Colombo

Carl Muller

Description

Colombo is in the throes of an explosion. Its face changes continuously, its vices are legion, its future as yet obscure and its paths speak of sunlight as well as of shadow.-' Carl Muller begins his quasi-fictional portrait of this beautiful, war-torn city by describing the great battles fought over it by European colonizers-. In AD 1505, a Portuguese fleet blown off-course took shelter in Galle, overthrew the local kings, fortified Colombo and decided to stay. The Dutch came along, ousted the Portuguese, made Colombo their capital and ruled till the British arrived and sent them packing. Muller intersperses the tales of the past into descriptions of the battles that are being fought in Colombo today"political battles in which vested interests play a major role as well as battles fought on the individual level in the struggle to survive: young women and children turning to prostitution to earn an extra buck, people begging in the streets to make ends meet, unemployed young men turning to crime in frustration, students demonstrating against atrocities, lovers pining for nightfall in order to push away loneliness if only for a few moments... Written in Muller's lucid style, Colombo: A Novel is a chronicle of a city's trials and triumphs.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 14 octobre 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351181583
• Langue: English

Extrait

CARL MULLER

Colombo—A Novel

PENGUIN BOOKS

About the Author

Part I: Colombo Nights

One: Under the Umbrella

Two: The Leafy Mango Tree

Three: Shabby People

Four: Harbour Lights

Five: The Exhibitionists

Six: Only by Night

Seven: The Canalians

Eight: Let Sleeping Gods Lie

Nine: Bodies and Spirits

Ten: Highlines and Skylines

Eleven: Structured for Collapse

Twelve: Colombo’s Child

Thirteen: In a Glass—Dimly

Contents

Fourteen: Other Guns—Other Times

Fifteen: Once upon a Garden

Sixteen: For the Record

Seventeen: Target—Colombo

Eighteen: Intermezzo

Nineteen: Oh, Oh, Colombo

Twenty: Fishers All

Twenty-One: Treasons, Strategems and Spoils

Twenty-Two: The Fall of Colombo

Part II: The Growth of a City

One: In the Beginning

Two: The Other Jewel in the Crown

Three: Changing Skylines

Four: Colombo Tomorrow

Finally: Crutches and Props

Footnotes

Eight: Let Sleeping Gods Lie

Fourteen: Other Guns—Other Times

Author’s Note

Copyright Page

PENGUIN BOOKS

COLOMBO—A NOVEL

Carl Muller completed his education from the Royal College, Colombo, and has served in the Royal Ceylon Navy and Ceylon Army. In 1959 h e entered the Colombo Port Commission and subsequently worked in advertising a nd 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 in S ri Lanka includeSri Lanka—a Lyric, andFather Saman and the Devilas well as a link language reader for students, Ranjit Discovers where Kandy Began. The Jam Fruit T ree, the first part of the Burgher trilogy, was published by Penguin in 1993 and was a warded the Gratiaen Memorial Prize for the best work of English Literature by a Sri Lankan for 1993, a prize endowed by Booker Prize winning international author Michae l Ondaatje. The two sequels toThe Jam Fruit Tree, Yakada YakāandOnce Upon a Tender Time, were published by Penguin in 1994 and 1995 respectively. A Puffin titledThe Python of Pura Malai and other Storieswas published in early 1995.

Carl Muller lives in Kandy, the hill capital of Sri Lanka, with his wife and four children.

To the people of Colombo—the ordinary people with a ll their difficulties and the problems of day-to-day living.

PART I

Colombo Nights

One

Under the Umbrella

The light stays in the sky for a long while. An ele ctric patch of blue-yellow like a melt- down of the colours of Armenia. The sun had reddene d, bloated, flattened along the line of the water like a flaming full-bodied ankh, and a tattered shaft of vermilion had danced over the long, restless sea. Then the blood-cowled ball of day had plunged below the rim of a morose sweepcircle of red-daubed black. But the patch of dusklight remains and in the north a grid of fireflies weave in the swell as ships ride at anchor in the fairway, waiting for a pilot to haul them into harbour. It is time to close the umbrella …

Kusum was growing increasingly restless. She and An ton had sat under the umbrella since early evening. That was when the city continu ed to scorch and there were too many people and too many loafers with narrow eyes a nd shirts with soiled sleevepits, who walked up and down and around, darting vile eye s, ogling, staring at her knees and smirking at the way her elbow pressed into Anto n’s crotch. She hated that man who had just dragged by, his han d full of multi-coloured paper fans. He would pause, leer and thrust a fan at her. ‘Bambaray,’ he would whistle through his teeth, looking at her, branding her bre asts, undressing her slowly, viciously. She hated the little fans. They whirred and flared, haloes of colour, spinning in the sea breeze. The man would hobble closer, emboldened by Anton’s silence. ‘Missy like bambaray,’ he would ask, ‘karakena bambaray. A spinning bee?’ Sly. Suggestive. His thin croakvoice was hot, hot like a large, furry ha nd on her thigh, and she would flinch, swallow and say, ‘Epa! No!’ And tell Anton, ‘Come go from here.’ The man would make a liquid sound in his throat and walk away to stand at the edge of the rockdip to the sea, turning to watch them, a nd Kusum would know he was there and her eyes would go to him, then quickly fall as he would slyly squeeze himself when he knew she was glancing at him and Anton wasn’t. Trapped. Trapped in this large public esplanade whe re once long ago, the bastion of St Jeronimo would have glowered at them from the fo rtress of Colombo. It was growing dark now, and Colombo was disguising itself in a gathering gloom. To their left, as they sat, the Galle Face Hotel—a cho colate gateaux of amber lights and frosted fluorescence. Behind them, contemplating th eir umbrella tent, the tall statue of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. A big statue for a small man . But he had such capacity in life before he met, with bullet shock, the rapacity of d eath. Anton closed the umbrella. They rose. He didn’t min d standing now. He was tumescent, he knew, and could feel the damp patch o n his pants. He could still feel Kusum’s fingers, squeezing, squeezing, her elbow pressing, restraining his impatient throbbing, while he clutched the umbrella close ove r them, hid them beneath it, stroked her thighs with his free hand, kneaded her small breasts when there was no one around except for the waves that laughed with a swallow of sunshine. No one? But there was always someone around. This was the Galle Face Green—a big dust-skirted lung in a city of smoking buses an d melting tar on hot roads and clogged, festering drains and whores outside the Hi lton and the Inter-Continental and at the top of Baillie Street. It was always the Green; that is until the green disappeared and governments had destroyed its verdancy with tub-thumping May Day an d Independence Day rallies and parades and political meetings and the tramp of sol diers and the pancaking of gun emplacements. It was a sea of red-grey dust now, tu rning blotchy, cadaverous under a

rising moon. It was a place of the night’s rankest perversions, the day’s gaudiest diversions. For Anton and Kusum, it was the only place they cou ld meet, sit, discover each other, cloaked in the umbrella which was their shield and shade. People came to jog, children to run their dogs, fly their kites, drop their ice-cream cones and cry. A man sometimes brought a half-starved pony, cupped-finger ribs and sores on its hocks and buttocks. He offered rides to louts who lashed the animal with a short rope. In an earlier time when the morning was grey and a cloud cluster assem bled over the lighthouse, the first Prime Minister of the country had ridden his horse here, fallen off, and died. If only they could stay on in this friendlier, clos er darkness. Somehow, with sundeath, the sea grumbled louder and the wash of the waves o n rock was crisper, hissier. There was a beeswarm in the wind. They walked slowly, he grudgingly, she with a hint of impatience, towards the Galle Face Hotel, its walls fleetingly washed by the head lights of cars that swung in to park, douse lights and crouch silent. If I had a car, Anton thought. I would drive it to that corner where the sea is louder and not even the green glow of the dashboard would witness as I spread her legs on the seat. He envied those richer men who drove thei r women here when he was leaving with his. They would roll up their window glasses a nd move urgently in their darkened cocoons. If I had a car … I would sit at the wheel and pull down the zip in my trousers and I would take her by her head, my fingers in her hair and push her face down on me and she would run her lips, her tongue on me and suck a nd suck… and he grew hard, even as they walked to the Galle Road, and in the shadow his hand crept up under the back of her skirt and Kusum wrung her hands and said, ‘D on’t. Not now, it’s late … I must go home.’ Anton stood, watching her board a bus. He gripped the umbrella, feeling the smart of this loins, the hurt of his testicles, the great wa nting, the denial of relief. He walked towards the Holiday Inn. In the shadows of the kerb vagrants gathered, staking shelter for the night. Behind him the esplanade purpled, plunged into a va st shadow tureen, became a blackened bay across which deeper shades flitted. L ike a cave turned inside out. And beyond, the India ink of the Indian Ocean. Among th e clouds over the harbour a thread of lightning whipped, thin, viperlike. Over a centu ry ago, when the British lorded over the city, lightning had struck the tallest building , destroying part of the roof and the walls. That was in 1805 and Colombo was a disintegrating fortress then. It had been a fortress under the Dutch and the Portuguese too. A closed fist that relaxed over the centuries, finger by finger. How would Anton know that he had just leftla plaine de Gallewhere, close to where he had sat, fondling his beloved, M. Duperon, secon d engineer with the Dutch forces had, in 1795, mounted four eighteen-pounders. There was a defensive barrier then, as the Dutch prepared to meet the onslaught of the British. The Galle Face esplanade had been vital then. Trees and shrubs had been cut down and all that lay north of the Green pulled to piece s. Over there, skirting the sea face, was the bazaar of the lower town. That, too, had be en razed and the ramparts of the Fort furnished with mortars, guns and howitzers. The roar of attack and defence had echoed many time s across the Green. Today it lay, wide, naked, a place for pimps and politicians , a place to rouse rabble, to hold a vituperative rally. Urchins with sores on their hea ds bathed in the huge drain that channelled the spill waters of the Beira Lake into the sea. An English Duke, when on a visit to the island, had sneaked out of Government House incognito and was found drinking black coffee from a chipped cup in the little lean-to at the end of the Green. Lives have been lost here, blood spilt, women gang raped, male prostitutes sodomized and addicts still stumble or stand, sniffing, nervously waiting for their