1. Something Was Burning - Lords of Serendipity

PART ONE

Small, dark, and not yet dangerous, Devi’s father knocked on the teak door.

No answer.

He knocked harder.

Who’s there?

Housekeeping, madam, he said, looking down.

What? Who’s there? Speak louder, please!

Housekeeping, madam. Housekeeping, he called out, staring at his beaten black shoes.

Oh, finally! she said.

A tall white woman in yoga pants and a hoodie opened the door.

He entered and propped open the door with his cart. He smelled something rich and sharp and saw fire: a sandalwood candle was burning. The room smelled like a very fine temple, but there was something else in there, under it. Standing water. Human waste. The opportunity for money.

Making a sweet face, the woman pointed at the bathroom. She volunteered that you’d expect better plumbing at a five-star hotel anywhere in the world, even Sri Lanka.

Never making eye contact, he told her it was okay and thanked her and apologized and went in and cleaned out the clogged toilet.

While he worked, he heard the woman yelling, Mackenzie! Come on! Get back to work! No, don’t start this again. This is what happens when you’re not on the water polo team!

Devi’s father came out of the bathroom and stood by the front door.

Please excuse, madam, job is finished. Thank you. Is there more to do, please?

What? Oh, sorry. I wasn’t yelling at you. That was my daughter. You have no idea how much I’m paying for her college tutor and she’s not even doing the tiny things he asks her to do. And she still thinks she’s getting into her top choice? I mean, we work hard, we’re very generous, but we have our principles. We’re not Varsity Blues criminals. If only we had that kind of money!

Ah, madam, so sorry to hear.

She cocked her head.

Thank you. For once, someone understands!

I also have a daughter applying to college, he said. She also has an overseas tutor. I agree, very expensive.

Oh really? That’s great. Wait. Here. Is US okay?

He bent at the waist and showed her an open palm, his free hand bracing his extended arm. He was all humility and hopefulness. He accepted an American twenty-dollar bill, bending even lower and muttering, Thank you so very much thank you so very much thank you very much, madam.

And I hope she works harder than my daughter!

Most definitely, madam, a very hard worker she is. Thank you.

That’s so inspiring. Here’s something for her, too.

Thank you, madam, he said, accepting ten more dollars.

You tell her to work hard and dream harder, okay?

Yes, madam.

And thank you for fixing the toilet.

Yes, madam, good night.

He finished his shift on the Serendib Road and, eating stolen pillow chocolates, did figures in his head on the bus back to the village. Just a few more luxury hotel toilets and his daughter’s dreams would start coming true. He went silently through the front gate and into the house, where his wife was already up. He was careful not to wake his daughter, who was, just then, still dreaming.

In her dream, Devi saw towers and domes and tall trees dropping red and copper leaves onto bright green grass. She saw white swans and pretty boats gliding on a shining brown river.

And she saw young people. Young people were everywhere. The boys wore navy blazers with gold buttons and the girls wore beige shirts and pleated skirts and they read to each other from heavy books. She saw old men wearing tweed jackets and slacks and gleaming leather shoes. The professors. They stood among the young people, smoking pipes and nodding at what the young people were saying and reading.

And sunshine. Devi saw sunshine everywhere, on everything, everyone.

Devi was dreaming.

But wait.

Something was on fire. Something was burning. What was burning? What was burning down? Devi couldn’t see. She could tell something was burning but she couldn’t see what it was. She wasn’t there, with the others. They couldn’t hear her asking what was burning. They didn’t notice. They didn’t seem to care that something was burning. But something was burning. Was the university burning?

Devi woke up.

Woodsmoke.

Ammi was heating the drinking water.

That was Devi’s job.

She’d slept in, again!

Devi jumped off the cot. Her grandmother muttered on the cot across from hers in the hallway the family had curtained into a bedroom. Devi waited. Achchi kept sleeping.

Devi got down on her knees. Not to pray, but to touch the things she kept under her cot: admission booklets, which she sent away for using her life’s birthday monies, and which she treated like secret and holy things. Sleeping on top of them, she liked to imagine their insides rising into hers, something of course she would never tell anyone else about, not anyone at school, not her older brothers, not Achchi, who slept on top of magazines about the British royal family. Devi also wouldn’t tell Thathi, and certainly, certainly, certainly not Ammi. She wouldn’t tell Thathi because her father would then boast to the whole village about it and any who were listening would think Devi even crazier than they already thought she was, with her plans to go to an overseas university. And she wouldn’t tell Ammi because, well, then her mother would think Devi was even crazier than she already thought she was, with plans not just to go to university, or even university overseas, but to an Ochpys university overseas.

So instead of any morning prayer to any kind of god, Devi had this moment with the admissions booklets, this longing into imagining, to heat and light the rest of her day.

She stood up, and Achchi turned and made another noise. Devi froze. She could imagine what Ammi would say if she had to gather the wood and heat the fire for the day’s drinking water because Devi slept in again, and not just that, but also deal with Achchi waking up early and asking to be taken to the toilet and waiting while she bid good day to Old Mr. Garandiya, the rat snake coiled up in the coconut shells in the side yard, and then waiting longer while she asked him how many mice he swallowed last night and then demanding Ammi make her Bovril and play the Jim Reeves cassette on the stereo hi-fi, which sat beside the shiny red rice cooker that had been presented to the family by a recently elected local official and shorted the electricity every time they used it.

But Achchi stayed asleep. Holding her Batas so they didn’t slap against the hard floor, Devi rushed barefoot to the back of the house to help her mother.

Morning Ammi sorry Ammi sorry Ammi sorry sorry sorry.

Girl, just don’t say it was the fault of the time zone, Ammi said as Devi slipped down beside her, cradling a load of the discarded construction timber that her brothers had chopped and stacked behind the kitchen.

Ammi stood up and put her hands on her hips and bent back, wincing. She wiped her brow and, looking down at Devi, pointed at the fire already going strong under the burnt-black-bottom metal pot.

Devi was too late.

Leave it beside, for tomorrow morning, Ammi said. That way, at least when I wake up and you’re still sleeping, I won’t have to go to the woodpile first.

I’ll do it tomorrow morning, I promise, Devi said.

Ammi half-laughed. This was also the sound she made whenever Devi spoke of Ochpys, Ammi’s nickname for university, inspired by the hand-drawn paper pennants Devi had tacked above the desk Thathi had made for her out of an old door stacked on top of empty petrol cylinders.

Ochpys.

OxfordCambridgeHarvardPrincetonYaleStanford.

What would Ammi say, Devi wondered, if she told her those same letters also spelled psycho? Maybe she’d get a good slap. Maybe Ammi would agree, because applying to university was bloody crazy.

You’ll see, said Devi, but quietly. She knew for certain she wouldn’t sleep in the next day, because her overseas tutor had already canceled their next session. Johannes attended a prestigious uni overseas. Serendipitously for Devi, he was also the sole proprietor of an exclusive international tutoring company. He was not available, he told her, for their next session because he was attending a lecture by a former recipient of the Nobel Prize in philosophy and had been selected by his professor to ask the first question. So, most definitely, there would be no time zone problems for Devi. She wouldn’t have to stay up until 3 a.m. for her next WhatsApp tutoring session for another two weeks.

Devi, just go and come with the bottles, Ammi said.

She went into the dark kitchen, bent down beside the rumbling fridge, and picked up a milk crate full of empty whiskey bottles. Walking slowly so they didn’t clatter and wake Achchi, she returned outside.

By now morning was starting in Sri Lanka: Devi made out the tops of the trees against the blushing, bluing sky. Coconut and talipot, messy tops. Not the clean, sharp rounds and ovals and triangles of the proper trees one finds in proper places, she thought.

OxfordCambridgeHarvardPrincetonYaleStanford.

OxfordCambridgeHarvardPrincetonYaleStanford.

Devi! Bring the bottles!

Devi brought her father’s empty whiskey bottles. Ammi ladled water from the big pot into a wide plastic laundry tub. Devi waited for it to cool down and then ladled it into the bottles. While she ladled, in her head she went over her personal statement and answers to the questions Johannes told her she would be asked in the admission interview.

Going to a top university overseas had been her dream ever since that day, as a student of CBK Primary School, she had been a finalist in the all-Negombo-schools spelling competition, and lost. The winner was awarded a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. Devi knew two of the words, not the third, and said, to the Mistress of the Bee, Miss, please, what’s Oxford? and the teacher had said, It’s a school. Devi asked, A school like ours? And the teacher said, No no, not a school like ours. Then? Oxford is a school like what? Teacher said, It’s a school like Cambridge. Miss, please, what’s Cambridge? Teacher smiled and said, Same as Harvard. Miss, sorry, but please, what’s Harvard? Same as Princeton, she said, and then that Princeton was same as Yale. Devi later found Stanford on her own. And it went from there, to everything she found out online, to this, five years later: she was a seventeen-year-old Sri Lankan village girl filling her father’s whiskey bottles with wood-smoked drinking water behind the family’s four-room house on the northeast coast of Sri Lanka, and she was preparing to make her applications to OxfordCambridgeHarvardPrincetonYaleStanford.

Ammi! Devi! Come! Come quickly!

It was Thathi, returning from his overnight job and calling them to the front of the house.

Devi was held in place by Ammi’s eyes.

By the time he’s finished talking he’s going to be dying of thirst. Finish filling the bottles, put them in the fridge, and then go see what he wants.

Aren’t you coming, Ammi?

She shrugged.

Ammi, Devi said, cocking her head and smiling, you know he won’t start, or finish, until you’re there.

Ammi sighed. True, child, true. That man.

And so they went through the house, passing Achchi, who was standing in the corner of the front room with her back to them, facing an empty corner.

Who do you want for today, Mummy? Ammi asked Achchi.

The old lady didn’t answer.

Mummy, come, tell us or I’ll go and bring the malu man and he’ll be the first face you see today, and what a bad-omen day that will be!

Don’t bring the malu man! Are you crazy, child?

Then tell, Mummy. Whose face is the first face you want to see today?

Still staring at the empty corner, the old lady straightened her shoulders, which otherwise disappeared into her loose cotton shift.

Devi!

Ammi motioned and Devi went and stood in front of her grandmother’s back. Her grandmother turned, looked at her formally, nodded, and then smiled, gap-toothed and loving.

Devi smiled back.

And now, having seen what she regarded as a good-luck face first thing in the morning, Devi’s grandmother could formally begin her day. She asked for Bovril and the Jim Reeves cassette.

Devi! Where are you? Come quickly!

All three women went to the front of the house as her father kept calling to his daughter, on whose success everything else depended.

He was waiting outside, with her two older brothers. The three of them looked very tired. Their green golf shirts and blue jeans were covered in all kinds of grease and muck. The men of her family cleaned hotel bathrooms in Colombo. By night, lately, they went to the docks for whatever work they could pick up. They were very tired these days from working double shifts. But this morning they were yawning and smiling, smiling directly at her.

What? she asked.

No, wait, wait, just wait. Gather. Everyone, please, gather, Thathi said, directing Devi and her mother and her grandmother to come down into the scrubby, chicken-wired courtyard in front of their house. He walked past them all and stood on the chipped front step to the house. He waited for their attention. He had their attention, such as it was—two exhausted young men, a wife sweating and aching from predawn housework, a mother-in-law whose face suggested that while she might be senile, at least she wasn’t totally crazy like her son-in-law, and also his beloved, beloved, brilliant daughter. Who was the Historic Future of Them All. Devi’s father cast his rheumy eyes a little further out, in case any of the nearby villagers had noticed he was about to deliver formal remarks. Several people were walking by. All of them had noticed he was about to deliver formal remarks. None of them stopped. Most assumed he was just drunk, if earlier than usual. Up the lane, from the verandah of the largest house in the neighborhood, its front yard full of white stone statues, a fat old woman watched and listened, grinning and fanning herself with a Holiday Inn Melbourne fan.

Today is the most auspicious of days for our family! Thathi began. As you all know, for several years now, our beloved and brilliant Devi has been doing her studies so that she may attend the university of overseas. And not just any university, but only the best. Only the best! Did she get any help from the teachers at that bloody school? Did any of the government ministers I sent letters even write back? No and no. But did that stop Devi or the rest of us? No and no. Did we take on extra shifts at the hotel to pay for her prestigious overseas tutor? Yes and yes. And today is the most auspicious of days for our family. Actually, not just our family, but our village. Actually, not just our village, but all of Negombo. Actually—

Okay, said Ammi. This is an auspicious day for all of Sri Lanka. Fine. Very good. Carry on. I need to fill your lunch and dinner tiffin—

And Bovril!

Yes yes, and make Mummy’s Bovril. Also, look at the poor boys. Aiyo. They need to wash and sleep. And Devi, actually, has to go to school and we will have to do her plaits. So come, tell, what is this all about?

What is this all about, you ask? It’s about this.

Harvard and Princeton, please step forward!

Devi’s eldest brother stepped forward and handed his father something fat and firm, wrapped tightly in a pink plastic shopping bag. It looked like a brick of fish. He was smiling at Devi.

Yale and Samford, please step forward!

Devi’s middle brother did the same.

And now, it is time for Oxford and Cambridge!

Pulling something from the small of his back, Devi’s father said, again, Oxford and Cambridge!

Devi’s father was now holding six fat pink plastic packets.

Thathi, what is all of this? Devi asked.

Fees, said her middle brother.

What men! These days, those rupees won’t even buy a bus ticket to Colombo. You think a few hundred rupees will pay for Ochpys?

Application fees, Ammi. This is money for the application fees, isn’t it, Thathi?

Do you see? Thathi said, turning and turning in the courtyard. He repeated his question in the general direction of the grinning, fat old woman watching from her verandah. Do you see how brilliantine my daughter is? Soon, monuments will be made to her! Exactly and precisely, Devi. Your brothers and I bring you this gift, so that you can send in your applications.

How did you even know? she asked.

Internet, said her middle brother, showing her his smashed-screen phone.

Crying, Devi hugged all of them and accepted the pink bundles. Cradling them, she went back into the house while her father and brothers went to the well to wash. Inside, her mother was already waiting. Her mother took her by the wrist and pulled her back to the dark, wood-smoke-smelling kitchen, where Achchi was sipping Bovril. Achchi got up and left, leaving Devi and nearly eighty thousand rupees alone with Ammi.

Studying Ammi, Devi held the bundles of money close like she was holding children about to be taken away by the police. Devi knew what Ammi thought of her plans, and what Ammi thought that much money could buy for the family instead of paying for applications to bloody Ochpys.

Ammi, please, said Devi.

Just listen to me, said Ammi. Just stay right here while I go and come.

Devi stayed in place. Ammi returned with a smaller pink bundle.

Take this too, Ammi said.

What for?

Apply to university here too.

What for? I’m going to OxfordCambridge—

I know I know. Ochpys, I know. But I’m your mother. I don’t know anything about OxfordCambridge. I’m just a simple village woman, but even a simple village woman now and then knows things about the world that Ochpys doesn’t know. Apply to university here, also. In Sri Lanka.

Ammi, you don’t think I’ll get into—

I don’t think anything.

Yes you do! You think—

Shut your mouth! Listen to me. I don’t think anything, understood? I don’t think anything because I stopped school when I was twelve to help Achchi with the cadju stand. I don’t think anything because one day a boy bought cadju from me and told me he had a million plans to become a dollar millionaire and I didn’t believe him of course but still I married Thathi and had all of you and now, now, always now I have to make the breakfast and lunch and dinner and take Achchi to the toilet and then do the washing whilst you do your plaits and get ready for school and go to school. Go to school all the way to the end of all the schools, Devi. Go. But do this also. Apply to university here, also, in Sri Lanka, with this money—

How did you save it without Thathi knowing?

Even a cashew-stand village woman with no schooling knows a few things. Okay?

Okay. Sorry. Thank you, Ammi.

Never mind. Now go. Get ready for school.

Devi did as she was told.

Small and bright, her heart beating hard, she was one bird among so many others taking flight, all around the world. Some were swifter, some were broken winged, older, bigger. Hungrier. Harder of beak. Sharper of talon. Working hard, dreaming harder, soaring, diving, clutching at the same perfect place. Ochpys. Psychos.