On Sal Mal Lane Read Online Free Page B

not bode well. They sat while tea was taken, the biscuits exclaimed over, and much was said about the good fortune of securing a house in these times by their mother, and each of them resolved, privately, to discuss all of it, the visit, the biscuits, and such times with their siblings when they went to bed that night.

Raju
    If the Herath children were gifted, like all children, to see through the facades created by adults, there was one adult on Sal Mal Lane who had learned to see through everybody: Old Mrs. Joseph, who lived in the pale pink and gray house directly opposite the Heraths’ and spent much of each day on her veranda, watching the goings-on. Her gardens consisted entirely of washed-out salmon-pink mussaendas except for a single white bush that claimed the center of the mangy lawn, where it flourished beside a crumbling bird bath that was routinely emptied of rain water so as not to breed mosquitoes. The largest of the vastly overgrown mussaendas provided both shade and cover as she surveyed her neighbors.
    On this particular afternoon, Old Mrs. Joseph had taken in the tableau of Mrs. Silva’s arrival at the Herath house, the presentation of tea, and the commencement of conversation, as well as Mrs. Silva’s hurried departure afterward. She also noticed the two Silva boys watching from their veranda as their mother went over to the neighboring house.
    “That older boy is no good,” she said, speaking in Tamil to the servant girl, who sat beside her on the floor, waiting for Old Mrs. Joseph to finish her tea.
    The girl said nothing and Old Mrs. Joseph searched her face, wondering if the girl was interested in Jith or Mohan Silva, there being no other boys her age for her to consider; well, there was Sonna, but he was an undesirable even for a servant like her.
    “The new family has two sons and two daughters,” the girl said quietly, itching the back of her head with the fingernail she kept long for this purpose, the one on the little finger of her right hand. “Maybe they are good.”
    The older two of the Herath children came out of the house and left with their father, cane baskets in hand, obviously to go to the Sunday market.
    “A little late in the day for them to get anything good,” Old Mrs. Joseph said. “By this time all the fresh mallun and fish would be gone.”
    “Maybe they are just going for dry goods. Or bread,” the girl said. She swatted at a fly that buzzed around the spill of tea on the tray next to her. Several red ants were clustering around the Nice sugar biscuit that Old Mrs. Joseph had not eaten, and the girl pressed down lightly on each ant, half taken by the way they felt under the pad of her index finger, grainy and rubbery at the same time, then flicked each one away toward the mussaenda, seemingly unconcerned that most of them fell on the ground near her, unfurled, and scurried back to the biscuit.
    After a while, the younger Heraths came out and perched on the parapet bordering one side of their house. Old Mrs. Joseph stretched to her fullest height in her chair to examine them, then slurped the last of her tea in disapproval; if the girl had not been wearing a dress, she could have been mistaken for a boy with that dark skin and short hair. She handed the empty cup and saucer to the servant girl, who had stood up to take it.
    “Well, we won’t know for a while,” Old Mrs. Joseph said, trying to be fair, “but surely they will be an improvement on the Silvas. We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of people they are.” She let the girl help her to her feet and shuffled indoors to clean her dentures as she did every time she ate anything, quite as though the dentures, like teeth, were irreplaceable.
    Old Mrs. Joseph, who wasn’t all that old—she had acquired this moniker in deference to the tragic circumstances of her marriage—excelled in the diligent observation of what her neighbors did when they were out of sight of their families. If her neighbor Mr.