Funny Boy (25 page)

“Chelvaratnam, sir.”

He took out a piece of paper from the file he carried and gave it to me. “Read this, Chelvaratnam,” he said.

I looked at the piece of paper. Photocopied on it was a poem called “The Best School of All,” by a Sir Henry Newbolt. I saw that the words on the board had come from this poem. I read the whole poem aloud. When I was finished, the teacher nodded and held out his hand for the piece of paper. Then, without a word, he picked up his file and left the room.

“Who’s
that
?” Salgado asked the prefect.

“That was Mr. Sunderalingam, the English and drama teacher,” the prefect replied. He looked at me. “I thinks he’s going to rope you into some play or other.”

Later that morning, during Social Studies class, Black Tie’s personal prefect, a thin, hook-nosed senior student called Kulasekara, came to our room. He was well known throughout the school, and because he always brought bad news with him, he was nicknamed the Angel of Death. Since Soyza had already left for Black Tie’s office, we looked fearfully at the prefect, wondering why he was here. The teacher stopped her lecture and waited for the prefect to state his business. “The principal wants to see Chelvaratnam,” he said to the teacher.

I jumped, nearly knocking my books onto the floor. Now the teacher turned to look at me. “Chelvaratnam,” she said, and indicated that I was free to go.

I remained where I was.

The other boys began to look at me and titter in anticipation of having another “ills and burdens” student in their class.

“Are you Chelvaratnam?” the prefect asked.

I nodded.

He crooked his finger at me.

After a moment, I got up. In my nervousness I bumped against a desk on my way to the front of the class.

When we were outside the classroom, I said to the prefect, “Are you sure it’s me he wants?” He didn’t answer. “What have I done?” I whispered, my voice cracking with fear.

He smiled. “Whatever it is, you’re going to get it.”

As we walked down the corridor, I tried to think why Black Tie would want me, how he even knew my name. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single reason for my being taken to see him. As we passed a window, I glanced at my reflection
to make sure that I looked neat and clean. The prefect noticed this and smiled again.

Black Tie’s office was on the second floor and we had to go up a flight of concrete stairs. When we reached the top step, I saw that there were two rows of benches and tables in front of the office. Soyza was sitting in the first row, and his eyes widened when he saw me. He raised his eyebrows questioningly and I shook my head to say that I didn’t know why I had been summoned.

Outside Black Tie’s office hung portraits of all the old principals of the Victoria Academy. Above the arched, heavy wooden door was the crest of the school. The prefect went into the office, closing the door behind him. After a moment, he came out and called me inside.

When I entered the office, I stopped for a moment in astonishment. Mr Sunderalingam was seated next to Black Tie. He smiled, as if to reassure me, and motioned to me to come nearer. Black Tie studied me as I came forward. He seemed very different from when I had seen him in our class, for he had a small smile on his face and was leaning back in his chair in a relaxed fashion. He was not wearing his topee and I now saw that he was almost completely bald.

Black Tie raised his hand for me to stop, and I stood at attention. He held out two pieces of paper, which the prefect then handed to me. I took them and continued to stand at attention.

Black Tie regarded me quizzically. “Chelvaratnam, look at those papers,” he said.

I quickly glanced at the papers. There were two poems
photocopied on them. The first I recognized as “The Best School of All,” and the second was called “Vitae Lampada.”

I looked at Mr. Sunderalingam, puzzled.

“I want a perfect recitation,” Black Tie said. “Tomorrow, last period, here in my office.”

Stunned, I said nothing.

“Do you understand me, Chelvaratnam?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied smartly.

He waved his hand and the prefect led me to the door.

When I walked out, Soyza raised his eyebrows again and I shrugged my shoulders to show that I still didn’t know what was going on. I began to walk down the stairs, clutching the poems. When I got to the bottom, I heard someone call my name. I turned to see Mr. Sunderalingam signalling for me to wait for him.

“I say, Chelvaratnam,” he said when he reached me. “You must be wondering what all this is about.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “Our beloved principal is a man of too few words, no?” He waved his handkerchief at the poems. “Those poems. You are to recite them at the upcoming prize-giving.”

I looked at him in amazement.

“Yes,” he said. “I told our beloved principal how impressed I was with your reading.”

“That … that’s wonderful, sir,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

“It is an honour, Chelvaratnam,” he replied.

When Mr. Sunderalingam had walked away, I glanced at the
two pieces of paper in my hand and nearly laughed out loud. I had expected to receive some terrible punishment when all along Black Tie wished only to confer this honour upon me.

After school that day, Soyza caught up with me as I was wheeling my bicycle down to the gate. He asked me what had happened in Black Tie’s office. I told him and he, too, seemed impressed by the distinction I had been given. We had reached the gate by now and he rode away on his bicycle. Diggy was standing under a tree with his bicycle, waiting for me.

“Are you friends with Soyza?” he asked, as I came up to him.

“Yes,” I said, surprised that he knew his name.

He frowned. “You better watch out for him,” he said. “You don’t want to become associated with Soyza.”

“Why?”

“Never mind why. Just listen to what I say.”

“But I like him.”

Now Diggy shifted uncomfortably.

“He’s an extremely nice person,” I said, trying to goad Diggy into giving me more information.

“You better be careful.… Listen,” he said after a minute, “I’m going to tell you something about Soyza because I don’t want you to become like him.”

I waited.

“Have you noticed that Soyza sometimes goes out during free periods?”

“Maybe I have.”

“Do you know where he goes?”

“How would I know?”

“To the head prefect’s room.”

“So what? He’s always getting into trouble.”

“But do you know what he does there?” He leaned towards me. “Sex,” he said. “He has sex with the head prefect. He lets the head prefect do all kinds of things to him.”

I stared at him, astounded.

Diggy smirked. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you remain Soyza’s friend, people will think you’re like him and you’ll become the laughing-stock of the whole school.”

It suddenly occurred to me that Diggy was making all this up. What he had said was too preposterous to be true.

“Liar,” I said to him. “You’re a liar.”

Diggy didn’t reply. He got on his bicycle and began to ride away.

“I don’t believe a word you say!” I called after him. Without turning around, he held up his finger at me.

Then something Soyza had said the previous day came back to me – that moment in the bicycle shed when he had asked, “What do you know about me?” An awful doubt began to form in my mind. Could he have been referring to what Diggy claimed he did with the head prefect?

And yet, sex? It didn’t make any sense. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that Diggy had invented the whole story to shock me and insult someone I liked.

That evening, I eagerly began to study the poems. I found them hard to memorize, however, and even harder to recite
with any conviction. There were many expressions and words I wasn’t familiar with, and the precise meaning of the poems eluded me. They spoke of a reality I didn’t understand. “Vitae Lampada” was about cricket, but not cricket the way I understood it. It said that through playing cricket one learned to be honest and brave and patriotic. This was not true at the Victoria Academy. Cricket, here, consisted of trying to make it on the first-eleven team by any means, often by cheating or by fawning over the cricket master. Cricket was anything but honest. “The Best School of All” was no better. In this poem, the poet looked back on his school days as the best days of his life. I found it puzzling that one would be nostalgic for something one had longed to escape.

It took me a long time, but finally I was able to commit those poems to memory.

Later, as I lay in bed, what Diggy had said came back to me. I tried again to imagine Soyza and the head prefect together. At fourteen, I was aware of what the sex act between a man and a woman entailed. But between two boys? I thought about the head prefect. I had seen him once in the corridor. He was short and stocky, his nose wide and flat, his lips too full, their pinkness contrasting oddly with his dark skin. Soyza, on the other hand, was so delicately built. The difference between them only heightened my curiosity. But try as I might I couldn’t figure the whole thing out, and eventually I put Diggy’s silly story out of my head and fell asleep.

The next day I set out for Black Tie’s office in the last period.

I got to the top of the stairs and I saw Soyza, sitting on one of the benches among the other “ills and burdens.” He called me over and informed me that Black Tie had gone on one of his rounds of the school. I would have to wait for him. The neatness of Soyza’s uniform and the way he sat, hands clasped primly on the table in front of him, made me certain that what Diggy had said about him the day before was nonsense.

I asked Soyza to listen to my recitation and correct me if I made any errors. He took the poems from me and waited for me to start, but, alarmingly, I couldn’t remember the lines. “That’s strange,” I whispered to him. “My mind is a blank.”

“Think only of the first line,” he said. “After that everything will come naturally.”

Much to my relief, this worked. He gave me the first line and the rest came to me easily.

I was halfway through the second poem, when one of the other “ills and burdens” nudged me. I turned around and saw that Black Tie was at the top of the stairs, listening to me. I became silent. Soyza hurriedly gave the poems back to me.

All the “ills and burdens” rose to their feet.

“Chelvaratnam, come,” Black Tie said. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “And you too, Soyza.”

Soyza and I looked at each other as we followed him into his office.

Black Tie took his seat. He pointed for Soyza to stand in a corner and he told me to give the poems to him. My hand shook slightly as I passed the pieces of paper to Soyza. He saw this and smiled encouragingly. His smile reminded me that I
should start by thinking of the first line, and I began to feel more confident.

Then Black Tie did a surprising thing. He reached behind him, took out a cane from his umbrella stand, and placed it on the desk. “If he makes a mistake, stop him,” Black Tie said to Soyza. His words carried a threat, enforced by the cane on his table.

I gazed at that cane and the poems fragmented in my mind, like a shattered reflection on a pond. I could capture only a word or a phrase and sometimes even a complete stanza, but where and how they fitted together I couldn’t remember.

“Chelvaratnam,” I heard Black Tie say, as if from a distance, “I’m waiting.”

I willed my mind to be calm, but to no effect.

I heard Soyza’s voice. “ ‘It’s good to see the School we knew, the land of youth and dream.’ ”

It was as if he was speaking to me in a foreign tongue. Somewhere in my mind it registered that he was prompting me. I tried to recall what he had just said. It was the first line of the poem, and surely, if I could concentrate on it, the rest would follow as it had done a short while back. “ ‘It’s good to see the School we knew,’ ” he repeated, “ ‘the land of youth and dream.’ ”

His words echoed over and over in my mind but they yielded nothing. They were like the prayers we had learned as children, senseless incantations that we repeated to ourselves each night.

“There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight,” Soyza read. The line was familiar, but I couldn’t tell if it was the second line
of the same poem, or the first line of the other poem. I looked at him as if I hoped to find the answer to my dilemma on his face.

“Chelvaratnam,” I heard Black Tie say. “You haven’t learned the poems, have you?”

Again his voice seemed to come from a distant place. Before I could formulate an answer, he raised the cane from the desk. My mind stopped rippling and became clear. Not with the words of the poems, but with the understanding of imminent danger. The sense of distance I felt disappeared.

“Sir,” I said quickly. “Yes, sir, I have learned the poems.”

He shook his head regretfully, as if my answer had come too late. He beckoned to me. I remained where I was and said again, “I do know those poems, sir. I studied them the whole of last night.”

He shook his head again. “Come here, Chelvaratnam,” he said, almost gently.