by Carl Muller
Anuradhapura could best be described as a place where boys became men and railwaymen became boys. Carloboy’s world was railway town, the big irrigation reservoirs characteristic of this arid region, the Malwatte River (Oya in Sinhalese), dry jungles full of snakes and hook thorn creepers, a bustling railway yard, ponies to ride, fish to catch, go catapulting, and later, air rifle hunting and rides on his father’s engine to the northern peninsula where stationmasters sucked foul, black Jaffna cigars and made weird sounds with their whistles. He also raised rabbits.
The chronicler will pass lightly over the short, catch-breath time Carloboy spent at the local St Joseph’s school. He was in and out before one could shout ‘Fire!’ which was what the scamps of railway town did shout (and danced like crazy Red Indians too) when a classroom went up in flames. It had to be the work of a railway town boy. Stout cadjan classrooms burn easily, true, but there had to be a spark. By the time water was toted in insufficient buckets, the classroom was overdone. Benches were saved as well as the blackboard and easel and a few tables. The rest became smoking wood and floating cinders that sorely threatened the rest of the makeshift school. The magnifying glass was his father’s, he said, and he had ‘borrowed’ it. But he had given it to Vanderputt to examine some kind of a bug that had lodged between the boy’s toes. These bugs would, for nobody bothered to wear shoes to school.
Some came in slippers because their mothers insisted, but most trooped in barefooted. Lots of earnest village boys, trying hard to learn, and a smattering of railway town ruffians who were, like Carloboy, between schools and merely marking time.
‘Go home,’ the long-nosed principal told Carloboy, ‘and don’t come back. Not learning, only coming, fooling and going. And for what you’re coming? Next year your father putting you in Colombo school. So go then. All you fellows only coming here two-three months and going. And what about the classroom? Who’s going to pay? Going to write to all your parents to pay.’
Sonnaboy couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘What? Why I must pay? You burnt the bloody school?’
Carloboy shook his head.
‘Then who?’
Carloboy stared, then shrugged dumbly.
Driver Alfie Ribeira came to the fence. ‘Oy, von Bloss, you also got letter from that school. Telling our buggers burnt the classroom and asking forty rupees.’
‘Yes, men, I also got. Telling not to send to school again, also.’
‘Same thing for me also. Edna is damn wild. At least had some peace in the mornings. So what to do?’
‘Pay and put, men. If go and tell the police or something . . .’
‘But Anton didn’t do anything. Your bugger brought a magnifying glass or something. Must have held to the sun and burnt the cadjan.’
‘What! What magnifying glass? You took from my desk?’ That called for a swat on the head, and Carloboy decided he had got out of that pickle very lightly indeed. Beryl, at her mother’s, was startled. ‘My God, see what have been going and doing . . . set fire to the school! Here Sonnaboy writing and saying.’
Florrie da Brea stopped knitting. ‘How?’
‘Who knows how. Now taking and going all over on the engine. Allowing to run wild.’
‘That even never mind, child,’ Florrie said piously. ‘With the father, so can keep the eye on him.’
Beryl nodded. ‘Good thing didn’t keep here. Dance I’ll have with big stomach and all.’ And Florrie mentally said a fervent Amen.
And yet, the chronicler maintains, Anuradhapura injected a strong dose of responsibility into the boys who were growing hard-muscled, berry brown, jungle-wise and ready to meet whatever was tossed at them. There were, in many railway bungalows, ponies. These were bought, quite wild and unbroken from Mannar, transported by railway wagon. It was always a celebration of the highest order when a pony arrived. Driver Benny Fernando comes home whooping. ‘There, Benno,’ he carols, ‘brought pony for you. Run to the station and see. Told to tie near the water tank and keep. Tell the S.M., I’ll come to take right?’
Benno Fernando is ecstatic. This is an event to be shared. His own pony. The pony, as the stationmaster later tells Vanderputt, is ‘scared shitless’. It is surrounded by whooping boys and escorted home. It bites Terence Edema and contrives to kick Anton Ribeira in the midriff. Benno clings on to the rope around its neck and the boys yell and stay clear of its hooves and urge Benno to ‘get on top and ride, men,’ which he tries to do and which the pony strongly objects to. One bleeding head, one puffy arm and many scratched and limping legs later the pony is in the Fernando’s garden where it rolls its eyes and shows wicked teeth and tosses its head. A man from the railway line rooms is brought in to make the beast tractable, muzzle it, get a halter on and a bit. ‘Now get up and go must,’ he informs. ‘Rope hold and go.’
Beryl gets another letter. ‘My lord, can see what’s happening now. Riding horses all over.’
‘Who, child?’
‘That small devil, who else?’
‘From where getting horses?’
‘Bringing for the children. Fell in the drain also and scraped all over.’
‘Who? The horse?’
‘That Carloboy. Who else?’
Florrie da Brea has one answer. ‘You light a candle, child, and pray to St Anthony. Not good telling all this. Just getting upset.’
‘Who’s upset?’ Beryl flames. ‘Wait till I go there, will you. Skin him alive. Father and son. One is no better than the other!’
Florrie sighes.
High jinks aside, as the chronicler has said, it was also a slow process of realization for these candidates for maternal flaying. Those were, as any Irishman would say, the ‘good owd days’ with each railway town rascal a ‘regular broth of a boy’. They rode rattletrap bicycles and their wild ponies, shaggy-maned and chins flecked with spittle. They carried Daisy airguns, point two-two’s and catapults. The mornings were always diamond blue and white and butterflies romped, blowing kisses at the lantana bushes.
The railway bungalow Sonnaboy occupied was a stone’s throw from the station. Opposite, to the right, was the office of the Railway Transportation Superintendent who was Trans to railway folk and whom Sonnaboy called Trance. The Trans would smile and wave. He never spotted the difference.
It was truly a boy’s world. They fished and hunted and roamed the scrubs, the wild woodlands, all olive and jade, the tank country where the large man-made irrigation reservoirs (tanks) lay breathless in the sun, and the marsh country.
Let’s consider one rather unusual (unusual for Carloboy, that is) morning, shall we? He lazed on the upstairs balcony gazing quite disinterestedly into the lacy tangle of the upper foliage of the weralu (Eleocarpus serratus) tree. Bright, bud-like leaves constantly slapping at each other like a million midgets playing pat-a-cake in the breeze. Birds favoured this tree, which housed a large pair of rat snakes at its roots, especially the barbet, the forest bul-bul, the leaf bird, the white-eye. They would enter, flash a painted breast or rump for a heartbeat, then disappear. Only when they rummaged around could Carloboy spot them—inquisitive eyes, Punch and Judy head-bobs. The camouflage of the weralu was really superb.
The boy wanted to stir himself, but there are some haunting mornings when the most energetic cannot get started. There was a mesmeric quality about the lazy clouds. He saw the Indian roller, all lavender and dusky blue, sitting motionless on a telegraph post. Over the northern tree line a hawk eagle was gliding in a slow, patient arc over twisted etamba (Magnifera zeylanica) and badulla (Semcarpus obscura) which masked the banks of the Malwatte river. The eagle did not seem to move in its long reconnoitre, his pre-noon sweep for food. Why then, thought Carloboy, should I?
But he went into the garden anyway. He would go to the river and sit under the kotamba (Terminalia catappa) and drowse and see the sun patterns jigsawing on the water. He stuffed his catapult into his pocket. No telling, but he could bag a thalagoya—the iguana—and Daddy liked thalagoya flesh.
And then he
saw that little pest. Tony de Zilva. The diminutive fellow, scarcely eight, who would trail behind the rest of the boys, catapult in hand, pockets bulging with pebbles. Tony was a nuisance. He couldn’t shoot. When they fished he would tangle the lines or splash around and yell exultantly each time his float registered a nibble. He refused to take aim, and seemed to enjoy shooting off his pebbles and was quite unabashed at the jibes.
‘What’s the matter? You came to chase the birds?’ Edema would cackle.
Tony was a regular spoiler, too. He would be the first to cut his leg, or lose a slipper, or get a thorn in his foot or trip, fall and skin his knees. It became a game of sorts. ‘Let’s scoot before that small bugger comes,’ Benno would say. But Tony would sniff around in search of the pack. An eager puppy of a boy, anxious to belong, never realizing how patiently or impatiently he was endured.
‘Look at me,’ he would call, ‘I’m going to shoot that bird.’
The bird was a blur of green perched far in a tree—a bee-eater with its twin-wand tail and pirate patch eyes. The pebble left the rubbers to fall twenty feet short.
‘Shoot? Can’t shoot for toffee!’ Benno would chortle. There would be the usual unkind laughter. ‘What? Your mummy made that ‘pult?’ and Tony would blink quickly. He always blinked.
Then he stopped tagging along. He may have realized that he was odd man out or who knows, he could no longer blink away those tears. Carloboy was shocked. There he was in the opposite garden. The bungalow was untenanted, the garden weedy, full of four o’clock flowers and lantana. Tony was parked under a bushy everlasting tree laden with purple blossom that stood in mauve-pink candle clusters on an olive-grey birthday cake. On the empty veranda was a pile of pebbles, and, in a neat row were the stiffening coloured corpses of two azure flycatchers, a flowerpecker and a small, drab tailor-bird.
Even as Carloboy strode to the gate, the catapult twanged. He saw a beautiful sunbird drop and there was a grin of triumph on the face of the executioner. The sunbird lay, its blue sheen like jewelled electricity, flaring down the side of its neck. Purple gems glistened on its jet rump. The little boy seized it, added it to the row of the dead—a row of setting colour, deep-sea blues, buttery yellows, scarlet-browns and fern greens.
Carloboy seized the scamp, swatted him across the head, tore the rubbers off the ’pult. ‘Bloody small shit!’ he shouted. Look what you’re doing!’
Tony blubbered, tried to run but he was gripped by his collar.
‘So this is what you’re doing these days? Coming here and killing all the small birds! Easy, no? Just stand under and shoot!’
Oh yes, the boys had their code. Nobody considered the tiny white-eye or the tit any sort of prize. They hunted the unwieldy iguana and went after crane and bronze pigeon or ash doves. The day’s bag, including the catfish they caught would feature in a backyard cook-out. They would enjoy the feast, Boy Scout fashion, while sympathetic servants provided the oil, salt, firewood and even prepared the iguana flesh in the kitchen to become an additional dinner dish.
‘Two feet!’ Carloboy gritted. ‘Damn shit! Standing only two feet under and shooting. How to miss! And see the amount of birds coming here.’ He shook the boy. ‘An’ what you’re going to do? Just throw in the drain and go?’
‘I wanted to bring and show,’ the boy mumbled.
‘Show? For what to show. To show you can shoot? You think this is hunting? Come go, I’ll tell your mummy what you’re doing.’
‘Don’t, anney. I won’t again. I won’t!’
‘Not won’t, don’t! You come here again to see. Give that karu1 here. Catch you with a catapult again I’ll hammer you properly!’
Tony fled. And yes, Carloboy was growing up. Not growing up in the sense that he was approaching manhood, but there was an overall acceptance of being a boy and living this boyhood in the accepted boyish way—serious at times, devil-may-care at others. Anuradhapura seemed to wash away many of the indignities of mind and soul he had been a victim to. It was a serious business, being a boy. Serious enough to know the difference between the sport of the hunt and the vile slaughter he had just witnessed. Above all, Anuradhapura allowed him to get on with this business of being a boy. There were no servant-girls to inveigle him, no adults to abuse his body, no vulgarity, smut, sexual assaults. Nor did he dwell on any of what had happened in the not too distant past. All he wished for was to enjoy each golden day to the full. Wisdom, too, came in on tiptoe at times, with a clatter of realization at others. He bred rabbits: brought home creatures to feed, delight in and study; knew the snakes to avoid, the reptiles he could handle and how to bait a hook that would drag in the biggest catfish from the wewas or tanks. He learnt to avoid the marsh grass at dusk because the vipers would be hunting but had the confidence to raise the sluggish Russel’s viper with a bent stick at midday because, as everyone knew, the viper would lie in a daze of sleep when the sun was hottest.
He knew he had but a short time for the New Year would deprive him, term by term, of this magical place. So he roamed, questing, discovering, sometimes quite alone, full of the stuff of dreams and imaginings. Red clay roads, forest tracks, springy river banks, scrub and marsh fringed with copper reeds and lilac grass flowers. And one day he found the Tree. There was no other like it—this solitary Elephant Tree2 as the natives called it.
Everything else grew in profusion: thorny woodapple, spreading margosa, mahogany, bombu,3 ironwood and the Bo Tree4 —but this Elephant Tree was a loner, single, unique, an exciting find. Carloboy would trot, almost a mile, just to sit beside it, wonder at it and ask villagers why it waved its roots in the air. It was a lot later that he learned that it was the baobab—the African Adansonia digitata, probably introduced to Ceylon by Arab traders many centuries ago.
‘You mean they came and planted this tree here?’ he asked driver Don, who laughed.
‘That must have grown long time ago,’ Don said.
‘How long?’
‘Who knows. Hundred years may be. Have some more towards Vavuniya and places. They are protected.’
‘Why?’
‘Because rare, son. Won’t allow anyone to cut down.’
Carloboy’s fascination for the baobab grew. For one thing it was a most curious tree. Such an immense trunk, and so tough-skinned the bark. ‘Just like elephant skin,’ Don said and Carloboy nodded.
‘Don’t know if that’s why they are saying Elephant Tree. But, Uncle Don, not a leaf on it.’
Don had a lot of patience with ten-year-olds. Also, despite the general headshakings that Carloboy was, after all, his father’s son (‘and if father is playing the devil son will be ten times worse!’) Don liked the earnest-eyed boy who could still make any adult uncomfortable with his curious stare. ‘Come go and see this tree of yours,’ he said, and they went and spoke to the villagers and learned that in the rainy time the baobab did put out dark green leaves in tufts, like the fingers of a hand. There are also dingy white flowers that hang on stalks and melon-sized fruits.
‘Monkeys very much like,’ a man said, ‘in gangs they come and fruit all eat.’
Anuradhapura is hot and tortuously dry for nine months of the year. It waits for the north-east monsoon to replenish itself between November and January. Carloboy never saw his tree with its new life in the wet months. All he knew was that it was some strange, upside-down giant, squiggling at the sky with its naked, stubby fingers.
Don was amused at first, then grew just as excited. ‘Here,’ he called, ‘that man that day said about monkeys coming and eating the fruit, no? Come and see in this book. Here the tree. Take and read. In West Africa calling it upside down tree. There the people used to say that God planted the tree the right way but the devil got angry and pulled it out and planted it upside down. And because monkeys like, some people saying it is Monkey Bread tree.’
Carloboy was happy. He went to Benno. ‘How? What you’re doing today. Can bring your pony and come?’
‘Where to?’
Carloboy
told him.
‘You want to measure a tree?’ ‘Yes.’
‘For why?’
‘Because it’s bigger than all the trees here. See and bring a measuring tape if have.’
Benno was always ready to fall in with any schemes, even if he considered them hare-brained and totally incomprehensible. He riffled his mother’s sewing basket. They trotted off.
And even Benno was impressed. When they recorded its girth at sixty-one feet after many false starts, he gave a low whistle and admitted it was like nothing he had ever seen. ‘How did you find this thing? Just came loafing?’
Carloboy was pleased. ‘Can you climb?’
Benno looked doubtful. ‘Hard, men, nowhere to put the leg and go up even. My God men, must be about thirty feet up, no?’
They heeled the pony for a hectic dash into town, taking the railway level crossing in grand style. Racing ponies always annoyed the sub postmaster who nipped out of his office to shake a fist at their flying backs. Don, too, was amused. ‘You know, son, I don’t think even the Forest Department knows about your tree. In the forestry office I asked some fellows. They’re telling have some baobabs in Vavuniya side and Kantalai and some in the Wipattu Park5 but nothing here.’
‘But if they don’t know then nobody to tell anyone it is protected,’ the boy cried. ‘Supposing some people cut it?’
Don raised an eyebrow. ‘Hey, hey, what you’re so upset about. Only an old tree, no?’
In Don’s house was a genuine grandfather clock. He was so proud of it. A family heirloom, he would say, over 150 years old. It stood in the corner of his hall, polished wood gleaming, brass fittings always aglow and its pendulum would swing in a sort of dignified, majestic way. Worth thousands and thousands, Don would say and expect visitors to regard it with due awe and reverence.