. It had been nearly dark when the men from the village had tied ropes around their waists and lowered themselves down to pick Rangi up from where she lay on a little ledge, with one leg dangling down.

Most of her body was bloody from being thrown against the cliff wall by the strong winds, but her face was not hurt, except for two tiny trickles of blood that ran out of the corner of her mouth and out of one of her nostrils. They said the back of her head had been smashed in like a ripe jak fruit that had fallen to the ground, but Chandi hadn't seen it. All he had seen was her face, now cleaned of the blood, for the rest of her was covered in flowers from Glencairn's garden. Too many of them. As if that would make up for everything.

She was buried in flowers before she was buried in earth.

John had taken care of everything, which was just as well because both Premawathi and Disneris were in another world. In other separate worlds.

During the three days and nights they kept vigil, but at opposite ends of the coffin, a mother and father divided by their dead daughter. At the funeral, they stood together but they might as well have stood at opposite ends of the grave.

The grave itself had presented a bit of a problem because Father Ross had expressed concern about burying Rangi in consecrated ground, her being a suicide case and all. But John had firmly overridden his doubts by saying that although everyone assumed she had thrown herself over, no one had actually
seen
her do it. Father Ross had accepted the argument because he, like everyone else, had loved Rangi.

So they finally buried her on an indecently beautiful day. The sun shone down mockingly and the sky wore its best festive blue.

Before they closed the coffin back in the house, he stood there and looked curiously down at her marble face.

He heard a sob behind him and turned to see Ayah standing there. “Oh, Chandi,” she murmured brokenly. “Look at your sister.”

He shook his head. “That's not Rangi,” he said clearly, and a ripple of consternation went through the little knot of mourners.

Poor boy, they said sadly. He's trying to pretend that it's someone else. Some of the older ones who'd seen a lot of death said they had seen this happen with children, and sometimes they even went a bit funny in the head and never quite recovered. Like Asilin's niece, remember her? Her brother died of snakebite and all she does now is sing strange songs and talk to herself.

They had been gazing sorrowfully at Rangi in her coffin.

Now they all transferred their sorrowful gazes to Chandi.

Chandi heard them and grimaced, wondering why people were so stupid. He hadn't meant it like that. The undertaker in Nuwara Eliya had done an awful job and Rangi's clear pale brown skin was now an unpleasant pink. Her lips were red and looked like Appuhamy's after he had a betel chew. They hadn't even got her hands properly around the little rosary she was clutching. They didn't close.

The air reeked with the sickly sweet smell of flowers and he longed to throw open a window. Let some fresh air in. Let some death air out.

Rangi would have hated all this, he thought dismally.

THE ONLY GOOD thing that came of Rangi's death was that Leela, with no one to comfort her, turned to Jinadasa. It was his shoulder she wept on. It was his compassionate gaze she sought as her only sister was buried beneath the dark, fertile hill-country soil. It was him she sat silently with afterward. And while Jinadasa's heart was heavy with her unhappiness, he was happy that she had turned to him.

PREMAWATHI'S WORDS TO John that fateful day proved prophetic, for just as suddenly as he arrived, Disneris left. Unlike the Sudu Nona's grand exit, he slipped away quietly one morning, and Premawathi had only known he was going the night before.

She was sitting on the kitchen step staring into space, as was her habit these days, when he came to sit next to her. She looked up uninterestedly, wondering what he was going to say. He hadn't spoken to her in weeks.

“Haminé,” he began. “I will be leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Oh,” she said, then roused herself to ask, “Where?”

“Maybe to Colombo or maybe back to my family. I haven't seen them in a long time. Almost two years.”

“Will you be coming back?” she inquired distantly.

“Of course,” he hastened to reassure her. “You see, this tea dust is giving my sinuses trouble. Maybe I'll find something else, better pay, and then I'll send for you and the children.”

“If that's what you want,” she said.

He was relieved that it had all gone so smoothly. “Well, I'd better go and pack,” he said, and left her sitting there.

He left at dawn, while the children were still asleep. Premawathi stood silently at the kitchen door and watched the mist swallow him up.

O life, she thought tiredly, how many of us do you need before your appetite is finally satisfied? The morning chill settled around her like a somber mood, but she didn't feel its coldness. What now? she thought. Who next?

On the morning that Disneris left, Chandi and Leela woke up and looked at each other. They knew he had gone. Unknown to their parents, they had listened to last night's conversation through the half-open door.

Premawathi didn't explain Disneris's absence to them, nor did they ask.

In the days that followed, Leela felt as if she were being thrown around in the winds and clung to Jinadasa for support. Chandi personally didn't feel anything. No sadness, no happiness, nothing. It was a good state to be in, all things considered.

But just as soon as Glencairn began to settle down, as much as it could given the upheaval of the last few months, the third misfortune struck, proving that trouble did indeed come in threes.

No one was quite sure if Disneris's departure was a “misfortune.” There were those like Premawathi who felt relief, John who felt guilty, Rose-Lizzie who was actually quite happy, Chandi who still felt nothing, and Leela who didn't quite know what she felt. But Disneris had left, and partings were supposed to be sad. Technically, at least.

And while everyone was trying to decipher their Disneris-departing feelings, the third misfortune crept in like a thief in the night.

IT WAS IN the night, just six months after the picnic, that Appuhamy's spirit finally conceded defeat to his tired body, and left for its higher abode.

He died with a happy sigh, in the middle of a dream where he was once more a young and sprightly butler, proffering a tray of beautifully garnished hors d'oeuvres to a glittering English crowd in tails and tiaras. Even the King and Queen were there.

That was at about one o'clock in the morning.

It was eight-thirty before they found him.

Chandi noticed Appuhamy was missing because Chandi expected him to die soon and was always slightly surprised to see him in the kitchen each morning. This morning, Chandi waited until eight, two hours after Appuhamy usually made his appearance.

“Ammi,” he informed Premawathi, who was rushing to and fro as usual, although these days she was slower, “Ammi, I think Appuhamy is dead.”

Premawathi stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“It's after eight and he hasn't come out yet. His door is still closed.”

“He's probably still sleeping. He's not getting younger,” she said.

“He's probably dead,” Chandi said.

Premawathi frowned. “You shouldn't talk nonsense. And you mustn't say ‘dead.' It's not nice.”

“What's nice, then?”

“You say ‘passed away.' ”

“Passed away? Passed away where?” Chandi asked in bewilderment.

“To the next world,” Premawathi said.

“Is that where Rangi went?”

“Yes.”

“What's the next world like, Ammi? Is it hard like this one?”

She looked at him. He was a child of thirteen and he already knew life was hard. “No,” she said gently. “I don't think it's like this at all. I think it must be beautiful and everyone must be happy.”

“So Appuhamy must be happy there,” he said thoughtfully. “That's good, because I don't think he was very happy here.”

“You don't even know he's dead!” she remonstrated.

“Passed away,” Chandi corrected her. She just shook her head.

Appuhamy looked as if he were sleeping, only he didn't get up when Premawathi spoke to him, or even when she shook his shoulder gently. Even through the sheet, she could feel that his body was cold.

“Ammi, he's passed away,” Chandi said.

Premawathi finally covered Appuhamy's face with his sheet. “He looks happy,” she said sadly. “We'd better go and tell the Sudu Mahattaya.”

UNLIKE RANGI, APPUHAMY didn't have a coffin and flowers and people sobbing quietly in the background. He was cremated in the tiny Buddhist cemetery on Glencairn, and the children were not allowed to go. Only Premawathi, Jinadasa, Leela and John stood by, watching the flames feast greedily on his emaciated body.