V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

Leela began to sob. ‘No, man. Why you don’t give up and take a work? Look at Suruj Mooma cousin, look at Sookram. The boy give up dentistry and Sookram give up massaging and take a work like a brave man. Suruj Mooma tell me that Sookram getting more than thirty dollars a week from the Americans. Man, for my sake, why you don’t make up a brave mind and take a work?’

‘You looking at this thing from the wrong point of view. Your science of thought tell you that the war going to last for ever? And what go happen to Sookram and the other massagers when the Americans leave Trinidad?’

Leela still sobbed.

Ganesh forced a smile and became coaxing. ‘Look, Leela girl, we go put another advertisement in the papers, and we go have my picture and we go have your picture. Side by side. Husband and wife. Who is this Ganesh? Who is this Leela?’

She stopped crying and her face brightened for a moment, but then she began to cry in earnest.

‘God, woman! If man did listen to woman all the time, nothing at all woulda happen in this world. Beharry was right. A woman does keep a man back. All right, all right, leave me and run back to your father. Think I care?’

And he stuck his hands in his pockets and went to see Beharry.

‘No luck?’ Beharry queried, nibbling.

‘Why you have this thing about asking damn fool questions, eh? But don’t think I worried. What is for me I will get.’

Beharry put his hand under his vest. It was a warning, as Ganesh knew now, that Beharry was going to give advice. ‘I think you make a big big mistake in not writing the companion volume. That’s where you go wrong.’

‘Look, Beharry. It have a damn long time now you judging me like some blasted magistrate, and telling me where I go wrong. I read a lot of psychology book about people like you, you know. And what those book have to say about you ain’t nice, I can tell you.’

‘Is only for you I worried.’ Beharry pulled away his hand from his vest.

Suruj Mooma came into the shop. ‘Ah, Ganesh. How?’

‘How “how”?’ Ganesh snapped. ‘You can’t see?

Beharry said, ‘Is a suggestion I have to make to you.’

‘All right, I listening. But I ain’t responsible for what I do when I finish listening.’

‘Is really Suruj Mooma idea.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, Ganesh. Me and Suruj Poopa been thinking a lot about you. We thinking that you must stop wearing trousers and a shirt.’

‘It don’t suit a mystic,’ Beharry said.

‘You must wear proper dhoti and koortah . I was talking only last night to Leela about it when she come here to buy cooking-oil. She think is a good idea too.’

Ganesh’s annoyance began to melt. ‘Yes, is a idea. You feel it go bring me luck?’

‘Is what Suruj Mooma say.’

Next morning Ganesh involved his legs in a dhoti and called Leela to help him tie the turban.

‘Is a nice one,’ she said.

‘One of my father old ones. Make me feel funny wearing it.’

‘Something telling me it go bring you luck.’

‘You really think so?’ Ganesh cried, and almost kissed her.

She pulled away. ‘Look what you doing, man.’

Then Ganesh, a strange and striking figure in white, went to the shop.

‘You look like a real maharaj ,’ Suruj Mooma said.

‘Yes, he look nice,’ said Beharry. ‘It make me wonder why more Indians don’t keep on wearing their own dress.’

Suruj Mooma warned, ‘You better not start, you hear. Your legs thin enough already and they look funny even in trousers.’

‘It look good, eh?’ Ganesh smiled.

Beharry said, ‘Nobody would believe now that you did go to the Christian college in Port of Spain. Man, you look like a pukka brahmin.’

‘Well, I have a feeling. I feel my luck change as from today.’

A child began crying inside. ‘My luck don’t change,’ Suruj Mooma said. ‘If it ain’t Suruj Poopa, is the children. Look at my hands, Ganesh. You see how smooth they is. They can’t even leave finger-prints now.’

Suruj came into the shop. ‘The baby crying , Ma.’

Suruj Mooma left and Beharry and Ganesh began a discussion about dress through the ages. Beharry was putting forward a daring view that dress wasn’t necessary at all in a hot place like Trinidad when he broke off suddenly and said, ‘Listen.’

Above the rustle of the wind through the sugar-cane came the rattle of a motor car bumping along the lumpy road.

Ganesh was excited. ‘Is somebody coming to see me.’ Then he became very calm.

A light green 1937 Chevrolet stopped in front of the shop. There was a woman at the back and she was trying to shout above the beat of the engine.

Ganesh said, ‘Go and talk to she, Beharry.’

The engine was turned off before Beharry could get down the shop steps. The woman said, ‘Who is this Ganesh?’

‘This is this Ganesh,’ Beharry said.

And Ganesh stood, dignified and unsmiling, in the centre of the shop doorway.

The woman looked at him carefully. ‘I driving all from Port of Spain to see you.’

Ganesh walked slowly towards the car. ‘Good morning,’ he said, but in his determination to be correct he was a little too curt and the woman was discomfited.

‘Good morning.’ She had to fumble for the words.

Speaking slowly, because he wanted to speak properly, Ganesh said, ‘I do not live here and I cannot talk to you here. I live down the road.’

‘Hop in the car,’ the taxi-driver said.

‘I prefer to walk.’

It was a strain for him to talk correctly and the woman noted, with obvious satisfaction, that he was moving his lips silently before every sentence, as though he were mumbling a prayer.

Her satisfaction turned to respect when the car stopped outside Ganesh’s house and she saw the GANESH, Mystic sign on the mango tree and the book-display in the shed.

‘Is books you selling on the side, or what?’ the taxi-driver asked.

The woman looked sideways at him and nodded towards the sign. She began to say something when the taxi-driver, for no apparent reason, blew his horn and drowned her words.

Leela came running out, but with a glance Ganesh told her to keep out of the way. To the woman he said, ‘Come into the study.’

The word had the desired effect.

‘But take off your shoes here in the verandah first.’

Respect turned to awe. And when the woman brushed through the Nottingham lace curtains into the study and saw all the books, she looked abject.

‘My only vice,’ Ganesh said.

The woman just stared.

‘I don’t smoke. I don’t drink.’

She sat awkwardly on a blanket on the floor. ‘Is a matter of life and death, mister, so whatever I say you mustn’t laugh.’

Ganesh looked straight at her. ‘I never laugh. I listen.’

‘Is about my son. A cloud following him.’

Ganesh didn’t laugh. ‘What sort of cloud?’

‘A black cloud. And every day is getting nearer. The cloud even talking to the boy now. The day the cloud reach him the boy go dead. I try everything. The real doctors and them want to put the boy in the mad-house in St Ann’s, but you know that once they put anybody there they does get mad for true. So what I do? I take him to the priest. The priest say the boy possess, and paying for his sins. It have a long time now I see your advertisement, but I didn’t know what you could do.’

As she spoke Ganesh scribbled in one of his note-books. He had written, Black boy under a black cloud; and he had drawn a great black cloud. ‘You mustn’t worry. Lots of people see clouds. How long your son has been seeing the cloud?’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, the whole bacchanal begin not long after his brother dead.’