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

‘Is a big big house you have here, Goldsmith,’ Harbans cooed.

‘Tcha!’ Chittaranjan sucked his teeth. He had three gold teeth and many gold fillings. ‘Biggest house in Elvira, that’s all.’ His voice was as thin as Harbans’s, but there was an edge to it.

Harbans sought another opening. ‘I see you is in your home clothes, Goldsmith. Like you ain’t going out this evening at all.’

Like Foam, Harbans was struck by the difference between the appearance of the house and the appearance of the owner. Chittaranjan’s white shirt was mended and remended; the sleeves had been severely abridged and showed nearly all of Chittaranjan’s stringy arms. The washed-out khaki trousers were not patched, but there was a tear down one leg from knee to ankle that looked as though it had been there a long time. This shabbiness was almost grand. It awed at once.

Chittaranjan, rocking, smiling, didn’t look at his visitors. ‘What it have to go out for?’ he asked at last.

Harbans didn’t know what to say.

Chittaranjan continued to smile. But he wasn’t really smiling; his face was fixed that way, the lips always parted, the gold teeth always flashing.

‘If you ask me,’ Chittaranjan said, having baffled them both into silence, ‘I go tell you it have nothing to go out for.’

‘Depending,’ Foam said.

‘Yes,’ Harbans agreed quickly. ‘Depending, Goldsmith.’

‘Depending on what?’ Chittaranjan’s tone seemed to take its calmness from the evening settling on Elvira.

Harbans was stumped again.

Foam came to the rescue. ‘Depending on who you have to meet and what you going to give and what you going to get.’

Chittaranjan relented. ‘Sit down. The both of all-you. You want some sweet drink?’

Harbans shook his head vigorously.

Chittaranjan ignored this. ‘Let me call the girl.’ For the first time he looked at Harbans. ‘Nelly! Nalini! Bring some sweet drink.’

‘Daughter?’ Harbans asked. As though he didn’t know about Nalini, little Nelly; as though all Elvira didn’t know that Chittaranjan wanted Nelly married to Harbans’s son, that this was the bargain to be settled that afternoon.

‘Yes,’ Chittaranjan said deprecatingly. ‘Daughter. One and only.’

‘Have a son myself,’ Harbans said.

‘Look at that, eh.’

‘Ambitious boy. Going to take up doctoring. Just going on eighteen.’

Foam sat silent, appreciating the finer points of the bargaining. He knew that in normal circumstances Chittaranjan, as the girl’s father, would have pleaded and put himself out to please. But the elections were not normal circumstances and now it was Harbans who had to be careful not to offend.

Nelly Chittaranjan came and placed two wooden Negro waiters next to Harbans and Foam. She was small, like her father; and her long-waisted pink frock brought out every pleasing aspect of her slimness. She placed bottles of coloured liquid on the waiters; then went and got some tumblers.

Chittaranjan became a little more animated. He pointed to the bottles. ‘Choose. The red one or the orange one?’

‘Red for me,’ Foam said briskly.

Harbans couldn’t refuse. ‘Orange,’ he said, but with so much gloom, Chittaranjan said, ‘You could have the red if you want, you know.’

‘Is all right, Goldsmith. Orange go do me.’

Nelly Chittaranjan made a quick face at Foam. She knew him by sight and had had to put up with his daring remarks when she passed him on the road. Foam had often ‘troubled’ her, that is, whistled at her; he had never ‘rushed’ her, made a serious pass at her. She looked a little surprised to see him in her father’s house. Foam, exaggeratedly relaxed, tried to make out he didn’t value the honour at all.

She poured the sweet drinks into the tumblers.

Harbans looked carefully at the wooden waiter next to his chair. But in fact he was looking at Nelly Chittaranjan; doing so discreetly, yet in a way to let Chittaranjan know he was looking at her.

Chittaranjan rocked and clacked his sabots on the floor.

‘Anything else, Pa?’

Chittaranjan looked at Harbans. Harbans shook his head.

‘Nothing else, Nelly.’

She went inside, past the curtains into the big blue drawing-room where on one wall Harbans saw a large framed picture of the Round Table Conference with King George V and Mahatma Gandhi sitting together, the King formally dressed and smiling, the Mahatma in a loincloth, also smiling. The picture made Harbans easier. He himself had a picture like that in his drawing-room in Port of Spain.

Then Foam had an accident. He knocked the Negro waiter down and spilled his red sweet drink on the floor.

Chittaranjan didn’t look. ‘It could wipe up easy. Tiles, you know.’

Nelly came out, smiled maliciously at Foam and cleaned up the mess.

Chittaranjan stood up. Even in his sabots he looked no more than five feet tall. He went to a corner of the veranda, his sabots clicking and clacking, took up a tall chromium-plated column and set it next to Foam’s chair.

‘Kick it down,’ he said. He looked flushed, as though he was going to break out in sweat.

Harbans said, ‘Ooh.’

‘Come on, Baksh son, kick this down.’

‘Goldsmith!’ Harbans cried.

Foam got up.

‘Foam! What you doing?’

‘No, Mr Harbans. Let him kick it down.’

The column was kicked.

It swayed, then sprang back into an upright position.

‘You can’t kick this down.’ Chittaranjan took the ashtray with the weighted bottom back to its corner, and returned to his rocking-chair. ‘Funny the modern things they making these days, eh? Something my brother in Port of Spain give me.’ Chittaranjan looked at Harbans. ‘Barrister, you know.’

Foam sat down in some confusion.

Harbans said, ‘Your daughter look bright like anything, Goldsmith.’

‘Tcha!’ Chittaranjan didn’t stop rocking. ‘When people hear she talk, they don’t want to believe that she only have sixteen years. Taking typing-lesson and shorthand from Teacher Francis, you know. She could take down prescription and type them out. This doctor son you have …’

‘Oh, he ain’t a doctor yet. ’

‘You shoulda bring him with you, you know. I like children with ambition.’

‘He was learning today. Scholar and student, you see. But you must come and see him. He want to see you.’

‘I want to see him too.’

So it was settled.

Harbans was so relieved that Chittaranjan had made no fresh demands, he took a sip of his orange liquid.

Chittaranjan rocked. ‘You ain’t have to worry about the election. Once I for you’—he made a small dismissing gesture with his right hand—‘you win.’

‘The boy father say he for me too.’

Chittaranjan dismissed Baksh with a suck of gold teeth. ‘Tcha! What he could do?’

Foam’s loyalty was quick. ‘He control a thousand votes.’

Harbans made peace. ‘In these modern days, everybody have to unite. I is a Hindu. You, Goldsmith, is a Hindu. Baksh is Muslim. It matter?’

Chittaranjan only rocked.

Foam said, ‘We got to form a committee.’

Chittaranjan widened his smile.

‘Committee to organize. Meetings, canvassers, posters.’

Harbans tried to laugh away Foam’s speech. ‘Things getting modern these days, Goldsmith.’

Chittaranjan said, ‘I don’t see how committee could bring in more votes than me. If I go to a man in Elvira and I tell him to vote for so-and-so, I want to see him tell me no.’

The cool threatening tone of Chittaranjan’s last sentence took Harbans aback. He didn’t expect it from such a small man.

‘What about that traitor Lorkhoor?’ he asked.