‘Could you give me Ari’s address, WeeJay?’
‘You already have it.’
‘Oh. That’s right. Give it to me again.’
‘Forgive him, Graham, he’s a bit upset …’
‘I know. It’s my fault. What’s the address?’
‘17/5 de Saram …’
Newton does not approve of the unorthodox deliveries. ‘That is our people’s whole problem. Try to do everything. He might as well have bowled right-hand also.’
My suitcase is packed, my bladder is empty, my hair is combed, my liver is clean.
‘When did you last see Mathew?’ I ask.
‘I met him with that Aussie girl of his.’
‘Shirali Fernando?’
‘No idea. That’s when he gave me the thank-you card. Fellow was different. Short haircut. No longer slouching.’ ‘So you never saw him in the 1990s?’
‘Oh yes. I took up coaching indoor cricket. He came to ask my advice.’
‘On what?’
‘On how to bowl the double bounce ball.’ Ari laughs like a jackal.
‘Was that before or after you discovered the wheel?’
Mathew came to Newton in 1991, uncertain and jabbering. His girlfriend is described by Newton as ‘tubby’ and ‘speaking with a hena accent’. Mathew had just returned to the side after being away for three years due to injury.
‘Fellow, I think, had been drinking. Called me out of the blue and wanted to chat.’
They met at Newton’s house and Mathew asked strange questions. Whether it was immoral to throw a game. Or to play with South Africa. Whether his carrom flick and his leaper were damaging his fingers.
‘I told him he had too many variations. That throwing a game was a sin. I also told him not to take money from apartheid South Africa, unless there was a lot of it.’
We pile into Ari’s Capri as Newton walks towards his Benz. I am convinced that there is a large chunk of something that he is keeping from us, something his pride will not allow.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘At that wedding of the great Sri Lankan opening batsman, Mr S …’
Ari puts his hand over his mouth and laughter fills his eyes. Sheila brings the last of my bags. Newton walks away. ‘See you, Wije. Goodbye, Sheila.’
So that is why Mathew was staring at us at the wedding of the GLOB. We were stuffing buriyani down his old coach.
Newton rides off in his Benz and does not wave. Ari and Sheila help me into the Ford Capri.
‘If you believe that liar, you’re mad,’ says Ari. ‘Wish I had some roast chicken.’ We burst into laughter and my stomach starts to hurt. Sheila does not smile.
Tonight is a powercut night and our battery-powered fan has run out of juice. We lie awake and listen to the background fuzz of Galle Road. We listen to the cats, the dogs and the man who beats his wife at midnight. I am unsure whose house the raised voices belong to.
‘Gayathri Baranage. She should leave that drunk bully.’
I forgot that Sheila was treasurer of the Mount Lavinia Ladies’ Charity Circle. For charity read chat.
‘I thought it was the Marzooqs who beat their women.’
Sheila yawns and turns to her side.
‘You say that because they came to hammer Garfield? Or because you’re racist against Muslims?’
‘That Marzooq can’t handle his liquor.’
I turn and rub the side of her arm. It is soft and beautiful even if it is the size of my thigh. ‘Unlike me.’
‘No, Gamini,’ she says and turns away.
‘I’m just saying …’
She reaches for her bedside table and produces a half-f glass from the shadow. ‘Here, darling. Drink this. Ari said the cravings stop after two weeks.’
She strokes my head and places the glass to my lips. The whiff paralyses me. It is even worse than Ari’s fruity miracle cures. It is kola kenda, a green herbal tonic that makes your burps smell like farts. It looks like vomit served in slime. It is now my turn to turn away and say no.
It begins with the alcohol counsellor two days after I am discharged. Before we go, Sheila gives me an article from the
Lanka Woman
on How to Overcome a Drinking Problem.
‘I didn’t know Lankan women had drinking problems,’ I snort.
‘They do. They’re called husbands.’
Unlike me, Sheila doesn’t laugh at her own jokes.
Sigh. The recent drama has made my sweet girl bitter and harder to outsmart. Sheila 1. W.G. minus 750 ml.
The alcohol counsellor is a Burgher girl in a white coat, even younger than my infant of a doctor. She addresses all her comments to my wife.
She tells Sheila that there is group counselling and individual counselling. She hands me leaflets. One speaks of Twelve Steps. The other of meditation and vegetarianism.
‘I recommend you attend a few group sessions first.’
‘What do they do at these sessions?’ I ask, thumbing through a yoga leaflet, with a bald man touching his scalp with his foot. ‘This kind of nonsense?’
The girl looks annoyed.
‘No. No. You just listen to what others say. You talk if you feel like it.’
‘I can’t do handstands and eat carrots, ah?’
Sheila squeezes my arm. ‘Let’s just go and see.’
‘Eat three meals and drink lots of water,’ says the counsellor, not rising as we leave.
‘Last week I had sex with my wife.’
The old man and his old wife smile and nod. Everyone around the table applauds. I look at Sheila with terror. Then the young man in the tie starts crying.
‘My daughter is afraid of me.’
The applause stops and everyone stares. I sit squeezing my walking stick, waiting for the final straw to break the camel’s spine.
The meeting is at Dehiwela St Mary’s. First bad sign. It is scheduled for 9.00 a.m. on a Sunday. Second bad sign. It starts at 10.20. 1.20 p.m. Sri Lankan Time. Three strikes.
It is chaired by a Dr Naomi Fonseka. Around the table are men chaperoned by women. Boys with mothers, husbands with wives, fathers with daughters. The walls are lined with crucifixes and filing cabinets.
Dr Naomi welcomes everyone. We begin with a young couple. The boy has spiky hair and the girl is dark and skinny.
‘Last week, Rasitha, you said you didn’t have a problem,’ says Dr Naomi. ‘Do you still feel like that?’
The boy leans back, folds his arms, and shrugs. ‘No problem. I enjoy my drinking, I don’t see what’s the problem.’
‘We are always fighting,’ interjects the girl.
‘Only when I’m sober,’ says Spike. ‘When I’m drinking there’s no problem.’
I feel like applauding. But instead I stroke my chin and adopt the quasi-serious pseudo-concerned look of everyone around the table.
‘You have a drinking problem, Rasitha,’ says the doctor.
‘I enjoy drinking. I’m earning well. What’s the problem?’
The doctor’s phone rings and she leaves to the side of the room. The tune is ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. Inside me I feel a creature stirring. I do not know what the creature looks like, but I know he is in a bad mood.
Then the old man confesses he had sex. Then the young man in the tie starts crying.
‘Every time I go near her. She’d cry. She thinks I hit her …’
The young man is comforted by the lady in a sari, the beneficiary of the old man’s renewed sex drive. The old man looks less than pleased.
‘Excuse me, son. I was talking. I’m sorry about your daughter, but kindly wait your turn.’
‘Let him talk, Sepala. His wife has left him,’ says the man next to me whose face I do not see. There is an argument and finally neither the old man nor the young man get to speak.
Dr Naomi returns to the table, oblivious to the drama, and calls out the next name on her list. In the next thirty minutes, three more grown men cry and the doctor’s phone rings four times. I pinch Sheila. ‘Can we please go?’ She ignores me.
The doctor gets off the phone, looks around the room and stares at us.
‘Y’all are new. Could you introduce yourselves?’
I know alcohol is killing me. I know I must stop. But surely.
‘My name is Karuna.’
‘Hello, Karuna.’
‘I have an alcohol problem.’
‘Tell us about it.’
Sheila clasps my hand and for the first time since arriving, looks at me in earnest. I hesitate.
‘Tell us, brother,’ says the old man who just had sex. ‘We’re all friends here.’
‘I can’t.’
Then Dr Naomi gets another call. The ringtone pierces my eardrums.
Yankee Doodle sits on the camel. That does it. The camel is now a quadriplegic.
‘It is … my wife. She drinks like a fish. Every day. For the last twenty years.’
Sheila releases my hand and turns scarlet. Everyone around the table nods sympathetically.
The doctor hangs up the phone. She catches the drift of my monologue and gazes at Sheila. ‘Could you tell us when you first started drinking?’
I throw my head back and laugh but no one else joins me.
My punishment is that I am made to do chores. Little do they know that not drinking is punishment enough. I have to sweep the back of the house, do the dishes and hang out the washing. I offer Kusuma an extra five hundred bucks to do my sweeping for me early morning. She refuses.
Little do they know that not drinking is punishment enough.
The first day I smash three dishes. I fling them to the side of the pantry. I throw them in quick succession, knowing Sheila will come running.
Kling! Clang! Clatterbash!
Three darts of venom, released from my heart, my soul and my liver. The creature that has been sitting behind my throat since the meeting vanishes, and for a nanosecond I feel glorious. It is not much but it is sufficient.
When Sheila and Kusuma come in I am nonchalantly sweeping. ‘They just fell,’ I say, not looking at anyone.
The truth about withdrawal is that it disappears if you stop looking at it. But how to stop looking at it? The more you stare at the elephant in the room, the bigger it grows.
Like the young couple, Sheila and I argue more now that I am sober. I sit alone, sipping thambili in my office room, listening to the one compact disc. There is something about Meat Loaf’s piano clatter that soothes my mood. I squint in the twilight and think.
The creature sips with me, both of us knowing it will not satisfy. I think of the pleasure I received from smashing those plates. I wonder if wife-beaters feel similar pleasure when breaking a spouse’s arm.
The papers speak of Socialist MPs becoming Nationalist MPs as the balance of power in our permanently hung parliament swings from the chair to the elephant. Sri Lankan politicians change parties like European footballers change teams.
MP Dissanayake transfers to UNP for undisclosed sum
Cooray to strengthen SLFP’s right wing
It is not ideological disagreements or divisions over economic policy that prompt these crossovers. It is petty squabbles, the other fellow getting a better ministry, a bigger Benz.
The youngest of Sri Lanka’s Ruling Dynasty, the Minister who never became President, has changed parties seven times, always just before an election, always to the losing side. Here’s a story about him that may or may not be true.
He once ordered the cordoning off of a Chinese restaurant in Mount Lavinia for him, his friends and his security, assuring management that he would spend more than the restaurant made in a week. Good to their word, they bust thousands on Chivas and lakhs on shark fin soup.
Then, in the early hours, paralytic from imported whisky, the Minister feels the call of nature, but is unable to get up. The guards try to help and receive an earful of raw filth as thanks. Then, the Youngest Sibling of the Ruling Dynasty has a bright idea. The bodyguards are told to form a semicircle in the middle of the restaurant. They stand to attention and stare straight-faced at the horrified manager and his staff, while the Honourable Minister, Youngest Sibling of the Ruling Dynasty, shits into four soup bowls. Ari swears this story is true.
In the 1970s, I was in transit at the Singapore airport on my way to cover the Asian Games. The Singaporeans then spoke of Ceylon as we now speak of New York. Their airport was little more than a leaf-thatched shack. Decades later, Singapore’s Changi Airport is the toast of Asia. We dropped our high catch, while they took a spectacular, one-handed diving one.
I pick up the leaflet on the Twelve Steps. The garish printing and the overuse of exclamation marks sour the lukewarm water I am sipping. The leaflet contains tinpot philosophy in a corny typeface.
‘You are not as worthless as you think you are.’
Neither am I as clever or as healthy or as lucky.
‘What is more important? The car you drive or how often you make your children laugh?’
My son hates me and I travel by bus.
I crumple the leaflet and put down my empty glass, wishing it were full. It takes all the muscles in my soul not to hurl it against the wall.
Ari and I, as members of the Moratuwa Sports Fellowship Club, are invited to a cricketers’ dinner that week; a printed invitation has been posted to both of us. Speakers include Duleep Mendis, Arjuna Ranatunga and the FLC.
On the way to the Sports Fellowship dinner, Ari tells me he is proud of me. ‘You have battled well. Shown true grit. Like a Thomian.’ He even puts his hand on my shoulder.
‘Ari. I went to Kurunegala Maliyadeva …’
‘Yes. Yes. But you are strong. Once you have beaten these demons, we will find Mathew and you will write about him. That is what God wants you to …’
‘Is this thing at the Masonic Hall?’
‘Oh. Yes.’
We are both wearing ties. Manouri and Sheila wear saris.
‘When did the fellowship get a dress code and start inviting wives?’
‘After the fellows grew old. And became grandfathers,’ teases Manouri.
‘Of course. Of course,’ says Ari, pulling onto Galle Road. Seven lanes of traffic pointing in different directions, each crawling at 20 mph. ‘When is Garfield expecting?’
‘In August,’ says Sheila.
That was the weekend’s celebration. Maybe the next Karunasena will play for Sri Lanka.
The traffic eases as we pass the cop who had been holding it up. Ari hums.