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

The next evening he went to complete the job.

The first three words of his slogans had been covered over with whitewash and Cordoba was marked everywhere, in dripping red letters, DIE! DIE! DIE!

‘That is Lorkhoor work,’ Foam said.

Then Rafiq pointed to a wall. The first three words of the slogan were only partially covered over. Three strokes with a dry brush had been used, and between each stroke there was a gap, and the sign read: —TE — N—DIE!

‘Ten die,’ Rafiq said.

‘Come on, man,’ Foam said. ‘You letting a thing like that frighten you? You is a man now, Rafiq. And whatever you do,’ Foam added, ‘don’t tell Ma, you hear.’

But that was the first thing Rafiq did.

‘Ten die!’ Mrs Baksh clapped her hand to her big bosom and sat on a bench, still holding the ash-rag with which she had been washing up.

Baksh swilled down some tea from a large enamel cup. ‘It don’t mean nothing, man. Somebody just trying to be funny, that’s all.’

‘Oh, God, Baksh, this election sweetness!’

The little Bakshes came into the kitchen.

‘Don’t mean nothing,’ Baksh said. ‘It say ten die. It only have nine of we in this house. The seven children and you and me. Was just a accident, man.’

‘Was no accident,’ Rafiq said.

‘Oh, God, Baksh, see how the sweetness turning sour!’

‘Is only that traitor Lorkhoor playing the fool,’ Foam said. ‘Let him wait. When he start putting up signs for Preacher …’

‘How it could mean anything?’ Baksh laughed. ‘It say ten die and it only have nine of we here.’

Mrs Baksh became cooler. A thought seemed to strike her and she looked down at herself and cried, ‘Oh, God, Baksh, how we know is only nine?’

*

Though he didn’t care for the ‘Ten die!’ sign and for Mrs Baksh’s fears, Foam didn’t go out painting any more slogans. Instead he concentrated on the first meeting of the campaign committee.

He decided not to hold the meeting at Chittaranjan’s house. The place made him too uncomfortable and he still remembered the malicious smile Nelly Chittaranjan had given him when he knocked his sweet drink over. His own house, the London Tailoring Establishment, was out of the question: Mrs Baksh didn’t even want to hear about the election. He decided then to have the meeting in the old wooden bungalow of Dhaniram, the Hindu pundit, who had also been made a member of the committee. At least there would be no complications with Dhaniram’s family. Dhaniram’s wife had been paralysed for more than twenty years. The only other person in the house was a meek young daughter-in-law who had been deserted by Dhaniram’s son only two months after marriage. That was some time ago. Nobody knew where the boy had got to; but Dhaniram always gave out that the boy was in England, studying something.

On the evening of the meeting Foam and Baksh, despite protests from Mrs Baksh, drove over in the loudspeaker van.

From the road Foam could see two men in the veranda. One was Dhaniram, a large man in Hindu priestly dress lying flat on his belly reading a newspaper by an oil lamp. The other man drooped on a bench. This was Mahadeo.

Neither Dhaniram nor Mahadeo was really important. They had been drafted into the committee only to keep them from making mischief. Dhaniram was the best known pundit in Elvira, but he was too fond of gossip and religious disputation, and was looked upon as something of a buffoon. Mahadeo was an out and out fool; everybody in Elvira knew that. But Mahadeo could be useful; he worked on what remained of the Elvira Estate as a sub-overseer, a ‘driver’ (not of vehicles or slaves, but of free labourers), and as a driver he could always put pressure on his labourers.

When Foam and Baksh came into the veranda Dhaniram jumped up and the whole house shook. It was a shaky house and the veranda was particularly shaky. Dhaniram had kept on extending it at one end, so that the veranda opened out into something like a plain; there were gaps in the floor where the uncured, unplaned cedar planks had shrunk.

‘Ah,’ Dhaniram said, rubbing his hands. ‘Campaign manager. Come to discuss the campaign, eh?’

Everything about the election thrilled Dhaniram. Words like campaign, candidate, committee, constituency, legislative council, thrilled him especially. He was a big exuberant man with a big belly that looked unnecessary and almost detachable.

Mahadeo didn’t get up or say anything. He drooped on his bench, a plump little man in tight clothes, his large empty eyes staring at the floor.

There was an explosion of coughing inside the house and a woman’s voice, strained and querulous, asked in Hindi, ‘Who’s there?’

Dhaniram led Foam and Baksh to the small drawing-room and made them look through an open door into a dark bedroom. They saw a woman stretched out on a four-poster. It was Dhaniram’s wife. She was lying on her left side and they couldn’t see her face.

‘Election committee,’ Dhaniram said to the room.

‘Oh.’ She didn’t turn.

Dhaniram led Foam and Baksh back to the veranda and seated them on a bench opposite Mahadeo.

Dhaniram sat down beside Mahadeo and began to shake his legs until the veranda shook. ‘So the goldsmith fix up, eh? Everything?’

Foam didn’t understand.

‘I mean, Chittaranjan see the boy? You know, Harbans son.’

‘Oh, yes, that fix up,’ Baksh said. ‘Chittaranjan went to Port of Spain day before yesterday.’

Dhaniram lit a cigarette and pulled at it in the Brahmin way, drawing the smoke through his closed hand. ‘Chittaranjan really believe Harbans going to let his son marry Nelly?’

Baksh seized this. ‘You hear anything?’

Dhaniram shrugged his shoulders. ‘We want some light. Doolahin, bring the Petromax,’ Dhaniram called.

Baksh noted that though she had been deserted for so long, Dhaniram still called his daughter-in-law doolahin, bride.

‘How Hari?’ Baksh asked. ‘He write yet?’

Hari was Dhaniram’s son.

‘Boy in England, man,’ Dhaniram said. ‘Studying. Can’t study and write letters.’

The doolahin brought the Petromax. She looked a good Hindu girl. She had a small soft face with a wide mouth. About eighteen perhaps; barefooted, as was proper; a veil over her forehead, as was also proper. She hung the Petromax on the hook from the ceiling and went back to the kitchen, a smoky room boarded off at one corner of the vast veranda.

Baksh asked, ‘How she taking it these days? Still crying?’

Dhaniram wasn’t interested. ‘She getting over it now. So Chittaranjan really believe that Nelly going to marry Harbans son?’

Mahadeo sat silent, his head bent, his full eyes staring at his unlaced black boots. Foam wasn’t interested in the conversation. In the light of the Petromax he studied Dhaniram’s veranda walls. There were many Hindu coloured prints; but by far the biggest thing was a large Esso calendar, with Pundit Dhaniram’s religious commitments written in pencil above the dates. It looked as though Dhaniram’s practice was falling off. It didn’t matter; Foam knew that Dhaniram also owned the fifth part of a tractor and Baksh said that was worth at least two hundred dollars a month.

Harbans came, agitated, looking down at the ground, and Foam saw at once that something was wrong.

Dhaniram rose. Mahadeo rose and spoke for the first time: ‘Good night, Mr Harbans.’

Dhaniram took Harbans into the drawing-room and Foam heard Harbans saying, ‘Ooh, ooh, how you is, maharajin? We just come to talk over this election nonsense.’

But he looked dejected like anything when he came out and sat on a blanket on the floor.

Dhaniram shouted, ‘Doolahin, candidate here. We want some tea. What sort of tea you want, eh, Mr Harbans? Chocolate, coffee or green tea?’