V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

Chittaranjan made a great deal of fuss about the wild passion of love. He said Antony had thrown away an empire for the sake of love, just as Hat had thrown away his self-respect. He said that Hat’s crime was really a crime passionel. In France, he said — and he knew what he was talking about, because he had been to Paris — in France, Hat would have been a hero. Women would have garlanded him.

Eddoes said, ‘Is this sort of lawyer who does get man hang, you know.’

Hat was sentenced to four years.

We went to Frederick Street jail to see him. It was a disappointing jail. The walls were light cream, and not very high, and I was surprised to see that most of the visitors were very gay. Only a few women wept, but the whole thing was like a party, with people laughing and chatting.

Eddoes, who had put on his best suit for the occasion, held his hat in his hand and looked around. He said to Hat, ‘It don’t look too bad here.’

Hat said, ‘They taking me to Carrera next week.’

Carrera was the small prison-island a few miles from Port of Spain.

Hat said, ‘Don’t worry about me. You know me. In two three weeks I go make them give me something easy to do.’

Whenever I went to Carénage or Point Cumana for a bathe, I looked across the green water to the island of Carrera, rising high out of the sea, with its neat pink buildings. I tried to picture what went on inside those buildings, but my imagination refused to work. I used to think, ‘Hat there, I here. He know I here, thinking about him?’

But as the months passed I became more and more concerned with myself, and I wouldn’t think about Hat for weeks on end. It was useless trying to feel ashamed. I had to face the fact that I was no longer missing Hat. From time to time when my mind was empty, I would stop and think how long it would be before he came out, but I was not really concerned.

I was fifteen when Hat went to jail and eighteen when he came out. A lot happened in those three years. I left school and I began working in the customs. I was no longer a boy. I was a man, earning money.

Hat’s homecoming fell a little flat. It wasn’t only that we boys had grown older. Hat, too, had changed. Some of the brightness had left him, and conversation was hard to make.

He visited all the houses he knew and he spoke about his experiences with great zest.

My mother gave him tea.

Hat said, ‘Is just what I expect. I get friendly with some of the turnkey and them, and you know what happen? I pull two three strings and — bam! — they make me librarian. They have a big library there, you know. All sort of big book. Is the sort of place Titus Hoyt would like. So much book with nobody to read them.’

I offered Hat a cigarette and he took it mechanically.

Then he shouted, ‘But, eh-eh, what is this? You come a big man now! When I leave you wasn’t smoking. Was a long time now, though.’

I said, ‘Yes. Was a long time.’

A long time. But it was just three years, three years in which I had grown up and looked critically at the people around me. I no longer wanted to be like Eddoes. He was so weak and thin, and I hadn’t realised that he was so small. Titus Hoyt was stupid and boring, and not funny at all. Everything had changed.

When Hat went to jail, part of me had died.

My mother said, ‘You getting too wild in this place. I think is high time you leave.’

‘And go where? Venezuela?’ I said.

‘No, not Venezuela. Somewhere else, because the moment you land in Venezuela they go throw you in jail. I know you and I know Venezuela. No, somewhere else.’

I said, ‘All right. You think about it and decide.’

My mother said, ‘I go go and talk to Ganesh Pundit about it. He was a friend of your father. But you must go from here. You getting too wild.’

I suppose my mother was right. Without really knowing it, I had become a little wild. I was drinking like a fish, and doing a lot besides. The drinking started in the customs, where we confiscated liquor on the slightest pretext. At first the smell of spirits upset me, but I used to say to myself, ‘You must get over this. Drink it like medicine. Hold your nose and close your eyes.’ In time I had become a first-class drinker, and I began suffering from drinker’s pride.

Then there were the sights of the town Boyee and Errol introduced me to. One night, not long after I began working, they took me to a place near Marine Square. We climbed to the first floor and found ourselves in a small crowded room lit by green bulbs. The green light seemed as thick as jelly. There were many women all about the room, just waiting and looking. A big sign said: OBSCENELANGUAGE FORBIDDEN.

We had a drink at the bar, a thick sweet drink.

Errol asked me, ‘Which one of the women you like?’

I understood immediately, and I felt disgusted. I ran out of the room and went home, a little sick, a little frightened. I said to myself, ‘You must get over this.’

Next night I went to the club again. And again.

We made wild parties and took rum and women to Maracas Bay for all-night sessions.

‘You getting too wild,’ my mother said.

I paid her no attention until the time I drank so much in one evening that I remained drunk for two whole days afterwards. When I sobered up, I made a vow neither to smoke nor drink again.

I said to my mother, ‘Is not my fault really. Is just Trinidad. What else anybody can do here except drink?’

About two months later my mother said, ‘You must come with me next week. We going to see Ganesh Pundit.’

Ganesh Pundit had given up mysticism for a long time. He had taken to politics and was doing very nicely. He was a minister of something or the other in the Government, and I heard people saying that he was in the running for the M.B.E.

We went to his big house in St Clair and we found the great man, not dressed in dhoti and koortah, as in the mystic days, but in an expensive-looking lounge suit.

He received my mother with a good deal of warmth.

He said, ‘I do what I could do.’

My mother began to cry.

‘To me Ganesh said, What you want to go abroad to study?’

I said, ‘I don’t want to study anything really. I just want to go away, that’s all.’

Ganesh smiled and said, ‘The Government not giving away that sort of scholarship yet. Only ministers could do what you say. No, you have to study something.’

I said, ‘I never think about it really. Just let me think a little bit.’

Ganesh said, ‘All right. You think a little bit.’

My mother was crying her thanks to Ganesh.

I said, ‘I know what I want to study. Engineering.’ I was thinking about my uncle Bhakcu.

‘Ganesh laughed and said, What you know about engineering?’

I said, ‘Right now, nothing. But I could put my mind to it.’

‘My mother said, Why don’t you want to take up law?’

I thought of Chittaranjan and his brown suit and I said, ‘No, not law.’

Ganesh said, ‘It have only one scholarship remaining. For drugs.’

I said, ‘But I don’t want to be a druggist. I don’t want to put on a white jacket and sell lipstick to woman.’

Ganesh smiled.

My mother said, ‘You mustn’t mind the boy, Pundit. He will study drugs.’ And to me, ‘You could study anything if you put your mind to it.’

Ganesh said, ‘Think. It mean going to London. It mean seeing snow and seeing the Thames and seeing the big Parliament.’

I said, ‘All right. I go study drugs.’

My mother said, ‘I don’t know what I could do to thank you, Pundit.’

And, crying, she counted out two hundred dollars and gave it to Ganesh. She said, ‘I know it ain’t much, Pundit. But it is all I have. Is a long time I did saving it up.’