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

Mrs Baksh opened her eyes wide, swung her head slowly, very slowly, from side to side and gave a cluck of horror. ‘Look at that, eh, Teach. In shorthand.’

‘You could trust somebody as stuck-up as Nelly Chittaranjan to do a low thing like that,’ Zilla said.

‘And Mrs Baksh, Miss Chittaranjan thinks I am a fascist.’ He paused; he had come to the end of his statement. ‘Mrs Baksh, I look like a fascist to you?’

‘No, Teach. You ain’t look like a fascist. Not to me anyway.’

Zilla said, ‘Don’t worry your head with Nelly Chittaranjan, Teach. She just a little too hot for man sheself. These small thin girls like Nelly Chittaranjan like man.’

‘Beg pardon, Teach,’ Mrs Baksh said. ‘I have to talk to my sister here.’ She turned to Zilla. ‘Yes, ma commère? Small thin girls like man? How you know? You does like man yourself?’ She turned to Teacher Francis again. ‘Beg pardon, Teach. But these children these days is like if dog eat their mind and their shame.’

Zilla hung her head.

Teacher Francis came to the point. ‘And then this evening, Mrs Baksh, Mr Chittaranjan come to see me. He come in cool cool and he tell me dry dry that Nelly not coming for no more lessons from me. It ain’t the money I worried about, Mrs Baksh. Is the fact that I don’t like people misunderstanding my views. I have to think of my job.’

It certainly wasn’t the ten dollars a month alone that worried Teacher Francis. He knew that what Chittaranjan did today the rest of Elvira did tomorrow. If all the parents stopped sending their children to him for private lessons, he would be in a spot.

Foam, an enamel cup in his hands, came down the steps.

Teacher Francis was saying, ‘That is why I come to see you, Mrs Baksh. I know how your husband and Mr Chittaranjan working on the same side in the elections, and I would be glad like anything if you could tell Mr Chittaranjan that I is not really a fascist. Fact is, I ain’t taking no sides in this election at all.’

‘Is the best best thing, God knows, Teach,’ Mrs Baksh said.

Foam gave a loud dry laugh. ‘Eh, Teacher Francis, why you want we to tell the goldsmith for? Why you don’t ask Lorkhoor? He could run about telling it with his loud-speaking van.’

And Foam had his first triumph.

He had been waiting a long time to spurn a suppliant Teacher Francis. He had had extravagant visions of the moment. The reality seemed made to order, and was sweet.

Teacher Francis accepted the rebuke sadly. ‘Lorkhoor let me down, man. Prove my point again, ma’am. Is the election that spoil Lorkhoor.’

But it had given Foam his first triumph.

‘Lorkhoor is a damn traitor if you ask me,’ Foam said.

‘Nobody ain’t ask you,’ Baksh said. ‘And look, eh, I ain’t want to hear nobody bad-talking Lorkhoor in this house.’

Foam was baffled.

Baksh said, ‘You, you was out campaigning, eh? Campaigning for that dirty Hindu Harbans. Dog eat your shame? It look like dog eat all m y children shame.’

Foam said, ‘But look, look. What happening? Ain’t you done take Harbans money and everything?’

If Teacher Francis hadn’t been there Baksh would have spat. ‘Money, eh? The money doing me a lot of good? A lot of good! Ten die. Big dog in the night turning tiny tiny in the morning. Send him away and he come back. A lot of good!’

Teacher Francis realized he had been talking in vain. Baksh was no good to him as an intermediary with Chittaranjan.

Foam said, ‘Well, I take Harbans money and I give him my word. I going to still help Harbans.’

‘I want you to help Harbans,’ Baksh said. ‘I going to help Preacher. I ain’t stopping you doing nothing. You is a big man. Your pee making froth. How much votes you control, Foam?’

Teacher Francis, unhappy, bemused, got up and left.

Then Baksh told about Chittaranjan’s visit.

‘All right, you supporting Preacher,’ Foam said, and Mrs Baksh noted that for the first time Foam was talking to his father man-to-man. ‘Preacher could give you anything?’

Baksh smiled. ‘It ain’t Preacher who going to give me anything. Don’t worry, you. I calculate everything already. Everything.’

MAHADEO WAS A WORRIED MAN. He haunted Elvira, checking up on Negroes, anxious lest any of them fell ill or, worse, died.

Hindus misunderstood his purpose and resented his partiality. Rampiari’s husband said, ‘What the hell? Hindus does fall sick too.’ And so, despite his strict instructions not to meddle with them, Mahadeo found himself making out a long list of sick Hindus to present to Harbans. That was one worry.

His big worry was Old Sebastian.

That evening in Dhaniram’s veranda he had been pretty confident that Sebastian would die before polling day; and in the happy days before his interview with Mr Cuffy he had kept a hopeful eye on him. Every morning he passed Sebastian’s hut and saw him sitting on a backless kitchen chair before his front door, a stunted unlit pipe in his mouth, making fish-pots from strips of bamboo, an inexplicable and futile occupation because Sebastian had no connexion whatever with the sea and the fish-pots only remained and rotted in his yard. Mahadeo would ask, ‘How you feeling this morning, Sebastian?’ And Sebastian would smile — he hardly spoke — showing his remaining teeth, isolated and askew as if some oral explosion had destroyed the others. In the afternoon Mahadeo would pass again, after the day’s work on the estate, and repeat his question; and Sebastian would smile again.

Some days Mahadeo felt Sebastian wasn’t going to die at all.

That was before Mr Cuffy.

Mahadeo distrusted and feared Mr Cuffy. He was old, he was black, he lived alone, he preached, and he read the Bible. And Mahadeo could never forget a disquieting encounter he had had with him as a boy. One Saturday morning he had gone into Mr Cuffy’s yard to watch Mr Cuffy whitewashing the walls of his house. Mr Cuffy frowned and muttered, but Mahadeo paid no attention. On a sudden Mr Cuffy had turned and vigorously worked the whitewash brush over Mahadeo’s face.

And now Mr Cuffy was Sebastian’s guardian.

Sebastian began to look very old and fragile. Mahadeo asked after his health with genuine concern and Sebastian suddenly revealed himself as a very sick man. He had aches and pains all over; stiff joints; and a dangerous stiffness in the neck. Everything that surrounded Sebastian seemed dangerous — the chair he sat on, the old thatched roof over his head. Mahadeo begged him to be careful with the penknife he used on his fish-pots, begged him not to lift heavy weights, begged him not to go for walks in the night dew, and not to get wet. Mahadeo backed up his advice with a shilling or so which Sebastian took easily, without acknowledgement, as though it was money from the government.

On the morning after Foam knocked down Mrs Chittaranjan’s clean-necked chicken, Mahadeo, sweating in his tight khaki uniform, walked past Sebastian’s hut.

And there was no Sebastian.

*

He forgot about the labourers on the estate waiting for him to measure out their tasks for the day. He hurried across the shaky bridge into Sebastian’s yard. He had to warn Sebastian about that bridge: it was dangerous, made only of lengths of bamboo piled up with dirt. He knocked on Sebastian’s door and there was no reply. He tried the door. It was locked. He walked around the hut, but every cranny in the walls was blocked up. That was what he himself had advised, to protect Sebastian from draughts.

‘Sebastian!’ Mahadeo called. ‘You all right?’

There was a gap about three inches high running all around the hut between the walls and the eaves of the thatched roof. Mahadeo decided to climb. He would get up on the narrow window-ledge and hope it didn’t come down with him. He tried to climb in full uniform. The dirt wall was too smooth to give him a grip and the tight khaki jacket hindered his arms. He took off the jacket, then took off his boots. Still, the wall was too smooth and the window-ledge too high to help him. He pressed the big toe of his right foot against the wall and tried again. He felt the wall give under his toe. He looked down. He had made a hole in Sebastian’s wall, about eight inches from the ground. He went down on all fours and lowered his head. Some strands of tapia grass in the wall barred his view. He poked a finger in. Before he could pull away the grass he heard a shout from the road.