Sins of the Father by ​Shane Joseph


​Today would be different. It was not just the twinge in his chest, an irritation that increasingly announced its presence, but the message from Dona Catharina that hinted to it. With clammy fingers, he clipped suspenders onto khaki slacks and pulled them over his starched cotton shirt. The mauve cravat and cream flannel jacket were hot for this tropical climate although appropriate for this occasion, so were the buck and tan shoes. And the pipe would be more distinguished than a cigarette holder; he placed it, along with the small tin of tobacco, inside his jacket pocket. Appraising himself in the mirror, he looked a proper pukka sahib.
 
He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, hoping the nicotine would deaden the pain in his chest. Cigarettes were not good for him, the doctor had said. But how do you give up a tradition of smoking that went back centuries, if one could believe that his tanned complexion had white genes in them? His European ancestors and tobacco had accompanied each other on all the trade routes they traversed together over the centuries.
 
The children were playing in the garden—wild, happy voices. At least, they were unmistakably fair skinned, given Cynthia’s purebred line that ran all the way to Utrecht. Two boys and two girls, all under the age of 10, and a fifth “in the oven.” He had done well to bury his legacy of being a solitary, unhappy child.
 
A heavy step outside the bedroom drew him away from the window. Cynthia plodded in, carrying a load of laundry. In her last trimester of pregnancy, bloated and overweight, she had exchanged stoicism for fatigue. He felt no desire for her, like he usually did in the months when he was newly returned from overseas. He went over to relieve her; as he carried the bundle towards the bed, he felt breathless himself. The clothes were stiff and hot from the sun.
 
“You shouldn’t be doing this work,” he said, tossing the load on the bed.
 
“It has to be done.” She surveyed his attire. “You are not here all the time.”
 
“I have paid for domestic help.”
 
“Today is Sunday, in case you have forgotten. Soma does not work on weekends.”
 
Cynthia sat down on the corner armchair and leaned her head on the backrest.
 
He started folding the clothes. He resented doing it. He was the breadwinner. And yet, seeing her condition, he momentarily cast aside his traditional role conditioned by culture, circumstance, and expectation.
 
“You are going out, again.” Her voice had taken on a tired iciness.
 
“Yes. A few errands, and then a round of drinks at the club. Clients...”
 
She sighed and started sobbing. “I’m useless to you at the moment, aren’t I? Can’t you give me a few years between children to be a proper wife?”
 
It was not like her to talk this way. The twinge returned. “It’s not as you think. One day, I will explain all this.”
 
“Is she beautiful? Not a prostitute, I hope?”
 
He grabbed the pile of folded clothes and flung them into the almyrah. The pain in his chest surged, and he staggered outside for fresh air. He did not stop to even give her his customary peck on the cheek, their only sign of intimacy these days.
 
When he stepped out into the car porch, the ’36 Ford greeted him with its sparkling newness. He had washed and waxed the car himself, a weekend chore that he looked forward to with relish. Perhaps these exertions had giving him the aches and pains in his chest and it was not the anger that burned in him since he could remember. Many of his peers could not afford such a vehicle, or the four bed-roomed bungalow that he paid cash-down for when he returned from his last overseas assignment.
 
The children lost their hilarity the moment they noticed his presence. Whenever he brought up the subject with Cynthia, she would reply, “You have been overseas longer than at home. The children don’t really know you.”
 
“Cecilia,” he called his eldest, a girl, nine years old. She dropped a ball and came running towards him, pony tails flailing, knee-length dress soiled by playing rough with the boys.
 
“Where are your shoes?”
 
She crossed her hands, looked down at her bare dusty feet, and her body went stiff.
 
“We were playing cricket. I... I didn’t want to dirty them.”
 
“Women do not play cricket. It’s a gentleman’s game. And a lady does not go around bare footed.” When will they understand that all he wanted to do was raise them properly? After all, even this outpost still belonged to the civilized British Empire.
 
“Yes, Daddy.” Cecilia stepped back as if expecting “six of the best.” But he did not mean to beat them? Why did they think so ill of him? They don’t know you, rang in his head. As if to break the spell, three-year-old Joe, the youngest, came running with his older sister’s sandals in his hand. She took the footwear from the boy. Joe hung onto the hem of his sister’s dress and stuck a thumb into his mouth as his father peered down at him.
 
Henry wanted to pick his son up and hug him tightly, but two things prevented him: the boy was covered in muck and would soil his own well-laundered clothes, and the boy looked out of place in front of this adult dandy. Instead, Henry straightened up and fell into his authoritative role, the one he hid behind while at home. “Cecilia, go inside and help your mother with her chores. She is very tired and needs help.” 
 
“Yes, Daddy,” came the meek reply. Cecilia took Joe by the hand and turned back towards the house.
 
Henry got into the car and drove away. Seeing the two middle children by the gate, he waved cheerily at them, but their heads were bowed too, for they had lost half their cricket field with the departure of Cecilia and Joe. Setbacks teach character, was all Henry could say to himself as he swung the car onto the main road.
 
The Ford purred through his hometown of Kotahena. He passed the Dipaduttarama Purana Rahjamaha Viharaya, Colombo’s oldest Buddhist temple, a combination of traditional and colonial architecture. Being the majority, the Sinhala Buddhists would play an increasing role in this country in the future as the Ceylonese agitated more and more for independence, and Henry wondered where that would leave him. Although he was bilingual in English and Sinhala, more by accident than design, his children were not even taught the country’s other languages, for they went to a private colonial school and were expected to read, write, and speak only in English. The Mariamman Kovile, with its intricate design of the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses trailing down the tower-shaped building, reminded him of the third major language in this nation that he had never learned—Tamil. That was the tragedy of colonial rule, he concluded: the philosophy of “divide and conquer” had led to a Babel of tongues, no one understanding the other.
 
As he entered the Fort, the commercial centre, the road opened up. This was his playground; where he wheeled, dealed, wined, dined, and sold his insurance policies. Selling was a way to transform his anger into revenge, to extract profit from humans by selling them something they would never gain from in their lives. Only their progeny would, progeny like him, who were owed.
 
 
Henry sped towards the Galle Face Hotel with the ocean on his right. This was the best part of the ride, and he did not want it to end. In school, the Christian Fathers predicted he wouldn’t make it; the man with no pedigree, the bastard. But he had shown them. His rise began after he hit twin centuries at the Big Cricket Match and went down in the history books. Leaving school on that high landed him a clerk’s job at the Imperial Insurance Company, thanks to an “old boy” of the alma mater, Mr. Pietersz, an avid follower of the college’s cricket games, who having seen Henry’s performance at bat, extended a helping hand. Mr. Pietersz, the managing director of the firm, had nurtured Henry’s potential and soon promoted him to insurance agent. Henry’s credentials thus established, it was only a matter of time before he met and married Cynthia, the daughter of one of his clients. Riding on these wins, he took on the difficult assignments, the ones that would lead up the career ladder: two years in India, two more in Singapore and finally two years in Kenya, wherever the opportunities rose, following the trail of the endless Empire on which the sun never set, despite war clouds gathering once more in Europe. During spells at home, he successfully impregnated Cynthia, so there was always a new child to get acquainted with whenever he returned on furlough following a choppy sea voyage.
 
Yes, he was successful, indeed – that’s what he needed to focus on. Number one in sales for the last three years, and now promoted to sales manager. His trailer fees were so high that they alone would suffice as his retirement nest egg. Given this locked-in annuity, he had not even bothered to take out a life insurance policy, the same product that he hoisted so successfully upon his clients with guile and finesse.
 
Henry turned inland towards Slave Island, moving back into the city’s outer fringe, an unattractive place housing the working poor who kept the infrastructure of the capital functioning. The clamminess returned to his hands and so did the pain to his side. His car slowed in denser pedestrian traffic; humans walking indiscriminately on the street, not on the sidewalks. Loud voices and the sour smell of toddy wafted from among the dark-skinned manual workers who lived here, already drunk on their only day of rest. Henry rolled up the windows. He hated this stretch for it brought back bitter memories of childhood.
 
The streets became narrower as he drove away from the railway station. After a couple of blocks, he pulled up opposite a row of raggedy Dutch-style tenement houses. Those colonials—not only the Dutch, but the English and Portuguese as well— had much to answer for, leaving their women back home, taking local women for comfort, disavowing the inevitable offspring from such carnal unions... 
 
He took out the bag of groceries from the back seat. Today he had been careless and bought two sets of groceries when out shopping in the morning: a larger one for the family, and this smaller one which set Cynthia’s imagination racing. Why doesn’t she realize that a man does not shop for his family and his mistress at the same time?
 
A chain rattled inside, the front door creaked open, and Dona Catherina stood before him. She was elegant, as always, in her long sleeved white hatte and indigo sari. Her dark skin and the pottu on her forehead stubbornly proclaimed native roots despite the names the Portuguese had forced upon her family in their mass baptisms. Her black hair, swept up in a konde, had grey streaks at the temples now. Her eyes lit up at the sight of him, but she made no move to advance; instead, she stepped away from the door. “Come in, come in,” she said in Sinhala.
 
He followed her into the small kitchen, sat at the table, and lit his pipe while she put the kettle on. Despite her attractiveness, she exhibited the uncertainty of a person who does not know her place. The rest of the house was in darkness but he knew its confines well: a large bedroom—hers— with only a dresser and a single bed; a smaller one—his old room—with a high window overlooking an alley down which the toddy drinkers puked and the prostitutes conducted their business; a living room with rattan chairs and an overpowering altar to the Virgin Mary with its perennially lit oil lamp, the short-wave radio. He had offered to get her better accommodations, buy her better things, but she refused to “put him out.”
 
She placed a cup of steaming tea on a saucer in front of him and started putting away the groceries. They were well used to this routine and words were unnecessary. But today he was anxious to get down to business.
 
“You have something for me.”
 
She paused. “I have thought deeply about this. I know that your heart will never be at peace until you know the truth.”
 
She went into her bedroom and came out with a frayed piece of paper. “This is your baptism certificate.”
 
He opened it with a trembling hand. It was from an unknown church down the south coast, dated 31st May 1901. The ink had bled on the neat cursive writing of the priest who performed the ceremony 37 years ago. There was mention of the mother he knew, Dona Catharina, and this time, also a father--
 
He sucked in his breath and thought his heart would burst as the pain seared through him.
 
“Son...” Dona Catharina was holding his sweaty palm, a worried look on her face. He wanted more from her at this time, her embrace and solace, but knew that she would not get any closer, she could not. She had not been able to hug him even when he was growing up, and he wondered if she considered him also of a higher station than her, like his...his father, who now stood revealed.
 
Instead, she said, “Please let it go. This...this anger is killing you.”
 
“This is different from my official birth certificate from the registrar’s office in Colombo,” he managed to say. That certificate had stated, “Father: Unknown,” and the son was given only two first names: Henry Morgan—a buccaneer’s name. And yet, this paper in front of him made so much sense, and diminished him all the more.
 
“Your father did not want to be mentioned for obvious reasons. But he consented to have you baptized a Catholic. The priest insisted on both parents’ names.”
 
“And you kept this from me all these years?”
 
She sighed and a tear streaked down one cheek. “What could I do? I am damned either way.”
 
“I am going to see him right away.”
 
“No, you mustn’t, putha. Let bygones be bygones. He was young, and I had no choice being a lowly maid. He paid me an allowance– you must not forget that.”
 
“Which he promptly cut off the moment I was employed.”
 
She returned to the stove, using the drape of her sari to wipe her tears. She poured a mug of plain tea for herself. This is how he always remembered her while growing up: in the kitchen, in her place, with that vacant look—a lack of confidence that he himself had tried hard to overcome, and succeeded. As he grew older, he preferred to stay in the boarding school and came home only during term holidays, and then too, to hide in his box-like room, shut off the obscene sounds in the alleyway, read his books, and dream of escape.
 
“I thought that by telling you, you would let go of this anger you have stored up since you were a child.”
 
“A child who was bullied because he did not have a father, because he was fairer skinned than his mother. Because the two of us standing together told a story that needed no imagination to piece together.”
 
“The nuns who birthed you told me that I needed to forgive him. I did that, and ever since, my life has been at peace. Yours hasn’t.”
 
“If I carry his genes, then the lust for conquest and revenge runs strong in me.”
 
“You do not take revenge on your father, no matter what he has done.”
 
He ignored her last remark, took a drag from his pipe and looked at the baptismal certificate again. “Why are you telling me this now?”
 
“When I heard he suffered a heart attack, I thought you needed to make your peace with him before it was too late. Heart disease runs in his family, his father and his brothers, all went the same way.”
 
Henry rose. He tucked the certificate into his jacket.
 
“When do I get to meet your family?” she asked softly. This was the dreaded question, often asked, but which today sounded like an accusation.
 
“Soon. Maybe after the baby is born.”
 
“That’s what you told me when the last baby was born...and the one before that. Of late, I have thought of simply turning up on your doorstep and introducing myself.”
 
“Don’t!” The blood rushed to his face.
 
She nodded sadly. “I know. It will shame you.”
 
How could he tell her that the facade he had built for himself in society would be destroyed if it were known that he was the son of a servant woman?  Even Cynthia and her family believed that he was an orphan raised by the Jesuits, that his Burgher parents met with a fatal car accident while travelling in India when he was an infant. But Burghers are nosy and had a bad habit of opening a conversation with, “Ah, you are Berty’s son? Who is your grandfather?” – a throwback to the time when they were looking for purebreds from the home country to marry off their daughters languishing in the colonies.
 
“I must go now.” He straightened his jacket and smoothed his hair.
 
She came up to him and looked into his face. “Promise me you will forgive? Promise?”
 
Then he did something he had never done before. He reached out and drew her to him, cradling her fragile form in an embrace. She trembled in his closeness, yet yielded. He smelled the coconut oil in her hair and closed his eyes, letting her smell take him back to childhood days when his universe had been his mother, the only family he had known.
 
Then he broke away. “I will come and see you again next Sunday.”
 
Before she could respond, he turned on his heel and quickly made his exit, leaving her staring desolately after him.
 
 
He stopped once on the way to his next appointment, to write a note that made his hand shake and the ink blot from tears spilling on the paper. When he pulled into the driveway off Ward Place, the sun was setting, glimmering through patches in the canopy formed by giant banyan trees lining this stately boulevard. This was the place he had often dreamed of arriving at when he became a senior executive in the company, and that day was not long off.
 
The two-storey colonial building, sprawling across a one-acre property in the heart of the city, had been freshly white-washed. Red roses ringed its manicured lawn.
 
Bandara, the ancient major domo, in a starched white tunic and sarong, and the traditional comb stuck in his receding hair, came rushing down the steps of the portico as Henry alighted.
 
“Ah, Morgan mahattaya, a surprise visit? Loku Mahattaya is getting ready to go to the club.”
 
“I need to see him urgently.”
 
The tremor in Henry’s voice sent the old retainer scampering off to find his master.
 
Henry followed, through the verandah, into the larger living-dining room. He took in the numerous family pictures adorning the walls, ones he had paid scant attention to on past visits but which today held a higher significance for him: the dead wife from a prominent Burgher family, with a Calvinist dourness as her most prominent feature; the older son who was an indulgent drunk and lived off his father’s largesse; the younger daughter who converted to Catholicism, become a nun, and went off to Malaya, perhaps in atonement for the family’s transgressions. While in the past when Henry felt sympathy for the patriarch of this dysfunctional family unable to procreate another generation, today he felt a deep-seated anger.
 
“I’m better than all you buggers,” he hissed at the photographs.
 
 Loku Mahattaya emerged from a side room, trailed by the fawning Bandara. The recent heart attack may have cost the Master of the House some weight but not his military poise. He was dressed in a white shirt and pants, a navy jacket, and striped tie bearing the blue and gold colours of their old school. His greying handlebar moustaches gleamed under the bright lights of the chandelier.
 
“Henry,” Cecil Pietersz said, with a mixture of surprise and delight, extending a hand. A firm handshake was the extent of Cecil’s affection. “Are you going to the club? There will be much to talk about after the tournament today.”
 
“No. I came here to talk to you about Dona Catharina.”
 
Cecil stopped in his tracks as if hit by a golf ball from that very tournament. He took a deep breath and walked stiffly over to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a drink. “Bring us some ice,” he said to Bandara, dismissing him.
 
Henry saw the older man’s hand shake as he spilled liquor onto the gleaming surface of the bar counter.
 
“Drink?”
 
“No, thank you.” Henry tossed the baptismal certificate onto the bar.
 
Cecil glanced at it, and drained his glass in a single gulp. He poured himself another drink. “My one weakness, consenting to your baptism, and she has exploited it, I see.”
 
Bandara returned with a bucket of ice and then retreated.
 
“I want the truth,” Henry said. “Finally.”
 
Cecil walked over to the large settee, drink in hand, ice forgotten, and sank into the cushions. Suddenly, he looked like a shrunken old man with the staring faces of his dispersed family—present, absent, and dead—staring down on him from all angles of the room.
 
“My father was a judge. Your mother was a maid in my parents’ household. She was too pretty to be a maid. We were hearty young bucks in those days. One thing led to another...”
 
“And the judge’s son shot his seed indiscriminately. And then you dumped her and abandoned us.”
 
“That’s not true. There was no possibility of marriage. Class, race, religion, all mismatched. So, we arranged for an allowance until you were past your schooling and could look after her.”
 
“And you got me this job so that she could become my problem.”
 
“That is not true, either. You made it on your own merits. I opened doors, as any father would.”
 
“I don’t feel that I have made it, now that the truth is out. You were watching my progress at all those cricket matches. Watching the little stud pony grow up.”
 
Cecil had a pleading look on his face. “Believe me, you were my thoroughbred. The others,” he waved a hand at the photographs behind him, “didn’t amount to much.”
 
“You must right this injustice.”
 
“How? How much more must I do to fix a few minutes of youthful lust that went out of control?”
 
“You are a widower. Marry my mother and put this business to rest.”
 
“Marry a servant?”
 
Cecil’s incredulity was total. Henry realized in that instant that they were two sides of the same coin. His was as ludicrous a demand as Dona Catharina asking to meet Cynthia and the children.
 
“I am resigning from the company.” Henry took out the note written in the car and handed it to Cecil. The old man fingered the folded paper but did not open it.
 
“My ‘rise’ has been a fraud.”
 
Cecil staggered to his feet. His moustaches quivered in feeble indignation. “Do not be ridiculous, Henry. You have a wife and four...five...children to support. If you ever possessed a weakness, it was pride.” Cecil tore up the letter and let the scraps fall on the floor.
 
The two men faced each other, defiant, unrelenting, proud.
 
He is in the same prison as I am. Henry turned to leave.
 
Cecil’s words stopped him at the door. “Tomorrow you may think differently. Remember, those who burn too bright, burn out early. I was like you once. I fired then aimed—your mother was one of those who unfortunately came within my sights. But that incident taught me to channel my passion into longer range plans. I worry about your single-mindedness. It may get you many sales but it will wear you out faster than you know.”
 
 
When Henry returned home the shadows were deepening. He had skipped the club, but he should have gone to see his doctor. However, private doctors did not work on weekends and public hospitals were only for poor people, like his mother. The visit with Cecil Pietersz had done him in. Lights were on in the dining room and kitchen. This house, his house, was modest in comparison to the one in Ward Place, and yet so much better than the one in Slave Island—he had not quite made it yet, he was only half-way there. Will I make it the whole way?
 
Henry slipped into the house and went into his bedroom. The smell of curry wafted in from the kitchen, along with the children’s exuberant voices. Cynthia was valiantly trying to maintain order. If he would but enter the kitchen, silence would reign immediately. But he was too tired to make the effort. He undressed, got into a dressing gown, took two aspirins to dull the pain in his chest, and lay down on the bed. He picked up a half-read book and leafed through its pages without registering.  He realized that he had left his baptismal certificate on Cecil Pietersz’s bar counter.
 
Today had indeed been a momentous day, but it hadn’t gone well.
 
“Let go,” his mother had pleaded.
 
“Those who burn too bright, burn out early,” his father had cautioned.
 
He was unable to let go, and bright lights were flashing before his eyes.
 
A shuffle of feet sounded outside the door. It was little Joe.
 
“Hello, young man,” Even talking was difficult and Henry’s voice was slurring.
 
Joe looked hesitant. He managed to blurt out. “Mummy says dinner is ready.”
 
Henry smiled and waved the child in. Suddenly he realized something he was capable of, something he only managed to accomplish today, something neither of his parents could do. He wished he could embrace Cynthia with the same tenderness he had shown his mother earlier, embrace all the children too, but now it was too late. “Come in here,” he called out to Joe.
 
Joe advanced tentatively. Henry took the boy’s chubby hand and drew his son towards him. The little chap’s heart beat steadily against his own exploding one. Perhaps in Joe’s time, or in Joe’s children’s time, the distinctions of class, race, and religion might not matter anymore. Maybe this impending second war they were talking about in Europe would obliterate the unnecessary straightjackets that tied everyone of his generation and left them in lonely rooms like his old one in Slave Island. Even children born out of wedlock might be passé in the future.
 
“Remember Joe, you must never be scared or ashamed of your Daddy...or angry with him,” he whispered as the boy relaxed and snuggled against him.
 
Henry died with the little boy in his arms.

​* * *
​15th December 1939
 
Dear Mr. Pietersz,
 
Thank you very much for the Christmas gift of the proceeds of the life policy you had taken out on Henry, unbeknownst to him, or us. He would never have thought about it – he was going to live forever, or, at least, until he “made it,” whatever that meant. And yet, a fatal heart attack at the age of 37 was a cruel blow to him, to all of us. The money will pay for the children’s schooling and help me into my old age. This bounty could not have come at a better time, with the war on in Europe, I wonder if times will get tighter, not better.
 
Yasmin is a handful, 18 months and a very angry child, unlike her siblings. She reminds me so much of Henry, in looks and temperament. I suppose a child without a parent is to be pitied. I never really knew my husband; he was a stranger to us all. I wish I had talked more with his nanny, Dona Catharina, who came to Henry’s funeral. But she spent her brief time with us hugging each of the children and crying, rather than talking to me. And then she quietly slipped away and I have not seen or heard from her since.
 
Yes, you can always visit us. The children look forward to your visits. Joe calls you his “rich grandpa.” I hope you don’t mind, even though you have no grandchildren of your own. I hope little Yasmin will also be able to relate to you as time goes by.
 
Well, I must get this off to the post box, a mother of five has a busy schedule and my work never seems to end. Thank you once again for your foresight, your considerate planning, and for being there for us during this difficult time.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Cynthia Morgan
 
Author’s note:
 
A Burgher named Henry, my grandfather, aged 37, was found dead by his pregnant wife, in bed, with a book in his hand—the cause of death was put down to heart failure. He was an enigmatic figure who had no blood relatives prior to marriage. No trace of him or his antecedents were found. I have presented a recreation of the last day of his life as told to me by my grandmother who was a great raconteur of tall tales and real ones.
 
Shane Joseph