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

‘Sebastian?’

‘Keep a eye on him.’

Foam said, ‘I believe Mahadeo should handle the whole of that job. He could make a list of all Negro who sick or going to dead.’

‘Yes.’ And Harbans added sarcastically, ‘You sure that job ain’t too big for you, Mahadeo?’

Mahadeo stared at the floor, his big eyes filling with determination. ‘I could manage, Mr Harbans. Old Sebastian is one Negro who bound to dead.’

They finished their tea and had some more. Then Harbans sent Foam to get the new posters he had brought in the lorry.

The posters said: HITCH YOUR WAGON TO THE STAR VOTE SURUJPAT (‘PAT’) HARBANS CHOOSE THE BEST AND LEAVE THE REST. And there was a photograph of Harbans; below that, his name and the star, his symbol.

Mahadeo said, ‘It must make a man feel really big sticking his photo all over the place.’

Harbans, unwillingly, smiled.

Chittaranjan asked, ‘Where you get those posters print?’

‘Port of Spain.’

‘Wrong move, Mr Harbans. You shoulda get that boy Harichand to print them.’

‘But Harichand ain’t got no sorta printery at all,’ Harbans said.

‘Never mind,’ said Chittaranjan. ‘People in Elvira wouldn’t like that you get your posters print in Port of Spain when it have a Elvira boy who could do them.’

And then Harbans knew. No one in Elvira was fighting for him. All Elvira — Preacher, Lorkhoor, Baksh, Chittaranjan, Dhaniram and everybody else — all of them were fighting him.

He was nearly seized with another fit of pessimism.

But deep down, despite everything, he knew he was going to win. He cried and raged; but he wanted to fool, not tempt, fate. Then he thought of the sign he had had: the white women and the stalled engine, the black bitch and the stalled engine. He had seen what the first meant. The women had stalled him in Cordoba.

But the dog. What about the dog? Where was that going to stall him?

SOME DAYS PASSED. The new posters went up. The campaign proceeded. Nothing terrible happened to Mrs Baksh. She became calmer and Foam thought he could start painting slogans again. But now he didn’t paint VOTE HARBANS OR DIE! He had had his lesson; it was too easy for the enthusiasm of the slogan to be mistaken for a threat. He painted straight things like WIN WITH HARBANS and WE WANT HARBANS.

One night when Baksh had taken out the loudspeaker van — he said it was to do some campaigning but Mrs Baksh said it was to do some drinking — one night Foam took up his pot of paint and a large brush and went about Elvira, painting new slogans and refurbishing old ones. He didn’t take the excitable and untrustworthy Rafiq with him. He took Herbert instead. Herbert was ten and politically and psychically undeveloped. He didn’t care for signs or election slogans; and while Foam painted Herbert whistled and wandered about.

Foam did his job with love. He painted even on houses whose owners had gone to bed; and only when he had got as far as the old cocoa-house did he decide it was time to go home.

Herbert hung back a little and Foam noticed that he was walking in a peculiar way, arching his back and keeping his hands on his belly. His belly looked more swollen than usual.

‘Your belly hurting, Herbert?’

‘Yes, man, Foam. Is this gas breaking me up.’

‘Don’t worry about it too much. All of we did get gas in we belly when we was small. It does pass.’

‘Hope so for truth, man.’

Lights were still on when they got home. They went around to the back of the house. The door was locked from the inside but it wasn’t barred; and if you pressed on the middle and pulled and shook at the same time, it fell open. Foam put down the paint-pot and the brush.

‘Herbert, when I press down, you pull hard and shake.’

Foam pressed down. Herbert, clutching his belly with one hand, pulled and shook with the other. The door unlocked, and as it did, something fell from Herbert’s shirt. In the darkness Foam couldn’t see what it was. When he pulled the door open and let out the thin light of the oil lamp inside, he saw.

It was a puppy.

A tiny rickety puppy, mangy, starved; a loose, ribby bundle on the ground. It made no noise. It tried to lift itself up. It only collapsed again, without complaint, without shame.

‘Where you pick him up, Herbert?’

‘Somewhere.’

‘But you can’t bring him home. You know how they don’t like dogs.’ They was Mrs Baksh.

‘Is my dog,’ Herbert said irrelevantly.

Foam squatted beside the puppy. None of the evening’s adventures had disturbed the flies that had settled down for the night around the puppy’s eyes. The eyes were rheumy, dead. The puppy itself looked half-dead. When Foam stroked the little muzzle he saw fleas jumping about. He pulled away his finger quickly.

‘Take care, Foam. Is them quiet quiet dog does bite, you know.’

Foam stood up. ‘You got to feed him good. But how you going to hide him from Ma?’

‘ I go hide him. Got a name for him too. Going to call him Tiger.’

Tiger tried to get up on his haunches. It was as if every tiny rib and every bone were made of lead. But he made it this time, and held the shaky pose.

‘See! He recognize the name already,’ Herbert said.

Tiger crumpled down again.

‘Come on, Tiger,’ Herbert said.

Tiger didn’t respond.

‘What you going to do with him?’

‘Take him upstairs. Put him in the bed.’

‘And what about Rafiq and Charles and Iqbal?’ Foam asked, naming the other Baksh boys. ‘Think they go want Tiger to sleep in the same bed with them?’

‘We go see.’

The room in which they were was the room behind the tailor shop. It was the only part of the house Baksh had attempted to renovate and it smelled of new concrete and new cyp wood. There was a new concrete floor and a new staircase of rough unpainted planks that led to the upper floor. The whole thing was so makeshift because Baksh said he was thinking of pulling down the whole house one day and putting up something better and bigger. The room was called the store-room; but it was used as a dumping-ground for things the Bakshes didn’t want but couldn’t bring themselves to throw away.

Foam said, ‘You can’t take up the dog tonight. They still waking. What about hiding him under the steps until morning?’

He rummaged among the pile of rubbish under the staircase and brought out a condensed milk case stencilled STOW AWAY FROM BOILERS, two smelly gunny-sacks and many old issues of the Trinidad Sentinel. He put the sacks in the case, the newspapers on the sack, and Tiger on the newspapers.

‘Under the steps now.’

The door at the top of the stairs opened and some more light flowed down into the store-room.

Mrs Baksh said, ‘What the two of all-you complotting and conspiring down there?’

‘Nothing,’ Foam said. ‘We just putting away the paint and thing.’

‘And we cleaning up the place,’ Herbert added.

Mrs Baksh didn’t take them up on that. ‘You see your father?’

‘Ain’t he out with the loudspeaker?’ Foam said.

‘I know where he is. He just using this election as a big excuse to lift his tail and run about the place. And is what you doing too. Ha! This election starting sweet sweet for some people, but I promising you it going to turn sour before it end.’

She stood at the top of the stairs, broad and dominant.

Herbert, noisily storing away the paint-pot, pushed Tiger’s box under the steps as well.

But Tiger had also to be fed.

Foam knew this. He walked up the steps. ‘Herbert take in with one belly pain, Ma. All the way home he holding his belly and bawling. I think he hungry.’