The Flower Boy Read Online Free PDF

and she’d laugh some more. When he was wet through, he would soap himself while she bathed.
    Her wet diya reddha outlined every contour of her slim, supple body. At the well, she looked her age and not a day older.
    She was twenty-eight.
    She was not beautiful, but her olive skin was smooth and clear, and her eyes were like cinnamon stones, dark brown sometimes, lightening to dark gold at others.
    Under them, her nose was too small and her mouth was too wide. While she wasn’t strictly beautiful, she was at least unstrictly so.
    With water dripping down her body and slivers of sunlight on her face, Chandi thought she looked like a laughing brown goddess.
    After he had lathered himself, she would take her pol mudda and scrub him from head to toe. The rough fiber sometimes made his back sore but mostly it tickled, especially when she got to his feet.
    After they had both finished, she washed the clothes.
    He enjoyed that part too. Watching her lay each piece of laundry down, rub it with soap, gather it into a bunch and scrub it, then dash it against the washing stone. He helped her hang them out on the two long clotheslines near the well. This was their talk time.
    â€œSchool okay?” she asked.
    â€œMmmm,” he mumbled back, reluctant to get into school talk.
    â€œBeen studying hard?”
    â€œMmmm.” He wished she would talk about other things, tell stories about her childhood in her village of Deniyaya, like she did sometimes.
    â€œYou have to study hard if you want to be somebody. Look at your father and me. You don’t want to be like us. You should be a doctor or something,” she said.
    He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to be besides a rich England returnee, but he definitely knew he didn’t want to be a doctor.
    The only doctor he knew was Dr. Wijesundera at the free Nuwara Eliya clinic, and everyone said he was a quack. His own mother said if a person was not already dead, a visit to Dr. Wijesundera would kill him. He smiled a lot, displaying dirty yellow teeth. He had long, dirty fingernails too, and from the way he dressed, he didn’t make much money either.
    No. Medicine was not an option for Chandi.
    However, he had had this conversation with his mother enough times to know the dangerous direction it went in—bad report cards, too much playing and not enough studying, complaints from teachers, etc.
    It was time to change the subject.
    â€œAmmi, look! There’s Krishna peeping from behind the kumbuk tree!” he exclaimed.
    She swung round angrily. “Krishna! You worthless lecher! I told you the next time I caught you peeping, I’d tell Appuhamy! Get back to your work, you shameless animal! Just wait and see what I’ll do to you!”
    Krishna slunk off sulkily. There was always tomorrow.
    Premawathi would carry on hanging out the clothes, muttering to herself. Chandi would feel sad that the precious time of closeness was gone, but it was better than the school talk.
    Once the last bit of laundry was swinging lazily in the afternoon breeze, she returned to her brisk, busy self.
    â€œHurry up, hurry up. We can’t stay out here all day. I’ve got my work and you’ve got your homework,” she’d say.
    And so Chandi, like Krishna, would wait patiently for tomorrow.
    THE SKY WAS still a dull gray, so he had no idea what time it was. He wondered if Ammi would bathe him today, although he doubted it. Besides, he had already had a bath. Sort of.
    Through the veil of rain he could see the mountains rising like vague specters, their tops thickly swathed in mist. Down the path, he could see the smaller mountain of muddy earth that had slipped down the hillside. He could just make out the tiny figures of the people clearing it.
    Most of them wore colorful sweaters to ward off the chill; they looked like a colony of exotic ants crawling around a giant anthill.
    His mother rushed into the kitchen, startling him. She dumped her