V. Naipaul - The nightwatchman's occurrence book - and other comic inventions

‘Green tea,’ Harbans said distractedly.

‘What happen, Mr Harbans?’ Foam asked.

Harbans locked his fingers. ‘Can’t understand it, Foam. Can’t understand it. I is a old old man. Why everybody down against me?’

Dhaniram was thrilled. He gave a little laugh, realized it was wrong, and tried to look serious. But his eyes still twinkled.

‘I drive through Cordoba,’ Harbans said, talking down to his hands, his voice thin and almost breaking. ‘As soon as the Spanish people see the lorry, they turn their back. They shut their window. And I did think they was going to vote for me. Can’t understand it, Foam. I ain’t do the Spanish people nothing.’

‘Is that traitor Lorkhoor,’ Baksh said.

*

Then Chittaranjan came. He wore his visiting outfit and carried a green book in his hand. He seemed to know the house well because he didn’t wait for Dhaniram to introduce him to the invalid inside. As he came up the steps he shouted, ‘How you feeling these days, maharajin? Is me, Chittaranjan, the goldsmith.’

When he came back out to the veranda, it seemed that Chittaranjan too had bad news. His smile was there, as fixed as his flush; but there was anger and shame in his narrow eyes.

‘Dhaniram,’ Chittaranjan said, as soon as he sat down and took off his vast grey felt hat, ‘we got to make new calculations.’

Dhaniram took Chittaranjan at his word. ‘Doolahin!’ he shouted. ‘Pencil and paper. New calculations. Committee waiting. Candidate and committee waiting.’

Harbans looked at Chittaranjan. ‘What I do the Spanish people for them to turn their back on me?’

Chittaranjan forced the words out: ‘Something happen, Mr Harbans. This thing not going to be so easy …’

‘It don’t surprise me, Goldsmith,’ Harbans interrupted. ‘Loudspeaker van. Campaign manager. Rum-account. Lorkhoor. People turning their back on me. Nothing don’t surprise me at all.’

The doolahin brought some brown shop-paper. ‘I ain’t have no pencil. I look everywhere.’

Dhaniram forgot about the election. ‘But this is craziness, doolahin. I have that pencil six months now.’

‘Is only a pencil,’ the doolahin said.

‘Is what you think,’ Dhaniram said, the smile going out of his eye. ‘Is more than just a pencil. Is the principle. Is only since you come here that we start losing things.’

‘Your son, fust of all,’ Baksh said.

Dhaniram looked at Baksh and the smile came into his eyes again. He spat, aiming successfully at a gap in the floor.

Foam said, ‘This is the pencil you was looking for?’ From the floor he picked up an indelible pencil of the sort used in government offices. A length of string was attached to a groove at the top.

Dhaniram began to rub himself. ‘Ah, yes. Was doing the crossword just before you come in.’

The doolahin tossed her head and went back to her kitchen.

Harbans brooded.

All of a sudden he said, ‘Chittaranjan, I thought you was the big controller of the Spanish vote?’

Everyone noticed that Harbans had called Chittaranjan by his name, and not ‘goldsmith.’ It was almost an insult.

Yet Chittaranjan didn’t seem to feel it. He fidgeted with the book he had brought and said not a word.

Harbans, not getting an answer, addressed his hands. ‘In the 1946 elections none of the candidates I know did spend all this money. I have to have loudspeaker van and rum-account with Ramlogan?’

Baksh looked offended. ‘I know you mean me, boss. The moment you start talking about loudspeaker van. What you say about 1946 is true. Nobody did spend much money. But that was only the fust election. People did just go and vote for the man they like. Now is different. People learning. You have to spend on them.’

‘Yes, you have to spend on them,’ Dhaniram said, his legs shaking, his eyes dancing. He relished all the grand vocabulary of the election. ‘Otherwise somebody else going to spend on them.’

Mahadeo, the estate driver, raised his right hand, turned his large eyes on Harbans and twitched his thick little moustache and plump little mouth. ‘You spending your money in vain, Mr Harbans,’ he said gently. ‘We win already.’

Harbans snapped, ‘Is arse-talk like that does lose election. (Oh God, you see how this election making me dirty up my mouth.) But you, Mahadeo, you go around opening your big mouth and saying Harbans done win already. You think that is the way to get people vote?’

‘Exactly,’ said Dhaniram. ‘People go say, “If he done win, he ain’t want my vote.” ‘

‘Foam,’ Harbans said. ‘How much vote you giving me today? Was six thousand when I first see you. Then was five thousand. Is four thousand today?’

Foam didn’t have a chance to reply because Chittaranjan spoke up at last: ‘Yes, Mr Harbans, is four thousand.’

Harbans didn’t take it well. ‘Look at the mess I getting myself in, in my old old age. Why I couldn’t go away and sit down quiet and dead somewhere else, outside Elvira? Foam, take the pencil and paper and write this down. It have eight thousand votes in Naparoni. Four thousand Hindu, two thousand Negro, one thousand Spanish, and a thousand Muslim. I ain’t getting the Negro vote and I ain’t getting a thousand Hindu vote. That should leave me with five thousand. But now, Goldsmith, you say is only four thousand. Tell me, I beg you, where we drop this thousand vote between last week Friday and today?’

‘In Cordoba,’ Chittaranjan said penitently. ‘You see for youself how the Spanish people playing the fool. Just look at this book.’

He showed the green book he had been turning over.

Mahadeo wrinkled his brow and read out the title slowly: ‘Let — God — Be — True. ’

As a pundit Dhaniram regarded himself as an expert on God. He looked at the book quizzically and said, ‘Hmh.’

‘That is all that the Spanish talking about now,’ Chittaranjan said, pointing to the book. ‘I did know something was wrong the moment I land in Cordoba. Everywhere I look I only seeing red signs saying, “Die! Die!” ’

‘That is Lorkhoor work,’ Foam said.

Chittaranjan shook his head. ‘I don’t know if any of all-you see two white women riding about on big red bicycles. If I tell you the havoc they causing!’

‘Witnesses!’ Harbans exclaimed. ‘I know. I had a sign. I shoulda run them over that day.’

No one knew what he was talking about.

‘Who they campaigning for?’ Baksh asked. ‘For Preacher?’

‘For Jehovah,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘They can’t touch the Hindus or the Muslims or the Negroes, but they wreaking havoc with the Spanish. Everywhere I go in Cordoba, the Spanish people telling me that the world going to end in 1976. I ask them how they know the date so exact and they tell me the Bible say so.’

Dhaniram slapped his thigh. ‘Armageddon!’ Pundit Dhaniram had been educated at one of the Presbyterian schools of the Canadian Mission where he had been taught hymns and other Christian things. He cherished the training. ‘It make me see both sides,’ he used to say; and even now, although he was a Hindu priest, he often found himself humming hymns like ‘Jesus loves me, yes I know.’ He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, ‘Armageddon!’

‘Something like that,’ Chittaranjan said. And these white woman telling the Spanish that they mustn’t take no part in politics and the Spanish taking all what these woman say as a gospel.’ Chittaranjan sounded hurt. ‘I telling you, it come as a big big pussonal blow, especially as I know the Spanish people so long. Look, I go to see old Edaglo, you know, Teresa father. The man is my good good friend. For years he eating my food, drinking my whisky, and borrowing my money. And now he tell me he ain’t voting. So I ask him, “Why you ain’t voting, Edaglo?” And he answer me back, man. He say, “Politics ain’t a divine thing.” Then he ask me, “You know who start politics?” You could imagine how that take me back. “Somebody start politics?” I say. He laugh in a mocking sorta way as though he know more than everybody else and say, “You see how you ain’t know these little things. Is because you ain’t study enough.” He, Edaglo, talking like that to me, Chittaranjan! “Go home,” he say, “and study the Bible and you go read and see that the man who start politics was Nimrod.” ’