December 1975
Why oh why after the big boxes of books and the telescope and the microscope for the classroom and the binoculars for nature walks—why after all these things following so close on the heels of Reza’s arrival—why (suspecting everything he suspects) does Leo do it? He should know better. He does know better. But he does it anyway.
This is how it happens: sitting at the long table in the kitchen while his mother grinds rice for idlis he sees them setting out. Cyril Dragon and Salmah not quite hand in hand but close enough. Behind them the boy looking like as though they have forced him. Dragging his feet. Hands pushed deep into his pockets.
Just before they disappear down the stone steps Cyril Dragon turns and looks at the back door. What to call that look? A faint hint of a smile in it but not a joyful smile. One kind of look. Seeing it, Leo has a funny feeling in his stomach.
What he should do is one or both of these: 1) sit quietly and mind his own business; 2) pull that strange look of Cyril Dragon’s close against his beating heart and keep it there and never ever show it to anyone else as long as he lives. Because (and part of him holds this thought briefly) it’s okay that Cyril Dragon loves Reza more isn’t it? As long as Cyril Dragon throws Leo some scraps every now and then?
But the other part of Leo rejects this consolation today. And weighing these two parts of himself against each other Leo chooses unwisely. What to do? He is only a six-year-old boy wondering what message he has been given. What he feels is a mixture of panic—what if he would be welcome to tag along on this walk what if he misses the moment what if it’s already too late?!—and curiosity.
“Like an idiot you got up and followed,” his mother will accuse him later. “Like a bloody nitwit! How easily people can make a fool of you!”
“People,” she says but they both know she means Cyril Dragon. All his life Leo’s mother has made him understand that no one but Cyril Dragon has the power to lift him up. Now he sees what she has never spelt out: no one but Cyril Dragon has the power to crush him also.
From the front porch Annabelle—who is supposedly playing a solitary game of batu seremban—sees him go. With her eyes she follows him and when he slips from her view she stands and steps to the edge of the porch to find him again.
Instinctively Leo adopts an aimless gait. His own body surprises him. His unsupervised feet taking their own selves towards Cyril Dragon and dragging Leo with them. What, what, tell me the right answer and I’ll be good his whole body begs.
Who is to say that Cyril Dragon’s look had not been a searching and optimistic one? He might well have been thinking Where oh where is that boy because he would make such good company for Reza. He might have been wishing that Reza had someone to show him all the smallboy things—the eggs the nests the weightless bodies of dead butterflies and dragonflies—because when Cyril Dragon tries to show him it is false and awkward for everyone involved. Who better for the task than Leo? Leo knows all the trails blindfolded and backwards. He can scramble up and down the bramble-choked slopes and run the rocky paths all in his Japanese slippers and never so much as twist an ankle. These hills have been to him the mother who dresses and undresses in front of her babe, who scrubs her back and oils her skin and empties her bowels as he watches, who lets him study her at her mirror arranging and painting her newly woken face into a mask for the rest of the world.
He is right behind Reza now. Close enough to see the down that grows in a V shape along the top of Reza’s spine. Close enough to hear Reza humming tunelessly to himself to keep Cyril Dragon’s voice out of his ears. But Leo knows that all Reza’s efforts are in vain and that in fact Reza can hear just as much if not more of Cyril Dragon’s words than he can. “You cannot imagine,” Cyril Dragon is saying to Salmah, “You cannot imagine how lonely I have been. You are the only one who sees me as I really am.”
Then Salmah’s indecipherable soft murmur. Leo sees her turn towards him. The shine of her eyeball in the dusk. The flutter of her lashes.
“Please,” Cyril Dragon begs—and who could have imagined that Cyril Dragon could ever beg anyone for anything!—“Please stay. Stay with me. I cannot go on without you. For so long I have been waiting, without knowing what I was waiting for!”
Leo allows himself to be thoroughly distracted by this melodrama. No longer paying attention to his own feet he steps closer and closer and closer to Reza until his toe catches Reza’s heel. Reza freezes. In the three long seconds between this uninvited contact and Reza turning around—slowly oh so slowly like a slow-motion gangster in a Hindi film—it becomes clear to Leo that Reza has been aware all along of his presence. When he turns around he is looking right at Leo.
“What?” he says. “What do you want?”
But, Leo wants to say, But I thought we were friends now!
“Why you following me?” Reza says. “What’s your problem?”
Leo blinks at him and he blinks back. “I thought … That day we went for a walk what,” he says. “Remember?”
“Remember?” Reza mocks. His face contorted in scorn. “Remember? Remember?”
“We went for a walk!” Leo insists. Refusing to be made fun of. “Of course you remember! I thought … I saw you going again so I thought … I just thought I’ll also come lah!”
Reza is holding back a smile. “You’re such a busybody!” he says. But then he does smile and it is not an unkind smile.
By now Cyril Dragon and Salmah have turned to look. Now Cyril Dragon is taking a deep breath. Now retracing his steps back along the trail towards Leo now smiling apologetically at his feet. Behind him Salmah folds her arms and draws shapes in the earth with the tip of her shoe. Leo cannot see the shapes but he knows what they are: a stick figure of Cyril Dragon. A stick figure of Salmah herself. A heart.
Cyril Dragon stands next to Leo now. Crouches on the balls of his feet and rests his elbows on his knees. Behind Leo, Reza rolls his eyes at his earnestness. Cyril’s face is everything and nothing: confused and guilty and ashamed. Frightened and doubtful and sorry. When finally he opens his mouth he says, “Leo, I know—we know why you want to come along but you see this is … We wanted to go for a little private walk.”
No we didn’t, Reza thinks.
“Maybe next time—” Cyril begins. Immediately he realizes what his mouth is about to promise. Leo and Reza see him stop himself.
A heavy juddering fit-to-burst cloud in Cyril Dragon’s chest. Too many unspoken promises already broken. He has never actually lied to Leo, and yet—how has it come to pass that the boy is standing here looking at him with an air of, yes call it by its name: betrayal. He never meant to mislead anyone. Hasn’t he cautioned people against unreasonable expectations and unsustainable dreams? I am only an imperfect human being, he has always told them. Just like all of you. And this boy …
He never wanted so much power over this child. Never asked for it never wanted it does not want it now. But the thing has fallen to him and what can he do but comfort himself with this: It is for the best. Better for the boy not to harbour any false hopes. He puts his hand on Leo’s shoulder and says in what he thinks is a reasonably gentle tone: “You go home. You go back to the house.”
Still Leo hesitates. Stands there looking from Cyril Dragon to Salmah to Reza who shrugs. Then back again at Cyril Dragon.
“Go,” Cyril says now. “Be a good boy.”
Leo grins an impish last-ditch grin. “I’m not a good boy!” he says.
And suddenly Cyril wants to slap him. His anger takes him completely by surprise: a hot high hum behind his eyes. How dare he, how dare this child intrude like this! That was the whole problem with children. You gave them an inch and they took everything. Everything. Without even realizing they were taking it. As though you had owed it to them all along. He cannot trust himself to speak at first. Once he opens his mouth there will be no going back. In front of him the boy waits like a jackass with that grin untouched. That irresistible innocent gap between his two front teeth: once the sight of it gave Cyril a tiny tender twinge but now he feels the fondness twist itself into fury. And this change shocks him, nearly breaks him.
“What?” Leo stupidly says. Perplexed by the expression on Cyril’s face.
“There is a time for making jokes and a time for being serious. Now is not the time for joking around. Go back to the house, okay?”
“But I just—”
“I said go! Don’t talk back to me, Leo. You are old enough to feel shame, aren’t you?”
Reza backs away slowly as though from a fight between two playground rowdies.
“Well?” Cyril says. “Aren’t you?”
“Cyril …” Salmah says. He feels her breath on his back. But now he cannot leave it.
“I’m waiting, Leo. Are you or aren’t you old enough to feel shame?”
Unblinking and fierce the boy finally whispers: “Yes.”
“In that case you should know that it is shameful to stay where you are not wanted.”
What has he just said? “Where you are not wanted.” To this boy of all people. His mother the unmarried cook. Himself so acutely aware of his Unwanted status. Cyril Dragon’s heart shrivels. But Leo does not flinch. He clenches his small jaw.
What is Leo supposed to do with all his swelling-welling feelings? His but-I-was-here-firstness and his you-wait-and-seeness? His flicker of but-I-thought! under its protective veneer of who-cares-anyway? He can see what Cyril Dragon apparently cannot: Reza has no use for Cyril Dragon. It is Cyril who lingers where he is not wanted. What is the point of playing this game Cyril Dragon has initiated? It is an illusion. Cyril the sole player who does not realize he has already lost.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay I’m going.”
He shrugs. Then he turns around and lopes back down the trail without a backward glance. They watch him go: the thin ankles the thorn-scratched calves. They watch him and feel all their different feelings. Cyril his guilt. Salmah her curiosity. Reza his panic: now he is trapped alone with these two. Wait! he could call out to Leo. Wait, I’so coming! But duty holds him back. For Mama’s sake he must try to play his part. He must go where he is supposed to go and eat what he is supposed to eat. He cannot take any more tears any more scenes. He has to play his part but dear god he doesn’t have to enjoy it.
On the front porch Annabelle sees Leo drag his feet back up the path. She springs up and slips her seven stones into the back pocket of her jeans. Ha! she says to herself. Thought you were so great is it? Thought you were Cyril Dragon’s special pet? Thought you were Reza’s best friend? Ha! With nowhere else to take her small but tasty triumph she scampers jauntily up to the girls’ dormitory to savour it in solitude.