Funny Boy (12 page)

I shook my head in disbelief.

“Ask Amma and see,” she replied.

We were close to the hotel now, and I saw that everyone else was seated at a table on the verandah. When we reached my parents, I said to them, “Is this hotel ours?”

They looked at me, amused.

“Yes,” my father said, “part of it is.”

“Really?” I said. “This is really ours?”

Everyone began to laugh at my astonishment. Then Amma explained to me that my father did not work for the bank any more. He had gone into the hotel business and Sena Uncle was his partner.

Our affluence seemed to reach a new height when my father announced that he was going to Europe to promote the hotel and also to take a holiday. He would be gone for a few months, and we were told to give him a list of five things we each wanted him to bring back for us.

Recently, I had found a yellowed copy of
Little Women
. It belonged to Neliya Aunty, Amma’s older sister. Neliya Aunty had come to live with us a year ago after Amma’s mother had
died. Neliya Aunty had never married and my parents felt she should not be living alone. Though she wasn’t much older than Amma, she seemed to belong more to my grandparents’ generation than my parents’. This was reflected in her clothes, for, unlike Amma, who wore everything from saris to dresses to pants, Neliya Aunty usually wore ankle-length housecoats at home and saris for going out. When she moved in, she had brought a large trunk that was full of photograph albums, letters, trinkets, and books, all of which smelt of camphor, and it was in this trunk that I discovered the book. I loved
Little Women
and longed to read the sequels but couldn’t find them anywhere. I wondered if I dared ask my father to bring them for me. He had found me reading
Little Women
and declared it to be a book for girls, a book that boys should not be reading, especially a boy of twelve. After some hesitation, I wrote down the three sequels to
Little Women
as the fifth item.

Other than excitement about what he would bring us upon his return, we experienced little emotion at our father’s departure. Even Amma did not seem overly sad. In fact, after he had left, she always seemed in a good mood. Now she began to go out every night with Chithra Aunty and her friends. The next morning she would tell Neliya Aunty about a fashion show or dance or party and how she had been introduced to different ministers and even, once, to the old prime minister, Mrs. Bandaranayke, who was looking “haggard, poor thing, now that she has been deprived of her civic rights.” One day, after she had been to a particularly entertaining fashion show the previous night, Amma declared, “Everything is wonderful! Who
would have thought, a few years ago, that things would turn out so well!”

Then, as if to contradict her optimism, Daryl Uncle entered our lives.

I had developed a slight fever that day and had been kept back from school. By early afternoon, however, I was feeling better. Amma had gone shopping, and Neliya Aunty allowed me to sit in an easy chair on the front verandah with my copy of
Little Women
. I was soon lost in book. The sound of the the gate opening brought me back to reality, however, and I looked up to find a white man standing inside the gate. As he walked towards me, we surveyed each other. The stranger was tall and powerfully built, and he had a beard and moustache. He came up the verandah steps and asked if my mother was in. I replied that she was not. After a moment, I stood up, went to the front door, and called out to Neliya Aunty in Sinhalese, so he wouldn’t understand, that there was a white man here to see us. The man laughed and said, in perfect Sinhalese, “This is no white man you are looking at.”

I stared at him, wondering how he spoke Sinhalese. He grinned back at me, enjoying my astonishment.

I was even more taken aback by Neliya Aunty’s reaction when she came out onto the verandah. She stared at him in shock for a moment, then let out a cry of joy and went to him, holding out her arms, and they embraced each other, laughing. Then they noticed my surprise and laughed even harder. “Arjie,” Neliya Aunty said to me, “come here. This is Daryl Uncle, one of our oldest and dearest friends.”

I presented my hand and, as Daryl Uncle shook it and leaned down to kiss me on both cheeks, I smelled the sweet odour of tobacco.

I learned that they had lived next door to each other from the time they were children. Daryl Uncle had been in Australia and was returning after fifteen years.

Neliya Aunty began to ask Daryl Uncle questions about himself. He told her that he worked as a journalist in Australia and he was here on a two-month vacation. Then they began to talk about their childhood together. As I listened to them, I realized that Daryl Uncle was not a white man but a Burgher, the same as Aunty Doris.

Neliya Aunty seemed cheerful and happy to see him, until she heard Amma’s car at the gate. Then, suddenly, she became nervous as if she had done something wrong. Daryl Uncle, too, became uneasy. Our servant, Anula, ran to open the gate and the car came in. Amma was trying to reach the garage without knocking over the flower pots that lined the driveway and she did not even notice us on the front verandah. When she had parked the car, she came around the side of the house expectantly, since Anula had probably informed her that we had a white visitor. When she saw Daryl Uncle she stood still and stared at him, her eyes wide.

He rose from his chair slowly and said, “Nalini, how are you.”

“Daryl?” she said, as if she had just awakened from a sleep and was not sure if he was part of her dream world or her waking world.

There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other,
then Amma recovered herself. She came up the steps to him, and rather than embracing him in the way Neliya Aunty had, she pointed hospitably to the chair he had been sitting in and said, “Come, come, sit, sit.” Then she excused herself and went inside to put down her parcels.

While Amma was inside, Daryl Uncle and Neliya Aunty tried to pick up their conversation again. I looked at Daryl Uncle with interest and found myself wondering why Neliya Aunty and Amma had shown such different reactions to him. I had never seen Amma so unprepared, so caught off guard.

In a few moments, Amma came out and she was composed. She lifted her eyebrows ironically and said to Daryl Uncle, “Goodness, what a surprise.”

Daryl Uncle laughed and said, “I always liked surprising you.”

Amma smiled and sat down. I looked at her and was aware that I knew very little of her life before my first conscious memory of her.

A short while later, Sonali and Diggy returned from school. When they saw our visitor they stared at him, surprised as I had been to find a foreigner in our house. Amma called them to be introduced and they approached shyly.

“This is Daryl Uncle,” she said. They looked at her, a little taken aback that Amma was referring to a foreigner as “Uncle.”

“He grew up next door to Neliya Aunty and me,” Amma added, noticing their expressions. “He’s a Sri Lankan, just like us.”

That evening my fever got worse, and Amma sat on the side of my bed holding a compress of ice and eau-de-Cologne on my forehead. I felt sorry to see the expression of concern on her face, a worry no doubt compounded by my father’s absence. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, so that she would think I was feeling better and go to bed herself.

Not long after I closed my eyes, I heard the door to my room open and someone come in.

“How is he?” Neliya Aunty whispered.

“Better, I think,” Amma replied.

They were silent for a while, then Neliya Aunty said in a low voice, “I didn’t know what to do when Daryl came today. I was worried because of you know what.”

Amma sighed, impatient with Neliya Aunty. “That was a long time ago,” she replied. “It’s all water under the bridge now.”

Once they had gone, I lay awake thinking about their conversation. Something had happened between Amma and Daryl Uncle in the past. It sounded like they had fought at one time and this fight had created a rift between them.

When I awoke the next morning, my fever had abated, and I was no longer sure if the conversation I had heard was real or if it had been a product of my mind. Certainly Amma seemed completely herself, as if Daryl Uncle’s visit had left no impression on her.

That morning Daryl Uncle came to see us again. Like the day before, I was seated on the verandah, reading. Rather than asking for Amma, he came up the steps and inquired about
what I was reading. I hesitated before I held out the book to him, remembering how my father had called it a girl’s book, a book that twelve-year-old boys should not be reading.

“Little Women,’ ”
he said warmly. “Used to be one of my favourite books.”

I looked at him in surprise.

“Have you read the sequels?”

I shook my head. “I can’t find them anywhere.”

He thought about this for a moment and then said, “The second-hand bookshops might have them. I’m going in the direction of Maradana today so I’ll stop off and take a look.”

Before I could thank him properly, Amma came out onto the verandah, having heard voices. She stopped in the doorway when she saw Daryl Uncle.

“I was just passing by and thought I’d drop in to say hello,” he said.

Amma invited him to sit down. She seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see him. She placed a hand on my forehead, declared that my fever had returned, and ordered me to bed. I protested so vehemently that finally she relented and allowed me to lie on the sofa in the drawing room. I could hear them talking through the window.

After they had been on the verandah for only a few minutes, I heard them raise their voices. They were arguing about politics and I learned that there was a war going on now in Jaffna, between the army and the Tamil Tigers, who were fighting for a separate state. War, to me, signified guns and soldiers and armoured cars, and I had seen no evidence of this in Colombo.

Amma, even though she was a Tamil, thought the Tigers were wrong, that they were nothing but terrorists and they were giving other Tamils a bad name. Daryl Uncle said that he understood why young men were joining the Tigers. He spoke of torture. My knowledge of torture was confined to Gothic novels in which people were stretched on racks until their limbs tore away from their bodies. The torture Daryl Uncle spoke of seemed a homegrown variety which included chillies and large red ants. Amma didn’t believe him when he told her this. This government was not like the old one, she said. Besides, how could this be going on and the press remain silent about it, especially now that there was “freedom of the press”? I learned that Daryl Uncle had found out this information from a European woman who was here to study the problem. He wanted to investigate if this was true and do an article for his newspaper. Amma said he was wasting his time and he would find nothing.

They also disagreed about something called the Prevention of Terrorism Act. This, I gathered, was a new law that allowed the police and the army to arrest anybody they thought might be a terrorist without something called a warrant. Amma thought it was a good thing, but Daryl Uncle called it a “tool for state terrorism.”

Neliya Aunty came into the drawing room, drawn by the sound of their voices. She saw me and asked in a whisper who was outside. When I told her, she folded her arms, and the expression on her face was the same as when somebody told a crude joke. As I looked at her, I realized that I had not imagined the conversation between her and Amma the night
before. She stood for a while and listened, then she twitched the palu of her sari around her waist and returned to the kitchen. The voices outside had got even louder. Fearing now that Amma would be really rude and that Daryl Uncle would not return and I would never get my books, I called out in my best invalid voice, “Ammaaa.”

She came immediately, her face flushed from the argument. Daryl Uncle put his head in through the door as well and asked if everything was all right. Amma placed her hand on my forehead and ordered me to bed in a no-nonsense voice. I wrapped my sheet around me and went off to my bedroom, since I really was beginning to feel worse. Just before I went into my room, however, I was surprised to hear Amma ask Daryl Uncle to stay for lunch. I was completely confused now about whether she liked Daryl Uncle or not.

Once Daryl Uncle had left, I heard Neliya Aunty say crossly to Amma, “I hope he stops visiting us like this. It’s most improper with no man in the house.”

Amma laughed. “Honestly, Neliya,” she said. “How old-fashioned of you.”

“I don’t think it’s nice. People will begin to talk.”

“It’s not as if he’s a stranger,” Amma said.

I was now puzzled by Neliya Aunty. I wondered what Daryl Uncle had said or done that had made her suddenly so against him. For my part, my feelings about Daryl Uncle were clear. I liked him, and not merely because he had offered to buy me those books.

My fever went up alarmingly that evening and my head felt so heavy that I could hardly lift it. Amma sat by my bed with the cold compress, and I could tell from the tender expression on her face that she was really worried.

“Amma,” I said to her and held her hand.

“Yes,” she said, stroking my hair.

“Why don’t you and Neliya Aunty like Daryl Uncle?”

Her hand became still.

“Why would you think that?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

“I do like him,” she said. “We just have different opinions.”

“Such as?”

“He thinks things are getting worse in Sri Lanka and I think things are getting better.”

After a moment I said, “I like him.”

“You do?” She seemed a little surprised.

That night, my sickness took a real turn for the worse and I began to have terrible bouts of vomiting. By morning, I was so feeble that I had to be helped to the bathroom. I could tell that Amma was quite concerned. She called Mala Aunty at her dispensary and asked her to come by and look at me.

I was falling asleep when I heard Daryl Uncle’s voice. Presently he appeared in the doorway of my room. I opened my eyes and tried to smile at him.