Funny Boy (17 page)

It was a Sunday morning, and so we had breakfast a little later than usual. Amma looked weary and she took only one piece of toast, which she didn’t even finish. Neliya Aunty was watching her carefully, and Diggy and Sonali, too, sensed that something was wrong. In the middle of the meal, the phone rang and I answered it, surprised not to hear the click. It was a friend of Diggy’s, and I handed the phone to him.

After breakfast, Sonali went for a piano lesson, and Diggy cycled off to visit a friend. I settled on the verandah with a book. I was unable to concentrate, though, and after a while I put the book down. A knock at the gate made me turn my head. The gate was ajar and presently a white man came inside. He was short and balding and he wore round glasses. My hands suddenly became cold and sweaty.

“Is your mother in?” he asked.

I nodded and went to get Amma. When I told her who was here, she looked alarmed, then her features became impassive. She followed me out onto the front verandah.

“Mrs. Chelvaratnam?” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’m with the
Sydney Morning Star
. I came to see you yesterday.”

She nodded and pointed to a chair. She sat down as well.

“I believe you are a friend of Daryl Brohier.”

Amma did not answer at first. Then she said, “Not a very good friend.”

I gave her a quick glance, but she didn’t look at me.

“Yes,” the man said, and from the way he smiled slightly, I could tell that he didn’t believe her.

“Mr. Brohier was a colleague of mine. Were you familiar with any of the work he was doing in Sri Lanka?”

“I thought he was here on holiday,” Amma replied.

The man crossed his legs impatiently.

“We are suspicious about the circumstances of his death. Do you share similar suspicions?”

Again, Amma paused before responding. Then she shook her head.

“You saw the body, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything odd about it?”

“No.”

“I see.” He leaned back in his chair and studied Amma for a moment. She looked at her hands, then glanced at him and smiled.

“Will that be all?” she asked.

He sighed and stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said.

Amma bowed slightly, acknowledging his thanks. She accompanied him to the gate. After he had gone, she stood there and stared down the road for a long time. Then she stepped back inside, placed the latch on the gate, and slowly came up the steps of the verandah. Without looking at me, she went inside the house.

I should have felt relieved that Amma had lied to the man, that she had decided not to pursue the matter any more, but all I felt was a terrible sadness. After a while I got up and went to my room. I realized, now, that we had come to the end of our quest. Daryl Uncle’s killer would never be brought to justice. In the bookcase in front of me, I noticed the Little Women books that Daryl Uncle had bought me. I took them down and laid them out on my bed. The pictures on their covers brought back the memory of that day Daryl Uncle had brought them into my room and put them out on my blanket. I picked up
Little Women
and opened it. It was the chapter called “Pleasant Meadows,” where the father of the family comes home and the little women sit at his feet, all their troubles at an end. It was one of my favourite passages, yet reading it now brought me no pleasure. The world the characters lived in, where good was rewarded and evil punished, seemed suddenly false to me. My father would soon be coming back too, but our troubles were not over. I thought of how strange it would be to have him back here, sitting at the table every morning reading the newspaper, his loud voice announcing the news of the day to Amma and forcing the entire household into a premature awakening. I thought of Amma and wondered how she would be able to fit into this old life again. We would return to a regular routine, yet nothing could take us back to where we had been before the day I looked up from my book and saw Daryl Uncle at the gate.

My father arrived the following week, on his birthday. He had phoned Amma from England to request that she have a big party to celebrate the event. It was to be a grand affair, bigger than anything we had ever had at our house. Over seventy-five people had been invited and the whole dinner was catered.

The night of the party, I stood on the verandah and watched as the guests came in. I glanced from time to time to where Amma stood at the bottom of the front steps, greeting them as they arrived. She wore a royal-blue silk sari, sprinkled with tiny crescent moons. She had been to the hairdresser’s in the afternoon and her hair was up, a crescent-moon clasp holding it in place. Outwardly, she seemed happy, almost gay. Yet once, when there was a lull in the flow of guests, I saw her raise her hand to her temple, a sudden tired expression on her face.

Amma had placed little clay lamps along the border of the garden. They provided the only light and, in their flickering illumination, the guests, the waiters, the tables of food, and indeed the whole garden, seemed insubstantial.

O
NE DAY
, my father received a letter from the widow of an old friend. The letter was from Jaffna.

“Listen to this,” he said to Amma and Neliya Aunty, and he began to read the letter.

“Dear Mr. Chelvaratnam, I am writing to request a favour in memory of my late husband. My son, Jegan, is a qualified accountant. He’s twenty-five years old and has spent the last year as a relief worker for the Gandhiyam movement but, due to recent problems, I removed him from the organization. He is currently unemployed. Would you be able to find him a post in your business? I am sure his skills will be useful to you. Yours truly, Grace Parameswaran. P.S. I found the attached document among my husband’s belongings, and I am sending it to you as a souvenir of your friendship with him.”

My father held out a yellowing piece of paper to Amma. We
crowded around her so that we could read it as well. The paper was torn from an exercise book, and the writing on it was badly formed and with spelling errors. “We, Robert Chelvaratnam and Buddy Parameswaran make the following declarashon: We will always protect each other and each others’ familys until death does us part. Signed with our mingld blood …” At the bottom of the page were two rust-coloured thumbprints.

We stared at my father, finding it hard to imagine he had been capable of such a spontaneous act, that he had felt so strongly about someone he had slit his thumb and mixed his blood with his.

My father must have read our thoughts, because he frowned in embarrassment and took the paper back from Amma. “If I had known that this would be used to blackmail me one day, I would never have done it.”

“But who is this Buddy Parameswaran?” Amma asked.

“A school friend.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“By the time I met you, I had lost touch with him.”

“Why?”

My father shrugged. “Just happened that way. We were very close, but then I went to university in England and he stayed here to do Oriental Studies.” He smiled ironically. “He became a great orientalist and I became a great banker.”

“Are you going to hire the boy?”

My father picked up the letter and glanced at it again. “I don’t know,” he said. “It says that the boy worked with the Gandhiyam movement.”

“But that’s good, no? These Gandhiyam people are helping Tamils who were affected by the communal riots.”

“People say that they are in league with the Tigers. A little while back, the police arrested Gandhiyam workers – don’t you remember? It was in the papers and everything.”

My father picked up the yellowed piece of paper and looked at it for a moment. He scowled and then put it down. “I suppose I should at least see the boy.”

He got up from his chair and, as if the boy were right in front of him, said sternly, “But first I’m going to quiz him carefully about his politics. Any Tiger nonsense and he will be out on his ear.”

I watched my father as he walked away down the hall. Unlike Amma, he was a distant figure who had very little effect on our everyday reality. We dealt with him mainly through avoidance. The family squabbles that took place, the secrets, were kept from him by an unspoken understanding. He was a figure we held in awe, and his presence represented an authority my sister and brother and I would seldom defy. Little could I have imagined then that my father would soon step out of the frame in which I had held him, to reveal dimensions I had never imagined him to possess.

A few evenings later, Sonali, Neliya Aunty, and I were in the garden, searching for snails among the rose bushes, when we noticed a young man standing inside the gate, looking at us.

Neliya Aunty straightened up and said, “Yes? Can I help you?”

“Is Mr. Chelvaratnam in, madam?”

“He’s having a shower. You are …?”

“Jegan Parameswaran.”

“Oh,” Neliya Aunty said in recognition. “Come, have a seat.”

She ushered Jegan to a chair and then hurried inside to get my father.

Sonali and I stayed in the garden, looking at our visitor. He was clean shaven and had straight hair that fell over his forehead and was short at the back. His skin was very dark and had a healthy glow to it. He saw me watching him and smiled. His teeth, like his eyes, were brilliant against his dark skin. I returned his smile shyly.

“What are you doing?” he asked, noticing the pail in my hand.

“It’s for snails. We’re getting rid of them before they ruin the roses.”

He nodded.

At that moment my father came out onto the verandah. From the serious expression on his face I could tell that he planned to make the meeting as short as possible. When he saw Jegan, however, he stood still and stared at him as if he had seen a ghost. Jegan rose to his feet, alarmed.

“My God,” my father said finally in an awestruck tone, “I feel as if I have stepped back in time.”

Jegan smiled, relieved. “Yes, sir, I resemble Appa, a little.”

“Resemble!” my father cried. “You are him! All your gestures, your voice.”

He ran his eyes over Jegan and then, seeing that Jegan looked
embarrassed, he pointed to the chair he had been seated in and said, “Come, come, sit, sit.”

My father sat down as well, still staring at Jegan. He sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I am thinking about your father and our youth together.”

“Yes,” Jegan said, “he often spoke of it.”

“Did he?”

Jegan nodded. “Especially in those last months …” Jegan looked at his hands for a moment. “He was very proud of your achievements.”

My father stared at Jegan. He suddenly looked ashamed.

“Sir,” Jegan began to say, but my father held up his and.

“No ‘sir’ with me,” my father said, and his voice was filled with emotion. “You must call me ‘Uncle.’ ”

“Uncle,” Jegan continued, “my mother wrote to you –”

“Don’t worry,” my father said. “I’m sure we can arrange something.”

“Do you want to know a little about my background?” Jegan asked.

“What do I need to know? You are Buddy’s son. That’s good enough for me.”

Now Sonali and I looked at my father with unconcealed astonishment, recollecting the way he had threatened to quiz Jegan about his Tiger connections. He must have seen the expression on our faces, because he said to us crossly, “Where are your manners? Go and get a drink for our guest.”

We went inside to the kitchen.

When we came out onto the verandah again with Jegan’s drink, Amma and Neliya Aunty were seated with my father.

From the bemused expression on Amma’s face, I could tell that she, too, had noticed how quickly my father had retracted his earlier threats.

She glanced teasingly at my father and said to Jegan, “So, tell us about this Gandhiyam movement you were in.”

My father looked at her and frowned slightly.

“It’s an organization to assist Tamil refugees who were affected by the 1977 or ’81 riots. We help them settle in Tamil areas.”

Amma continued: “Are you Gandhiyam people connected with the Tigers?”

Before Jegan could answer, my father cried out, “Chi, chi, chi! No politics.” He gestured to me to offer Jegan the drink, and I did so.

“There may be those who are sympathetic, but it’s not the policy of the organization,” Jegan said, answering Amma’s question. “And you?” she asked. “Are you ‘sympathetic’?”

“What are you saying?” my father cried. “Don’t insult the boy. Why, if the Tigers had such fine chaps in it, I would be the first to support it.”

“Oh, I’m just curious, you know,” Amma said, and gave my father a sidelong glance.

I noticed that Jegan was looking at his hands, a small smile on his face.

Sonali was seated near Amma, but instead of joining her, I went to sit down in a corner of the verandah where I could observe Jegan without him being aware of it. When I had served him the drink, I had got a closer look at him. What had struck me was the strength of his body. The muscles of his arms
and neck, which would have been visible on a fairer person, were hidden by the darkness of his skin. It was only when I was close to him that I had noticed them. Now I admired how well built he was, the way his thighs pressed against his trousers.