The Bicycle Man ” a short story from “Rainbows in Braille” – A collection of short stories – By Elmo Jayawardena
Piyasiri was dressed, in his available best, which is something you seldom see. His greased black, dirt-brown shorts, eternal costume at his hole in the wall bicycle repair shop had been exchanged for a sakaramutai pink Palayacart sarong and his usually bared body was sporting a clean, cream, short-sleeved shirt which stretched a tad tight. The little shop cum home was closed. No repairing bicycles or inflating tyres. Not on this day.
“Manike is coming today from the Middle East, I am going to the airport to bring her home, two years is a long time,” he forced declarations proudly to anybody who cared to even glance at him standing by the road, a beaming smile and intrepid anxiety written all over his face.
“I am waiting for Jeremius to come in his car.”
He was referring to the town driver who had an old Hilman Minx for hire.
The airport was two hours away, the last time Piyasiri had gone there was to see Manike off, to her housemaid job in Oman. He still remembered the parting. Tears for the separation and a fear for the unknown made it all such a mournful moment; it had broken his heart to see his Manike go.
“Manike please take care,” that’s all he could say.
“Don’t worry, Piya,” Manike had assured, “I will work hard and come back soon,” she promised. “We will have a better life.” That was how she parted with a lot of sadness and a lot of tears.
This time it was so very different. He couldn’t sit still and control the excitement. Piyasiri had been counting the months, the weeks, then the days and the hours and now had started on the minutes, just to have his beloved Manike back. He wished the airport was closer, maybe Jeremius could make the car go faster.
That night the shack with rims and bicycle skeletons took a new light. Casseted music flowed from the Sanyo two-in-one that Manike brought. A few acquaintances had dropped in, Kit-katting and Nescafeing while extending a warm welcome to Manike. Piyasiri was proudly showing off his personal gift, an electrical inflator.
“No more hand pushing to blow tubes,” he explained to his friends.
“Fix valve, switch on, and the motor rotates to inflate any tyre, all electric,” he beamed.
It appeared that life was taking a different turn and beginning to blossom for the bicycle repair man.
As the days rolled, the couple got down to their day to day life. The shop had its share of customers; a cyclist temporarily immobilised by punctured wheels, a boy coming by to get his brakes adjusted, another to tighten a chain or align a front fork, and the smiling Bicycleman obliged willingly. Ex-housemaid Manike could be seen cleaning and helping and supplying Piyasiri with endless golden brown glasses of plain tea that he enjoyed so much. When the noon day heat was at its highest, you could see Manike coming out with a little towel and very lovingly wiping the sweat off her husband’s brow when his hands were full of grease holding tools and bicycles, all to the cassette music of the Sanyo that was constantly on.
There was a little money, hard-earned and miserly saved from the Middle East that went sparingly to adorn the hole-in-the wall home. A few flowerpots appeared; a velvety wall hanging of a lion-head covered the empty back wall concealing its many nail mark sins. Even a name board came up, in bright yellow and gaudy green.
“Piyasiri Cycle Works”
Yes, the days meandered sweetly for the couple. Mending bicycles lost its tedium with Manike around.
The hospital visit was mandatory to all who had been abroad. The nurses nudged and poked various places and drew blood samples through a needle inserted to the forearm. They were asked to come later for the results.
A week went by and behind the closed door of the resident doctors consulting room Piyasiri’s and Manike’s world collapsed.
Ours was a small town; everybody knew everyone and everything that happened to anyone. Manike had tested positive for something dreadful, no one knew much about it. Alwis, the attendant at the hospital said you died from it; it was contagious to all who came in to contact.
The word spread, people got worried, nobody knew much about these things. The best was to be cautious; one could always do without a Bicycleman and his wife.
At first a bewildered Piyasiri tried to explain.
“The Doctor Sir himself told me, he said it was only dangerous to the husband, and to no one else.”
He tried hard to convince his customers and friends.
Nobody listened. The Kit-Kat eater and the Nescafe drinker joined the town in their single voiced condemnation. There were no more visitors to the bicycle shop, no one wanted to adjust brakes or inflate tyres. The doors of “Piyasiri Cycle Works” hardly opened. The Sanyo too had gone silent.
One night they stole out, making their way in abject sadness to the railway station. A bundle of clothes, a box of tools and some odd bits that were dear were parceled in brown paper bags; among them a Sanyo two-in-one cassette, loosely wrapped in a velvety wall hanging with the head of a lion. Yes, there was more, a collection of memories, a few hard to forget days of shared happiness, mullioned from remnants of a lifetime of shattered hopes and vanishing rainbows. They were all stored in two minds that were plunged into a web of total confusion. Life certainly had taken its toll.
Nobody heard again about Piyasiri and Manike, nobody cared, they were best left forgotten. Someone said there were two bodies that had washed ashore on the banks of the Mahaveli River. Could not t be identified, as they had been in the water for a while, the river and the fish had erased all traces of recognition.
The hole in the wall home had a new tenant who sold plastic flower wreaths and had plans to expand the business into renting chairs and selling coffins. There were still traces of the bicycle shop, rusted rims and broken frames rotting in the backyard, along with old punctured tubes and worn out and holed Dunlop tyres.
Totally discarded.
* * * * * *
Ervin ‘Magic’ Johnson was invited to the White House in celebrity status. He ate cookies and drank coffee with President George Bush Snr. They discussed an important issue, nothing to do with the NBA and basketball. It was about a sickness that plagued people all over the world. Magic Johnson himself was a survivor of the dreaded disease.
