The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (37 page)

The Sri Lankans played the last test in black armbands to commemorate the death of Minister Tyronne Cooray, long-time patron of Sri Lankan cricket. The Minister, builder of stadiums and burner of libraries, was killed by a suicide bomber in Colombo.

The RM XI declared at 270 for 9, having slumped from 232 for 2. Mathew was brought on late and his figures were a remarkable 9 for 8. One more wicket would have given him the best ever first-class figures, beating H. Verity’s 1932 feat of 10 for 10.

Rose hit the ball into the air to where Sajeewa Liyanage stood, awaiting the unlikelihood of such a lapse in Rose’s concentration. While the ball dangled in the air, Rose glared at the bowler, then at the umpire, and yelled, ‘We declare! We declare!’ The Zimbabweans walked off the pitch and Liyanage bungled the catch. Mathew didn’t get his record.

On TV, the sign held by the English crowd says, ‘Forget Private Ryan. Save Sri Lanka.’ Ari and Jonny laugh, I do not understand the joke. They explain it to me and I do not think it is funny.

Jonny’s place is beginning to look more homely. No more cardboard boxes spilling over into furniture. Masks, ornaments, wooden carvings and handlooms decorate the drawing room.

Outside the May monsoon arrives four months late and appears to be making up in ferocity what it lacked in punctuality. We used to have defined monsoon seasons. Now it just rains when it feels like it. Maybe there is something to this warming of the globe business.

‘You been shopping, Jonny boy?’ asks Ari.

‘Just been enjoying my retirement.’

‘At Barefoot?’

The High Commission had been generous with their severance package. Jonny is thinking of buying land in the hill country once the dust has settled.

‘You been to Diyatalawa, WeeGee? It’s better than New Zealand.’

‘I lived in Badulla for almost five years.’

‘What? Didn’t know they played cricket in the tea fields.’

‘Those days I used to follow boxing.’

I wasn’t a sportswriter in those days. I was a newlywed. Sheila and I honeymooned in the hills and stayed there. The
Observer
was looking for a journalist to assist the plantation correspondent; she was escaping Kotahena and I was fleeing Kurunegala. The views from our bungalow were magical and the climate was cool. Though reporting on tea auctions and earth slips was as mundane as it got.

I would travel to Kandy at my own expense to watch rugby games and boxing matches. Over the years I became a fan of both. Muhammad Ali had just been stripped of his title and had his licence revoked for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Like the rest of the world I was stirred by his stance. ‘No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.’

My freelance article ‘The Golden Age of Ceylon Boxing’, covering the present but also harking back to the 1950s, was more a hobby piece to while away the hours between hill gazing, love making and transcribing plantation labour negotiations. I did not expect it to win me Ceylon Sportswriter of the Year in 1969.

‘Diyatalawa is a beautiful place,’ I say. ‘Are foreigners allowed to buy land?’

Jonny taps a wooden elephant with a curved trunk freshly purchased from Paradise Road and winks. I am glad the colour has returned to his cheeks and the twinkle to his eye.

Our drinks coasters show etchings of the topless women of Sigiriya. Jonny sips Scotch while Ari and I drink tea. I pretend this is no longer an issue, even though it very much is.

Outside, the thunder sounds like the cracking open of a thousand skulls. Rain beats down on our roof, drowning out the commentary on TV. We are playing a one-off test against England. The home team are batting and have just crossed 400.

Growing up, I never thought I’d befriend an Englishman. Or if I did, I didn’t think he’d be a Geordie with a penchant for sports and decorating rooms.

‘How’s the Twelve Steps, WeeGee?’

‘I’ve stayed clean, but I hate it.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I can get through the day, but is that a good thing?’

‘Shall we change the subject?’ asks Ari.

‘No, Ari,’ says Jonny. ‘We should talk about it.’

‘Stop putting that stuff into his head, Jonny. Look at me. I stopped after the ’96 World Cup. I haven’t relapsed.’

‘That’s because you don’t have psychological baggage. WeeGee has got over his physical withdrawal, but he’s still tied to it emotionally.’

Outside the late monsoon is still hammering away at Jonny’s roof.

‘Can we get back to watching this boring match?’ I say.

‘I’m serious, WeeGee. You thought about getting counselling?’

Jonny is getting on my nerves.

‘Discuss with a quack why I shat in my bed when I was two? Whether my ayah tickled my balls when I was three? Fine. Sign me up.’

‘Don’t be a twat. What about those letters to your brothers?’

He is now using my nerves as a trampoline.

‘Ari, can you tell this bugger to shut up?’

‘He’s right, Wije, you should make your peace.’

‘Then why don’t you leave me in peace?’ I say, a tad too loudly.

There is silence. Lightning flashes like a broken tubelight. I glare at my friends and they look away. And then there is a terrible pounding on the door.

‘Arinawa dora! This is police.’

‘What the fuck …’ says Jonny with widening eyes.

‘You wait,’ says Ari. ‘Wije, come. Let’s go talk.’

We open the door to find six raincoated police officers with batons. Outside, there is a crowd with umbrellas peeping over the wall. At the gate is a fat man in a sarong, holding two boys by the scruffs of their necks. The boys are crying and the man is screaming. ‘Where’s that fucking suddha?’

The policemen barge past us.

‘Move, Uncle.’

The road is filled with police vehicles. Before we know what’s what, Jonny is being pushed forward in handcuffs. And that’s when the men with cameras arrive. The walk from Jonny’s gate to the road can be done in ten seconds at a leisurely pace. This time it takes as many minutes.

Projectiles of invective and venomous curses are hurled by the crowd. The policemen hold back the mob, but are powerless to prevent the snapping of cameras.

‘Call my lawyer. Call him,’ pleads Jonny.

We can do nothing except look on in horror.

Two similar problems. Two very different solutions.

Ever since the sparrows vanished from de Saram Road, squirrels have taken their place, scurrying into our homes and helping themselves to fruit. Kusuma and Sheila position a stool under the araliya tree and place a tray of nuts upon it. They convert a broken clock into a makeshift bird bath. As the man of the house I should be helping, but I have typing to do. They sit on the veranda and coo at the bushy tails helping themselves to my beer snacks. ‘Aney darling, sweet, no?’ says Sheila.

Rats have been enjoying free dinners from our kitchen bin. Every other evening we hear Kusuma’s shrieks as a well-fed pig-rat escapes into the pantry. We respond with carpenters who mesh-wire the windows and lay poison behind the cooker and rat-traps in the cupboards. Three days later, when the kitchen starts to smell of corpses, I am called to locate and dispose of twitching bodies.

It is while scraping bloodied fur wrapped in tail and innards into rubbish bags that I spy three squirrels fighting over my manyokka crisps. I realise that humans respond to squirrels and rats on a primal level. One makes us want to squeeze cheeks and go aney, the other makes our skin curl.

Sheila and Kusuma tell me that rats are disease-carrying vermin and that squirrels are nature’s little gatherers. But these are not true reasons. We post-justify our prejudice. We respond to rats with revulsion as we do to certain people, without any idea why. We gravitate towards humans with bushier tails for reasons we cannot fathom. Punchipala may get away with murder, while my friend Jonny may be falsely accused of it.

Ari plays me a spool of an Indian batsman complaining to the umpire that the crowd is shining mirrors at his eyes. The umpire’s response is clear and his voice is somewhat familiar. ‘Play on. This is not Calcutta.’ The sound quality breaks up and we hear a young Sri Lankan voice insisting that the umpire apologise to the batsman. Ari claims the voice belongs to Pradeep Mathew. I am sceptical. We hear the Skipper’s voice asking the bowler to shut up. The spool is marked ‘Indya test seris 85’.

Pradeep Mathew was perhaps more rat than squirrel. Not so much the polecat beast that roams our roof, but more akin to the grey kitchen mouse that no one fears, but no one wants to touch. The world mistook his shyness for contempt and misinterpreted his passion as belligerence.

There have been many times in my life when I have wished I was more of a squirrel. These days I’m glad I’m not.

England reach 445 and Sri Lanka lose Atapattu and Jayawardena before the day is done. The lawyer tells us that it’s match over. Jonny is being charged with six counts of sexual assault and will be held indefinitely till the High Commission responds.

The lawyer tells us that sometimes the police will negotiate with the High Commission and for the right price could be convinced to drop the charges, provided the culprit leaves the country. Embassies usually comply, depending on the severity of the crime and the potential for embarrassment.

The lawyer speaks like a law book.

‘In light of the fact that the British High Commission relinquished a substantial sum of unemployment compensation to our client, it is doubtful they will part with more funds.’

‘Can’t you pay off the cops with the severance money?’

‘Mr Karunasena, this is no longer merely about money. If so, it would be already settled. But six different victims, claiming mental and physical trauma. The allegations are serious. Only diplomatic pressure could save him.’

‘But he is innocent.’

‘Of course. But there is the record to consider.’

‘What record?’

He tells me Jonny has been deported from Thailand and Indonesia for possession of marijuana. That records have been suppressed till recently. He tells me of a strong nationalist lobby, rallying against foreigners who buy land in Sri Lanka and turn slices of our coast and slivers of our hills into holiday homes and boutique hotels. Jonny’s case will help the ‘Suddhas go home’ brigade.

Many of them are spiritual descendants of Sinhala Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala, who at the turn of the century stated without irony to a crowd at Mattakkuliya that ‘an effigy of a white man should be made of plantain stems, dressed in trousers and placed before each house and beaten in the presence of children’.

I put the phone down and share the news with Ari. Ari reaches for the Scotch.

This time it is I who does the restraining.

‘What the hell …’

‘Just one, Wije. To calm the nerves.’

‘If you have one, I will have ten.’

‘I’ll only have one.’

‘I’ll only have ten.’

He snorts and lets me put the bottle away.

‘OK. OK. Take it away. Come, let’s sit.’

Ari cups his hands and prepares for a speech.

‘Wije, I have something shocking to tell you.’

‘Haven’t we had enough shocks for the day?’

The Yorkshireman is on Jonny’s TV and is comparing Sri Lanka’s bowling to an ‘Ilford 2nd XI’. Ari turns it off and looks me in the face.

‘I’m afraid to say that Jonny … is a homosexual.’

I try not to smile.

I love Sheila more than she knows. I love her shrieking voice, her penguin-like waddle, her olive skin, her flopsy boobs and her boundless kindness. I loved her on that bus to Kotahena. Asleep on my shoulder on that train to Badulla. In the back of that taxi cradling baby Garfield. For the years she put up with me. For the years she left me alone.

But when I see Danila Guneratne in a short skirt, my loins are kindled. Desire from my groin spreads to my limbs. If she offered herself to me, there would be little hesitation.

Men have no control over what quickens their pulses or hardens their pricks. We do not know when or where lust will strike and we are powerless to its tyranny. We build religions and elaborate social laws to stifle these appetites. Not all of them succeed.

Jonny has been my friend since Sri Lanka won test status, since the ’82 soccer World Cup. Ari and I have never known him to be anything other than gentle and generous.

‘Wije. Who knows what goes through a man’s head when the lights are out? How can we know?’

‘He’s not a paedophile, Ari.’

‘The boys were aged between fourteen and nineteen.’

‘Don’t lie.’

‘That’s what the police said.’

‘Have you told Manouri?’

‘Are you mad? She would ban me from associating with him.’

‘I suggest we tell no one.’

‘I agree. But what do we do?’

‘We must talk to the families.’

‘The victims?’

‘Don’t call them that.’

‘Saying what?’

‘This was consensual sex. He must’ve paid them. They must’ve come willingly. He’s not a rapist. Let’s convince them. Maybe even offer some money.’

‘There is no such thing as consensual sex with a fourteen-year-old.’