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

When Foam was in the Big House one day, a breadfruit and three over-ripe zabocas fell on the roof. Foam waited. Chittaranjan kept on rocking and pretended he hadn’t heard.

Foam decided to confess

He said, ‘Goldsmith, that clean-neck fowl …’

‘Oh, that.’ Chittaranjan waved a hand, anxious to dismiss the subject. ‘That cook and eat long time now. Didn’t have no disease you know.’

‘Shoulda say this before, but was me who kill it. Knock it down with the loudspeaking van.’

Chittaranjan paused, just perceptibly, in his rocking; a look of surprise, relief passed over his face; then he rocked again. When he spoke he didn’t look at Foam. ‘All right, you kill it right enough. But who did want to see it dead?’

Foam didn’t answer.

Chittaranjan waved a tired hand towards Ramlogan’s yard. ‘He. He wanted to see it dead. If the chicken dead now and eat, that not on your conscience.’

Foam didn’t follow the reasoning; but it pleased him to see Chittaranjan look a little less oppressed. A little less grieved.

Foam said, ‘It did grieve Ramlogan like anything to see it dead. He tell Pa so the day after. Is what he tell Pa and is what Pa tell me. Ramlogan say he did know the chicken from the time it hatch, and he did watch it grow up. He say it was like a child to him, and when it dead it was a pussonal loss.’

Chittaranjan looked even less grieved.

*

The big quarrel, coming after three years of intermittently explosive hostility, had in fact purged Chittaranjan of much of his animosity towards Ramlogan. He had never been sure that it was Ramlogan who had killed the chicken; but coming upon it so soon after discovering Tiger in the cupboard, he had felt that he had to do something right away. Now he realized the enormity of his accusation. Ramlogan had, justly, got the better of him in that quarrel; and would always get the better of him in any future quarrel: Nelly’s dishonour was a more devastating argument than his ownership of the fence or his appearance in the Supreme Court.

He had had his fill of enmity. He wanted to change his relationship with the man. He called Mrs Chittaranjan and said, ‘That breadfruit that fall, and those three zaboca, pick them up and put them in the basket I bring back from San Fernando and take them over to Ramlogan.’

Mrs Chittaranjan didn’t show surprise. She was beyond it.

She packed the fruit in the basket and took it across. Ramlogan’s shop was open. It was early morning and there were no customers.

Ramlogan was reading the Sentinel, his large hairy head down, his large hairy hands pressing on the chipped and greasy counter. When he saw Mrs Chittaranjan he went on reading with an air of absorption, reading and saying, ‘Hm!’ and scratching his head, aromatic with Canadian Healing Oil. In truth, he was deeply moved and trying to hide it. He too was ripe for reconciliation. He had always wanted to wound Chittaranjan; but now that he had, he regretted it. He knew he had gone too far when he attacked the honour of the man’s daughter; he felt ashamed.

‘Ah, maharajin, ’ he said at last, looking up and smoothing out the Sentinel on the counter.

Mrs Chittaranjan placed the basket of fruit on the counter and pulled her veil decorously over her forehead.

‘Breadfruit,’ Ramlogan said, as though he had never seen the fruit before. ‘Breadfruit, man. And zaboca, eh? Zaboca. One, two, three zaboca.’ He pressed a zaboca with a thick forefinger. ‘Ripe too.’

Mrs Chittaranjan said, ‘He send it.’

‘It have nothing I like better than a good zaboca and bread. Nothing better.’

‘Yes, it nice,’ Mrs Chittaranjan said.

‘Nice like anything.’

‘He send it. He tell me to take up the breadfruit and the three zaboca and bring it for you in this basket.’

Ramlogan passed a hand over the basket. ‘Nice basket.’

‘He bring it from San Fernando.’

Ramlogan turned the basket around on the greasy counter. ‘Very nice basket,’ he said. ‘It make by the blind?’

‘He say I have to bring back the basket.’

Ramlogan emptied the basket, hugging the fruit to his breast. Mrs Chittaranjan saw the basket empty, saw the fruit in a cluster against Ramlogan’s dirty shirt. Then she saw the cluster jog and heave and heave and jog.

Ramlogan was crying.

Mrs Chittaranjan began to cry in sympathy.

‘We is bad people, maharajin,’ Ramlogan sobbed.

Mrs Chittaranjan pressed a corner of her veil over her eyes. ‘It have some good in everybody.’

Ramlogan clutched the fruit to his breast and shook his head so violently that tears fell on the breadfruit. ‘No, no, maharajin, we is more bad than good.’ He shook down some more tears and lifted his head to the sooty galvanized-iron roof. ‘God, I is asking You. Tell me why we is bad.’

Mrs Chittaranjan stopped crying and took the basket off the counter. ‘He waiting for me.’

Ramlogan brought his head down. ‘He waiting?’

She nodded.

Ramlogan ran with the fruit to the back room and then followed Mrs Chittaranjan out of the shop.

Chittaranjan was leaning on the wall of his veranda.

Ramlogan shouted, ‘Hello, brothers!’

Chittaranjan waved and widened his smile. ‘You all right, brothers?’

‘Yes, brothers. She bring the breadfruit and the zaboca for me. Ripe zaboca too, brothers.’

‘They did look ripe to me too.’

Ramlogan was near the wire fence. He hesitated.

‘Is all right, brothers,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘Is much your fence as mine.’

‘Nice fence, brothers.’

Chittaranjan’s two workmen were so astonished they stopped working and looked on, sitting flat on the concrete terrace under the awning, the bracelets which they were fashioning held between their toes.

Ramlogan spoke sharply to them: ‘What the hell happen to all-you? The goldsmith paying all-you just to meddle in other people business?’

They hurriedly began tapping away at their bracelets.

From the veranda Chittaranjan said, ‘Let them wait until I come down.’ He clattered down the front steps. ‘Is this modern age. Everybody want something for nothing. I work for every penny I have, and now you have these people complaining that they is poor and behaving as though other people depriving them.’

Ramlogan, grasping the fence firmly, agreed. ‘The march of time, brothers. As the saying goes. Everybody equal. People who ain’t got brain to work and those who use their brain to work. Everybody equal.’

Ramlogan invited Chittaranjan over to the shop and seated him on an empty rum crate in front of the counter. He gave him a glass of grapefruit juice because he knew Chittaranjan didn’t drink hard liquor.

They talked of the degeneracy of the modern age; they agreed that democracy was a stupid thing; then they came to the elections and to Baksh.

Chittaranjan, sipping his grapefruit juice without great relish — he still had a low opinion of Ramlogan’s cleanliness — said: ‘This democracy just make for people like Baksh. Fact, I say it just make for Negro and Muslim. They is two people who never like to make anything for theyself, and the moment you make something, they start begging. And if you ain’t give them, they vex.’

Ramlogan, thinking of Haq, assented with conviction.

‘And if you give them,’ Chittaranjan went on, ‘they is ungrateful.’

‘As the saying goes, however much you wash a pig, you can’t make it a cow. As the saying goes.’

‘Look at Baksh. Everybody else in Elvira just asking for one little piece of help before they vote for any particular body. Baksh is the only man who want three.’

Ramlogan scratched his head. ‘Three bribe, brothers?’