Beggar's Feast by Randy Boyagoda Page A

turned away from him, concentrating on the playing, as seemed everyone else in the room, which had windows taller than any man he’d ever known and drapes that looked finer than even the finest finery he had watched from Galle Face Parade on Sunday mornings, when it had been English wives walking into Christ Church, their laced throats arching in wonder at the long shadow of the new bell tower. He had to do something else with his eyes and so he inventoried the rest of the room. Heavy chairs, heavy lamps, a large patterned carpet, the cluster of flowers at its centre made yellow beneath a light that looked like a giant drop of perfect water. There was a big black dog sleeping in a corner, on its own carpet, a carpet that was thicker than his father’s sleeping mat. A fire was burning at the back of a deep stone square, above it a mantel made of the same grey stone, another promenade for their shiny silver things.
    â€œEveryone, please,” said Astrobe. He had talked over her playing! Sam wanted to hate him for it, wanted nothing from the world but to remain in the moment that had just passed, to wither away witnessing the sound and shape of her and her music. But she stopped playing and everyone turned at Astrobe’s words—an older woman, a very old woman, a round man about his age, and she did too. She did too.
    â€œEveryone, this is Sam, who’s been working for me at the harbour this past year. I may have mentioned him previously. I’ve decided to let him sleep in the observatory.”
    â€œAnd why?” one of the women asked.
    â€œBecause that’s what I’ve decided.”
    â€œYes, I see,” she said. Mrs. Astrobe.
    â€œAnd where is— Sam, is it? Where is Sam from?” asked Astrobe’s daughter. Her voice like honey and music.
    â€œCeylon,” answered Astrobe. “And he understands much of what we’re saying.”
    â€œOh really, Ceylon?” said Mrs. Astrobe and looked at him, smiled, then turned back to the piano, turning the very old woman at the same time. She never so much as breathed his way again. The very old woman, Astrobe’s mother-in-law, spoke to Sam once, a few weeks later, after stopping him in a hallway. “They dance with kangaroos in the bush. And when I was a girl, I watched them shave a bear.” And then she walked on.
    â€œThose aren’t— Are those Jim’s?” asked the round young man, pointing at Sam’s shoes but looking at her.
    She slammed down on the piano and rushed from the room and the young man followed like some heavy pet, a sloth bear, and also the two women left, and finally Astrobe took a step toward their exit, stopped, then walked away, through yet another doorway, without saying anything to him either. And so Sam was left by himself, the crashing bowel sounds of the piano ringing in his ears, which were burning, wanting more. Everything was. All of it.

“Ha! You thought I meant you, yes? That I’m going to box you up and send you home?” Astrobe laughed until it sounded like he was coughing up metal. He dabbed his monogrammed hanky to his eyes. How vengeful was a man’s memory, how conspiring his tongue! He hadn’t thought of his Jim in days. They were in his harbour office. It was almost time to walk home. He’d only told Sam that he knew of a freighter going to Ceylon with free space in the hold. That something small could be sent along. Not someone.
    â€œWhat I am proposing,” he continued, his voice now milder, chastened, “is that you might want to put together some effects to send to your family back home. Am I presuming too much? Just it’s that I thought, and I know it’s not for you, and it’s months off from December, but people are already getting their parcels ready to send to London for Happy Christmas. There’s not much left for ourselves in England, thanks to old Martin Astrobe, but I thought it was something you