by Carl Muller
Three drinks later, Totoboy joins the family for the 11 p.m. walk to St. Mary’s after a hazy explanation that Iris and the children are at her uncle’s in Havelock Road and will come to the church. There, he falls asleep and snores loud and long while everyone tries to drown him with spirited renderings of ‘Adeste Fideles’ and ‘Joy to the World’. But he wakes up when it is all over to stumble out and join in the waves of wishes and kisses and embraces outside the church and singing out ‘Happy Christmas’ to everyone who swims into view.
This is what the children enjoy most. Knots of small boys are lighting crackers and Roman candles and sparklers and the girls are admiring each others Christmas dresses and everyone is grinning and yawning and saying ‘same to you, same to you’ and boyfriends are stealing swift kisses in the long shadows of the trees in Lauries Lane.
Elsie had herded her family in and out of church like a female warden from Belsen camp. Noella, who sat next to the Speldewinde boy, was hauled out of her seat and pushed between Ian and Dorcas while the boy, treated to Elsie’s ‘look’, paled, rose, trod on Mrs Misso’s new shoes, and scuttled off. Finally, with Beryl carrying a sleeping Heather and Sonnaboy carrying Diana, the family returned to 18th Lane and on the way there was a road-up sign where some sort of water mains repair was in progress. Totoboy was entranced by the red Municipal lanterns that hung around the makeshift barrier around the excavation. He was, as he explained later, in a Christmassy mood. He had insisted, in a nasal B flat, that the shepherds washed their socks by night and decided that these lanterns were Heaven’s gift to midnight revellers. He took one and urged other pedestrians to help themselves. So six jolly men with six road lanterns wobbled bravely on, shouting ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’. Iris and the children followed for they would all see Christmas morning in at Sonnaboy’s it being ‘out of the question, men, to go to Dehiwela at this time, no?’ So it was wine and rich cake and Peak Freans crackers and cheese and everybody bedded wherever it suited them and slept like babes until the police pounded on the door at eight o’clock.
The law was not pleased. It seemed that other revellers in infinitely worse condition than Totoboy, had ignored the road-up sign which they had regarded as the Colombo Municipality’s impediment to progress, and fallen into the excavation. That, in itself was regarded as one of the hazards of a silent night, holy night, but when it was discovered that the bottom of the pit contained a batter-like mixture of mud and water, their howls had been pitiful to hear. Inspector Leembruggen of the Bambalapitiya police, who superintended the rescue, wanted to know where the red lanterns were. ‘Find those lanterns,’ he snarled, ‘and tell this lot to go home and bathe. God! the sight of you. And mud inside your socks also. All drunk, I suppose.’
‘So Christmas, no?’ one mud-streaked moron said.
‘So Joseph also putting a drink in the manger and chasing the cattle? Go home or I’ll lock all you buggers up.’
Some inquiry was necessary and a stroll down 18th Lane, and there, on the garden wall, where Totoboy & Co. had deposited them, were the lanterns.
Sonnaboy opened the door and looked at the constables interestedly. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said.
‘Where from on your wall came these lanterns?’
‘Lanterns?’
‘These lanterns. On your wall had.’
‘Come, come and sit. Somebody must have kept and gone. Street boys work, must be. Last time took my flower-pots and put in the next door garden.’
The policemen nodded at each other. Boys, they agreed, will be boys.
Sonnaboy warmed to his theme. ‘Why, you remember when there was a board advertising that some land was to be sold?’
‘Where, here in Bambalapitiya?’
‘No, in Dehiwela. Had a board. Land in Campbell place going to cut in parts and sell. Telling people to come and book their piece of land early.’
One policeman nodded wisely. ‘Ah yes, have like that boards in lot of places.’
‘So somebody take the board in the night and put outside the cemetery.’
The policemen stared, then began to cackle. ‘Hee, hee, that is fine thing. Maru (expressive Sinhala word that could hazily mean ‘tophole’ or ‘super’) devils, these fellows. So anyway you did not see anything last night?’
‘No, men. All went to church and came two-three o’clock and still sleeping. What about a cake piece. Sit, sit, I’ll bring and come.’
Inside, Carloboy informed that Uncle Totoboy had seen the police and dived for cover.
‘Where?’
‘In the room. Under the bed.’
Sonnaboy grinned. ‘Go and tell not to come out. Say police came to take him to the station for taking lanterns and are waiting to catch him.’
After double helpings of Christmas cake and biscuits the policemen left and Totoboy, doubled up under the bed and groaning that he had cramps on his cramps, was encouraged to stay put because quite extraordinarily, the police knew that he was the culprit and were anxious to ask him why. So Totoboy crouched and groaned for a full hour and the children began to bounce on the mattress to his added discomfiture and had him wailing: ‘Stop that, my God you bloody buggers, jumping on my bloody spine, no? You wait, I’ll Christmas you.’ When he was told to come out, he did so with a barrage of oohs and aahs and needed two large drinks to put him right.
The chronicler has taken his readers through a Burgher wedding and a Burgher funeral. So why not a Burgher Christmas? Here, too, the seat of operations is the kitchen, and the most important item of all—the Christmas cake—is made in early November so that all the brandy and arrack that is liberally mixed in has time to take hold and give it the body it must possess. The making of the Christmas cake is an occassion where everybody needs to stick an oar in. Leah would run into Elsie. ‘So how? When are you making your cake?’
‘Thought of next Sunday, child. You can come, no?’
‘Anney, I also thought to make mine next Sunday.’
‘But Anna also coming. How about if you make this Sunday? I’ll tell Anna and Beryl also to come. Can ask Iris also but that wretch has got piles of sewing to do for Christmas. Must be making enough money, men. Must see the amount of people coming for Christmas sewing.’
‘Yes, men. I also told to do my dress. Charging seven rupees. One thing, she is pukka dressmaker but won’t put a stitch without the money. You heard what happened to Sophie?’
‘Sophie? Sophie who?’
‘Sophie Juriansz, men, in Hampden Lane. Gave Iris cloth to make a dress. Iris said eight rupees. Full flared skirt and all with lining and big bow in the back and brought crinoline lady cutwork pieces and told to put round the skirt. Gave Iris two rupees and said will pay balance when fit on.’
‘So, so?’
‘So Iris make the dress and Sophie go for fit on and saying this is not right and this is crooked and the yoke is cut wrong and all sorts of things and then telling never mind, now that it is finished I’ll take and go but how to wear when it is not done properly and then tried to take dress without paying the six rupees.’
Elsie laughed. ‘That Sophie to pay? I know, no. Always hard up. So Iris gave the dress?’
‘Just the Iris to give like that. Said, if don’t pay, no dress. Then Sophie began screaming and saying Iris is hopeless tailor and in vain her cloth and all.’ Leah paused to wipe her eyes and Elsie said: ‘Wonder Iris kept quiet.’
Leah hooted. ‘What to keep quiet? You know Iris, no? Took the dress to the kitchen and put it in the fireplace:’
‘No!’
‘Yes, men. Into the fireplace!’
‘My Jesus! So what did Sophie do?’
‘What to do? Started crying and ran on the road and shouting that Iris robbed her and Iris go to the gate and shouting what for you are screaming, you bloody bitch, who is your bloody mother? You know who your bloody mother is? And then she also get on the road and should have seen the way Sophie ran and should have heard the way Iris shouting. My God, men, the dirty words. I’m th
inking how Totoboy has to put up with all this.’
So with all the delicious tittle and tattle, Sunday becomes cake-making day at Leah’s and Marlene and Ivor are in their element as all manner of delicious things are being chopped up: seedless raisins, sultanas, mixed glace fruit which usually consists of pineapple, apricot and quince; preserved ginger and chow chow; mixed peel and glace cherries; blanched almonds and cashew nuts and lemon rind. Elsie has this talent for the chopping and the cutting and sets to work with an awesome concentration. She keeps up a steady stream of gossip as she chops up the raisins and sultanas, cuts the glace fruit into tiny squares and having drained the syrup from the ginger and chow chow, subjects them, too, to a click-clack treatment on the chopping board, and then to the nuts and the halving of the cherries. Beulah is told to beat eggs, which she does with a most mournful look.
When all this is done, the fruits and nuts are put into a huge bowl and Leah (the expert in the lacing of the mixture) is summoned with her pint of arrack and flask of brandy to decide on just how much of each should be poured in. It’s an art, of course, and in goes the arrack . . . just so . . . and the brandy is dashed in with care. Holy water could not be sprinkled with such loving precision and care. ‘Now, cover and keep,’ Leah says and the bowl is placed between two large clay pots of cold water, ‘The arrack and brandy will soak in much faster,’ Leah explains, although nobody knows why this is so.
Anna is the grater and grinder. She sets to work on lemon rind and cardamoms, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and doles out careful measures of vanilla, almond and rose essences, honey, semolina, butter and sugar. Elsie, meanwhile sits back with a large mug of tea and says: ‘Every year this dance, no? And see the amount of work. Next year feel like buying a Elephant House cake and serving.’
Anna says: ‘Yes, child, but won’t have everything like what we make, no? And you know, no, how our devils go and talk. Stretch the hand and take, and then go and say cake is hopeless and must have put poonac (cattle cake mixture).’
‘Hah! As if I don’t. Damn cheek. Last year that Mrs Toussaint came and my God, the way she ate. No shame, men, asking and eating. My, your cake is nice, I think I’ll have another piece—as sweet as you please. What, child, if gobbling like that how to keep to serve everybody who comes?’
Leah nods. ‘And not enough the people we have. That Beryl’s children are another lot. Carloboy especially. Taking cake and giving the dog, men. Felt like giving him a thundering slap last year. See, will you, the price of things now.’
Anna says dolefully: ‘Other people’s cake everybody wants to eat. But when go to visit they say my, why you waited so long to come? Now even the cake is finished.’
They get together over the cake mixture, creaming butter and sugar and adding egg yolk and Beulah is pinched and told to ‘beat, men, beat’. Anna adds the rind and spices, the flavourings and essences and honey and Beulah goes on stirring and stirring until she begins to sniffle and Elsie drags her away. ‘Bloody useless lump. Now cry into the cake if you can,’ and takes the wooden ladle and stirs with a great huffing and puffing and swirling blobs of the mixture to the floor where the cat waits, doubtless for this manna from Heaven. When the semolina is added, Leah takes over and Beulah is told to whip up some white of egg ‘or you’ll get this whole pan on your head, miss!’
The trick is in the stirring, for this perpetual motion needs to go on until Leah decrees that the fruit, steeped in liquor, is now ready to be mixed in. This is now Leah’s operation, after she has washed her hands thoroughly and scrubbed them dry on a clean towel. Carloboy had been appalled to see Aunty Leah at work last year (when the in-laws had gathered to make Beryl’s cake) and the sight must have prompted him to give his cake to the dog. There was this vision of Aunty Leah, both hands in the cake mixture up to her elbows, squeezing and squishing great gobs of chopped fruit into the gooey mess.
‘Nothing like putting the hands for this,’ Leah would say. Fingers could scrunch the fruit into the cake mixture best and it was much easier than using a spoon. In fact, the chronicler learns that to this day professional pastry cooks DO use their hands—both hands—but to Carloboy it didn’t seem right at all. He told Diana: ‘Chee, see what she is doing. When she goes to the lavatory, washing the back with the left hand; and now putting it into our cake.’ Diana looked positively ill at this information and urinated . . . naturally.
As would be imagined, it had to be a very big cake and the mixing was done in a great-grandfather of a pan. After Leah had done her damndest, scraping each finger against the side of the pan so that nothing, but nothing, went waste, stiff-beaten egg white is folded into the mixture and the large cake trays are brought out and lined with grease-proof paper and the mixture poured in.
The men are then assembled, for no home oven could accommodate such cakes which have spread to two and even three oversized trays, each like a goodish-sized drawer. This used to make a pretty picture, and usually at dusk, when, from many Burgher homes, men and boys would fare forth, laden cake trays borne carefully on their heads, to the nearest bakery where the trays are accepted, labelled and a collection time given. There, the cakes are baked and then carried back to be checked carefully and the women are satisfied that the cakes are rich and moist and not over-browned. Inspection over, each cake is then doused with more brandy and readied for the finishing touch, the almond paste icing. Children are now pressed into service—to cut squares of foil and coloured cellophane, serrating the edges to make pleasing cake wrappers . . . and this, too, is a traditional necessity, for each piece of cake must be individually wrapped.
While the men folk take away and later, bring back the trays of cake, Leah and Anna have ground almonds, sifted icing sugar and Beulah has been forced to beat more eggs. It’s quite a mix: ground almonds, icing sugar, eggs, brandy, sherry and almond essence. Kneaded until stiff, it is then rolled out and ready. The cake is then brushed over with white of egg and the paste pressed on with the lightest pressure of a rolling pin. There! That’s done, and now to get it all cut to pieces and wrapped. Anna takes over because she seems to know exactly how to cut that cake to give pieces that are not too big or too small. Elsie watches like a hawk. ‘Keep an eye on these small devils,’ she says, ‘When not looking will stuff the mouth.’
The ‘small devils’ have been waiting for this moment. They have already had a whale of a time licking clean the mixing bowls and generally getting in everyone’s way; and try as Elsie might, she just cannot have her eyes everywhere. Sonnaboy pops in. ‘How the cake? Sha! Looks good, no?’
‘You leave alone, will you. How to wrap cake when coming and taking pieces like this?’
‘So what harm if put a taste? Carried and came all the way also.’ Takes a piece. ‘Mmmm not bad. Should have put more brandy.’
And that, you would think, is that. But hold. Christmas in a Burgher home is lot more than Christmas cake. Mustard must be ground and potted and salt beef prepared. What’s Christmas lunch without salt beef and mustard? And there must be the breudher for breakfast which is the rich Dutch yeast cake.
Making a real Dutch breudher is another art Maudiegirl excelled in and passed on to her daughters (who were also shown how to make excellent love cake and that intrinsically Portuguese sweet—the many layered cake which was a Burgher speciality: the bola folhado (pronounced Fi-a-dho). It is like a very rich Danish pastry and also, when Maudiegirl had a mind to, she would produce such marvellous things as the true Dutch Lampries (from the Dutch word ‘Lomprijst—rice cooked in stock and baked in a wrapping of banana leaf); fish koftas, fried squid in what was known as a ‘bedun’ (a thick gravy sauce) and that sneaky wonder, the tara padre curry which was curried duck but cooked with ghee, sugar, coconut milk and—hold your breath—half a cup of whisky!
‘So why, Mama, you call it tara padre?’ Leah would ask.
Maudiegirl (God rest her soul) would shush her daughter and say: ‘So duck curry, no? Sinhalese people say tara for duck, no?’
; ‘Then padre?’
‘Padre is priest, child. What, I don’t know, you learning in that convent. Today sending meal to Father Romiel and for him always I make tara padre. Good for him. Poor man. Cannot drink because priest and all. But who going to see if put the whisky in the curry?’
Christmas lunch called for the Dutch frikkadels—the forcemeat balls which were deep-fried and delicious; and a prawn blachan and the pungent kalu pol sambol where coconut meat is roasted dark brown in the ashes of the fireplace and then ground with onions, lime, salt and Maldive fish.
After the bread dough has been brought from the bakery, the breudher mixture is prepared. Ten egg yolks, mind, and the men are commandeered because the breudher needs a strong beating arm. A special marble slab was placed on the kitchen table. Sonnaboy was the obvious choice, for the dough had to be hurled onto the slab for well over an hour while an egg yolk is added, one at a time and Sonnaboy says: ‘Ten eggs putting? My God, men, how long will have to go on pounding this damn thing.’ It does seem an eternity but suddenly Elsie says ‘Ah, now enough,’ and stirs in the vanilla and sultanas and puts the mixture near the hearth to rise. So the breudher is also baked and there is a right royal spread with the family sitting down to a Christmas breakfast of breudher and cheese, bread and butter, bananas, Scotch eggs, jam roly-poly and an astonishing assortment of savoury pastes and patés to apply on bread as required.
‘Keep room for lunch,’ Sonnaboy would tell the children while Cecilprins would try to look severe and say: ‘Give all the buggers an opening dose for the New Year. Whole season won’t stop eating.’ Which was quite true because the round of Christmas visits had to be done and this meant a steady, unrelenting intake of cake and fruit and fizzes and biscuits and all manner of savouries. Each place, too, had its characteristic offerings. Anna always made love cake for Christmas. Beryl’s sister, Juppie, was known for her asparagus and bread rolls. Florrie da Brea made some potent ginger beer and Leah’s bacon and egg rolls were out of this world. Above all there was Florrie da Brea’ s ‘miraculous’ bottle which was the wonder of every Christmas. All Florrie bought for Christmas was one bottle of Johnnie Walker and every male who visited was treated to a single draught out of this bottle. Even Totoboy, who looked upon it as a sort of ritual peg. Over forty men would call and beam and sing out ‘Happy Christmas’ and dust cake crumbs on the floor and take a glass of whisky . . . and Johnnie Walker marched on. Florrie always had a drop more in her bottle for every new visitor and this was considered on par with the celebrated loaves and fishes. One drink was all anybody received and down the years, as the family grew, forty became fifty and then even sixty. But every male did receive his drink and the bottle lasted and was the most important Xmas topic. ‘Going to Florrie’s?’
