PADRE ROCHA got the news from Vellupillai that evening. It startled him. Even after he’d sorted out the truth from Vellupillai’s usual embellishments and cast aside the shining haloes Vellupillai placed over the heads of some and the Satanic horns he put on others.
Vellupillai had gone to the District Office for Padre Rocha, to get some papers signed by the pink-faced District Officer. To his surprise he met Mr Alfonso Rosario there with that urchin Rama, waiting to see Mr Chandler. The brat was wearing a shirt too tight for him and actually looked clean. Vellupillai stared at Rama and saw that he had been scrubbed and his hair was plastered down with coconut oil. Vellupillai was sure it was coconut oil.
“What’s all this in aid of?” he asked Rama in Tamil.
The urchin put his nose in the air and did not reply. He put his little black hand on Mr Rosario’s large tanned hand, shocking Vellupillai with his blatant intimacy.
“Good morning, Mr Rosario,” Vellupillai wished Fonso.
Fonso grinned widely and returned the salutation with a little bow but said nothing more. Vellupillai could see that he was nervous. Then he realised Mr Rosario too looked remarkably clean. Some attempt had been made to comb his mass of blond hair. Probably his wife made him do it.
“I have to see the kerani besar about these papers for Padre Rocha. I’ll go first, Mr Rosario,” Vellupillai said, excusing himself.
He scurried to the general office like a frightened cat.
“Hoi, Salleh, what’s that lout of a fisherman doing with the Tamil urchin?” he asked the clerk in Malay.
“That’s Muthu’s son, you know.”
“Yah, yah. I know. But what’s he doing here?”
“Ha! I’ll tell you. It surprised me.”
Salleh grinned and let Vellupillai wait a few seconds.
“That geragok fisherman, that shrimp fisherman wants to adopt the brat.”
“WHAT?”
“Yah. True.”
“Goodness me!”
“Don’t ask me why. He can hardly feed his own family. How many has he got now? Eight? Ten?”
“Seven already.” Vellupillai made it his business to keep tabs on all the Padre’s flock. He took it as part of his heavy responsibilities.
“Aiyah! These people,” Salleh sighed to imply their stupidity. It was the same kind of sigh his wife Minah used on him after her “Aiyah! You!” every time he came home with a new songkok or a new sarong for himself.
“That fellow, stupid lah. The cunning little worm must have come to him crying with his hard luck story and the …”
“Eh! That boy’s your people, you know,” Salleh stopped him.
Vellupillai was thinking how to frame his next question when there was a shout from the direction of the District Officer’s office. “Salleh!” With a loud “Yes Sir!” Salleh got up and walked slowly away with dignity, jerking his head to indicate to Vellupillai that the big man had summoned him.
Vellupillai sat down in the chair in front of Salleh’s desk. It would be the wrong time to leave now. He had to wait for Salleh to return to take his leave politely. Even though Salleh was not the kerani besar. And perhaps Salleh would have some news about Mr Rosario’s sudden desire to adopt the pariah boy.
It was a fortuitous decision on Vellupillai’s part. Salleh was back within five minutes. He was grinning.
“Come,” he said to Vellupillai with a twist of his raised wrist.
“Where?”
“To the D.O.’s office.”
“Alamak! Oh Mother of God!” with his hand going up in a jerk to his forehead.
Salleh stood in front of Vellupillai, grinning.
“It’s like this. That bodoh, that stupid fellow, cannot speak English. Mr Chandler cannot speak Portuguese or Malay. He’s one of those civil servants trained to speak Hokkien. For Singapore, lah. So they send him here!”
Vellupillai could not see the humour of it. Being summoned to the D.O.’s office was too much of a shock.
“That Rosario fellow can speak Malay. But I told the D.O. he couldn’t. Why should I get involved in his stupid business? So the D.O. told me to find someone who spoke Portuguese.”
Salleh grinned again, enjoying Vellupillai’s discomfort. But he knew it would be something for Vellupillai to talk about for months after. He himself could walk into the office grinning with the pride of his immediate response to Mr Chandler’s order. It would be his day.
It also made Vellupillai’s day. His report to Padre Rocha would be absolutely first-hand news. From the centre of power of the D.O.’s office. Not only was he able to translate Mr Rosario’s words and put a touch or two here and there, he was also able to translate the pariah boy’s Tamil words and clean them up nicely for the D.O.
That evening, he reported to the Padre how Rama had been left stranded when his toddy drinking son-of-the-very-devil father, that lazy, low-caste, odd job labourer, had died of drink. It was really smallpox, but Vellupillai knew smallpox only struck at the wicked and those whose health had been run down with daily doses of alcohol. Rama’s mother had died a week after her man’s death. The boy disappeared. With the flair of a detective sergeant Vellupillai had got the facts out of Rama. He was frightened that he would be locked up in some prison or poor house. He lived off the fish which the fishermen threw away on the beach and what rotting vegetables the Foos gave him. He also admitted that he had been so bold as to take some bread and other things from Mrs Foo on credit, promising that his rich uncle who was coming from India would settle his account when he arrived.
It was a blatant lie. The brat was the devil’s own handwork, he added in his translation to Mr Chandler, and was sharply told to stick to the exact words the brat used.
Padre Rocha stopped listening to Vellupillai’s story after he had heard the main facts. He frowned while his thoughts went their own way, shutting out Vellupillai’s unceasing emotional account. Strange, he thought. But he didn’t think the boy was the evil agent Vellupillai described.
Rama, a Hindu god. Rama, branch of a tree, a bush, foliage in the plural in Portuguese. His game of name meanings crept into his thoughts.
Altogether it was a silly thing for the oaf to do.
Mrs Delgado was emphatic that it was the stupidest thing that anyone of their kampong had done within living memory when she almost rushed at him after the six o’clock morning mass with her version of the news.
Padre Rocha pretended ignorance about Alfonso’s adoption of the little Indian boy. He got her version. The miserable Kling Pusing (she used that awful phrase meaning an Indian from the Kling Coast twisting the facts with lies; the phrase with which the locals ran down the Tamils), the miserable Kling Pusing had, she told him, gone down on his knees and kissed Fonso’s feet, sobbing his heart out, begging mercy and forgiveness for stealing the fish, groaning with hunger pains. She went on and on.
“But, Mrs Delgado, that’s Alfonso Rosario’s problem …”
“It brings disgrace to all of us. Fancy bringing a Kling into our community.”
“Hmmmm …” Padre Rocha grunted. Then with the faintest smile on his face muttered, “Yes. Yes. A heathen.”
“That’s it!” She leapt at the opening, and went on to rave and rant at Fonso’s lack of consideration for his God, his religion and his very own people.
Padre Rocha interrupted her. “So! I know what. We’ll make the little one a Roman Catholic!”
Mrs Delgado was stumped. Her voice trailed off and she took her leave. He watched her fat form waddle away in disgust.
The strange business of Fonso’s adoption of the Tamil boy lingered in his mind as he smoked his after-breakfast cheroot.
It was ironical, he thought to himself. Thirty-five years ago I came to this godforsaken country with all the missionary zeal to bring Christianity to the natives. And I was so startled when they sent me to Malacca to look after people so much like my own in Portugal. And now, after all these years, there may be a chance of making my first conversion. The ways of God are unpredictable but wonderful. He sent me the oaf to try me many years ago. My anger erupted that day and He held a mirror up to me. It made me see myself. That bad day changed the drift of my life. I have learnt to control anger. And now the oaf is going to bring me my first convert.
ANGER. THAT must be the theme of his sermon on Sunday. One of the Deadly Sins. Even anger aroused by misplaced justice. Judge ye not … Now where in God’s creation did that appear in the Bible. The epistles? I am getting old.
Padre Rocha walked to the Foos’ kedai, the little shop at the corner near the mosque, still thinking of his sermon.
“Ola … Padre!” Mrs Foo greeted him in Portuguese. “Bom dia.”
Mrs Foo and her husband spoke enough of almost every language and dialect to sell their dried foods and some fresh vegetables and fruit. They chatted about the stray dog shot on Monday and other kampong events. Then Mrs Foo raised the subject. Padre Rocha knew she would.
“Mrs Peixe told me about Mr Rosario …”
Padre Rocha laughed. “You mean Mrs Lucio?”
Mrs Foo laughed with him. “Of course, so silly of me.”
She was always getting it wrong. Piexe was fish in general. Mrs Lucio’s name meant pike.
“Why he want to bring a stranger into the family? Not his own people, I mean, lah.”
Padre Rocha knew very well what she meant. The Chinese had no inhibitions about adoption; but adoption of a child of their own people. They treated adoption as an investment, he believed.
Mrs Lucio thought as the fat Mrs Delgado did.
“I know that child,” Mrs Foo said. “My husband even allowed him to take goods on credit.”
Padre Rocha pricked up his ears.
“He say his rich uncle is coming from India. I tell him, all bohong,” she slipped in a Malay word and quickly corrected herself in Portuguese, “all bluff. But Mr Foo, he allow.”
Padre Rocha waited. She would continue.
“That little child never cries. I saw a dog bite him once. One year ago, I think. There was so much pain on his face. But he did not cry. When his father died and after that his mother, he never cried. Like a monk.”
Padre Rocha did not understand her simile but recognised in it Mrs Foo’s praise of the child.
“I can remember when he was born. In the year of the rooster. His mother was so thin. Don’t know why she stayed with that Muthu pig.”
“Bad blood in his family, then?” Padre Rocha asked.
“No. The boy was born in the year of the rooster. That’s good.”
Padre Rocha did not know what all those heathen animal beliefs were. It did not interest him in the least.
“It seems that your servant, that Vellupillai, told the District Officer about the child taking goods from us on credit. And Rosario was surprised to hear it. After he left the office he came here and said he’d pay up for everything that the child took. I said to him, ‘How can you? You already owe us so much.’ He said he would start cutting trees again and earn more money. Mr Foo said that he would let him know when anyone wanted a tree cut. He thought he remembered towkay Tan on the hill saying yesterday he was looking for someone.”
Padre Rocha did not need to be told that when he was younger, Fonso had earned extra money for the family cutting and trimming trees. But Mrs Foo had to explain it all to him.
He found an opening in her conversation and quickly put in an excuse and an adeus and left.
The whole affair about the adoption of Rama was tied up nicely over the weekend. Fonso was there kneeling in front of him at the confessional on Saturday evening admitting to God the Father Almighty his anger and a host of other minor sins. And after Padre Rocha had finished his Saturday evening confession session, there was Fonso outside the church waiting for him.
“It’s er … a er … an unusual thing, Father … You see … there is a little orphan boy … er … a Tamil boy … a Hindu. I think so. I’m not sure … but er … such a good boy but err … Well, Father, it’s like this … I have decided … er … more than that … er … This morning I went and signed the papers.. Thanks to your man Vellupillai …”
Padre Rocha listened patiently, watching Fonso crushing his hat in his hands. This was the man who had amazed him with his flow of words, the fire in his eyes, the magnetism he radiated as he held children spellbound with his stories.
Padre Rocha helped him. “Ah! The boy needs the grace of God …” and eventually it came out. Rama was to be baptised.
“Maria and I have chosen the name Ramalho.”
They went over some details and agreed to meet again another day.
THE PADRE peeped out from behind the curtain between the sacristy and the altar on Sunday when he heard the altar boys whispering and peeping at the congregation.
He saw Fonso striding down the main aisle before Maria and Ignacio, his hands on the shoulders of Joao and the skinny Rama, with Adam, Clara, Catarina and Ricardo following. Maria genuflected somewhere in the middle of the church as usual, but Fonso turned, touched her on the shoulder and continued down the aisle, steering the two boys slowly and deliberately right up to the third row. Padre Rocha saw the veiled heads of all the women move to their husbands’ heads.
He looked at Fonso. His head was held high. His eyes were half shut and there was a gleam of pride in them. He thought that some attempt had been made to comb his hair.
That day, Padre Rocha did not speak of anger in his sermon. He spoke of love. The love of the Almighty for his people cast in the image of God. The love between boy and girl. The love of parents for their children. Love that the world today needed so badly.