The Jam Fruit Tree

by Carl Muller

  The court lapped all this up and the judge, who was decked in a new white wig and looked like Robespierre of the French Revolution leaned forward to study Sonnaboy as though he was inspecting some alien life-form.

  ‘Does the defendant admit to the promise of marriage,’ the judge asked.

  Sonnaboy stifled a yawn.

  Bumpy Juriansz tabled the famous letter which was taken to the bench by a red-sashed court sergeant. This was studied.

  ‘This letter is addressed to the plaintiff’s father?’

  ‘As the natural guardian, my Lord,’ said Juriansz, ‘It is a binding promise to marry my client.’

  ‘And this was accepted?’

  Juriansz said, yes, my Lord. His client’s father wrote a letter of acceptance, a copy of which is also exhibited.

  Sonnaboy was shown his letter and grudgingly confirmed that he had written it: ‘Because he said to write, no? Said I must write because that’s the way with gentlemen.’

  ‘I see,’ said the judge, ‘and are you a gentleman, Mr von Bloss?’

  ‘I am an engine driver.’

  This raised titters of laughter which were quickly quelled by the court sergeant.

  ‘I see. I was not aware that present society makes distinction between engine drivers and gentlemen. You do admit you wrote this letter?’ Sonnaboy nodded.

  ‘And you did promise to marry the plaintiff?’

  No answer.

  ‘The defendant will please answer the bench.’

  ‘Yes. I said I will marry her. But that was before . . . .’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘Before I met Buiya.’

  The judge frowned. He decided it wiser not to pursue this line of examination. Who or what a Buiya was he didn’t wish to know. Crude fellow, this. Seemed to think he could just waltz into court—his court—with no legal representation and not a clue about how he should conduct himself. He rapped his gavel.

  ‘Does the defendant admit liability to a promise of marriage and a solemn engagement and to having given in token of such promise, a ring to the plaintiff?’

  Sonnaboy had to concede that Elaine still had his ring which had cost him thirty-six rupees and that it was generally accepted that he and Elaine were to marry. He also had to admit that as result of this contract, Elaine had eschewed the attentions of other suitors, ‘But nobody else come for half a mile near as long as I’m there,’ he grinned, and that, as would be expected, sealed his fate.

  It was taken, naturally, that Sonnaboy intimidated the ‘competition’ (which was very true, though considering Elaine’s mannish, impudent manner, was not of any considerable size), made plans to marry her, then ditched her most unceremoniously and in midstream, mind, to marry another. This cavalier attitude and conduct merited judicial censure and, as Bumpy Juriansz prayed (legally, that is) the plaintiff was awarded the princely sum of two thousand rupees and Sonnaboy was also informed that costs would run to another 125 rupees. He said he had a thousand and asked for time, whereupon he was given a month to make good the balance and so he emerged into the sunshine of Hulftsdorp a thousand rupees in debt and with thirty days to find more money.

  Sonnaboy was, by nature, a most unconcerned man. There are, it is supposed, many like this. Thirty days was a long time away. He pushed aside his need for 1125 rupees and returned to Kadugannawa where, back at work and with Beryl to care for, he put the whole unpleasant business out of his mind for the next twenty-four days. Then he began to worry and took to pacing the tiny veranda and scowling at the passing trains and generally giving his fireman a hard time. Beryl was in her seventh month. He would need money for her confinement and all the things a baby would need. He mentally consigned the entire judiciary of the island to the Kalahari. Elaine, too, could go there.

  So he didn’t appear in court and the judge was most annoyed. A writ was issued. Seize, the law decreed, the wordly goods of Sonnaboy Duncan Clarence von Bloss, Esquire; the said worldly goods and possessions would then be auctioned by the court and the sum of Rupees 1125 owing to the plaintiff and the Crown so recovered. The defendant, by his failure to appear in court and discharge his obligations is hereby called upon to pay a further sum of Rupees twenty being in the nature of a fine for wasting His Lordship’s time and giving him a headache which he certainly did not have when setting out that particular morning.

  Cecilprins, who had come to court to see how his son fared, took the afternoon train to Kandy, arriving in Kadugannawa at dinner time, wringing his hands and slumping into a chair with impending doom writ large on his face.

  Sonnaboy was astonished. ‘Came alone all the way?’ he marvelled, ‘And how you found the house?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Cecilprins panted, ‘stationmaster told. Why you didn’t come to court? Even if hadn’t the money should have come, no? And if I didn’t go how to come here and tell what they are going to do? That Juriansz fellow hell of a chap. Talking in court as if you promised to marry him! Going my lord, my lord, and crying through the nose. But I got good tip from old Bocks. You know that Bocks, no? Living in Wellawatte? He is lawyer also and met him in court, no, actually outside court when I coming out. I told how that judge said to send fiscal fellows to take everything. Everything, you hear? Even this chair I’m now sitting.’

  Sonnaboy gaped. He couldn’t make head of tail of this rigmarole and had to get the old man sorted out. Eventually, after several false starts the story became more intelligible. And advocate Cecil Bocks had given them a fine legal point of great interest. The seizers could only enter a premises through the front door. The worldly possessions they were expected to seize and carry away had to be in the premises upon their making entry and these worldly goods had to be carried out through the mode of entry, viz., the front door. If said front door remained closed, the seizers must wait opportunity when the door was opened to march in and take possession. They had no licence to force their way in or act in any manner that could be interpreted in the loosest sense as illegal, high-handed, injudicious, obstreperous or just plain ungentlemanly. Any attempt at breaking and entering was to be abhorred as highly illegal. And only the front door, mind. There was no other legal way into the house.

  Sonnaboy thought this over and saw the light. ‘You are sure that is what Bocks said?’

  Cecilprins nodded. ‘But how to know for sure. Have a lawyer here to ask?’

  Sonnaboy thought this over too. ‘Have in Kandy. Fine thing you come to tell, and this time in the night also. Now Beryl also looking worried. Bad time, no? to get upset. Bought cot also for the baby. She making all the things in pink.’

  ‘Pink!’ shouted Cecilprins, horrified, ‘What is this pink business? She also wanting a girl? My God, don’t know what’s the matter with all of you!’

  Beryl pouted. ‘So my baby, no? I told I want a girl.’

  ‘Told? Whom to tell? So what’s the harm, child, if have a boy?’

  ‘But I like a girl. Can dress her and put ringlets and bows in the hair and all.’

  Cecilprins glowered. Ringlets and bows indeed. ‘Vain I came,’ he said hollowly, ‘All the others having girls. Like measles, getting girls, girls, girls all over the place. Anyway, never mind that for now. What you going to do about this other thing? If come tomorrow or even tonight?’

  ‘Don’t open the door. Go from round and see who and if say to open the door I’ll put a clout with the molgaha (the mortar).’

  Nobody came, not the next day either, which gave Sonnaboy the opportunity to consult Josh Bevan, a Kandy lawyer who said that old Bocks was right. It was only through the front door that the law could serve itself, satiate its appetite. The back door, windows, side doors could all be left open quite invitingly. Cheered, Sonnaboy returned, banged at his front door, remembered and went round the house. Cecilprins said: ‘So how?’

  ‘It’s right. Close the front, open the back. And if we want to move the furniture out for safety can move all out from the back door and they cannot do anything.’

  Kadug
annawa hadn’t seen anything like it. The affair was talked about for months. The western railway yard, where Sonnaboy’s bungalow was situated, became a stage where all the men and women (and a fair sprinkling of pariah dogs) became merely players. First came a dirty blue fiscal lorry that wheezed and panted up the road, nearly dying of apoplexy near Dawson’s Tower. It struggled up the rise with a great clashing of gears and then coasted down to the station with a sigh that must only be reserved for the long-suffering.

  From this contraption issued four men, an official type in a khaki pith hat who held a file of papers and three burly workmen who had obviously been press ganged in order to march in at the crook of a finger and seize and carry away Sonnaboy’s movable possessions. Two station porters, doubtless instructed to keep their eyes open for such a development, immediately alerted stationmaster Thilainathan, a fussy little Tamil whose cap covered his ears. The Divisional Inspector of Mechanics, Vere Cook, was also informed. A linesman named Swaris was sent at the double to sonnaboy’s bungalow. That worthy, whose mouth was always full of chewing betel leaf, jogged up, spat a stream of betel juice on a pile of sleepers and told Sonnaboy: ‘There they coming. S.M. told to tell the front door close and our boys ready.’

  Meanwhile the eager writ-servers were in earnest conversation with Thilainathan. Apparently there was a problem. Pith Hat said he needed to take his lorry to the bungalow and Thilainathan said that, as Pith Hat could plainly see, that was an impossibility. ‘Look around,’ he invited, ‘Where’s the road? The house is between the railway lines.’

  Pith Hat puffed. ‘We have to take everything in the house. I have court order.’

  Thilainathan smiled. ‘I know, I know. But you cannot take the lorry to the house. So you tell your men to carry all the things here.’

  This, too, was not satisfactory. ‘My God, men, that will take the whole day. See how far they will have to go, up and down. And only three men.’

  ‘That,’ said Thilainathan, ‘is your problem.’

  Pith Hat suggested that the lorry could be manoeuvred along the path beside the main line to a point directly opposite the bungalow and Thilainathan told him to perish the thought.

  ‘Why? Can go that way. What’s the harm?’

  ‘Harm? Railway Ordinance. That’s the harm. Standing Orders. That’s the harm. If I allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to come into my yard and drive vehicles all over the place what do you think will happen? This is railway property. Not a thoroughfare for lorries and buses and carts and rickshaws. You are trying to set a precedent? Next time kerosene oil man will came and say he want to take his bull-and-cart.’

  ‘But this is judicial matter,’ Pith Hat bawled, ‘You cannot obstruct. You have to co-operate. I have court order.’

  Vere Cook, who was enjoying the conversation immensely, told Pith Hat what he could do with his court order and another stormy session erupted. From the east end of the platform came Alex Raymond, the Way and Works Inspector, to join the party. Also striding up was ‘Jowls’ St. John, the Mechanical Engineer, whose red nose blazed in the morning sun. Pith Hat was outgunned. Then Foreman Plate Layer Salgado reminded him that all railway property was, in a sense, private property. People paid for user’s privilege. The public, for whose purpose the railway ran, could not enter a station or board a train without a ticket. To trespass on the railway track was a punishable offence. Pith Hat conceded that this was correct.

  ‘Then where’s your platform ticket?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You people are trespassing. First thing is to buy platform tickets. So you go and do that.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No but business. I can give you in charge of Railway Security. You are trespassing.’

  ‘This is official government business,’ Pith Hat bawled.

  ‘Then where is the official government letter addressed to me requesting that you and your crew be permitted to walk all over railway property? Where?’

  Pith Hat waved the writ. Thilainathan waved it away. Vere Cook told him once again where he could put his writ. Meanwhile this platform summit had attracted all manner of people—a few interested passengers, porters and coolies, the gatekeeper and the cabinman who, like Swaris, shot a blob of betel juice close to Pith Hat’s foot and said: ‘What, gentleman, you’re saying? First ticket get and come, otherwise will chase from platform.’

  Pith Hat pointed out, shakily, that the intention was to go to Sonnaboy’s bungalow and not to dally on platforms or catch trains.

  ‘Then what for here coming?’

  ‘Because there’s no other road,’ Pith Hat hooted.

  He was advised to take his lorry and his cretins, park beside the embankment on the main road facing the bungalow and make his way down a tiny footpath. That is the way. Not this way.’

  ‘Ho! And the people in the bungalow also go up and down that hill? Even a goat cannot climb that.’

  ‘They come through the station.’

  ‘Ho!’

  ‘But they are railway employees. Other people who want to go there go on the footpath.’

  Pith Hat raised a point. ‘How they bring their furniture to the bungalow, then? They carried their things down the bank?’

  Thilainathan smiled. ‘Their furniture all came by goods wagon. The wagon was shunted to the back door and unloaded. You should have come in a wagon like wagon goods with a goods shed ticket.’ Roars of laughter greeted the look on Pith Hat’s face.

  ‘Oi!’ said the cabinman who deplored long-winded arguments, ‘Your lorry take and go. From main road go to the house.’

  ‘You will hear about this!’ Pith Hat bellowed.

  ‘I think,’ Vere Cook told the stationmaster, ‘this constitutes a public nuisance. What do you think? Shall we hand them over to the police?’

  The porters crowded in. Passengers pushed into the tightening circle to stare at these ‘Colombo Fellows’ who had come with some crazy ‘Colombo ideas.’

  ‘What they trying to do?’

  ‘Mad devils, on the railway, lorry trying to take.’

  A couple of mongrels who hung around the platform canteen and never needed to buy platform tickets also nosed in to sniff at ankles and bristle and bare teeth at each other. Eventually the fiscal team retreated to a round of cheers, hoots, jeers, whistles and clapping, while Vere Cook went to Sonnaboy’s, picking his way along the tracks while the fiscal lorry backed out, turned and rattled to a halt beside a fifty-foot cutting which was directly above the bungalow. The moving men were visibly moved. How, they wished to know, could anything be lugged up such a precipice. In easier circumstances Pith Hat would have entertained such objections as more than reasonable, but he was as mad as a hornet and determined that justice would be served. Once in, he would strip that bungalow clean. ‘We will go in and take everything, ‘he shrilled.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes! Beds, cupboards, almirahs, stoves, tables, chairs, everything.’

  ‘And bring to lorry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How? Up and down this?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Gentleman is mad or what?’

  ‘That is what we came for! We have a job to do!’

  Mutters and scowls and the blackest of looks accompanied them as they warily stepped out to the steep footpath that necessitated single file descent. Then Pith Hat froze. The damp, tall undergrowth was thick with leeches. Some had already swung aboard and latched on to elbows, and gone exploring under trouser legs and inside socks.

  Meanwhile it seemed that all of Kadugannawa, alerted to what promised to be a merry morning’s entertainment, had begun to make tracks to Sonnaboy’s bungalow. The postmaster, some off-duty policemen, Joronis who operated a sleazy tea kiosk, a Public Works Department overseer and his men who left off inspecting the road, the resthouse keeper, a gang of carters and all manner of citizens who considered it their lawful duty to gather round and watch. A fruit seller who rejoiced in the name of Sarnelis brought along a bag of avocad
o pears. He thought it was a party of sorts and being a considerate soul, felt that a contribution would be in order.

  Sonnaboy sat on a shunt track and watched the road and the tall blade grass of the embankment nod this way and that as the swearing, slapping, panting fiscal men plunged through, now with a long slither, now with a gravelly slide on a path that was ideally suited for the nocturnal ramblings of a porcupine. Eventually they broke through to the main line amidst a wave of encouraging cheers from the assembled Kadugannawans although many were holding their bellies and laughing like a chorus line of hyenas. Old Jossie Nona, who supplied hoppers to the platform canteen cackled like one of Macbeth’s witches. ‘Hee, hee, hee, look will you those lunatics. Ammo, leeches eating for sure.’

  Limping slightly, Pith Hat crossed the tracks to the veranda and tried the front door. Locked. He peered through the window. Not bad, the furniture. ‘Hoy!’ he called, ‘Open this door.’ Nobody did. Pith Hat banged angrily, and Beryl said she suddenly felt ill and had cramp in her legs and swayed through the back door to flop down in the little hall. Sonnaboy called in two railway types. They carried up the chair with Beryl in it and went out. Pith Hat, at the window, fumed. ‘Hoy! Where are you taking that chair? You bring it back, do you hear! And open this bloody door!’ A porter who came in to grin, made a rude gesture with a half-closed fist and a finger which told Pith Hat that he was pitted against men with imagination. He nearly choked in fury and went back to assaulting the door. His crew, meanwhile, sat on the front steps and picked off leeches which had shown grim tenacity and the urge to explore all manner of unmentionable places.

  Carrying Beryl out gave Sonnaboy an idea. He would carry out all the furniture and, hopefully, drive Pith Hat mad. One fiscal officer going back to Colombo in a strait jacket would show that judge what he was up against. The crowd was delighted. They trooped in en masse to quickly empty the house before Pith Hat’s popping eyes.