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

‘How we know you not going to change your mind?’

Lorkhoor shrugged. ‘I will leave on the Saturday before the elections.’

‘Five hundred dollars,’ Chittaranjan said.

‘Splendid,’ said Lorkhoor. ‘That suits me fine.’

THAT HAPPENED ONE WEEK before polling day. Harbans and Chittaranjan were confident but didn’t show it. Dhaniram was shamelessly exultant. Mahadeo was beyond caring. He still had to endure Mr Cuffy’s watchful eye, and still had to keep his own vigil over Old Sebastian. And there was his eternal anxiety that some other Negro might fall ill. Hindus were falling ill by the score every day now; Muslims had begun to join them, and even a few Spaniards. But no Negro became infirm. Mahadeo didn’t have time to be thankful.

*

And then Baksh began to play the fool again.

‘Bribe number three coming up,’ Chittaranjan said.

Baksh told Ramlogan and Ramlogan told Chittaranjan. Baksh told Foam and Foam told Chittaranjan. Baksh told Harichand and Harichand told Chittaranjan.

‘Say he ain’t got a chance,’ Harichand said. ‘Not a chance in hell. Say, by asking Muslim people to vote for him, he wasting good good votes. Say it ain’t fair to the Muslim to ask them to waste their good good votes. Say that it would look to a lot of people like a Hindu trick to waste good good Muslim votes. Say he thinking that, weighing up everything and balancing it, Preacher is still the better man. Say he thinking of selling out to Preacher. Say is the only thing to give back the Muslim their pride. Say …’

‘Say he could kiss my arse,’ Harbans said. ‘Say he could go to hell afterwards.’

‘Say,’ Harichand went on unperturbed, ‘that he willing to talk things over fust.’

‘Give them the Muslim vote,’ Dhaniram said. ‘With the Spanish voting and with Lorkhoor telling the other Hindus not to vote for Preacher, we could give them the Muslim vote.’

Harbans paced about Chittaranjan’s veranda with his jerky clockwork steps. ‘It go against my heart to give that man another penny. Against my heart, man.’

Chittaranjan said, ‘Harichand, tell Baksh we not going to see him until Saturday night.’

‘But election is on Monday,’ Harichand said.

‘We know that,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘We don’t want Baksh to tired out hisself changing his mind four times. Three times in one election is enough for one man.’

‘Is your election, pappa.’ Harichand shook his head, laughed and left.

Harbans fell into one of his unsettling depressive moods. He continued to walk up and down Chittaranjan’s tiled veranda, muttering to himself, cracking his fingers.

‘It don’t matter who the Muslim vote for now,’ Dhaniram said. ‘Work it out for yourself, Mr Harbans. We getting all the Hindu votes and the Spanish vote. Five thousand. If the worst come to the worst and Baksh sell out to Preacher, Preacher could still only get three thousand. Two thousand Negro and a thousand Muslim.’

Harbans refused to be comforted.

And Chittaranjan rocking, rocking in his morris chair, wasn’t as cool as he looked. It wasn’t Baksh’s message. He had expected that. And, as Dhaniram had said, Baksh wasn’t important now anyway; though it would have been worthwhile, just to make absolutely sure, to see that the Muslims didn’t vote for Preacher. But the message had come at a bad time. Chittaranjan had called Harbans to the committee meeting that Wednesday evening to tell him all about the big motor-car parade on Sunday, the eve of polling day.

Harbans knew nothing about the parade. Chittaranjan, Foam and Dhaniram had planned it among themselves. They were afraid that if Harbans got to know about it too early he might object: the parade was going to be a grand, expensive thing. But the committee wanted it — a final flourish to an impressive campaign.

Big motor-car parades were not new to Trinidad. Up to 1946, however, they had been used only for weddings and funerals. At weddings the decorated cars raced through the main roads with streamers flying and horns blaring. In their sombre way funeral processions were equally impressive; they always had right of way and often dislocated traffic; an important man could paralyse it. In 1946 the political possibilities of the motor-car parade were exploited for the first time by the P.P.U., the Party for Progress and Unity. On the day before the first general election the P.P.U hired five hundred cars and toured the island. It was the P.P.U.’s finest moment. The party had been founded two months before the parade; it died two days after it. It won one seat out of twelve; ten of the candidates lost their deposits; the president and the funds disappeared. But Trinidad had been impressed by the parade and after that no election, whether for city council, county council or local road board, was complete without a parade.

But parades were expensive.

Chittaranjan, seeing Harbans work his way back and forth across the veranda, wished once again he could manage the campaign without having to manage the candidate as well.

He thought he would be casual. He said, ‘You doing anything on Sunday, Mr Harbans?’

Harbans didn’t reply.

Chittaranjan said, ‘I hope you not doing anything, because we having a little parade for you.’

Harbans stopped walking.

‘Small parade really.’

Harbans locked his fingers, looked at them and then at his shoes, cracked his fingers, and continued to walk.

‘Motorcade,’ Dhaniram said.

‘About fifty cars.’ Chittaranjan began to write. ‘Fifteen dollars a car. And you could give them a few gallons of gas. You got to have food to give the people. And you have to have music.’

Harbans, still jerking about the veranda, only cracked his fingers.

‘You can’t disappoint the people, Mr Harbans,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘It go cost you about fifteen hundred dollars, but at the same time it going to make the people who want to vote for you feel good, seeing their candidate at the head of a big big parade.’

‘Must have a motorcade,’ Dhaniram said. ‘Must must. Keep up with the times.’ He laughed. ‘Pay the entrance fee.’

Harbans sat down.

When Foam came in they worked out details.

*

The only member of the committee who didn’t turn up for that meeting was Mahadeo. Of late he had begun to stay away from committee meetings. It embarrassed him to be continually offering up lists of sick Hindus; much of Harbans’s anger had been directed against him and he had had to defend himself more than once: ‘ I didn’t start up this democracy business, Mr Harbans.’

Old Sebastian was getting more difficult too. Concurrently with a series of unexpected ailments Sebastian had developed a sprightliness that should have heartened Mahadeo. It sickened him with worry. He could no longer rely on Sebastian to stay at home and make fish-pots. He often found him now in Ramlogan’s rumshop, drinking free rum with the rest. Mahadeo didn’t know where Sebastian got his rum vouchers. (He got them from Harichand, who had printed the vouchers and kept a few.) It didn’t take much to get Sebastian drunk. He had lived for too long on an old age pension that had cramped his drinking style.

Mahadeo said, ‘This democracy ain’t a good thing for a man like Sebastian, you hear.’

And Mr Cuffy said, ‘Mahadeo, I ain’t know what sort of magic you working on Sebastian, but he acting damn funny. A candle does burn bright bright before it go out, remember. And Sebastian burning it at both ends.’

Sebastian’s behaviour also distressed his drinking companion, Haq. Haq had with relief sacrificed his religious scruples so far as to drink in public. It wasn’t the drink, he said; he wanted to be in a crowd, otherwise Foam would beat him up. He and Sebastian sat silently side by side on the bench against one wall of Ramlogan’s rumshop and drank. They looked curiously alike; only, Sebastian smiled all the time, while Haq looked grumpy and uncompromising behind his spectacles; and Haq’s bristle of white beard and whiskers was more impressive than the stray kinky brownish-grey hairs on Sebastian’s chin that looked as though they had been despairingly planted by someone who hadn’t enough seed to go round.