Reef Analysis

Reef (1994) is a novel written by the British novelist with Sri Lankan origin Romesh

Gunesekera. The novel revolves around the life of Triton from boyhood to adulthood. Most

of the story takes place in Sri Lanka except the last part which takes place in London. The

novel is written in the first person, narrated by Triton's adult voice. The novel starts when

Triton takes us back to the year 1962 when he was eleven years old. Triton could not return

home after burning the thatched roof of a hut in his school yard by accident. His father went

mad and Triton ran away to his uncle who promised to arrange a new life for him. His uncle

took him to Mr. Salgado's house to work as a houseboy. The house was on the beach. His

uncle tells Mr. Ranjan Salgado that Triton is a smart boy and can learn very quickly.

Mr. Salgado is a rich young man who works as a marine biologist. He studies the effect of sea

erosion of the coral reefs of the Sri Lankan beaches. Mr. Salgado was thin and had a curved

spine. He spoke slowly, almost hesitantly. ''When Mr. Salgado spoke, I would be captivated. I

could lose myself in his voice.'' (Gunesekera: 7). Joseph was the head servant in Mr.

Salgado's house. He maltreated Triton from day one and the latter resented him. At first

Triton's job was to take the young master his morning tea and then sweep the front veranda
and steps. Until he proved himself, he was not allowed to make tea, or dust or sweep inside

the rooms. The broom he was given was very tall and he was afraid to break anything. One

day Triton had an idea: he cut the handle short so he can manage it. Cutting the broom was

the start of the trouble with Joseph:

I was meant to help Joseph, but he resented me from the beginning. Perhaps because, despite

my circumstances, I was not of his kind. Joseph had come to work for Mr. Salgado two years

earlier. He was from Kosgahapola, a small brackish village on the other side of Ambalangoda

beyond the mask makers. He had wriggled his way into a job in a government Rest

House until a buy election resulted in his being kicked out. The opposition had won and the

local party workers were being paid off. (Gunesekera: 9)

When Mr. Salgado stood for Triton, he felt that he is in the right place. Joseph laid out the

rules for him; he told him where and when to sleep and when to get up. Triton was filled with

hate and resentment towards Joseph to the extent that he thought many times of taking

revenge from him. Joseph was arrogant and sadistic. ''It made my blood boil just to think of

him contaminating the world with his foul breath, controlling my destiny.'' (Gunesekera: 14)
Triton used to watch Lucy Amma, Mr. Salgado's cook, doing her work. He learned about

cutting onions from watching her. He was interested in onions as a refuge and an escape from

Joseph. Joseph hated onions and could not stand their smell. When Triton and Lucy Amma

were cutting onions, Joseph would go far away from the kitchen. Lucy Amma is an old

woman is her seventies. She has been cooking since the turn of the twentieth century. Sri

Lanka has faced many changes during her life. She had known Mr. Salgado as a child while

she was bringing up her own. She served his grandfather as well as his father after him and

now Mr. Salgado. Lucy Amma's way of cooking has not changed. She believes that cooking

is like sex has not changed throughout history.

For Triton, Mr. Salgado's house was the center of universe and everything takes place in its

enclosure. In September 1963, Mr. Salgado had planned to go away for a few days to his

cousin's tea estate, Joseph was in charge of the house during his absence. Triton admits that

although he stayed in the house for more than a year, he has never felt happy because of the

presence of Joseph. He believed that if he stayed with Joseph for a long time, he will

eventually become corrupted.

Mr. Salgado has been to the best of Colombo's schools. Despite that fact he regarded himself

as largely self educated. He came from a line of people who believed in making their own

future. To him, there were no boundaries to knowledge. He studied insects and sea creatures

and wrote articles about them.

After Mr. Salgado left the house, Lucy Amma also went away, on her annual visit home.

Joseph was responsible to give Triton food and he hated the idea of being dependent on him

''I felt trapped. Blood pounded in my head at the thought that there was nobody else in the

house - in the world - except Joseph and me.'' (Gunesekera: 25)

Triton declares that what he hated most about Joseph was the power he had over him. The

power to make him feel powerless. He was not a big man but he had a long rectangular face

and big head and hands. Triton rubbed his body with onion to protect himself from him. On a

rainy day, Joseph left the house without saying where he is going. Without Joseph, Triton felt

safe and comfortable. Joseph came back at night drunk and tried to rape Triton.

He came towards me locking me with his gaze. I couldn't move. I swallowed and swallowed

but my mouth was dry. I couldn't get anything to move from inside. Joseph had his mouth
open and his tongue thickened between his teeth. I could see the spittle on his lips bubbling.

He lunged forward and grabbed me. I lashed out with my hand. If I could hit his jaw his

tongue would fall out, but his arms were like steel belts around me. He pushed me on the big

soft bed. He was on top of me, twice my size, squeezing the life out of me and the breath out

of my chest. His fist digging between my legs and punching a hole in me. The more I

struggled, the stronger he became. I bit his arm and he nearly broke my back. In the end I

gave up and died. Let the life out of my body, and he froze. Then with one hand he undid his

sarong and pulled at his dribbling warped prick. He looked down at it, and slipped out from

under him down to the floor. He rolled over still holding himself. He was breathing hard, his

body was pumping. I found a shoe under the bed and flung it at him. I wanted to scream but I

couldn't. I had no voice. I jumped up and ran out of the house. (Gunesekera: 36)

Mr. Salgado came back the next morning and was angry for not finding Joseph. He asked

Triton about Joseph's whereabouts but he says that he does not know. Triton does not tell Mr.

Salgado about the attack but he preferred to be silent. He thought that if he does not speak

about it, it will go away, but it did not. Joseph came back home drunk and Mr. Salgado was

in the front bay watching him walk up. Mr. Salgado ordered him to collect his things and

leave the house. He fired him and paid him one month's severance. Surprisingly, Triton felt
sorry for him: I felt sorry for Joseph even though I hated him; the moment he began to fall, my

feelings began to change [...] Joseph seemed to change in front of my eyes from a spumy barrel

full of stunted frogs into a pitiful little man obsessed by the small world that he had lorded and

was now too stinking drunk to understand what is happening to it. (Gunesekera: 41).

Mr. Salgado put Triton in charge of the house and the latter felt overwhelmed by the

responsibility. Mr. Salgado suggested that Triton should go to school as he is a smart boy but

Triton refuses and declares that all what he needs to learn is to watch Mr. Salgado ''I watched

him unendingly, all the time, and I learned become what I am.'' (Gunesekera: 43)

Mr. Salgado's closest friend was Mr. Dias Liyanage. He had known him from his schooldays.

Dias had become a government officer, following his father's footsteps. His father had been

involved in the program for the Queen when she first came from England and Dias often

claimed that he spoke to her and traveled with her all the way to Polonnaruwa in his shorts.

Triton became an expert in the kitchen and he knew how to prepare various delicious local

dishes. Mr. Salgado went on with his studies about the coral reefs. His main concern was how

fast the coral reefs are disappearing due to external factors like bombing, mining and netting

as he explains to Dias:

You see, this polyp is really very delicate. It had survived eons, but even a small change in

the immediate environment - even so if you pee on the reef - could kill it. Then the whole
thing will go. And if the structure is destroyed, the see will rush in. The sand will go. The

beach will disappear. That is my hypothesis. (Gunesekera: 48)

When Mr. Salgado was gone to the observatory, Triton would spend a long time in his study

reading his books and magazines. But Triton also yearned to see the real world. He wanted to

see life outside the house. He had the chance to see the outside world when Mr. Salgado was

taking Dias to the observatory. He ordered Triton to prepare himself as he was going with

them. Triton was excited, he prepared himself and took all the equipment he needed for

cooking. On their way to the observatory in the land rover, they saw people praying inside a

temple square and drivers and travelers stuffed money into a blessing box in the wall. Triton

jumps out of the car and drops ten cents in the box for all their sake. Triton declares that he is

not a believer and says that he is a rationalist like Mr. Salgado: Mr. Salgado's observatory was a

bungalow on the beach. There he saw Mr. Salgado's assistant, Wejitunga. Wijetunga had a black

plastic binder filled with grids and numbers where he recorded twice a day after measuring the

tide mark on the beach. He counted the corals, sea slugs and other sea creatures and studied

them. He then writes a report and shows it to Mr. Salgado.

After sometime Miss Nili entered Mr. Salgado and Triton's lives and changed it forever. Miss

Nili is Triton's first encounter with women. He had special feelings for her along with his
master's but Triton's love was platonic. He expressed her love for her by cooking her

delicious food and baking delicious meals. Nili gave Triton a cooking book as a Christmas

present. Nili was an outgoing liberal independent young woman. During her relationship with

Mr. Salgado she worked in a hotel for tourists but at some point she quit her job to start her

own business which is running her own guesthouse.

At the beginning Nili used to come as a guest with Mr. Salgado's other friends but later she

moved in and it was the beginning of a new era as Triton declares. She stayed in the house

without an official position. Miss Nili and Mr. Salgado held parties in the house for friends or

went out to parties or restaurants nearly everyday. Mr. Salgado started to be distracted from

his research which annoyed his assistant, Wijetunga. Mr. Salgado should have been drawing

his conclusions in big report but instead he kept asking his assistants to write more reports

and study more samples. Among their friends, Nili and Mr. Salgado were a daring example of

a real modern couple. They were in love, independent and carefree. Instead of a traditional

extended family, they grew up a network of friends and admires. Their friends kept coming

eagerly to see how long the romance would last. Among their friends was Tippy.

Tippy was one of Mr. Salgado's own friends, he had come back recently from America with a

''beer gut and an addiction to cards.'' (Gunesekera: 138) Nili did not like him. She despised
the way he flirted with her. She believed that Tippy thought he was charming and charismatic

because of the years he spent in America. Suddenly, one day a fight broke out between Mr.

Salgado and Nili, a fight that marked the end of their relationship though not their love. At

night, Triton heard them fighting and their voices were very loud, louder than he had ever

heard them before. Mr. Salgado accused Nili of going to bed with one of their common male

friends. After exchanging harsh words, Nili left the house the next morning without goodbyes

and left Mr. Salgado in a miserable state of melancholy. Triton tried everything to get him out

of his condition but all his attempts were in vain. Everyday Mr. Salgado grew sadder and

thinner. Moreover, something tragic happened that changed their life irrevocably. Dias

disappeared in the sea and after few days his inflated corpse was appeared on the shore

pushed by the waves.

By that time, political unrest started to erupt in Sri Lanka. Mr. Salgado told Triton to prepare

himself as they are traveling to London. He told him that he had an offer to work in a marine

biology institute there and that he had accepted. In London Mr. Salgado rented an apartment

near Gloucester Road and immediately started to work. They did not go anywhere until the

following spring, when Mr. Salgado arranged a visit to Wales where a colleague of his had a

cottage to rent.
Back home by that time, in April 1971 violence escalated and they watched news reports

about explosions, gunfire and insurgencies tearing up the country. Thousands were killed and

tens of thousands grieved. Triton describes the events that he saw on TV that appalled him:

News reports of ghastly beheading on the beach. But these were only precursors of the

staggering brutality that came, wave after wave, in the decades that followed, the suffocating

infernos, the burning necklaces, flaming molten rings of fire; Region of Terror; this

suppurating ethnic war. The bodies would roll again and again in the surf, they would be

washed in by the tide and be beached by the dozen the lives of brothers, sisters, men and

women, lovers, fathers and mothers and children would be blighted time and time again,

unremembered. (Gunesekera: 173)

In 1976, Mr. Salgado decides that it is time to settle permanently in England and bought a

maisonette in Earls Court. Triton started to educate himself. He read all Mr. Salgado's books

and went to classes and libraries. Triton suggested that they should open a restaurant but Mr.

Salgado told him that some day, he will be able to do it by himself. Mr. Salgado bought a car

and taught Triton how to drive. They traveled all over England and visited the historical

places, museums, gardens and parks.

In 1983, a new wave of violence erupted again in Colombo. Again they saw the appalling
images and videos on TV. Mr. Salgado received a phone call from his friend Tippy. He was

changing planes to Heathrow heading for New York on business. He told Mr. Salgado about

the situation in Sri Lanka and what happened to Nili. She was running a guesthouse for

tourists and had done well. But during the recent violence she sheltered a Tamil family

because their own homes were destroyed. She hauled off the mob that came after them the

next day the mob had come with cans of kerosene and set fire to the place. She had lost

everything and had no one beside her. Mr. Salgado decided to go back for Nili but Triton did

not go back with him. He stayed in London and opened a restaurant that became successful.

''It was the only way I could success, without a past, without a name, without Ranjan Salgado

standing by my side.'