The boy sat with his feet dug into the wet, sticky mud where the river began. The river was very wide, and green where the shady palms reflected in it, and the breeze blew cool and quick across it caressing the dry brown cheek of the child. He could hear his parents and his elder brother, who was several years older than he, quarrelling inside. Inside the Three Villas, which it had once been, belonging to three merchants who were brothers. Now only one villa stood, dilapidated, with its red tiles falling off the roof and the green paint on the verandah pillars badly chipped. But with the foliage of the palm trees around it, the hibiscus bushes, and vegetable plots, with the great river Mandovi as a backdrop, it looked charming, and it was home to the people who lived in it: Mr. and Mrs. Da Silva with their two boys Melvin and Manuel and their old cousin Chico who was hardly ever home. He was drunk most days and spent a lot of time on his old tug painted blue and black, ferrying vegetables, or oil, or fish, to and from the sea shore.
On Sundays, after the short service in the stark white church on the hill, Melvin would sometimes accompany his Uncle Chico on his tug. Those were the best days. Often they spent the entire day by the sea, avoiding the tourists, who lay tanning themselves for hours and hours in the scorching sun. People depraved, Uncle Chico used to say. Uncle Chico’s fisherman friend Mohnish would be there, with his fishing boat, and sometimes they would all go off together to sea, and if uncle Chico was feeling especially kind towards Melvin, they would go see the dolphins. Uncle Chico and Mohnish would exchange some mysterious packages and letters and Uncle Chico made Melvin promise never to tell his parents, and as a reward he would take him on his tug whenever he wanted. It was an easy promise to keep, for who wanted to remember packages and letters when everything else was so exciting?
Melvin heard his mother announcing lunch, and he dragged his feet out from the mud and splashing a bit in the water to wash it off, walked back towards the house. His father and Manuel were still quarrelling. He could hear them clearly now. Manuel had not been able to get the job he had applied for. Other people, more qualified, had been there. There were always more qualified people: Keralites. Goa was swarming with Keralites, buying land, taking up jobs. Their jobs, Manuel said. The Keralites were better educated. Manuel, at twenty, had thought that a diploma in engineering after school was education enough for a man to get a job and feed his family and make merry once in a while with his friends. Manuel was a wizard on the battered guitar he had, and sang well too, though he was no Remo. His voice was cracking with anger now as he tried not to shout while talking to his father.
“They’ve offered me a job as a clerk in one of the hotels at Anjuna. But they’re willing to pay only eight hundred rupees. I’ll spend half that amount getting from here to Anjuna, and more.”
“Take the job!” growled his father “Something is better than nothing. There’ll be more openings, sooner or later.”
“I’ll never get an engineering job. All the boys from Kerala have degrees.”
“Now you’re blaming me for not sending you for a degree course?” Mr. Da Silva questioned, threateningly, because he felt guilty.
Melvin sat down to lunch and his mother served him his rice and fish curry. She was a large-hipped, faded woman who had been pretty once, as have all women. She wore a flowered dress with short sleeves and a frayed collar and didn’t seem to give much thought to her appearance. She had too much work, with the poultry and the vegetables and the men to feed. If their villa had been on one of the beaches, she could have turned it into a hotel like her friend Maria had done; her brother who was in the Merchant Navy would have helped. Then she would’ve been rich like Maria was. She could make a mean cafreal, she knew.
“You know, Ma,” Melvin was saying “Uncle Chico’s friend Mohnish goes to Kerala now and then. He says the earth there is red, red as the gill of a kingfish.”
“Don’t you believe him!” Mrs. Da Silva laughed.
“Maybe the red earth makes the people clever,” Melvin reasoned, half to himself.
“Where did you go with Uncle Chico today?”
“Oh, here and there. Aguada, mostly. But we came back in a hurry. We had more fun the last time. And guess what, when we were coming back, we even crossed the Santa Monica, full of tourists. And it looked so gay, with all the little lights, and music…” he broke off, for he realized his mother was not listening. The quarrel between the father and son had escalated and Mrs. Da Silva was telling them to let it be and come eat their lunch.
But it was a while before they heard her. Melvin wished Uncle Chico had been home. But there was no telling when he would come. He left often, too, without a word. But then he lived in his own part of the house. He only came down for meals or to watch TV, or to have a smoke with Melvin’s father.
Melvin tried to distract his mother by telling her about the Santa Monica once more. He thought how wonderful it would be to own a tourist launch like the Santa Monica. Then he would bring it down the river, standing at the helm, his hair flying in the constant breeze, and park it by Three Villas, and ask his mother what there was for lunch. It was one of his many dreams.
He liked uncle Chico’s tug, though it always smelt of stale oil and rotting cabbage, fish, and cheap fenny. He thought Uncle Chico smelt like that too, but he loved him. He loved the times they had together on his boat, talking of their dreams. Uncle Chico, old though he was, had many, many dreams and he talked of them at length to Melvin, as they lay on the deck and uncle Chico drank his sharp palm fenny. One day he would be a great diamond merchant, just as Jimmy was, and own a palace like his, with guards at the gates and a drive so long that you could only see the house from the sea or from the hilltop. Melvin had seen Jimmy’s place from the lighthouse at Fort Aguada, just as everyone else had, but uncle Chico said he’d been inside. He recounted all the marvels he had seen there, right from the stone lions that guarded the gates, to the drive and the marble walls, the Grecian vases and the crystal tables. Melvin listened to him in fascination, though he knew Uncle Chico had never been inside Jimmy’s, for only anyone was someone could enter. Why, you couldn’t even stand by the gate to admire the view, without the guard ticking you off. But Melvin listened to the made-up tales as though they had been true, and they were both happy in that, Melvin and Uncle Chico.
One day Uncle Chico became very drunk, and he put a loving arm around Melvin, drawing him close.
“If anything ever happens to me, son, I’ll tell you what you must do. For you’re my only son. In my bed, just under where my head rests, there is a loose board. Under it is a little box. Look for it, if anything happens to me. It’s for you. But if you dare go near it while I’m alive, I’ll break both your legs.”
Melvin soon forgot about the little box, just as he never remembered the mysterious packages and letters Uncle Chico exchanged with Mohnish. For he was only a child of ten, for whom the real world and the world of fantasy did not have distinct boundaries.
That year the monsoon was unusually harsh and long. It rained day and night, night and day, for weeks on end. The river became swollen and menacing, and for a time the traffic on it came almost to a standstill. The electricity would fail often, and there was nothing to do but listen to the endless patter of the raindrops. The yard dogs were miserable and would shudder and howl in the nights. It was during this dreary time that Uncle Chico took ill with a cold, which, despite the doctor’s ministrations, slowly became worse. Soon Uncle Chico had to be shifted from his part of the house to the spare bedroom closer to the family, so Mrs. Da Silva could take care of him better. But Uncle Chico showed no signs of recovery. Melvin would sit and read to him or tell him about the world outside, the sad state of the henrun, the swollen Mandovi, the trees that had fallen during a night storm. One day Mohnish came to visit him, but he sat only for a few minutes, said something in urgent whispers, patted Melvin’s head, then left abruptly.
“What did he say, Uncle Chico?” asked Melvin.
“I wish you were old enough to understand, Melvin,” replied the old man sadly. “I know you would understand. Manuel is grown up, but he has never been close to me as you have.”
The day the rain let up, Uncle Chico died. He was buried in the little churchyard on the hill, and Melvin thought the sodden monsoon earth would soil the neat coffin they had made for Uncle Chico. But in grief sometimes the most trivial things seem important.
Many days passed and the old blue and black tugboat stood lonely and neglected, tied under the leaning palms, reeking of Uncle Chico’s life. Many nights passed, when one night Melvin remembered the little box Uncle Chico had spoken of. His heart thudding painfully, Melvin ran quickly across the darkened house to the rooms once occupied by Uncle Chico. He switched on the dim overhead lamp. Everything was as it had been. Mrs. Da Silva hadn’t had the heart to move Uncle Chico’s things yet. Under the mattress he found the loose board. And under the board… a small, blue, rectangular box! Melvin lifted it out with trembling fingers. He would not open it now. He slipped it into the breast packet of his night suit then tiptoed back to the room he shared with Manuel.
In the first light of dawn, Melvin, who had been unable to sleep all night, leapt out of bed, ran barefoot across the wet grounds towards the river, where Uncle Chico’s tug stood, swaying gently in the morning mist. In a trice he was seated, panting, on the deck, now overgrown with moss. But he felt he owed it to Uncle Chico’s memory to open the box on the boat where he had spent so many good days with the old man. Breathlessly, he undid the tiny latch, and from the velvet interior of the box five small diamonds winked and blinked at him in the morning light.
Melvin tied the little box in a kerchief and kept it with him at all times. He could think of nothing else. He couldn’t remember if Uncle Chico had instructed him to tell no one else. If he couldn’t tell anyone, what good were the diamonds? After a week of almost bursting with his secret, Melvin decided to tell his mother. Mrs. Da Silva was not entirely surprised that cousin Chico had left the diamonds to Melvin. But diamonds!
Fine though the stones were, they weren’t really worth a large fortune, but they did buy the old tug a new coat of paint and paid to refurbish her thoroughly for Manuel, who promptly gave up his job as a hotel clerk. The house got new curtains, Mrs. Da Silva a few flowered dresses, Mr. Da Silva a new suit, the car a new battery and even Melvin got a new school bag and a pair of leather shoes.
The very first time that Manuel took the boat out, Mrs. Da Silva made her special brand of bebinca with cashew nuts on the top, and they had Porto and cashew fenny.
Sundays on the tug weren’t the same as before, for Melvin. The deck was clean and smelt of new paint, and Uncle Chico’s smell didn’t emanate from the cabin. They hardly ever went out to sea, and Manuel was always smartly turned out, meeting with the smartest people he could. Melvin would hang around desultorily, thinking of the old days. He missed Uncle Chico, he missed even Mohnish. He missed the sea. Manuel didn’t talk of the future. He thought if Uncle Chico had made enough money on the old tug to buy diamonds, surely he could make as much, and more.
“Business is not really very good,” Manuel told Mrs. Da Silva one day at breakfast. “I wonder how Uncle Chico made so much money.”
“He wanted to become a diamond merchant, just like Jimmy,” Melvin piped in. Mr. Da Silva laughed, but Mrs. Da Silva looked sad and said, “Poor Chico.” She knew what dreams were.
“Like Jimmy indeed!” scoffed Mr. Da Silva. “I’ve heard Jimmy is a big time smuggler.”
“People are bound to say all sorts of things about a man who is doing so well for himself,” said his wife generously. She was never jealous of anyone’s success. She only wished some for herself.
Melvin, on the tug, would sit silently and watch the great river. Her green-brown depths, her moods. Her swishes and murmurs. She must have a thousand secrets, he thought. She must know Uncle Chico’s secret too. But she held them all well within her great silent swell, and told no one at all, but whispered and murmured to her shores. She knew the secrets of the Portuguese, the secrets of the Goans, and she would learn the secrets of the Malayalis. But she would never tell. What good were secrets, thought Melvin? If only the river could tell them all!
One afternoon, at Calangute, while he was out with his brother, Melvin spied Mohnish in the crowd. He ran eagerly up to him and tugged at his arm.
“Melvin!” Mohnish cried with a laugh, “You don’t come this way anymore! I hear the old tug’s working again?”
“Manuel works it,” Melvin informed him. Then he grew thoughtful “Mohnish, Uncle Chico said if I were older, he would’ve told me what you spoke to him about, the day you came home. He told me I’d understand. Now he’s gone. You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“Maybe. And your brother, is he doing good business?”
“He says it’s not like Uncle Chico used to do. He can’t buy diamonds.”
“So you found the diamonds?”
“Were they also part of your secrets?” asked Melvin.
“Maybe. It’s nothing. Something the tourists want, we supply. We get paid. No harm done. Not good for young children, though.
“Can Manuel do the same?”
“Why not, if he’s interested.”
At that moment Manuel came after Melvin, scolding him for running off in the crowd.
“But Manuel,” cried the boy “I saw Mohnish! If you work with him, you can buy diamonds too. And we can go see the dolphins now and again,” he added hopefully.
The two men looked at each other, straight in the eye, for one long moment. Then Manuel looked Mohnish over. He was a fisherman, but his getup was too jazzy. Manuel understood.
“What are the risks?” he asked gravely.
“None at all!” replied the other lightly, with a wave of his hand. “Your uncle Chico and I had been doing it for years! Hashish. Some merchants from the north, you know, the Himalayas.”
“Can we go see the dolphins now?” put in the small lad, his face shining.
“Yes,” replied his brother. “But mind you don’t tell anyone at home.”
So Melvin had another secret to keep.
****
Mr. D’Silva sat smoking his old pipe on the verandah. He could hear Mrs. D’Silva humming her favourite tune in the kitchen. The river was calm and grey. He could see Manuel’s tug making its way in the distance, leaving a silver snail-trail in the water. A cool capricious breeze blew the smoke from his pipe this way and that. He had known Uncle Chico had secrets, and he had never wanted to ask what they were. He knew now that Manuel had secrets, and he knew he would never ask for them either. As long as he was earning a living what did it matter how he did it? Life was too short to be filled with the secrets of others. And children too became others once they grew up. Melvin, now hanging on the railing near him, approaching his math book from the oddest possible angle as it lay spread on the floor, would become a stranger too…another stranger with secrets.
Mariam is a University teacher in French Language and Literature; she studied at the Sorbonne Paris. She has been writing for children for over twelve years, doing creative writing workshops in schools. She is also a playwright and many of her plays are performed in theatres.
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