BECOMING SUPRA

Chapter 4

RAË

Weekends at school: music blaring, students strewn like seals basking on patches of green, some played ball, some watched 'B' grade films in dank theatres. Some like Neel, slept in and surfaced only after sunset.

My friends and I went visiting relics of a colonial past: stone cottages, dusty clubhouses with mounts of tiger and bison busts. And our favourite: the old cemetery now defunct for over a century.

Lydia pushed down on the barbed-wire fence and slid her body through. Sakura, Shazia and I followed, entering the premises of the cemetery which was scattered with graves mottled with red fungus and pale-green lichen spills. Burning heaps of eucalyptus deadfall offered the graveyard the haunted touch it deserved.

Lydia scattered chips for birds and squirrels before passing the bag around to us. As tradition demanded, we visited Nathaniel Holt's grave, the founder of our school.

It read, 'Nathaniel Holt, Missionary of the A.B.C.F.M. Born in Boston, U.S.A. October 27, 1855. Killed by a Bison, whilst shooting in the Pulney in 1908'.

Another gravestone read, 'Died of drowning in the Vagai River'.

Another, 'Killed by leopard'.

The gifts of the forest claiming what was rightfully theirs.

"Some of the graves are unmarked, I wonder what they died of?"

"Probably by diseases they hadn't yet classified," said Shazia.

"I'd rather not know the cause of death. It makes the idea of it more plausible ... let's change the topic ... I want to update you on a new development in my life," said Lydia.

We settled on the graves. She told us about the love letters she and Imkong had been exchanging over the holidays.

"I wrote him a hand-written letter ... and he replied with a hand-written letter!"

"Who does that anymore?" said Sakura.

"How long did it take to arrive?" I asked.

"Two weeks!" said Lydia.

"What's his handwriting like?" asked Shazia.

"It's straight and ... soft," said Lydia, smiling.

"He's so stylish," said Shazia. "You make such an exotic pair."

"So ... Imkong is in soccer practice with the new boy who joined us this year ... Æsh. Apparently, he's nineteen, skipped a year somewhere," said Lydia.

"Maybe he failed," I said.

"No, Imkong says he's very smart. The school gave him these aptitude tests to know which levels to place him and he's topped them all."

"Yeah, he's in my higher-level English class," said Shazia.

"I heard he was in prison," said Sakura.

"Prison?" I balked. "Where'd you hear that?"

"My Dad worked in the same financial firm as his Dad. He said that Æsh did something terrible ... terrible enough to force his Dad to resign," replied Sakura.

"Is that why they sent him here in his senior year?" asked Shazia.

"His grandmother lives in Bali," I said. "He said it's closer to her from here than Europe."

"Haven't you seen his scars?" said Sakura.

"On his face?" I said.

"No, on his body." We stayed silent, eager to hear her explanation. "He was playing basketball and in between the games he changed his shirt ... I saw a long scar on his right side ... and no I was not ogling ... he came into my line of vision," she finished in one breath.

We laughed.

"He's in my Social Experience class and the girls love him," I said.

"I don't blame them! Smacking good looks he's got," she said, smacking her lips. And those scars ... if only those scars could talk," she sighed.

A black langur shrieked, jumping heavily on a branch above. Shazia squealed. "I'm out of here. I don't know why you guys keep insisting on the cemetery."

The sun was out, we rented boats taking turns rowing to the far end of the lake where the willows frisked the water and the lotus bunched in clusters. Many had drowned swimming in and around the lotus flowers. Their feet entangled with the long tubal roots, it was death by the grip of a lotus. His gravestone would have read, 'Killed by lotus root'.

How can something so benign, be so fatal? But there were many benign things that could kill. Gravestones have been marked, 'Killed by icicles'. 'Killed in a hot sauna'. 'Killed by falling coconut'.

As can a menacing thought.

It was these silent killers, that had left those graves unmarked.