Good Little Ceylonese Girl , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Ashok Ferry

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83 pages

English

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The Good Little Ceylonese Girl is Ashok Ferrey's second collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy where Joe attends a course in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. But Italians-much like today's residents of Colombo-live at home till marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond. A hen and chicken affair of fake fiancs and phony engagements ensues. Long years and many miles away, Colombo's Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them-with plaques to announce their charity. On the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet. A broken mother-with neither Dutch cabinet nor navy helicopter to rescue her-feels her son slip away, and watches him go giving her looks of mild reproach. Two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Nineteen years of clandestine meetings culminate in another chance of marriage. Perhaps time does separate. Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam. He writes of the Sri Lankan diaspora, who seem not to notice that their country has changed in their absence. He writes of the West's effect on Sri Lankans, of its 'turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing'. As you laugh, you are left with nostalgia for a bygone Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans who might have been.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	10 décembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184003680
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Serendipity Colpetty People

Published by Random House India in 2012
Copyright Ashok Ferrey 2009
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, U.P.
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
All characters and situations in this publication are fictitious. There is no intended resemblance to anyone, living or dead.
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184003680
For Alexander and Soraya ,
The Little Emperor, The Little Empress
Contents
Fidanza to Fidanzata
Dust
Love in the Tsunami
Vitamain V
Maleeshya
The Ola! Ola! Club
The Indians Are Coming!
The Good Little Ceylonese Girl
The Maharaja of Patragarh
The Jackfruit
Last Man Standing
The Moon Princess
Pig
Oh No, Roger, No, No, No!
Seedevi
But Did I Tell You I Can t Dance?
Fidel Sent the Plane
Acknowledgements
Fidanza to Fidanzata
It was biting cold up there in the Tuscan hills. I stuck my hands even deeper into the pockets of my Oxfam jacket and continued walking: past the house of the medieval pope that was now a disco, past the little town square, from the Porta Romana at one end to the Porta Fiorentina at the other. Then I walked all the way back.
Joe and I had this arrangement, you see. While Joe entertained I walked. I tell you, by the end of that holiday I had buns of iron, calves of steel. Just as I got back to the Porta Romana a third time, the louvred shutters above me burst open.
He s all yours, she said. Come and get him.

I first met Joe at one of those posh Christ Church dinners-black tie-where you bring guests, usually at your peril because the food is execrable.
I think, said my invitee rather grandly, this duck on my plate died of anorexia quite a few years back. It wasn t as bad as all that, really. He was Alfred Dunhill s grandson. What did he know about ducks?
There was a commotion as Joe, who was the person on my other side, climbed on to the table, knocking over a wine glass or two. When this Hall was built in the sixteenth century it was the largest room in the kingdom. To command it you have to have the sort of voice to carry up to the rafters of its splendid hammer beam ceiling.
I would like you all to join me, if you will, in singing a little song, he boomed.
Three jelly fish And three hundred voices sang after him,
Three jelly fish
Sitting in a dish
Sitting in a dish
Joe was my best friend at Oxford, though what he saw in me I really couldn t tell. I suppose I was his conscience, his alter ego, his good angel. Not that Joe was dark or evil or menacing. On the contrary, he was good at everything. A little too good for his own good, if you know what I mean.
I m leaving this place, he said after only four weeks of term. I m off to Italy for higher studies.
What sort of higher studies? I asked, perplexed.
A course of higher studies in women.
I didn t know they had courses like that.
Oh, believe it, he replied. In Italy, I hear, there are splendid openings for keen students like me. Only one thing though. Do I mean higher studies, or do I mean lower studies?
I took the train down to Italy as soon as term ended, to Monte San Savino high up in the Tuscan hills. Sri Lankans didn t need visas those days, but at the border they inspected my sachets of cloves, cardamoms and thunapaha with deep suspicion.
For curry, I explained. They didn t understand but they let me through anyway. You leave Sri Lanka with the firm conviction you ll be happy if you never see another curry as long as you live, but at some point in your career your convictions falter and, before you know it, you re knee-deep in curry. You re back to your roots really; ginger as well as turmeric.
When I stepped off the train at Monte the whole station stopped and stared. They had never seen a black man before. It was the only time in my life I was able to appreciate the meaning of the phrase time stood still. I felt like God on the Seventh Day.
I lugged my suitcase up the hill to the little flat by the Porta Romana where Joe lived, above Signora Sirra, his landlady. The good Signora s husband had died during the war and nothing very exciting had happened to her since, but your beard could grow grey before she finished her war stories and let you go. The trick was to sneak past the open doorway of her flat where she sat knitting, permanently in black. It wasn t easy, I tell you.
Good thing you re here! said Joe when I arrived panting at his door. I m inundated with work. I find I ve cornered the market in fidanzata s.
Before we go any further, let me explain this thing about fidanzatas and fidanzatos.
In Italy in those days-much like Colombo these days-you lived at home till marriage, death and sometimes even beyond. So what was an eighteen-year-old girl to do to have herself a little fun? She went out and got herself engaged, of course, to the first thing in trousers that came along. She became fidanzata. That way, she could step out at seven every evening, leaving her moustachioed Mamma growling indoors. After all, if your fidanzato couldn t protect your virtue from others, who could?
The funny thing is, your fidanzato probably got engaged for the very same reason. It gave him exposure to a whole lot of girls-usually other men s fidanzatas-to whom he would normally not have access as a single man.
Monte at that time had a whole flock of these free-range fidanzatas, all out to have a good time, fluffing and preening their feathers. They took one look at Joe and decided to a man (or do I mean bird?) to take up his offer of English lessons. Joe always has this effect on women, I can t understand why.
Some nights I m so tired I can t sleep, he complained.
Oh? I replied, a little icily.
Of course Joe didn t restrict himself to Monte alone. In his little butu-butu Fiat, we ranged far and wide over those Tuscan hills. There was Anna at Anghiari. There was Teresa at San Sepolcro. Of her he said, It s a good thing my tastes are so catholic, her arms are so short.
Good thing, I sighed, how noble!
Then there was Rosanna the kitchen maid at Castle Gargonza, ancient and wooded and Gothic. (The castle, not Rosanna.) She was like a tiger, with shoulder-length chestnut hair. I spotted the beginnings of a moustache on her cute upper lip. Trouble. I told Joe so.
He blinked his baby-blue eyes at me. When I require your advice on women, I ll ask for it, he said.
Rosanna cooked us dinner at two o clock one morning in the dungeon kitchens of the castle. Dante himself had eaten there some six hundred-odd years back.
I don t think they bothered to clean up after he left, Joe whispered.
Rosanna threw two dry chillies and six cloves of garlic into half an inch of bubbling olive oil. Then she tipped in a bowl of cold cooked spaghetti and enriched it with shavings of parmesan.
Delicious. I still cook this sometimes. And I think of her.
Rosanna was not one bit interested in learning English, so Joe made her the standard offer: first lesson free. That was usually enough.
In between his strenuous English lessons Joe took me on cultural outings, since your Oxford education has left you so painfully deficient in the finer points of life. He took me to Palazzuolo to listen to the padrone s accent- the finest in all Italy, the purest music. He showed me frescoes by Giotto. He bought me wine at the Palazzo Antinori and ice creams at Perch No? I am ashamed to say very little of this remains in the mind, except maybe the wine.
It was Joe s idea to throw the party, towards the end of my holiday, a sort of graduation for all his English students. There were twenty-odd fidanzatos and fidanzatas, a whole brood, clucking and quarrelling among themselves. It was rare to get them all under one roof, and more than a few feathers were being ruffled. If you ask me, the mood that night was quite fowl.
I cooked them curry. Chicken, of course. When in doubt, give them curry , has always been my motto.
Early on, the party split into two groups. Those who had enjoyed Joe s novel teaching methods, and those who were about to. The hads and the had nots , so to speak. The former were led by Paola, a large doe-eyed girl with a treacherous smile. I remember her well because the first day I met her she asked me:
Are you black all over?
Do you want to check? I replied. Or would have, if only I d had the nerve. She was furious because her position as favourite was about to be usurped by Luisa who led the other group. The two sides began singing songs at each other, with a sort of violently cordial competitiveness.
Nobody touched the chicken.
Troppo piccante, troppo piccante, they all said. I retired to the kitchen with a few disgruntled fidanzatos, where we moodily picked at chicken bits from the aluminium pot with a common fork.
I couldn t tell you which side won the competition. My Italian wasn t good enough to understand the violence of those songs, but even I could appreciate the rolls of thunder in the music, the jagged streaks of lightning across the sky, the oncoming storm.

The louvred shutters above me burst open.
He s all yours, Rosanna said, come and get him.
I passed her on the stairs coming down. To tell the truth, I was a little nervous and for once I wished Signora Sirra was there to interrupt us. She wasn t. Rosanna gave a little laugh.
You d better warn your friend, she said, not to mess with girl