Yakada Yaka , livre ebook
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2000
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143
pages
English
Ebook
2000
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Publié par
Date de parution
14 octobre 2000
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184751109
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
14 octobre 2000
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9788184751109
Langue
English
Carl Muller
YAKADA YAK
The Continuing Saga of Sonnaboy von Bloss and the Burgher Railwaymen
PENGUIN BOOKS
CONTENTS
About the Author
Map
Dedication
To Explain . . .
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Footnotes
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Twelve
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
YAKADA YAK
Carl Muller completed his education from the Royal College, Colombo, and has served in the Royal Ceylon Navy and Ceylon Army. In 1959 he entered the Colombo Port Commission and subsequently worked in advertising and travel firms. Muller took up journalism and writing in the early Sixties and has worked in leading newspapers in Sri Lanka and the Middle East. His published works include, Sri Lanka - A Lyric, Father Saman and the Devil , a link language reader for students, Ranjit Discovers Where Kandy Began , and The Jam Fruit Tree for which he was awarded the Gratiaen Memorial Prize for the best work of English literature by a Sri Lankan for the year 1993.
At present he is working on his third novel. He lives in Kandy with his wife and four children.
To the memory of my father, Vernon Muller, who, for forty years, drove the Iron Demons in Sri Lanka.
To Explain . . .
READERS will wonder at the strange title of this book. Who, or what, is a yakada yak ? Sounds, for all the world, like a Mau Mau rallying call. Let me explain:
When the conquering British rolled out the first railway steam-driven locomotive on iron rails in Sri Lanka, it caused quite a stir-one which lived long in rustic memory. Gone forever were lotus-eating days. Here now, on parallel iron tracks, belching sparks and smoke and making a fearsome chug-chug that sounded like a banshee with broncho-pneumonia, ran a Thing. It was a black, iron Thing. In its maw a fire roared and it hissed like a thousand cobras and it steadily devoured a small mountain of coal that sat upon its tender. Children, it was said, were frightened into maturity: and dogs crept, whining, into hen coops to be severely pecked by indignant poultry.
This Thing, the villagers declared, was an Iron Demon-a yakada yak Later, of course, familiarity bred the familiar contempt: children would rush outdoors to dance beside the track. Trains became fair game and many village boys in the south of Sri Lanka developed excellent throwing arms by regularly and devotedly pelting trains with rocks. In fact they still do. And while the children danced at the passing of each train and laid all manner of objects on the rails to be flattened by the Iron Demon and his entourage, they would sing:
Vathura bi-bee, anguru ka-kaa , Kolamba duvana Yakada Yak .
This translates:
Guzzling water, swallowing coal To Colombo runs the Iron Demon.
The principal character of this book is Sonnaboy von Bloss-an engine driver of the Ceylon Government Railway (it is Sri Lanka now) of the 1930s and on and on. He is no stranger to those who have already read my previous book on the old-time Burgher community of Sri Lanka, The Jam Fruit Tree. This, as promised, is the continuing saga of Burgher life . . . Burgher railway life, to be exact, where the iron demons who worked on the railway were as good or bad as the Iron Demons they rode. Sometimes, it was hard to know what was better . . . or worse! Sonnaboy, I assure you, will not hold centre stage. Too many characters, too much to be said, too many trains running any which way, and at the end, I am sure, so much will be left unsaid.
This is, like The Jam Fruit Tree , a work of faction . . . more fact than fiction, if you please, but that will always remain, I suppose, a matter of personal interpretation.
Carl Muller
Chapter One
SONNABOY von Bloss couldn t whistle for toffee.
Oh, there were lots of things Sonnaboy couldn t do. He couldn t drive a car, for instance, which was, perhaps, the reason why his schoolgirl wife, Beryl, admired the smooth-haired, slick-talking Kinno Mottau. Kinno could drive. What is more, he always contrived to borrow an old Morris Eight and meet Beryl at the Wellawatte Municipal Market and offer to drive her home. They would take the back roads . . . not much of that, of course, but old Hampden Lane-that ran a goodish bit and stopped, rather surprised, at the Dutch canal-was good enough for Kinno. He would park under the spreading champa tree with its riot of golden flowers and he would put his hand up Beryl s skirt while she kept saying, Don t, anney , you re mad or what? How if somebody comes?
Sonnaboy also couldn t dance. Not the way people are supposed to dance, that is. This, too, was vexing. Beryl had accepted much, she would tell the next-door tattle-tale, Olga Oorloff who had a turned-up nose and the makings of a moustache. What, child, Beryl would say, more than double my age, no? If don t know, mustn t do. That s what I always say.
Sonnaboy, to Beryl s everlasting embarrassment, would dance doggedly, energetically, and to the last dying note. He made his own space on the floor, using elbows to make any intruding ribcage retreat in agonized haste. He performed a sort of fandango which cannibals probably execute before a wholesome dinner of prime parson. Like a harrycane, men, Beryl would complain, and every time going to fight also. Someone can t look even at me, he s going to hammer. Which, as readers will note, was typical of the Sonnaboys of the world. He was a firm believer in offence as the best form of being a cog in the many wheels of Sri Lankan society.
As said, Sonnaboy couldn t whistle. But he felt like whistling on this first day of August 1938 as he bicycled to Dematagoda to collect his locomotive from the Railway Running Shed. It was his birthday and he had contrived to exchange duty turns with driver Leembruggen who was to do a quick coastline return. Sonnaboy was to take the 25-up to Anuradhapura which would have meant overtime, payment of overnight allowance and a night of heady booze at the Anuradhapura Railway Running Bungalow. But it was his birthday and he wanted to be with the family, now nicely settled in Wellawatte after a stint in Kadugannawa; and son Carloboy was three and Beryl had been delivered of daughter Diana and this was no day, of all days, to be going to Anuradhapura. Birthdays must be spent at home. Old Phoebus would come, and Jerry Jonklaas and Dumbo Matthysz from Arethusa Lane. Totoboy, his alcoholic brother, would come, of course, and Leah and George might make it. Of course, they would. George de Mello always came when there was free arrack to consume. Totoboy s presence was a certainty. Beryl had said, I suppose your whole jing-bang family will come and drink and dance the devil and no sleep for the baby.
Sonnaboy had frowned. So what are you grumbling? My birthday, no? And how to say don t come? If I open a bottle and wave the cork that Totoboy will get the smell and come.
Beryl had sniffed. All this drinking was another thing she did not understand. Bad, men, for the children to see these big devils drinking like this, she would tell Olga.
Olga would also sniff. Better if doing that in the home than going somewhere else and doing God alone knows what, she would console. I always say let come home and drink and fall in the bathroom. At home, no? How if going out and getting into something else? Men, no? And nowadays women don t care like in those days. All this War business, I think. Smoking and going with soldiers and putting zips on the sides of the dresses. You think I don t know why all this craze to put long zips? Vulgar bitches, men. Don t care whose lap they sitting on now. Yes, men. Saw with my own eyes one day. That Doreen Markwick s daughter. Shameless, child. Sitting on that Aldo Beekmeyer s lap and how do you like? Bugger had pulled her zip down and whole hand inside. Thinking I did not notice. Saying hullo auntie to me and smiling.
Beryl would bite her lip nervously. As much as she favoured this business of an occasional laying of hands, visions of Sonnaboy with his meaty paws zipping or unzipping a willing or unwilling victim was not to her liking. It was wisdom, then, to keep him honourably occupied at home. She blushed ripely at the thought and went to the kitchen to make patties. Lots of things to make for the evening, actually, but Anna, Sonnaboy s sister in Pamankade, had said she would come to help and that was a mercy. Anna would fuss around the kitchen and bring her up to date on all the going gossip. Anna could always be relied on to help. She had no children and welcomed the opportunity to spend the day , as she called it.
So Beryl rolled out the dough and cut circles in it with an upturned cigarette tin and beat up egg whites for stiffening and checked on the patti-curry which was the filling for the patties. She occasionally checked on the baby and smacked Carloboy a couple of times because she couldn t bear the boy and because, in time, he would grow older and bigger and more noticing and she would have to watch her step where Kinno was concerned.
The servant girl was there, of course, Sonnaboy had insisted on a servant. Need someone here, no, when I am working night. Even to run to the market or watch the children or buy an Aspro. So Poddi was installed. Poddi, a Sinhalese girl who had been brought from a village in Galle, was a lazy good-for-nothing who scratched all the time and had a headful of lice. Poddi was twelve and of no use whatsoever. But she would sit for hours with baby Diana on her lap, crooning tunelessly to the infant and not seeming to mind that Diana wet her many times over. This left Beryl time to wallop Carloboy, do all she had to do and also go marketing. It gave her time to meet Kinno and dally at the end of Hampden Lane and come home hot and flushed and needing quick relief
