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

Jordan was waiting for them, reclined on a couch in his front room, a plump sleepy-faced young Negro with a pile of stiff kinky hair. He wore pyjamas that looked suspiciously new. Chittaranjan was surprised. Nobody in Elvira wore pyjamas.

‘Jordan,’ Harbans called. ‘You sick?’

‘Yes, man,’ Jordan said. ‘Stroke. Hit me all down here.’ He ran his hand along his left side.

‘The man break up bad,’ Rampiari’s husband said. ‘He can’t do no more work for a long time to come.’

‘It come sudden sudden,’ Jordan said. ‘I was drinking a cup of water and it come. Bam! just like that.’

An old woman, a young woman and a boy came into the room.

‘Mother, wife, brother,’ Baksh explained.

‘Jordan supporting all of them,’ Harichand said.

Chittaranjan regarded Jordan and Jordan’s family with contempt. He said, ‘Give him ten dollars and let we go.’

‘Ten!’ Jordan exclaimed acidly. ‘Fifty.’

‘Fifty at least,’ Baksh said.

‘At least,’ said Rampiari’s husband.

‘Is not something just for Jordan,’ Baksh said. ‘You could say is a sort of thank-you present for everybody in Elvira.’

‘Exactly,’ Harichand said. ‘Can’t just come to a place and collect people good good vote and walk away. Don’t look nice. Don’t sound nice.’

Harbans said, ‘This election making me a pauper. They should pass some sort of law to prevent candidates spending too much money.’ But he pulled out his wallet.

Jordan said, ‘God go bless you, boss.’

Harbans took two twenty-dollar notes and one ten-dollar note, crackled them separately and handed them to Jordan.

Without warning Tiger sprang on the couch, trampled over Jordan’s new pyjamas, put his front paws on the window-sill and barked.

Almost immediately there was a loud explosion from the main road. Seconds later there were more explosions.

The crowd in the trace shouted, ‘Fire!’

Jordan’s stroke was forgotten. Everybody scrambled outside, committee, mother, wife, brother. Jordan himself forgot about his stroke and knelt on his couch to look out of the window. In the direction of the main road the sky was bright; the glare teased out houses and trees from the darkness.

Somebody cried, ‘Mr Harbans! Goldsmith!’

But Harbans was already in the trace and running, awkwardly, like a woman in a tight skirt.

He found the crowd standing in a wide silent circle around the burning Jaguar. It was a safe spectacle now; the petrol tanks had blown up. The firelight reddened unsmiling, almost contemplative, faces.

Harbans stopped too, to watch the car burn. The fire had done its work swiftly and well, thank to the Jaguar’s reserve petrol tank, which Harbans liked to keep full. That was little smoke now; the flames burned pure. Behind the heat waves faces were distorted.

The people from the trace ran up in joyful agitation, flowed around the car, settled, and became silent. Harbans was wedged among them.

Foam acted with firmness.

He beat his way through to Harbans.

‘Mr Harbans, come.’

Harbans followed without thinking. They got into the loudspeaker van. It wasn’t until Foam drove off that the people of Elvira turned to look. They didn’t cheer or boo or do anything. Only Tiger, missing Foam, ran barking after the van.

‘Is okay now, Mr Harbans,’ Foam said. ‘If you did stay you woulda want to start asking questions. If you did start asking questions you woulda only cause more trouble.’

‘Elvira, Elvira.’ Harbans shook his head and spoke to the back of his hands, covered almost up to the knuckles by the sleeves of his big grey coat. ‘Elvira, you is a bitch.’

And he came to Elvira no more.

The Jaguar was less than a week old. The insurance company bought him a new one.

*

It made Lorkhoor’s reputation. He was living with the doolahin in a dingy furnished room in Henry Street in Port of Spain. He had already applied, without success, for jobs on the Trinidad Guardian and the Port of Spain Gazette when, on Saturday, the news of the burning Jaguar broke. Lorkhoor took a taxi down to Harichand’s printery in Couva and got the facts from Harichand. That, and his own inside knowledge, gave him material for a splendid follow-up story which he submitted to the Trinidad Sentinel. It appeared in the Sunday issue. Lorkhoor wrote the headline himself: ‘A Case of Whisky, the New Jaguar and the Suffrage of Elvira’. He had fallen under the influence of William Saroyan.

On Monday Lorkhoor was on the staff of the Sentinel. He began to contribute a regular Sunday piece for the Sentinel ‘s magazine section, Lorkhoor’s Log.

Foam had his wish. He got Lorkhoor’s old job, announcing for the cinemas in Caroni. In addition, he had earned two hundred and twenty-five dollars as Harbans’s campaign manager; and he had been able to snub Teacher Francis.

Teacher Francis deteriorated rapidly. In the Christmas holidays he married into one of the best coloured families in Port of Spain, the Smiths. He renounced all intellectual aspirations, won the approval of the Education Department and an appointment as Schools Inspector.

And Ramlogan. He had won his largest rum-account. He could buy that refrigerator now. Now, too, he could pick his own flowers and eat his own breadfruit and zaboca.

And Dhaniram. He had some luck. His brother-in-law died in September, and his sister came to live with him.

And Tiger. He had won a reprieve. He was to live long and querulously.

And Chittaranjan. But he had lost. He sent many messages to Harbans but got no reply. At last he went to see Harbans in Port of Spain; but Harbans kept him waiting so long in the veranda and greeted him so coldly, he couldn’t bring himself to ask about the marriage. It was Harbans who brought the point up. Harbans said, ‘Chittaranjan, the Hindus in Trinidad going downhill fast. I say, let those who want to go, go quick. If only one hundred good Hindu families remain, well, all right. But we can’t let our children marry people who does run about late at night with Muslim boys.’ Chittaranjan accepted the justice of the argument. And that was that.

But if Chittaranjan had lost, Nelly had won. In September of that year she went to London and joined the Regent Street Polytechnic. She went to all the dances and enjoyed them. She sent home presents that Christmas, an umbrella for her father, and a set of four china birds for her mother. The birds flew on the wall next to the picture of Mahatma Gandhi and King George V. The umbrella became part of Chittaranjan’s visiting outfit.

*

So, Harbans won the election and the insurance company lost a Jaguar. Chittaranjan lost a son-in-law and Dhaniram lost a daughter-in-law. Elvira lost Lorkhoor and Lorkhoor won a reputation. Elvira lost Mr Cuffy. And Preacher lost his deposit.

IT WAS THURSDAY, Miss Millington’s afternoon off, and Mr Stone had to let himself in. Before he could switch on the hall light, the depthless green eyes held him, and in an instant the creature, eyes alone, leapt down the steps. Mr Stone cowered against the dusty wall and shielded his head with his briefcase. The cat brushed against his legs and was out through the still open door. Mr Stone stood where he was, the latchkey in one ungloved hand, and waited for the beating of his heart, the radiation of fine pain through his body, to subside.

The cat belonged to the family next door, people who had moved into the street just five years before and were still viewed by Mr Stone with suspicion. It had come to the house as a kitten, a pet for the children; and as soon as, ceasing to chase paper and ping-pong balls and balls of string, it began to dig up Mr Stone’s garden, its owners having no garden worth digging up, Mr Stone had transferred his hostility from the family to their cat. When he returned from the office he examined his flowerbeds — strips of earth between irregular areas of crazy paving — for signs of the animal’s obscene scuttlings and dredgings and buryings. ‘Miss Millington! Miss Millington!’ he would call. ‘The cat pepper!’ And heavy old Miss Millington, aproned down to her ankles, would shuffle out with a large tin of pepper dust (originally small tins had been thought sufficient: the picture of the terrified cat on the label looked so convincing) and would ritually sprinkle all the flowerbeds, the affected one more than the others, as though to obscure rather than prevent the animal’s activities. In time the flowerbeds had become discoloured; it was as if cement had been mixed with the earth and dusted on to the leaves and stems of plants.