The Devil’s Due a short story from “Rainbows in Braille” – A collection of short stories – By Elmo Jayawardena
The village of Nelumpitiya was about ten miles down stream from the better-known town of Ruwanwella. They were both located on the same side of the Kelani River that crawled and meandered to the sea, barely fringing the two settlements. Ruwanwella was a more recognised town: well populated and had the civic administration of an Urban Council and a few other government offices such as a post office, a police station and a small tiled room to house the Assistant Government Agent. Nelumpitiya was different, just another dot on the map of Sri Lanka, a name of no worthy repute, a cluster of houses scattered on either side of the main road that passed through Nelumpitiya to bigger and better known places in the hills. The residents of Nelumpitiya too were like the place itself; run of the mill types, farmers and fishermen and the usual rabble of poverty whose mundane lives were as turgid and colourless as the waters of their Kelani River.
A few tradesmen also did count as residents of Nelumpitiya. They were mainly outsiders who had come and settled in the little village to run the gunnysack walled makeshift stores that were scattered around the open space where the buses stopped. The “gunnysack-supermarket” catered to the day to day needs of the village dwellers. Nelumpitiya was small and sleepy, poor and insignificant, mostly unknown for anything that was worthwhile remembering.
All that was true, except for Rorbi, Nelumpitiye Rorbi Gurunanse, that’s how he was known. Rorbi Gurunanse was infamously famous, notoriously reputed, feared and cursed; yet sought out often by many who believed in the powerful satanic black magic that he revelled in and so devilishly delivered.
Rorbi Gurunanse was a Kattadiya, a necromancer who dealt with the spirits. A Kattadiya belonged to a diminishing clan, especially in the townships. These were the sixties, the world was shrouded with science and men were getting ready to kick dust in the moon. Yet in villages such as Nelumpitiya, a Kattadiya was still almost like a demi-god, someone whom the village communities held in awe and apprehension. A local Kattadiya was not a medicine man, nor a soothsayer. He was somewhat different. He strutted in the world of devils. A Kattadiya was a feared individual who had the power to deal with the spirits; to make them dance to his will; someone who could cast spells on anyone and ruin them through diabolic powers. That was their prime occupation. They were also sought to cleanse evil tidings and cure sicknesses suffered by villagers who believed they were directly or indirectly connected to devils and their fiendish work among human beings. As such, a Kattadiya was a very important man in the everyday rural life where spirits and gods played such decisive roles in the lives of the innocent and gullible.
Fat and ugly, that was Rorbi; mid forties, unkempt oily hair, potbellied and a face as wicked as that of a bad mood witch. Dark skinned and sweaty, he most times donned a semi-dirty white cotton shirt that was crumpled in every possible place. Undoubtedly Rorbi was an unpleasant sight for any eye; he had very successfully projected his devilish image among his fellowmen, appearing fearful and menacing so that the poor denizens of the village communities around Nelumpitiya saw in him the very devil incarnate. Everyone walked soft around Rorbi, grinned at him like fools and spoke in whispers in his presence, lest the Kattadiya would take notion of offence and cast a demonic spell devil on the innocent villager.
Such was the power Rorbi Gurunanse enjoyed among his lesser beings; the devil man, the one who had the power to make the devils dance to whatever his whims and fancies would be.
Somi, his wife, was twenty years his junior. She was the daughter of a poor sharecropper farmer from the vicinity of Nelumpitiya. Rorbi had once seen the young girl at the village vegetable stall.
“Tell that man who fathered that woman I want her,” such was Rorbi’s instruction to his disciple. “Tell him I want her to be my woman.”
That was that. No one would dare refuse the devil-man.
Somi was given in marriage to Rorbi Gurunanse.
The marriage was dead from the day it was born, frigid and loveless as it possibly could be; a ‘no communication’ existence of a man and his slave. Everything that took place under the roof was totally one sided, including the occasional sex Rorbi indulged in to ease his lustful needs. The union was for the total convenience of the Kattadiya. Somi was nothing but a servant in the devil-man’s household running frightfully and timidly to answer Rorbi’s every beck and call.
Rorbi Gurunanse was a specialist. He was an expert thoile man. A thoile was a chanting ceremony performed by a Kattadiya who used manthara to talk to devils; an all night satanic ritual, eerie by any morbid standard. It was performed by a Kattadiya under torchlight, to the beat of muffled drums, in a room decorated with talcum yellow tender coconut leaves. If a person had some misfortune, the locals believed it was the devil’s work and the devil had to be exorcised by doing a thoile. On the same token, if a villager, for some perverted reason needed to harm another, he would call on a Kattadiya to perform a thoile and cast a spell on the enemy and bring ruin to the unsuspecting unfortunate.
Thoile in short was a macabre ceremony where a devil was called upon by a Kattadiya to do some fiendish work for humans.
Rorbi Gurunanse was known to be the best. A thoile performed by Rorbi was guaranteed to be a success. People paid dearly to acquire the services of Rorbi. He wasn’t cheap; that meant the poor ‘would-be’ devil customer sold anything that was sellable or pawned everything that was pawnable to raise money. Such needs at times did drain the poor villagers and often they lost their very homes and the very land they cultivated, just to pay the devil’s dues.
Whenever Rorbi Gurunanse accepted a contract to perform a thoile he had his set pattern. He came with his apprentice Kattadiyo and drank arrack and ate spicy curry and rice and chanted through the whole night. The hideous highlight was at midnight. After much muttering of chants and manthara, Rorbi would break the neck of a chicken, smearing its blood on his face and hands, and order demons to bend to his will and carry out whatever he commanded.
The devils always obeyed.
With all his expertise on satanic ways, Rorbi was a very successful devil-man who made the spirits humble. There was no better Kattadiya around than Nelumpitiye Rorbi Gurunanse when dealing with anything connected to the ghostly world of spirits and demi-gods and spell-casting slave demons.
Many were the nights Rorbi went away to distant villages to do his devil work which left Somi alone and frightened at home.
“Please Rorbi,” Somi appealed many a time.
“I feel so alone here; can’t we get a Boyi-kolla?” She pleaded with Rorbi to find her a domestic servant to help around the house and to be Somi’s companion to simmer her fears on eerie nights when Rorbi was out chasing devils. The pleadings turned to constant begging when she became pregnant.
One day Rorbi returned from a faraway trip with a youngish boy of about ten years.
“Woman, you are always grumbling. Here I have found a boy who will stay with us to do all the work,” the Kattadiya boasted about the new addition he had brought to the house.
“I must warn you, don’t treat him kindly. Don’t be stupid and try to be nice to him,” Rorbi ordered, menacingly looking at the child slave.
“Whatever you do, don’t ever touch his head,” Rorbi insisted and repeated his warning many times.
Days went by and the boyi-kolla settled in the Kattadiya’s home. Somi got heavy with child and was relieved there was someone living under the same roof to assist in her work and ease the loneliness when Rorbi was away. She did notice at times certain peculiarities about the boy; his constant vague look and how he had very little to say in conversation. There was a strangeness too; the dog and the cat in Rorbi’s house both hated the sight of him and scampered away whenever he came near them. All this was nothing serious, just passing observations that Somi soon forgot without further thought.
One fateful day in November, the month of the dead, Rorbi Gurunanse had gone to a nearby village for an all night thoile. It was evening time. Somi was lighting the lamps and the boy came in from the backyard scrub bushes carrying a bundle of firewood on his head.
“Somi Akke, help me, something in these dry sticks is hurting my head,” lamented the boy.
“Come let me see,” Somi moved and helped the boy to unload the firewood. “Bend your head. Let me see what has happened.”
The boy came close, and Somi felt his scalp and her fingers ran into something metallic that was embedded in the boy’s head.
“It is a small nail, let me take it out,” Somi pacified the boy and dug her fingers deep for a grip and slowly pulled out a rusted round-capped tin-tack nail.
In a nearby village, Rorbi Gurunanse was busy taming demons. Sweat pouring, skin glistening in the dim light; Rorbi chanted his manthara with a contorted face, his mouth moving like a machine to spit words of venom at the devils. The assistant Kattadiyo did the supporting work, like beating the muffled drum and shouting choruses, all part of learning the trade from the master devil-man himself. The occupants of the house and those who had come to see the thoile kept vigil, seated on benches, watching every fiendish ritual that was taking place. The wind blew in spasms, moving the candle flames that cast slow swaying shadows on the pale surrounding walls. The silhouettes themselves looked almost devilish in appearance, adding a further uneasiness to the already demonic atmosphere that was present in the thoile room.
A reddish brown chicken with its legs tied by a coir rope lay on the floor, waiting to lose its head and contribute in blood to satisfy the evil spirits.
The instant Somi pulled the nail, the boy let out a murderous yell, frightening and ear splitting. His eyes grew red and enormous. His voice became hoarse and guttural and his mouth filled with clotted blood that came dripping down from open lips.
The devil-boy shivered and grabbed Somi.
The spell of the nail had been removed. The devil was set free.
With claws like iron the devil-boy ripped Somi’s stomach and wrenched the infant, pulling skin and intestines that spilled out from the torn open belly of the mother. He flung the baby away and as Somi fainted, the spirit transferred in to her and the boyi-kolla fell lifeless by the broken-torn unborn child.
The thoile was going on. Rorbi, after many gulps of arrack, was slurring his chants. The string-tied reddish brown chicken awaited its fate.
The bench-seated onlookers saw and froze.
Somi was standing by the entrance. Stomach ripped open, bloodied and torn. Her eyes were as big as saucers, menacingly staring at Rorbi. Her mouth opened and saliva dripped. The devil’s voice resonated through Somi, hoarse and guttural.
“I have come for you.”
Rorbi Gurunanse froze; mid sentence in his chant. A spine chilling fear engulfed the Kattadiya’s mind and made him shiver. He stared in disbelief at the blood-soaked woman standing menacingly in front of him. The fear paralysed the room. Rorbi collected himself and raising the candle he had in his hand, whispered some manthara and threw it at the slow advancing Somi.
“Get away you bastard devil, get away from me!” screamed Rorbi.
“Your nail is gone Rorbi, so is your power,” the guttural voice hissed out. “I am coming,” said the devil incarnated Somi as she took deliberate steps towards the Kattadiya.
“Take somebody else,” Rorbi Gurunanse pleaded.
“Take the chicken, take anybody! Leave me alone.”
‘Ahrrahhrra,’ ‘Hooooooo,’ ‘Ahrrahhrra.’
The blood-curdling shriek shattered the night as Somi reached for Rorbi and gorged his eyes out and snapped his head from the neck. The body crashed to the ground with spasms of dying heartbeats and sprouting blood like a maroon-red water tap. Somi threw the Kattadiya’s head out of the window and stared menacingly at the chicken.
The woman fell dead beside the body of her already dead husband.
Rorbi’s assistants, the apprentice Kattadiyo and the onlookers who were at the thoile were rooted like cast statues. Everything else froze too, including the swaying flames of the pandam. The shadows on the walls remained pasted; motionless morbid black figures like the devils themselves. The headless body of Rorbi and the ripped stomach of Somi gaped at them in a grotesque masquerade.
The world stood still, both spirit and man.
The men at the thoile slowly uncoiled and crawled back to life. They shuffled out of the room soft-stepping like zombies and mumbled meaningless words from mouths embalmed with fear.
A piece of loose coir rope remained where the sacrificial brown-red chicken had been tethered.
Even today, some old folks in Nelumpitiya remember Rorbi Gurunanse and young Somi. Their horrifying story has been told and retold in typical village style, of course with expanded and exaggerated additions.
The Kattadiya’s house still remains, just as it stood before, though now dilapidated and wasted; the small garden grown wild with weed. The people of Nelumpitiya want no part of it, let alone occupy it. Nobody is bold enough to even lift a nail that is in the premises, lest they disturb some long-subdued devil.
Legend has it that sometimes at midnight, especially when the moon was full in the sky, some people in Nelumpitiya had seen a chicken shrieking and flying across the open fields; a chilling blood-curdling shriek.
At such times, pregnant women were never left alone.
Mini Glossary
Kattadiya – one who dealt with spirits
Thoile – a ceremony to deal with devils
Manthara – a spell – talking to devils
Boyi-Kolla – servant boy
Pandam – flaming torches
