Exclusive Face2Face with Denis Janz
By Dr. Tilak S Fernando
Pix: Tilak
Denis Jansz, born in Sri Lanka, a self-confessed Casanova, who never loved any women but charmed them and seduced whoever who came across was entrapped in a world of his own as a philanderer.
The irreparable mistake done by his mother, when he was just 12 days old, and worsened by his foster father, let his world turn upside down from a tender age of twelve. His remarkable, explosive and forthright revelations were made public for the first time in 67 years (in 2001) to the writer in London, who received exclusive ‘copyright of his true story’ - even to make it into a film script’.
The greatest wonder of all is that nobody knows where we all come from! No one bothers to find out one’s beginning (though its an impossibility) even among those who spend their lifetime in becoming inquisitive to know about others! Once a child is born, parents register the birth of that child on a piece of paper called the Certificate of Birth that stands as confirmation of the child’s parental link.
Children do not come into this world at their own choice or own request, but through parents - either planned, accidentally or by promiscuous sexual encounters. In this respect, illegitimate children born to this world are no exception, and it has been the norm from time immemorial – even encompassing the Royals down the history lane.
Conventional morality does not teach or show a child what kind of a person one ought to become and why. It is only concerned with imposing a set of rules upon the child - arbitrary, incomprehensible. The child grows up with nothing but resentment and fear, for any concept of morality. Ethics appear to him/her only as a phantom scarecrow demanding the drab performances of dry duty.
Mother is the Guardian, Provider, and the Teacher for a child. Mother provides child to progress in every aspect of life with armoury required to overcome the foes on his pathway and helps the child to march towards the final triumphs. Absence of a mother during childhood undoubtedly devastates child’s psychology, and the worst would be to inform the child about his mother abandoning him within days of his birth.
Denis Raymond Jansz registered technically as a ‘Sri Lankan’ has been entrapped in such an indefinable human drama, the consequences of which he is still fighting hard to get rid of.
Disclosure
This desolate ‘Sri Lankan’, who grew up in a Colombo bourgeois family, has a sentimental maudlin story, which he had compressed in his heart lobes for sixty-seven long years. For the first time Denis Raymond Jansz decided to speak out to the writer in London (in 2001), his restrained story which he did not mind at all to be dramatised even on the Silver Screen!
The following is a synopsis of how a psychological bullet has remained embedded in his system for such a long time.
Beginning
An English woman by the name of Miss. Monica Nicholls, at the Women’s Industrial Home, No, 10 Regent Street, Colombo, Ceylon, gave birth to a handsome baby on 22nd January 1934, whose father was unknown He was named as ‘ Raymond’ and registered his Nationality as “English”. The birth has been registered at the Western Province, Colombo District, and Maradana Division at the Registrar General’s Office on 24th January 1934, under registration No. 8516.
Just twelve days after the birth, on 2nd February 1934, Monica Nicholls, on a Salvation Army headed notepaper, wrote thus:
“ This is to certify that I have given my baby to be adopted, I understand to a good home, where the baby will be loved and cared for. I promise that I will have no claim on it in the future”. On that day his mother gave ‘Raymond’ away to the Salvation Army on a Five Cents Ceylon stamp!
Providence
Providence plays its own rules as much as its tricks in a most mysterious way. At the same time the wife of Rev. Luzian Jansz of the Church of St Paul, Milagiriya, Colombo was looking out for a baby for his childless sister. He approached the Salvation Industrial Home and the baby was arranged for adoption to Paul Dion Jansz, a PWD Engineer.
Although Paul Dion Jansz accepted baby Raymond for adoption in 1934 there was no legal method of adopting children in Ceylon, and it was only in 1941 that the Adoption of Children Ordinance No. 24 of 1941 came into being.
Paul Dion Jansz and his wife, Iris Clare Jansz, brought up this child as their own son after baptising him as Denis Raymond Jansz. With the presence of mind, foster parents obtained a British Passport, bearing No.D.111039, which enabled him to leave Ceylon at will.
Young Denis grew up in the lap of luxury with servants to galore - Ayah to read nursery rhymes, Kussi Ammas to cook, chauffers to drive him to school and Sunday school etc. Paul Jansz after his retirement from the PWD worked for the Chettinard Corporation as a senior consultant.
At the age of twelve, while living in Maharagama, Denis exhibited signs of a spoilt brat and threw his foster father’s gold toothpick into a disused well. The infuriated ‘father’ lambasted him calling him an ungrateful ‘guttersnipe’ and bellowed:
“ What the hell have you done to me? I have adopted you bastard, and saved you from the gutter”!
He made young Denis go down the well and fetch it back! Rubbing salt to injury his mother called him a ‘sakkiliya’ (toilet cleaner). That was the moment, which pierced young Denis’s heart with an emotional bullet
Bullet
How could a child of twelve years of age understand or cope with a barrage of such abuse? That physiological bullet did not pass through his heart and escape from the other side, instead it embedded inside him as an ever-growing cancer for sixty seven long years.
For young Denis, it was a moment his identity suddenly nullified and the ground literally was taken from under his feet. That was enough for him. As a last straw he took to his heels. The mistake he made was to leave a note to his foster father saying “ I hate you’. He was later caught at the Kirulapone Bridge. Subsequent harsh beatings by his adopted father made matters worse and hardened him, yet he was given all the attention, care, and even buying a brand new bicycle from Cargills !
Shock Effect
The shock of the disclosure imploded inside young Denis like a nuclear test underground, although he did not experience any social ostracism by anyone of his friends. His whole personality was beginning to take shape in a completely different direction. He began to acquire an intense misogyny, which was carried forward throughout towards his future years with a lifetime of mistreating and using women like resells. The bullet started to penetrate through that gaping wound from the time he heard about his maternal mother giving him away when he was only twelve days old and calling him an IT!
In 1934 Maradana had been a very bleak area, ‘infested with beggars, rich ‘Muslims’, Indian Tamils, taxi drivers and fishermen doing various kinds of business ranging from prostitution, selling Arrack to side gambling’.
Dennis had always felt his father was a Sinhalese, developed an affinity towards Sinhalese and resented Burghers. Fundamentally, he developed repugnance towards the Burghers, as they seemed ‘clanny’ to him. His friends had always been Sinhalese from his school days at St. Thomas’s Mt. Lavinia, St. John’s Nugegoda and Royal College Colombo. In his mind, Denis always had an answer that he was not a Burgher. True, his mother was English, but he did not know any English people, he did not like the Burghers either, and he smiled sarcastically calling it a “Bloody Mallun”!
Politics
At the age of 18, he joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, and the late Colvin R. De Silva became a hero to work against the affluents in general.
He started to resent the rich sitting comfortably on their lawns, listening to the buzz of the water sprinklers in their gardens, clapping for the servant ‘boy’ to serve a stiff Gin on Tonic, coming back at 11.30 at night and the servants having to sit in front of the gate to let the master in; domestics having to remove their sandals to follow the master inside the house. He particularly resented the terms, ‘baby mahattaya, podi mahattya, mahattaya and hamu”.
Young Denis saw Peter Keunaman once eating with his fingers, along side with his driver, without showing any aftermath of class distinction , which inspired him. He never joined the Burgher Recreation Club, but admitted that he had ‘ of course to pay a lip service’ to all that.
One thing he remembered vividly and hated so much was the Ayah bringing him an egg flip early in the morning at 7 am to ‘baby mahattya’. He was ‘more so interested in inspecting Ayah’s breasts’ rather than the egg flip! He also used to sleep alongside the Ayah on the bed nestling his head in between her breasts. This, he did not attribute to any carnal connotations but may be as a refracted substitution to mother’s warmth and love that he missed so much!
Soon he fell prey to bad company of youths, who came from equally affluent families, who were consuming alcohol, going to Havelock Park and paying prostitutes Rs.10 to overcome curious curious and innocent adolescent carnality. It became a novelty for him.
“This was a period where no decent Sinhalese, Burgher or Tamil boy could have a civilised relationship with a girl unless it was arranged with a betrothal on the cards”! He admitted. His behavioural patterns started to change and decline dramatically, and before long consequence of which was his having recourse to the Ayah at such a young age, ‘ a horrible thing to do’, he admitted. Such occurrences seemed to prick his conscience still, with no answers or means to repair the damage.
Ambition-less
After passing his SSC examination at the Royal College, he was not keen on further studies and becoming a top executive. Instead, he joined The Times of Ceylon newspaper. As as a cub reporter he had interviewed many a politician during his time, and his specialty later became writing poetry. Even in London at the time of the interview, his poetry found a permanent slot in the Lanka Viththi newspaper.
His association with the criminal gangs during this period marked another milestone in his life. Unknown to the society, he had suddenly become a gang master of the notorious Mt. Lavinia mob, hobnobbing with Oscar de Alwis, S. N, Fernando, ‘Massa’ Fernando Kalu Abey (Dehiwela), Ralahami etc., who became later involved with the Turf Club Robbery and Rajagunatilake, son of the owner of Fireworks Palace. This was the time when the Sunday Observer carried articles under the caption, “ Chicago style blackmail comes to Colombo’! Denis reminisced.
Threatening
One day when he returned home at dawn (4 am), his foster father bashed him severely. Due to the hardened nature of his character at the time, he looked at his ‘father’ – eyeball to-eyeball - and warned him that he would kill him, if he (‘father’) were to touch Denis again - and immediately he broke down.
Old Janz realised exactly what his adopted son meant, but did nothing astounding. Instead, very diplomatically he rented his property to the Maharagama Police Inspector for six months. This meant that young Denis had to find cheap accommodation in shoddy lodgings in a horrible, remote, bug-infested room in Wellawatta.
Denis liked the new landlord who was poor. His ‘father’ sent them a cheque regularly for the room rent, which made him think he meant ‘nothing’ to his adopted parents, but he had turned into a ‘pariah dog’ suddenly. Although this feeling seemed to dominate in his system, yet no one else knew about it except Denis. His conscience consistently sent warning messages for him not to become disheartened but to do something positive, yet the results were completely negative.
He ended up as a violent ruffian, picking fights at Maharagama beer stalls and anywhere until one day, a police inspector friend advised him to restrain from such behaviour for his own safety. For once in his life, such advice seemed to have gone down well with him and to think rationally. Coincidentally, one of his good friends, Shirley Peiris, suddenly left Sri Lanka and settled down in Finchley, London, and Denis followed suit by taking a P&O Liner.
UK
When he arrived at Southampton in November 1957, fog in England made him depressed. He became home sick and returned home. Old Jansz gave him fatherly advice and persuaded him to be constructive in his deeds and actions.
Denis became a confused man yet again and, through such confusion, a debauched encounter with a Welsh divorcee in Finchley flashed through his mind. Once again, he was travelling back to London focusing his mind on the Welsh woman. Denis admitted that in all his life he had not known what romance was and coming back to London for the second time was the biggest mistake he did.
When he arrived in London, he was disappointed to hear about his friend Shirley Peiris, married a West Indian woman and had migrated to West Indies. He had no option but to seek solace in Finchley divorcee, which did not work out for more than a one-night stand!
Dennis was thrown into the deep end once again. He could now see a clear comparison of his bourgeoisie life, which he had been used to, for such a long time in Colombo and that of the ‘greener pastures’ he came searching for in England.
He ran short of money in London and had no alternative but to visit pawn shops quite regularly to pledge his shoes, rain coat and even the expensive suit a Colombo tailor at Cargills stitched for him with great care for a ‘ mahattaya,’ who was going to England on a big mission. The suit was seen later twisted and wrapped with hundreds of other hangers at the back of a pawnbroker’s shop for about ten shillings! Denis recollected.
Casual Encounters
Denis has been a handsome young man with a passing resemblance to the English actor Rex Harrison, which gave an added advantage over women. Even today on a London street he could easily be mistaken for Rex Harrison! (Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady). This very fact had helped him to have many encounters and casual affairs with women in the West, who had unhesitatingly supported this dashing young man financially, which in an aristocratic expression could be described as, ‘ living off the wife’!
However, in Denis Jansz’s system the unpleasant inferiority tag, of being a ‘bastard’ and being rejected at birth, had not helped him to settle down to a steady family life. The entire sitting room and the hallway inside his Marylebone flat resembled a picture gallery (2001) containing a collection of photographs of his international sweet hearts with flashes of misogyny. He was happy that he had not subjected any Sri Lankan woman as his prey in his hatred towards women.
During his second journey back to England, he met with a rich English woman painter, Mrs. Cautaulds (deceased), who had been married to a ‘ homosexual’ but maintained her legal bond with the husband only to safeguard against a possible social stigma, if exposed excessively. On board the liner, she made a request to Denis to paint her as an ‘exotic’ specimen. The painting job turned into a shipboard romance and Denis ended up living with her at her plush Slone Square apartment, thus commencing the second phase of his vicious circle in England.
Mrs. Cautaulds loved him dearly, looked after him dotingly, and gave him a luxurious life style, but the venom inside Denis made him cold and callus. Instead of reciprocating her fondness, he started to continue with his usual misogamy because the implosion within him had taken place for the second time in England. The Bullet was still inside him and it was too late for ‘ U-turns’ as he had by then already sold his should to the devil of debauchery.
Discrimination
When he was looking out for accommodation in London, the signs boards displayed openly saying, ‘ No Blacks, No Niggers, No Irish and No Dogs,’ which shocked him and felt him in a cultural disgust rather than a cultural shock. This repugnance even hardened his heart to take revenge on women whom he met and had casual affairs with. He continued with his past time - misogamy- relentlessly by pretending to be romantic externally but with an ulterior motive of impregnating them and dumping them willy-nilly.
It was a great tragedy to an innocent soul where one gross mistake by a single woman, in the shape of a maternal mother, by disowning her own child when he was just twelve days old, which had already grown into a cancerous tree with many branches spreading all over Denis’s system.
Denis married twice and divorced both wives within a short period of the marital bliss. He could “count eleven bastards” but knew only one son, while he possessed a certificate of birth of another!
He admitted it was a total tragedy, but admitted that ‘there was no cure for it’. For the last twenty years of his life (at the time he was interviewed) there had been only tears, and that had warped his life completely.
Fundamentally, the physiological shock caused by rejection made him use women like ‘Ping-Pong-balls.’The only time he fell in love with a woman, Denis admitted, was with a crippled Swiss girl who, according to Denis ‘had a soul above Himalayas’! She taught him about classical music and tried her best to discipline him and bring back to reality in life, yet the bullet inside made him abuse her pristine love too, which she was able to give for once and for all to him.
Rescue operation
In 1964 January, Denis set off to go for the Royal Opera House. The time was around 18 hrs. The weather had turned nasty with sleet and the wind was bitter. Lights at Battersea Park were scarcely visible, and the river Thames was wrapped up with fog. When Denis was about to cross the north end of the Chelsea Bridge when he caught sight of Rosemary only about 100 yards away from him, who was about to jump into the river on a suicidal attempt.
He shouted, ‘stop...! stop ...!’ However, the shouts were in vain. She did not respond to his call and just vanished silently in the mist into the icy cold water. Due to fog muffling the visibility, Denis could hardly see, yet he heard her body impact on the icy-cold water beneath. Within seconds Denis removed his jacket and shoes and dived into the river risking his own life to rescue her. Denis had been a good swimmer. He swam towards her while she was already half fighting for life and half forcing not to sink. When Denis reached her, she was pale as a sheet and her eyes were closed. He gripped the collar of her coat, rested her limp body against his and swam slowly dragging both bodies to a stretch of sand. He pulled her through the shallows, and then turning her body facedown felt her pulse. Lo and behold, she was still alive! He cried out for help and heard an ambulance and paramedics arrive. (This was highlighted in a British journal at the time)
Compassion
Few hours later he was sitting in St. Stephen’s Hospital and a doctor told him that he could go home. Denis made one request just to see her face, out of curiosity. Rosemary Scheck’s pained and pale face fixed itself firmly on him when she opened her eyes and whispered:
‘Hello, you must be the one who save me.” Denis was desperate to know her story as to what had dragged her to the depths of River Thames. However, that could wait. They sat in silence. They were total strangers but there was already closeness between them.
“Will you see me tomorrow”? Rosemary asked gratefully. Denis had already decided to do so anyway. He visited the following day, and every day until she was released from the hospital. At every meeting, they filled in more gaps. Rosemary was Swiss and was going to be in London only for a few more months.
Rosemary and Denis made the most of her stay in London together. For the first time ever this self-confessed womaniser, who never loved but only charmed women and then seduced began to need her.
When Rosemary was about to return to Switzerland, she invited him, and Denis didn’t hesitate. He continued her friendship for twenty long years , but never gave a thought of marrying her. Although it made him learn what it meant when someone mattered and cared for him, the bullet inside him did not help him even at such a late stage in life as the ‘ psychological cancer’ caused by his mother’s rejection had grown into clusters all over his system already.
Denis lived at an address (No. 32) in Kensington and Earls Court areas by himself entrapped in a world of his own and as a philanderer for 44 years in Europe - soliciting women of every nationality. Out of the eleven children he had fathered, the only one in contact with him was Alvin , who was 33 years old and lived in Germany.
Lost Touch
His foster parents wrote to him never-ending letters, which he ignored wilfully. When he was in dire straits, he wrote to his foster father to remit £100. Old Mr. Jansz was a pensioner at the time and he wrote back to Denis saying it was an impossibility being a pensioner and, moreover, due to Sri Lankan Exchange Control restrictions that prevailed in the country, he was unable to accede to his request. He wrote a letter back demanding the money, and that was the last of the communications between Denis and his foster parents. He did not know what had happened to them ever since. He was not aware whether they were still alive or dead, presumably dead! He exclaimed. Denis remembered their last address as 19 Taxila Place, Kirulapone.
Denis accepted Sri Lanka as his country, but could not help feeling like a Dracula without a home. He often used to lament by questioning himself:
“What have I done? I can’t even know whether I am Tamil or Sinhalese, leave alone being Burgher or English! I could be a chauffeur’s son or the son of an Appu! But I prefer to be a Sinhalese. All I know is that I am half English”.
He wanted to give a clear message to the world at large through his personal experiences:
“ No way should any foster parent suffer from the most degrading syndrome after revealing to an adopted child that he/she has been adopted”.
“ No way should any foster parent suffer from the most degrading syndrome after revealing to an adopted child that he/she has been adopted”.
He certainly had developed a guilty conscience towards his adopted parents at the time of the interview, who did so much for him and gave him everything he wanted, but the damage done to him in Nugegoda at the age of 12 had remained as a festered wound for sixty-seven long years.
It was therefore natural for him at times to raise the question:
‘ What have I done to the Sri Lankan society and what has the society done to me?” He was born a Christian, forced and sent to Sunday school, but he rejected Christianity. From the little understanding of Buddhism, which he knew, he was trying hard to reconcile himself even at this late stages with the help of the remnants of his middle class upbringing in Sri Lanka.
Dennis Raymond Jansz at the age 67 (in 2001) has mellowed considerably and is taking an interest in Buddhism right now. He is also engaged in writing poetry and contemplating on a semi-autobiographical novel and most importantly, he has called a halt to his lifetime philandering.
During the interview although he became rigid, animated and eloquent at various moments of his past revelations, I could see yet another different, mellow, humanistic and a generous elevation to this soul. The tremendous amount of pain and sorrow he has been fighting hard to conceal within him was evident from his wet eyes and at each moment he had to pull himself together, whenever he thought of his foster parents.
In no uncertain terms, I could only see the dire repentance trying to force out of Denis’s sharp eyeballs.
London (2001)
© tilakfernando@gmail.com
