V. Naipaul - Collected Short Fiction

And, in truth, he had a nasty skin. It was yellow and pink and white, with brown and black spots. The skin above his left eye had the raw pink look of scalded flesh.

But the strange thing I noticed was that if you just looked at Toni’s hands and saw how thin and wrinkled they were, you felt sorry for him, not disgusted.

But I looked at his hands only when I was with Hat and the rest.

I suppose Mrs Hereira saw only his hands.

Hat said, ‘I wonder how long this thing go last.’

Mrs Hereira obviously intended it to last a long time.

She and my mother became good friends after all, and I used to hear Mrs Hereira talking about her plans. She said one day she wanted some furniture, and I think she did get some in.

But most of the time she talked about Toni; and from the way she talked, anybody would believe that Toni was just an ordinary man.

She said, ‘Toni is thinking about leaving Trinidad. We could start a hotel in Barbados.’

Or, ‘As soon as Toni gets well again, we will go for a long cruise.’

And again, ‘Toni is really a disciplined man, you know. Great will-power, really. We’ll be all right when he gets his strength back.’

Toni still behaved as though he didn’t know about all these plans for himself. He refused to settle down. He got wilder and more unpleasant.

Hat said, ‘He behaving like some of those uncultured people from John John. Like he forget that latrines make for some purpose.’

And that wasn’t all. He appeared to develop an extraordinary dislike for the human race. One look at a perfect stranger was enough to start Toni cursing.

Hat said, ‘We have to do something about Toni.’

I was there the evening they beat him up.

For a long time afterwards the beating-up was on Hat’s mind.

It was a terrible thing, really. Hat and the rest of them were not angry. And Toni himself wasn’t angry. He wasn’t anything. He made no effort to return the blows. And the blows he got made no impression on him. He didn’t look frightened. He didn’t cry. He didn’t plead. He just stood up and took it.

He wasn’t being brave.

Hat said, ‘He just too damn drunk.’

In the end Hat was angry with himself. He said, ‘Is taking advantage. We shouldnta do it. The man ain’t have feelings, that’s all.’

And from the way Mrs Hereira talked, it was clear that she didn’t know what had happened.

Hat said, ‘That’s a relief, anyway.’

And through all these weeks, one question was always uppermost in our minds. How did a woman like Mrs Hereira get mixed up with Toni?

Hat said he knew. But he wanted to know who Mrs Hereira was, and so did we all. Even my mother wondered aloud about this.

Boyee had an idea.

He said, ‘Hat, you know the advertisements people does put out when their wife or their husband leave them?’

Hat said, ‘Boyee, you know you getting too damn big too damn fast. How the hell a little boy like you know about a thing like that?’

Boyee took this as a compliment.

Hat said, ‘How you know anyway that Mrs Hereira leave she husband? How you know that she ain’t married to Toni?’

Boyee said, ‘I telling you, Hat. I used to see that woman up Mucurapo way when I was delivering milk. I telling you so, man.’

Hat said, ‘White people don’t do that sort of thing, putting advertisement in the paper and thing like that.’

Eddoes said, ‘You ain’t know what you talking about, Hat. How much white people you know?’

In the end Hat promised to read the paper more carefully.

Then big trouble started.

Mrs Hereira ran out of her house screaming one day, ‘He’s going mad! He’s going mad, I tell you. He will kill me this time sure.’

She told my mother, ‘He grabbed a knife and began chasing me. He was saying, “I will kill you, I will kill you.” Talking in a very quiet way.’

‘You do him something?’ my mother asked.

Mrs Hereira shook her head.

She said, ‘It is the first time he threatened to kill me. And he was serious, I tell you.’

Up till then Mrs Hereira hadn’t been crying, but now she broke down and cried like a girl.

She was saying, ‘Toni has forgotten all I did for him. He has forgotten how I took care of him when he was sick. Tell me, you think that’s right? I did everything for him. Everything. I gave up everything. Money and family. All for him. Tell me, is it right for him to treat me like this? Oh, God! What did I do to deserve all this?’

And so she wept and talked and wept.

We left her to herself for some time.

Then my mother said, ‘Toni look like the sort of man who could kill easy, easy, without feeling that he really murdering. You want to sleep here tonight? You could sleep on the boy bed. He could sleep on the floor.’

Mrs Hereira wasn’t listening.

My mother shook her and repeated her offer.

Mrs Hereira said, ‘I am all right now, really. I will go back and talk to Toni. I think I did something to offend him. I must go back and find out what it is.’

‘Well, I really give up,’ my mother said. ‘I think you taking this love business a little too far, you hear.’

So Mrs Hereira went back to her house. My mother and I waited for a long time, waiting for a scream.

But we heard nothing.

And the next morning Mrs Hereira was composed and refined as ever.

But day by day you could see her losing her freshness and saddening her beauty. Her face was getting lined. Her eyes were red and swollen, and the dark patches under them were ugly to look at.

Hat jumped up and said, ‘I know it! I know it! I know it a long time now.’

He showed us the Personal column in the classified advertisements. Seven people had decided to leave their spouses. We followed Hat’s finger and read:

I, Henry Hubert Christiani, declare that my wife, Angela Mary Christiani, is no longer under my care and protection, and I am not responsible for any debt or debts contracted by her .

Boyee said, ‘Is the selfsame woman.’

Eddoes said, ‘Yes, Christiani. Doctor fellow. Know him good good. Used to pick up rubbish for him.’

Hat said, ‘Now I ask you, why, why a woman want to leave a man like that for this Toni?’

Eddoes said, ‘Yes, know Christiani good good. Good house, nice car. Full of money, you know. It have a long time now I see him. Know him from the days when I used to work Mucurapo way.’

And in about half an hour the news had spread through Miguel Street.

My mother said to Mrs Hereira, ‘You better call the police.’

Mrs Hereira said, ‘No, no. Not the police.’

My mother said, ‘Like you fraid police more than you fraid Toni.’

Mrs Hereira said, ‘The scandal—’

‘Scandal hell!’ my mother said. ‘Your life in trouble and you thinking about scandal. Like if this man ain’t disgrace you enough already.’

My mother said, ‘Why you don’t go back to your husband?’

She said it as though she expected Mrs Hereira to jump up in surprise.

But Mrs Hereira remained very calm.

She said, ‘I don’t feel anything about him. And I just can’t stand that clean doctor’s smell he has. It chokes me.’

I understood her perfectly, and tried to get my mother’s eye.

Toni was growing really wild.

He used to sit on his front steps with a half bottle of rum in his hand. The dog was with him.

He appeared to have lost touch with the world completely. He seemed to be without feeling. It was hard enough to imagine Mrs Hereira, or Mrs Christiani, in love with him. But it was impossible to imagine him being in love with anybody.

I thought he was like an animal, like his dog.

One morning Mrs Hereira came over and said, very calmly, ‘I have decided to leave Toni.’