The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (48 page)

On sinking sand, under thatched cabana, on foam mattress, gazing at sea foam, we are sipping thambili through straws and arguing about isso vade. To our left, on a tree-lined crag, Mount Lavinia Hotel and its ballrooms and pools turn on their lights. To our right, in a crumbling Fort, Colombo’s World Trade Centre and its village of towers switch off theirs.

The sun changes colour behind a cloud, like a lady behind a screen, discarding amber shawl for tangerine blanket. And my beloved wife and I argue about isso vade.

Three prawns fried in chilli on a thick wafer, as orange and as intoxicating as the setting sun before us. ‘Very nice for your cirrhosis. Chilli, oil, salt. How many drinks you’re planning on having tonight?’

‘I don’t have cirrhosis.’

‘How do you know? Now one month you have been drinking horen. Now wants to eat isso vade.’

‘Sheila, I thought we weren’t here to fight. I will drink carefully till my b …’

‘Your book. Your book. How much longer? This is just an excuse …’

’I think I might walk back …’

‘I brought you some cake. It is just butter cake, but it is good.’

It is several flights of stairs down from an isso vade, but I accept the peace offering.

‘Why did you start drinking again?’

‘My book is almost finished. I need to finish it soon. Then promise I will give up. I will go to your prayer meetings, therapy sessions. I will do yoga and stand on my head. But for the next few weeks. Just till after the World Cup.’

‘The World Cup? That finishes in bloo … blooming June. You’ll be dead by then.’ Her mouth turns down and her eyes water. ‘I’m sorry. Please, Gamini. No isso vade.’

She dabs her soggy eyes with her hanky as I sip more wretched thambili and put butter cake in my mouth. She gets her way and I get the guilt. Women are such cunning creatures.

‘Garfield sent a CD of his songs. He is cutting a record in Germany, it seems.’

‘How is the music?’

‘Hopeless. All noise. There is one song that is nice. Something about poison. He might come for a visit with little Jimi.’

‘No wife?’

‘Gamini, don’t start.’

The sun yawns and the beach fills with noise. Boys chase kites and girls around the palms. Children get thrown by the waves. Soon night will descend and battered prawns will be ordered in the beachside restaurants and hora couples will search for dark corners of sand to sit on. I will read my notes, watch some TV and prepare for my writing.

‘I’m going to ask one thing,’ she says. ‘Do you want to live to see your grandson? Or do you want to leave me?’

If ever there was a loaded question.

‘I want to finish what I started.’

‘How long will that take?’

‘As long as it takes.’

‘You’re a child, Gamini. Look at Ari. I don’t see any difference. He’s the same old Ari. He used to drink more than you. Now occasionally has a wine. Why can’t you …’

‘Be more like Ari? Let’s go to Arpico and buy a raincoat.’

‘I’ll give you to the end of the month. Finish whatever you have to finish. But every day we meet here for sunset.’

I look around at the descending shadows and the emptying beach and realise this sea breeze is good for me. As is the lady sharing my mattress as long as she isn’t crying or screaming.

‘How many will you have a day?’

‘I can’t count drinks when I’m working.’

‘How many?’

‘From seven to five, no? So one every two hours. About six?’

‘Two.’

‘Two won’t even get me out of bed.’

‘Two, Gamini.’

‘Three.’

‘OK. Three.’

Like we are bargaining with a beach hawker over the price of a shawl. We spy a dark woman dragging batiks across the fluffy sand.

‘There’s a saasthara woman. I’m going to ask our fortune.’

I recognise the midget’s concubine by her walk. She drags her bundle of rags as if it were a bag full of plastic bottles. She appears to be looking for something other than customers. I am unable to stop Sheila from clapping.

‘Don’t, men. She might curse us.’

‘Don’t be silly, Gamini. Why would she curse us?’

‘Not today, men. Please.’

‘Is she a prostitute?’

‘I think she is.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Call her if you want.’

Sheila waves the dark woman away. ‘Epa.’ The saasthara woman stops and stares at me for a very long time. It is over ten years since I spoke with her, though I have seen her now and again near the Tyronne Cooray. She turns and drags her bags towards de Saram Road.

‘Are you sure you don’t know that woman, Gamini?’

‘We should do another trip soon.’

‘Aney please, shall we? I enjoyed that trip to Badulla, Gamini. I never said thank you.’

‘It was a disaster.’

‘Yes, but Badulla was lovely. I remembered the good old days. I did my flower arrangements, you were writing your poetry. What happened to your poetry?’

‘I burned it.’

‘Don’t lie, men. I’m sure it’s buried in that room of yours.’

‘If you find the poems after I’m gone, please don’t publish them. Only publish my book.’

‘When are you planning on going?’

‘No plan as such. After I finish the book, let’s see.’

‘I thought you were giving up after your book.’

‘I am.’

‘You must promise me that you will, Gamini.’

I take her hand. I nod.

‘Remember the first film you took me to?’

‘Charlton Heston at the Savoy?’

‘What Charlton? Freddie Silva.’

‘Go, men.’

‘Of course. You told me he was the Sri Lankan Jerry Lewis.’

‘I never did.’

‘That’s when you were trying to be intellectual to impress me.’

‘I never tried to do anything.’

‘Except steal me from my boyfriend.’

We giggle like the teenagers we once were. Sheila squeezes my hand.

‘You’re friends with him now?’

‘I wouldn’t say friends.’

‘Why he visited you?’

‘That’s just to show off. I think it still bothers him that you stayed with me.’

‘Can’t believe that I did,’ she says and plants a kiss on my cheek.

A waiter comes over and tries his best not to be rude. ‘Uncle. This seat. Foreigners only.’

‘Let’s go, Gamini,’ says Sheila.

‘Are you mad? We are sitting here. After we are gone, you can give to your foreigners along with your arse.’

‘No need to insult.’

‘You are the one insulting. I will write to the papers. We have lived here for twenty years, we can’t have a …’

The manager sees us, dashes over, dismisses the waiter, and heaps apology on apology. ‘Mr Karunasena. I didn’t see you. Sorry. That boy is new.’

‘You’ve instructed him to only serve foreigners?’ asks Sheila.

‘No. No. Just to keep out the …’

‘The what?’

The manager insists that we stay for dinner and that it is on the house.

Sheila cannot stop smiling. There are, after all, some perks to having worked as a journalist in Sri Lanka.

I manage to shelve despair long enough to keep writing. I hold my level at four drinks over ten hours and cut down to ten cigarettes. Every evening we greet the sunset. If it is raining, we sit inside and do jigsaws.

Sheila and I talk about other people’s children and friends who have died. She tells me that I can stop eating Hacks and hiding empty bottles. I do not tell her that my bodyaches have returned and that my appetite has faded. That the typing hurts my fingers.

Ari tells me that Sheila is worried and if I’m going to keep drinking I should go for a check-up. I let him read my first few chapters and he is reasonably impressed. I tell him that is why I cannot stop to go for check-ups. He keeps talking, but I stop listening.

Sheila tells me her only regret is that she didn’t paint more. I ask what about selling the piano. ‘I still give lessons around the neighbourhood. I still get to play every day.’

I ask what about her flower-arranging business that closed down after a year. She tells me that she only regrets the things she didn’t do.

I listen to my son’s CD. It has a picture of a skeleton staring at a mushroom cloud and is titled
Bring Back the Sun
by Alice Dali. It is unashamedly awful. There is one song called ‘Poison on a Tray’ where it is just Garfield singing with a box guitar. I have no idea what the song is about, but at least it does not sound like furniture falling down stairs.

The more I write, the less I comprehend. If this were a film, it would end with me tracking down Pradeep, coaching him back to fitness and ushering in his comeback. The final scene would be the World Cup 1999, where Mathew takes the last Australian wicket and Sri Lanka retains the Cup. I have less than three months to make that happen.

I’m beginning to wake up hungover and each hangover brings with it a thin topping of petulance. I try and put on a brave face for my walks with Sheila and hide my irritation when she talks about how proud she is of our son, the abandoner of women.

I feel shame for things I have done to Sheila. Things that I have not smeared these pages with. I do not want my son to become like me.

I see the saasthara woman on her knees in our garden. I call out to her through the window and when I get to the veranda she is at the doorstep holding a sequinned rag.

‘The wind blew my cloth,’ she says. She shakes the dust from it and ties it over her plaited hair. She gazes through me.

‘I have met you, Uncle.’

‘Yes. Long time ago. With Uncle Neiris.’

‘There are gods in this house.’

It is then that I notice that her features are almost African; maybe she has Kaffir blood. Kaffirs are descendants of Africans, brought here by the Portuguese. Negroid Sri Lankans who are found in villages around Puttalam, just near Lanka’s left elbow. I suspect our nation’s greatest female sprinter may have Kaffir blood in her. If I’m right, she may win Lanka its first Olympic medal since Duncan White.

‘Can I tell Sir’s saasthara?’

Her pottu is as red as her betel teeth. Her nose stud is as shiny as her eyes.

‘No need saasthara.’

She pulls my hand, but does not look at it. Instead she looks in my eyes. ‘You are looking for a Chinaman.’

I pull my hand away.

‘You will not find him.’

Sweat slaloms down the many hills on Reggie’s shirtless torso. When he lies, he plays with his Sri Lanka cricket cap.

He fiddles with the peak when he tells me that the entire Pakistani U-19 team had grey in their beards. He adjusts the sides and tells me that the Sri Lankan vice captain used to stand at mid-wicket and trade stocks on his mobile phone.

Reggie tells me one story that I choose to believe. It took place in Wellington, in the hotel room of the MD of the SLBCC. Not the current MD, but the then-MD, Jayantha Punchipala, the powerbroker, the man with the iron fist, the man who would inherit Danila after Pradeep abandoned her.

The date was 16 March 1995. Sri Lanka had just won their first overseas test at Napier’s McLean Park.

Booze flowed in the then-MD’s suite at the Wellington Inter-Continental. Reggie remembers the post-match function filled with every Sri Lankan south of Papua New Guinea. ‘Drunken uncles, sexy girls, noisy children, naughty aunties and best of all, unlimited booze,’ squeals Reggie.

Unfortunately Wellington noise control cut short the party after 3 a.m., when drunken baila broke the decibel level.

Reggie remembers adjourning with a few other drunks to the then-MD’s suite, but not much else. He remembers waking up behind the couch, covered in cushions, curled up next to a pot plant, carpet burn on face, invisible to the rest of the room. He remembers that the morning light was peeping through the blinds and that he felt chilly. Not how or when he came to be lying there. I nod a bit too knowingly.

But he does remember what he heard. And he repeats it with dollops of salt and cartons of spice. I have attempted to paraphrase.

A gruff hungover voice and a quiet, well-rested one: