V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

‘Girl, this is the most important case anybody ever handle in the world. I know that that boy going to dead tomorrow unless I do something for him. It give you a funny feeling, you know. Is like watching a theatre show and then finding out afterwards that they was really killing people on the stage.’

‘I was thinking, man. I didn’t like the taxi-driver. He come here, he see all the books, he never mention them once. He ask for water and for this and that and he ain’t even say, “Thank you.” And he making a pile of money bringing these poor people here every day.’

‘Girl, but why you have to be like your father for? Why you have to try to take my mind off what I doing? You want me to start driving taxi now?’

‘I was just thinking.’

When he had washed his hands after eating, Ganesh said, ‘Leela, take out my clothes — the English clothes.’

‘Where you going?’

‘It have a man I want to see in the Oilfields.’

‘What for, man?’

‘ Tonerre! But you full of questions today. You and Beharry is one.’

She asked no more questions and did as she was told. Ganesh changed from dhoti and koortah to trousers and shirt. Before he left he said, ‘You know, sometimes I glad I get a college education.’

He came back radiant later in the afternoon and immediately began clearing out the bedroom. He paid no attention to Leela’s objections. He placed the bed in the drawing-room, the study; and took the table from the study into the bedroom. He turned the table over on its top and arranged a three-sided screen round the legs. He made Leela hang a heavy curtain over the window, and he went over the wooden walls systematically, blocking up every chink and cranny that let in light. He rearranged the pictures and quotations, giving the goddess Lakshmi pride of place just above the screened and upturned table. Below the goddess he placed a candle-bracket.

‘It look frightening,’ Leela said.

He walked about the darkened room, rubbing his hands, and humming a song from a Hindi film. ‘It don’t matter if we have to sleep in the study.’

Then they agreed on arrangements for the next day.

All that night camphor and incense burned in the bedroom and in the morning Ganesh, rising early, went to see how the room smelled.

Leela was still asleep. He shook her by the shoulder. ‘It look all right and it smell all right, girl. Get up and milk the cow. I hear the calf bawling.’

He bathed while Leela milked the cow and cleaned out the cow-pen; did his puja while Leela made tea and roti ; and when Leela started to clean the house, he went for a walk. The sun was not yet hot, the leaves of razor-grass still looked frosted with the dew, and the two or three dusty hibiscus shrubs in the village carried fresh pink flowers that were to quail before midday. ‘This is the big day,’ Ganesh said aloud, and prayed again for success.

Shortly after twelve the boy, his mother and father arrived, in the same taxi as before. Ganesh, dressed once more in his Hindu garments, welcomed them in Hindi, and Leela interpreted, as arranged. They took off their shoes in the verandah and Ganesh led them all to the darkened bedroom, aromatic with camphor and incense, and lit only by the candle below the picture of Lakshmi on her lotus. Other pictures were barely visible in the semi-darkness: a stabbed and bleeding heart, a putative likeness of Christ, two or three crosses, and other designs of dubious significance.

Ganesh seated his clients before the screened table, then he himself sat down out of view behind the screen. Leela, her long black hair undone, sat in front of the table and faced the boy and his parents. In the dark room it was hard to see more than the white shirts of the boy and his father.

Ganesh began to chant in Hindi.

Leela asked the boy, ‘He ask whether you believe in him.’

The boy nodded, without conviction.

Leela said to Ganesh in English, ‘I don’t think he really believe in you.’ And she said it in Hindi afterwards.

Ganesh spoke in Hindi again.

Leela said to the boy, ‘He say you must believe.’

Ganesh chanted.

‘He say you must believe, if only for two minutes, because if you don’t believe in him completely, he will dead too.’

The boy screamed in the darkness. The candle burned steadily. ‘I believe in him, I believe in him.’

Ganesh was still chanting.

‘I believe in him. I don’t want him to dead too.’

‘He say he go be strong enough to kill the cloud only if you believe in him. He want all the strength you could give him.’

The boy hung his head. ‘I don’t doubt him.’

Leela said, ‘He change the cloud. It not following you now. It chasing him. If you don’t believe, the cloud will kill him and then it will kill you and then me and then your mother and then your father.’

The boy’s mother shouted, ‘Hector go believe! Hector go believe!’

Leela said, ‘You must believe, you must believe.’

Ganesh suddenly stopped chanting and the room was shocked by the silence. He rose from behind his screen and, chanting once more, went and passed his hands in curious ways over Hector’s face, head, and chest.

Leela still said, ‘You must believe. You beginning to believe. You giving him your strength now. He getting your strength. You beginning to believe, he getting your strength, and the cloud getting frighten. The cloud still coming, but it getting frighten. As it coming it getting frighten.’

Ganesh went back behind the screen.

Leela said, ‘The cloud coming.’

Hector said, ‘I believe in him now.’

‘It coming closer. He drawing it now. It not in the room yet, but it coming. It can’t resist him.’

Ganesh’s chants were becoming more frenzied.

Leela said, ‘The fight beginning between them. It starting now. Oh, God! He get the cloud. It not after you. It after him. God! The cloud dying,’ Leela screamed, and as she screamed there seemed to be a muffled explosion, and Hector said, ‘Oh God, I see it leaving me. I can feel it leaving me.’

The mother said, ‘Look at the ceiling. At the ceiling. I see the cloud. Oh, Hector, Hector. It ain’t a cloud at all. Is the devil.’

Hector’s father said, ‘And I see forty little devils with him.’

‘Oh God,’ Hector said. ‘See how they kill the cloud. Look how it breaking up, Ma. You see it now?’

‘Yes, son. I see it. It getting finer and finer. It dead.’

‘You see it, Pa.’

‘Yes, Hector, I see it.’

And mother and son began to cry their relief, while Ganesh still chanted, and Leela collapsed on the floor.

Hector was crying, ‘Ma, it gone now. It really gone.’

Ganesh stopped chanting. He got up and led them to the room outside. The air was fresher and the light seemed dazzling. It was like stepping into a new world.

‘Mr Ganesh,’ Hector’s father said. ‘I don’t know what we could do to thank you.’

‘Do just what you want. If you want to reward me, I don’t mind, because I have to make a living. But I don’t want you to strain yourself.’

Hector’s mother said, ‘But you save a whole life.’

‘It is my duty. If you want to send me anything, send it. But don’t go around telling all sorts of people about me. You can’t take on too much of this sort of work. A case like this does tire me out for a whole week sometimes.’

‘I know how it is,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. We go send you a hundred dollars as soon as we get home. Is what you deserve.’

Ganesh hurried them away.

When he came back to the little room the window was open and Leela was taking down the curtains.

‘You ain’t know what you doing, girl,’ he shouted. ‘You losing the smell. Stop it, man. Is only the beginning. In no time at all, mark my words, this place go be full of people from all over Trinidad.’