Once Upon a Tender Time

by Carl Muller

  ‘So what to do?’

  ‘I don’t know, men. I went to tell Daddy and he’s saying I know, I know but she is your mother.’

  ‘And that other bugger put the bolt, no?’

  ‘He has gone. One thing anyday I see him I’ll kill him.’

  Mrs Van Sanden sniffed. ‘Still coming here? Don’t step this house again, you heard! Damn prostitute’s son!’

  Carloboy clenched a fist. ‘Who is what? You bloody bitch?’

  The woman’s screams bring in the garden folk. Pat Silva propels Carloboy away. ‘You go home. If not wanting why you want to come?’

  Enemies hid behind walls to taunt. ‘Ado! Who fucked your mother? If we come also can do?’

  Carloboy was in no mood to suffer ‘Pol Thel’. He was asked a question and snarled at the master.

  ‘What? What did you say? Stand on the form!’

  This, for an Upper Fifth boy was unthinkable. One told First Formers to do so, even second formers. Carloboy grunted and ignored the man.

  ‘Stand on the form!’ Pol Thel shrieked.

  ‘I won’t!’

  The class cheered wildly. Pol Thel came up, hand upraised. ‘I have had enough of you,’ he hooted, ‘how long do I have to put up with your insolence?’

  Carloboy stared at him stubbornly. It was a wild look, a look the master should have taken time to assess. Instead he swung his hand. A stinging slap . . . and something snapped in the boy’s tortured mind. He swung out and as Pol Thel turned, the blow took him hard against his shoulder. The class was in ecstasy. Pandemonium peaked as Pol Thel, his spectacles askew, rushed for cover. Carloboy kicked back at his desk, strode up. ‘To hell with you,’ he shouted, ‘to hell with you!’ He didn’t even gather his books. He stood, a short, fierce figure.

  ‘You will be sacked,’ Pol Thel squeaked, ‘I’ll see that you’re sacked!’

  Carloboy tossed his head. ‘I’m going.’ Suddenly there was silence and in the silence he passed sentence on himself.

  ‘Do anything you like. Do . . . any . . . fucking . . . thing . . . you want!’ and he strode away.

  He cycled home, tossed his bike against the gate. Home was quiet. His mother moved around the house. ‘You’re early,’ she said, ‘what happened?’

  ‘That’s my business! What do you care what I do?’

  ‘Don’t you come to talk like that to me. I’ll tell your father!’

  ‘Why my father? Why you won’t go and tell that Kinno? Or the baker? Or the vegetable man?’

  ‘You shut up!’ Beryl screamed.

  ‘Why? What you do no one can talk about?’

  Beryl quivered, even her lips grew ashen. ‘You have nothing to talk,’ she brazened. ‘That’s between your father and me.’

  ‘Why? For people in the lane to say things? For boys to hoot when I’m going. Anybody asks I’ll say you’re not my mummy!’

  ‘What? You want a slap? Trying to be a big man here?’

  ‘Slap to see if you can! Mother? Shame to call you my mother!’ and he stormed past a white-faced Beryl who rushed into the room to break into uncontrollable sobs.

  Sonnaboy was bewildered. He wanted to kill somebody, anybody. He wanted to take his wife by the throat, choke her till her eyeballs burst and the blood jerked out of her mouth. He wanted to find Kinno, he wanted to walk into Jason Rodrigo’s house and smash it to pulp. He wanted, he wanted, and here was this bitch snivelling, snivelling and his son stony-faced, accusing him, him! of being a gutless cuckold.

  ‘I left school,’ Carloboy said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I hit a master. Sack me anyway.’

  ‘And what are you going to do? Not yet seventeen even. What are you going to do!’

  ‘I’ll study at home. Have enough credits to take Varsity entrance.’

  Sonnaboy saw red. This was the boy he had beaten, hugged, wondered at, accepted despite everything. All the anger of ages gripped him.

  ‘What did you say to Mummy! What’s the matter with you?’

  The boy stared defiantly.

  ‘You want to stay here you keep your bloody mouth shut, you heard? I’m the master here. I’ll settle things my way.’

  ‘I told the truth.’

  ‘Truth? You’ll say nothing! Think you’re a big man now because you can hit masters and come? And Varsity! No bloody Varsity! Go and find a bloody job if you can!’

  ‘But—’

  The blow caught Carloboy along the side of his face. It stunned him. He couldn’t avoid the next that hurt him even more. He cringed, backed into a table. A glass splintered. There was nowhere to run. Between wall and dinnerwagon, which long ago he had scored with the penknife his father had given him, he stood trapped. Over him hung a picture of his grandmother, Maudiegirl Esther von Bloss nee Kimball with the legend ‘Lest We Forget’. Sonnaboy clenched his fists. ‘Nobody comes to try anything in my house! This is my house, do you hear?’

  Beryl came through the bedroom curtain. She laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder, was savagely pushed aside. Carloboy took a deep breath. ‘I’m not staying here,’ he said.

  ‘Then get out! Take your things and get out! Now! Go on! Let’s see what you’ll do!’

  Carloboy edged past. His legs trembled. He felt sick in the stomach, dry mouthed. He took some clothes out of his cupboard, stuffed them into a mat bag. His bicycle was still beside the gate. He went round the house, slung the bag. His father stood at the door. He didn’t say a word.

  Carloboy saw too much hurt in his father’s eyes. And an awful loneliness. He wanted to go to him, put his arms around him but he somehow didn’t know how he could. ‘I’m going,’ he said. Sonnaboy just stood. Like some big stone idol. Then as though from faraway he said, ‘You come back when you want, all right.’

  Carloboy didn’t know what he would do, where he would go. He had friends across the canal. Eardley Steinwall and George Saverus and so many other in and around the neighbourhood. He would survive.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘You have money?’

  Strange . . . two proud men—yes, men—determined not to budge an inch for the other. Father and son. One bruised outside, both bruising terribly inside. One willing the other to stay, one willing the other to say stay. But they battled on.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want some money?’

  ‘No.’

  And the man pedalled away, and he lived with his friends and would stand at the wall to gaze across the canal where home was. Sonnaboy would cycle past sometimes.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  In 1953 Carloboy joined the Royal Ceylon Navy. He was enlisted as a signalman. Kitted out, he rode across the Vihara Lane bridge, into Saranankara Road. In uniform, he placed his bicycle against the fence and walked in. Sonnaboy was in the hall. Beryl sat on the sofa, hemming a dress and there was another baby, gurgling and dribbling on a mat in the centre of the hall. Marie was spreading a cloth on the dining table. She gave a squeak when she saw him at the door. Sonnaboy looked up, rose hurriedly. ‘You came?’ he said and somehow his voice broke a little. ‘Beryl, see, have been joining the Navy!’ and they embraced and became one.

  Inside each of them the bruises disappeared.

  Chapter One

  1. Lady. In this case the lady of the house, mistress, meaning Beryl, who had enough troubles of her own.

  2. Sinhala colloquial exclamation used loosely to stress the gist of what is being said.

  3. Kapok

  Chapter Two

  1. One can never be sure about native humour. Malwana grows lush, red rambuttans, which, because of the appearance of the fruit, are aptly called ‘hairy balls’. To dub the Portuguese Captain-General as King of Malwana could have been the waggish Sinhalese way of calling him ‘Big, red, hairy balls’. This, of course, is pure conjecture.

  2. It is not my intention to identify any of these officia
ls or describe what they did not do. May I ask my readers to just ride along with the names?

  3. Proceedings of the De Meuron Committee. Mentioned in dispatches from the Secretary of State to the Governor and marked Colonial Office 55,2.

  Chapter Three

  1. See The Jam Fruit Tree (Penguin 1993) pp. 190 and 191-192.

  2. Daniel is introduced in The Jam Fruit Tree (Penguin, 1993) p. 126.

  3. The long green pods of the horse-radish tree, eaten as a vegetable. The pods are commonly called drumsticks.

  Chapter Four

  1. See The Jam Fruit Tree (Penguin, 1993) pp. 103-109.

  2. Richard Dionysius Colontota, Sonnaboy’s sister Anna’s husband.

  3. Sonnaboy’s elder brother.

  4. Sonnaboy’s sister Leah’s husband, George de Mello.

  5. A local Moor.

  6. Long, flat bottomed scows, poled along the waterways, used by the Dutch to transport salt, areca nuts, cinnamon, etc. on the canal system. The boats subsequently became the floating homes of a type of river people and are used to this day to transport river sand.

  7. Children of George de Mello and Leah.

  8. The stems and bark of the Calumba wood shrub—a spiky medicinal plant which makes a strong antiseptic infusion. It is drunk in Sri Lanka to ward off tetanus and is a preventive and protective decoction after deep cuts, wounds, poisonous thorn pricks, animal bites, insect stings, etc.

  9. A rude, rough and ready way of gaining somebody’s attention. Could be framed insultingly, venemously, angrily or, as in this particular instance, in a spirit of camaraderie.

  10. A Bharatha dance festival performed by a troupe. The Bharatha dance form is unique in that it was originally created to be a devotional dance, to pay obeisance to the gods. It is a temple dance ritual, assuming the several attitudes of devotion and is performed with great mastery.

  11. A Shiva dance performed in a spirit of anger.

  12. Literally, ‘the fires of lust’.

  13. Author’s note: Faction is stranger than fiction. I write these words in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where I work. One of my colleagues here is P. Ravichandran of Palghat, India, and guess what . . . he is the son of Madhavan, the man who danced his way into the wonder world of Carloboy’s imagination over fifty years ago!

  Chapter Five

  1. Thoppi—hat. This Sinhala expression indicates ‘trouble’. To put a hat on something is to cause trouble. This was Anglicized to the extent that boys would also say: ‘Hell of a hat’ meaning a sticky situation or big trouble.

  2. Ammo—Oh, mother!

  3. Kanay—a clout on the ear. Kana is Sinhala for ear.

  4. Kossa—Sinhala derogative for constable. Actually the Sinhalese took the word ‘constable’ and made it ‘Kostapol’. This was shortened to ‘Kossa’.

  5. Hora—Sinhalese ‘rogue’.

  6. For a detail of the Japanese bombing of Colombo, the reader is exhorted to see The Jam Fruit Tree pp. 196-206 (Penguin, India 1993). The author cannot abide repetition, this book being big enough as it is!

  Chapter Six

  1. Engine drivers brought in from England. Readers could fill in on these characters in Yakada Yakā.

  2. Yako—Sinhalese ‘devil’ or ‘demon’. Never used in any fearsome manner, but simply in a spirit of relating to one another in conversation.

  3. Sudda—whiteskin.

  4. This is a diminutive of that awful word ‘pakaya’, dealt with earlier.

  5. Sinhalese for egg. Gomes was so labelled because he had to shave his head after a prolonged attack of scabies. His life was never the same in school thereafter.

  6. Schoolboy term for a homosexual act. A cupper is a homo, to be cupped is to suffer a homosexual attack. A cup boy is a boy who welcomes homosexual advances.

  Chapter Seven

  1. Mussina is colloquial Sinhalese for brother-in-law!

  2. Thero—the title given to a monk. In the art world of the times (and since he was a true artist and not averse to painting female torsos) he preferred to be accepted as L.T.P. Manjusri.

  3. Konday—the bun of hair, twisted and knotted at the nape.

  Chapter Eight

  1. Amazing the way the children ingested every scrap of the war. Truly, Allied tank units were shocked to find how easily the Shermans burst into flames. The German Panthers and Tigers were heavily armoured and, with their long guns, could stand off and fire without actually engaging the enemy.

  2. Steamed circlets of flour. The flour after steaming is pressed through a mould to drop in wriggly strands on the little basket-weave trays which are then re-steamed in batches until done. A favourite anytime meal in Sri Lanka.

  3. For details of this incident, see Yakada Yakā (Penguin 1994).

  4. Thamai—a Sinhalese stress word to emphasize ‘only’ or ‘this is’ or ‘this is it.’ Used sarcastically too. Thus Anna would say ‘Careful only’, which is laden with sarcasm.

  Chapter Nine

  1. The forked stick of the catapult.

  2. The Sinhalese call it Aliya gaha (Elephant Tree—the baobab).

  3. Symplocos cochin-chinensis.

  4. Ficus religiosa.

  5. A national reserve in the north-west of the island.

  6. An ancient and one of the greatest Buddhist dagobas in the island. It was built by hero-king Dutugemunu.

  7. A call of praise and reverence just a ‘Hosannah’ or ‘amen’ would apply in Christianity.

  Chapter Ten

  1. ‘England, your England’ – George Orwell, Selected Essays (Penguin, 1957).

  2. Learn or Depart.

  3. A thin griddle cake made of flour and fermented coconut water.

  4. Meeyo! – Rats!

  Chapter Eleven

  1. Veeringde Oost-indische Compagnie—Dutch East India Company.

  2. An. Account of the Island of Ceylon—Percival 1803.

  3. Tivu is Tamilian for island or islet.

  4. Dipa or dwipa is Sinhalese for island. Naga is the serpent, in this instance the cobra—hence island of the cobra. This strays into the realms of Buddhist legend and pertains to a particular visit of the Buddha to Sri Lanka. The author will not dwell on this further, but Nagadipa is a place of Buddhist pilgrimage.

  5. A fierce rebel war goes on in Sri Lanka at the time of writing. The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) are fighting for a separate northern state. The Sinhalese government, at the time of writing, has as its emblem, the elephant—the symbol of the United National Party.

  6. Kankesanturai. Sri Lanka’s most northern small port.

  7. ‘Smell the mouth.’

  8. The tank of Tissa—a large irrigation reservoir.

  9. Cat fish.

  10. This system naturally catered openly to a polarization of sorts. The Tamils became a separate entity. The Sinhalese accepted the Burghers. Strange, when one considers how well the Burghers lived in the Northen Peninsula and how those who drifted to the central plantation areas also spoke fluent Tamil. In most schools of the Forties and Fifties, this policy resulted in the Tamils ganging together socially and academically, only mixing at sports and other extra-curricular activities. It is true to this day that all Burghers are fluent in Sinhala but there are Burghers who have no knowledge of Tamil!

  11. I will not explain this further. Curious readers will find the answer in The Jam Fruit Tree (Penguin 1993) p. 112.

  Chapter Twelve

  1. The man figures quite prominently in Yakada Yakā(Penguin, 1994).

  2. Teal.

  3. Inebriated summations notwithstanding, readers will agree that carrier pilots had to be a daring breed of men. The author is reminded of the World War II pilots’ ten commandments. With typical gallows humour, he declared: Check frequently thine airspeed lest the ground rise up and smite thee.

  4. Why this is so is detailed in Yakada Yakā(Penguin, 1994).

  5. Details of this Boxing Day delivery are elaborated in Yakada Yakā (Penguin, 1994).

  6. Artho
carpus heterophyllus.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1. Sinhala Greater Council.

  2. Tabled by Mr A. P. Jayasura and seconded by Mr H. W. Amarasooriya. The former was member for Horana, the latter member for Galle.

  3. Sinhala ‘brother-in-law’ but universally used as a form of friendly address. A sort of acknowledgement that we are all brothers under the skin, perhaps.

  4. Sort of like ‘throw your cap in the ring’. To cap a girl was to show, in various ways, that one was interested in her.

  5. Sinhalese—loosely, ‘in truth.’

  6. Sinhalese: ‘Is that true?’

  7. Sinhalese: ‘White or fair-skinned’.

  8, 9, 10. White younger sister, elder sister, uncle.

  11. Sinhalese: loosely a ‘fight’, a disturbance, a breach of the peace.

  12. The accepted way to goad the animal into second gear.

  13. Sinhalese colloquial: ‘Policeman.’

  14. Sinhalese for king coconut.

  15. Sinhalese colloquialism—pride, swagger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1. It was Batavia then.

  2. The old woman who would come to the school each day to sell gram (kadalay) and peanuts, doubtful-looking toffees and other things dear to boy’s tummies. Achchi is grandmother. Kadalayachchi, who had served generations of Royalists was an institution. When she died she was sorely missed.

  3. Pandu—ball. In this sense, however, it could be interpreted as playing socks, merry hell, the dickens, the devil, etc. etc.

  Author’s Note

  Now in the honey pot, now in the acid jar—it’s these Burghers of old Ceylon playing silly buggers . . . the eight- to-eighteen of third generation Carloboy and his kin—in and out of the garbage pails of life, love and lunacy.