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

‘He ain’t hungry one little bit. I don’t know who ask him to walk about Elvira with all this dew falling.’

Herbert took his cue from Foam. He came out from under the steps, arched his back, and pressed his hands on his belly. ‘God, man, how this gas breaking me up!’

Mrs Baksh said, ‘But if a stranger hear this little boy talk they go believe I starving him. You ain’t eat this evening, Herbert?’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘You ain’t eat one whole roti? ’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘You ain’t eat bhaji?’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘You ain’t drink half a big pot of tea?’

‘Yes, Ma.’ Herbert drank enormous quantities of tea. He could drink two or three large enamel cups, and when visitors were present, four or five. Mrs Baksh used to boast to her sisters, ‘I ain’t see nobody to touch Herbert when it come to drinking tea.’

‘You eat all that and you drink all that, and you still asking me to believe that you hungry?’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘Look, boy! Don’t answer me back like that, you hear. You standing up there with your little belly puff out and you looking at me in my face and you still bold and brave enough to challenge me? Don’t think I forgetting how you shame me in front of that Harbans man, you know.’

Foam said, ‘Is not his fault, Ma. Is the gas.’

‘Gas! And the other modern thing is appendicitis. Nobody did have gas and appendicitis when I was small. It ain’t gas. Is just the sort of gratitude I getting from my own children, after all the pinching and scraping and saving I does do. And tell me, for who I pinching and scraping and saving?’

She got no reply.

Her annoyance subsided. ‘All right, come up and take out something. If you ain’t careful you go get fat and blow-up like me. But I done see that is what you want. Dog eat your shame. Go ahead.’

She stood aside to let them pass and followed them to the grimy little kitchen. From a large blue enamel pot Herbert poured tea, stewed in condensed milk and brown sugar, into an enamel plate. He took half a roti, a dry unimaginative sort of pancake, broke it up and dropped the pieces into the tea.

Mrs Baksh stood over him. ‘Go ahead. I want to see you eat up all of that.’

Herbert listlessly stirred the tea and roti.

‘Is so hungry you was? Nobody ain’t have to tell me about you, Herbert. Of all the seven children God give me, you have the longest tongue, and your eyes always longer than your tongue.’

Foam couldn’t think of anything to get Mrs Baksh out of the kitchen. But distraction came. From one of the inner rooms came a shriek, and a girl’s voice shouting, ‘I going to tell Ma. Ma, come and see how Zilla pounding me up. She know I can’t take blows and still she pounding me up.’

Mrs Baksh moved to the kitchen door. She lowered her voice with sardonic concern: ‘Zilla, this evening you was telling me that you had a pain in your foot.’ She left the kitchen and went inside. ‘I go take away this pain from your foot. I go move it somewhere else.’

Herbert ran down the steps with the tea and roti. Upstairs Zilla was being punished. Tiger was unmoved by the screams and slaps and bumping about. When Herbert put the plate of tea and roti before him, he didn’t know what to make of it. Slowly, instinct overcame inexperience. He sensed it was food. He sought to rise and approach it with dignity, on all four legs; but his legs trembled and folded under him. He let his muzzle lie on the chipped rim of the plate, edged out a tiny languid tongue and dipped it in the tea. Then he dragged the tongue back. He did this a few times; at last, with a show of strength that quite astonished Herbert, he got up on all four legs, trembly and shaky, remained upright, drank and ate.

‘Go at it, Tiger boy,’ Herbert whispered.

But Tiger ate in his own unemphatic way. Herbert expected him to wag his tail and growl at being handled while he ate; but Tiger ate without overt excitement or relish, philosophically, as though at any moment he expected to see the plate withdrawn as capriciously as it had come.

‘Where that boy Herbert gone now?’

Herbert heard Mrs Baksh, and he heard Foam say, ‘Went downstairs to bolt and bar the door. I tell him to go down.’

Tiger ate sloppily, squelchily.

Herbert waited, expecting Mrs Baksh to ask for the plate.

‘But you and all, Foam, what happening to you? You want to bar the door and your father ain’t come home yet?’

‘I go call him up.’

The door at the top of the stairs opened, new light ran down the steps and striped Tiger’s box, and Herbert heard Foam saying, ‘Is all right, Herbert. Don’t worry with the door. Come up.’

*

The room in which the five Baksh boys slept was called the brass-bed room because its only notable feature was a jangly old brass four-poster with a mildewed canopy that sagged dangerously under a mounting load of discarded boxes, clothes and toys. The four younger Baksh boys slept on the brass bed. Foam, as the eldest, slept by himself on an American Army canvas cot.

Herbert squeezed between Rafiq and Charles under the single floursack coverlet. He didn’t like sleeping at the edge of the bed because he always rolled off. Iqbal, the youngest, held that position; he never rolled off.

Rafiq was still waking.

Herbert whispered, ‘Tell you a secret if you promise not to tell.’

Foam, from the cot, said, ‘Herbert, why you don’t keep your mouth shut and go to sleep?’

Herbert waited.

He saw Rafiq kiss his crossed index fingers and put them to his eyes, to mean that his eyes would drop out if he told.

‘Got a dog,’ Herbert whispered. ‘Not big, but bad.’

‘They know?’

Herbert shook his head.

‘How big?’

‘Oh, he have to grow a little bit.’

‘Call him Rex.’

‘Nah. Calling him Tiger. Bad dog. Quiet too. Sort of thing, if they allow you, you could write up a signboard and hang it outside: Beware of Bad Dog.’

At that moment they heard the van drive into the yard and after a while they heard Baksh fumbling with the back door. Then there was a rattling and a stumbling, and Baksh began to curse.

Rafiq said, ‘The old man drunk again.’

They heard him clattering hastily up the stairs, his curses becoming more distinct.

Then: ‘Man!’ Baksh cried. ‘See a dog. Big dog. Downstairs.’

Herbert nudged Rafiq.

‘Is all this campaigning and loudspeaking you doing,’ Mrs Baksh said.

‘Telling you, man. Big big dog. Downstairs. Walking about. Quiet quiet. Sort of guarding the steps.’

‘You go start seeing hell soon, if you ain’t careful,’ Mrs Baksh said.

Herbert giggled.

‘Who bite who?’ Mrs Baksh asked. ‘You bite the dog, or the dog bite you?’

Rafiq dug Herbert in the ribs.

They listened hopefully; but there was no further excitement. Mumblings from Baksh about the big dog; quiet sarcastic remarks from Mrs Baksh. But no blows; nothing being smashed or thrown through the window.

*

When Herbert got up the next morning, the brass bed was empty. Foam’s cot was empty. He jumped out of bed — he slept in his ordinary clothes — and rushed to see what had happened to Tiger.

He had hardly set foot on the steps when Baksh said, ‘You sleep well and sound? Come down, mister man. We waiting for you.’

Herbert knew it was all over.

Baksh was saying, ‘But I tell you, man, I did see a big big dog here last night. And look how small it come this morning. Is only one thing. Magic. Obeah. But who want to put anything on me?’

Mrs Baksh was seated heavily on the cane-bottomed chair from the upstairs veranda. Baksh was standing next to her. In front of them the Baksh children were lined up, including Foam. Tiger’s box had been dragged out from under the steps, and Tiger dozed fitfully, curled up on damp Trinidad Sentinels.