V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

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 wich 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.

Titus Hoyt was the first man I met when I came to Port of Spain, a year or two before the war.

My mother had fetched me from Chaguanas after my father died. We travelled up by train and took a bus to Miguel Street. It was the first time I had travelled in a city bus.

I said to my mother, ‘Ma, look, they forget to ring the bell here.’

My mother said, ‘If you ring the bell you damn well going to get off and walk home by yourself, you hear.’

And then a little later I said, ‘Ma, look, the sea.’

People in the bus began to laugh.

My mother was really furious.

Early next morning my mother said, ‘Look now, I giving you four cents. Go to the shop on the corner of this road, Miguel Street, and buy two hops bread for a cent apiece, and buy a penny butter. And come back quick.’

I found the shop and I bought the bread and the butter- the red, salty type of butter.

Then I couldn’t find my way back.

I found about six Miguel Streets, but none seemed to have my house. After a long time walking up and down I began to cry. I sat down on the pavement and got my shoes wet in the gutter.

Some little white girls were playing in a yard behind me. I looked at them, still crying. A girl wearing a pink frock came out and said, ‘Why you crying?’

I said, ‘I lost.’

She put her hands on my shoulder and said, ‘Don’t cry. You know where you live? ’

I pulled out a piece of paper from my shirt pocket and showed her. Then a man came up. He was wearing white shorts and a white shirt, and he looked funny.

‘The man said, Why he crying?’ in a gruff, but interested way.

The girl told him.

The man said, ‘I will take him home.’

I asked the girl to come too.

The man said, ‘Yes, you better come to explain to his mother.’

The girl said, ‘All right, Mr Titus Hoyt.’

That was one of the first things about Titus Hoyt that I found interesting. The girl calling him ‘Mr Titus Hoyt.’ Not Titus, or Mr Hoyt, but Mr Titus Hoyt. I later realised that everyone who knew him called him that.

When we got home the girl explained to my mother what had happened, and my mother was ashamed of me.

Then the girl left.

Mr Titus Hoyt looked at me and said, ‘He look like a intelligent little boy.’

My mother said in a sarcastic way, ‘Like his father.’

Titus Hoyt said, ‘Now, young man, if a herring and a half cost a penny and a half, what’s the cost of three herrings?’

Even in the country, in Chaguanas, we had heard about that.

Without waiting, I said, ‘Three pennies.’

Titus Hoyt regarded me with wonder.

He told my mother, ‘This boy bright like anything, ma’am. You must take care of him and send him to a good school and feed him good food so he could study well.’

My mother didn’t say anything.

When Titus Hoyt left, he said, ‘Cheerio!’

That was the second interesting thing about him.

My mother beat me for getting my shoes wet in the gutter but she said she wouldn’t beat me for getting lost.

For the rest of that day I ran about the yard saying, ‘Cheerio! Cheerio!’ to a tune of my own.

That evening Titus Hoyt came again.

My mother didn’t seem to mind.

To me Titus Hoyt said, ‘You can read?’

I said yes.

‘And write?’

I said yes.

‘Well, look,’ he said, ‘get some paper and a pencil and write what I tell you.’

I said, ‘Taper and pencil?’

He nodded.

I ran to the kitchen and said, ‘Ma, you got any paper and pencil?’

My mother said, ‘What you think I is? A shopkeeper?’

Titus Hoyt shouted, ‘Is for me, ma’am.’

My mother said, ‘Oh.’ in a disappointed way.

She said, ‘In the bottom drawer of the bureau you go find my purse. It have a pencil in it.’

And she gave me a copy-book from the kitchen shelf.