V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

‘Is a nice photo, sahib.’

‘You look at it. I got to go now.’

Ganesh and Leela moved to Fuente Grove that afternoon; but just before they left Fourways a letter arrived. It contained the oil royalties for the quarter; and the information that his oil had been exhausted and he was to receive no more royalties.

Ramlogan’s dowry seemed providential. It was another remarkable coincidence that gave Ganesh fresh evidence that big things were ahead of him.

‘Great things going to happen in Fuente Grove,’ Ganesh told Leela. ‘Really great things.’

FOR MORE THAN two years Ganesh and Leela lived in Fuente Grove and nothing big or encouraging happened.

Right from the start Fuente Grove looked unpromising. The Great Belcher had said it was a small, out of the way place. That was only half true. Fuente Grove was practically lost. It was so small, so remote, and so wretched, it was marked only on large maps in the office of the Government Surveyor; the Public Works Department treated it with contempt; and no other village even thought of feuding with it. You couldn’t really like Fuente Grove. In the dry season the earth baked, cracked, and calcined; and in the rainy season melted into mud. Always it was hot. Trees would have made some difference, but Ganesh’s mango tree was the only one.

The villagers went to work in the cane-fields in the dawn darkness to avoid the heat of day. When they returned in the middle of the morning the dew had dried on the grass; and they set to work in their vegetable gardens as if they didn’t know that sugar-cane was the only thing that could grow in Fuente Grove. They had few thrills. The population was small and there were not many births, marriages, or deaths to excite them. Two or three times a year the men made a noisy excursion to a cinema in distant, wicked San Fernando. Little happened besides. Once a year, at the ‘crop-over’ harvest festival, when the sugar-cane had been reaped, Fuente Grove made a brave show of gaiety. The half-dozen bullock carts in the village were decorated with pink and yellow and green streamers made from crêpe paper; the bullocks themselves, sad-eyed as ever, wore bright ribbons in their horns; and men, women, and children rattled the piquets on the carts and beat on pans, singing about the bounty of God. It was like the gaiety of a starving child.

Every Saturday evening the men gathered in Beharry’s shop and drank a lot of bad rum. They became sufficiently enthusiastic about their wives to beat them that night. On Sunday they woke sick, cursing Beharry and his rum, continued sick all day, and rose fresh and strong early Monday morning, ready for the week’s work.

It was only this Saturday drinking that kept Beharry’s shop going. He himself never drank because he was a good Hindu and because, as he told Ganesh, ‘it have nothing like a clear head, man’. Also, his wife didn’t approve.

Beharry was the only person in Fuente Grove with whom Ganesh became friendly. He was a little man, scholarly in appearance, with a neat little belly and thin, greying hair. He alone in Fuente Grove read the newspapers. A day-old copy of the Trinidad Sentinel came to him every day by cyclist from Princes Town and Beharry read it from end to end, sitting on a high stool in front of his counter. He hated being behind the counter. ‘It does make me feel I is in a pen, man.’

The day after he arrived in Fuente Grove Ganesh called on Beharry and found that he knew all about the Institute.

‘Is just what Fuente Grove want,’ Beharry said. ‘You going to write books and thing, eh?’

Ganesh nodded and Beharry shouted, ‘Suruj!’

A boy of about five ran into the shop.

‘Suruj, go bring the books. They under the pillow.’

‘ All the books, Pa?’

‘All.’

The boy brought the books and Beharry passed them one by one to Ganesh: Napoleon’s Book of Fate , a school edition of Eothen which had lost its covers, three issues of the Booker’s Drug Stores Almanac , the Gita , and the Ramayana .

‘People can’t fool me,’ Beharry said. ‘Tom is a country-bookie but Tom ain’t a fool. Suruj!’

The boy ran up again.

‘Cigarette and match, Suruj.’

‘But they on the counter, Pa.’

‘You think I can’t see that? Hand them to me.’

The boy obeyed, then ran out of the shop.

‘What you think of the books?’ Beharry asked, pointing with an unlighted cigarette.

When Beharry spoke he became rather like a mouse. He looked anxious and worked his small mouth nervously up and down as though he were nibbling.

‘Nice.’

A big woman with a tired face came into the shop. ‘Suruj Poopa, you ain’t hear me calling you to eat?’

Beharry nibbled. ‘I was just showing the pundit the books I does read.’

‘Read!’ Her tired face quickened with scorn. ‘Read! You want to know how he does read?’

Ganesh didn’t know where to look.

‘He does close up the shop if I don’t keep a eye on him, and he does jump into bed with the books. I ain’t know him read one book to the end yet, and still he ain’t happy unless he reading four five book at the same time. It have some people it dangerous learning them how to read.’

Beharry replaced the cigarette in the box.

‘This world go be a different and better place the day man start making baby,’ the woman said, sweeping out of the shop. ‘Life hard enough with you one, leave alone your three worthless children.’

There was a short silence after she had gone.

‘Suruj Mooma,’ Beharry explained.

‘They is like that,’ Ganesh agreed.

‘But she right, you know, man. If everybody did start behaving like me and you it would be a crazy kinda world.’

Beharry nibbled, and winked at Ganesh. ‘I telling you, man. This reading is a dangerous thing.’

Suruj ran into the shop again. ‘She calling you, Pa.’ His tone carried his mother’s exasperation.

As Ganesh left he heard Beharry saying, ‘ She ? Is how you does call your mother? Who is she ? The cat mother?’

Ganesh heard a slap.

He went often to Beharry’s shop. He liked Beharry and he liked the shop. Beharry made it bright with coloured advertisements for things he didn’t stock; and it was as dry and clean as Ramlogan’s shop was greasy and dirty.

‘It beat me what you does see in this Beharry,’ Leela said. ‘He think he could run shop, but he does only make me laugh. I must write and tell Pa about the sort of shop it have in Fuente Grove.’

‘It have one thing you must write and tell your father to do. Tell him to go and open a stall in San Fernando market.’

Leela cried. ‘You see the sort of thing Beharry putting in your head. The man is my father.’ And she cried again.

But Ganesh still went to Beharry’s.

When Beharry heard that Ganesh was going to set himself up as a masseur he nibbled anxiously and shook his head. ‘Man, you choose a hard hard thing. These days nearly everybody you bouncing up is either massager or dentist. One of my own cousin — really Suruj Mooma cousin, but Suruj Mooma family is like my own family — a really nice boy he is, he too starting in this thing.’

‘As another massager?’

‘Wait, you go hear. Last Christmas Suruj Mooma take up the children by their grandmooma and this boy just come up to she cool cool and say he taking up dentistry. You could imagine how Suruj Mooma was surprise. And the next thing we hear is that he borrow money to buy one of them dentist machine thing and he start pulling out people teeth, just like that. The boy killing people left and right, and still people going. Trinidad people is like that.’