The Jam Fruit Tree

by Carl Muller

  Anna, sweeping in in a wave of white satin and lace and cheese biscuit crumbs in her bodice was worried about this visit to Father Romiel. ‘Will scold for sure, anney.’

  ‘Don’t talk rot, child. Papa going with you, no? Only give blessing and tell Colon also to kneel, right?’

  Colontota had also hoped that this church business would be forgotten. Senior was curious. ‘Where they want to go now?’ he asked, ‘Without eating, even, going for honeymoon?’

  Cecilprins tried to explain.

  ‘So that is Anna’s church. So what for my son going. Apoi, if head priest in temple hears about this, thoppi (literally ‘big hat’—a colloquial Sinhala expression meaning that it will be a disaster) for us also’.

  ‘So you also come and see,’ Cecilprins invited, ‘and not even going inside church. Only to mission house where priest live.’

  Colontota’s mother, a doll-faced woman with a derririere that had Dunnyboy in ecstasy, smiled. ‘If not going inside church then no harm. What your priest will do?’

  ‘Give blessing. And pray that they have happy married life. That is good thing, no?’

  Senior nodded slowly. ‘No harm if I come also?’

  So Cecilprins, Anna, Colontota and his father and sister chugged to St. Mary’s where Father Romiel emerged only after the mission house bell had been rung thrice, and looked them over narrowly. ‘Smelling of spirits you come,’ he told Cecilprins severely. ‘So this is the couple? Wait a minute,’ and he popped off to pop back wearing a purple stole and carrying a carafe of holy water and sprinkler.

  ‘What’s that thing?’ Colontota senior asked.

  ‘For putting water.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘So kneel,’ Father Romiel said and Anna sank to the floor while Colontota looked uncertainly around. Cecilprins prodded his son-in-law in the ribs. ‘Kneel, men, going to bless you, no?’

  Colontota knelt and behind him his father knelt as well and grinned: ‘Put for me also.’

  Father Romiel stared. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘That is bridegroom’s father.’

  ‘And he is also Buddhist?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘So you see? He has more respect than you. Wants to receive my blessing with his son and new daughter. And you standing and smelling of alcohol. Kneel down all!’ the priest roared and Colontota’s sister and Cecilprins dropped to the floor as though someone had given them smart kicks behind the knees. Calling on the Lord in Latin, Father Romiel sternly asked that He look upon this bunch of misfits and favour them with His divine mercy and did a histrionic ‘in nomine patris’ and emptied the dispenser, dashing it this way and that until he had soaked them all considerably. ‘I bless you because this is all I can do,’ he said, regarding the empty carafe ruefully, ‘You, child,’ addressing Anna, ‘chose to marry this . . . this . . . a Buddhist and have denied yourself the grace of a sanctified marriage. But I will pray for you and may God have mercy on you. So now you can go,’ and that unpleasant duty over, he hopped off and they all got up and Cecilprins said, ‘Foo! Like as if he poured with a bucket.’

  Back home Anna was told to get out of her bridal dress ‘otherwise sure to spill some curry on it, damn careless woman, no?’ and a bunch of ladies huddled in the bedroom to watch the bride change and finger the lace and feel the satin and say ooh and aah and giggle and whisper. Mavis Lappan couldn’t contain herself. ‘So what you do when he coming to sleep in the night?’

  Anna turned scarlet. ‘Chee, men, as if you don’t know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lalla Boniface, ‘but Sinhalese fellows have black ones, no? And long also.’

  ‘So never mind. Anyway, Mister Colontota not so dark,’ said Anna.

  ‘That’s sure, quite fair he is. Must be doing same way like Burghers, no?’

  ‘I don’t know, men . . . here, take out this hooks ‘n’ eye . . . I’ll just wait and let him do.’

  ‘Anney, you must tell us when you come again, right?’ and all twinkled with laughter and Anna kept blushing and saying ‘all right, all right’ and Dora Markwick sighed and said, ‘I also feel like going with Sinhalese boy. Or Muslim.’

  ‘Chee, now because Anna marry Sinhalese, everybody getting mad or what?’

  ‘Burgher boys nice, men. But when marry only want to drink and do. Can see, no? Even my mama say can’t with Papa. Only last week she telling that she tired of going to maternity home and Papa don’t know when to stop.’

  ‘Yes, men. And when coming home drunk won’t even eat and sleep. Same thing at home,’ said Bunty Todd, ‘Whole time squeezing his thing and saying where’s your mother. No shame, men.’

  And while all these delicious titbits were tossed around and Anna wore a pale-blue silk and Maudiegirl charged in to carefully take away the wedding dress for airing and wrapping in blue crepe paper to keep it fresh and white, the drinks had begun to circulate with a vengeance and Colontota senior had made several trips to the back room where Totoboy plied the poor man with all manner of ‘rheumatic cures’. It turned out that a lot of other members of the clan were also willing to imbibe, provided their drinks were sufficiently disguised, so the weirdest concoctions were on offer to be snapped up, tossed down the hatch with equally weird grimaces and loud lip-smackings.

  Colontota senior would weave in, squint and point at the rows of bottles. He went, apparently by the colours. ‘Give that and . . . that,’ and Totoboy, ever obliging, would go half and half on sweetened Irish gin and vintage port. The old man would swallow this in a long gulp, vibrate like an electric eel on the prod and steer an erratic course back to the revels.

  And revels they were. The band had arrived: three boys in bow ties, two fiddles and a tom-tom and Jessie Ferdinands produced a harmonica and Finny Jackson played the spoons, clickety-clack on his knees and a rollicking kaffrinja set everybody in motion with Colontota’s uncles hitching up their sarongs and jerking around shouting ‘adi-ji! adi-ji!’ and the ladies holding the sides of their skirts and high-stepping to the beat. Colontota said he did not know how to dance, which announcement was greeted by shouts of disapproval because the wedding couple simply had to take a turn. So he was dragged to the floor where he clutched blindly at Anna and the fiddlers played a sonorous ‘Daisy, Daisy’ in three-four time and Anna humped him around quite unceremoniously. Totoboy, quite unblushingly, cut loose with the parody:

  Daisy, Daisy, show me your grassy land,

  until Maudiegirl clouted him across the ear and everybody grinned and ladies covered their smiles with their fans and Anna dragged Colontota feverishly around the floor as though she was sweeping the kerb. Dunnyboy, meanwhile, had been put out of action on Maudiegirl’s strict orders. The good woman, who had her eyes everywhere, noted her son’s fascination with Mrs Colontota’s beam-end and wisely plied him with a huge whisky saying, ‘Drink all like a good boy,’ and Dunnyboy, after years of Mama’s castor oil and Epsom salts and white mixture, obliged without a murmur and went to sleep with his trouser buttons open. ‘Saw him opening his Galle Face. Shame, no, if took out his thing in front of everyone.’

  So the fiddlers scraped away and everybody cavorted around as merry as could be and snatches of this, that and the other rose to the rafters and all manner of yokels walked in from the lane and hung around under the jam fruit tree to watch and point and cackle and say, ‘What about small one for us also.’

  Merriment hit a high spot with ‘Hands knees and boomps-a-daisy’ with the ‘boooomps’ bringing hips and buttocks into swivelling contact and the ladies getting the better of the men every time. George de Mello flapped his arms like a penguin on pension and bawled:

  Hai, ho, sister Bubby’s brand new bicy-kell,

  All the buggers coming round to ring the bloody bell.

  Totoboy, in a state bordering delirium tremens was howling:

  Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee.

  until Sonnaboy told him to shut up, ‘You thought this is a bloody funeral, you damn fool!’

&nbs
p; Viva insisted that there was a voice breathing over Eden and old Simmons was giving a gamey rendition of ‘Sweet Violets’. Then, as if on signal all began:

  O Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling . . .

  while Cecilprins insisted that somebody must sing his favourite, ‘Come into the garden, Maud’, and Maudiegirl would blush and said, ‘Good for him to say, with all the work in the kitchen.’

  ‘All the work’ was the understatement of the year. Never had a kitchen in a Dehiwela home been so overworked, so hectic, yet so perfect in what it produced. Maudiegirl had this passion. A meal, be it the humblest of sorts, had to be a work of art. On the wall beside the big, circular kitchen clock was her famous card, much admired and much copied out by all the ladies of Dehiwela who had been privileged enough to visit her kitchen. On the card were Maudiegirl’s Golden Rules, and deserve mention:

  Without CLEANLINESS and PUNCTUALITY good cooking is impossible

  Leave nothing DIRTY. CLEAN AND CLEAR as you go

  A time for everything, and EVERYTHING IN TIME

  A good cook wastes NOTHING

  An hour LOST IN THE MORNING has to be run after ALL DAY

  Haste WITHOUT HURRY saves worry, fuss and flurry

  Stew BOILED is stew SPOILED

  STRONG fire for roasting; CLEAR fire for broiling

  Wash vegetables in THREE waters

  Boil fish QUICKLY, meat SLOWLY

  With such inspiring admonitions, it would be natural that for this wedding lunch, Maudiegirl outdid herself. Each hour by roaring fireplaces—not all roared, though, some hissing, some spitting, others burning placidly, almost morose in mood—made her face redder and redder until she looked as well done as Saint Lawrence in the picture. When the tables were covered and chairs pushed and pulled around and guests swarmed around to push and pull each other around as well, Cecilprins rose to say grace and nobody took any notice for flushed, blousy women, their breasts bulging over low-cut jackets began to stock the tables with grave dignity. The old faithfuls were there: great bins of yellow rice studded with cashew nuts, plums and stoned French olives; pappadams in lined wire baskets and deep plates of steaming almond soup. The latter, Maudiegirl said, ‘Was to settle all the drinking and give good appetite,’ and even the Colontotas quaffed deep and long and never minded that twelve pounds of veal and a large chunk of lamb had been boiled for an eternity and the gravy strained off as the base for the soup.

  ‘Shah! Very fine this soup. What have in it?’

  ‘Over three pounds almonds, child. All pounded and putting also cream and eggs and cloves. How you like it?’

  ‘Pukka. Can drink bucketful.’

  ‘Apoi, if drinking like that, how to eat. Have fish for you people and beef for others. Only fish had to do in big hurry because how to know you not beef-eating, no?’

  Old Colontota was gallantry plus. ‘If fish like this soup, I eat everything you put here. Wait and see.’

  Dispensing with further polite conversation—although the chronicler must mention that George de Mello fell asleep between the sixty-third and seventy-fourth minute with his face in his plate of pork—it must be emphasized that Anna’s wedding lunch was a smash hit. The head and shoulders of seer arrived in Italian sauce, garnished with finely-minced devilled pork and lettuce and lemon and tomato slices. Over the whole, Maudiegirl had brushed garlic vinegar and a coating of cream and a dusting of powdered sugar. She tried to warn the Colontotas about the pig meat in the garnish. She was blithely ignored. When the salmon arrived, brushed over with egg, basted in butter and floating in thick anchovy sauce, their cup of happiness spilled over. The salted herrings in their bed of bay leaves, with their red-gold skins after an open grilling and sprinkled with Cayenne pepper, were greeted vociferously; and the red mullet, too, had been grilled in oil-paper wrapping, which held Maudiegirl’s special mixture of parsley, pepper, salt, lemon juice and a tumbler of sherry.

  It was a masterful, monumental, marvellous mastodon of a meal. The distinctive brown gravy made the meats simply delicious. Home-made bacon sauce, brandy sauce and, of course, the Dutch Sauce (tarragon vinegar, flour, butter, yolks of eggs, lemon juice and water) went equally well with the meat and the fish. There was Tartar mustard for the pork and brown onion sauce for the turkey that couldn’t have looked better in its bier of mushrooms and fried breadcrumbs. The side of beef had given rise to a host of preparations—curried, broiled, a fricassee, an aromatic stew, a ragout, roast ribs and Maudiegirl’s special salt beef which, twenty days ago, was a twenty-pound round of flank, shiny with treacle. Maudiegirl had kept rubbing in the honey and turning the beef for days, after which she had carefully wiped it and begun the thankless task of kneading in the saltpetre and salt, turning and pressing in the preservative until just last week she had rapped it with her knuckles, given a grunt of satisfaction and begun the smoking and boiling which took all of three days. Then to the large press (who could boast of a salt-beef press today?) where it lay, palpitating until the wedding morning.

  There were rissoles and baked veal, neatly-stewed fillets of veal and a special mince with macaroni and large dishes of young carrots and new potatoes. The lamb was braised and part of it went into Maudiegirl’s favourite Dutch Stew with side dishes of asparagus. And there was excellent pickled pork and stone jars of ground mustard relish with large peppers, spring onions, finely sliced carrots and lean, fiery chillies just turning red. And so they ate, and belched, and ate again and Cecilprins could hardly believe that so much could be consumed by so many so quickly.

  The shadow of the jam fruit tree lengthened slowly, falling across the boundary wall and it was time for Anna and Colontota to leave. Already a bullock-cart was trundling its way to Wellawatte, piled high with all manner of boxes and packages—the brushes and candlestands and pails and basins, the wedding presents, and piles of wrapped-up clothes and linen and curtaining. Cecilprins, feeling quite reckless, had thrown in the household egg-rack and tumbler-rack, and the umbrella-stand in the veranda. ‘You take and go, will you, never mind us.’Viva rode the bullock-cart to show the carter the way while Totoboy, totally useless after consuming enough liquor to sink the Queen Mary was sleeping the sleep of the replete.

  They drove off to Colontota’s home after a screeching farewell where Maudiegirl struck her breast and declared: ‘Lost to us now you are,’ and, ‘For this, no, I bring you up for ‘nother man to take and use,’ and Leah and Elsie bawled and Maudiegirl cuffed them and said, ‘What for you crying? Tomorrow day after you also go and leave your poor mama alone, no?’ And they all boo-hooed and clung to each other and Colontota looked uncomfortably around and felt like a criminal.

  Such a show! But earlier, when the tables had been cleared Maudiegirl had dragged Anna to the bedroom and given her a big rosary with a crucifix as large as a handgun and said: ‘Now say your prayers every evening, did you hear, and three Hail Mary’s when Angelus goes and when it is time you first ask the Holy Mother to help you and then don’t be too forward, miss. Just lie down and listen to what he say. Don’t try to show you know all about it. Just do what he tells. And when he get inside you cry and tell it paining, remember, because that make him very proud because all these buggers the same. Telling love, love, but very happy when hurt you. Thinking they big men if make the wife suffer. And will pain, anyway, but not much so don’t worry because this is first time, no? Nobody getting inside you yet, no?’

  Anna, red-faced, gulped. ‘No, Mama.’

  ‘That’s good. Worried I was about that Dunnyboy, but he little mad, no?’

  Anna gulped again. Dunnyboy had had his moments but she was quite certain that as a virgo she was pretty well intacta.

  ‘That’s good. These Sinhalese people funny about these things. Coming in the morning to see if have blood. Hopper woman telling me yesterday. But I told that Colon, if his people coming between and telling anything will send Sonnaboy to hammer. And he tell his people won’t come too much. They go back anyway and only you and he in ho
use. And getting servant woman also for cooking and pounding and grinding and washing chatti-pots (earthenware cooking vessel) and all, so you have easy life I think. Only you work also and don’t just sit in chair like pudding and get fat. Already you too fat and some men like when young but when getting old what?’

  When more crackers had been lit and the entire lane had reassembled to see them go and all manner of snide remarks had been made (old Simmons’ stock advice: ‘Just keep your mouth shut and your legs open, child. That’s the only way to be good wife. When my Dora died undertaker had hell of a time putting her legs together.’) and old shoes, tins and lumps of blue rag were tied to the rear bumper of the Ford, Anna and Colontota got in and everybody rushed round the car, fighting and elbowing furiously and the driver honked madly to clear the way as they waved and waved and slowly moved through the maelstrom of grinning faces and jerking arms and legs and bodies that weaved in and out, and mothers scooped up children to point and sing, ‘There, there, they going,’ and shouts of ‘Don’t break the bed’ and ‘If he too small never mind, tell to call me’.

  So Anna and Colontota went away to a childless marriage and only Father Romiel looked pleased and said it was the judgement of God and Maudiegirl wept and said, ‘How my Anna unbearable? Must be that Colontota,’ while his father shook his head and said, ‘If married girl from here will have big stomach every year. What to do? Worked in pharmacy before getting married, no? Must have swallowed something. Big pig she is. Always eating. Don’t know if when hungry ate pills in pharmacy. Saw how ate on wedding day?’

  Mrs Colontota did not hold with this. ‘She is good girl. And see how she is looking after him. Everyday buying slice of seer and making nice mirismalu (fish cooked in condiments and water without a coconut milk base) for him and not just spending. If they are happy what do we care?’

  ‘But what about me?’ Colontota senior would growl, ‘When I be a grandfather?’

  ‘For what you wanting to be grandfather?’