Preeta Samarasan - Evening Is the Whole Day

Preeta Samarasan

For Mom, Pop, and my brothers, who taught me that words matter

History begins only at the point where things go wrong; history is born only with trouble, with perplexity, with regret. So that hard on the heels of the word Why comes the sly and wistful word If. If it had not been for … If only … Were it not … Those useless Ifs of history. And, constantly impeding, deflecting, distracting the backward searchings of the question why, exists this other form of retrogression: If only we could have it back. A New Beginning. If only we could return …

— from Waterland by Graham Swift

The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp, light dwindles. Then is evening when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say. But evening is the great brightening dawn when crested cocks crow all through the tall city and evening is the whole day for those without their lovers.

— Kuruntokai 234, translated by A. K. Ramanujan

1. The Ignominious Departure of Chellamservant Daughter-of-Muniandy

2. Big House Beginnings

3. The Necessary Sacrifice of the Burdensome Relic

4. An Old-Fashioned Courtship

5. The Recondite Return of Paati the Dissatisfied

6. After Great Expectations

7. Power Struggles

8. What Aasha Saw

9. The Futile Incident of the Sapphire Pendant

10. The God of Gossip Conquers the Garden Temple

11. The Final Visit of the Fleet-footed Uncle

12. The Unlucky Revelation of Chellam Newservant

13. What Uncle Ballroom Saw

14. The Golden Descent of Chellam, the Bringer of Succor

15. The Glorious Ascent of Uma the Oldest-Eldest

Acknowledgments

Copyright EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY Preeta Samarasan

About the Publisher

1 CONTENTS 1. The Ignominious Departure of Chellamservant Daughter-of-Muniandy 2. Big House Beginnings 3. The Necessary Sacrifice of the Burdensome Relic 4. An Old-Fashioned Courtship 5. The Recondite Return of Paati the Dissatisfied 6. After Great Expectations 7. Power Struggles 8. What Aasha Saw 9. The Futile Incident of the Sapphire Pendant 10. The God of Gossip Conquers the Garden Temple 11. The Final Visit of the Fleet-footed Uncle 12. The Unlucky Revelation of Chellam Newservant 13. What Uncle Ballroom Saw 14. The Golden Descent of Chellam, the Bringer of Succor 15. The Glorious Ascent of Uma the Oldest-Eldest Acknowledgments Copyright EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY Preeta Samarasan About the Publisher

September 6, 1980

THERE IS, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak into the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. These are the most familiar rains, the violent silver ropes that flood the playing fields and force office workers to wade to bus stops in shoes that fill like buckets. Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible—choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses—and beautiful: aglow with winding lines of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls. Every day appears to begin with a blaze and end with this deluge, so that past and present and future run together in an infinite, steaming river.

In truth, though, there are days that do not blaze and rains less fierce. Under a certain kind of mild morning drizzle the very earth breathes slow and deep. Mist rises from the dark treetops on the limestone hills outside Ipoh town. Grey mist, glowing green hills: on such mornings it is obvious how sharply parts of this land must have reminded the old British rulers of their faraway country.

To the north of Ipoh, clinging to the outermost hem of the town’s not-so-voluminous outskirts, is Kingfisher Lane, a long, narrow line from the “main” road (one corner shop, one bus stop, occasional lorries) to the limestone hills (ancient, inscrutable, riddled with caves and illegal cave dwellers). Here the town’s languid throng feels distant even on hot afternoons; on drizzly mornings like this one it is absurd, improbable. The smoke from the cement factories and the sharp odors of the pork van and the fish vendor are washed away before they can settle, but the moist air traps native sounds and smells: the staticky songs of one neighbor’s radio, the generous sweet spices of another’s simmering mutton curry. The valley feels cloistered and coddled. A quiet benevolence cups the morning in its palm.

In 1980 the era of sale-by-floorplan and overnight housing developments is well under way, but the houses on Kingfisher Lane do not match one another. Some are wide and airy, with verandas in the old Malay fashion. A few weakly evoke the splendor of Chinese towkays’ Penang mansions with gate-flanking dragons and red-and-gold trim. Most sit close to the lane, but one or two are set farther back, at the ends of gravel driveways. About halfway down the lane, shielded by its black gates and its robust greenery, is the Big House, number 79, whose bright blue bulk has dominated Kingfisher Lane since it was an unpaved track with nothing else along it but saga trees. Though termites will be discovered, in a few weeks, to have been secretly devouring its foundation for years (and workmen will be summoned to an urgent rescue mission), the Big House stands proud. It has presided over the laying of all the others’ foundations. It has witnessed their slow aging, their repaintings and renovations. Departures, deaths, arrivals.

This morning, after only a year at the Big House, Chellam the nolonger-new-servant is leaving. Four people strain to believe that the fresh weather augurs not only neat closure, but a new beginning. Clean slates and cleaner consciences. Surely nothing undertaken today will come to a bad end; surely all’s well with the world.

Chellam is eighteen years old, the same age as Uma, the oldest-eldest daughter of the house. Only one week ago today, Uma boarded a Malaysian Airline System aeroplane bound for New York America USA, where it is now autumn. Also known as fall in America. She left behind her parents, her eleven-year-old brother Suresh, and little Aasha, only six, whose heart cracked and cried out in protest. Today the four of them thirstily drink the morning’s grey damp to soothe their various doubts about the future.