V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

One day he said, ‘Leela, is high time we realize that we living in a British country and I think we shouldn’t be shame to talk the people language good.’

Leela was squatting at the kitchen chulha , coaxing a fire from dry mango twigs. Her eyes were red and watery from the smoke. ‘All right, man.’

‘We starting now self, girl.’

‘As you say, man.’

‘Good. Let me see now. Ah, yes. Leela, have you lighted the fire? No, just gimme a chance. Is “lighted” or “lit”, girl?’

‘Look, ease me up, man. The smoke going in my eye.’

‘You ain’t paying attention, girl. You mean the smoke is going in your eye.’

Leela coughed in the smoke. ‘Look, man. I have a lot more to do than sit scratching, you hear. Go talk to Beharry.’

Beharry was enthusiastic. ‘Man, is a master idea, man! Is one of the troubles with Fuente Grove that it have nobody to talk good to. When we starting?’

‘Now.’

Beharry nibbled and smiled nervously. ‘Nah, man, you got to give me time to think.’

Ganesh insisted.

‘All right then,’ Beharry said resignedly. ‘Let we go.’

‘It is hot today.’

‘I see what you mean. It is very hot today.’

‘Look, Beharry. This go do, but it won’t pay, you hear. You got to give a man some help, man. All right now, we going off again. You ready? The sky is very blue and I cannot see any clouds in it. Eh, why you laughing now?’

‘Ganesh, you know you look damn funny.’

‘Well, you look damn funny yourself, come to that.’

‘No, what I mean is that it funny seeing you so, and hearing you talk so.’

Rice was boiling on the chulha when Ganesh went home. ‘Mr Ramsumair,’ Leela asked, ‘where have you been?’

‘Beharry and me was having a little chat. You know, Beharry did look real funny trying to talk good.’

It was Leela’s turn to laugh. ‘I thought we was starting on this big thing of talking good English.’

‘Girl, you just cook my food good, you hear, and talk good English only when I tell you.’

This was the time when Ganesh felt he had to respond to every advertiser’s request to fill in coupons for free booklets. He came across the coupons in American magazines at Beharry’s shop; and it was a great thrill for him to send off about a dozen coupons at once and await the arrival, a month later, of a dozen bulging packets. The Post Office people didn’t like it and Ganesh had to bribe them before they sent a postman cycling down with the packets to Fuente Grove in the evenings, when it was cool.

Beharry had to give the postman a drink.

The postman said, ‘The two of all you getting one set of big fame in Princes Town. Everywhere I turn it have people asking me, “Who is these two people? They come just like Americans, man.” ’ He looked down at his emptied glass and rocked it on the counter. ‘And guess what I does do when they ask me?’

It was his manner of asking for a second drink.

‘What I does do?’ He downed his second glass of rum at a gulp, made a wry face, asked for water, got it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, ‘Man, I does tell them straight off who you is!’

Both Beharry and Ganesh were excited by the booklets and handled them with sensuous reverence. ‘That America, boy, is the place to live in,’ Beharry said. ‘They does think nothing of giving away books like this.’

Ganesh shrugged a knowing shoulder. ‘Is nothing at all for them, you know. Before you twist and turn three times — bam! — a book done print.’

‘Ganesh, you is a man with a college education. How much book they does print every year in America, you think?’

‘About four five hundred so.’

‘You crazy, man. Is more about a million. So I read somewhere the other day.’

‘Why you ask me then?’

Beharry nibbled. ‘Just to make sure.’

Then they had a long discussion whether one man could ever get to know everything about the world.

Beharry annoyed Ganesh one day by showing a folder. He said casually, ‘Look what these people in England send me.’

Ganesh frowned.

Beharry sensed trouble. ‘Didn’t ask for it, you know. You mustn’t think I setting up in competition with you. They just send it, just like that.’

The folder was too beautiful for Ganesh’s annoyance to last.

‘I don’t suppose they go just send it to me like that, though.’

‘Take it, man,’ Beharry said.

‘Yes, take it before I burn it up.’ The voice of Suruj Mooma, inside. ‘I don’t want any more rubbish in my house.’

It was a folder from the Everyman Library.

Ganesh said, ‘Nine hundred and thirty book at two shilling a book. Altogether that make —’

‘Four hundred and sixty dollars.’

‘Is a lot of money.’

Beharry said, ‘Is a lot of book.’

‘If a man read all those book, it go have nobody at all to touch him in the line of education. Not even the Governor.’

‘You know, is something I was talking about to Suruj Mooma about only the other day. I don’t think Governor and them is really educated people.’

‘How you mean, man?’

‘If they was really educated they wouldn’t want to leave England where they printing books night and day and come to a place like Trinidad.’

Ganesh said, ‘Nine hundred and thirty book. Every book about one inch thick, I suppose.’

‘Make about seventy-seven feet.’

‘So with shelf on two walls you could find room for all.’

‘I prefer big books myself.’

The walls of Ganesh’s drawing-room were subject to a good deal of scrutiny that evening.

‘Leela, you got a ruler?’

She brought it.

‘You thinking of alterations, man?’

‘Thinking of buying some book.’

‘How much, man?’

‘Nine hundred and thirty.’

‘Nine hundred!’ She began to cry.

‘Nine hundred and thirty.’

‘You see the sort of idea Beharry putting in your head. You just want to make me a pauper. It ain’t enough for you to rob my own father. Why you don’t send me straight off to the Poor House?’

So Ganesh didn’t buy all the Everyman Library. He bought only three hundred volumes and the Post Office delivered them in a van late one afternoon. It was one of the biggest things that had happened to Fuente Grove, and even Leela was impressed, though reluctantly. Suruj Mooma alone remained indifferent. The books were still being taken into Ganesh’s house when she told Beharry loudly, so that everybody could hear, ‘Now, you don’t start copying anybody and making a fool of yourself, you hear. Leela could go to the Poor House. Not me.’

But Ganesh’s reputation, lowered by his incompetence as a masseur, rose in the village; and presently peasants, crumpling their grimy felt hats in their hands, came to ask him to write letters for them to the Governor, or to read letters which the Government, curiously, had sent them.

For Ganesh it was only the beginning. It took him about six months to read what he wanted of the Everyman books; after that he thought of buying more. He made regular trips to San Fernando and bought books, big ones, on philosophy and history.

‘You know, Beharry, sometimes I does stop and think. What those Everyman people did think when they was parcelling up those books for me? You think they did ever guess that it had a man like me in Trinidad?’

‘I ain’t know about that but, Ganesh, you beginning to get me vex now. You always forgetting nearly all what you read. You can’t even end what you was beginning to remember sometimes.’

‘What to do, then?’

‘Look, I have a copy-book here. I can’t sell it because the cover get oily — is that boy Suruj playing the fool with the candles — and I go give you this copy-book. When you reading a book, make notes here of the things you think is important.’