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

Ramlogan didn’t retaliate, didn’t even put his head out of his window.

Mrs Chittaranjan sighed.

Chittaranjan turned to her. ‘You see how that man Ramlogan provoking me? You see?’

Mrs Chittaranjan, ash-smeared pot and ashy rag in hand, sighed again.

‘You see or you ain’t see?’

‘I see.’

Chittaranjan was moved to further anger by his wife’s calm. He put his head out of the Demerara window and cursed long and loud, still in Hindi.

Ramlogan didn’t reply.

Chittaranjan was at a loss. He spoke to Mrs Chittaranjan. ‘A good good picture. You can’t just walk in a shop and get a picture like that every day, you know. Remember how much time I spend passe-partouting it?’

‘Well, man, it have one consolation. The picture ain’t break.’

‘How you mean? It coulda break. Nothing in this house ain’t safe with that man breadfruit dropping all over the place.’

‘No, man. Why you don’t go and hang back the picture up?’

‘Hang it back up? Me, hang it back up? Look, you don’t start provoking me now, you hear. I ain’t know what I do so, for everybody to give me all this provocation all the time.’

‘But, man, Ramlogan ain’t provoking you today. The breadfruit fall, is true. But breadfruit ain’t have a mind. Breadfruit don’t stop and study and say, “I think I go fall today and knock down the picture of Mahatma Gandhi.” ’

‘Stop giving me provocation!’

‘And Ramlogan, for all the bad cuss you cuss him, he ain’t even come out to answer you back.’

‘Ain’t come out! You know why he ain’t come out? You know?’ And running to the window, he shouted his own answer: ‘Is because he ain’t no fighter. You know who is the fighter? I, Chittaranjan, is the fighter.’ He shook his short scrawny arms and beat on the enamel sink. Then he pulled in his head and faced Mrs Chittaranjan. ‘My name in the Supreme Court for fighting. Not any stupid old Naparoni Petty Civil — ha! — but Supreme Court.’ He sat on the paint-spotted kitchen stool and said ruminatively, ‘I is like that. Supreme Court or nothing.’ He chuckled. ‘Well, if Ramlogan go on like this, Supreme Court going to hear from me again, that is all.’ He spoke with rueful pride.

‘Man, you know you only talking.’ Mrs Chittaranjan was being provocative again.

Chittaranjan pursed and unpursed his lips. ‘Only talking, eh?’

But he was quite subdued. Ramlogan’s perverse silence had put him out. He sat smiling, frowning, his sabots on the cross-bar of the stool, his small sharp shoulders hunched up, the palms of his small bony hands pressing hard on the edges of the seat.

Mrs Chittaranjan returned to her pans. She scoured; the ash grated; she sang the song from Jhoola.

Chittaranjan said, slowly, ‘Going to fix him up. Fix him good and proper. Going to put something on him. Something good.’

The singing stopped. ‘No, man. You mustn’t talk so. Obeah and magic is not a nice thing to put on anybody.’

‘Nah, don’t stop me, I begging you. Don’t stop me. I can’t bear any more provocation again.’

‘Man, why you don’t go and hang back the picture up?’

‘Put something on him before he put something on we.’

Mrs Chittaranjan looked perturbed.

Chittaranjan saw. He drove home his point. ‘Somebody try to put something on Baksh day before yesterday. Dog. Was big big in the night and next morning was tiny tiny. So high.’

‘You see the dog?’

‘You laughing. But I telling you, man, we got to put something on him before he put something on we. And it ain’t we alone we got to think about. What about little Nalini?’

‘Nelly, man? Little Nelly?’

His wife’s anxiety calmed Chittaranjan. He got up from the stool. ‘Going to hang back the picture up,’ he announced.

He clattered down the wooden back steps in his sabots and went to the little dark cupboard behind the shop. In this cupboard he kept all sorts of things: pails and basins for his jewellery work, ladders and shears and carpenter’s tools, paint-tins and brushes, tins full of bent nails he had collected from the concrete casings when his house was being built. There was no light in the cupboard — that was part of his economy. But he knew where everything was. He knew where the hammer was and where the nail-tin was.

When he opened the door a strong smell met his nostrils. ‘That white lime growing rotten like hell,’ he said. He felt for the hammer, found it. He felt for the nail-tin. His fingers touched something hard and fur-lined. Then something slimy passed over his hand. Then something took up the loose flesh at the bottom of his little finger and gave it a sharp little nip.

Chittaranjan bolted.

One sabot was missing when he stood breathless against the kitchen door.

‘Man,’ he said at last. ‘Man, dog.’

‘Dog?’

‘Yes, man.’

‘Downstairs?’

‘Yes, man. Store-room. Lock up in the store-room.’

Mrs Chittaranjan nearly screamed.

‘Just like the one Baksh say he see, man. They send it away but it come back. To we, man, to we.’

*

Ramlogan had heard the breadfruit fall and heard all the subsequent curses from Chittaranjan. But he didn’t reply because a visitor had just brought him important news.

The visitor was Haq.

Haq had come at about half past two, gone around to that side of Ramlogan’s yard which was hidden from Chittaranjan’s, and beaten on the gate. The gate answered well: it was entirely made up of tin advertisements for Dr Kellogg’s Asthma Remedy, enamelled in yellow and black.

Ramlogan shouted: ‘Go away. I know who you is. And I know who send you. You is a police and your wife sick and you want some brandy really bad for she sake, and you go beg and I go sell and you go lock me up. And I know is Chittaranjan who send you. Go away.’

Chittaranjan had indeed caught Ramlogan like that once.

Haq drummed again. ‘I is not a police. I is Haq. Haq.’

‘Haq,’ came the reply, ‘haul your black arse away from my shop. You not getting nothing on trust. And too besides, is closing time.’

Haq didn’t go away.

At length Ramlogan came out, smelling of Canadian Healing Oil, and unchained the gate. He had been having his siesta. He was wearing a pair of dirty white pants that showed how his fat legs shook when he walked, and a dirty white vest with many holes. And he was in his slippers: dirty canvas shoes open at the little toes, with the heels crushed flat.

‘What the hell you want, black Haq?’

Haq put his face close up to Ramlogan’s unshaved chin. ‘When you hear me! When you hear me!’

Ramlogan pushed him away. ‘You ain’t bound and ’bliged to spit on me when you talk.’

Haq didn’t seem to mind. ‘When you hear,’ he twittered, his lower lip wet and shining. ‘Just wait until you hear. It not going to be black Haq then.’

Ramlogan was striding ahead, flinging out his legs, shaking and jellying from his shoulders to his knees.

They went to the room behind the shop. Here Ramlogan cooked, ate and slept. It was a long narrow room, just the size of the rumshop. Trinidad Sentinels covered the walls and sheltered many cockroaches. The one window was closed; the air was hot, and heavy with the sweet smell of Canadian Healing Oil.

Ramlogan said grumpily, ‘You wake up a man when a man was catching a little sleep, man,’ and he lay down on his rumpled bed — a mattress thrown over some new planks — scratching easily and indiscriminately. He yawned.

Haq leaned his stick against the rum crates in a corner and eased himself into the sugar-sack hammock hanging diagonally across the room.