January 1977
For a former Scoutmaster Harbans Singh is deplorably unpunctual. Three times a week he takes the children on their Nature Walks and three times a week they shuffle about on the front porch waiting ten-fifteen minutes for him to turn up.
“Needs extra time to take his bath,” Reza says. “Fler is getting so fat he’s having trouble reaching his toes. He’s got to lie down on the bathroom floor, put his legs up, wash his feet with the long-handled brush.”
“No lah,” Leo says. “You don’t know ah? Gurmeet washes for him. She soaps him she scrubs him she bathes him nicely and then she dries him with a soft towel and puts powder.”
The children guffaw. Annabelle Foo the loudest of all but even—I regret to admit—Kiranjit herself. Laughing at her own parents to get into the good books of those two charming clowns. Except it will never work. Already it is amply clear that they cannot give two hoots about anyone else. Their two-person club is all they need. There is nothing more pathetic to them than a person who has failed to understand that basic fact.
“You guys can be professional comedians I tell you!” Annabelle Foo says. “Last time my parents used to watch TV to see people like you.”
She loves them she hates them she cannot leave them alone. They do not even look at her.
“Some more the fler got terrible gas lah,” Reza says. “You walk past the john only you can hear his thunder. Most people only got morning thunder but his is all-day thunder. All-you-can-breathe buffet. Of course lah he’s got to sit on the throne for an hour before taking us for our walks, otherwise he’ll be simply letting fly. Nature walk but all the nature will be dying.”
Annabelle Foo collapses against the railing in helpless laughter. When she recovers, a strange expression comes over her face. A sort of slow rolling brainwave. Very deliberately she reaches out one leg and hooks her foot around Reza’s ankle. They all see him freeze but he does not turn around.
“Eh!” she says. “Your tracksuit top so nice lah. From where you bought?”
Now he turns his head unhurriedly and blinks a lazy lizardy blink.
“Why? You going shopping is it?”
Effervescent giggles from the front row seats.
“No lah, just asking what.”
“I brought it from KL. I brought all my things from KL. Satisfied?”
Annabelle Foo knows she should let it go now but …
“Oh, your mother bought for you ah?” she says.
He turns his whole body to face her. “No. My father bought for me. It’s imported from England.”
But his voice shakes a bit and he looks at his feet as he speaks. Annabelle offers an encouraging “Wah!”
But her smile is sly. Not a smile at all; a smirk.
“Eh what’s your father’s job anh?” she says. “You never told us also.”
“He’s a businessman.”
“Ohhhh, international mat salleh businessman. Wah, that means he can buy for you anything you want, hor? So lucky!”
Reza shrugs.
“What toys he bought for you before?”
His eyelashes flutter as he mumbles, “Lego, Airfix, Matchbox cars, everything.”
“Waaaah. Sure lah you want to go back to him rather than stay here. When is he going to come?”
Suddenly Reza meets her eyes and with unexpected ferocity says, “He’s on a business trip in Europe. When he comes back he’s going to fetch me.”
Again Leo feels that shifting and twisting in his chest. A month ago he would have snorted Bullshit lah you! But slowly slowly starting with the day Reza said “I can’t go back, my mother wants to stay here” an invisible hand has been reshaping Leo’s heart. Now he sees what is happening with a new clarity. This mixed-up boy with the greenish eyes has become not the enemy or the rival his mother sees but someone he must protect. But he must do it so cleverly that Reza himself must not realize he is being protected. Reza is proud and his pride is not just the pride of one boy in front of another: it is the special pride of the half-white child in a country that still—shamefacedly or subconsciously—worships whiteness. Leo understands this and understands also that he—a dark-skinned ragamuffin an Indian bastard child a gangster boy to look at—should want to squash that half-white pride. It would be in the natural order of things for him to do so. But he does not want to. He does not want to and whatever his mother says there is nothing to do about that. With a dim sense that he is betraying her he says, “No, he won’t fetch you. I won’t let him fetch you. If you go I’ll be left with all these idiots.” He juts his chin at the awed bright-eyed girls.
“Aiyo, true also, huh?” Reza says. “Then how?”
They laugh. Even Reza himself. And with a flourish Leo finishes: “So you better tell your father you’re not going anywhere. At least for my sake, friend.”
As the heavy-breathing shape of Harbans Singh ambles towards them along the path from the back door like some winter-fat English woodland creature in a book—a badger perhaps or a brown bear—they arrange themselves into two desultory rows and prepare to hear all about stamens and pistils. When no one else is watching Reza gives Leo a shove. A shove at once forgiving and grateful: a shove to seal a deal.
But recent developments have assuaged Cyril’s sense of loss when he sees the two boys together. Namely: a bubbling. A pulsing. A greedy new life that will not be denied. Cyril Dragon one, Reza nil. At least that is how it must feel to Salmah because she does not tell Reza about me. The nagging guilt draws up fiery baritone burps from her belly. Her ankles swell and her skin secretes silky oils. On Nature Walks she struggles to breathe the thin hilltop air. Slowly slowly my growing bulk ousts my brother from her lap. I knead her bladder with my see-through hands. I drive my knees into her ribs. I do everything in my power to make my presence felt. She cannot stand or sit or lie down without pangs and twinges and if she lies on one side I convince her she must roll over onto the other. She suffers from heartburn and headaches and rashes. She scratches her stomach skin. She disgusts Mrs Arasu in whom these things have always retained the faint distaste they induce in girls of twelve or thirteen. Can’t the woman at least wear looser maternity dresses? Can’t she complain a little less and can’t she stop rubbing her stomach like an emperor who has just eaten a whole suckling pig in front of his starving subjects?
But Salmah remains blissfully unaware of these uncharitable thoughts. She smiles and rubs her stomach some more. At night she props herself up on two pillows and stares at the changing light on the ceiling: first the grey-black of 10 p.m., then the true black of midnight, then the deep blue of 1-2-3 a.m., and finally the purply grey of creeping dawn. Speak! I command from her depths. Speak of me! Acknowledge my existence! And though her waters swallow my voice my mother understands that I am plotting and scheming. Here I come. Here I come, Reza and Leo.