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

The cameraman chewed, nodded to his driver and the van moved off.

‘Everybody want bribe these days,’ Chittaranjan said.

He sent Foam off in the loudspeaker van to look for the rest of the motorcade. Foam came upon them parked not far off in a side road near Piarco Airport. The food van had been plundered; the liquor van was being noisily besieged. Harichand was there, Lutchman, Sebastian, Haq, and Rampiari’s husband, moving about easily on a bandaged foot.

Foam broke the party up. All went smoothly after that.

*

Baksh made one last attempt to cause trouble.

It happened after the motorcade, early in the evening, when Harbans was sitting in Chittaranjan’s drawing-room, signing voucher after petrol voucher. He was giving each car six gallons for polling day. Baksh said it wasn’t enough.

Harbans said, ‘Ooh. When that finish, Baksh, come back to me and I go give you another voucher.’

Baksh snorted. ‘Ha! Is so you want to fight elections? You mean, when my gas finish, I must put down whatever I doing? Put it down and come running about looking for you? Look for you, for you to give me another voucher? Another voucher for me to go and get more gas? Get gas to go back and take up whatever it was I was doing before I put it down to come running about looking for you …’ He completed the argument again.

The taxi-drivers were drunk and not paying too much attention, and nothing would have come of Baksh’s protests but for a small accident.

Chittaranjan had, at his own expense, got his workmen to make heart-shaped buttons for Harbans’s agents and taxi-drivers to wear on polling day. Shortly after the motorcade Foam came downstairs to distribute the buttons. They were in a shoebox. A taxi-driver at the bottom of the steps tried to grab a handful. The man was drunk and his action was high-spirited, nothing more. But Foam turned nasty; he was thoroughly tired out by all the festivities, first Mr Cuffy’s wake, then the motorcade.

He said, ‘Take your thiefing hand away!’ That was bad enough, but as Foam spoke his temper rose, and he added, ‘I going to make you wait till last for your button.’

When he finally offered, the man declined. ‘I don’t want none.’

‘Come on. Ain’t you was grabbing just now? Take the button.’

‘Not going to take no damn button. All you people running about behaving like some damn civil servant, pushing away people hand as if people hand dirty.’ He raised his voice: ‘My hand ain’t dirty, you hear. You hearing me good? I is a taxi-driver, but I does bathe every day, you hear. My hand ain’t dirty, you hear.’

A crowd began to gather.

Foam said, ‘Take your button, man.’

The other taxi-drivers were already sporting theirs.

Foam tried to pin the button on the driver’s shirt.

The driver pushed him away and Foam almost fell.

The taxi-driver addressed his audience: ‘They want to use people car, but they don’t want to give people no button. I ask for one little button and the man push away my hand and practically threaten to beat me up. Giving button to everybody. Everybody. And when he come to me, passing me. I is a dog? My name is Rex? I does go bow-wow-wow? Well, I is not a dog, and my name ain’t Rex, and I ain’t taking no damn button.’

Foam’s tactics were wrong. He tried to be reasonable. He said, ‘I threaten to beat you up? Or you mean that you try to grab the whole shoebox of button?’

The driver laughed. He turned his back on Foam and walked away, the taxi-drivers making a path for him; then he turned and walked back to Foam and the ring of taxi-drivers closed again. ‘Is so all you people does get on. So much money all-you spend for this election and now, on the second to-last night, all-you start offending people and start getting insultive and pussonal.’

Foam continued to be reasonable. ‘I was insultive?’

But nobody was listening.

Another taxi-driver was saying, ‘And today, when they was sharing out food, I ain’t even get a little smell. When I go and ask, they tell me it finish. When I go and ask for a little shot of grog, they drive me away. Harbans spending a lot of money, but is the people that helping him out who going to be responsible if he lose the election. I mean, man, no food, no grog. Things like that don’t sound nice when you say it outside.’

And then came this talk about petrol.

‘Six gallons ain’t enough,’ Baksh said.

Somebody else said, ‘You know how much they giving taxi-drivers in Port of Spain? Thirty dollars a day. And then in addition too besides, they fulling up your tank for you, you hear. And it have good good roads in Port of Spain that not going to lick up your car.’

That at once made matters worse.

Chittaranjan, Mahadeo and Harbans were upstairs, besieged by more taxi-drivers. Harbans was filling in petrol vouchers as Chittaranjan called out the amount, the number of the taxi, the name of the driver. They were not using the cedar dining-table; it was too good for that; Chittaranjan had brought out the large kitchen table, spread it over with newspapers and jammed it, like a counter, in the doorway between the drawing-room and the veranda. The drivers pressed around the table, waiting for Harbans to fill in and sign their vouchers. Mahadeo was trying to keep some order among the drivers, fruitlessly. They shouted, they cursed, laughed, complained; their shoes grated and screeched on the tiled floor. Harbans filled in and signed, filled in and signed, in a daze, not looking up.

Through all the press Chittaranjan sensed that something was wrong downstairs, and he sent Mahadeo to see what was happening. Mahadeo came back with the news that unless the men were given at least ten gallons of petrol they were going to go on strike the next day.

The taxi-drivers around the table took up the cry.

‘Ten gallons, man. I got a big American car. No English matchbox. I does only do fifteen miles to the gallon. Six gallons is like nothing to my car, man.’

‘In Port of Spain they fulling up your tank for you.’

‘Let Harbans watch out. He think he only saving two gallons of gas. If he ain’t careful he saving hisself the trouble of going up to Port of Spain every Friday afternoon to sit down in that Legislative Council.’

Not even Chittaranjan’s authority could quell the unrest.

‘Mahadeo,’ Chittaranjan called. ‘Go down and tell them that they going to get their ten gallons. Those that get six tell them to come up for another voucher.’

Harbans didn’t stop to think.

Chittaranjan just whispered to him, ‘Ten gallons. Driver name Rapooch. He taxi number is HT 3217.’

And Harbans wrote, and wrote. If he stopped to think he felt he would break down and cry. His wrinkled hand perspired and shook; it had never done so much writing at one time.

Mahadeo went downstairs and spread the healing word.

*

Elvira was stirring before dawn. A fine low mist lay over the hills, promising a hot, thundery day. As the darkness waned the mist lifted, copying the contours of the land, and thinned, layer by layer. Every tree was distinct. Soon the sun would be out, the mist would go, the trees would become an opaque green tangle, and polling would begin.

Polling was to begin at seven; but the fun began before that. The Elvira Estate had given its workers the day off; so had the Public Works Department. Chittaranjan gave his two workmen the day off and put on a clean shirt. Baksh gave himself the day off. He rose early and went straight off to start celebrating with Rampiari’s husband and the others. As soon as he was up Foam went over to Chittaranjan’s. Harbans was there already. Harbans had wanted to spend the night in Elvira, but Chittaranjan had advised him not to, considering the irreverent mood of the taxi-drivers.