V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

The roars grew louder and more frequent.

I could hear Hat shouting, ‘Come on, Big Foot. Beat him up. Beat him up, man.’ Then, with panic in his voice, ‘Remember your father.’

But Hat’s shouts died away.

Big Foot had lost the fight, on points.

Hat paid out about a hundred dollars in five minutes.

He said, ‘I go have to sell the brown and white cow, the one I buy from George.’

Edward said, ‘Is God work.’

Boyee said to me, ‘I go give you your six cents tomorrow.’

I said, ‘Six cents tomorrow} But what you think I is? A millionaire? Look, man, give me money now now, you hear.’

He paid up.

But the crowd was laughing, laughing.

I looked at the ring.

Big Foot was in tears. He was like a boy, and the more he cried, the louder he cried, and the more painful it sounded.

The secret I had held for Big Foot was now shown to everybody.

Hat said, ‘What, he crying?’ And Hat laughed.

He seemed to forget all about the cow. He said, ‘Well, well, look at man, eh!’

And all of us from Miguel Street laughed at Big Foot.

All except me. For I knew how he felt, although he was a big man and I was a boy. wished I had never betted that six cents with Boyee.

The papers next morning said, ‘PUGILIST SOBS IN RING.’

Trinidad thought it was Big Foot, the comedian, doing something funny again.

But we knew otherwise.

Big Foot left Miguel Street, and the last I heard of him was that he was a labourer in a quarry in Laventille.

About six months later a little scandal was rippling through Trinidad, making everybody feel silly.

The R.A.F. champion, it turned out, had never been in the R.A.F., and as a boxer he was completely unknown.

Hat said, ‘Well, what you expect in a place like this?’

A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say ‘Slum!’ because he could see no more. But we who lived there saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else. Man-man was mad; George was stupid; Big Foot was a bully; Hat was an adventurer; Popo was a philosopher; and Morgan was our comedian.

Or that was how we looked upon him. But, looking back now after so many years, I think he deserved a lot more respect than we gave him. It was his own fault, of course. He was one of those men who deliberately set out to clown and wasn’t happy unless people were laughing at him, and he was always thinking of new crazinesses which he hoped would amuse us. He was the sort of man who, having once created a laugh by sticking the match in his mouth and trying to light it with his cigarette, having once done that, does it over and over again.

Hat used to say, ‘Is a damn nuisance, having that man trying to be funny all the time, when all of we well know that he not so happy at all.’

I felt that sometimes Morgan knew his jokes were not coming off, and that made him so miserable that we all felt unkind and nasty.

Morgan was the first artist I ever met in my life. He spent nearly all his time, even when he was playing the fool, thinking about beauty. Morgan made fireworks. He loved fireworks, and he was full of theories about fireworks. Something about the Cosmic Dance or the Dance of Life. But this was the sort of talk that went clean over our heads in Miguel Street. And when Morgan saw this, he would begin using even bigger words. Just for the joke. One of the big words I learnt from Morgan is the title of this sketch.

But very few people in Trinidad used Morgan’s fireworks. All the big fêtes in the island passed-Races, Carnival, Discovery Day, the Indian Centenary — and while the rest of the island was going crazy with rum and music and pretty women by the sea, Morgan was just going crazy with rage.

Morgan used to go to the Savannah and watch the fireworks of his rivals, and hear the cheers of the crowd as the fireworks spattered and spangled the sky. He would come in a great temper and beat all his children. He had ten of them. His wife was too big for him to beat.

Hat would say, ‘We better send for the fire brigade.’

And for the next two or three hours Morgan would prowl in a stupid sort of way around his back yard, letting off fireworks so crazily that we used to hear his wife shouting, ‘Morgan, stop playing the ass. You make ten children and you have a wife, and you can’t afford to go and dead now.’

Morgan would roar like a bull and beat on the galvanized-iron fence.

He would shout, ‘Everybody want to beat me. Everybody.’

Hat said, ‘You know we hearing the real Morgan now.’

These fits of craziness made Morgan a real terror. When the fits were on him, he had the idea that Bhakcu, the mechanical genius who was my uncle, was always ready to beat him, and at about eleven o’clock in the evenings the idea just seemed to explode in his head.

He would beat on the fence and shout, ‘Bhakcu, you fat-belly good-for-nothing son-of-a-bitch, come out and fight like a man.’

Bhakcu would keep on reading the Ramayana in his doleful singing voice, lying flat on his belly on his bed.

Bhakcu was a big man, and Morgan was a very small man, with the smallest hands and the thinnest wrists in Miguel Street.

Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘Morgan, why you don’t shut up and go to sleep?’

Mrs Morgan would reply, ‘Hey, you thin-foot woman! You better leave my husband alone, you hear. Why you don’t look after your own?’

Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘You better mind your mouth. Otherwise I come up and turn your face with one slap, you hear.’

Mrs Bhakcu was four feet high, three feet wide, and three feet deep. Mrs Morgan was a little over six foot tall and built like a weight-lifter.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘Why you don’t get your big-belly husband to go and fix some more motor-car, and stop reading that damn stupid sing-song he always sing-songing?’

By this time Morgan would be on the pavement with us, laughing in a funny sort of way, saying, ‘Hear them women and them!’ He would drink some rum from a hip-flask and say, ‘Just watch and see. You know the calypso?’

“The more they try to do me bad

Is the better I live in Trinidad”

time so next year, I go have the King of England and the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.

And Hat or somebody else would ask, ‘You go make the fireworks for them?’

Morgan would say, ‘Make what} Make nothing. By this time so next year, I go have the King of England the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.’

And, in the meantime, in the back of the yard, Mrs Bhakcu was saying, ‘He have big belly. But what yours have? I don’t know what yours going to sit on next year this time, you hear.’

And next morning Morgan was as straight and sober as ever, talking about his experiments.

This Morgan was more like a bird than a man. It was not only that he was as thin as a match-stick. He had a long neck that could swivel like a bird’s. His eyes were bright and restless. And when he spoke it was in a pecking sort of way, as though he was not throwing out words, but picking up corn. He walked with a quick, tripping step, looking back over his shoulder at somebody following who wasn’t there.

Hat said, ‘You know how he get so? Is his wife, you know. He fraid she too bad. Spanish woman, you know. Full of blood and fire.’

Boyee said, ‘You suppose that is why he want to make fireworks so?’

Hat said, ‘People funny like hell. You never know with them.’

But Morgan used to make a joke of even his appearance, flinging out his arms and feet when he knew people were looking at him.