Once Upon a Tender Time

by Carl Muller

  ‘After the holidays will see. Now Easter holidays also close, no?’

  ‘So how Beryl and the small ones. Like the place?’

  ‘They’re all right. Baby had cold and cough but now all right. If ask Leah don’t know if can take Carloboy, no?’

  ‘Ask to see. There even Ivor also so have some company even. And lot of friends roundabout, no, near your old house.’

  ‘I’ll ask anyway. For this term only you keep, will you.’

  Carloboy, who had his ears wrung and was preached an Epistle with more foul language that ever the Ephesians heard in their heyday, glared at Aunty Anna. ‘Waiting till Daddy comes to complain,’ he glowered, ‘why you said for us to come and stay here, then?’

  ‘Don’t come to talk to me like that!’ Anna would quiver. ‘Your father must know what you’re up to!’

  The boy had the last word. At his room door he said, ‘Good thing after holidays won’t come here,’ then thought a while and loosed a cutting shaft, ‘Good thing you haven’t children. If had they will go and commit suicide or something!’

  Anna, aghast, sank into the lounger where Colontota found her red-eyed and palpitating extraordinarily. Angered, he banged on the children’s door. ‘Come here at once!’ he shouted. Carloboy refused the invitation. Diana began to cry.

  ‘You shut up!’ he hissed. ‘Let bang. If break, his door, not ours!’

  ‘No dinner for you if you don’t come out!’

  It did not turn the trick. Answer, as from the oysters of the poem, there was none . . .

  The overall gut cancer of the piano was discovered long after Sonnaboy took his children to Anuradhapura. It was the slattern, Sumana, who inhabited Anna’s kitchen who raised the alarm with a screech which had its own poetry: ‘Aiyoo! meeyo!4 ’ When sweeping the hall she had seen a nasty piece of vermin ooze out from the slot where the floor pedals were, flung the broom upwards in alarm and given vent to this particular emotion. Stripped to its action, the piano was a sorry sight. Gerard and Anton were hauled in from next-door to evict the rats, which they did, merrily enough. Anna held a stupefied hand to a shocked cheek.

  ‘Whole inside have been eating, men,’ she told Leah in the hollowest of tones.

  ‘If played every day for the noise even rats won’t stay,’ Leah said wisely. ‘How much to repair?’

  ‘God alone knows. Mr Colontota very angry. Scolding me, child. Just locking and keeping, he’s saying. Once in a way playing but the stool is uncomfortable, men. When sit getting a back pain also.’

  Leah clucked. ‘Sonnaboy came an’ asked if can keep that small devil. You know George, no? Straightaway said can’t but what to do, men. And whole day in school, no? So said to come and keep. Have that small store room, can put a bed there. Only sometimes that Dunnyboy coming and we put there.’

  ‘Then Diana what’s happening?’

  ‘Going to keep with Mrs da Brea up the lane. How? Now telling in vain took from the convent. Now could have gone with Millie in the rickshaw. Anyway Millie said will take and drop top of Chapel Lane so only for her to come in the afternoon. They will arrange something.’

  None of this worried Carloboy a whit. He was bobbing excitedly in a second class compartment. ‘Don’t know if have my catapult. Can make another one anyway.’

  The sanitizing had begun once again. He pushed Colombo out of his mind. He scarcely dwelt on the corruption of the city—how he and Sumantha of his class would compare each others cocks; how the tuck shop man’s assistant offered him a free meal if he would come around the counter where no one could see and masturbate him; how he had harboured hot thoughts about creeping upon Diana at night as she lay, her nightdress rolled up to her hips; how the vileness manifested itself everywhere and how he had to become a riotous hellion of a boy in order to earn a reputation that he shouldn’t be tangled with.

  ‘Bada’ would give new masters the owl’s eye and say: ‘Here we have three cliques . . . or gangs, if you like to call them so. One is Linton Jayasekera’s gang. Like to move in a herd and get up to all manner of tricks. Then there is the Vishva gang. You know, his father is an eminent barrister. A well-to-do gang, up to a great deal of mischief. You should approach this problem warily. The Vishva boy likes to lead. Thus the gang, actually his friends. We have many important pupils here. You will find that the wealth and eminence colours these boys somewhat. They come with a lesser sense of values. All boys at heart but careless with money, used to the good things of life. A class here is quite complex. Upper class morality and middle class morality together. Limousines and bicycles, if you get my meaning. These boys, fortunately have a sense of their destiny. They’re upper crust, if you get what I mean. The third gang is von Bloss. One boy and let me warn you, he’s a gang in himself. A peculiar boy. Ordinary family. Father is a railwayman. But the boy passed the entrance exam and has plagued our lives ever since. Oh, we beat him. And he is bright. Bit of a madcap, I believe, but there is upbringing to be considered. Let me tell you, however, since there will be little time to dwell on niceties, you can tangle with the other gangs. They will swear in a quite superior way under their breaths, but they will buckle down. Try not to tangle with von Bloss. I mean to say, don’t get personally involved. Whack him and leave him be. He’s playing a different sort of fiddle here and it will take a lifetime to understand the music.’

  And that summing up was what kept the only von Bloss of Royal going. He was the school’s idiosyncrasy. He was loathed, caned, cheered, disregarded, analysed, wanted, unwanted, even gated on occasion. But in later years he would march up to collect his gift voucher for the Dornhorst Memorial Prize for English Literature or the Sir James Peiris Memorial Prize for English Essay and be reminded, quite unnecessarily that he was the most-caned boy in the college which, in itself, was a distinction of sorts!

  It got so that Carloboy, rushing to the Racecourse end playground would check, get on hands and knees and crawl past ‘Jowl’s’ window. The vice-principal couldn’t abide the boy. If he saw Carloboy he would roar: ‘You, von Bloss! Come here!’ and give him four cuts with a middling-sized cane, and then say. ‘I don’t know what you have done today but that’s for whatever you did!’

  Once the train pulled out of Kekirawa station, Carloboy was a fast-unwinding bundle of impatience. ‘Next Anuradhapura!’ he yodelled to Diana who was as eager to see her new baby brother and show how important she was to sister Heather. It was happiness time once again and Anuradhapura welcomed the boy in a green and glorious embrace.

  The chronicler, in keeping however spasmodically to the Burgher saga, will skip regretfully over much of the boy’s exploits to focus on Jaffna, where since the days of the Dutch, a strong-blooded Burgher community thrived. A feature of the holidays was the excitement of riding the footplate with Sonnaboy. It was Beryl’s idea.

  ‘For God’s sake take and go. I’m with the baby and all. Can’t keep running behind to see what he’s up to!’

  So Sonnaboy tousled his son’s head and said, ‘Come go. Show you the bloody Jaffna peninsula.’

  ‘And tell to go and bring leaves for the rabbits. Had to pay that Karuppan to pluck and bring all these days. And see the amount now? For what I don’t know allowed. You heard what Mrs Edema said, no? Can get diphtheria also.’

  Beryl, as would be expected, kept exploding. She was Carloboy’s mother and had decided long ago that the pain of bringing forth the ‘little devil’ was duty done, mission fulfilled. Thereafter he had to pay her back for all that splitting pain he had caused her. There were times she regarded him with black hatred and the boy sensed it. But he was a creature of pure Nature. Quite stoic at times, imaginative to a fault, a dreamer, a boy of devastating intellect and, quite uncharacteristically, a loner. He wanted to stand out. He also wanted to hear an endearment, a good word from Mummy and gripped himself, bit his own lip, when it never came. He looked elsewhere for tenderness and suffered the embraces of Joachim’s servant and the sly caresses of Uncle Aloy and those close minutes on Podd
i’s mat. He learned like a sponge. He couldn’t abide his sisters either and was thrashed terribly by Beryl on the day he yelled at Diana: ‘You wait will you. All of you! Catch and fuck all of you. And if Mummy comes to talk I’ll fuck her also!’

  Sonnaboy and his railway engine were balm to the boy’s soul. This was a flaring world of crimsom-tongued firebox, serpent steam, the rush of wind and the great force of big drive wheels as the black behemoth swallowed the dreary miles northwards. His first visit to Jaffna. He couldn’t know, but perhaps his forefathers lived in this placid, largely Tamilian place. To this day, Kruys Kerk stands in the Jaffna Fort. Built in 1706, it is the oldest Dutch church in Sri Lanka.

  Chapter Eleven

  The chronicler finds this just the time to get back to those stirring days when the Dutch sailed in and decided to give the Portuguese the heave-ho. The history books will tell you how the Dutch commander, Rycleff van Goens, led quite a venomous force of trained Sinhalese to Mannar where he routed the Portuguese in 1658. The Portuguese, it is recorded, fled, honking like geese, to Jaffna, and those who thought better of the whole boiling, went to India which was infinitely more comfortable in the circs.

  It was a sort of Ides of March business. On the 20th of the month van Goens entered Jaffna and terrible things began to happen. Laying siege to the Jaffna Fort seemed a textbook exercise, but the Portuguese held out grimly enough. It took van Goens up to three months to dislodge them, bury many and send the rest pelting into the sea. So, on 23 June 1658, the victorious van Goens who, no doubt, used the flat of his sword on many Portuguese bums, encouraging them to ‘Goen! Go on!’ held a thanksgiving service in the Portuguese church and set about being a good Dutch uncle.

  This, impatient reader, must be said. You may wonder how Jaffna became so Tamilian in character. Well, blame the Dutch. Van Goens needed to show the natives that, as a conqueror, he had their interests at heart. Land needed to be cultivated and there had to be enough of food. The problem was a labour shortage and a population which got by in that lotus-eater style so characteristic of the breed. So thousands of slaves were shipped in from India, each with the V.O.C.1 mark branded on them, who found the land to their liking and fornicated furiously and bred fearsomely.

  Oh, the Dutch were cagey enough. They looked upon Jaffna as a splendid retreat—a second capital and with a ‘safe house’ status in the event that things in Colombo got too stroppy.

  British Captain Robert Percival, who wrote a most disparaging book about the Dutch,2 remarked that he had found oodles of Hollanders living in Jaffna and that when the British took Colombo, the civilian Dutch packed their pots, pans, wives and daughters and fled to Jaffna.

  (A remarkable point, actually. When the Sinhalese made things hot for the Tamils in Colombo in recent years, the Tamils, too, were evacuated to Jaffna. They actually sailed to the peninsula in small ships chartered by the government. Jaffna, historically, has always been a place of both sanctuary and internal pyrotechnics.)

  Getting back to the van Goens era, the Dutch accepted that with Jaffna being a ‘faire countrie’ it was eminently politic to have a strong Dutch population there. The problem was the acute scarcity of Dutch women. But there were, in compensation, bounding quantities of Portuguese and these continental women were deemed more than worthy. Dutch soldiers were encouraged to marry them, which they did at the drop of a pike. Great days, to be sure and a marvellous progeny came forth, full of dour Dutch blood and continental fire, a penchant for wicker-clad flagons of sweet wine, desperado eyes and broad Dutch shoulders.

  Also, the Dutch encouraged other European settlers into this stew-pot. Emigrants from Europe were given passage on the regular East Indiaman fleets. They came in droves. From Germany, the Hannoverians, Brandenbergers, Bavarians; and there were Danes, Swedes, Austrians, the French, a few brash Londoners, a sprinkling of Scots, a roister of Irish and even a few Poles who found their winters very unpleasant. The ships of the Dutch East India Company would bring in these emigrants twice a year and they all settled down or ran amok as inclined and became ‘Burghers’. You see, the Dutch wanted a cohesive European population. The community was made up of many nationalities, true, but the generic was important as well as administratively convenient. Without distinction, they were nominated ‘Hollanders’ and more conveniently ‘Burghers’.

  Jaffna, let me tell you, has many islands scattered around it like breadcrumbs brushed off a mother’s lap. The Dutch set about making themselves at home and what better way than the names of those old familiar places? Thus it was that Jaffna and the many islands around the peninsula became as Dutch as could be. The island of Kayts was a storing place for goods and armaments. The name comes from the Portuguese cais or warehouse and sharpened to suit the Dutch. But this island was always Velanativu3 and the Dutch preferred to call it Leyden Island. Nainativu (also known as Nagadipa4 by the Sinhalese) was dubbed Harlem, and Karaitivu was called Amsterdam, Punguditivu was Middelburgh, Analaitivu was Rotterdam and Nendutivu was Delft. Today, only Delft remains Delft, and Leyden Island continues to be the easier said Kayts. Thus did the Dutch ‘set up house’ and it was universally acknowledged in all the island that to be the best of the Burghers, one had to be born in Jaffna! Quaint? Yes, but very true.

  It is somewhat sad to think that today, no Burgher in Sri Lanka can ever imagine the northern peninsula as home. It is almost unthinkable. But in the 1700s Jaffna town was the Burgher Pettah (market town) and its fair-skinned denizens beachcombed in Mandaitivu (Harlem) and went hunting in Klali (Kilali today) and Carlmone (Kalmunai). Today all that stands to remind us of the Jaffna Burghers is the old lighthouse at Kalmunai Point, the toll gate over the road at Point Pedro, Kruys Kerk and naught else (but oh, the memories!).

  The Dutch, naturally, entrenched. They strengthened the Portuguese forts of Jaffna and Hammenheil and put up another stockade at Pooneryn which became in turn a resthouse and then seemingly dissolved into nothingness. Beside the causeway was an elephant path, so the causeway became Elephant Pass. It is the present intention of the rebel Tamilians that no elephant should pass,5 but that is another story I shall carefully avoid!

  Another fort was built in Kovilkyal, proudly named Beschutter (the defender) and Vettilekerni—the forest of the betel vine—was, for a time known as Pass Pyl after the Commander, Laurens Pyl.

  Even Sonnaboy could not know of Jaffna’s Dutch connection. But he knew a very old, coppered man who claimed to be a Burgher but who walked the streets with a black cigar between the yellowest teeth and even his lips were burned black in the torrid sun. The only hint of his Burgherness lay in his very light, watery eyes and he hobnobbed with the engine drivers and hobbled along the platform as though it was a corridor in his own home. He would also undo his baggy pants to urinate against the platform railings and not mind the fact that he was regaling many women who looked quickly away.

  He spoke of the Burghers of Jaffna. ‘I am Isaacs,’ he wheezed. ‘All our families from here, no? Real Dutch we are.’

  Carloboy was surprised. The man was as dark as an overdone kettle and as sooty as an unscrubbed one. He dragged cracked leather slippers on his feet and the white hangout he wore had been white perhaps a dozen years ago. ‘Over two hundred years can trace,’ he intoned, ‘You like to see?’

  Carloboy gave his father a quizzical glance. Sonnaboy grinned. ‘You and your bloody family. Who cares, men, if your great grandfather was so and so. See your state? You ate anything today?’

  Isaacs looks hurt. ‘So big my people an’ you’re always talking like that.’

  ‘Balls! Here, take this and go and eat rotti.’ Proffers a one rupee note—a small, tatty bit of paper with the face of King George VI looking quite debonair. Old Isaacs takes the note. ‘Your son? Must tell about our people to him. Must know, no? In old days had all Burgher peoples all over here. You didn’t know?’

  Carloboy shook his head.

  ‘Come go,’ Sonnaboy said. ‘There, signal is down. Oi, Isaacs, must go.’
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br />   ‘You bring and come to Jaffna one day. Tell him about my people. Your people also can be. Had Krauses and Schneiders and von Haghts here. German names, no? Von Bloss don’t know but good to know these things.’

  ‘For what?’ Sonnaboy grinned, swinging aboard.

  ‘And Heynsberg.’

  Sonnaboy hung on the whistle cord. The stationmaster had stopped his preeping and with a long-drawn chug-achug, the big locomotive glided forward. Carloboy, quite grimy, watched the fireman dish in the coal and stood at the left rails, watching Jaffna spill past. The train, near empty, bucked along.

  ‘Hungry?’ Sonnaboy called over the roaring of the rails, ‘Can do a seabath at KKS6 before we eat. Never mind you bathe in that trouser. Have another one in my bag.’

  Old Isaacs was not wrong. Many German ‘Burghers’ had also lived in Jaffna—and the usual mixing that had produced the Greniers and Toussaints, the Vaderstraatens and Keegels, the Thiedemens and Rulachs, the Speldewindes and the Ebells.

  The Portuguese mixture also lent much to the overall colour, both in speech and style. A kiss was cheraboca7 and a dish was a bandeya and oli riccini was castor oil, no doubt liberally spooned down young throats after such periods as the Christmas festivities, where Anna’s love cake would have been called Bolo de Amor and nothing else!

  As said, Robert Percival described the Burghers of Jaffna with much derision (the chronicler has been accused of doing the same) and even wrote that the Burgher’s day began with tobacco and gin and ended with gin and tobacco. Be that as it may, Carloboy—who had taken to pinching his father’s Three Roses cigarettes (to which he graduated from Peacocks) and had surreptitiously taken a swig of arrack and ran to the bathroom, gasping, holding his chest and wondering who was applying a branding iron inside his throat—standing in the slow-lapping water and squirming his toes into the soft grey sand, felt at peace with the world.