Funny Boy (29 page)

Then I hit him. One moment he was sitting on the bed, the next moment he was on the floor. We stared at each other, both of us shocked by my swift, violent reaction. Then he got up, and, without a word, he crossed to the door and opened it. He stood for a moment, as if waiting for me to ask him to stay, but I didn’t. He shut the door and went down the hall and I began to put the Scrabble game away.

That night I dreamt of Shehan. I was walking down a corridor in school and, when I reached a door, I knocked and went inside. Even though it was bright daylight outside, the room was so dark I couldn’t see in front of me. I felt a presence before
me and I knew that it was Shehan. His hands were on my hips now, moving slowly towards my stomach. They seemed bigger than I would have expected them to be. Then he pressed me against the wall and I realized that, though it was Shehan, he had the size and strength of the head prefect. I began to panic. I tried to escape from him, but he held me tightly against the wall. Now he placed his lips over mine and I couldn’t breathe. Purple spots appeared before my eyes and my lungs began to hurt so much I felt they would tear apart.

I awoke gasping for breath. I sat up in the darkness, breathing deeply and thankfully. After a while I lay back on my pillow. I looked up at the patterns the moonlight made on the ceiling, and I thought of the tender look on Shehan’s face before he had kissed me, the feel of his body against mine after he had opened the buttons of his trousers. Then, to my horror, I felt the stirring of desire within me. I looked away from the ceiling, reminding myself about the loathing I had felt, the way my backside had hurt as he pushed me against the wall. But these memories only served to increase my desire.

For the remainder of the night, I tossed and turned restlessly in my bed, torn between my desire for Shehan and disgust at that desire.

The next day, as I walked across the quadrangle to my class, I thought about my dream and also about my conflicting feelings. I dreaded that moment when I would actually see Shehan and be confronted anew with all that had happened. He was
already at his desk when I arrived in class. He was reading a book, and he glanced at me quickly before returning to it. I walked to my seat and put my bag down. Now that I was closer, I saw that something had changed in him. The careless bravado that he always used to mask his feelings was gone. Instead, his emotions were as clearly visible as the veins below the surface of his skin. During the physical training period, he didn’t ask permission to leave the class. Instead he remained at his desk, reading. The other boys were quick to notice this too, especially Salgado. When the bell rang, he purposely brushed against Shehan on his way to his desk and then watched for his reaction. Shehan continued to read his book as if he had not noticed Salgado.

Later in the day, Black Tie came to our class. It was between periods and so the boys had grown unruly. There was a game of touch football in progress, the blackboard duster being used as the ball. Suddenly the lookout at the door called out “Black Tie!” and everyone ran to their seats. In the silence we heard Black Tie approaching and I was reminded of the poems. His footsteps came to a stop in front of our class.

He strode in as if he had come for a particular reason. We all stood up and chorused, “Good morning, sir.” He ignored our greeting and surveyed the class. I looked at him, wondering if it was me he wanted, but his eyes rested on Shehan. Then he said, “Soyza. There you are.”

I stared at Black Tie, wondering what this meant.

He beckoned to him, “Come here, scallywag.”

Shehan was looking at Black Tie, dismay evident in his face. After a moment, he walked reluctantly towards him.

“Soyza, where have you been?” he said.

“Sir?” Shehan said in surprise.

“Why haven’t you reported to my office, Soyza?”

“But, sir,” Shehan said. “You said that I could go …”

“I never said anything of the kind,” he replied.

“Yes you did, sir,” Shehan said insistently.

Black Tie’s face filled with anger at Shehan’s tone. He grabbed him by the ear.

“Hooligan. Don’t tell me what I said and didn’t say. I told you that you were free for the day, that’s all.”

Still holding Shehan by the ear, he pulled him towards the door.

Even though Shehan’s head was pulled to one side, his eyes met mine for an instant before he was dragged out of class.

In that moment my conflicting feelings for Shehan disappeared and all my anger at him dissolved in the face of this new horror that had descended upon him. The only thing I was concerned about now was Shehan’s welfare. I listened to their footsteps getting fainter. When Black Tie had dismissed us, I, too, had thought it was for good. But we had forgotten that once you became an “ills and burdens,” you remained one for a long time.

For the rest of that day, all I could think about was Shehan, and a profound sense of misery began to seep through me. I was so lost in thought that the science teacher had to call to me three times before I heard her. As a punishment for not paying attention, I was sent outside the classroom. I stood in the corridor, looking down at the deserted quadrangle. I thought of Shehan and wondered if he was being punished again, if
Black Tie had caned him and made him kneel on the balcony. I leaned against the wall, feeling like I was going to cry. The more I thought about Shehan and the way I had treated him, the worse I felt. With the terrible regret of a realization come too late, I saw that I had misjudged what we had done in the garage. Shehan had not debased me or degraded me, but rather had offered me his love. And I had scorned it.

Once school was over, I sat waiting for him. Finally he arrived, and when he saw me, he paused for a moment and then went to his desk without looking at me. I watched him pack his bag. The expression on his face was forbidding, but beneath the sternness I could tell he was close to tears. I was not used to seeing Shehan like this, with all his self-possession gone and the despair so visible on his face. He was the leader in our friendship; the one who had guided me, who had comforted me on Black Tie’s balcony.

“Shehan,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me. “Why? Why should you be sorry?” he said, and now the angry words were spilling out of him. “Everything has worked out for you. You’re no longer an ‘ills and burdens.’ ” He pushed the books into his bag. “And as for what happened between us, nobody knows about it, so you can pretend it never happened.”

“That’s not fair,” I cried.

He made a dismissive sound and picked up his bag. Without a word he left the classroom and I heard him go down the corridor.

All that afternoon, I sat on our front verandah, waiting for something. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I couldn’t make myself do anything but sit there and wait. Then the phone rang and I stood up involuntarily. I heard Amma pick up the receiver and call out to Sonali that the call was for her. As I heard Sonali come down the hall to the phone, I realized that I had been hoping Shehan would call me or come to me to say everything was forgiven. Now I saw the absurdity of my expectation. If I wanted to make up with Shehan, I would have to go to his house and do it myself.

When I knocked on the gate, the servant woman came immediately, as if she had been sitting on the steps waiting for someone. The expression on her face alarmed me.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“Don’t know, baba,” she said. “From the time Shehan baba came back, he has been in his room.”

I wheeled my bicycle into the driveway and leaned it against a tree.

She followed me, saying, “I’ve only seen him once like this before and that was when his mother left.” She sighed and shook her head. “What a calamity that was. But who can blame the lady? Husband was always out of the country on business. Never had time for his family. If not for me, I don’t know what would have happened to the baba after his mother left.”

I looked at her, puzzled, wondering why she was telling me all this. She asked me to come with her into the house.

When we got to the second-floor landing, I approached
Shehan’s door and listened. Inside I could hear him walking around. I knocked on the door and called out, “Shehan.”

He stopped pacing.

“Shehan,” I called again.

“What?” he finally said.

“Open the door.”

“No. Leave me alone.”

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“If you’re doing nothing, let me in, then.”

He was silent.

“Did that old woman ask you to come?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I came because I wanted to see you.”

“Tell that woman to go away. Then I’ll let you in.”

I turned to the servant and asked her to go downstairs. She reluctantly agreed. She went halfway down the stairs and watched me. Shehan opened the door. His face was grimy from weeping. He still had his school clothes on, and his shirt hung out of his trousers. He closed the door behind me and bolted it, then gestured towards the bed for me to sit down. I did so.

“Shehan,” I said after a moment, “I really need to apologize. I was so angry at you …” He raised his hand to say that he had already forgiven me. Yet he continued to look miserable.

“Now everything is okay, no?” I asked anxiously.

He shook his head. “I can’t bear it,” he said after a moment. “As long as you were there, I didn’t mind being an ‘ills and burdens.’ But now that you’re gone, I don’t know what I’ll do. I feel like …”

He stopped himself, and I could tell that he was on the verge of tears again. He moved his hand, as if willing himself not to cry. Then he went to the window and stood there for a long time, looking out at the playground across from his house. “I can’t stand the constant punishments. If I don’t get out of this, I think …”

He fell silent, and his expression was so serious that I felt afraid. I understood now why the servant woman had been so worried about him. She, who knew him so well, was aware that he had reached his limit.

As I cycled home through the rapidly descending dusk, despair began to grow in me. A despair that was fuelled by my inability to relieve Shehan of his pain. I thought of all the times he had come to my aid, how he had rescued me from Salgado on my first day, how he had taken me to the British Council library. I was also reminded of the times he had been punished because of my failure to recite those poems and how he had borne his punishment without once blaming me for it. I felt that now it was my duty to find a way of getting him out of his predicament, though I couldn’t think how to do it.

I was approaching the street that led to the Victoria Academy. On an impulse, I swerved my bicycle until I was in the middle of Galle Road, and then, when the traffic from the other side had momentarily cleared, I crossed and went down the street to the school.

When I got there, I stopped my bicycle. Beyond the railway lines I could glimpse the sea. The sun was an orange ball of fire
as it sank slowly behind the waves. The sea had turned a coppery colour, the tips of the waves brilliant amber glass. The light was changing over the Victoria Academy as well. The whole building was illuminated in a coral pink that swiftly deepened as the sun set. How peaceful and stately it looked. The balcony where Black Tie stood each morning, and where Shehan and I had spent many awful hours, now seemed cleansed in the rays of the setting sun. A few boys came strolling down to the gate, their cricket bats across their shoulders. As I gazed at this idyllic scene, the refrain from “The Best School of All” came to me: “For working days and holidays, / And glad and melancholy days, / They were great days and jolly days –” what foolish lines they were. Still, as I looked at the Victoria Academy, a voice in me said that this was how I would remember the school when I was no longer its captive. This was how my father must remember it, washed in the coral pink of memory.

No, I vowed to myself, I would never remember it like that.

I looked at the building again and I wondered how many boys like Shehan had passed through this school, how many Shehans had been its prisoner. I knew there must have been many. They were the ones no one spoke of, the ones past pupils pretended never existed. I gazed at Black Tie’s balcony, now hidden in shadows, and I felt bitter at the thought that the students he punished were probably the least deserving. They were the ones who had broken his rules – no blinking, no licking of lips, no long hair – a code that was unfair. Right and wrong, fair and unfair had nothing to do with how things really were. I thought of Shehan and myself. What had
happened between us in the garage was not wrong. For how could loving Shehan be bad? Yet if my parents or anybody else discovered this love, I would be in terrible trouble. I thought of how unfair this was and I was reminded of things I had seen happen to other people, like Jegan, or even Radha Aunty, who, in their own way, had experienced injustice. How was it that some people got to decide what was correct or not, just or unjust? It had to do with who was in charge; everything had to do with who held power and who didn’t. If you were powerful like Black Tie or my father you got to decide what was right or wrong. If you were like Shehan or me you had no choice but to follow what they said. But did we always have to obey? Was it not possible for people like Shehan and me to be powerful too? I thought about this, but no answer presented itself to me.