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

Herbert called out, ‘Foam, the roof still working.’

‘Herbert, why you so bent on playing the ass? Look how you make Tiger frighten.’

Tiger was indeed behaving oddly. He had staggered to his feet, for the first time since his marathon afternoon walk; and for the first time since he had been discovered, was making some sound. A ghost of a whine, a faint mew.

Herbert came down to see.

Tiger mewed and tottered around in his box, as though he were trying to catch his tail.

Herbert was thrilled. ‘You see? He getting better.’ He remembered Miss Elvira’s baby. ‘Dog could smell spirits, you know, Foam.’

The tropical twilight came and went. Night fell. Tiger’s mews became more distinct. Whenever Foam stepped on the rotting floor the cocoa-house creaked. Outside in the bush croak was answering screech: the night noises were beginning. Tiger mewed, whined, and swung shakily about in his box.

Foam tried to force Tiger to lie down; the position seemed normal for Tiger; but Tiger wasn’t going to sit down or lie down and he wasn’t going to try to get out of his box either. The darkness thickened. The bush outside began to sing. Foam could just see the white spots on Tiger’s muzzle. A bat swooped low through the room, open at both ends.

‘Can’t leave him here,’ Foam said aloud. ‘Herbert!’

But Herbert wasn’t there.

‘Herbert!’

He lit a match. For a moment the spurt of flame blinded him. Then the rotting damp walls, stained with the ancient stain of millions of cocoa-beans, defined themselves around him. He looked up at the roof.

‘Herbert!’

He walked back to the box. Shadows flurried on the walls.

‘Take it easy, Tiger.’

The match went out. He dropped it but didn’t hear it fall. It must have gone through one of the holes in the floor.

‘Herbert! You up on the roof? Boy, take care you don’t fall and break your tail, you hear.’

He felt his way to the broken entrance. The house creaked, the galvanized-iron roof shivered.

‘Herbert!’

In the night his voice sounded thinner. He couldn’t see anything, only the blackness of bush all around. The road and the van were a hundred yards away.

Then: ‘Foam! Foam!’ he heard Herbert screaming, and ran back inside. The sudden rumbling of the house made him stop and walk. Tiger he couldn’t see at all now, only heard him whining and striking against the sides of his box.

‘Foam! Foam!’

He walked to the other end of the room, lighting matches to see his way across the holes in the floor.

‘Look, Foam!’

He went down the solid concrete steps at the back. They were the only solid thing left in the cocoa-house. The ground sloped down from the road and the steps at the back were about eight feet high, nearly twice as high as those in front. A solid concrete wall supported the solid concrete steps. Foam lit a match. The surface of the steps was still smooth and new, as though it had been finished only the week before. Tall weeds switched against Foam’s legs. The weeds were already damp with dew. The match flickered in his cupped hands.

‘Look, Foam, under the steps here.’

Herbert was almost hysterical. Foam did what he had been told to do in such circumstances. He slapped Herbert, with great dexterity, back-hand and forward-hand. Herbert pulled in his breath hard and kept back his sobs.

Foam lit another match.

Under the steps he saw a dead dog and five dead puppies. The mother had its mouth open, its teeth bared. She was the dog Harbans had hit that afternoon weeks before.

Her eyes were horribly inanimate. Her chest and belly were shrunken. Her ribs stood out, hard. Damp black earth stuck to her pink blotched dugs, thin and slack like a punctured balloon. The puppies were all like Tiger. They had died all over their mother, anyhow.

The match went out.

‘She didn’t have no milk or nothing to feed them,’ Herbert said.

Foam squatted in the darkness beside the dead dog. ‘You talking like a woman, Herbert. You never seen nothing dead before?’

‘Everybody only know how to say, “Mash, dog!” ’ The words came between sobs. ‘Nobody know how to feed it.’

‘That is all you could think about, Herbert? Food? It look as if they right, you know.’

‘What we going to do with them, Foam?’

Foam laughed. ‘I got a master-idea, Herbert.’ He got up and lit a match, away from the dead puppies. ‘I going to get the cutlass.’

‘What for, Foam?’

‘Dig a hole and bury the mother. You coming with me or you staying here to cry over the dogs?’

‘I coming with you, Foam. Don’t go.’

They dug a shallow hole and buried the mother. Herbert trimmed a switch, broke it in two, peeled off the bark and tied the pieces into a cross. He stuck it on the grave.

Foam pulled it out. ‘Where you learn that from?’

‘Is how they does do it in the belling-ground, Foam.’

‘Eh, but you turning Christian or something?’

Herbert saw his error.

‘Come on now,’ Foam said cheerfully. ‘Help me take these dead puppies in the van.’

Foam’s business-like attitude calmed Herbert. ‘What we going to do with five dead puppies, Foam?’

Foam laughed. ‘Ah, boy, you go see.’

Herbert trusted Foam. He knew that whatever it was, it was going to be fun.

‘But what about Tiger, Foam? We could leave him here? He wouldn’t grieve too much?’

Foam said confidently, ‘Only place for Tiger now is right here. Don’t worry about Tiger. He going to be all right.’

*

They got home late and found Baksh, Mrs Baksh and Zilla in the store-room. Teacher Francis was there too. Foam was surprised. Teacher Francis had come to the Baksh house only once before, to say that if Rafiq didn’t buck up at school he was going to turn out just like Foam.

‘Ah,’ Baksh said heavily to Foam and Herbert. ‘Campaign manager and little mister man. Where you was out so late? I did tell you to put away the dog or I did tell you to build a mansion for it?’

Herbert smiled. ‘We was out campaigning.’ He winked at Foam.

‘That prove what I was saying about the elections, ma’am,’ Teacher Francis said to Mrs Baksh. ‘A little boy like Herbert ain’t have no right to go out campaigning.’

Mrs Baksh was on her best behaviour for the teacher. ‘Is what I does forever always keep on telling the father, Teach. Beg pardon, Teach.’ She turned to the boys. ‘All your food take out and waiting for all-you in the kitchen. It must be cold as dog nose now.’

Herbert went noisily up the stairs. Foam sucked his teeth and followed.

‘I don’t mean anything against you, Mr Baksh,’ Teacher Francis went on, ‘but the fact is, the ordinary people of Elvira don’t really appreciate that voting is a duty and privilege.’ That was part of the speech he had prepared for the Bakshes. ‘Duty and privilege, ma’am.’

‘Is what I does forever always keep on telling the father, Teach. Hear what the teacher say, Baksh? I been telling him, Teach, a hundred times if I tell him one time, that this election begin sweet sweet for everybody, but the same sweetness going to turn sour sour in the end. Zilla, you ain’t hear me use those self-same words to your father?’

‘Yes, Ma.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Election bringing out all sort of prejudice to the surface. To the surface, ma’am.’

Mrs Baksh crossed her powerful arms and nodded solemnly. ‘You never say a truer word, Teach. In all my born days nobody ever come to my own house — my own house, mark you — and talk to me like how the goldsmith come and talk to me this afternoon.’

Teacher Francis delivered the rest of his statement: ‘I have been turning over this and similar ideas in my mind from time to time. From time to time. Yesterday evening I stated them in general terms — in general terms — to Miss Chittaranjan. Mrs Baksh, Miss Chittaranjan took down every word I said. In shorthand.’