Funny Boy (26 page)

“Please, sir,” I said, my voice cracking, “give me another chance sir.”

He tapped the cane on the desk. Then he lifted his hand for me to give it another try.

I glanced at Soyza for the first line again.

“It’s good to see the School we knew, the land of youth and dream’,” he said.

I ran the last phrase of the line through my mind, trying to remember what followed it. Then suddenly a line came to me, and with the joy of a traveller who has reached his destination, I blurted out, “It’s good to see the School we knew, the land of youth and dream, / This is the word that year by year, while in
her place the School is set, / Every one of her sons must hear and none that hears it dare forget …” my voice trailed off as I noticed Soyza’s eyes widen in alarm. I had moved from “The Best School of All” into “Vitae Lampada.”

“Chelvaratnam,” Black Tie said after a moment, a pained expression on his face, “of all the vices, falsehood is the most terrible.”

“Please, sir,” I said. “Sorry, sir.”

“Chelvaratnam, come here.”

I remained where I was.

“If you had come to me today and told me the truth, I would have been angry that you hadn’t learned the poems, but I would not have been,” he lifted his finger for emphasis, “sad.”

He called to his prefect, who came and pushed me towards Black Tie. When I was close enough to him, Black Tie reached out and grasped me by the ear. He pulled me down so that I was leaning across his desk. “You see, Chelvaratnam, if I do not punish you now, you will go into life thinking you can get away with lies.” He moved his chair back so as to position himself better. “Falsehood is the biggest malaise in this country, the cause of all its problems. If most of the politicians today had received a good thrashing, we would not be having the problems we currently have.” He lifted the cane and then paused. “One day, Chelvaratnam, you will thank me for this.”

With that he hit the back of my legs. I cried out as I felt the sting of it spread up my thighs. Black Tie kept his hand firmly on my shoulder as he brought the cane down again on the same spot. After that I lost count of how many times he struck me. The school bell rang, signalling the end of school, but that did
not stop him. He continued to cane me until he felt the vice of falsehood had been banished from my being. When he was done, he turned and put the cane away in a businesslike fashion. “Tomorrow,” he said to me, “come before the interval, and this time have those poems memorized.” With that, he dismissed us.

When we got outside the office, I was trembling. Soyza gave me the poems and I took them quickly, not wanting him to see how my hand shook.

“Where is your bag?” he asked.

“In class, where do you think?” I replied angrily, even though I was not angry with him.

“Mine too,” he said.

We walked along the corridor, buffeted by the stream of boys hurrying to get out of school. My legs were smarting. By the time we reached our classroom, everyone had gone and we packed our bags in silence. As I looked at the poems, lying on my desk, I thought about the trouble they had caused me, of the humiliation and pain of the caning I had just received. Suddenly, I grabbed the pieces of paper and ripped them in two.

“Hey!” Soyza shouted at me. “Are you mad?”

He tried to stop me, but I continued to tear the paper. I threw the pieces into the air.

“I don’t care,” I cried. “I hate them, I hate them.”

My voice broke. I turned away and finished packing my bag, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand.

Soyza bent down and picked up the shreds of paper. He put them on the edge of my desk. “Gosh,” he said, “what a drama. You should become a Sinhala film star after that performance.”

I didn’t reply.

“I can just see it,” he said. “New sensational darling of the silver screen.”

“Stop it,” I yelled.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked after a moment. “I don’t care.”

Yet even as I spoke, I felt the stupidity of my words. Tomorrow I would have to present myself to Black Tie with the poems in hand. I sat down. “I don’t know what to do.”

Soyza thought about it for a moment, and said, “Why don’t you try to find the poems?”

“Where?”

“What about the British Council library?”

“How would I get in there?”

“I have a membership,” he said quickly. He turned away and closed up his schoolbag. I waited for him to offer to go to the British Council with me, but he didn’t say anything. Then I saw that he was hesitant about inviting me, as if he was not sure I would want to be seen in his company.

“Can you take me?” I asked.

He nodded and seemed relieved that I had asked him.

He picked up his bag and we went out of the room. I looked at him as he walked a little ahead of me down the corridor. I was puzzled by his shyness, especially as he was usually so confident.

We had arranged to meet at the gates of the British Council that evening. When I arrived on my bicycle, Soyza was already
there waiting for me. He was wearing jeans and a shirt, both of which were carefully ironed. I also noticed that he had taken a lot of trouble with his hair, for he had oiled and parted it so that the jagged ends were less noticeable. It was strange to see him out of school uniform and, as I looked at him, I thought for the first time about his life outside school, a life of which I knew nothing. What did his parents do for a living? How many brothers and sisters did he have? I wondered if he ever thought about me in this way.

When we walked in, the security guard at the gate didn’t bother to ask if we were members. Soyza took me to where the microfiche machines were, and we looked up Sir Henry Newbolt.

We found his books quite easily and took them to the reading room to look for our poems.

“Gosh,” Soyza said, after he had read a few of them, “this fellow really loved school.”

“Must have been a teacher’s favourite,” I said bitterly.

“Or must have been cricket captain or something,” Soyza added.

We looked at each other and smiled.

“Must have been on the rugger team,” I said.

“No, no,” Soyza cried. “Must have been a rugger
captain
.”

“Do you think tennis captain too?”

“Of course. Triple coloursman at least.”

Now we were chuckling, and it was a relief to be able to hold up for ridicule all that was considered sacred by The Queen Victoria Academy.

“I bet you anything,” I said, “that he was cricket captain, rugger captain, and tennis captain all in one year.”

“And don’t forget leader of the debate team and chairman of the English Literary Association,” Soyza added. “Otherwise, how else could he know such big words?”

He peered at the book, then held up his finger authoritatively and read in a sonorous voice, “ ‘Qui ante diem periit: Sed miles sed pro patria.’ ”

The expression on his face, as if he understood what he was saying, made me laugh.

The other people in the reading room turned to look at us. The librarian rose from her seat and we picked up the book and fled to the photocopier. As we stood in line for the machine, I noticed that Soyza was looking at me. He smiled tentatively, as if he was not sure that I would return his smile. I felt suddenly shy but, wanting to acknowledge his gesture of friendship, I smiled back.

When we walked to the gate afterwards, we were both strangely subdued. I kept trying to think of things to say, but nothing came to mind. We unlocked our bicycles and rode in silence to the top of Alfred House Gardens. Then we stopped.

“How does your family call you? Is it Arjun?”

“No. Arjie.”

“Arjie.” He said it as if he were thinking over the word. “Can I call you Arjie, then?”

“Yes. And you? What do …”

“Shehan.”

He grinned suddenly and bowed. “Well goodnight, Arjie.”

“Well goodnight, Shehan,” I replied in an equally playful tone.

He waved and rode off in the direction of Cinnamon Gardens. I watched him for a while and then I set of in the opposite direction.

As I rode along Duplication Road, I said the word “Shehan” to myself, trying to get used to its newness on my tongue. Our laughter over the poems had made me feel good. The terror that awaited me tomorrow was still with me, but, for the moment, I had pushed it into the back of my mind. I was content, as I cycled home through the rapidly descending night, to think of Shehan and the relief and pleasure we had shared in holding up the Victoria Academy to ridicule. I thought for a moment about Shehan and the head prefect, and what Diggy had said. I couldn’t imagine Shehan, who had such a sense of humour, who was moody and prim, even being friends with the head prefect.

That night I dreamt of Shehan. We were in the Otter’s Club pool, swimming and joking around. He was in a very mischievous mood, and every time I spoke to him he answered in Tamil, knowing that I didn’t understand. He swam away from me and I chased after him until finally I caught him in the deep end. I wound my legs around his so that he couldn’t escape. He splashed water in my face and tickled me, but I would not let him go. I was very aware of the feel of his legs against mine and of the occasional moments when, in trying to prevent him from getting away, my chest would rub against his.

The next morning I noticed the familiar wetness on my sarong.

I went to Black Tie’s office at the beginning of the second period that day. Shehan was in his usual place. We looked at each other and there was, in our silent exchange, an acknowledgement of our newly found friendship. As I sat down next to him, I thought about my dream the night before, and caught myself studying him, the way his skin became lighter below the top button of his shirt, the way sweat had gathered in little spots on his chin and his upper lip, the way his hair was damp around the edges and clung to his temples in little curls. When he leaned towards me to whisper something, I smelled the odour of sweat mixed with Lifebuoy soap.

Shehan was called in to prompt me. But it was useless. The moment Black Tie removed the cane from his umbrella stand, the words of the poems again fragmented in my mind. Black Tie’s face changed colour with anger. He made me lean over his desk once again and he caned me until he was breathless. Then he caught me by the ear and led me out onto the balcony. I was to kneel there until such time as I learned the poems. I felt worse when Shehan, too, was brought out and made to kneel on the balcony with me. He was to help me learn the poems. Black Tie went inside and closed the glass door, and I saw him return to his desk and continue his work.

I turned to Shehan and whispered, “It’s not fair. You didn’t do anything.”

Shehan clicked his tongue against his teeth dismissively and shrugged, as if kneeling on the balcony, under a sun that was reaching its mid-day fierceness, didn’t bother him at all.

“Come,” he said, and picked up the poems.

“It’s no use,” I replied. “I know those poems. I just can’t recite them with that cane on the desk.”

“What are you going to do, then?” he asked.

I glanced down at the front lawn of the school, which was empty of students and peaceful. A slight breeze blew across the grass, creating a wave-like pattern as it went. Outside the school gates, the vendors sat on the pavement preparing their wares for when school would finish. One of them had a little child who was playing hopscotch on the deserted road. As I gazed at the child, a feeling of hopelessness descended on me. I heard in the distance the bells of St. Gabriel’s, announcing the end of a period, and my despair increased. Their sound was a reminder of a more carefree time, when school had been looked forward to rather than dreaded. How rapidly and sadly my life had changed.

After about an hour, Black Tie’s prefect came to call us in. This time, when I still couldn’t recite the poems, Shehan received a punishment as well, for wasting his time on the balcony and failing to help me learn the poems. I looked on in agony at the grimace on Shehan’s face as Black Tie held him by the ear and brought his cane down on him repeatedly.

We were sent out to the balcony again. I whispered to Shehan, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replied, and from the way he tilted
his head back and wrinkled his nose, I could tell that he was trying not to cry.

I realized that it was my responsibility to get us out of this situation. Then I remembered Mr. Sunderalingam and the fact that he was the one who had recommended me to Black Tie in the first place.

I waited till the interval bell rang, and I gathered up the courage to go inside and ask Black Tie if I could use the toilet. He considered my request for a moment and then assented. I hurried down the stairs and along the corridor that led to the staff room. It was a sacred place, and under usual circumstances I would have been too scared to enter it. Now, however, desperation made me brave. I knocked on the door and waited. After a moment someone called out for me to enter and I opened the door and went in. All the teachers stopped talking and turned to stare at me. I saw Mr. Sunderalingam and said, “Please, sir. May I speak with you?”

Mr. Sunderalingam nodded and stood up. He led me to a secluded verandah outside the staff room.

“How’s the poetry recital, Chelvaratnam?” he asked.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, sir,” I said.

Then I told him everything that had happened.

When I finished, he said, “You must bear with our principal, Chelvaratnam. He belongs to the old school that believes you can beat knowledge into a student.”

Seeing that this had no effect on me, he went on: “Did you know that he was brought up by the old principal?”

I looked at him, interested.

“Yes. He was an orphan and the old principal, Mr. Lawton, raised him and educated him. The values he was taught are the ones he still holds on to, so you must not blame him too much for what he did to you.”

Mr. Sunderalingam saw that I was still not convinced by his arguments. He looked ahead for a long time, then he said, “Chelvaratnam, are you aware of the dispute that’s going on between our principal and the vice principal?”

I nodded hesitantly, not sure if I should let on that I knew.