October 1975
A four-foot parcel arrives from America. Inside the cardboard box is a wooden box with a hook clasp. Inside the wooden box is a telescope: a beautiful shiny black-and-white contraption nestled in a green baize bed. Cyril Dragon sets it up himself on the front porch. He swivels it this way and that on its stand. In great excitement he turns to George Cubinar and cries, “Just think of it! The ancient Greeks, the Hindus, the Arabs, the Chinese, even the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians! Has any civilization or religion in the history of the world been immune to the night sky?”
For weeks Cyril Dragon has been outlining and fleshing out his plans. They should be investing more time more money more effort in the future he says. They should be broadening the horizons of the next generation. Exposing them to the best that the human spirit of inquiry has to offer.
Three years have passed since Cyril Dragon entrusted George Cubinar with the futures of the Centre’s children. In the privacy of his own head George wonders, Why now? Why is this the moment to pour what little money the Centre has into flashy new tools for horizon-broadening. But his questioning does not extend to: So, now you have set your sights on making that boy your real and proper son I will be reduced to an egg for your omelette. This he will not allow himself to think. For George Cubinar does not hate Reza. All his grief spins around Cyril Dragon as he tells himself It is only to be expected. All the great leaders must have disappointed their followers left right and centre because doesn’t everyone want to be the chosen one? But even a mother hen has limited space under her wing. At some point surely she must push one chick out to fit another in. It must also be that he is older and stronger now and Cyril Dragon knows he needs less coddling. Perhaps—George Cubinar told himself as he was leafing through the optical instruments catalogue Cyril Dragon had told him to send for—perhaps it was not such a bad thing to be taken for granted. Perhaps it was even an honour. A promotion to an even higher level of trust. He ordered the Criterion Dynascope.
When it arrives Mrs Arasu takes one look at it and wants to say to Cyril Dragon: Take it from me, nothing you do is going to impress that boy. How much did we pay for the bloody thing? Cyril Dragon tut-tutting over the accounts and suggesting Cuticura instead of Yardley if ladies really must have their talcum powder and then in his desperation to impress Salmah getting a telescope from America! As though the child has any interest in astronomy. Mrs Arasu knows a spoiled brat when she sees one. Greedily the child laps up all the special treatment without showing one ounce of appreciation.
But she never does say it. And now here they are all lined up to take turns with the telescope on its inaugural night. “Good good good,” Cyril murmurs and steps back and folds his arms. But look at the expressions on their faces! Reza yawning and rolling his eyes. Annabelle Foo scratching at all the bites on her shin. The twins whispering secrets as usual. Kiranjit glassy-eyed with the strain of staying up past her usual bedtime. Only Leo is making any effort to be inscrutable and this in itself Mrs Arasu knows is remarkable in a six-year-old is it not?
No need to bother also, Mrs Arasu wants to say. Now itself can close it up and send them upstairs.
But Cyril Dragon is not a man who changes his plans.
“Okay, George,” he says like a film director.
In attitudes varying from resignation to obedience the children step up to put an eye to the lens.
“It’s just the moon,” George Cubinar says apologetically. “Next time we will look at one of the planets. Or maybe even—”
“Just the moon!” Cyril Dragon wails. “Just the moon! But look at it, children, look at it! To think they were walking around up there just a few years ago, same time as some of you were learning to walk down here!”
Embarrassment wells up in George Cubinar’s throat. Of course he didn’t mean just the moon in that way. He wants to make a joke of it he’s trying oh he’s trying so hard to find the joke and now he’s almost got it but no, Mrs Arasu has jumped in.
“To think,” she says sourly, “that some nations were sending people to outer space while our countrymen were busy butchering each other.”
Estelle Foo snaps. “What a thing to—”
“Okay okay,” George Cubinar says hurriedly and then pretends he was addressing the children. “Keep moving, don’t take too long, everybody must have their turn.”
He’s calmed his voice nicely somehow. Now he is establishing his authority again.
“Come on then, Reza,” he says.
He has to nudge Reza forward and even then the boy will not walk but stumbles and flops towards the telescope like a poorly controlled marionette. George Cubinar suspects that he places his head in the designated position and shuts his eyes and counts to five before turning away. So what? George thinks. He’s not going to make a big deal of it. A scene is probably what the boy wants.
Annabelle Foo squints through the lens and smiles to herself. The other children know what is coming. And there it is as if on cue. The hands clasped to the chest. The gasp. The turning to Reza who has the misfortune of having gone just before her. The Beijing-opera blink-blink-blink of those flashing eyes.
“Wah! Did you see, Reza? Did you see the moon’s face? A sad sad face!”
Reza snorts. “There’s no face. Those are just craters.”
“No, Reza, come and see properly.”
She reaches out to take his hand but George Cubinar steps in. “Come come Annabelle, it is Leo’s turn now.”
Annabelle stops. Her mouth hangs open. She blinks first at George Cubinar and then—as though she has just realized something—at Leo.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh, okay.”
Stepping away to join the other children she holds her arms close to her body like somebody’s fastidious grandmother forced to use a public toilet on an outing. She keeps her eyes on the ground and gives Leo a wide wide berth.
George Cubinar says half-heartedly, “Your turn, Leo.”
But Leo does not move up to take Annabelle Foo’s place.
“Come on, Leo,” says George Cubinar. “Getting late already. Come and look quickly, before you all have to go to bed.”
Still Leo does not move. He shakes his head. “Don’t want,” he says.
George Cubinar looks helplessly at Cyril Dragon expecting another subtle dressing-down. But Cyril Dragon refuses to look back at him. He smiles only at Leo: first a small sheepish smile and then broader and broader until at its limit it has turned into the disarming grin of the organ grinder the performer of tricks the market square purveyor of miraculous cures.
“Come, come, boy!” he says. “You are the one who has always been so fascinated by the stars and the planets! Now finally you have a chance to see them properly so don’t be silly. Don’t sulk, don’t be stubborn, come and look.”
Leo stands at attention. His face is perfectly still. He does not even blink.
“No,” he says.
“No what?”
Leo beetles his brow at Cyril Dragon. “I’m not interested in it anymore,” he says.
Cyril Dragon’s smile freezes. A faint note of cruelty slowly colours its eerie glow. George Cubinar feels he should do something say something anything but again he doesn’t know what. He feels the chill in his nostrils: the night is turning. No good to be outside past this time they say. Damp settles on everything. Cyril Dragon’s eyes beam unforgiving through the mist.
“Not interested?” Cyril Dragon says. “You don’t want to learn? You prefer to be stupid and ignorant? You want to be the village idiot? Everybody else will write Scientist, Astronomer, Physicist under Occupation, and you will write Village Idiot.”
Nobody laughs. Not even one nervous giggle breaks the silence. Leo looks right at Cyril. His eyes are unafraid but his tightly closed lips tremble.
“Yes,” he says.
The silent universe expands. The air thins so much so fast that they are left dizzy and lightheaded. Above them the stars whirl in widening circles. Any minute now gravity will lose its hold on them and they will drift and float like astronauts: all of them except Leo who stands solid and heavy and earthbound as a boulder.
Suddenly Cyril Dragon’s face seizes up. He runs a quick hand from forehead down to chin as though to smooth it back into place.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay then. Nobody is going to force you.”
It is perhaps the most unnecessary sentence he has ever spoken because if there is one thing everyone can see it is that Leo will not be forced. Just look at him standing there. Unmoved and unmoving. He is a law of physics. He is the blind wisdom of the universe. He will never look through that telescope. Even George Cubinar can see that. He doesn’t know why but the realization makes him want to fall down on the damp grass right there and sleep and sleep.