The Jam Fruit Tree

by Carl Muller

  The neighbour, Pantis Perera said that his son Kukku would marry Opel any day, ‘and we next door and all.’

  Papa Ludwick smiled. ‘But this good Burgher fellow, no? After all, we also Burghers,’ and Pantis spat betel juice and scowled.

  ‘See how now getting big for the boots,’ Pantis told his wife, ‘saying they are Burgher. Only name. Thuppahi (half caste) Burgher. Never mind. Can find Kukku good girl. Better than that half-caste next-door one.’

  As has been recorded, Viva was a miserly fellow. While enraptured with Opel’s pelvic perambulations, he wasn’t going to put his pocket in jeopardy. He embarked on a strange and perhaps the cheapest form of courtship ever: the humble postcard. Each morning he would write the damndest things he could think of on a postcard and send it to Opel. It never occurred to him that Opel might need a microscope to read his tiny script. At first Opel was, in her own words, ‘stuntified’. What the hell was it, anyway? Papa Ludwick squinted and ventured that it must be a ‘tax department thing’ but grew easier when he read ‘my dearest Opel’ and the ‘Vivi’ in a miniscule flourish at the bottom, ‘Vivi? Who the hell is Vivi?’

  ‘Must be that Viva, no? Mad, anney, to write like this. Have to hold it far otherwise get squint.’

  ‘What is he saying?’

  ‘Apoi, how to tell when can’t even read. Like in sardine tin, no?’

  Papa snorted. ‘Sardine tin? Sardines better off. Like lice on your head. Give to see.’

  Opel tried one eye, then the other, then both, screwing them up until they were fair competition to her nose. ‘All nonsense, anney. Saying he love me and can kiss even my toes and getting something up his something when near to me and then something stamps .. . no, stars and .. . and aiyo, I don’t know, putting big words . . . motions? No—’

  ‘Motions? Why, he having bad stomach or what? Let see, child; here, hold to the light . . .’

  ‘Ah,’ said Opel, ‘emotions. What is that?’

  Papa shrugged. ‘So what he wants, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing. Simply writing. Stars, moons, he adore me . . . want to worship me. Saying I am angel and how he cannot sleep and wants to kiss me everywhere . . . .’

  ‘Chee, what he thinking? Nowadays fellows no shame. If come today you behave yourself, you hear? And wash your toes. Walking all over without slippers even. Boys thinking funny things these days. Kissing toes. I didn’t know your mother had toes until I married her.’

  Viva would roll up at six, beaming, the love-light like 100-watt bulbs in each eye. ‘You got my postcard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Opel simpered.

  ‘My morning gift to you. What better thing I can give, you tell me. Putting my heart on postcard. Every day I send you one. You can collect and keep.’

  ‘But so small your writing, Viva.’

  ‘What to do? All my love I sending, no? You think I just write dearest Opel, I love you, Viva, and that is enough? Wasting whole postcard, no? Now see, I post one today also. Will get tomorrow. And I post ‘nother one tomorrow. So everyday postman come with my love. How’s that?’

  Opel simpered again. This man was devastating. ‘If like can kiss my toes,’ she murmured, ‘Washed nicely and put powder also.’

  That night Papa Ludwick gave Viva a fistful of tracts and a beat-up Bible. ‘You take home and read,’ he said, ‘You put everything in the hands of the Lord and he give you strength to smite everybody. See that David in Chronicles. He got the strength of the Lord. So he goes knocking about the country smiting everybody. Wait, I show you . . . here, Chronicles 18—see, David smite the Philistines, the Maobites, the king of Zobah. Then the Syrians come to fight. He smite them also.’

  Viva listened patiently. He didn’t see the point in going around smiting everyone. That was Sonnaboy’s department. But he took the tracts and the Bible home and, if the family history can be credited, sealed his poor mother’s fate.

  As earlier recorded, Maudiegirl had taken to medicating herself. Anna had, over the past two weeks been told to bring all manner of things from the pharmacy. Maudiegirl would mix compound camphor liniment with soap liniment and rub the mixture on her chest and then rub a flannel, thick with the stuff, around her neck. ‘Touch of the quinsy,’ she would croak and lower herself into the lounger groaning ‘Uppaday’ and digging out her rosary. At other times she would heat up camphorated oil and keep massaging it into the base of her neck. What is more, she had the bed moved from its position between the doorway and the window.

  ‘What for you moving the bed, woman?’ Cecilprins would want to know.

  ‘Getting draught. Air coming from doorway. Some more coming from window. Bad, no?’

  And when Cecilprins found Maudiegirl sprinkling chloride of lime on the bedroom floor he grew concerned. ‘Something wrong with you, no? Better if I get doctor.’

  ‘Just don’t waste money,’ Maudiegirl would moan. ‘What can doctor do? Just come and look and go and tell to rest. Who doctor for everybody in this house all these years? I, no?’

  Cecilprins had to admit that this was no boast. Through the years, from whooping cough to worms and measles and all the ills a family is heir to, it was Maudiegirl who had worked her miracles of healing. Her poultices were the talk of Dehiwela. Her liniments (mustard flour and spirits of turpentine) should have been patented. Nobody got colds. Maudiegirl’s cold cure was positively awesome. Besides making the sufferer swallow thirty drops of camphorated sal volatile in a cup of warm water every hour on the hour, she would mix camphorated spirit in boiling water, then wring a sponge into it and apply the steaming sponge to the nose and mouth. ‘Breathe in deep,’ she would growl as the sponge was thrust under the nostrils. Then to the mouth! ‘Swallow the steam!’ To make sure none of the healing steam escaped she would also drape a large flannel over the patient’s head. Operation over, she would then apply the sponge to throat and chest. Colds? Nobody dared get a cold in the von Bloss household.

  Cuts were treated with Friar’s balsam or diluted tincture of arnica. Burns were rubbed over with soft soap, then coated with olive oil and flour. Wounds were treated with sanitas and water or carbolic acid and water or Condy’s fluid and water. Small cuts got a dusting of dried alum powder. Dill water did the trick for heartburn or flatulence, and whenever Anna over-ate, which was often.

  Around the home, too, Maudiegirl had the formula, the recipe, the answer for almost everything. She would take the yolk of an egg, a spoon of treacle, a little isinglass, half a tumbler of water and a big lump of lampblack and stir the whole into a gooey mess that would become a waxen cake in time. And it was the finest shoe polish. Even when shoes became so scuffed that an archaeological restoration was indicated, she had the answer. Black ink and the white of an egg. She would go over the shoes with a soft sponge dipped in this mixture and they were as good as new.

  Leah would bring flowers home from the florist’s and put them in assorted vases around the house. They lasted longer, Leah said, than if at the florist’s. Maudiegirl would simply drop a lump of charcoal or a small piece of camphor into the water. Sometimes Leah would carry home a sorry-looking bunch of cut flowers.

  ‘From whose grave you took,’ Viva would cackle and Maudiegirl would bustle up and take the wilted, woebegone specimens and say: ‘Never mind, child, you go and boil some water, will you.’ She would plunge the stems into the boiling water and by the time the water cooled each flower had perked up considerably. They no longer draggled. They stood at attention. Maudiegirl would then snip the ends off each stem and put the flowers in fresh, cold water and they were ready to bloom for another two days.

  Yes, Maudiegirl, like all good Burgher women of the 1930s was a wonder when it came to anything and everything in and around the home. She made her own linseed oil, turpentine, vinegar and spirits of wine. Shaking the mixture well, she would apply it on the furniture with a linen rag and then polish with a duster. She had her special rust and stain removers and special concoctions for cleaning wood, brass, metal; she made starch and a gum
that was hyper-effective in mending broken glass and china. She was the only one around who made her own linen bleach and no one could clean a mirror the way she did. She would damp a sponge with spirits of wine, clean, and when dry, dust the mirror liberally with whiting. One of the boys would be pressed to scour the mirror with a soft cloth. This done, Maudiegirl would go to her kitchen cupboard for a bottle of blotchy powder. This was the snuff from the wicks of burnt candles, carefully collected. ‘Only top of wick snuff,’ she would say explaining that at the bottom of the wick where the candle melts around, the snuff is greasy. The particles are patiently scraped into a fold of paper and tipped into the bottle. Then, when the whiting has been well worked out of the mirror and the surface has already begun to glow, the candle snuff is carefully dusted over. A silk handkerchief is then produced for the final polish, and the result was truly spectacular.

  She was the only woman who could wash silk . . . and this, mind you, was an art much sought after in an age when every woman had a goodly store of silk gowns. And she hugged that secret to the end. Only when she lay dying did she ask that her girls wear their black silk dresses to the cemetery. ‘And don’t forget,’ she whispered, ‘After filling the washtub, put pint of gin in the water and then wash. After washing, keep dry in the shade, not in sun, and iron from inside, not outside.’ So that was how she did it!

  Poor Maudiegirl knew she was very ill. And everybody was all mixed up in their affairs and Cecilprins was apparently mixed up in all of them too. ‘If can see one girl even married,’ she said, and Anna, being the eldest, found the spotlight turned on her.

  ‘I die and go and cannot see even one married,’ Maudiegirl would grumble and Cecilprins would make the old rattan chair creak and say: ‘What’s this silliness you’re saying. If anything wrong with you can bring doctor, no?’ But he knew. Deep inside. Over fifty years of married life and all it stood for was not lost on this man. ‘Anna doing the dance with Sinhalese fellow. So what to do? You want Sinhalese son-in-law, I suppose.

  Maudiegirl glared and let loose one of those rare shafts of wisdom that was based, even if she did not know it, on pure logic. ‘So never mind. You thinking we are special or something? Good to go to top market buying bombili (the dried ‘Bombay duck’—a thin ell-like fish that is found in abundance in Indian waters) from Sinhalese man. Good to get children’s bicycle made by Sinhalese man. Good to eat rice and curry and stringhoppers (steamed circlets of flour—a favourite breakfast dish in Sri Lanka) like Sinhalese man. When want to cut tree in the backside you call Sinhalese man, no? Firewood bringing Sinhalese man. Plucking coconuts who? Dhoby who? All over people Sinhalese, no? Father telling in church love the neighbour. See, will you, who neighbour is. Sinhalese, no? Never mind if Anna wants to marry that Colon somebody. Can write, can typewrite, even. And in the radio, no? How he do such good job if he not good man? That day you telling how you chase him from office. How if you can go to his office and he chase you? He put switch and then everybody hear on radio. Now Anna old also. And all the other girls also getting old. You want to put them in convents? And when I die who will look after Dunnyboy? He mad a little, no? If children marry can even give small room to Dunnyboy to stay also. What you’re thinking, I don’t know.’

  Cecilprins heard her out and grew terribly afraid. And Anna’s happiness became the need of the hour.

  ‘That bicycle clip fellow still coming to see you?’

  Anna was not going to admit to anything. Colontota turned up as usual but he wasn’t the same man. Jittery, she thought. Didn’t even hold her hand. He would keep looking over his shoulder and wanted assurance that no other member of the von Bloss family was within a quarter-mile radius. But he kept coming, and as Anna correctly estimated, ‘If coming then he still love me.’ Which was correct, but she was not going to trust the home folk any further.

  ‘Nobody coming to see me and I’m not going to see anybody and if anybody come anyway that’s not anybody here’s business.’

  Eventually it was impressed on the angry woman that Bicycle Clips was not out of favour. ‘Nobody saying anything against, no?’ said Totoboy, ‘That day Papa say he got angry because he seeing you so long and even you not saying anything. Going on behind the back, no? From the start should have told. But that’s never mind now. Papa is all right. Ask and see if you like. You tell that fellow to come here and see how Papa will say hullo and give chair to sit.’

  Anna was doubtful. ‘Easy to say. Saw what happened to George? When Mister Colontota come that Sonnaboy will hammer for sure.’

  Sonnaboy came up wearing a towel. ‘Hammer whom?’

  Totoboy hastened to explain.

  Sonnaboy grinned. ‘You tell to come. And tell to marry you. If all you buggers hurry up and get married I can also marry, no?’

  So, after an hour’s cajoling, twenty-three minutes coaxing and fourteen minutes of earnest assurances that nothing would happen to him that would merit plastic surgery, Colontota entered the von Bloss home.

  He was, as Leah noted, ‘dressed to kill’ and the entire family awaited him while ‘our Anna’ wore her Blessed Virgin blue dress with the French lace edging and Cecilprins polished his spectacles for the umpteenth time and Elsie sulked because Eric had been told to stay away because of ‘important family business and not for him to come and listen’.

  Maudiegirl, reclining on the lounger had insisted that the large Victorian print titled ‘Two Strings to her Beau’ which hung in the living-room be replaced with a picture of our Lady of Perpetual Succour. A picture of St. Cecilia playing the organ was brought from the bedroom to a spot near the altar. A calendar advertising Brand’s Gravy and Giblet Soup was sent on temporary transfer to the kitchen and a shocking picture of Saint Lawrence being roasted on a gridiron by a bunch of unshaven Roman soldiers was installed.

  ‘Must show we are good Catholic family,’ Maudiegirl said, ‘And you remember to tell about Anna going church and all. Sunday, First Friday, Feast Days, everything,’ she warned Cecilprins, ‘Put the foot down. All well and good getting married but if she going Godless afterwards I will curse from my grave, wait and see.’

  Everything went swimmingly for the first one hundred and seventy-six seconds. This was the period of ‘hullo, hullo’ and ‘How, men?’ and ‘No harm if you call me Colon but Anna always says Mister Colon,’ and Cecilprins saying, ‘That’s because my girls always brought up to show respect.’

  Sonnaboy sized up the visitor and there was something about the fellow he didn’t like. He decided that this particular bull needed to be taken by the horns, firmly. ‘Never mind all that,’ he said, ‘Are you going to marry Anna or not?’

  That’s when Colontota made his big mistake. It flashed upon him that the family now wanted him to marry Anna. So he was at an advantage, eh? Good. Now he can make the old man squirm . . . .

  ‘That day your father is very rude to me and saying he will break my legs and all. And after I do the right thing. Went to see him to tell. And he telling me to find Sinhalese girl and throwing my parents’ buffaloes in my face. If I marry . . . .’

  ‘What do you mean if? Why you came, then, came to if and but? You want to marry Anna or not?’

  ‘But—’

  Sonnaboy rose. ‘Again you’re saying but. Asking simple question, no? Tell, will you, like a man.’

  Colontota paled. ‘What I mean is how quick to threaten me as if I doing something wrong. I do nothing bad. Now I think your father sorry he talk to me like that.’

  ‘So why you come today, then? Asking for the last time if you going to marry Anna.’

  ‘But have lot of things to sort out,’ Colontota objected, ‘That’s why I came.’

  ‘Can do all that afterwards. First must know if you want to marry Anna, no?’

  ‘If your father—’

  Sonnaboy’s right hand shot out, a fist closed over the front of his shirt and tie and Colontota was hauled out of his chair squeaking in alarm. ‘Wasting our bloody time. From time you come only iff
ing and butting. You think you can play games here!’ Colontota was shaken violently and he kicked out in desperation. Thud! The blow seemed to send the top of his head into his shoulders. Anna’s screams split the welkin as she leapt upon Sonnaboy’s back. Totoboy tried to intervene, received a whallop on the side of his face and lost interest in the rest of the evening. Colontota was hauled around the veranda and lambaced at half second intervals and the stream of Sinhala invective was effectively dammed by a punch that split his upper lip and dislodged a tooth. Finally, when it was deemed that the neighbours had been sufficiently entertained and that Colontota would survive although any possibility of kissing Anna would have to be shelved for a fortnight, the man was dragged in, laid on the divan in the hall and fomented with a hot towel and dosed with brandy, which added to his misery since that was the first and only time in his life that an intoxicant had been poured down his throat. He kicked out feebly, then flopped back to lie as stiff as a board.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Anna howled, ‘I knowed it, I knowed it. Everybody promise and I tell to come and now you kill him. I’ll jump in the well. Let go! I going to jump!’

  ‘So jump,’ Sonnaboy snarled.

  ‘Hooooo! Now want to kill me also.’

  Dunnyboy wanted to know what was the four-letter word for what a diva sang in an opera. He was not interested in the proceedings. Lately he had decided that fame and fortune lay in winning the enticing cash prizes offered for all-corrects in the Sunday newspaper crossword puzzles. He would hunch over the puzzles for days, filling words that had to be from some Martian dialect and energetically scratching his testicles for inspiration.