My teacher, Miss Vanderstraaten, seemed wholly ancient to me, so she was probably about forty. She lived with her mother in a dark house devoid of oxygen set within the blackened walls of the Dutch fort. Her academy was run from an antimacassared back parlor, where the starched children of local notables were delivered to her to be drilled in enunciation. Its furnishings included an occasional table crowded with photographs in heavy frames, and a row of monogrammed Delft plates on a shelf.
Miss Vanderstraaten was the first Dutch Burgher I knew. The European purity of her race was her great pride, and she guarded it with the zeal that brands all lost causes. One day I arrived a little early for my lesson, and so encountered a Mrs. de Jong and her beefy daughter, Phyllis, in the hall. Phyllis and I eyed each other with mutual distaste, while her mother, one of those women who sticks, exchanged a protracted farewell with Miss Vanderstraaten.
As soon as the door closed behind the de Jongs, my teacher’s sugared tones altered. “The cheek of that woman,” she hissed. “Black as the ace of spades and always passing herself off as one of us. As if everyone doesn’t know she was one of the railway Rosarios before she married.” My mystification must have been apparent, because she added impatiently, “A Portuguese Burgher. A lot of very common Sinhalese took Portuguese names when they converted.”
“Pater says there’s not a Ceylonese without mongrel blood in his veins,” I replied, gratified that I could keep up my end of the conversation. “He says we’ve all got at least one skeleton in the family closet—a Tamil, a Moor, a Swiss mercenary, someone we’d rather keep quiet about.”
“That might well be true of your people,” said Miss Vanderstraaten, enunciating with great clarity. Her eyes flicked over me from head to toe. “Although you look extremely Sinhalese to me.”
Whenever I tripped up in my recitations, Miss Vanderstraaten’s wooden ferule thudded down on my knuckles. Mosquitoes congregated in the dim space under the table where I swung my legs. “How now brown cow,” I intoned until the itching grew wild and I had to break off to tear at my shins, while the ruler crashed about my shoulders for fidgeting.
Miss Vanderstraaten often left the room in the middle of a lesson. I assumed this was for reasons to do with her bed-ridden mother, whose voice quavered down the stairs from time to time. Now I am not so sure. My teacher’s habitual odor of lavender water and camphor was subtly different when she returned. In Oxford I was once at a party where a bottle of gin slipped from a girl’s fingers. The sweetish whiff of those fumes transported me instantly across the years. I found myself once again in that cramped parlor, I could see the swing of Miss Vanderstraaten’s coral beads, feel the nubbly texture of her plum-colored tablecloth beneath my elbows as I leaned over my book of exercises.
One day when my teacher had gone to the solace of her flask, I crossed the room to study her photographs. I picked up a studio portrait of a raven-haired goddess on the arm of a stout European gentleman at least twenty years her senior, posed against a painted backdrop of snowy mountain peaks. Peering at the photograph, I had just realized with a jolt that the beauty was my teacher—the mole fastened like a tick under her left eye was unmistakable—when the ruler caught me hard across my arm. Miss Vanderstraaten snatched the photograph from me and clasped it to her pintucked bosom. She brought her face down so close that I could see the grains of powder caught in the downy hair at the corners of her upper lip: “Don’t you ever, ever touch my belongings with your black hands.”
Behind Miss Vanderstraaten’s house lay a harbor that had seen the fleets of Phoenician merchants; beyond it, the Indian Ocean rolled without interruption to the southern ice. But that spacious blue view was invisible from the parlor, where the blind was always pulled down behind elaborate lace curtains.
My formal education in those years was dispensed by a series of tutors, Englishmen whom the years have blurred into a single pinkish young man with an archetypal chin. The product of a minor public school, he instructs me in Ancient Civilizations (which is to say Egyptian, Greek and Roman) and is tormented by prickly heat. We study Geography with the aid of a globe supported by ormolu caryatids. In Arithmetic he allows that fractions are dashed confusing. He hears out my Latin declensions slapping at mosquitoes; he scratches his bites, which grow red and inflamed. He takes tea on the verandah, staring out at the vegetation that crawls about the house looking for a way in; the milk has turned, again. If he’s a good sort, he plays the piano and teaches me a bawdy song; we belt out the chorus together. Once a month he goes into town, where he tries to work up an interest in the magistrate’s sister, a lady with buck teeth who conducts séances. After a while he packs up the blank notebooks he intended to fill with piquant detail for his Travels in the East. A card at Christmas informs us that he has settled into his post of assistant housemaster at his old school. A wistful postscript adds that in England tea simply doesn’t taste the same.
But the most enduring lesson of my childhood was provided, against all expectation, by my father. It happened when I was eight years old. Discipline on the estate at Lokugama was strict, although by no means harsh. As was usual in those days, village cattle that strayed onto the estate were shot. Our overseer, who prided himself on his loyalty to our family — and who no doubt relished the power and prestige that came with his post — always flogged any villager caught stealing coconuts. Yet conditions on our estate were far more lenient than on many others, where it was not unknown for landowners to keep laborers in stocks overnight to prevent them deserting during the coconut-picking season.
One morning, not long after daybreak, we heard a commotion in the compound. It happened that Pater was down from Colombo, seeing to the sale of a few acres to pay off a creditor who was proving a bore. He went out onto the verandah, still in his lounging slippers and foulard dressing gown. There he found our overseer, two watchmen propelling a sniveling youth and, at a respectful distance, a small group of laborers.
The overseer, who was in some distress, told his story haltingly. For some weeks now, coconut thieves had been operating on the estate. Traps had been set, extra watchmen hired. The overseer questioned villagers for miles around and had one or two known troublemakers thrashed for good measure. Still the thefts had continued. Thereupon the overseer announced that he was docking every laborer a tenth of each day’s pay until the thieves were caught. This was grossly unfair; but it produced a startling result.
A few of the men, goaded by the loss of income, decided to institute their own watch, an initiative they discussed with no one. On the third night, two dark hours before dawn, they managed to lay hands on one of the thieves. To their amazement he turned out to be the overseer’s youngest son, a fifteen-year-old boy who confessed to working in ca-hoots with some ne’er-do-wells from the town. Being privy to his father’s security measures he had passed the information to his accomplices, and thus they had evaded detection. But that night the thieves had been startled by the unexpected presence of the laborers; the thugs from the town had gotten away, but the boy had panicked and been taken captive.
Seeing Pater, the boy flung himself to the ground and kissed his slippers, pleading for clemency. But it was no use. During the telling of the story, the number of onlookers had swelled until the entire working population of the estate had gathered in our driveway. Needless to say, the overseer and his family were not greatly loved. All the house servants came out onto the verandah. The gardeners and other outdoor workers clustered on the lawn. The watchmen removed the boy’s shirt. His hands were tied, and the ends of the rope fastened around the trunk of a convenient flamboyante tree. The overseer himself, tears streaming down his face, handed the lash to my father.
I am certain Pater was as gentle as he could be, under the circumstances. Nevertheless, by the sixth and final stroke, the boy’s back was streaked with blood. He was a screamer: he had been at it since the rope first rose in the air. I had an excellent view from the top of the steps. I remember standing very straight and still, and b
eing careful to keep my face from betraying my emotion. For truth to tell, I was in the grip of a queer exaltation. What I was witnessing was the grand and terrible spectacle of justice.
At breakfast, Pater said as much. He had heaped his plate from the dishes on the sideboard. Now he sat staring at his rashers, tomatoes and green chili omelette. “Without fear or favor,” he said, at last. Then he left the room, neglecting to close the door. The sound of vomiting reached me from the hall lavatory.
The whole episode left me much to ponder. Like all children I had believed fairness to be synonymous with justice. It’s not fair!—so runs the eternal cry of childhood. Was it fair that the overseer’s son was thrashed while the men who had led him astray went unpunished? I now realized that it was a childish question. It was essential to the harmonious functioning of our little community that the boy paid publicly for his crime in spite of his privileged standing on the estate. Pater had taught me, by his example, that while we might dread what justice requires of us, our fear cannot be allowed to interfere with the benefit to society.
You see, don’t you, why I have made prosecution my life’s work. In the popular imagination, defense is the noble choice—what my old pupil-master liked to call le beau rôle. But I have invariably found that it appeals to childish men; a flabby brotherhood that calls it justice when a blackguard who should be ornamenting the gallows strolls away from the dock. Give me prosecution every time! It is a stern and thankless calling. But it has a grandeur that the sentimentality of defense can never hope to rival.
I see I have neglected to mention that I had a baby sister, then aged three. Claudia was standing beside me on the verandah that morning, but as soon as the overseer’s son began his racket, she burst into tears and ran sobbing into the house. Thus from a tender age she displayed the hysterical turn of mind that was to overwhelm her later in life. I had a brother as well, Leonard, born a few weeks before the incident of the coconut thieves. The sight of Mater crooning over that puny stranger had filled me with loathing when Claudia and I were taken to Colombo to admire him. Claudia, being a girl, had never posed a threat to my standing. But in Leo I intuited an adversary, a pretender to my throne.
I need not have feared; my resentment did not have long to simmer. Leo’s life was a short one: he died in his cot when he was only six months old and plays no further part in this testimony.
SONS OF EMPIRE
At the age of thirteen I was enrolled in St. Edward’s School in Colombo as a boarder. Neddy’s had been founded in 1862 by an Anglican bishop on the pattern of Eton and Rugby. There, some five hundred boys were educated in English, Classics, Mathematics, Divinity and the Sciences. Many of us went on to Oxford and Cambridge, and returned home to forge illustrious careers. Government, the judiciary, medicine, education: to this day Old Edwardians are disproportionately represented in all the leading professions. Even in its present degraded state, Neddy’s has no rival in the land. Preposterous claims have been made for Queen’s College; but as we Edwardians like to say, Queen’s is all balls and no brains. Which has never prevented us from routing them at cricket.
Neddy’s occupied a prime site in Colpetty, a former coconut plantation that stretched between Galle Road and the sea. After the close green canopy of Lokugama, I thrilled to the wide skies and salty, invigorating air. When the wake-up bell sounded at ten to six, we boarders had to assemble in the quad for twenty minutes of drill. How I relished those mornings: the cool breeze, the drum roll of breakers beyond the boundary wall, a dozen boys moving as one under the ghost moon that still haunted the pearly sky. Decades later, it was the memory of those mornings that prompted me to buy Allenby House. I did not realize— how could I have?—that the sea is a cruel companion to the old. To a young man it sings of change, boundlessness, the beckoning future. Later it changes its tune. Every day now I wake to the same complaint, a relentless whisper of frustrated endeavor.
I was a boarder rather than a day boy because Pater was still wending his merry way toward financial ruin and it had been necessary to sell all the property we had once owned in Colombo. Shortly after I entered Neddy’s, my parents moved in with my Aunt Iris, who lived in the newly fashionable suburb of Cinnamon Gardens. Although my aunt and her husband were childless, their palatial house could have accommodated half a dozen boys; but I suppose my parents didn’t wish to presume further on their hosts’ kindness and include me in the household, and so I remained a boarder throughout my time at Neddy’s.
Uncle Kumar, Iris’s husband, had once been briefly engaged to my mother. When she threw him over for Pater, Kumar promptly married her cousin to show he didn’t care a fig; but for years he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Pater and was famous for having walked out of a ball at Government House when my father was announced. Unfortunately he was halfway through a waltz with Lady Marriott, a singular honor. I believe it was the last time she danced with a Ceylonese.
Over the years, things had been patched up between Pater and Kumar. Still, I was surprised to hear that my parents were putting up at Cinnamon Gardens. Today, the only conclusion I can draw is that Mater had embarked on an affaire with Uncle Kumar. The three of them— Kumar, Iris and my mother—called at Neddy’s one Saturday during my second term and treated me to a feed at the Dragon Restaurant. All the boarders came out to admire Kumar’s shiny blue motor car and I was much envied when I climbed aboard. Kumar, I recall, was in rattling good spirits and tipped me ten chips. Pierced with sudden loneliness when I was returned to Neddy’s, I pressed my lips to Mater’s cigarette-scented cheek and wound my arms about her neck. “Goodness, Sam,” she said, disentangling herself. “Anyone would think you had a claim on my affections and whatnot.” Then she tapped me lightly on the head with her folded fan and was gone. Three months and eighteen days passed before I next saw her.
Most of us Edwardians came from Sinhalese or Burgher families, but there were several Tamils among our number, a sprinkling of Moors and Chinks, an Indian from Bangalore and even two woolly-haired brothers from East Africa. But racial divisions were played down at Neddy’s, as a matter of school policy. We were Edwardians first and Ceylonese a long way second. Of course a fellow’s name proclaimed him a Sinhalese or a Tamil, a Burgher or a Moor; but these distinctions passed almost unnoticed.
It’s true that we routinely referred to the Chinese boys as Ching-Chongs. And yes, we never bothered with the Kaffirs’ jawbreaking name but dubbed them the Kalus for their glossy black skin: at sixteen, Kalu Dwarf already stood over six feet tall; while cheerful Kalu Dhodhol enlivened any gathering, like the sticky black sweetmeat that inspired his name. But these appellations were no more sinister than calling a chap Four Eyes because he wears spectacles or Fatty because he runs to lard; all schoolboys everywhere seize on physical attributes that deviate from the norm.
As any Old Edwardian will attest, the prevalent tone of the school was one of comradeship unmarred by racial or religious strife. We spoke English, our only common tongue, to each other as well as to our masters. Most of us were Christians, and attended the daily service held in the school chapel, while the dozen or so non-Christian boys did extra prep or listened to an uplifting talk by Warden Metcalfe’s wife. Friendly rivalry, encouraged in the classroom and on the playing field, served only to strengthen our common bonds and provided healthy lessons in character and confidence. I myself had the highest regard for Kalu Dhodhol, a formidable opponent on the tennis court. He died last year, poor devil, hanged in one of those coups the Kaffirs are so keen on. I have such a vivid memory of him leaping the net, all graceful limbs and a wide white grin. “Pukka show, Obey,” he would say and mean it, despite having beaten me in straight sets. He put it about that he and his brother were of royal blood, a claim I received with skepticism; I believe the savage races do not distinguish between fact and fable as rigorously as we do. But he was certainly one of nature’s gentlemen. Hard to believe he’s gone now, forever.
PLAYING THE FOOL
I emphasi
ze the harmony that prevailed at Neddy’s because one of my classmates was none other than Donald Jayasinghe. That’s right: the architect of racial hatred, our erstwhile Minister of Culture. The champion of Sinhalese who couldn’t read or write the language and delivered his Cambridge-inflected speeches from transliterated scripts with nervous aides standing by to prompt him when he tripped over his tongue. The famous Jungle Jaya, with his talk of Aryan supermen that pandered to the vanity of villagers and won his party its landslide election victories. The British made a fatal error when they brought in universal suffrage. It might be plausible in Europe, but here, with our ignorant masses, what can it lead to but the disasters we’ve seen since independence? Would you ask a child to operate on your appendix or a lunatic to advise you on your investments? Yet we entrust our choice of government to villagers with no discernment or finesse, no training in sustained analytical thought. Inevitably, their crude emotions carry the day. We all suffer the consequences.
Jaya was a day boy, so we were never close. But as academic rivals we kept an eye on each other. I trounced him at Greek and Latin but he had the edge on me when it came to French and Geometry. In English we were neck and neck. And to this day you may see our names bracketed in gold on the Honors Board. (I had half a mark more, I believe, but the examiners, with questionable wisdom, decided to award us equal first place.)
Even as a boy, Jaya was extraordinarily hairy: at fifteen, with his blue-and-silver school tie knotted around his neck, his collar was edged with thick dark fur. If you ask me, all that parading about later in a sarong had nothing to do with rejecting the dress of our imperial masters and everything to do with showing off his breastplate of matted curls.
Women are notoriously attracted to that kind of thing; it appeals to the primitive mind. “What a perfectly delicious young man,” I remember Mater saying at one prize-giving. It was 1918 and I had just collected the Bishop’s Medal for Poetry, the school’s most coveted award, for my sonnet “On the Fallen.” It was the first time in Neddy’s history that the prize hadn’t been carried off by a Sixth Former and I think I may say without exaggeration that my victory caused a small sensation. After the speeches and ceremonies had ended and we boys were free to mingle with our guests, I went straight over to my parents, carrying my usual haul of books, supplemented with the Bishop’s gold medal. Mater ruffled my hair. “What a perfectly delicious young man.” For a dizzy moment, I thought she meant me. Then I followed her gaze—and there was Jaya, encircled as usual by a pack of doting juniors, looking my mother over with his sticky brown eyes.
The Hamilton Case Page 3