Funny Boy (23 page)

I stared at him, my fork held in mid air. The Queen Victoria Academy was the school Diggy attended. Why was I being taken out of St. Gabriel’s and sent there?

Nobody else at the table seemed surprised by the news, and I realized that I had been the last to hear of his decision.

“But
why
?” I asked.

“Because it’s good for you.”

I didn’t like the sound of this.

“What’s wrong with St. Gabriel’s?”

“Nothing. It’s just that the Victoria Academy is better for you.”

My father was being evasive, and this made me even more suspicious.

“Why is it better?”

My father picked up his fork to indicate that the subject was closed. “The Academy will force you to become a man,” he said. Sonali, Amma, and Neliya Aunty smiled at me sympathetically before they continued with their meal. Diggy had a look on his face that told me he understood all the things my father had not said. I decided to corner him that evening and see what I could get out of him.

I found him in the garage, fixing the chain on his bicycle. When I came in, he looked up for a moment, then went on working. I stood by his bicycle and watched him.

“Why am I being transferred to the Victoria Academy?” I asked.

He continued to fiddle with the chain for a moment, then he looked up at me. “Because Appa is worried about you.”

He said this as if I were in some kind of danger.

“Appa is worried about me? What for?”

He didn’t answer. He tested the pedals to see if the chain now worked. Then he straightened up. “He doesn’t want you turning out funny or anything like that.”

I felt a flush rise into my face.

Diggy was looking at me, his eyes slightly narrowed. “You’re not, are you?”

“Not what?” I asked, not meeting his gaze.

He picked up a piece of rag and wiped his greasy fingers.

“Listen,” he said, after a moment, “since you’re coming to the Victoria Academy, I want to warn you about Black Tie.”

“Black Tie?”

“The principal. His real name is Mr. Abeysinghe, but we call him Black Tie because he always wears one. You better watch out for him,” Diggy continued. “Once you get on his bad side, that’s it.” Then he began to detail the punishments one received for getting on his bad side. “Once, he slapped a boy and broke some of his teeth. Another boy in my class got caned so severely his trousers tore. Then he made the boy kneel in the sun until he fainted.”

I was appalled. “What did they do?”

“One of the boys had hair that was too long and he wore his top two shirt buttons open. The other blinked too hard and Black Tie thought he was winking at him.” He leaned towards me. “Never blink too hard in front of him and, most of all, don’t lick your lips. If you do that, for sure, he’ll think you’re trying to mock him.”

This was so preposterous that I wondered if he was exaggerating. I found it difficult to believe that anyone would punish boys so severely for such negligible wrongs. At St. Gabriel’s, the most the fathers would do was give the wrongdoer a smack on the palm with a ruler. Diggy had seen the doubt in my eyes, for he said, “You better believe me. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.”

“Why doesn’t someone do something about it?” I asked.

He laughed. “Like what?”

“Like complain to their parents.”

His eyes grew wide. “Never complain,” he said. “Once you come to The Queen Victoria Academy you are a man. Either you take it like a man or the other boys will look down on you.”

If I had not been pleased with the idea of transferring to the Victoria Academy, I now hated and feared it. I thought of approaching my father, but I knew this would be useless. From the way he had spoken at the dinner table, it was clear that his decision was final. The school was two streets away from St. Gabriel’s, on the sea side of Galle Road. I had never actually seen the building; the school hours of both St. Gabriel’s and the Victoria Academy were from 7:30 to 1:30, but I had always been dropped off before Diggy. After school, the car always picked us up in front of St. Gabriel’s gates. All I knew of the Victoria Academy was the older boys. I would watch them from my classroom window as they swaggered along the railway lines or on the beach, their arms around one another. They seemed so grown up in their long pants, and the way they laughed and called to each other, their voices loud and strident, made me a little frightened. Now, their loud confidence seemed a symbol of all the horror that awaited me in the new year.

The remainder of the Christmas holidays was completely ruined for me. I could think only of what lay ahead when school began. Diggy held out one ray of hope, however. Black Tie, he told me, might not be with the school much longer. He had heard this news from one of the prefects.

I learned from my brother that there was a dispute going on between Black Tie and Mr. Lokubandara, the vice principal. Diggy wouldn’t tell me what the conflict was about, but he did inform me that Mr. Lokubandara was a “political appointee,” his cousin being a minister in the cabinet. This meant that, in
fact, he had a lot more power than Black Tie, and so Black Tie might well lose the struggle and have to resign.

I was surprised to see that as Diggy related all this he looked worried.

“Does the vice principal give worse punishments than Black Tie?” I asked.

“He’s a snake in the grass,” Diggy replied, but he would not say any more than that.

The Christmas holidays ended all too soon and one morning I woke with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that something terrible awaited me that day. Then I saw my new school uniform over the chair.

The uniform at St. Gabriel’s was shorts and a shirt, and this would be the first time I’d be wearing long trousers to school. Amma and Neliya Aunty oohed and aahed when they saw me in them, saying how quickly time had passed and that it seemed like yesterday they were changing my nappies. I remained untouched by their sentimentality and admiration. All I could think of was the boys in shorts at St. Gabriel’s. I longed to be with them.

When the car came to a stop in front of the Victoria Academy, I got out and stood for a moment, looking at the building in front of me. It was a grand structure, about a hundred years old,
a long rectangular block with sloping roofs and tall windows that extended from midway up the building to the top. The bottom half was covered with ivy. The building had three domes, one at each end and one in the centre. Under the central dome was a small balcony. On the balcony stood a figure dressed all in white. “Black Tie,” Diggy said to me, and the awe in his voice seemed to match the image of this figure in white, highlighted against the old building. I stared at Black Tie in surprise, for Diggy had failed to mention a very significant detail of his attire: a sola topee, that white domed hat I had only seen in photographs from the time the British ruled Sri Lanka.

When I was closer to the balcony, I got a better look at Black Tie. Though he was a fat man, his posture was upright. He wore a carefully pressed white suit that also belonged to another era, a white shirt, and, of course, the black tie.

Diggy took me in through the main entrance and led me towards a door at the other end of the building. This door opened out onto a quadrangle where a game of rugger was in progress. I paused in the doorway, reluctant to descend into the quadrangle. Most of the boys were much older and bigger than I was, and they were playing rugger with a brutality I had never seen at St. Gabriel’s. Diggy signalled impatiently to me, and I had no choice but to follow him. I crossed the quadrangle watchfully, afraid that one of the players would run into me and knock me over, but I made it safely to the other side.

Diggy led me up a set of stairs to a row of classrooms. The open corridor outside the classrooms was filled with boys about my size, yet they seemed much older. The bravado with
which they walked and the crude words they used reminded me of the boys I had seen playing on the railway lines and beaches. I would have taken this bravura to be their true nature had I not noticed that they stood aside respectfully to let us pass. Diggy, being an older boy, hardly deigned to notice them.

We finally arrived at my classroom. There was a group of boys standing in the doorway, and they glanced our way with curiosity. One boy in particular was examining us. I noticed that Diggy avoided meeting his gaze.

“This is your class,” Diggy said to me.

“This is 9C, Chelvaratnam,” the boy said.

I was surprised that he knew Diggy’s surname. Diggy looked at him for a moment and then he said pityingly, “I know it’s 9C, Salgado.”

“This is a Sinhalese class, not a Tamil class. You want 9F, Chelvaratnam.”

“No, I don’t, Salgado,” Diggy replied. “I want 9C.” They stood looking at each other like two dogs who had met on the edge of their territories. Then, much to my surprise, Diggy backed down. He turned to me and said gloomily, “This is your class,” and began to walk away. I looked after him in alarm, not wanting to be left alone with Salgado. He soon disappeared into the crowded corridor.

“How come you’re in a Sinhala class?” Salgado asked me.

“My parents put me in a Sinhala class from grade one because they wanted me to learn Sinhalese,” I said. My voice sounded anxious and I wondered if they had noticed it.

“We don’t want you here,” Salgado said, and he stood in front of the doorway. “Go to the Tamil class.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t very well go down the corridor to 9F. I didn’t even speak Tamil.

Then a voice behind me said, “But Salgado, aren’t you always saying that Tamils should learn Sinhalese?”

I turned to look at the speaker. A boy was standing at the open window of the classroom, his elbows on the window-sill, hands cupping his chin. He had a small, musing smile on his face.

“Aday, Soyza, you better watch out or I’ll give you something,” Salgado replied, but his threat had an empty ring to it.

The boy named Soyza smiled indolently, thus dismissing Salgado’s threat. “What’s your name?” he said to me.

“It’s Arjun.”

“We only use surnames here,” he said, kindly.

“It’s Chelvaratnam,” I said.

“Well, come in, come in, Chelvaratnam,” he said and waved his hand theatrically. “Don’t be shy.”

Now Salgado moved aside and let me in. Soyza came away from the window. He beckoned to me to take the desk next to his. At that moment the bell rang and the boys hurried to their seats.

As I started to sit down, Soyza said, “Be careful, there’s a nail in the corner of that chair.”

I glanced at the chair and then nodded my thanks. Our eyes met for a brief instant, then Soyza looked away as if he was embarrassed.

When the teacher came in and began the roll call, I wrote the word “thanks” on a piece of paper and passed it to Soyza. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he opened the note. I
was surprised that instead of seeming pleased, he frowned as if I had committed an impropriety. He folded the paper and put it inside his desk. I stared at him, wondering what I had done wrong. Although he was aware that I was looking at him, he refused to meet my gaze. Later on, however, he relented, offering me the use of his protractor in geometry class.

I found myself looking at Soyza often during the classes that morning. Though delicately built, his body was well-proportioned and lacked the awkwardness of most other boys his age. His face was full of contrasts. His upper lip was thin, his lower lip full; his forehead was fine and well-shaped, his eyebrows thick and unruly. Yet the overall effect was attractive.

In the days that followed, it became evident to me that Soyza had a certain power which gave him immunity from bullies like Salgado. Where this came from I didn’t understand. It was certainly not his physical strength. His long eyelashes and prominent cheekbones gave his face a fragility that looked like it could be easily shattered. Yet there was a confidence about him, an understanding of his own power. He was also daring, for, unlike any of the other boys, he wore his hair long. It fell almost to his shoulders. I noticed that whenever he went out into the corridor between classes or to the toilet, he always reached into his desk for black hair clips and pinned his hair up so deftly it looked like he had short hair.