Once Upon a Tender Time

by Carl Muller

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  ‘For why?’

  ‘Just I went. Everyday must go.’

  George gaped. Later he told Leah, ‘If police come and say anything happened in Wellawatte at five o’clock don’t go to say anything.’

  Carloboy had discovered religion.

  Father Sebastian was intrigued. This was the boy who had, with incredible venom, killed his laying hens. That had been in March, when he had come to the mission house after evening benediction to be told by an agitated Sacristan that two of his hens lay dead. ‘To the head have been hitting. There, dead and waiting. Father come and see.’

  Later it was learnt that a boy had been seen, perched on the grey church wall and this boy had a catapult. Two and two were put together. ‘What boy?’

  ‘Lansi boy. Others everyone church inside. This one wall on top sitting was.’

  There was no help to it. The parish had its share of ruffians too and Father Sebastian sadly instructed that his hens be interred and delivered a scorching sermon on delinquency and parents who didn’t seem to give a fig about what their children were up to.

  To a boy who ‘saw the light’ a good confession was imperative. So Carloboy knelt before the ratanned screen with its dark curtain, crossed himself and said, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  Father Sebastian made appropriate murmurs and inquired about the last date of unburdening, and which Carloboy hazily recalled was for Easter Sunday mass in Anuradhapura. He then launched into a long, fascinating account of his many transgressions, being very thoughtful and very thorough and including the stirring news that he had, in a lighter moment killed the mission house hens.

  The priest made a strange, strangled sound, then shot out of the confessional to seize the penitent by the collar. ‘So you’re the rascal!’ he said fiercely. ‘Ah, von Bloss, no? Only yesterday your aunt was telling about you.’ He shook the boy, then stared into those large eyes that seemed to hold all the fears and joys of boyhood in them. The priest frowned, scratched his head and returned to the confessional. ‘Say your other sins,’ he said, and Carloboy, quite disturbed, said that was all, unless tormenting masters in school needed to be listed, although that could hardly be considered a sin, that being a sort of God-given right to every boy.

  The penance was heavy. He was told to say three decades of the rosary, five Our Fathers, five Hail Mary’s and five Glory he’s and may God have mercy on his soul. ‘Now make the Act of Contrition,’ the priest said and listened dully as the boy intoned ‘O my God, I am truly sorry for my sins of thought, word and deed . . .’ and made a muttered In nomine Patris and mumbled ‘Go in peace . . . and don’t let me catch you near the mission house again!’

  It was a good feeling. Carloboy felt that a lot of lumber had been cleared along with the cobwebs of his mind. He stepped lightly and felt quite light-hearted too. Millie was proud. She gave him scapulars and a handsome Missal, all black and grainy covered with a cross embossed on the cover. There were gold, silver, crimson and powder-blue silk page markers. He learnt how to find and mark the epistle and gospel of the day, the particular Saint’s day mass and to tread surefooted through the Festive Calendar. These were books of litanies and special prayers which the Church decreed, gave indulgences. ‘Say this prayer twenty times and you will get an indulgence of 365 days,’ Millie told him.

  ‘What’s that, Aunty?’

  ‘That’s for helping you to go soon to heaven, child. We are not without sin, no? So we will all have to go to Purgatory and suffer before we are taken to heaven.’

  ‘But why? Can’t go straight to heaven?’

  ‘Can, can, but must be like a saint for that. Not a single sin. Spotless you must be. That’s not easy, no? Any amount of small small sins people commit every day. Even a tiny lie is a sin. Venial sin.’

  ‘But venial sins you won’t go to hell, no?’

  ‘No. God knows we are all making mistakes. So he sends you to Purgatory to be clean and when you have suffered a little there he will take you to heaven.’

  ‘So this indulgence, then?’

  ‘Ah that is what I’m trying to tell you. If you have to go to Purgatory for thousand days then if you say this prayer twenty times, will cut off 365 days. Like that by saying the prayers in this book daily all the time in Purgatory is reduced. Quickly you will go to heaven.’

  ‘So can even go straight to heaven, no?’

  ‘Yes, child. Pray, pray. That’s what God is asking us to always do.’ This as we know now, is a load of tripe and has long since been scrapped. Readers will recall that King Henry VIII clashed with the church on the sale of indulgences. One could put down cash and buy one’s way out of confinement in Purgatory. This was later watered down to the recitation of long prayers which earned reprieves. All this is, thankfully, over. Indeed, today there is a lot of doubt about the existence of Purgatory, and anyway, don’t we make our own heavens and hells and God, sadly, is nowhere around to make reference to?

  Father Sebastian was adamant. ‘Let him be an altar boy, but can’t allow to wear cassock and surplice. If he learns can serve at daily mass. But Sunday Mass can’t allow. Going to non-Catholic school, no?’

  Carloboy was indignant. He had taken this altar-server business to heart. His quick mind grasped the Latin prayers, and he was spouting them as easily and flawlessly as a star seminarian. He followed procedures, the changing of the big Missal, the ringing of the bell, the holding of the paten under the chins of those who came to the rails to receive the Body of Christ, the prayers at the foot of the altar, how to hold the hem of the celebrant’s chasuble at the elevation of the bread and wine . . . he knew the different procedures for a High Mass, the mass of the pre-sanctified, the dead mass, the wedding mass and later, even the Episcopal High Mass. But his first venture into the sanctuary was at that everyday five thirty morning mass where he wore his school clothes and held the communion plate under the chins of old Mr Capper and Mrs Redlich and Aunty Millie and Mrs Toussaint who stuck out a very blue-flecked tongue and whom everybody said had a very evil mouth and anything she said was sure to happen.

  Aunty Millie was delighted. She pressed a rupee into the boy’s hands. ‘One day you can become a priest if you want. Never had a priest in the family also.’

  Carloboy thought about it. Why not? He could be a priest. He could be a priest at war, blessing dying soldiers, going into danger with God to keep an eye on him. Leah was stirred. She wrote a near-hysterical letter to her brother, and Sonnaboy wisely said, ‘All this nonsense will stop soon. Not doing anything bad, no? But don’t allow to sit the whole day in the church. Tell to study also.’

  There were several other Burgher boys at Royal. There was Alan Bartholomeusz, fair, curly-haired, a hint of blue in his eyes, and Haig Siebel who was called Kossa because his father was an inspector of police. Oh, Royal had, of old, boasted a creamy crop of Burghers, each distinguishing himself in one way or another. Even in Carloboy’s time there was Desmond Van Twest who was on the cricket team and played rugby as well—and Wilhelm Woutersz (who is, at the time of writing, in the Sri Lanka Foreign Office) and Eric Labrooy who had the makings of a fine batsman and had a baby face. There was also Rankine and Van der Gert (Rodney, his name was and he had an elfin face and a most impudent grin and is a Permanent Secretary today).

  Royal, like many other colleges, was proud of its Burgher students who, though quite exotic in manners and temperament, were excellent playing field material. None of them hailed from the affluent backdrop of Colombo 7 society yet, in those vintage years, there were the Roberts, the van Geyzels, the Raaffels, (Douglas Raaffels was a great hunter and explored the Ruhuna jungles of Sri Lanka and also did things of instant distinction during the war), and the Kelaarts and de Saras and that scintillating character Elmer de Haan who claimed Belgian blood and superiority over the ‘third rate’ Burghers!

  Colombo 7, originally ‘Cinnamon Gardens’ is where the rich and the upper-crust live. Peculiarly enough, while a few i
mportant Britishers also hang out here, the majority of this society are the rich Sinhalese—the landowners, estate owners, big businessmen, leading professionals. Colombo 7 society in this plush residential area is very real to this day. Within its confines are many foreign embassies as well as the sprawling mansions of ambassadors, gem merchants, politicians, bankers, etc.

  The Burghers, however prominent they became, never really claimed the wealth of the country. They lived and died ordinarily enough, eschewing pomp and fine feathers. Indeed, the author claims just one friend in Colombo 7 today and that is Arthur C. Clark, MBE of 2001 Space Odyssey fame who resides in Barnes place. But then, the author is a Burgher too, so a Colombo 7 milieu is very distant from his own carefree state of being.

  Carloboy fared in the best Burgher tradition. He livened up Royal, and the new spirit of ‘godliness’ which surged through him had to battle hard to keep a grip on his naturally rebellious soul. There was ‘Bruno’ who was a Burgher too, and taught English, both grammar and literature, and was tall, lanky, quite bony-faced, and a superb sportsman. True, he quit eventually, but he was a strong influence on Carloboy who discovered much of the glory of the English language and Literature under Bruno, whose drawling voice, wisecracks and wit was much appreciated by even the most pagan of souls.

  Schoolmasters are quickly categorized and, obviously, it were the madcap Burghers who drew the lines of definition. Men like Baldsing and Perimpanayagam and ‘Jowl’ were not to be trifled with. Those like Eddie and ‘Cowpox’ and ‘Penda’ and ‘Pocket Billiards’ were mere players who fluffed and bluffed their hours on the stage and then retired to the staffroom to drink tea. ‘Lapaya’ and ‘Connor’ were pushovers; ‘Cupper’ was to be kept at a distance and so was ‘Bella’ and ‘Gon’ who flared up for the strangest reasons. Naths and ‘Bruno’ were the delectables, while principal J.C.A. was tolerated on the basis that, left alone, he would in turn leave you alone. J.C.A. occupied the same status as God in his heaven. As long as God stayed there, all was right with the schoolboy world.

  Pushing a working knowledge of Sinhala down Burgher gullets was a trial. It was all well and good for the Sinhalese boys. They had their Sinhala lives at home and their Sinhala ways, manners and customs. It was, after all, their mother tongue. The Tamils too, had their Tamil language periods and were not considered, even remotely, for Sinhala education. The Burghers had no such luck. There was no education system which catered to their mother tongue— English—and they had to study Sinhala!10 This would give ‘Lapaya’ many painful moments. Carloboy, especially, seemed to loathe Sinhala, sat at the back of the class and was, to both master and classmates, a persecution of major proportions.

  ‘Von Bloss! Today studying you’re going to do?’ (All said in succinct Sinhala, of course).

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then books open. Homework you did?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why? Homework giving, must do.’

  ‘Will do, sir.’

  ‘What day? Next year you’re going to do?’

  ‘Time hadn’t, sir.’

  ‘Madness don’t talk. Time haven’t, time haven’t. Where? Your book bring to see!’

  Carloboy makes a great show of rummaging in his desk. The lid is raised, banged down several times. The class explodes in titters. Lapaya gets furiouser and furiouser. ‘Get up!’ he screams. ‘Get out outside! Stand outside! If work won’t do, outside you wait!’ and Carloboy saunters out to stand in the corridor where he makes terrible faces through the glass and very obscene gestures and even stands on his head to the hysterics of the boys inside until he is hauled in, given a chit and banished to the headmaster’s office for the customary six of the best.

  Eventually Lapaya resorted to a measure of sheer desperation. It began on the day that he was nearly skewered by a pair of dividers. It had been a hair-raising battle. Little demons like Farouk Abdi and Doyne Jaya, and Milton Amera and Ravi and Linton Jayasekera and Alan de Sara began the war. The idea, as Carloboy explained, was to range on either side of the class and sling dividers at each other. Whizzing through the air like dinky stilettos, this was no game. It could mean murder, but who gave a damn? The dividers flashed, spinning to stab into desktops and bounce into walls inches from heads. More nervous souls took cover. Edward, whose father was a minister and was thus a timid little fellow, bolted to the safety of the corridor. Lapaya checked at the sight. With an enormous scowl he stood at the door, was taken note of with short barks of ‘there, Lapaya is looking!’ and with the deadliness of a final arrow, a pair of dividers cut a dizzy arc and buried its head in the doorpost half a centimetre from Lapaya’s arm. The man wobbled visibly, speechlessly, and while in this state of extremis, there was a rush for chairs and, an instant later, a class that sat silent, clear-eyed, guileless and as well-behaved as pats of butter. This, the man decided, was too, too much. And if he shoved them all out, who would he have to teach? With some dignity he sat at his desk and crooked a finger at Carloboy. ‘Here, you come!’

  Carloboy trotted up.

  ‘This thing is whose?’ indicating the pair of dividers.

  ‘Mine not, sir.’

  ‘You didn’t throw?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then you were doing what?’

  ‘Looked and waited, sir.’

  ‘Only looking?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And these when throwing, you did what?’

  ‘Ducking, sir.’

  ‘Ducking?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So you looking and ducking, ah? Then who was throwing like this.’

  ‘Some boys, sir. Who, I don’t know.’

  ‘Ah! You don’t know?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why? Like this if throwing, you don’t know who?’

  ‘I’m ducking, sir, so can’t see.’

  ‘Just now said you were looking!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So if you’re looking how you didn’t see?’

  ‘Dividers from behind coming. So to see couldn’t.’

  ‘Then what looking-looking and doing?’

  ‘Just, sir.’

  ‘Just!’ Lapaya had this feeling that he was wrestling with a big blob of mercury.

  ‘Today but for you good caning!’

  ‘Sir, why, sir?’

  The master blinked. It was a difficult position and he was basically a fair man. And being caned had little effect on this terrible boy. Also, many others would have to be caned too. True, he would make ‘Jowl’s’ day but it had to be considered that any master who kept sending boys up for a whacking were also admitting to a lack of control. A master should be able to take command of his class.

  ‘Your homework you did?’ he asked.

  ‘Some I did, sir, but not right, I think.’

  Lapaya sighed. Then a shaft of light from some schoolmaster’s heaven seemed to speak to his soul. He produced a large coin. ‘You go to the tuckshop. Here, this you take. Go and something eat and wait. Bell when it is ringing to the class come back.’

  Dumbly Carloboy took the rupee and went. Quite unreal, this freedom, at eleven in the morning. Enough time to use his catapult on the droves of mynah birds who squawked and shrilled in the trees behind the tuck.

  And so, despite his Catholic God and the feverish recitation of prayers to circumvent the discomforts of Purgatory, Carloboy remained the boy he was expected to be, a fighting, shouting, riotous creature, and was surprised for stock still seconds when he saw old ‘Pol Thel’ of St Peter’s bowl through the college gates.

  ‘Migorsh,’ he told Christopher de Saa (who was called Hakispuruss for reasons to be given shortly), ‘you know who he is?’

  ‘Who? Who came on that autocycle?’

  ‘St Peter’s geography master. Shout Pol Thel to see.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Shout, will you. Shout loud.’

  And thus was Baptiss welcomed to Royal and the word spread like a thin silk sheet
and boys of all ages thumped fists into palms and chortled and greeted the new master with the words POL THEL chalked boldly on the blackboard of the first classroom he entered to take his first lesson. The man, let it be said, hadn’t a prayer.

  ‘Hakispuruss’ had the dubious honour of unleashing the first catcall. This pleased him no end. He hated his nickname, quite onomatopoeic, and bestowed on him on the day he broke wind loudly in class and covered the sound with a sneeze. Or so he thought. The trouble was the sneeze came first . . . and the fart breasted the tape a close second. The result: first the hakiss of the sneeze and the puruss of the fart!

  Millie, sensing the threat of an undisciplined school life a certain obstacle to Carloboy’s spiritual progress, exhorted Sonnaboy to take the boy in hand. Sonnaboy did much better. He took his son to All Saints Church in Borella and paused thoughtfully at the storm drain and then grinning to himself,11 introduced his son to Father Boniface whose father, too, was a railwayman and who knew Sonnaboy very well.

  ‘Taking to Anuradhapura tomorrow,’ he told the priest. ‘Came to ask you—this bugger wants to be a priest ipseems. Going for daily mass and all. Serving also. You think this is some nonsense or what?’

  Father Boniface twinkled. He had said his first Mass at the Kotahena Cathedral barely six months ago. He had fought tooth and nail with his burly railway father to leave Wesley College and enter the Borella seminary. He placed a hand on Carloboy’s shoulder. ‘Come to the parlour. So you want to be a priest?’

  The boy liked to get things straight. Aunty Millie also said can become.’

  ‘But if you become a priest, what do you want to do?’

  ‘I want to go to people in the war and fight also and even if the Germans are dying can bless them and give them communion and go to Russia and open the churches for the people even if nobody allowed to pray there. In my book Catholics are very brave—’

  ‘What book is that?’

  ‘My aunty gave. About martyrs. She said all Catholics must be like soldiers.’

  Father Boniface chuckled. ‘But you have to be a good priest.’