V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

I was travelling to Arima, and just near the quarry at Laventille I saw him driving a lorry.

He was smoking a cigarette.

That and his thin arms are all I remember.

And riding to Carénage one Sunday morning, I passed the Christianis’ house, which I had avoided for a long time.

Mrs Christiani, or Mrs Hereira, was in shorts. She was reading the paper in an easy chair in the garden. Through the open doors of the house I saw a uniformed servant laying the table for lunch.

There was a black car, a new, big cai, in the garage.

My Uncle Bhakcu was very nearly a mechanical genius. I cannot remember a time when he was not the owner of a motor vehicle of some sort. I don’t think he always approved of the manufacturers’ designs, however, for he was always pulling engines to bits. Titus Hoyt said that this was also a habit of the Eskimos. It was something he had got out of a geography book.

If I try to think of Bhakcu I never see his face. I can see only the soles of his feet as he worms his way under a car. I was worried when Bhakcu was under a car because it looked so easy for the car to slip off the jack and fall on him.

One day it did.

He gave a faint groan that reached the ears of only his wife.

She bawled, ‘Oh God!’ and burst into tears right away. ‘I know something wrong. Something happen to he’

Mrs Bhakcu always used this pronoun when she spoke of her husband.

She hurried to the side of the yard and heard Bhakcu groaning.

‘Man,’ she whispered, ‘you all right?’

He groaned a little more loudly.

He said, ‘How the hell I all right? You mean you so blind you ain’t see the whole motor-car break up my arse?’

Mrs Bhakcu, dutiful wife, began to cry afresh.

She beat on the galvanized-iron fence.

‘Hat,’ Mrs Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, come quick. A whole motor-car fall on he? ’

Hat was cleaning out the cow-pen. When he heard Mrs Bhakcu he laughed. ‘You know what I always does say,’ Hat said. ‘When you play the ass you bound to catch hell. The blasted car brand-new. What the hell he was tinkering with so?’

‘He say the crank-shaft wasn’t working nice.’

‘And is there he looking for the crank-shaft?’

‘Hat,’ Bhakcu shouted from under the car, ‘the moment you get this car from off me, I going to break up your tail.’

‘Man,’ Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘how you so advantageous? The man come round with his good good mind to help you and now you want to beat him up?’

Hat began to look hurt and misunderstood.

Hat said, ‘It ain’t nothing new. Is just what I expect. Is just what I does always get for interfering in other people business. You know I mad to leave you and your husband here and go back to the cow-pen.’

‘No, Hat. You mustn’t mind he. Think what you would say if a whole big new motor-car fall on you.’

Hat said, ‘All right, all right. I have to go and get some of the boys.’

We heard Hat shouting in the street. ‘Boyee and Errol!’

No answer.

‘Bo-yee and Ehhroll!’

‘Co-ming, Hat.’

‘Where the hell you boys been, eh? You think you is man now and you could just stick your hands in your pocket and walk out like man? You was smoking, eh?’

‘Smoking, Hat?’

‘But what happen now? You turn deaf all of a sudden?’

‘Was Boyee was smoking, Hat.’

‘Is a lie, Hat. Was Errol really. I just stand up watching him.’

‘Somebody make you policeman now, eh? Is cut-arse for both of you. Errol, go cut a whip for Boyee. Boyee, go cut a whip for Errol.’

We heard the boys whimpering.

From under the car Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, why you don’t leave the boys alone? You go bless them bad one of these days, you know, and then they go lose you in jail. Why you don’t leave the boys alone? They big now.’

Hat shouted back, ‘You mind your own business, you hear. Otherwise I leave you under that car until you rotten, you hear.’

Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘Take it easy, man.’

But it was nothing serious after all. The jack had slipped but the axle rested on a pile of wooden blocks, pinning Bhakcu to ground without injuring him.

When Bhakcu came out he looked at his clothes. These were a pair of khaki trousers and a sleeveless vest, both black and stiff with engine grease.

Bhakcu said to his wife, ‘They really dirty now, eh?’

She regarded her husband with pride. ‘Yes, man,’ she said. ‘They really dirty.’

Bhakcu smiled.

Hat said, ‘Look, I just sick of lifting up motor-car from off you, you hear. If you want my advice, you better send for a proper mechanic’

Bhakcu wasn’t listening.

He said to his wife, ‘The crank-shaft was all right. Is something else.’

Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Well, you must eat first.’

She looked at Hat and said, ‘He don’t eat when he working on the car unless I remind he? ’

Hat said, ‘What you want me do with that? Write it down with a pencil on a piece of paper and send it to the papers?’

I wanted to watch Bhakcu working on the car that evening, so I said to him, ‘Uncle Bhakcu, your clothes looking really dirty and greasy. I wonder how you could bear to wear them.’

He turned and smiled at me. ‘What you expect, boy?’ he said. ‘Mechanic people like me ain’t have time for clean clothes.’

‘What happen to the car, Uncle Bhakcu?’ I asked.

He didn’t reply.

‘The tappet knocking?’ I suggested.

One thing Bhacku had taught me about cars was that tappets were always knocking. Give Bhakcu any car in the world, and the first thing he would tell you about it was, ‘The tappet knocking, you know. Hear. Hear it?’

‘The tappet knocking?’ I asked.

He came right up to me and asked eagerly, ‘What, you hear it knocking?’

And before I had time to say, ‘Well, something did knocking,’ Mrs Bhakcu pulled him away, saying, ‘Come and eat now, man. God, you get your clothes really dirty today.’

The car that fell on Bhakcu wasn’t really a new car, although Bhakcu boasted that it very nearly was.

‘It only do two hundred miles,’ he used to say.

Hat said, ‘Well, I know Trinidad small, but I didn’t know it was so small.’

I remember the day it was bought. It was a Saturday. And that morning Mrs Bhakcu came to my mother and they talked about the cost of rice and flour and the black market. As she was leaving, Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘He gone to town today. He say he got to buy a new car.’

So we waited for the new car.

Midday came, but Bhakcu didn’t.

Hat said, ‘Two to one, that man taking down the engine right this minute.’

About four o’clock we heard a banging and a clattering, and looking down Miguel Street towards Docksite we saw the car. It was a blue Chevrolet, one of the 1939 models. It looked rich and new. We began to wave and cheer, and I saw Bhakcu waving his left hand.

We danced into the road in front of Bhakcu’s house, waving and cheering.

The car came nearer and Hat said, ‘Jump, boys! Run for your life. Like he get mad.’

It was a near thing. The car just raced past the house and we stopped cheering.

Hat said, ‘The car out of control. It go have a accident if something don’t happen quick.’

Mrs Bhakcu laughed. ‘What you think it is at all?’ she said.

But we raced after the car, crying after Bhakcu.

He wasn’t waving with his left hand. He was trying to warn people off.

By a miracle, it stopped just before Ariapita Avenue.

Bhakcu said, ‘I did mashing down the brakes since I turn Miguel Street, but the brakes ain’t working. Is a funny thing. I overhaul the brakes just this morning.’