V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

‘What is this thing, Mr Bolo?’

He stopped clipping my hair and pulled out a printed sheet from his trouser pocket.

He said, ‘You know what this is?’

I said, ‘Is a sweepstake ticket.’

‘Right. You smart, man. Is really a sweepstake ticket.’

I said, ‘But what you want me do, Mr Bolo? ’

He said, ‘First you must promise not to tell anybody.’

I gave my word.

He said, ‘I want you to find out if the number draw.’

The draw was made about six weeks later and I looked for Bolo’s number. I told him, ‘You number ain’t draw, Mr Bolo.’

He said, ‘Not even a proxime accessit?’

I shook my head.

But Bolo didn’t look disappointed. ‘Is just what I expect,’ he said.

For nearly three years this was our secret. And all during those years Bolo bought sweepstake tickets, and never won. Nobody knew and even when Hat or somebody else said to him, ‘Bolo, I know a thing you could try. Why you don’t try sweepstake?’ Bolo would say, ‘I done with that sort of thing, man.’

At the Christmas meeting of 1948 Bolo’s number was drawn. It wasn’t much, just about three hundred dollars.

I ran to Bolo’s room and said, ‘Mr Bolo, the number draw.’

Bolo’s reaction wasn’t what I expected. He said, ‘Look, boy, you in long pants now. But don’t get me mad, or I go have to beat you bad.’

I said, ‘But it really draw, Mr Bolo.’

He said, ‘How the hell you know it draw? ’

I said, ‘I see it in the papers.’

At this Bolo got really angry and he seized me by the collar. He screamed, ‘How often I have to tell you, you little good-for-nothing son of a bitch, that you mustn’t believe all that you read in the papers?’

So I checked up with the Trinidad Turf Club.

I said to Bolo, ‘Is really true.’ Bolo refused to believe.

He said, ‘These Trinidad people does only lie, lie. Lie is all they know. They could fool you, boy, but they can’t fool me.’

I told the men of the street, ‘Bolo mad like hell. The man win three hundred dollars and he don’t want to believe.’

One day Boyee said to Bolo, ‘Ay, Bolo, you win a sweepstake then.’

Bolo chased Boyee, shouting, ‘You playing the ass, eh. You making joke with a man old enough to be your grandfather.’

And when Bolo saw me, he said, ‘Is so you does keep secret? Is so you does keep secret? But why all you Trinidad people so, eh? ’

And he pushed his box-cart down to Eddoes’s house, saying, ‘Eddoes, you want box-cart, eh? Here, take the box-cart.’

And he began hacking the cart to bits with his cutlass.

To me he shouted, ‘People think they could fool me.’

And he took out the sweepstake ticket and tore it. He rushed up to me and forced the pieces into my shirt pocket.

Afterwards he lived to himself in his little room, seldom came out to the street, never spoke to anybody. Once a month he went to draw his old-age pension.

Edward, Hat’s brother, was a man of many parts, and I always thought it a sad thing that he drifted away from us. He used to help Hat with the cows when I first knew him and, like Hat, he looked settled and happy enough. He said he had given up women for good, and he concentrated on cricket, football, boxing, horse-racing, and cockfighting. In this way he was never bored, and he had no big ambition to make him unhappy.

Like Hat, Edward had a high regard for beauty. But Edward didn’t collect birds of beautiful plumage, as Hat did. Edward painted.

His favourite subject was a brown hand clasping a black one. And when Edward painted a brown hand, it was a brown hand. No nonsense about light and shades. And the sea was a blue sea, and mountains were green.

Edward mounted his pictures himself and framed them in red passe-partout. The big department stores, Salvatori’s, Fogarty’s, and Johnson’s, distributed Edward’s work on commission.

To the street, however, Edward was something of a menace.

He would see Mrs Morgan wearing a new dress and say, ‘Ah, Mrs Morgan, is a nice nice dress you wearing there, but I think it could do with some sort of decoration.’

Or he would see Eddoes wearing a new shirt and say, ‘Eh, eh, Eddoes, you wearing a new shirt, man. You write your name in it, you know, otherwise somebody pick it up brisk brisk one of these days. Tell you what, I go write it for you.’

He ruined many garments in this way.

He also had the habit of giving away ties he had decorated himself. He would say, ‘I have something for you. Take it and wear it. I giving it to you because I like you.’

And if the tie wasn’t worn, Edward would get angry and begin shouting, ‘But you see how ungrateful black people is. Listen to this. I see this man not wearing tie. I take a bus and I go to town. I walk to Johnson’s and I look for the gents’ department. I meet a girl and I buy a tie. I take a bus back home. I go inside my room and take up my brush and unscrew my paint. I dip my brush in paint and I put the brush on the tie. I spend two three hours doing that, and after all this, the man ain’t wearing my tie.’

But Edward did a lot more than just paint.

One day, not many months after I had come to the street, Edward said, ‘Coming back on the bus from Cocorite last night I only hearing the bus wheel cracking over crab back. You know the place by the coconut trees and the swamp? There it just crawling with crab. People say they even climbing up the coconut trees.’

Hat said, ‘They does come out a lot at full moon. Let we go tonight and catch some of the crabs that Edward see.’

Edward said, ‘Is just what I was going to say. We will have to take the boys because it have so much crab even they could pick up a lot.’

So we boys were invited.

Edward said, ‘Hat, I was thinking. It go be a lot easier to catch the crab if we take a shovel. It have so much you could just shovel them up.’

Hat said, ‘All right. We go take the cow-pen shovel.’

Edward said, ‘That settle. But look, all you have strong shoes? You better get strong shoes, you know, because these crab and them ain’t playing big and if you don’t look out they start walking away with your big toe before you know what is what.’

Hat said, ‘I go use the leggings I does wear when I cleaning out the cow-pen.’

Edward said, ‘And we better wear gloves. I know a man was catching crab one day and suddenly he see his right hand walking away from him. He look again and see four five crab carrying it away. This man jump up and begin one bawling. So we have to be careful. If you boys ain’t have gloves just wrap some cloth over your hands. That go be all right.’

So late that night we all climbed into the Cocorite bus, Hat in his leggings, Edward in his, and the rest of us carrying cutlasses and big brown sacks.

The shovel Hat carried still stank from the cow-pen and people began squinging up their noses.

Hat said, ‘Let them smell it. They does all want milk when the cow give it.’

People looked at the leggings and the cutlasses and the shovel and the sacks and looked away quickly. They stopped talking. The conductor didn’t ask for our fares. The bus was silent until Edward began to talk.

Edward said, ‘We must try and not use the cutlass. It ain’t nice to kill. Try and get them live and put them in the bag.’

Many people got off at the next stop. By the time the bus got to Mucurapo Road it was carrying only us. The conductor stood right at the front talking to the driver.

Just before we got to the Cocorite terminus Edward said, ‘Oh God, I know I was forgetting something. We can’t bring back all the crab in a bus. I go have to go and telephone for a van.’