V. Naipaul - Collected Short Fiction

Morgan then rose and said, ‘These sentences will be carried out this afternoon.’

He smiled all round and left the room.

The joke misfired completely.

Hat said, ‘Nah, nah, man, you can’t make fun of your own self and your own children that way, and invite all the street to see. Nah, it ain’t right.’

I felt the joke was somehow terrible and frightening.

And when Morgan came out on the pavement that evening, his face fixed in a smile, he got none of the laughter he had expected. Nobody ran up to him and clapped him on the back, saying, ‘But this man Morgan really mad, you hear. You hear how he beating his children these days …?’ No one said anything like that. No one said anything to him.

It was easy to see he was shattered.

Morgan got really drunk that night and challenged everybody to fight. He even challenged me.

Mrs Morgan had padlocked the front gate, so Morgan could only run about in his yard. He was as mad as a mad bull, bellowing and butting at the fence. He kept saying over and over again, ‘You people think I not a man, eh? My father had eight children. I is his son. I have ten. I better than all of you put together.’

Hat said, ‘He soon go start crying and then he go sleep.’

But I spent a lot of time that night before going to sleep thinking about Morgan, feeling sorry for him because of that little devil he had inside him. For that was what I thought was wrong with him. I fancied that inside him was a red, grinning devil pricking Morgan with his fork.

Mrs Morgan and the children went to the country.

Morgan no longer came out to the pavement, seeking our company. He was busy with his experiments. There were a series of minor explosions and lots of smoke.

Apart from that, peace reigned in our end of Miguel Street.

I wondered what Morgan was doing and thinking in all that solitude.

The following Sunday it rained heavily, and everyone was forced to go to bed early. The street was wet and glistening, and by eleven there was no noise save for the patter of the rain on the corrugated-iron roofs.

A short, sharp shout cracked through the street and got us up.

I could hear windows being flung open, and I heard people saying, ‘What happen? What happen?’

‘Is Morgan. Is Morgan. Something happening by Morgan.’

I was already out in the street and in front of Morgan’s house. I never slept in pyjamas. I wasn’t in that class.

The first thing I saw in the darkness of Morgan’s yard was the figure of a woman hurrying away from the house to the back gate that opened on to the sewage trace between Miguel Street and Alfonso Street.

It was drizzling now, not very hard, and in no time at all quite a crowd had joined me.

It was all a bit mysterious — the shout, the woman disappearing, the dark house.

Then we heard Mrs Morgan shouting, ‘Teresa Blake, Teresa Blake, what you doing with my man?’ It was a cry of great pain.

Mrs Bhakcu was at my side. ‘I always know about this Teresa, but I keep my mouth shut.’

Bhakcu said, ‘Yes, you know everything, like your mother.’

A light came on in the house.

Then it went off again.

We heard Mrs Morgan saying, ‘Why you fraid the light so for? Ain’t you is man? Put the light on, let we see the great big man you is.’

The light went on; then off again.

We heard Morgan’s voice, but it was so low we couldn’t make out what he was saying.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘Yes, hero.’ And the light came on again.

We heard Morgan mumbling again.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘No, hero.’

The light went off; then it went on.

Mrs Morgan was saying, ‘Leave the light on. Come, let we show the big big hero to the people in the street. Come, let we show them what man really make like. You is not a anti-man, you is real man. You ain’t only make ten children with me, you going to make more with somebody else.’

We heard Morgan’s voice, a fluting unhappy thing.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘But what you fraid now for? Ain’t you is the funny man? The clown? Come, let them see see the clown and the big man you is. Let them see what man really make like.’

Morgan was wailing by this time, and trying to talk.

Mrs Morgan was saying, ‘If you try to put that light off, I break up your little thin tail like a match-stick here, you hear.’

Then the front door was flung open, and we saw.

Mrs Morgan was holding up Morgan by his waist. He was practically naked, and he looked so thin, he was like a boy with an old man’s face. He wasn’t looking at us, but at Mrs Morgan’s face, and he was squirming in her grasp, trying to get away. But Mrs Morgan was a strong woman.

Mrs Morgan was looking not at us, but at the man in her arm.

She was saying, ‘But this is the big man I have, eh? So this is the man I married and slaving all my life for?’ And then she began laughing in a croaking, nasty way.

She looked at us for a moment and said, ‘Well, laugh now. He don’t mind. He always want people to laugh at him.’

And the sight was so comic, the thin man held up so easily by the fat woman, that we did laugh. It was the sort of laugh that begins gently and then builds up into a bellowing belly laugh.

For the first time since he came to Miguel Street, Morgan was really being laughed at by the people.

And it broke him completely.

All the next day we waited for him to come out to the pavement, to congratulate him with our laughter. But we didn’t see him.

Hat said, ‘When I was little, my mother used to tell me, “Boy, you laughing all day. I bet you you go cry tonight.” ’

That night my sleep was again disturbed. By shouts and sirens.

I looked through the window and saw a red sky and red smoke.

Morgan’s house was on fire.

And what a fire! Photographers from the papers were climbing up into other people’s houses to get their pictures, and people were looking at them and not at the fire. Next morning there was a first-class picture with me part of the crowd in the top right-hand corner.

But what a fire it was! It was the most beautiful fire in Port of Spain since 1933 when the Treasury (of all places) burnt down, and the calypsonian sang:

It was a glorious and a beautiful scenery

Was the burning of the Treasury .

What really made the fire beautiful was Morgan’s fireworks going off. Then for the first time everybody saw the astonishing splendour of Morgan’s fireworks. People who used to scoff at Morgan felt a little silly. I have travelled in many countries since, but I have seen nothing to beat the fireworks show in Morgan’s house that night.

But Morgan made no more fireworks.

Hat said, ‘When I was a little boy, my mother used to say, “If a man want something, and he want it really bad, he does get it, but when he get it he don’t like it.” ’

Both of Morgan’s ambitions were fulfilled. People laughed at him, and they still do. And he made the most beautiful fireworks in the world. But as Hat said, when a man gets something he wants badly, he doesn’t like it.

As we expected, the thing came out in court. Morgan was charged with arson. The newspaper people had a lot of fun with Morgan, within the libel laws. One headline I remember: PYROTECHNIST ALLEGED PYROMANIAC.

But I was glad, though, that Morgan got off.

They said Morgan went to Venezuela. They said he went mad. They said he became a jockey in Colombia. They said all sorts of things, but the people of Miguel Street were always romancers.

THIS MAN WAS born to be an active and important member of a local road board in the country. An unkind fate had placed him in the city. He was a natural guide, philosopher and friend to anyone who stopped to listen.