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

‘Feed him outside?’ Baksh asked.

‘That’s right. Outside. Feed him outside.’

Harichand stood up and looked down at Tiger.

‘Think he go dead, Harichand?’ Mrs Baksh asked.

‘Hm.’ Harichand frowned and bit his thin lower lip with sharp white teeth. ‘Mustn’t let him dead.’

Baksh said, ‘He look strong to you, Harichand?’

‘Wouldn’t exactly call him a strong dog,’ Harichand said.

Baksh coaxed: ‘But is thin thin dogs like that does live and live and make a lot a lot of mischief, eh, Harichand?’

Harichand said, ‘Trinidad full of thin dogs.’

‘Still,’ Baksh said, ‘they living.’

Harichand whispered to Baksh, ‘Is thin dogs like that does breed a lot, you know. And breed fast to boot.’

Baksh made a big show of astonishment, to please Harichand.

‘Yes, man. Dogs like that. Telling you, man. See it with my own eyes.’ Harichand caught Mrs Baksh’s eye. He said, loudly, ‘Just feed it outside. Outside all the time. Everything going to be all right. If anything happen, just let me know.’

He hung his coat lovingly over his left arm and straightened his tie. As he was leaving he said, ‘Still waiting for those election printing jobs, Baksh. If Harbans want my vote, he want my printery. Otherwise …’ And Harichand shook his head and laughed.

*

Soon Tiger was passing through Elvira again, this time in the loudspeaker van. Foam and Herbert were taking him, on instructions, to the old cocoa-house.

*

Chittaranjan called.

Baksh said, ‘Going out campaigning, Goldsmith?’

For Chittaranjan was in his visiting outfit.

Chittaranjan didn’t reply.

‘Something private, eh, Goldsmith?’

And Baksh led Chittaranjan upstairs. But Chittaranjan didn’t take off his hat and didn’t sit down in the cane-bottomed chair.

‘Something serious, Goldsmith?’

‘Baksh, I want you to stop interfering with my daughter.’

Baksh knit his brows.

Chittaranjan’s flush became deeper. His smile widened. His calm voice iced over: ‘It have some people who can’t bear to see other people prosper. I don’t want nobody to pass over their obeah to me and I ain’t give my daughter all that education for she to run about with boys in the night-time.’

‘You talking about Foam, eh?’

‘I ain’t talking about Foam. I talking about the man who instigating Foam. And that man is you, Baksh. I is like that, as you know. I does say my mind, and who want to vex, let them vex.’

‘Look out, you know, Goldsmith! You calling me a instigator.’

‘I ain’t want your obeah in my house. We is Hindus. You is Muslim. And too besides, my daughter practically engage already.’

‘Engage!’ Baksh laughed. ‘Engage to Harbans son? You have all Elvira laughing at you. You believe Harbans going to let his son marry your daughter? Harbans foolish, but he ain’t that foolish, you hear.’

For a moment Chittaranjan was at a loss.

‘And look, eh, Goldsmith, Foam better than ten of Harbans sons, you hear. And too besides, you think I go instigate Foam to go around with your daughter? Don’t make me laugh, man. Your daughter? When it have five thousand Muslim girl prettier than she.’

‘I glad it have five thousand Muslim girl prettier than she. But that ain’t the point.’

‘How it ain’t the point? Everybody know that Muslim girl prettier than Hindu girl. And Foam chasing your daughter? Ten to one, your daughter ain’t giving the poor boy a chance. Let me tell you, eh, every Hindu girl think they in paradise if they get a Muslim boy.’

‘What is Muslim?’ Chittaranjan asked, his smile frozen, his eyes unshining, his voice low and cutting. ‘Muslim is everything and Muslim is nothing.’ He paused. ‘Even Negro is Muslim.’

That hurt Baksh. He stopped pacing about and looked at Chittaranjan. He looked at him hard and long. Then he shouted, ‘Good! Good! I glad! I glad Harbans ain’t want no Muslim vote. Harbans ain’t going to get no Muslim vote. You say it yourself. Negro and Muslim is one. All right. Preacher getting every Muslim vote in Elvira.’

Baksh’s rage relaxed Chittaranjan. He took off his hat and flicked a finger over the wide brim. ‘We could do without the Muslim vote.’ He put on his hat again, lifted his left arm and pinched the loose skin just below the wrist. ‘This is pure blood. Every Hindu blood is pure blood. Nothing mix up with it. Is pure Aryan blood.’

Baksh snorted. ‘All-you is just a pack of kaffir, if you ask me.’

‘Madinga!’ Chittaranjan snapped back.

They traded racial insults in rising voices.

Mrs Baksh came out and said, ‘Goldsmith, I is not going to have you come to my house and talk like that.’

Chittaranjan pressed his hat more firmly on his head. ‘I is not staying in your house.’ He went through the brass-bed room to the stairs, saying, ‘Smell. Smell the beef and all the other nastiness they does cook in this house.’ He matched the rhythm of his speech to his progress down the steps: ‘A animal spend nine months in his mother belly. It born. The mother feed it. People feed it. It feed itself. It grow up. It come big. It come strong. Then they kill it. Why?’ He was on the last step. ‘To feed Baksh.’

Baksh shouted after him, ‘And tell Harbans he have to win this election without the Muslim vote.’

‘We go still win.’

And Chittaranjan was in the road.

‘What I tell you, Baksh?’ Mrs Baksh exclaimed. ‘See how sour the sweetness turning?’

‘Look, you and all,’ Baksh said, ‘don’t start digging in my tail, you hear.’

Mrs Baksh smoothed her dress over her belly. ‘Why you didn’t talk to the goldsmith like that? No, you is man only in front of woman. But Baksh, you just put one finger on me, and Elvira going to see the biggest bacchanal it ever see.’

Baksh sucked his teeth. ‘You talking like your mother. Both of all-you just have a lot of mouth.’

‘Go ahead, Baksh. You finish already? Go ahead and insult the dead. This election make you so shameless. If it was to me that the goldsmith was talking, I woulda turn my hand and give him a good clout behind his head. I know that. But you, you make me shame that you is the father of my seven children.’

Bakish said irritably, trying to turn the conversation, ‘You go ahead and talk. And let the goldsmith talk and let Harbans talk. But no Muslim ain’t going to vote for Harbans. Just watch and see.’

*

It was growing dark when Foam and Herbert brought Tiger to the cocoa-house. Years before, labourers were paid to keep the very floor of the cocoa-woods clean; now the woods were strangled in bush that had spread out to choke the cocoa-house itself. When Foam was a child he had played in the cocoa-house, but it was too dangerous now and no one went near it.

Foam and Herbert broke a path through from the road to the house. They had brought a box, gunny sacks and food for Tiger. While Foam hunted about for a place safe enough to put Tiger, Herbert explored.

Herbert knew all about the ghost of the cocoa-house, but ghosts, like the dark, didn’t frighten him. The ghost of the cocoa-house was a baby, a baby Miss Elvira herself had had by a negro servant at the time the cocoa-house was being built. The story was that she had buried it in the foundations, under the concrete steps at the back. Many people, many Spaniards in particular, had often heard the baby crying; some had even seen it crawling about in the road near the cocoa-house.

Herbert climbed to the ceiling and tried to push back the sliding roof: the roof was sliding so that the beans could dry in the sun and be covered up as soon as it began to rain. He pushed hard, but the wheels of the roof had rusted and stuck to the rails. He pushed again and again. The wheels grated on the rails, the whole house shook with a jangle of corrugated-iron sheets and a flapping of loose boards, and wood-lice and wood-dust fell down.