V. Naipaul - The Mystic Masseur

Beharry heard him shouting. ‘Look, girl, I ain’t care how tired you is, you hear. You never too tired to count money. What I want is the facts. You and your father is proper traders. Buy, sell, make money, money.’

Beharry listened, pleased.

‘Wasn’t your father idea. He too stupid. Was your idea, not so? You and your father ain’t care what sort of name I have in this place once you making your money. And, eh, eh, is my money. A year back, how much motor car coming to Fuente Grove in a whole month? One, two. Today? Fifty, sometimes a hundred. Who is the cause of that? Me or your father?’

Beharry heard Leela crying. Then he heard a slap. The crying stopped. He heard Ganesh walking heavily back to the verandah.

‘You is a good good friend, Beharry. I go see about this right away.’

Before midday he had eaten, dressed — not in English clothes but in his normal Hindu attire — and was on his way to Fourways in a taxi. It was one of Ramlogan’s. The driver, a fat little man bumping cheerfully up and down in his seat, handled the steering-wheel almost as if he loved it. When he wasn’t talking to Ganesh he sang a Hindi song, which apparently had only four words. Let us praise God .

He explained, ‘Is like this, pundit. We five taxi-boys does remain in Princes Town or San Fernando, and we does tell people that if they going to see you they must only use these taxis, because you say so. Is what Mr Ramlogan say. But even I say is better for them, seeing how you bless the taxi yourself.’

He sang Let us praise God a few times. ‘What you think of your pictures, sahib?’

‘Pictures?’

The driver sang the song again. ‘Picture on the door, hanging by where other taxi does have the tariff.’

It was a framed picture, issued by the Gita Press of Gorakhpur in India, of the goddess Lakshmi standing, as usual, on her lotus. There was no tariff.

‘Is a too nice idea, sahib. Mr Ramlogan say was your own idea, and all five of we taxi-boys take we old hat off to you, sahib.’ He became earnest. ‘It does make a man feel good, sahib, driving a car with a holy picture inside it, especially when said picture bless by you. And the people like it too, man.’

‘But what about the other taxi-drivers and them?’

‘Ah, sahib. Is we biggest problem. How to keep the son-of-a-bitches away? You have to be very very careful with them. Pappa, they could lie too, you know. Eh, Sookhoo find one man the other day who did sticking up he own holy picture.’

‘What Sookhoo do?’

The driver laughed and sang. ‘Sookhoo smart, sahib. He drive the man car on the grass one day and take up the crank and he go over and tell him cool cool that if he don’t stop playing the fool, you was going to make the car bewitch.’

Ganesh cleared his throat.

‘Sookhoo is like that, sahib. But listen to the upshot. Two days good ain’t pass before the man car get in an accident. A bad accident too.’

The driver began to sing again.

Ramlogan kept his shop open all week. The laws forbade him to sell groceries on Sunday; but there was no regulation against the selling of cakes, aerated water, or cigarettes on that day.

He was sitting on his stool behind the counter, doing nothing at all, just staring out into the road, when the taxi pulled up and Ganesh stepped out. Ramlogan held out his arms across the counter and began to cry. ‘Ah, sahib, sahib, you forgive a old, old man. I didn’t mean to drive you away that day, sahib. All the time since that day I only thinking and saying, “Ramlogan, what you do your cha’acter? Ramlogan, oh Ramlogan, what you go and do your sensa values?” Night and day, sahib, I praying for you to forgive me.’

Ganesh tossed the tasselled end of his green scarf over his shoulder. ‘You looking well, Ramlogan. You getting fat, man.’

Ramlogan wiped his tears away. ‘Is just wind, sahib.’ He blew his nose. ‘Just wind.’ He had grown fatter and greyer, oilier and dingier. ‘Ah, sit down, sahib. Don’t bother about me. I is all right. You remember, sahib, how when you was a little boy you use to come in Ramlogan shop and sit down right there and talk to the old man? You was a fust-class talker, sahib. It use to flubbergast me, sitting down behind the counter here and hearing you giving off ideas. But now’ — Ramlogan waved his hands around the shop and fresh tears came to his eyes — ‘everybody gone and leave me. Me one. Soomintra don’t even want to come by me now.’

‘Is not about Soomintra I come to talk —’

‘Ah, sahib. I know you just come to comfort a old man left to live by hisself. Soomintra say I too old-fashion. And Leela, she always by you. Why you don’t sit down, sahib? It ain’t dirty. Is just how it does look.’

Ganesh didn’t sit down. ‘Ramlogan, I come to buy over your taxis.’

Ramlogan stopped crying and got off his stool. ‘Taxi, sahib? But what you want with taxi?’ He laughed. ‘A big, educated man like you.’

‘Eight hundred dollars apiece.’

‘Ah, sahib, I know is help you want to help me out. Especially these days when taxi ain’t making any money at all. Is not the sort of job you, a famous mystic, want. I buy the taxi and them, sahib, only because when you getting old and lonely it must have something for you to do. You remember this glass case, sahib?’

It looked so much part of the shop now that Ganesh hadn’t noticed it. The woodwork was grimy, the glass in many places patched and repatched with brown paper and, in one instance, with part of the cover of The Illustrated London News . The short legs stood in four salmon tins filled with water, to keep out ants. It required memory rather than imagination to believe the glass case was once new and spotless.

‘I glad I do my little piece to help modernize Fourways, but nobody ain’t appreciate me, sahib. Nobody.’

Ganesh, for the moment forgetting his mission, looked at the newspaper-cutting and Leela’s notice. The cutting was so brown it looked scorched. Leela’s notice had faded and was almost unreadable.

‘Is what life is, sahib.’ Ramlogan followed Ganesh’s gaze. ‘Years does pass. People does born. People does married. People does dead. Is enough to make anybody a proper philosopher, sahib.’

‘Philosophy is my job. Today is Sunday —’

Ramlogan shrugged. ‘You ain’t really want the taxis, sahib.’

‘It go surprise you how much time I have on my hand these days. Let we say we make a bargain right now, eh?’

Ramlogan became very sad. ‘Sahib, why for you want to make me a pauper? Why for you want to make me sad and miserable in my old, old age? Why for you prosecuting a old illiterate man who don’t know A from B?’

Ganesh frowned.

‘Sahib, wasn’t a trick I was working back on you.’

‘Working back ? Trick? What trick you have to work back? Anybody passing in the road this hot Sunday afternoon and hearing you talk like this go swear I work some trick on you.’

Ramlogan placed the palms of his hands on the counter. ‘Sahib, you know you getting me vex now. I ain’t like other people, you know. I know you is a mystic, but don’t provoke me, sahib. When I get vex, I don’t know what I could do.’

Ganesh waited.

‘If you wasn’t my son-in-law, you know I take up your little tail and fling it through that door?’

‘Ramlogan, ain’t you does ever get a little tired of being smart smart all the time, even in your old age?’

Ramlogan thumped the counter. ‘When at your wedding you rob me, we didn’t get any of this damn mystical stupidness. Look, move out of here before I lose my temper. And too besides, is Government road and anybody can run taxi to Fuente Grove. Ganesh, you just try and do anything and I put you in the papers, you hear.’