V. Naipaul - Collected Short Fiction

My mother used to say to me, ‘Why you don’t take after Elias? I really don’t know what sort of son God give me, you hear.’

And whenever Hat or Edward beat Boyee and Errol, they always said, ‘Why you beating we for? Not everybody could be like Elias, you know.’

Hat used to say, ‘And it ain’t only that he got brains. The boy Elias have nice ways too.’

So I think I was a little glad when Elias sat the examination for the third time, and failed.

Hat said, ‘You see how we catch these Englishmen and them. Nobody here can tell me that the boy didn’t pass the exam, but you think they go want to give him a better grade? Ha!’

And everybody said, ‘Is a real shame.’

And when Hat asked Elias, ‘What you going to do now, boy?’ Elias said, ‘You know, I think I go take up a job. I think I go be a sanitary inspector.’

We saw him in khaki uniform and khaki topee, going from house to house with a little notebook.

‘Yes,’ Elias said. ‘Sanitary inspector, that’s what I going to be.’

Hat said, ‘It have a lot of money in that, I think. I hear your father George uses to pay the sanitary inspector five dollars a month to keep his mouth shut. Let we say you get about ten or even eight people like that. That’s — let me see … ten fives is fifty, eight fives is forty. There, fifty, forty dollars straight. And mark you, that ain’t counting your salary.’

Elias said, ‘Is not the money I thinking about. I really like the work.’

It was easy to understand that.

Elias said, ‘But it have a exam, you know.’

Hat said, ‘But they don’t send the papers to England for that?’

Elias said, ‘Nah, but still, I fraid exams and things, you know. I ain’t have any luck with them.’

Boyee said, ‘But I thought you was thinking of taking up doctoring.’

Hat said, ‘Boyee, I going to cut your little tail if you don’t shut up.’

But Boyee didn’t mean anything bad.

Elias said, ‘I change my mind. I think I want to be a sanitary inspector. I really like the work.’

For three years Elias sat the sanitary inspectors’ examination, and he failed every time.

Elias began saying, ‘But what the hell you expect in Trinidad? You got to bribe everybody if you want to get your toenail cut.’

Hat said, ‘I meet a man from a boat the other day, and he tell me that the sanitary inspector exams in British Guiana much easier. You could go to B.G. and take the exams there and come back and work here.’

Elias flew to B.G., wrote the exam, failed it, and flew back.

Hat said, ‘I meet a man from Barbados. He tell me that the exams easier in Barbados. It easy, easy, he say.’

Elias flew to Barbados, wrote the exam, failed it, and flew back.

Hat said, ‘I meet a man from Grenada the other day—’

Elias said, ‘Shut your arse up, before it have trouble between we in this street.’

A few years later I sat the Cambridge Senior School Certificate Examination myself, and Mr Cambridge gave me a second grade. I applied for a job in the Customs, and it didn’t cost me much to get it. I got a khaki uniform with brass buttons, and a cap. Very much like the sanitary inspector’s uniform.

Elias wanted to beat me up the first day I wore the uniform.

‘What your mother do to get you that?’ he shouted, and I was going for him when Eddoes put a stop to it.

Eddoes said, ‘He just sad and jealous. He don’t mean anything.’

For Elias had become one of the street aristocrats. He was driving the scavenging carts.

‘No theory here,’ Elias used to say. ‘This is the practical. I really like the work.’

EVERYBODY IN MIGUEL STREET said that Man-man was mad, and so they left him alone. But I am not so sure now that he was mad, and I can think of many people much madder than Man-man ever was.

He didn’t look mad. He was a man of medium height, thin; and he wasn’t bad-looking, either. He never stared at you the way I expected a mad man to do; and when you spoke to him you were sure of getting a very reasonable reply.

But he did have some curious habits.

He went up for every election, city council or legislative council, and then he stuck posters everywhere in the district. These posters were well printed. They just had the word ‘Vote’ and below that, Man-man’s picture.

At every election he got exactly three votes. That I couldn’t understand. Man-man voted for himself, but who were the other two?

I asked Hat.

Hat said, ‘I really can’t say, boy. Is a real mystery. Perhaps is two jokers. But they is funny sort of jokers if they do the same thing so many times. They must be mad just like he.’

And for a long time the thought of these two mad men who voted for Man-man haunted me. Every time I saw someone doing anything just a little bit odd, I wondered, ‘Is he who vote for Man-man?’

At large in the city were these two men of mystery.

Man-man never worked. But he was never idle. He was hypnotized by the word, particularly the written word, and he would spend a whole day writing a single word.

One day I met Man-man at the corner of Miguel Street.

‘Boy, where you going?’ Man-man asked.

‘I going to school,’ I said.

And Man-man, looking at me solemnly, said in a mocking way, ‘So you goes to school, eh?’

I said automatically, ‘Yes, I goes to school.’ And I found that without intending it I had imitated Man-man’s correct and very English accent.

That again was another mystery about Man-man. His accent. If you shut your eyes while he spoke, you would believe an Englishman — a good-class Englishman who wasn’t particular about grammar — was talking to you.

Man-man said, as though speaking to himself, ‘So the little man is going to school.’

Then he forgot me, and took out a long stick of chalk from his pocket and began writing on the pavement. He drew a very big s in outline and then filled it in, and then the c and the H and the o. But then he started making several o’s, each smaller than the last, until he was writing in cursive, o after flowing o.

When I came home for lunch, he had got to French Street, and he was still writing o’s, rubbing off mistakes with a rag.

In the afternoon he had gone round the block and was practically back in Miguel Street.

I went home, changed from my school-clothes into my home-clothes and went out to the street.

He was now halfway up Miguel Street.

He said, ‘So the little man gone to school today?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

He stood up and straightened his back.

Then he squatted again and drew the outline of a massive L and filled that in slowly and lovingly.

When it was finished, he stood up and said, ‘You finish your work. I finish mine.’

Or it was like this. If you told Man-man you were going to the cricket, he would write CRICK and then concentrate on the E’s until he saw you again.

One day Man-man went to the big café at the top of Miguel Street and began barking and growling at the customers on the stools as though he were a dog. The owner, a big Portuguese man with hairy hands, said, ‘Man-man, get out of this shop before I tangle with you.’

Man-man just laughed.

They threw Man-man out.

Next day, the owner found that someone had entered his café during the night and had left all the doors open. But nothing was missing.

Hat said, ‘One thing you must never do is trouble Man-man. He remember everything.’

That night the café was entered again and the doors again left open.

The following night the café was entered and this time little blobs of excrement were left on the centre of every stool and on top of every table and at regular intervals along the counter.