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

Mahadeo did his best. He bribed Sebastian to stay home; but Sebastian insisted that one bribe was good enough for only one day; and the days he stayed away from the rumshop he was very ill and alarmed Mahadeo more. He gave Sebastian money to go to the D.M.O. for a check-up. Sebastian said he went but Mahadeo didn’t believe him. He bribed the D.M.O. to go to Sebastian. The D.M.O. reported, ‘He’ll last for a bit,’ and left Mahadeo just as worried. ‘A candle does burn bright bright before it go out,’ he thought, and remembered Mr Cuffy and the whitewash brush on his face.

Mahadeo was a devout Hindu. He did his puja every morning and evening. In all his prayers now, and through all the ritual, the arti and bell-ringing and conch-blowing — which seemed in the most discouraging way to have nothing to do with what went on in Elvira — Mahadeo had one thought: Sebastian’s health.

*

On the evening of the Saturday before the election Mahadeo noted that Sebastian was not at home. His vigil would be over in two days; he couldn’t risk anything happening now. He went straight to Ramlogan’s rumshop. It was full of the Saturday night crowd, merrier than usual because they still had rum vouchers; in two days they would have to start paying for their rum again. The floor was wet — the floors of rumshops are always wet. Ramlogan was busy, happy. Mahadeo forced his way through to the bench where Haq and Sebastian normally sat. He caught bits of election gossip.

‘The British Government don’t want Harbans to win this election.’

‘They going to spoil all the poor people votes once they get them inside the Warden Office. Lights going out all over the place.’

‘No, I not going to bet you, but I still have a funny feeling that Baksh going to win.’

‘When Harbans done with this election, he done with Elvira, I telling all-you.’

‘Chittaranjan in for one big shock when this election over, you hear.’

Mahadeo saw Haq, overshadowed by the standing drinkers and looking lost, fierce, but content.

‘Where Sebastian?’

Rampiari’s husband, his right foot emphatically bandaged, put his big hand on Mahadeo’s shoulder. ‘Sebastian! I never see a old man get so young so quick.’

Somebody else said, ‘Take my word. Sebastian going to dead in harness.’

‘Haq, you see Sebastian?’

‘Nasty old man. Don’t want to see him.’

Rampiari’s husband said, ‘Yes. In harness.’

‘This ain’t no joke, you know. Where Sebastian?’

‘At home. By you. Go back and see after your wife, Mahadeo boy.’

‘Two three years from now some Negro child running down Elvira main road calling Mahadeo Pa.’

‘All-you ain’t see Sebastian? Ramlogan!’

‘Mahadeo, who the arse you think you is to shout at me like that? A man only got two hands.’

‘Where Sebastian?’

‘He take up a little drink and he gone long time.’

‘For oysters.’

Mahadeo ran out of the shop, dazed by worry and the smell of rum. He ran back to Sebastian’s hut. It was dead, lightless. No Sebastian. He made his way in the dark through the high grass to the latrine at the back of the yard. The heavy grey door — it came from one of the dismantled American Army buildings at Docksite in Port of Spain and heaven knows how Sebastian had got hold of it — the door was open. In the dark the latrine smell seemed to have grown in strength many times over. Mahadeo lit a match. No Sebastian. The hole was too small for Sebastian to have fallen in. He ran back to the road.

‘Mahadeo, choose.’

It was Preacher, smelling of sweat and looking somewhat bedraggled.

‘You see Sebastian?’

‘The stone or the Bible?’

‘The stone, man. The Bible. Anything. You see Sebastian?’

‘Take the stone and kill me one time.’

‘Let me go, man, Preacher. I got one dead on my hands already.’ Then Mahadeo paused. ‘Sebastian choose tonight?’

‘Like Cawfee.’

‘Aha! I did always believe that Cawfee was putting him up to everything. Let me go, man, Preacher, otherwise I going to hit you for true with the stone, you know.’

Mahadeo was released. On his way to Mr Cuffy’s he passed a crowd on Chittaranjan’s terrace, taxi-drivers waiting for instructions about the motorcade tomorrow. They were drinking and getting noisy. Mahadeo looked up and saw the light from Chittaranjan’s drawing-room. He knew he should have been there, discussing the final election plans with Harbans and the rest of the committee. Guiltily he hurried away.

There was no light in Mr Cuffy’s house. Normally at this time Mr Cuffy sat in his small veranda reading the Bible by the light of an oil-lamp, ready to say ‘Good night’ to disciples who greeted him from the road.

Mahadeo passed and repassed the house.

‘Mr Mahadeo.’

It was Lutchman. Mahadeo couldn’t make him out right away because Lutchman wore a hat with the brim most decidedly turned down, as protection against the dew. Lutchman lived in the house with six votes. He was one of the earliest Hindus to report sick to Mahadeo. He had been succoured.

Mahadeo remembered. ‘How the pain in your belly?’

‘A lil bit better, Mr Mahadeo. One of the boys gone and fall sick now.’

‘He fall sick a lil too late. Election is the day after tomorrow.’

Lutchman laughed, but didn’t give up. ‘You waiting for somebody, Mr Mahadeo?’

‘You see Sebastian?’

Lutchman buttoned up his shirt and screwed down his hat more firmly. He held the brim over his ears. ‘He sick too?’

‘You meet anybody these days who ain’t sick?’

‘Is a sort of flu,’ Lutchman said.

There was a coughing and a spluttering behind them.

Mahadeo started, ready to move off.

Lutchman said, ‘Look him there.’

A cigarette glowed in Mr Cuffy’s dark veranda.

Mahadeo whispered, ‘Sebastian, is you?’

There was some more coughing.

‘He smoking,’ Mahadeo said angrily. ‘Picking up all sort of vice in his old age.’

Lutchman said, ‘He can’t be all that sick if he smoking. Is a funny thing, you know, Mr Mahadeo, but I could always tell when I going to fall sick. I does find it hard to smoke. The moment that happen I does say, “Lutchman, boy, it look like you going to fall sick soon.” True, you know, Mr Mahadeo.’

‘Sebastian!’

‘These days I can’t even take a tiny little pull at a cigarette, man.’

Sebastian came into the road and Mahadeo knocked the cigarette from his hand.

Then Sebastian spoke.

‘Dead,’ Sebastian said. ‘Dead as a cockroach.’ He said it with a sort of neutral relish.

Mahadeo was confused by fear and joy.

‘Dead?’ Lutchman uncorked his hat.

Sebastian spoke again. ‘Put back your hat on. You going to catch cold.’

‘As a cockroach?’ Mahadeo said.

‘As a cockroach.’

The three men went into the lightless house. Mahadeo lit a match and they found the oil-lamp on a corner shelf. They lit that. The floorboards were worm-eaten and unreliable, patched here and there with the boards from a Red Cow condensed milk box. The pea-green walls were hung with framed religious pictures and requests to God, in Gothic letters, to look after the house.

Mr Cuffy sat in a morris chair as though he were posing for a photographer who specialized in relaxed attitudes. His head was slightly thrown back, his eyes were open but unstaring, his knees far apart, his right hand in his lap, his left on the arm of the chair.

‘As a cockroach,’ Sebastian said. He lifted the left hand and let it drop.

Lutchman, his hat in his hand, wandered about the tiny drawing-room like a tourist in a church. ‘Old Cawfee Bible, man. Eh! Mr Mahadeo, look. Cawfee in technicolor, man.’ He pointed to a framed photograph of a young Negro boy looking a little lost among a multitude of potted palms and fluted columns. It was a tinted black and white photograph. The palms were all tinted green; the columns were each a different colour; the boy’s suit was brown, the tie red; and the face, untinted, black.