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

‘Mahadeo! What the hell you think you doing?’

Still on all fours, he looked up. It was Mr Cuffy.

‘Not doing nothing,’ he said.

‘Mahadeo, what get into you to make you play the ass so?’

Mahadeo rose and put his bare feet into his laceless boots.

‘You see Old Sebastian this morning, Mr Cawfee?’

‘Ain’t see nobody,’ Mr Cuffy said sullenly. ‘What you was looking for so?’

‘Was Old Sebastian I was looking for, Mr Cawfee.’

‘And is so you does always look for Sebastian? Look, Mahadeo, if anything happen to Sebastian, you go be surprise …’

At this moment Baksh shouted from a little way down the road, ‘Hear about this thing at Cordoba, Mr Cawfee?’

‘Going up there right now,’ Mr Cuffy said.

‘When I did tell people,’ Baksh said, ‘nobody did want to believe. Everybody did just run about saying Baksh is a big mouther, eh?’

‘What happen at Cordoba?’ Mahadeo asked.

Mr Cuffy looked at Mahadeo. It was the look he had given him when he pasted his face with the whitewash brush. ‘Something funny happen up there last night, Mahadeo. I hear something about a dead.’

Mahadeo stared.

‘Let him go and see for hisself,’ Baksh said.

Mahadeo didn’t wait. He ran as much as he could of the way to Cordoba. Even before he got there he saw the crowd blocking up the road. It was mostly a Spanish crowd — he could tell that by the dress — but there were people from Elvira as well.

The crowd made a wide circle around something in the road. The Spaniards were silent but uneasy; they actually seemed happy to have the outsiders from Elvira among them.

Mahadeo was stared at. A path was opened for him.

‘Look,’ he heard someone say in the acrid Spanish accent. ‘Let him look good.’

*

Five dead puppies were symmetrically laid out on a large cross scratched right across the dirt road. One dead puppy was at the centre of the cross and there was a dead puppy at each of the four ends. Below was written, in huge letters:

AWAKE

And all around, on palings and culverts, Cordoba was still red with Foam’s old, partly obliterated slogans: DIE! DIE!

Mahadeo, sweating, panting, gave a chuckle of relief.

The Spaniards looked at him suspiciously.

‘I did think it was Sebastian,’ Mahadeo said.

There were murmurs.

Mahadeo felt someone pull the sleeve of his uniform. He turned to see Sebastian, smiling, the empty pipe in his mouth. He almost embraced him. ‘Sebastian! You here! You ain’t there!’

The murmurs swelled.

Fortunately for Mahadeo, Baksh and Mr Cuffy came up just then, and almost immediately Foam arrived in the van and began to campaign.

Foam said, ‘Is those Witnesses. They can’t touch nobody else, so they come to meddle with the poor Spanish people in Cordoba. Telling them not to vote, to go against the government. Who ever see white woman riding around on red red bicycle before, giving out green books?’

Baksh wasn’t thinking about politics. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘Aha! Just look at those dogs. Said same coloration, said same shape, said same everything, as in my dog. But nobody did want to believe. Well, look now.’

Mr Cuffy crossed himself. ‘Mahadeo, this is your work?’

‘Ain’t my work, Mr Cawfee. I just come and see it.’

‘Want to know something?’ Baksh said. ‘For all the tiny those dogs look tiny this morning, they was big big dogs last night. I telling all-you, man. Come in that night. Eleven o’clock. Open the door. See this mister man dog, big big, walking about quiet quiet and sly …’

‘Is those damn Witnesses,’ Foam said.

‘… next morning, is a tiny tiny puppy.’

‘Jesus say,’ Foam said, ‘we have to give Caesar’s things back to Caesar. Witnesses tell you different.’

‘I always say this,’ Mr Cuffy said. ‘God hath made man upright, but they have found out many inventions.’

A Spaniard asked, ‘But what they trying to do to we?’

‘Do to you!’ Foam said. ‘Do to you! They ain’t begin yet. Ain’t they was talking about the world blowing up in 1976? And ain’t you was listening? They was talking and you was listening. Well, look.’ And he pointed to the puppies.

Baksh said, ‘Nobody can’t try nothing on me. I know how to handle them. My dog didn’t dead.’

Harichand the printer came up, dressed for work.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘More puppy dogs.’ He squatted and examined the ground like a detective. ‘Dead, eh? Awake, eh?’ He stood up. ‘Witnesses. Serious. Very serious. Ganesh was the man to handle a thing like this.’

‘But what we going to do, Mr Harichand?’

‘Do, eh? What you going to do.’ Harichand thought. ‘Just don’t feed no Witnesses,’ he said decisively. ‘Don’t feed no Witnesses. Funny, five little puppy dogs like that. Like your dog, eh, Baksh?’

Baksh smiled. ‘Tell them about it, Harichand. And tell them about the sign too.’

Harichand said, ‘Yes, things really waking up in Elvira. But don’t feed no Witnesses.’

Baksh said, ‘But you did tell me it was Preacher who set the fust dog on me, Harichand.’

Harichand said quickly, ‘Didn’t exactly say it that way. Said a preacher was putting something on you. Didn’t say what sort of preacher. What about those printing jobs, Baksh? If Harbans want my vote, he want my printery, I telling you.’

Baksh said, ‘Harbans could haul his arse.’

Harichand laughed. ‘Election thing, eh? You changing sides? Who you for now?’

Baksh said, ‘Preacher. Eh, you ain’t hear the bacchanal?’

Mr Cuffy spat loudly. ‘Obeah! Obeah!’

The Spaniards looked on in dismay.

‘Obeah!’ Mr Cuffy cried. ‘That is what all-you trying to work. Lorkhoor, and now you, Baksh. Tomorrow I go hear that Harbans come over to Mr Preacher side too. All-you only making a puppet-show of Mr Preacher. Mahadeo!’ Mr Cuffy called. ‘You trying something, eh?’

‘I ain’t trying nothing, Mr Cawfee.’ Mahadeo turned to Sebastian. ‘Come on, Sebastian, let we go home.’

Sebastian, smiling, stepped away from Mahadeo’s hand.

Mahadeo followed. ‘Come, Sebastian, you only tireding out yourself. You should go home and rest, man.’ He pressed a shilling into Sebastian’s palm. Sebastian smiled and allowed himself to be led away.

Mr Cuffy shouted, ‘Look after him good, you hear, Mahadeo.’

And then Chittaranjan was seen coming up to Cordoba.

He was in his visiting outfit.

*

Harbans — the candidate — heard about the row between Baksh and Chittaranjan and hurried down that noon to Elvira. He didn’t want to inflame either of the disputants, so he went straight to Pundit Dhaniram to find out what was what.

That day Dhaniram was not being a pundit. He was in his other, more substantial role as the owner of one-fifth of a tractor. No dhoti and sacred thread; but khaki trousers, yellow sports shirt, brown felt hat and brown patent leather shoes. When Harbans drove up, Dhaniram was standing on his sunny front steps, humming one of his favourite hymns:

What though the spicy breezes

Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;

Though every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile;

In vain with lavish kindness

The gifts of God are strown;

The heathen, in his blindness,

Bows down to wood and stone.

He was about to leave, but he stayed to tell Harbans all about Foam and Nelly, and Baksh and Chittaranjan.

Harbans seemed more concerned about the loss of Baksh and the thousand Muslim votes than about the loss of honour of his prospective daughter-in-law. Dhaniram wasn’t surprised.