V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

He got off one stop before the terminus.

We walked a little way in the bright moonlight, left the road and climbed down into the swamp. A tired wind blew from the sea, and the smell of stale sea-water was everywhere. Under the coconut trees it was dark. We walked a bit further in. A cloud covered the moon and the wind fell.

Hat called out, ‘You boys all right? Be careful with your foot. I don’t want any of you going home with only three toes.’

Boyee said, ‘But I ain’t seeing any crab.’

Ten minutes later Edward joined us.

He said, ‘How many bags you full?’

Hat said, ‘It look like a lot of people had the same idea and come and take away all the crab.’

Edward said, ‘Rubbish. You don’t see the moon ain’t showing. We got to wait until the moon come out before the crab come out. Sit down, boys, let we wait.’

The moon remained clouded for half an hour.

Boyee said, ‘It making cold and I want to go home. I don’t think it have any crab.’

Errol said, ‘Don’t mind Boyee. I know him. He just frighten of the dark and he fraid the crab bite him.’

At this point we heard a rumbling in the distance.

Hat said, ‘It look like the van come.’

Edward said, ‘It ain’t a van really. I order a big truck from Sam.’

We sat in silence waiting for the moon to clear. Then about a dozen torch-lights flashed all around us. Someone shouted, ‘We ain’t want any trouble. But if any one of you play the fool you going to get beat up bad.’

We saw what looked like a squad of policemen surrounding us.

Boyee began to cry.

Edward said, ‘It have man beating their wife. It have people breaking into other people house. Why you policemen don’t go and spend your time doing something with sense, eh? Just for a change.’

A policeman said, ‘Why you don’t shut up? You want me to spit in your mouth? ’

Another policeman said, ‘What you have in those bags?’

Edward said, ‘Only crab. But take care. They is big crab and they go bite off your hand.’

Nobody looked inside the bags and then a man with a lot of stripes said, ‘Everybody playing bad-man these days. Everybody getting full of smart answers, like the Americans and them.’

A policeman said, ‘They have bag, they have cutlass, they have shovel, they have glove.’

Hat said, ‘We was catching crab.’

The policeman said, ‘With shovel? Eh, eh, what happen that you suddenly is God and make a new sort of crab you could catch with shovel?’

It took a lot of talk to make the policemen believe our story.

The officer in charge said, ‘I go like to lay my hands on the son of a bitch who telephone and say you was going to kill somebody.’

Then the policemen left.

It was late and we had missed the last bus.

Hat said, ‘We had better wait for the truck Edward order.’

Edward said, ‘Something tell me that truck ain’t coming now.’

Hat said very slowly, half laughing and half serious, ‘Edward, you is my own brother, but you know you really is a son of a bitch.’

Edward sat down and just laughed and laughed.

Then the war came. Hitler invaded France and the Americans invaded Trinidad. Lord Invader made a hit with his calpyso:

I was living with my decent and contented wife

Until the soldiers came and broke up my life.

For the first time in Trinidad there was work for everybody, and the Americans paid well. Invader sang:

Father, mother, and daughter

Working for the Yankee dollar!

Money in the land!

The Yankee dollar, oh!

Edward stopped working in the cow-pen and got a job with the Americans at Chaguaramas.

Hat said, ‘Edward, I think you foolish to do that. The Americans ain’t here forever and ever. It ain’t have no sense in going off and working for big money and then not having nothing to eat after three four years.’

Edward said, ‘This war look as though it go last a long long time. And the Americans not like the British, you know. They does make you work hard, but they does pay for it.’

Edward sold his share of the cows to Hat, and that marked the beginning of his drift away from us.

Edward surrendered completely to the Americans. He began wearing clothes in the American style, he began chewing gum, and he tried to talk with an American accent. We didn’t see much of him except on Sundays, and then he made us feel small and inferior. He grew fussy about his dress, and he began wearing a gold chain around his neck. He began wearing straps around his wrists, after the fashion of tennis-players. These straps were just becoming fashionable among smart young men in Port of Spain.

Edward didn’t give up painting, but he no longer offered to paint things for us, and I think most people were relieved. He entered some poster competition, and when his design didn’t win even a consolation prize, he grew really angry with Trinidad.

One Sunday he said, ‘I was stupid to send in anything I paint with my own two hands for Trinidad people to judge. What they know about anything? Now, if I was in America, it woulda be different. The Americans is people. They know about things.’

To hear Edward talk, you felt that America was a gigantic country inhabited by giants. They lived in enormous houses and they drove in the biggest cars of the world.

Edward used to say, ‘Look at Miguel Street. In America you think they have streets so narrow? In America this street could pass for a sidewalk.’

One night I walked down with Edward to Docksite, the American army camp. Through the barbed wire you could see the huge screen of an open-air cinema.

Edward said, ‘You see the sort of theatre they come and build in a stupid little place like Trinidad. Imagine the sort of thing they have in the States.’

And we walked down a little further until we came to a sentry in his box.

Edward used his best American accent and said, ‘What’s cooking, Joe?’

To my surprise the sentry, looking fierce under his helmet, replied, and in no time at all Edward and the sentry were talking away, each trying to use more swear words than the other.

When Edward came back to Miguel Street he began swaggering along and he said to me, ‘Tell them. Tell them how good I does get on with the Americans.’

And when he was with Hat he said, ‘Was talking the other night with a American-damn good friend-and he was telling me that as soon as the Americans enter the war the war go end.’

Errol said, ‘It ain’t that we want to win the war. As soon as they make Lord Anthony Eden Prime Minister the war go end quick quick.’

Edward said, ‘Shut up, kid.’

But the biggest change of all was the way Edward began talking of women. Up till then he used to say that he was finished with them for good. He made out that his heart had been broken a long time ago and he had made a vow. It was a vague and tragic story.

But now on Sundays Edward said, ‘You should see the sort of craft they have at the base. Nothing like these stupid Trinidad girls, you know. No, partner. Girls with style, girls with real class.’

I think it was Eddoes who said, ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you. They wouldn’t tangle with you, those girls. They want big big American men. You safe.’

Edward called Eddoes a shrimp and walked away in a huff.

He began lifting weights, and in this, too, Edward was running right at the head of fashion. I don’t know what happened in Trinidad about that time, but every young man became suddenly obsessed with the Body Beautiful ideal, and there were physique competitions practically every month. Hat used to console himself by saying, ‘Don’t worry. Is just a lot of old flash, you hear. They say they building muscle muscle. Just let them cool off and see what happen. All that thing they call muscle turn fat, you know.’