The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (12 page)

All this was overshadowed when Sabi Sivanathan ran away with Indrakrishnan Amirthalingam, the baker’s assistant.

‘I thought, no problem, nice, hard-working Tamil boy. But Amma wanted me to marry a Kandyan. Appa didn’t want me marrying a low caste. They themselves had a mixed marriage. Still they threw me out.’

She had no contact with the family for most of the 1980s. While this may explain why Mrs Sabi knew little of her brother’s cricketing career, it does not clarify why a mother of four would travel all the way from Angulana for a badly typeset newspaper ad. Nor why she would volunteer her life story to strangers.

‘Pradeepan visited when the children were born. Didn’t talk about his cricket.’

Ari administers the questions and I watch her and try to ascertain why my gut tells me that she is lying through her teeth.

‘When did Pradeep start playing cricket?’

Mrs Sabi has an uncanny knack of relating any answer to the story of her mother and her.

‘One Christmas, Appa got him a bat and a ball. I got a Yamaha keyboard. Amma never learned music when she was a girl. So I had to go for piano classes.’

‘Did anyone coach him?’

She bares her palms and shrugs. ‘He was always playing with those thugs from the flats, or the street kids. He was never home. Neither was I. Ballet, sewing and elocution classes…’

I look at her deportment, her dress and hear her uneven accent. Ari pours tea and the woman keeps jabbering.

She hardly saw Pradeep but was aware that he had secured a job at Sampath National Bank and played occasionally for Sri Lanka. Appa was right; hard work didn’t kill him, it just left him paralysed. The stroke came in 1991 and drained the family coffers. Pradeep had no money of his own, so Sabi, emboldened by funds sent by her husband from Dubai, came to the rescue.

‘Amma and Appa were against my marriage and my husband. In the end it was Indi’s money that looked after them,’ she says. Not without triumph.

‘Later Pradeepan also made money and he would send us, but I hardly saw him. I was busy with the children. Every time Indi came from Dubai, he would leave me with a bump.’ She rubs her tummy and allows herself a chuckle.

‘Did Pradeepan take loans from the Cricket Board?’

The grin freezes on her face. The eyes hold their expression. The change in manner is switch-like. ‘Is that what this is about?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ says Ari.

‘Are you with Kuga or with the SLBCC?’

‘Who is…’ I begin.

‘We’re with Kuga,’ says Ari and puffs his chest out.

I attempt damage control. ‘No. No. We’re doing a documentary on your brother.’

‘I know my brother wasn’t so famous to do a documentary on.’ She shuffles to her feet.

‘If only you knew, Mrs Sabi,’ I say. ‘My colleague and I believe he was the greatest Sri Lankan cricketer ever.’

‘I am not a Chinaman with a ponytail.’ She is someone whose voice lowers when they are angry.

She walks to the table with all our cuttings and waves a wand-like finger. ‘This is documentary? My brother is dead. You better leave him alone.’

‘Kuga is willing to leave him alone, Mrs Sabi.’ I shake my head at Ari.

But the buffoon has already begun strutting like Perry Mason. ‘Mrs Sabi. How did Pradeep die?’

She hands me an envelope and pulls a yellow umbrella from her handbag. ‘Mr Karunasena. Please tell your boss to tell
their
boss that Pradeepan Sivanathan has nothing left to give.’

She walks past stacks of newspapers that are waiting to be scrapped. She barks at the puzzled-looking Ari leaning by the doorway. ‘We’re not scared of your Kuga. Or your Cricket Board. We also have connections.’

Perhaps she expected a fight or at least a show of machismo. Anything but two scared old men. Suddenly there is a flash of light. I blink to find Ari holding his miniature washing machine. A piece of paper comes out of it. This is the sort of bravery that garners Victoria Crosses.

‘Give me that,’ shouts Mrs Sabi.

‘See. See. It is blank,’ shows Ari. This time he does not flap it.

She storms off to the veranda and looks at the sunbeams scorching my driveway. She opens her umbrella, considers, then lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘The Moratuwa Police DIG and the Mayor of Panadura are both old customers at our bakery. Our partner Bharatha Malinda is a powerful man. If your people come near my family, you be careful.’

She walks onto de Saram Road, flags down a three-wheeler as yellow as her umbrella, casts us one last scowl and disappears in a huff of exhaust fumes.

The cardboard in Ari’s hand has broken out in spots of brown.

‘Does that thing take proper pictures?’

‘This is Ali McGraw’s Polaroid Swinger,’ says Ari, as if that means something. ‘Look.’

He stops flapping it and I see a shadowy blotch of a plump lady attempting to block a camera.

‘Good photo,’ I say. ‘If you like abstract art.’

‘Not that,’ says Ari. ‘What’s in the envelope?’

This is what is in Sabi Amirthalingam’s envelope. Typewritten on official pastel stationery. If it’s a forgery, it is a pretty decent one.

Graham Snow, alas, was proving to be unreachable. We missed two of his calls and he missed seventeen of Ari’s. After three letters outlining our financial woes, we receive a postcard from Cape Town promising to send more money.

Ari wails like a jilted lover, but I understand. A Graham Snow has an Ari Byrd in every port. Wherever he goes there are clones of us, wanting to talk about the 1971 Ashes or the underarm incident. He can’t be expected to keep up with every one of us.

Meanwhile, Garfield and Sheila are leaving sound engineering course leaflets on my desk. A not-so-subtle hint for me to call my eldest brother.

The Loku Aiya who called me a parasite. Sheila tells me it is because I got drunk and was rude to him, but I do not recall this.

I have one other option. That too requires a sizeable loss of dignity. Newton Rodrigo, the rotund gentleman whom Ari once assaulted, now coaches the Sri Lanka women’s cricket team. The kindest thing I can say about women’s cricket is that it’s better than women’s rugby. Newton had received the appointment a month earlier; there was an announcement in his old paper, the
Lankadeepa.

I stand outside the Colts Cricket Club, telling myself to resist. No jibe or barb or smart alec comment. No matter how strong the compulsion. I am here on business.

He sees me and raises his hand. ‘Wije. Kindly bugger off.’

I approach him with a friendly smile. ‘Newton, old chap, shall we put a drink?’

‘Daughter is here, have to go.’ A skinny girl in a blue tracksuit approaches Newton’s Mercedes Benz. Coaching obviously pays far more than journalism.

‘Your daughter is in the national team?’ I ask. Making conversation.

He speaks to me from behind the car door. He appears to be holding in his stomach. ‘Wije. Do not provoke me. So what? I am coaching the women’s national squad. What are you doing?’

His daughter hurls her cricket bag into the back seat and averts her eyes. ‘Thaathi, let’s go.’

They leave without a goodbye.

The next day I am better organised. My press pass and cock-and-bull story get me into the Colts ground. Newton is hitting catches to women in baggy tracksuit bottoms with ponytails. His free hand wears a wicketkeeping glove that he uses like a baseball glove. He scoops up the wayward throws from the ladies, spoons the ball and hits gently, but with pinpoint precision.

While Newton’s torso is pear-shaped, his limbs are twigs. The glove looks monstrous next to his wrist. I am carrying a book and wearing a humble smile. I accost him on his way to the changing rooms.

‘Wije, I’m busy.’

‘I came to give you this.’ I hold a first edition of Sir Donald Bradman’s
The Art of Cricket.
He knows exactly what it is. I turn to the page with the words
Best Wishes Donald Bradman
written in black felt pen in the great man’s own hand. I now have his attention.

‘Autographed? I thought you were bullshitting.’

I hand it to him; he strokes it as if it were a kitten. He beckons me to the pavilion. ‘Come. Sit.’

‘Newton. I have more. All first editions. Sobers’
Coaching Manual.
With handwritten notes by the man himself. Douglas Jardine’s
Bodyline Diaries.
I’m getting a new book about the apartheid tours.’

Newton thumbs through the honestly written, well-diagrammed bible of insight from the world’s greatest batsman. It is unclear whether he hears me.

‘Wije. Why are you selling this?’

No longer caring about dignity, I opt for honesty. ‘I need to pay for my son’s studies.’

‘I heard you and Brian and all were trying to make a documentary.’ He laughs.

‘You have big ears.’

‘And a big brain.’

‘I know. And big keeping gloves.’

Newton and I were friends in the 1950s, rivals in the 1960s, enemies in the 1970s. Long story. Over the last twenty years, our paths hardly crossed, except for the occasional incident with weddings and buriyani.

‘I cannot accept this.’

‘Accept it. I have no use for those. It is all in here.’ I point to my grey scalp.

‘Wije. Be a man, will you? How can you do this? How much money do you have?’

‘Not much. SLBCC advanced hundred. We may get another fifty.’ ‘Have you seen my car?’

I nod and sigh. He was going to give me a lecture on how he rose from the sewers of Panadura to become a cricket entrepreneur. I mentally buckle up.

‘You think twenty years at
Lankadeepa
paid for that?’

‘Look, I don’t want to talk about this, Newton.’

‘No. Talk. Talk. I know what they say. Newton took kickbacks. He made money off players. He brought outstation boys to Colombo and sold them to cricket clubs. He was a cricket pimp.’

I realise that none of this is helping my cause. ‘I’m not here to discuss this. I need your help.’

‘For your information, I never took a cent from any cricketer I promoted.’

I say nothing. He looks at me a long time, all the while stroking the book. ‘Lend me this. I will return it.’

‘I’m not a library, Newton. I need cash.’

He looks at me a long time. His words appear carefully chosen. ‘If you promise to keep shut, I will tell you how I bought this Mercedes.’

‘I’m too old to coach the national blind team …’

He bursts out laughing. ‘You think SLBCC gives the women’s coach enough to get a Benz?’

He looks around and then leans forward. ‘I will help you, not for this book, but because I am the bigger man.’

I look at the tyre of fat around his belt and nod.

‘Cricket betting is run by two families. The Punchipalas and the Sumathi-Silvas. But there is a third. Newly opened. Attached to a casino. Run by Filipinos who don’t know a ball about cricket. If you promise not to repeat this to that thug friend of yours, I can give you a tip.’

‘Definitely.’

He then asks if he can borrow my book. I smile and mentally say goodbye to it.

‘No, Wije. That is madness.’

‘Let’s just go in. Then we shall take a call. What is there to lose?’

Ari shakes his head.

The Neptune Casino sits on a seaside lane in Colpetty. There is a gold-plated sign saying ‘Foreigners Only’ on its white entrance and a single file of taxis that transport oriental women and Arab men to and from hotels. Next to it is a narrow lane of crumbling brick and the whiff of urine. Brick gives way to white plaster which widens into a courtyard of fluorescent shadows. To the left is a door with two burly men in white shirts sitting at the entrance. To the right, a large roti shop with a sign saying ‘Turf Accountants’.

This is the back door of the Neptune that Newton spoke of. The well-dressed brutes direct us towards the curry house. It smells of onions, fried chicken and deep coriander. The floor is a mess of newspapers and coloured rice, but I see no flies.

We are not the first drunk old men to darken these doorways. The room is large, but clumsily placed pillars and tables make it look small. The lack of lighting doesn’t help. The dress code here is messy casual. There are men in trousers and men in sarongs.

A shuffling man with a thick moustache points us to a table and places two printed sheets and two Reynolds pens on the dust-ridden formica.

I have been in places like this many times. A lifelong commitment to drink is not for the squeamish.