The woman straightened her back and looked down at him. ‘If Amme doesn’t understand English, why don’t you tell her in Singhalese? And you say you won’t come out them on. So please get ready. Quickly now.’
He turned to the Amme and said in Singhalese, ‘That bloody woman say not to cut vegetables on the floor.’
Very slowly and heavily the Amme got up from where she was squatting. She picked up the vegetables and threw them on the kitchen table. Then she said to the child, ‘Tell her I can’t work for her. Also I am not well. I have to go home. Laskhman repeated in English exactly what the old cook had said.
The tall one looked from the child to the woman a little helpessly, then shrugged her shoulders.
‘If she is not feeling well, she must go home and get better. Meanwhile, you get ready. I am waiting.’
He stepped right in front of her stepmother; he had bend his head far back in order to see her face. He collected the spit in his mouth, then walked slowly and deliberately to the corner of the kitchen where there was a space for washing vegetables, and spat. Spitting was the best way to drive away evil things. Then he said:
‘But I told you. I am not coming.’
She took a deep breath. ‘All right. If you are not coming, I am not buying the shoes.’ She turned and walked towards the front door.
Lakshman ran after her and shouted so that it echoed down the road, ‘If you don’t but those, I’II – I’II tell all the neighbours and relations what a mean, hateful, horrible stepmother you are …’
She didn’t even turn her head. All she said was, ‘You tell them whatever you like, Lakshman. But if you want a pair of shoes, you’ve got to come and try them on. Or else, no shoes.’
He witched her drive off. He was very angry, not because he needed the shoes so badly, but because he felt she had won this particular argument. He could hear the men servants talking and laughing loudly in the kitchen with the Amme, who was packing her thing. They were talking about his stepmother. And suddenly a cold fury rose in him.
Why had she come here and upset things, when everthing was running so smoothly before! And now the Amme was leaving…
Uostairss the baby began to cry. That was another thing – her baby. All that fyss and bother about him … you would think nobody had ever had a baby before. And all that nonsense about keeping him clean and not touching him with dirty fingers! And almirahs! Almirahs were bought for brides when they got married, to take to their new husband’s house, to keep their saris and jewellery safe.
And then he had an idea.
Thoughtfully he climbed back up the stirs. There stood the almirah, with its smell of new wood. Without hesitating he opened the two bottom doors, which he could easily reach because they were at at his height. He took hold of one door and forced it back further and further until the wood broke and the door fell to the ground with a loud crash. The second door soon followed the first. To reach the upper two doors, he got a chair and climbed on it. It was more difficult this time, but he pushed as hard as he could, until the third door landed on the ground with an even bigger crash.
He waited for a moment to see whether anyone would come to investigate, but he wasn’t really worried. They = the servants – couldn’t stop him. Wasn’t he the young master? Anyway, they wouldn’t want to stop him. Not at all. They’d be delighted with the trouble he was casing the new woman. He smiled nastily. Wouldn’t she be wild! He imagined her return. This time she’d really get mad. She’d hit him and scream at him, and then his father would get rid of her, once and for all.
With this happy thought he turned back to the almirah, and finally managed to break the fourth door off. Carefully he replaced the chair, and left the broken doors where they had fallen. Then he decided to play a game in his room. There would be enough time to hide when he heard the car.
She was coming up the stairs. Lakshman was lying flat on the floor of his room, looking thought the narrow space under his door. He could hear the changing sound of her footsteps as she came higher and he geld his breath when she finally stopped.
She stopped for quite some time. Then she called – not him, but the srvant.
She asked, ‘Who has done this, Somapala?’
Somapala, who had not seen the broken almirah before, gasped and said, ‘T don’t know.’ There was another pause, and she said something Lakshman couldn’t hear. Then she went into her bedroom.
That was too much for lakshman. After all his hard work … He jumped up from the floor, ran though the doors, and burst into her room without knocking. She was standing by the mirror examining her face, and his eyes met hers in the mirror.
He scramed, ‘You want ti know who did it. Well, I did, I did it … ‘ His face was red under the brown skin, and his eyes very black, shining with the light of battle. His arms hung by his sides, his hands tightly closed.
She turned slowly. ‘You did it, Lakshman? You?’ She looked down at him from her great height. Her fingers were playing with the household key she was holding. ‘That’s really too bad, Lakshman. Breaking the baby’s cupboard. We had to pay a lot of money for it.’
He almost laughed. The stupid woman! What was the point in breaking something cheap? He waited for her fury to break, preparing himself for the punishment, looking forward to it almost with pleasure.
But it didn’t come. She just stood there and looked at him calmly. Then she said, ‘that’s really too bad, Lakshman, I thought you were a sensible sort of boy.’ She sighed. ‘So now we have to ask the workman to repair the damage. Quite an unnecessary bother and cost. ‘She walked towards the baby’s room.
Lakshman had a terrible feeling of disappointment, worse than he had ever experienced before. Wildly he ran after her and asked urgently, ‘But aren’t you going to punish me?’
‘Punish you?’ She appeared surprised. ‘Punish you?’ Oh, no. There’s no point in that. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it?’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘No, Lakshman. I am not going to punish you. Only …’ she hesitated for a moment. ‘About the repairs. You are going to pay for them, Lakshman. Out of your bicycle money. That’s fair, don’t you think?’
She opened the door of the baby’s room, walked through, and firmly shut it behind her.
Lakshman stared at the closed door. The sun was shining outside and little gold bits of dust were dancing in the sunlight. The blood had left his face, and he stood there, wide-eyes and silent. Then he walked out of her room, past the four broken almirah doors on the floor, and down the stairs. His head was bent as he went slowly down, his old shirt hanging out over the too-small blue trousers.
He heard the door of the baby’s room opening. The woman was looking down at him from the top of the stairs, but he pretended not to see, and continued going down without stooping.
She said, ‘Lakshman’ Pause. ‘Lakshman – we can come to an arrangement.’
He did not look up. But there was no longer any sharpness in her voice; instead, there was a warm note in it that the child did not fail to notice.
She said, ‘You help the workman repair the cupboard, and I’II pay half the cost. Agreed?’
His eyes were hot with tears. ‘The bloody woman,’ he whispered to himself. ‘The bloody, bloody woman …’ But he slowed down, and as he reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard him begin to whistle.
‘Agreed,’ he shouted, and ran quickly out of sight.