Once Upon a Tender Time

by Carl Muller

  ‘No! You mean after they bomb and come they have to come to the carrier and crash?’

  ‘No, men, you don’t understand? Coming fast, no? And ship also not just sitting and waiting. Going up and down and this way that way in the waves. So have to make like crash landing.’

  ‘My God. Nothing happens to the planes?’

  ‘Who knows? But anyhow they go and come, no? It seems have big wires and under the planes in the back have big hooks. As plane comes down hook catches the wire and pulls the plane to stop.’

  ‘My God, like a catapult or something?’

  ‘Yes, men. Like that have four wires. Sometimes in the dark pilots are missing all the wires. If they don’t put speed and go up again, fall straight into the sea!’

  ‘Holy mother of God! Pour, men, another drink. Must give these buggers to drive an engine to see.’

  ‘Hah! Pukka that will be. Will climb the bloody platform and go through the station!’3

  The defeat of the Third Reich caused church bells to be rung vigorously and the atomic strike created universal awe. So this was how it all ended. A single plane in a grey, battle-clouded sky and a projectile that shredded the land into crimson, blood spattered dust, bearing down with all the lust, the vehemence of war. There were no people—just a gravy, a thick oily sludge that was once a metropolitan population. Who, then, could comprehend such an obliteration? Carloboy couldn’t. He was just a boy, wasn’t he? He returned to Aunty Leah’s, wrote long letters to Maurius and Quinny and volumes to Audrey. Even Marlene who liked to spread her brown legs, then place an ankle on a knee and relax while she read, held no special interest for the boy. He had been very taken up with the way Marlene sat. As she cocked up her leg, bent over her books, her skirt would fall away and a fat thigh would be revealed all the way up to where her knicker cut into her flesh. He never knew it then, but it was Marlene’s ‘come hither’ gesture. Yes, Marlene was interesting, and very beautiful too. He had loved her. . . when? Oh, that was a light year ago. He had even slipped a note among her books one day and yet, the girl gave no indication that she had seen or read it. And she was older, too, and thought much of her studies and looked upon the world with too much seriousness for her age.

  The first wet dream made Carloboy feel that he was growing to be quite depraved. He woke up, hazily recalling that somewhere, a naked girl had figured in his dream. But he was wet and the stickiness on his pajamas made him get up hurriedly. This was awful. Who was that girl? And were there other people, too, in his dream? He went to the loo, passed urine, washed himself and came back to bed, yawning. He felt very tired.

  In school he told Alan Bartholomeusz: ‘I say, hell of a thing happened. Last night when I was sleeping, dreamt I was landing a girl and had a leak.’

  Alan grinned and yelled: ‘Hey, you heard? Von Bloss shot in his sleep.’

  Abdi chuckled, ‘Must have been putting a shake in his sleep.’

  ‘No, men, it was a dream,’ and Carloboy explained.

  ‘Sha, if I also can dream like that. You can remember the girl?’

  ‘No, men. But in the dream saw the cunt an’ all and I was landing and suddenly I got up spill all over the sheet also.’ So, gradually, school claimed him and the pang of that platform parting became duller and duller and when Sonnaboy announced that another brother or sister was now shaping up in his mother’s womb he just nodded, while Leah looked quite startled and said: ‘One in the hand, one in the stomach. How going to manage like this God knows.’

  George grunted, ‘Took and went there, no? If stayed with the mother no problem.’

  ‘Yes, men, but living in that tiny house. There even nice upstair house and all.’

  ‘When is the baby coming?’

  ‘December, I think. You heard?’ she told Carloboy. ‘Good Christmas present for you.’

  Carloboy scorned reply. The postman had brought him a letter from Audrey who said she was going to act in a school play and why couldn’t he come and see her perform? Also, she said, her brothers both wished to become doctors and what would he be? And she wished to be his wife and that was enough, wasn’t it?

  ‘One thing, quite quiet now he’s becoming,’ Leah said and George rubbed his beaky nose.

  ‘Don’t even say like that,’ he warned. ‘Can see the father, no? If quiet also don’t know what will do next.’

  ‘Uncle George, for this art competition need fifteen rupees.’

  ‘What? What competition? And from where money to give like that?’

  ‘See in the papers have. Bluebird Art Competition. Have to send drawing or painting of a child in a flower garden. Entrance fee is ten rupees and see the prizes. First prize hundred rupees, then fifty rupees, like that. Have to send by post the picture.’

  ‘Just keep quiet, men. I haven’t money.’

  ‘So what, Uncle George, if I win?’

  ‘Rubbish. Waste of money all this.’

  ‘I drew the picture also. And next week closing date.’

  ‘I haven’t I told, no?’

  ‘But Uncle—’

  ‘Don’t come to worry like this! Your father never gave money for all this. Only for your food and bus fare giving something.’

  ‘Huh, if Daddy was here would have given.’

  ‘So then write and ask your bloody father!’

  Carloboy stormed indoors, brought out his picture, crushed it into a ball and flung it in the garden. ‘There! That’s what you want, no! You wait I’ll write and tell what you said!’

  ‘What did I say?’ George hooted. ‘You think you can show your temper here? This is my house, you heard.’

  Leah tried to pull Carloboy away. He jerked free and his eyes blazed. ‘Telling bloody father! Why? You’re not a father? So you re also a bloody father, no?’

  George shot out of the lounger. Leah wrung her hands. Carloboy recklessly glared at the man. ‘You think I want to stay here? Bloody miser, won’t give five cents to a beggar even!’

  ‘Get out at once!’ George roared.

  ‘Now bloody father! When we were in 34th Lane nicely came to drink my father’s arrack and eat and go!’

  ‘Arrack! Your father gave arrack? Your father gave piss to drink, you heard? Piss!’

  Carloboy said, ‘We’ll see. We’ll see what you’ll get. Catch and kill you, that’s what my father will do. You can tell anything, I don’t care!’ and he banged into his room, trembling in the fever of the moment and refused to eat. He didn’t know how Leah took up the crumpled picture, carefully opened it, gently releasing it crease by crease. She took it inside, showed it to a wide-eyed Marlene who whispered, ‘It’s nice, Mummy, in vain he spoilt it, no?’

  Leah laid a thick napkin over it and plied the smoothing iron. Slowly, the sheet of drawing paper was restored, although colour smudges did lie in lines where the creases had been ironed out. She checked the newspapers, then rummaged in the Cream Crackers tin in the kitchen for the money she carefully hid away. ‘Don’t tell,’ she cautioned Marlene, ‘we’ll send and see.’

  It was an all-island competition and Carloboy was startled one morning by a summons from the principal. J.C.A. no less. Even Pol Thel throbbed visibly. ‘What have you been doing this time?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Nothing? Then go to the Principal’s office. Here’s the chit.’

  The class buzzed. Carloboy rose slowly, then swaggered to the door. The swagger was essential. What the devil could the principal want? But J.C.A. had a smile on his chubby face and asked why Carloboy paid such little attention to Art, and anyway congratulations were in order, weren’t they? Carloboy blinked.

  He hadn’t the foggiest until Corea told him that he had won fifty rupees being the second prize in the Bluebird Art Competition. Carloboy’s hands shook and for a minute amazement washed over him. Corea gave him the page from the Ceylon Daily News. Yes, it was there in bold black type. ‘Second prize Rs 50—C. P. von Bloss’ and the information that winners would receive their cheques in t
he mail. Corea smiled slightly. ‘You see what thought and application can do? You have the makings, boy and you are, I feel, sadly misguided. Mens sana—you know what that means? Mens sana in copore sano—a healthy mind in a healthy body. That’s what I want of my students. You insist on playing the fool. Why?’

  Carloboy groaned inwardly. Why not? Life held too much for a twelve-year-old who had lived through such things as an atom bomb and kissing a girl knee deep in the Malwatte river and living in an Anuradhapura railway bungalow which everybody called ‘Monkey House’4 and ogling Marlene’s fat thighs each time she cocked a leg in his presence.

  Why? The whole damn world was playing the fool! The civics periods had degenerated into long discussions on events leading to the Second World War—interesting enough, if only ‘Gon’ didn’t make it so utterly boring. Why, the ribald roistering conversations between railway cronies at home were more colourful, interesting and eminently listenable. He had thrilled to the gory renderings of Pearl Harbour and how the Japs and sunk HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. Rommel’s capture of Tobruk had been another high point, and again how Montgomery had brought Rommel to his knees.

  ‘How dew like!’ Sonnaboy had exulted. ‘Finished for Rommel. Whole army surrendered. Quarter of a million buggers!’ That was May 1943 and North Africa was rid, finally, of the Axis forces. Hitler was, as Edema had said, ‘getting it tight from all sides, serves the bastard right!’ But Hitler didn’t seem to care, or did he?

  ‘Three hundred thousand buggers gone!’ Totoboy would cry, waving a small Union Jack. He loved waving the flag even if he had poked it into Iris’ eye one day and had to take her to the Eye Hospital in Darley Road.

  ‘Gone? Gone where? What the devil are you talking about?’

  ‘Gone! Finished! Russians killed 300,000 Germans! And how? ‘Nother 100,000 surrendered!’ It was the great Stalingrad victory. And the war got closer to Ceylon too. The Japanese tried to launch an attack on India but were defeated at the battle of Kohima and America began its long-range bombing of Japan from the Marianas. And then came D-Day and the liberation of France and that famous Channel crossing by the Allied Armada on 6 June 1944. All the world was in a ferment. So was every home in Sri Lanka, and for sure, every classroom in every school in the island.

  Old ‘Penda’ gave his boys a graphic description of the debacle in France. ‘You know-um-Hitler is not listening to advice. He won’t even allow his generals to retreat. So a lot of men are being trapped and killed.’ He outlined how a group of German military leaders had tried to assassinate Hitler. ‘The man was lucky and see what he did? Executed everybody. Even Rommel was caught.’

  ‘But, sir, Rommel committed suicide.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but only because Hitler said, commit suicide or I will have you shot. So what to do? Rommel killed himself.’ He rose to write on the blackboard. ‘Take down these dates and notes. These are the most important dates in the world. Always remember them.’ And ‘Penda’ catalogued those stirring times and when La Brooy, who was monitor, wanted to wipe the blackboard after the bell had rung, Carloboy said, ‘Don’t do that? Let it be. You don’t understand, men? These are what have happened now. This is our time also, no?’

  And ‘Penda’s’ potted history of German and Japanese surrender had remained and been remarked on by every successive master in every successive period except, of course ‘Cowpox’ who received his charges in the chemistry lab and had his own daily battle of the Bunsen burners.

  Years later, when Carloboy had been sacked from the college and been well pummelled by Sonnaboy for this ‘disgrace to the family’, he had sat morosely over his monitor’s exercise books and come across ‘Penda’s’ notes:

  GERMANY:

  April 25, 1945: Russians entered Berlin and advance units of the Russian and American forces met on the River Elbe.

  April 30, 1945: Mussolini captured and shot by Italian partisans. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker and his body burnt in the courtyard of the Chancery.

  May 7, 1945: Hitler’s successor, Admiral Doenitz, surrenders.

  JAPAN:

  August 8, 1945: Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by an American Superfortress bomber. 78,000 people killed in a single blast.

  August 8, 1945: Russia declares war on Japan. Invades Manchuria.

  August 9, 1945: Second atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

  August 14, 1945: Japan surrenders.

  It was all so unbelievable that he, Carloboy, had lived through all this. How many hours had he spent poring over the many shocks and aftershocks of this massive show of human hatred—the destruction of the Japanese navy at the battle of Leyte Gulf, the decimation of the Japanese airforce at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, those ghastly concentration camps of Belsen and Buchenwald and the grim extermination of millions of Jews at Auschwitz. And what about the Battle of the Bulge and Hitler’s famous Siegfried Line? And those terrible V1 flying bombs and those silent, deadly V2 rockets. What, he thought could any boy of twelve do when the whole world seemed intent on slaughter, offence and defence? All he did, as Corea said, was play the fool! At least, in this, he excelled and became a quickly identified plague to his mentors.

  It was so easy to make ‘Cowpox’ a victim. The master (who always slapped his boys according to Geometry) would sit in the lab, keep his pipe on the desk, and after detailing a simple experiment which would not result in any terrible aftermath, relax, read a book, nod over it and even doze off for a few unguarded minutes. It was the work of an instant to push a few crystals of iodine into his pipe, burying the crystals in the Three Nuns tobacco the man relished.

  The staffroom had never known anything quite like it. ‘Cowpox’ came in, put down his books and clip file, shrugged off his twill coat and lit up. There was a teeny-weeny crackle and then, a horrified man, eyes bulging, flung down his pipe and rubbed at his lips before rushing to the water filter. A thick thread of violet smoke curled out of the bowl of burning tobacco!

  Caning Carloboy became the pastime of every master. ‘Bada’ would glower. ‘What is this? Again? In the morning I gave you six cuts. Now what?’ Later he didn’t even ask. But one day the wily man checked after the fourth cut and gave his victim a quizzical look. ‘You know, von Bloss, I don’t seem to be making much of an impression. And you know something, boy? I like to make an impression! But you seem to be determined to deny me the satisfaction. Take off your trousers!!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You heard me! Take them off!!’

  When Carloboy stood in his underpants, the headmaster chuckled. ‘Aha! I thought so. Very ingenious. Now take that off and stand still!’

  Carloboy unhitched the padding of motorcycle tube rubber he had cleverly wrapped around his bum. The six cuts, vigorously applied on his thin underpants, smarted like the devil. ‘Bada’ dropped the rubber into his wastepaper basket. ‘You may go,’ he said with deep satisfaction, ‘and this trophy,’ indicating the rubber which he prodded with the end of his cane, ‘will be exhibited in the staffroom for the edification of the whole staff.’

  Ruefully and with much rubbing, Carloboy went back to class, then cheered himself at the thought that he had weathered many such sessions and there had to be more ways, surely, to upholster (if not skin) a cat.

  But the mayhem continued and it infected others too. Athula, would have none of it. A podgy, well-built thick-lipped and wide-mouthed boy he was well-liked by his cronies and much disliked by those who thought him very much a damp squib. Athula was also an ambitious fellow and to boys like von Bloss who were seemingly born unambitious, there was little in common between them. They tolerated each other, being classmates and Athula would dismiss Carloboy’s many peccadillos with that superior sniff that said: ‘What can you expect. He’s a no-class Burgher and we are from good families.’

  Athula in turn was scorned by Carloboy who watched him waddle, quite fat-assed, his posterior masquerading as a bowl of jelly and hissed: ‘Copacabana!’ A delicious name for a boy whose arse moved to the rhyt
hm of his soul. Athula, as would be expected, was sorely disturbed. He dared not challenge Carloboy who had no use for the Queensberry rules. Also, as was constantly demonstrated, the boy seemed to have fists of iron. It had happened, quite naturally, one day. Each boy had a little wooden locker in which he kept the usual rubbish and what was better kept away from class for fear of whatever it was being confiscated. Interval time saw a stampede for lockers where such strange items as three-days-old chewing gum, pen knives, etc., were extracted. Ashoka Madanayake had a pet squirrel in his locker. Ranjit Jaya, who was a roly-poly with calves in keen competition with his thighs, had cake and a bottle of strawberry jam while Doyne had a policeman’s hat and a bottle of ammonia! (The author couldn’t explain why—the mind truly boggles). Farouk Abdi, who was proud of his biceps and had begun weight training had a poster which read:

  Cows may come

  and cows may go

  but the bull in this house

  goes on forever!

  (Later, he had set this same poster, ornately framed, inside the door of his bachelor apartment—his only souvenir of madcap college days.)

  On the day Carloboy mislaid the key to his locker, he didn’t fret. He just grinned, swung a fist and split the door. Soon, he was designated emergency locker-opener and when this reached the staffroom, Danton Obeya, who was the boxing master hmmed and said that a pair of fists like that belonged in the gym. Also, shrilled ‘Bella’, the boy should be dissuaded from going around, destroying school property and what next? I ask, what next?

  So Athula accepted ‘Copacabana’ in good grace, and Vishva, who had collided painfully with those fists, vouched most fervently that it was wisdom to stay three metres out of reach.

  Thus did the months flit by and December holidays saw Beryl von Bloss at Leah’s from where she was rushed to hospital to deliver her fifth child, Michael Granton Duke5

  and it was transfer time, too, and Sonnaboy descended on Anna en masse where the entire family squirrelled into a single room until negotiations for a house in Saranankara Road, in Kalubowila, were completed.