The ruler

Jayashantha JAYWARDHANA

I seated myself upon the threshold with my back leaning against the perpendicular wall, and stretched my legs forward, balancing myself on its narrow space.

I was in the habit of sitting here in this posture whenever I had to ruminate on something that deeply affected my emotions or caused great rumpus in my mind, disturbing its peace. And I began to recollect what had happened at the school or in the classroom.

In reality, nothing noteworthy had happened at the school. But, I was feeling guilty, I felt like a man who had just committed a horrendous crime. I really was terribly depressed over the consequences to come.

It all had happened just when the Social Studies teacher had left the classroom. Had she stayed a little longer at the classroom, I thought, I would not have got myself into so much trouble as I had done now.

Or if the mathematics teacher had come to the class on time, this terrible thing would not have happened either.

'Had I stayed home today', I thought remorsefully, 'I would have been devoid of all these fears and worries.'

'But, what is the point in talking or thinking about different conditions or circumstances in which things would all have happened for better?' I said to myself, 'what happened has happened.'

Yet I was getting more and more anxious as I thought what was going to happen the next day. The worst was not over, it was yet to come.

I felt down in the dumps as some people put it. At the worst, I would be severely beaten by Rasanga's father, that tall, lean, placid man with a stormy temperament; at the best, I would be thoroughly humiliated by him.

'If the worst came to the worst', I shuddered to think that, 'I'd be both leathered and embarrassed.' The future presented to me such a grim prospect that there was more or less danger in every possibility I considered.

When I had returned home at about three O'clock in the afternoon, I felt I was not myself. Usually, I would have stripped myself of the school uniform and put on a pair of shorts; then I would have sprinted to the well and had a brief wash; thereafter I would have wolfed down my lunch despite that I took lunch at the school too.

But that day was different. I did take my school uniform off and put on a pair of shorts. I did have a brief wash too. I did so lest mother should reproach and perhaps punish me.

But I had lost my appetite altogether; I did not even want to look at my lunch let alone eat it! Mother sounded rather incredulous when I said I would not eat.

She said it was quite a remarkable thing to hear me refuse to eat my lunch and that it augured well for the whole family. If only I was in a mood to share her laughter!

If she knew what was going to become of me, her adorable little son the following day, she would indeed sympathise with me.

But how could she know about my problem, when I myself remained so silent? She sure was to be totally ignorant about it for she was no clairvoyant.

When a fellow is in such great trouble as I did, does it matter whether he misses one meal or ten meals? How can a man enjoy himself today when he is so sure that tomorrow will bring him such great catastrophe?

I had heard that some people got killed when they were beaten, particularly if the blows landed on their heads, injuring their brains causing haemorrhage in the brain.

'Tomorrow', I thought with great fear rising in my heart, 'I might be beaten to death.' If I got killed in a skirmish with Rasanga's father, the whole school would come to my funeral.

My friends would have a great time eating biscuits and drinking soft drinks. I remembered how we enjoyed ourselves at a funeral of a friend's father. I drank several cups of soft drink and pocketed some twenty Mari biscuits to eat at home (in addition to what I ate at the funeral.)

The principal himself would make a speech at my funeral expressing his deep sorrow over my tragic but preventable death.

No, he would not beat me to death, for if he did so he would be put in the jail and would have to remain imprisoned for the rest of his life. Yet, he would embarrass me to death, and I should be made the laughing stock of the whole school.

'Why do I think such gloomy thoughts over what tomorrow will bring for me?', I thought while wondering if I could not be a little less pessimistic about my predicament. But the more I thought, the surer I felt that I was closer than ever to an ineluctable catastrophe.

Oh! How so stupid it was of me to do such a silly thing! I must be as mad as a hatter, no, still madder! Now I was beginning to realise why my wise, old father often called me a donkey.

His calling me a donkey had always offended me, but now I was more convinced than ever that he was absolutely right in his judgement and that I was, in reality, a donkey in the human form.

How is it possible that the parents can see in advance what their children are up to? It may be because they are older and wiser, or perhaps it is also possible that they can remember how they acted while they themselves were children and the little follies and stupidities they committed as children.

It amused me a little to think that father was seeing himself as a child in me and that he himself must have been no less stupid in his childhood; this amusing thought lifted my gloomy spirits a little. But, presently, I relapsed into the old, fretful state of mind.

I shuddered to recall what Rasanga had told me at the school. He had told me that when they were living in Mahawa, a naughty boy in his class had broken his pencil box. He had complained to his father about that boy.

The news of the broken pencil box, he told me, had infuriated his father. So both the son and the father had waylaid to capture the little culprit and settle the scores.

In a fit of anger, his father had hit him on the head so hard that the boy in question had swooned. Rasanga had admitted to me quite frankly that he had been scared out of his wits by the blow his father had dealt that boy.

I was curious to know if that boy had been killed in that deadly skirmish with his father, but could not ask him that since the teacher had come to the class.

But, I guessed that he must have been killed by that blow. Now the disaster to happen manifested itself to me in such vivid detail that I shivered in fear. That he could have exaggerated the facts of the incident did never cross my mind.

It was one of my ingrained habits to sit in front of the television from 5.30 in the afternoon to at least 9.30 in the night. There were many days when I watched TV for even longer time.

My parents would often berate me for my addiction to the television which my father had rechristened as 'Devil's box'. Many a time he had threatened to smash it or sell it off to some fancy buyer.

But it was pretty obvious that he was only blustering out. No same mortal would ever buy an over-used black and white television with a broken knob, a twisted aerial, and a dusty tube.

Besides that, it needed the expertise of a rocket scientist to tune it to get clear pictures; I alone knew how to tune it setting the aerials at the right angle to get at least moderately clear pictures.

That day, however, I was too depressed to watch TV, and opted to remain on the bed in my room under the pretext of reading a book.

So great had been my father's consternation at my absence before the television in the parlour that he himself came to my room and asked half-mockingly and half-anxiously, 'Are you ok?' I nodded my head to imply that I was well. I feigned to be so engrossed in the book I was reading that father left the room.

To be honest, I felt great fear that he would dig deeper and force me to creep out of the shell into which now I had withdrawn.

At the dinner-time, unlike on all other occasions, I did not take my plate to the parlour, but sat at the table pecking at the meal. Father did seem to have noticed my change and cast an inquiring glance at me.

What if he began to interrogate me? The very thought that he would grill me gave me quakes since I had known him to be a relentless interrogator. And he was about to pose a question to me when the grandfather asked him about the fertiliser subsidy offered to paddy growers.

As he was expatiating on the matter of fertiliser subsidy of which I had hardly any idea, I slipped out of the kitchen, like a stealthy cat, into my room.

Soon I was on the bed, with the quilt thrown over my body, covering it from the head to my toes. But all night I lay tossing on the bed, and was unable to catch even a wink of sleep...

To me the following day was more or less the day of Last Judgement. I felt like a criminal to be hanged in a short while. Yet I knew I had little choice but to go to school, since my parents would never abide my staying home on a school day even for the fairest of the reasons.

The rule was so stringent that I never dared to transgress it. I literally trembled as I thought, 'This may perhaps be my last day at the school.'

It was, however, both frightening and comforting: frightening because I would no more be living on this earth; comforting because I would no longer have to get up so early, go to the school, and get punished by those horrible, unkind teachers for neglected homework...

I was about to cross the road, when I saw Rasanga and his father coming from the right on a scooter. I could not venture to look in that direction, and felt my heart beginning to beat faster than ever..... as I crossed the road, the previous day's incident flashed across my mind in the vividest details.

I had been toying with Rasanga's ruler, a precious gift from his aunty who had just returned from abroad. Suddenly I had wondered if it could be bent in two placing it between my thumb and forefinger.

I tried to bend it in two, and was applying pressure from both ends to bend supple ruler, and make the two ends meet in the end when Rasanga warned me against breaking it. And I replaced it in his pencil box.

Yet soon when his attention was focused on a neighbour, narrating some adventurous story, I resumed working on it.

Suddenly, to my consternation, it cracked in the middle and broke into two parts. I was beginning to wonder what really had happened when an angry Rasanga yelled, 'You, you broke many ruler, you stupid donkey....' and threatened to complain the matter to his father. I made many an attempt to mollify his anger but to little avail...

When I was about to enter the school premises through the huge iron gate, trembling like a fish out of water, I heard someone calling me.

Turning back, I found Rasanga signalling me to stop. He and his father too were crossing the road and were coming towards me; I knew that the moment had come. That decisive moment between life and death! My fears were doubled, tripled and quadrupled.... I felt like running away from them as far as my short legs could carry me.

Yet, how could I even walk let alone run when my feet were so stamped to the ground? I had no doubt that the worst was just a few inches away from me; and the gap was getting narrower and narrower with each second passing.

I heard the sound of water rushing through the gutter, which ran by the wall encircling the school yard. What if he picked me up and plunged me headlong into the gutter? I looked in terror at the gurgling gutter and felt sure that there was water enough to drown me, a dumpy fellow...

Now that they were as close to me as ever, I felt it could happen at any moment. I tried to smile but felt as difficult to move my lips as if they had been sewn together. To my vast surprise, that lean, tall man asked Rasanga with a genial smile, pointing at me.

Is your friend Thanula?' Rasanga nodded with a smile 'Glad to meet you young man we've heard a lot about your from Rasanga.' I wanted to speak out something for the sake of politeness but felt too astonished to do so due to that anticlimax, so I tried to grin as broadly as I could. To be frank, I was still suspecting that the volcano would erupt sooner or later.

But soon he wished us a good day and walked back to where he had halted the scooter.... Now that we were going towards our classroom, talking about the Test match between Sri Lanka and India to be commenced that day, I asked as casually as if it was the world's most ordinary thing.

'Didn't you tell your dad about the broken ruler?' I used the phrase, 'the broken ruler' as if to imply that the ruler had broken itself or that it had happened to be broken and that I had no connection whatsoever with regard to it's being broken.

'Yes, I did', said he, 'and he told me that such type of rulers were available even here and promised to bring me one today itself on his return from the office.

Oh! I sighed with great relief, and hoped he did not notice my sigh....

Evader

M. Gayanga C. NANAYAKKARA

The target was to become first in the class. But Naween Delpajith had several problems that overlapped one another.

First, he lived in a lodge and had no one to guide him through his lessons. Secondly, he had to do everything on his own from cooking to washing clothes.

Thirdly, his dad notoriously restricted his cash handling. Fourthly he had got only the eighth place in the class repeatedly through three term tests. Fifthly he was only a child just starting to learn the ways of society.

Sixthly - to crown it all - a girl had started showing an interest in him. He had sensed it suddenly. He was sitting at the front row in the class when he felt goose bumps all over.

Someone at the back of the class must be watching him intently. Partly turning his head tried to locate the source.

He was successful two days later.

Aparna's emotional waves were powerful. Her coal black eyes had recently found a tendency to slid away from the blackboard towards that young handsome boy with curly hair, sitting at the front row. Her thoughts were full of him. But he was so cool! He was always looking away from her. And that excited her.

Naween realised his grip on himself loosening. In the class, he saw Aparna everywhere. Her presence was intoxicating. He slowly rubbed his forehead. Man, am I nuts?

He was too young, but even at the age of thirteen he felt the heaviness of first love.

He slipped his foothold at every term test. Aparna's hypnotising eyes sleepily looked up at him from every text book he opened.

He tried to shook himself free but his conscience only tightened the love net. He had to gasp for breath when she walked by. But each time she glanced at him tenderly. She did not smile. But her glistening eyes were raining them.

But at the other end of the class loomed his target. The target he lived for. To be the first. To be the best of the best.

One evening he was going home for the weekend (he rarely did, his little body was always too tired) and he was sitting by a window, listlessly watching houses, trees and people race past him, he saw the absurdity of it all. He had been simply WASTING his time.

Fantasising Aparna would not serve his prime purpose. He did not come to Colombo to find a bride. He came here to earn back the money his dad invested on him. He was a debtor.

From then on he avoided Aparna's presence, her voice, her eyes, and finally Aparna herself. Whenever he saw her coming, he slowly turned into an alleyway or if there was not an alleyway available, he turned back.

Whenever her eyes pleasingly searched for those of his, he averted them. He was grim. He was stone. He had become an evader. As if to aid his effort the fate helped him. In grade ten, Aparna was given another class. She moved away. She had been haunting him for three years.

In grade ten Naween Delpajith worked out a miracle. It was certainly a miracle for a fifteen year old who lived in a lodge looking after himself.

He had been the sixteenth of the class in the last term test in grade nine. But this time, with his head cleared, he leap frogged to his usual eight place in the first term test in his new class and in the second term test he was - at last, at last - FIRST IN THE CLASS.

The two leaps from 16th to 8th and from 8th to 1st astounded Delpajith himself. The feat surprised the class teacher considerably who smilingly inquired about it. There was no avoiding the limelight. People began to talk about Naween Delpajith.

From then on he scored victory after victory. In year 2001 he graduated with honours from SCAF National Defence Academy. It was his master stroke.

However his intense self control left on him a permanent strain. He came to avoid every girl who kindled an interest in him or every girl who took on interest in him. Either way he was subdued.

He surprised his batch-mates by turning down most appealing girls whom they considered as worth dying for.

Many of his friends wondered what could be the trouble with him, slithering away from opposite sex, denying golden opportunities others would have jumped at. But always his decisions were solid as brick. When he said no, he meant no.

Once at an official party gathering a Colonel's daughter had dimpled at him and asked "Shall we dance?" but he had bowed courteously and replied "So sorry to disappoint you Miss, I have an extremely jealous wife."

Everyone knew he was single. But no one dared to discuss his comment. His passive resistance had earned him utmost respect in the society. Officers knew him as an unbending, unfeeling soldier in the trenches and never worried when he stopped to talk to their wives.

He was an evader and called himself thus, and people followed suit.

"So you are sure she took the CD?" Colonel Nethyuga inquired raspingly. His secretary shifted uncomfortably, at the voice that felt like steel."

"Yes Sir, Ms. Kasporova had it last. She might have double crossed us."

The Colonel looked at the eight VIPs sitting in the underground auditorium of Special Commando Assault Force (SCAF) Headquarters. Every face looked chilled from granite. Sweet glistening.

"I know a guy who would be able to tackle Kasporova" said the Colonel eyeing the satellite phone. "We still have one day left."

Anya Kasporova hummed happily to herself as she gently slid into the fragrant bath. How swiftly life changes! Forty eight hours ago she was only a poor typist in the military.

But now with one million euros already in their personal account in Italy and another three million promised to be delivered after she hands over the CD to the man from Moscow she would be a rich lady in fur. Then she would change her identity and go into hiding in Rome.

She had arranged a fake wedding ceremony in her home town St. Petersburg, Russia to which the man from Moscow would arrive as the bridegroom. Undercover, she would be able to give him the CD without much trouble.

She had sent invitations to most of her life long budders, and tomorrow there would be lot of happy reunions in the church of St. Annes. It would look as a genuine marriage. Only she and the Man from Moscow would know the truth. She started shampooing her hair. The wedding took place solemnly.

There was quite a crowd to see them off. Anya knew she was absolutely stunning in that Jasmine White lace dress. Through her veil she saw the Man from Moscow only once. Most of the time he was by her side and she did not dare look up.

She felt like she was actually marrying him. She had never seen him before. He was so handsome!

He never spoke a word to her through the entire party. His presence alone was enough. Anyway they would have plenty of time to talk when they reach their hotel.

They were received warmly at Hotel Excelsior and were showed graciously to room No. 23. Everything had been clandestinely arranged by the FSB, the federal Security Service of Russia.

The man from Moscow ordered drinks and food for them while Anya desorbed. He was calm, controlled and silent. When she came out from the bathroom draped only in a towel, he was facing away from her sitting at a lotus position by the bookshelves, meditating.

It seemed he was in no hurry to proceed with his business, or for that matter, with more intimate affairs.

Food was waiting on the table. She uncorked a bottle of white wine.

The explosive ringing of the phone jolted Anya out of bed and she dived at her handbag on the divan. God, how she must have slept! She must have been drugged! And it must be the emergency call she was dreading all along this mission. She raised the phone to her ear.

"Moscow calling...This is Moscow calling..Anya can you hear us?" The voice sounded urgent and strained.

"Hell, yes" she breathed, recognising the accent. "Why do you risk dialling this number? These mobile phone records can be devastating."

"Doesn't matter about that." The voice broke in" For the time being we are worried about your safety. Where is the Man from Moscow?"

The question brought her sharply back to reality. Then to her relief she heard the sound of water running in the bath.

"He - he must be having a shower."

"Anya" the voice all but screamed," shoot him this very moment. He is not the same Man from Moscow. He is an undercover operative working for Special Commando Assault Force - the elite army unit in Ceylon that meddles in International espionage. It is lucky, you are still alive and he is still with you. Kill him. Don't let him get away." She looked at the closed bathroom with an acute feeling of panic, hatred and wrath. Her beautiful face had lost its femineity. SCAF! Indeed!

She hissed "What happened to OUR man from Moscow?"

"We discovered his body an hour ago. He was shot at the neck."

Mon Dieu! She switched off the phone quickly and drew a small Magnum. 357 pistol from her handbag. She had already lost lost of valuable time.

She turned the handle and walked menacingly into the bathroom, pistol ready.

She froze.

The shower was on. But there was no Man from Moscow under it. A sitting chair from the living room had been placed under the flow of water. Water dripped off it. It sounded just like someone bathing. She get her teeth. So the bastard had long gone. Raw terror gripped her. The disc! She had stitched it carefully to one of her blouses in her suitcase. Surely it was intact?

She came out from the bathroom as in a dream, and sleep walked to where her suitcase still lay. She let the pistol drop from her lifeless hand.

With trembling fingers she opened the bag. Sure, there it was! No one had touched it. No one, let alone the dumb bastards from SCAF - could ever know what's behind Iran's Uranium enrichment project in Natanz.

But just as well she make sure about it. Heaving a sigh of relief she placed the disc on the tray and sat down by the lap top. She clicked on Windows Media Player.

Her heart began to hammer faster again. The computer stuck! Someone HAD tampered with the disc. SCAF had sent her one of their best men. Their bloody best of the best.

For there on the screen, in red lettering, blinked a single warning; YOU HAVE JUST BEEN EVADED.

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