The Hungry Ghosts (23 page)

To put some distance between us, I began to refer to my mother, when speaking to Renu, as “Our Lady of Angoda,” and make biting comments about her madness. Renu found this funny and appalling and would say, “Chee, Shivan, how can you joke about Amma belonging in that asylum? It’s a vile place.”

I was certain the reason behind our mother’s new anxiety was my return to Sri Lanka, but Renu disagreed, insisting it was delayed shock at our grandmother’s illness. She patted my shoulder and advised me to ignore our mother’s behaviour. “You are doing the right thing. You need closure with Aachi. You need to take charge of your own life, to shrug off the burden of Amma. She must learn to move forward on her own.”

My sister had written to her old history professor, Sriyani Karunaratne, and asked her to please look out for me. “She’s really nice, Shivan,” Renu said as she gave me the professor’s phone number the day before I left and made me promise to call. “Being a feminist, she’s gay-positive. I’m sure you could use someone like that in homophobic old Sri Lanka.”

During the bus ride to the airport, my mother looked out the window and didn’t speak to Renu or me. Once I had got my boarding pass and was ready to go through Security, she held my arms and said in the tone of a prepared speech, “Shivan, your life is here now. I want you to remember that. You’re only going for four weeks, and you’re not to let her convince you otherwise.”

“No, Amma,” I said, bewildered. “Of course I’m coming back.”

“She will try and persuade you, I know her. I’m frightened for you, Shivan, I am. I feel this trip is inauspicious.”

“For heaven’s sake, Amma,” Renu said, rolling her eyes at me, “what a way to say goodbye. Inauspicious!”

I laughed uneasily, then gave my mother an angular embrace. “I must go.”

After I went through Security, I looked back at my mother, with her handbag clutched under her arm, and I felt disturbed, as if what she had said was a truth I had not yet considered.

There is a tale called “The Naga King Manikantha and the Hermit” that must have inspired my unsettling dream about the lover who visited me in a cave. In the story, two brothers take up the monk’s life, living as hermits far from
each other in grottoes along a riverbank. The Naga king, Manikantha, is swimming by one day when he spots the younger brother and takes an immediate liking to him. He begins to visit every day, and soon the two are close friends. Manikantha takes a human shape when he visits but, before he leaves, always reassumes his serpent form and embraces the hermit, coiling himself around his body. Even though he loves Manikantha, the hermit is terrified at this transformation and grows thin and pale, the veins standing out on his skin. His older brother comes to visit and inquires about the reason for his poor condition. The brother advises the hermit to ask three times for the jewel the Naga king wears on his forehead. The hermit does so, and on the third occasion Manikantha leaves him forever. But the hermit grows even more pale and thin because he now pines for his friend. His older brother comes to visit again, and discovering the reason for his worsened state, says, “Importune not a man whose love you prize, for begging makes you hateful in his eyes.”

The final lines of that strangely inconclusive tale make me think of Mili Jayasinghe the first time I saw him after my return to Sri Lanka, waiting for me outside my grandmother’s gate, grinning with shy delight as he stood beside his motorcycle, the sun shining in his hair.

PART THREE
 

12
 

I
HAVE FINALLY REACHED
M
ELSETTER
B
OULEVARD
, but when I turn onto it, I stop. My mother’s car is parked in the driveway. Pushing my hands in my coat pockets, I hurry towards the house, panicked at how I left it—sliding doors unlocked, empty glass smelling of Scotch on the counter, my grandmother’s photograph abandoned on the dining table.

My mother is at the kitchen window peering out, arms crossed over stomach. When she sees me hurrying up the front path, she rushes to open the door, for I have forgotten to take a key.

“I tried calling, but you did not pick up.”

“Just went out for a walk.” I turn away and take off my shoes.

“I finally came over because I was so worried.”

Glancing at her, I am taken aback at the way she looks. I was so lost in my memories I expected to find her as she was then—hair sheared short, face sharp. Instead, her hair is now in waves to her shoulders with silver streaks enhancing the dark tan of her skin, her face full and heart-shaped. She wears a garnet brooch at the neck of her soft pink silk blouse, both gifts from David.

“Son,
where
have you been?” The question is heavy with how she found the house in my absence. I am suddenly very conscious of the whisky bottle bulging in my inner pocket.

“Why do you worry so much?” I demand. “You could have tried phoning again.”

“I did,” she says quietly.

I go into the kitchen and she follows me. The glass has been washed and put in the drying rack, my grandmother’s photograph is back in place.

“Perhaps … perhaps I should stay home tonight.”

“What? Why? You don’t need to be here. Stay with David.” The thought of her being with me is unbearable.

“But there is so much to get done.” She gives me a significant look.

I regard her blankly, then turn quickly away. But she has seen that I’ve forgotten the task I promised to do of emptying the kitchen of all perishables, so the house can be fumigated.

My mother opens a drawer and pulls out a garbage bag.

“Amma, I will do it. I … I just felt like a little fresh air.”

I go to take the bag and she winces at the alcohol on my breath. I step back, ashamed.

“Shivan,” she says, trying to be stern but sounding helpless. After a moment I reach into my inner coat pocket and put the mickey of Scotch on the counter. When she sees how much I have drunk, her face crumples, then becomes impassive. “I will stay tonight.”

“No, no,” I say, louder than I intended, my nerves stretched to the breaking point.

“Oh, Shivan,” she says, near tears, “I wish I had stopped you earlier from this plan to go back for your grandmother. You are so unhappy, son, so troubled. I don’t think you can take anything more. And I worry about the effect of Sri Lanka on you. Then there is your aachi …” She gives me a miserable look to convey what I have already guessed. She has not told my grandmother about my impending arrival.

“The truth is I’ve been too frightened to tell her,” she says quietly. She begins to remove her coat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t start the kitchen before,” I say. “I promise, I will do this.”

I watch the struggle on her face, as if she were listening to another voice within her. She pulls her coat back on. “I suppose no one can take another person’s journey. It is the hardest thing about being a mother.” She glances quickly at the Scotch. I can tell she wants to take the bottle with her and has to force herself not to do so.

“Please don’t go out again,” she says, as if this one assurance will fix her worries.

Following her out into the hallway, I promise I won’t.

She points to the garbage bags. “Why are you throwing out all these clothes?”

“They’re old and out of fashion. Most of them are slightly mouldy.”

She is not paying attention, frowning as she buttons her coat and searches for gloves in her pockets. “And this news from Sri Lanka. The closer I get to arriving there, the more it depresses me, this endless hatred and enmity. Why did the Tigers have to break the truce, why? And why did Chandrika respond with violence too and not try to get them back to the table? Her husband Vijaya would never have done that.”

“It’s not so easy, Amma. Her hands are tied. All actions are compromised, tainted, in Sri Lanka.”

“War for peace. How can she describe war in this cynical way?” My mother lets out a sad laugh as she slips her gloves on. “I feel ashamed that David is reading such things. What must Canadians think of us?”

“I didn’t know that David takes an interest.”

She gives me a look that says I am being an idiot. “Of course he takes an
interest
, Shivan.” There is a small proud smile on her face; David loves her, he will fret while she is away.

“You … you shouldn’t keep David waiting.” I am suddenly desolate.

She kisses me distractedly and leaves.

I watch her go down the driveway to the car. A few snowflakes have begun to fall, and a wind has suddenly picked up. As she opens her car door, my mother tugs her scarf into place and glances crossly at the sky. She looks small but capable, a woman in control of her life. This battered old red Honda Civic is an emblem of her accomplishments. She will not let David drive her around, a trait he finds both endearing and exasperating. After six years, she still won’t move in with him. She will not give up this house.

The moment her car leaves, I shut the door and lean against it, closing my eyes for a moment. Then I begin to pull things out of the kitchen cabinets with frantic, trembling hands, throwing packets of tea and biscuits, tins of cocoa, coffee and Ovaltine, bags of raisins, peanuts, salt, pepper into the garbage bag my mother left on the counter.

My arrival in Sri Lanka that spring of 1988 came upon me suddenly. I had taken a sleeping pill to make time pass faster on the tedious plane journey and was awakened by the bustle of passengers standing up, stretching, hauling
down bags to look for combs, brushes and compacts. The flight attendants were coming around clearing away the last glasses of juice and alcohol, folding up newspapers. Then the pilot announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we can now see Sri Lanka,” and there was a rustle of excitement as people craned over fellow passengers for a view.

Out my window were dense clouds. Then we were through the clouds and below us was the sea, golden pink in the dawn light, its waves seemingly frozen from up here, like scallops along the edge of some giant seashell. A sweep of beach was bordered by acres of coconut trees, the mound of a dagoba rising out of this greenery like a boulder, its whitewashed surface also pink in the dawn light. It seemed unreal to be seeing Sri Lanka after all this time. There, there it was, lying below me, yet I could not imagine landing, could not imagine looking up at those coconut trees and smelling the ocean. I felt suddenly like a foreigner about to enter a strange land, this plane the last point of familiarity from which I would be ejected into a chaotic, frightening world. I shook my head to chase away the thought, trying to take comfort, as the plane landed and hurtled along the tarmac, at how normal everything looked, the shuttle buses going to and fro, other planes coming in and taking off in an orderly way, the airport building in the distance newly painted. As we came off the plane and were ushered to the shuttle buses, I smelt that odour of Sri Lanka, like the inside of a dry clay pot, an odour I had never really noticed when I lived here, but which now, because of my long absence, my foreignness, I recognized as the smell of home.