V. Naipaul: The Mystic Masseur

‘It look good and I sorry Miller sick,’ Ganesh said.

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and beat a ruler on the green blotter in front of him. ‘What is the purpose of the school?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Form — ’ Ganesh began.

‘Not — ’ the headmaster encouraged.

‘Inform.’

‘You quick, Mr Ramsumair. You is a man after my own heart. You and me going to get on good good.’

Ganesh was given Miller’s class, the Remove. It was a sort of rest-station for the mentally maimed. Boys remained there uninformed for years and years, and some didn’t even want to leave. Ganesh tried all the things he had been taught at the Training College, but the boys didn’t play fair.

‘I can’t teach them nothing at all,’ he complained to the headmaster. ‘You teach them Theorem One this week and next week they forget it.’

‘Look, Mr Ramsumair. I like you, but I must be firm. Quick, what is the purpose of the school?’

‘Form not inform.’

Ganesh gave up trying to teach the boys anything, and was happy enough to note a week-to-week improvement in his Record Book. According to that book, the Remove advanced from Theorem One to Theorem Two in successive weeks, and then moved on unexhausted to Theorem Three.

Having much time on his hands, Ganesh was able to observe Leep next door. Leep had been at the Training College with him, and Leep was still keen. He was nearly always at the blackboard, writing, erasing, constantly informing, except for the frequent occasions when he rushed off to flog some boy and disappeared behind the celotex screen which separated his class from Ganesh’s.

On the Friday before Miller was due back at the school (he had had a fractured pelvis), the headmaster called Ganesh and said, ‘Leep sick.’

‘What happen?’

‘He just say he sick and he can’t come on Monday.’

Ganesh leaned forward.

‘Now don’t quote me,’ the headmaster said. ‘Don’t quote me at all. But this is how I look at it. If you leave the boys alone, they leave you alone. They is good boys, but the parents — God! So when Miller come back, you have to take Leep class.’

Ganesh agreed; but he took Leep’s class for only one morning.

Miller was very angry with Ganesh when he returned, and at the recess on Monday morning went to complain to the headmaster. Ganesh was summoned.

‘I leave a good good class,’ Miller said. ‘The boys was going on all right. Eh, eh, I turn my back for a week — well, two three months — and when I turn round again, what I see? The boys and them ain’t learn nothing new and they even forget what I spend so much time trying to teach them. This teaching is a art, but it have all sort of people who think they could come up from the cane-field and start teaching in Port of Spain.’

Ganesh, suddenly angry for the first time in his life, said, ‘Man, go to hell, man!’

And left the school for good.

He went for a walk along the wharves. It was early afternoon and the gulls mewed amid the masts of sloops and schooners. Far out, he saw the ocean liners at anchor. He allowed the idea of travel to enter his mind and just as easily allowed it to go out again. He spent the rest of the afternoon in a cinema, but this was torture. He especially resented the credit titles. He thought, ‘All these people with their name in big print on the screen have their bread butter, you hear. Even those in little little print. They not like me.’

He needed all Mrs Cooper’s solace when he went back to Dundonald Street.

‘I can’t take rudeness like that,’ he told her.

‘You a little bit like your father, you know. But you mustn’t worry, boy. I can feel your aura. You have a powerhouse for a aura, man. But still, you was wrong throwing up a good work like that. It wasn’t as if they was working you hard.’

At dinner she said, ‘You can’t go and ask your headmaster again.’

‘No,’ he agreed quickly.

‘I been thinking. I have a cousin working in the Licensing Office. He could get you a job there, I think. You could drive motor car?’

‘I can’t even drive donkey-cart, Mrs Cooper.’

‘It don’t matter. He could always get a licence for you, and then you ain’t have to do much driving. You just have to test other drivers, and if you anything like my cousin, you could make a lot of money giving out licence to all sort of fool with money.’

She thought again. ‘And, yes. It have a man I know does work at Cable and Wireless. Eh, but my brain coming like a sieve these days. It have a telegram here for you, come this afternoon.’

She went to the sideboard and pulled an envelope from under a vase stuffed with artificial flowers.

Ganesh read the telegram and passed it to her.

‘What damn fool send this?’ she said. ‘It enough to make anybody dead of heart failure. Bad news come home now . Who is this Ramlogan who sign it?’

‘Never hear about him,’ Ganesh said.

‘What you think it is?’

‘Oh, you know …’

‘But ain’t that strange?’ Mrs Cooper interrupted. ‘Just last night I was dreaming about a dead. Yes, it really strange.’

ALTHOUGH IT WAS nearly half past eleven when his taxi got to Fourways that night, the village was alive and Ganesh knew that Mrs Cooper was right. Someone had died. He sensed the excitement and recognized all the signs. Lights were on in most of the houses and huts, there was much activity on the road, and his ears caught the faint hum, as of distant revelry. It wasn’t long before he realized that it was his father who had died. Fourways seemed to be waiting for the taxi and the moment people saw Ganesh sitting in the back they began to wail.

The house itself was chaos. He had hardly opened the taxi doors when scores of people he didn’t know scrambled towards him with outstretched arms, bawling; and led, almost carried, him into the house which was full of even more mourners he didn’t know or remember.

He could hear the taxi-driver saying over and over, ‘Man, I guess long time what the case was. We stepping on the gas all the way from Port of Spain, driving like madness all in the dark. And the boy so mash up inside he not even crying.’

A fat, sobbing man embraced Ganesh and said, ‘You get my telegram? Fust telegram I send. I is Ramlogan. You don’t know me but I know your father. Just yesterday, just yesterday’ — Ramlogan broke down and wept afresh — ‘just yesterday I meet him and I say, “Baba” — I does always call him that — “Baba,” I say, “come inside and have something to eat.” I take over Dookhie shop now, you know. Yes, Dookhie dead nearly seven months now and I take over the shop.’

Ramlogan’s eyes were red and small with weeping. ‘ “Baba,” I say, “come inside and have something to eat.” And you know what he say?’

A woman put her arms around Ganesh and asked, ‘What he say?’

‘You want to know what he say?’ Ramlogan embraced the woman. ‘He say, “No, Ramlogan. I don’t want to eat today.” ’

He could hardly finish the sentence.

The woman removed her hands from Ganesh and put them on her head. She shrieked, twice, then dropped into a wail: ‘ “No, Ramlogan, I don’t want to eat today.” ’

Ramlogan wiped his eyes with a thick hairy finger. ‘Today,’ he sobbed, holding out both hands towards the bedroom, ‘today he can’t eat at all.’

The woman shrieked again. ‘Today he can’t eat at all.’

In her distress she tore the veil off her face and Ganesh recognized an aunt. He put his hand on her shoulder.

‘You think I could see Pa?’ he asked.

‘Go and see your Pa, before he go for good,’ Ramlogan said, the tears running down his fat cheeks to his unshaved chin. ‘We wash the body and dress it and everything already.’