Running in the Family Read Online Free
Author: Michael Ondaatje
Colombo.
People’s memories about Gasanawa, even today, are mythic. “There was a lovely flat rock in front of the bungalow where we danced to imported songs such as ‘Moonlight Bay’ and ‘A Fine Romance.’ ” “A Fine Romance” was always my mother’s favourite song. In her sixties I would come across her in the kitchen half singing,
“We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes/but you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes.”
So many songs of that period had to do with legumes, fruit and drink. “Yes, we have no bananas,” “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts,” “Mung beans on your collar,” “The Java Jive.” … Dorothy Clementi-Smith would sing the solo verses to “There is a tavern in the town” while the others would drunkenly join in on the chorus. Even the shy Lyn Ludowyck betrayed his studies and came out there once, turning out to be a superb mimic, singing both male and female parts from Italian operas which the others had never heard of—so they all thought at first that he was singing a Sinhalese baila.
But for the most part it was the tango that was perfected on that rock at Gasanawa. Casually dressed couples, coated in a thin film of sweat, swirled under the moon to “Rio Rita” by John Bowles on the gramophone, wound up time and again by the drunk Francis. Francis could only dance the tango solo so that he wouldn’t do damage to women’s feet, for which he had too much respect. He would put on “I kiss your little hand, Madame” and mime great passion for an invisible partner, kissing the mythical hand, pleading to the stars and jungle around him to console him in an unrequited abstract love. He was a great dancer but with a limited endurance. He usually collapsed at the end of hisperformance, and a woman would sit beside him bathing his head and face with cool water while the others continued dancing.
The parties lasted until the end of the twenties when Francis lost his job over too splendid a road. He was lost to them all by 1935. He was everyone’s immaculate, gentle friend, the most forgiven and best-dressed among them, whispering to someone a few seconds before he died, while holding a fish in his hand, “A man
must
have clothes for every occasion.”
The waste of youth. Burned purposeless. They forgave that and understood that before everything else. After Francis died there was nowhere really to go. What seemed to follow was a rash of marriages. There had been good times. “Women fought each other like polecats over certain men.”
THE BABYLON STAKES
“The Wall Street crash had a terrible effect on us. Many of the horses had to be taken over by the military.”
The only occupation that could hope to avert one from drink and romance was gambling. In India only the aristocracy gambled; in Ceylon the bankers and lime-burners and fishmongers and the leisured class would spend their afternoons, shoulder to shoulder, betting compulsively. The rulers of the country genuinely believed that betting eliminated strikes; men had to work in order to gamble.
If it was not horses it was crows. A crippled aunt, who could not get to the track, began the fashion of betting on which crow would leave a wall first. This proved so popular that the government considered putting a bounty on crows. In any case, soon after the time Gertie Garvin trained a pet crow, bird-gambling proved to be untrustworthy. But the real stars were involved with racing: horses such as “Mordenis,” jockeys like “Fordyce,” the trainer “Captain Fenwick.” There were racetracks all over the island.If you sat in the grandstand all bets were five rupees. Then there was the two-rupee enclosure and finally, in the middle of the track, the “gandhi enclosure” where the poorest stood. “From the grandstand you could watch them leaving like ants a good hour before the last race, having lost all their money.”
The most dangerous track profession was starter of the race, and one of the
People’s memories about Gasanawa, even today, are mythic. “There was a lovely flat rock in front of the bungalow where we danced to imported songs such as ‘Moonlight Bay’ and ‘A Fine Romance.’ ” “A Fine Romance” was always my mother’s favourite song. In her sixties I would come across her in the kitchen half singing,
“We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes/but you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes.”
So many songs of that period had to do with legumes, fruit and drink. “Yes, we have no bananas,” “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts,” “Mung beans on your collar,” “The Java Jive.” … Dorothy Clementi-Smith would sing the solo verses to “There is a tavern in the town” while the others would drunkenly join in on the chorus. Even the shy Lyn Ludowyck betrayed his studies and came out there once, turning out to be a superb mimic, singing both male and female parts from Italian operas which the others had never heard of—so they all thought at first that he was singing a Sinhalese baila.
But for the most part it was the tango that was perfected on that rock at Gasanawa. Casually dressed couples, coated in a thin film of sweat, swirled under the moon to “Rio Rita” by John Bowles on the gramophone, wound up time and again by the drunk Francis. Francis could only dance the tango solo so that he wouldn’t do damage to women’s feet, for which he had too much respect. He would put on “I kiss your little hand, Madame” and mime great passion for an invisible partner, kissing the mythical hand, pleading to the stars and jungle around him to console him in an unrequited abstract love. He was a great dancer but with a limited endurance. He usually collapsed at the end of hisperformance, and a woman would sit beside him bathing his head and face with cool water while the others continued dancing.
The parties lasted until the end of the twenties when Francis lost his job over too splendid a road. He was lost to them all by 1935. He was everyone’s immaculate, gentle friend, the most forgiven and best-dressed among them, whispering to someone a few seconds before he died, while holding a fish in his hand, “A man
must
have clothes for every occasion.”
The waste of youth. Burned purposeless. They forgave that and understood that before everything else. After Francis died there was nowhere really to go. What seemed to follow was a rash of marriages. There had been good times. “Women fought each other like polecats over certain men.”
THE BABYLON STAKES
“The Wall Street crash had a terrible effect on us. Many of the horses had to be taken over by the military.”
The only occupation that could hope to avert one from drink and romance was gambling. In India only the aristocracy gambled; in Ceylon the bankers and lime-burners and fishmongers and the leisured class would spend their afternoons, shoulder to shoulder, betting compulsively. The rulers of the country genuinely believed that betting eliminated strikes; men had to work in order to gamble.
If it was not horses it was crows. A crippled aunt, who could not get to the track, began the fashion of betting on which crow would leave a wall first. This proved so popular that the government considered putting a bounty on crows. In any case, soon after the time Gertie Garvin trained a pet crow, bird-gambling proved to be untrustworthy. But the real stars were involved with racing: horses such as “Mordenis,” jockeys like “Fordyce,” the trainer “Captain Fenwick.” There were racetracks all over the island.If you sat in the grandstand all bets were five rupees. Then there was the two-rupee enclosure and finally, in the middle of the track, the “gandhi enclosure” where the poorest stood. “From the grandstand you could watch them leaving like ants a good hour before the last race, having lost all their money.”
The most dangerous track profession was starter of the race, and one of the
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