by Carl Muller
Carloboy was disgruntled. There was, he thought, nothing to look forward to. He had endured Uncle George, passed his time smirking at Marlene’s legs, written fervently and faithfully to Audrey, done his best and worst at school. And there was, half a day away by rail, that jewelled land of gleaming stupas and silver-swept rivers and vacant-faced tanks and clamorous jungle. In transferring Sonnaboy, the railway had slammed the door on a boy’s wonderland and tossed away the key.
Nobody cared tuppence for what a thirteen-year-old thought or did not think. Germany swept into centre stage and the Burghers, all Christians, had a new whipping boy—the great Godless Russia. Father Sebastian would get all worked up at Sunday mass and thunder on and on at sermon time until he grew quite hoarse and croak through the offertory. A draught of mass wine put him right, however, and he would eventually leave the sanctuary, altar boys leading, well satisfied that he had given Stalin and Lenin and Trotsky and other unpronounceable blighters what for.
Father Sebastian held strong views. He declared that the radio was the work of the devil and foamed at the mouth when he heard, at a St Lawrence School Carnival, a group of boys singing a hot favourite of the times.
I, I, I, I, I, I like you very much,
I, I, I, I, I, I think you’re grand,
Why, why, why, why, why, why, when I feel your touch
My heart starts to beat, to beat the band.
This was vile, lewd, all this feeling and touching. ‘Don’t sing these I, I songs!’ he screeched, importuning parents to protect their children from these sinful modern songs. He also detested that rousing ‘Pistol-packing Mama’ which was always bounced around at parties together with ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes’ and to which strange new verses had been added—verses like:
She’ll be sucking my banana when she comes
and:
She’ll be wearing pippie knickers when she comes.
Indeed ‘she’ could be relied on to be doing the damndest things whenever she came, and as the arrack level lowered her accomplishments became more outrageous.
Father Sebastian warned his parishioners that these were surely the Signs of the Times. ‘Think about what is happening today!’ he would bellow. ‘Pray! pray! See what Russia is doing! In Poland they have abolished the Holy Father’s administration. Now even the priests there are appointed by these Communists! But is our Catholic spirit broken? Never! In Hungary also this has happened. And you are having parties and singing dirty songs?’
Yes, Communism was the new dirty word of the times. The Catholic Messenger spewed forth virulent attacks on this anti-Christ—the red machine that destroyed churches and hounded the faithful. When Cardinal Beran was expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1951 there were yips and yaps of horror and Father Sebastian declared that ‘Martyrdom was upon us’.
Carloboy didn’t pay much heed to the deterioration of Germany which began like a hoof-and-mouth disease in 1948. At thirteen years he had (a) brought a mynah bird into class and caused a hellish uproar and (b) nearly broken the vice principal’s neck. As a result of (b) he had been caned and embarked on (c) which was to report his caning to the Cinnamon Gardens police. This caused more complications involving an inspector who was determined to do his duty and Sonnaboy who wished to flay his son preferably before the whole school and the vice principal who complained long and loud that he needed a surgical collar.
Masters met in hushed conclave. How can one little demon cause so much trouble in two days? One even ventured that the problem was glands. But Bruno said he has the only pupil he had who could recite the whole of Gray’s Elegy by heart and didn’t this mean anything? Pol Thel snorted and said, ‘Decidedly not! The boy’s a menace. See what he did—’ and produced a map of Ceylon which Carloboy had drawn and proudly labelled MY MUMMY GOING TO HAVE A BABY —and couldn’t understand why Mr Anghie laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. The author would like to reproduce this map which he was able to secure and which gave Pol Thel a nervous tic for the rest of the day.
Let us unroll (a), (b) and (c) in order that it be forever on record, shall we? What else could a boy, to whom
Carloboy’s map of Ceylon. This was secured from the home of Mr Baptiss, given to the author by his widow. This good lady, too, died in 1993.
Anuradhapura was so special, do but carry his catapult with him wherever he went? It was a symbol. Hadn’t he brought down a bronze pigeon with it before Audrey’s admiring eyes? The ‘pult stood for a glorious boyhood, unfettered, unconfined. He winged the mynah bird while chewing on a sugary bun in the tuck shop. He used glass taws as ammunition, better than any pebble. And he aimed carefully to stun. The idea was to take the bird home, cage it, teach it to talk. In class, he popped the irate bird into his desk where it sulked, having no doubt the mother of all headaches (Saddam Hussein, please note!).
Besides the usual stalwarts, the class also held a tall, dark gawky boy who walked quite disjointedly and was, alas, an epileptic. Bassie, as his name was, was a mass of nerve-ends, had a sort of internal lever movement all his own, tended to drool and was painfully ignored by masters as a dangerous commodity. One never knew with Bassie. He would be perfectly normal, then his eyes would glaze, cross, and his hands would begin to twitch. Then his legs would begin to kick out and his head would begin to assume an angle that ‘Cowpox’ would have given him a medal for. He would foam, too, and emit strange garroty noises while Abdi would leap on his chair and gleefully announce that Bassie was having a fit.
Yes, Bassie was the beloved of the class. Abey would note that there was a History test on Thursday. ‘ Adai, Bassie, can you get a fit in third period on Thursday?’
Bassie would smile weakly, say something like gobble-gobble and frown at his Hall and Stevens Algebra.
When Carloboy opened his desk to check on his mynah bird which was scrishing and scrushing madly inside, the bird gave him a baleful look, then made its dash for freedom. It also gave vent to a stream of Mynah Billingsgate, both irritable and indignant, and flashed across the class, whooped over Pol Thel’s head, swerved inches past Bassie’s nose and rollicked around, scolding incessantly and demanding to know where the tuck shop was.
The uproar was only to be expected and yells of ‘mad bird! mad bird!’ and more personal remarks like ‘catch and put some pol thel’ and all to the accompaniment of falling chairs and thumped desks made the scene pretty frenzied. Bassie, too, obliged, and by the time the mynah gave a last hair-raising screech and shot through an open window into the quadrangle, boys were shoving wooden rulers and pencils into the epileptic’s mouth and Pol Thel had rushed for help and the row, Jowls said, quite paradoxically, was ‘unspeakable’. Well, perhaps he was right. It was more of the ‘yellable’ quality. Bassie’s parents were summoned and the boy taken home in a limousine. Oh, very rich were they. Old man Bassie had a bookshop and they lived in a plush home in Bambalapitiya. Carloboy, needless to say, was whacked and Pol Thel shakily declared that he had aged ten years and demanded that something, anything, be done about that boy!
Jowl selected his longest and stingy-est cane for the occasion. It was new, and seemed to have been saved for a very special purpose. Carloboy stared. Never had he seen such a long, malevolent cane. With a quick intake he positioned himself. Six may be of the best, Jowl had said, but twelve were infinitely better.
Canings in the Forties and Fifties were accepted, hither and yon, as standard tactics. Children, looking for a crumb of comfort would go home to say, ‘I got a caning in school today. Not even my fault. That behind fellow pulled my chair and I upset the ink and got a caning.’
Daddy would look at the dishevelled ink-stained figure. ‘Very good! Go and rub a limeskin on those ink marks and put your shirt to wash!’
However, ply the rattan as one wills, one was not expected to draw blood. Teachers could be pretty sadistic at times. The old and beautiful technique of giving a child a kanay was frowned upon. A master had allowed his enthusiasm to get the bet
ter of him once and burst a boy’s eardrum. Knocks or carefree swats across the head were better and the edge of a ruler on the knuckles very satisfying. This time, however, Jowl drew blood. The end of the cane, curling lovingly round, split the skin on the boy’s forearm. Every successive blow sent that same cane end burrowing into the wound. Twelve cuts later, Carloboy stood, face twisted in pain while blood dripped down his hand and onto the floor.
Jowl blinked. Should never have used such a long cane he thought. ‘Go and get something put on your hand,’ he said sharply. Carloboy grimaced, spun on his heel and walked out, out of the college, marched along Racecourse Avenue and straight to the Cinnamon Gardens police station. His lower arm still bled. ‘I want to put a complaint,’ he said breathlessly and the desk sergeant who only wrote complaints in Sinhala and couldn’t make out what, bounced the boy into Inspector Patternot’s office where Carloboy said his vice principal had assaulted him.
Patternot was a Thomian—he had been educated at St Thomas’ College and as everyone will tell you, Royal and St Thomas’ are deadly rivals. Patternot clucked, examined the hand and clucked again. ‘Your dadda knows you came here?’
‘No.’
‘When did you get caned?’
‘Just now. If one boy gets a fit in class I must get caned?’
‘So if cane pricked your hand why didn’t you take your hand away.’
‘Won’t allow. Must hold the table and wait. If try to move will cane summore. I know, no, everytime I’m the one he’s caning. Can’t even pass his room. If see me calling and caning.’
Patternot chuckled. Bugger must be turning Royal upside down. ‘I’ll tell you what? You go and tell your dadda. If he wants let him come and put a complaint. Now you came from school without telling anyone, no? When you go back might ask where you were and give another punishment. So what are you going to do?’
Carloboy stared. ‘If beat me like this why I cannot put a complaint? Useless telling Daddy. Just he’ll say very good and keep quiet.’
Patternot grinned. It struck him that here was a swell story for the club. ‘I’ll tell you what? You go home. I’ll go and put the fear of Moses into your vice principal.’
Carloboy doubted this very much. Moses and all his Israelite brickmakers couldn’t faze old Jowl but the idea of going home appealed. All he had to do was get his bicycle out of the shed and pedal away. Which he did.
Patternot, pulling a very serious face, called on Jowl and had, as he later said, words. He assured the man that he had not entertained a complaint but took a most serious view of the matter. The boy’s father, he said, had every right to prosecute. Shylock, he reminded, was entitled to his pound of flesh but what had Portia decreed? ‘Shed thou no blood . . .’ wasn’t that so?
Jowl nodded dumbly. A police inspector who quoted Shakespeare! It was all too much for the poor man.
The next morning he asked gruffly about Carloboy’s arm. The boy informed him, stiff-voiced, that his mother had dressed it.
‘I’m excusing you from cadet drill for a week.’
The boy said nothing.
‘Now look here, von Bloss, I’m sorry about this. But it was an accident as you are plainly aware of.’
No answer.
‘I understand that you went to the police.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Was that really necessary? You were punished for the uproar you caused in class.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Anyway, we will say no more about this.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What happened was an accident.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Jowl meditated for a moment after Carloboy had gone. The boy was a menace. Ease off for a week, he thought, then I’ll clout him again . . . and he cheered up considerably. That afternoon he bustled out of office and 104 pounds of boy fell on him!
It was Malin Abeya who looked down the school building from the second floor and noticed the stout wire, stapled into the red brickwork. It disappeared near the steps at the tennis court end, lodged in a conduit of sorts. The wire connected to the lightning rod.
‘If you’re so big,’ he said, curling his lower lip (which always made him look like some galactic life form), ‘why don’t you climb down this?’
Carloboy peered over the side. ‘Pooh! Anyone can do that!’
‘So you do to see.’
‘Wait, I’ll take off my shoes.’
Malin scoffed in a nasty way. ‘Shoes? You’re calling those old cricket boots shoes?’
Carloboy crimsoned. The cricket boots were also a punishment. A week ago he had stopped on his way back from school at the Wellawatte canal. There, barefooted, near the Kinross Avenue railway bridge, where the canal met the sea, he had spent a very wet evening catching guppies which he transferred into a jam jar. And he lost his shoes. He stood, nonplussed. There was nobody in sight so all he could gather was that a stray wave with a fondness for shoes had nipped up and seized his.
He had found it quite tedious giving explanations. Why was it that boys were always asked to explain their every thought, word or deed? Also, these explanations were never believed. So he told his mother: ‘I went to catch fish and my shoes went.’
Beryl glared. ‘Went? Just like that went? What? Somebody wore and went?
‘No-oo, must have gone in the waves.’
‘Very nice. Your only pair also. Wait till your father comes home!’
Sonnaboy looked his son up and down. ‘When you’re going to behave yourself I don’t know. Bigger you get the worse you’re becoming. Now you wait till payday, you heard. You lose your shoes go barefoot to school!’
Cricket boots were all else he had. He spent some time with a pair of pliers, wrenching out the hobnails . . . and he hoped, quite foolishly, that the school wouldn’t notice, which hope was dashed the instant he entered.
‘Adai, von Bloss is coming in cricket boots. Oy, von Bloss, where’s the match?’
Anyway, Carloboy tossed aside his footgear, dangled over the second floor ledge and tested the wire. It held. Thus assured he began a cautious descent. Malin fled. He wasn’t going to witness this. The stapled wire held, and Carloboy found it tolerably easy although the wire cut into his fingers and the top of his palm. He was over the ground floor arch and the wire turned left to follow the huge pillar, and that’s where the weak spot was. A staple gave way with a crumble of red dust and Carloboy clawed up to seize the upper section of wire. His feet slipped on the smooth crenellation of the arch and as the wire took his weight, another staple popped. It seemed to the swaying boy that thousands of boys were congregated below, hooting, whistling, cheering. His palms burned. Another staple tumbled from way up, bouncing on his shoulder. Jowl strode out. Above Carloboy let go, kicked out and fell. He hoped to clear the steps. He didn’t. He landed like a sack of spuds on Jowl, who collapsed.
When the vice-principal rose, having assured himself then he had not been hit by an atom bomb, he gave Carloboy, quite unhurt except for deep blue wire scores on his palms, a terrible look. The man was hurting. His neck was stiffening, his shoulders seemed to have had a quarrel with his breastbone and emerged losers, his ribcage seemed to have made a bad impression on his lungs. He hobbled away, rubbing a hip that had suddenly begun to ache, and wrote a letter. It was to be delivered, by messenger, to Sonnaboy von Bloss.
It was an end-of-tether, very final sort of letter. It reminded that the Royal College had produced generations of the island’s finest citizens and sportsmen. It also said that many of the country’s most notable Burghers, the cream of the crop, so to say, had graced the hallowed halls, corridors and study rooms of this College whose houses honoured Hartley, Harvard, Marsh and Boake. It described Carloboy as an infinite pain in the Royalist butt. It admitted, albeit grudgingly, that boys in whatever form, would be boys, but the College was comfortable in the thought that boys could be defined, their needs anticipated, their moods met, their peculiar temperaments kept in check. The College prided itself
on refining the crudest, polishing the roughest, bringing up those gems of purest ray serene from dark caves of ocean; unfathomed or whatever. Something had to be done, the latter insisted. In this case, the College needed help. Sonnaboy had to enforce what the college decreed.
Sonnaboy did. He gave a bellow of rage that rattled the neighbours’ windows. ‘Go and cut me a stick!’ he thundered and Carloboy did just that. There was a large jak tree6 in the garden. He tied his son to that and belaboured him until the boy’s shirt was in bloodstained tatters and the neighbours rushed out to cling to him and drag him away and Orville Ludwick narrowly escaped being punched by a flailing fist.
It was the end of a madcap chapter. Carloboy spent two day at home. Beryl drenched his weals with Dettol and tended a split upper lip and dosed him with venivelgeta and, for once, looked white-lipped at her son. The long crushed-skin vents scabbed over and the boy found it uncomfortable to even take a deep breath. He avoided his father and turned his face to the wall when Sonnaboy entered the room.
He returned to school, swotted to catch up on a lot he had lost or blithely ignored. He sat the Junior School Certificate and passed commendably enough. Yes, 1948 hadn’t been such a bad year after all.
Chapter Thirteen
All things considered, 1948 had, to repeat our previous sentence, been quite a year. Among other things, it was a year of independence and thus a good enough occasion to impregnate the wife yet again . . . which was what Sonnaboy did.
This was accepted by all the family as more than natural and Carloboy and his sisters and toddler brother found an old familiar mummy with her old familiar big stomach, also most acceptable. Little Heather Evadne Maryse had howled in fear when Mummy came back with baby David Stefan Lance. It took a long time persuading the child that this was the same Beryl and that she was slim and most unusual because she had just brought forth David.
Perhaps, for Ceylon, 1948 will always be remembered—not because Carloboy nearly flattened his vice principal, but because, at long last, the British said ‘nuff and hauled down the Union Jack.