The Mystic Masseur (10 page)

Ganesh had never liked copy-books, since his school days; but the idea of note-books interested him. So he made another trip to San Fernando and explored the stationery department of one of the big stores in the High Street. It was a revelation. He had never before realized that paper could be so beautiful, that there were so many kinds of paper, so many colours, so many glorious smells. He stood still, marvelling and reverent, until he heard a woman’s voice.

‘Mister.’

He turned to see a fat woman, traces of white powder on her black face, wearing a dress of a most splendidly floriferous design.

‘Mister. How you selling the’ – she fished out a piece of paper from her purse and read from it – ‘Nelson
Introductory
reading-book?’

‘Me?’ Ganesh said in surprise. ‘I ain’t a seller here.’

She began to laugh all over the place. ‘Kee! Kee! Kyah! I did take you for the clurkist!’

And she went in search of the clerk, laughing and shaking and bending forward to hide her laughter.

Left alone, Garesh began taking surreptitious sniffs at the paper, and, closing his eyes, passed his hands over many papers, the better to savour their texture.

‘What you think you feeling?’

It was a boy, wearing a white shirt, a tie, unmistakable badge of authority, and blue serge shorts.

‘What you think you feeling? Yam or cassava in the market?’

Ganesh in a panic bought a ream of light blue paper.

Now, with the desire to write on his paper strong within him, he decided to have another look at Basdeo’s printing shop. He went to the narrow, sloping street and was surprised to find that the building he knew had been replaced by a new one, all glass and concrete. There was a new sign:
ELITE ELECTRIC PRINTERY;
and a slogan:
When Better Printing is Printed We Will Print It.
He heard the clatter of machinery and pressed his face against a glass window to look in. A man was sitting at a machine that looked like a huge typewriter. It was Basdeo, long-trousered, moustached, adult. There could be no doubt that he had risen in the world.

‘Got to write my book,’ Ganesh said aloud.
‘Got
to.’

There were diversions, however. Presently he developed a passion for making note-books. When Leela complained he said, ‘Just making them now and putting them away. You never know when they go be useful.’ And he became a connoisseur of paper-smells. He told Beharry, ‘You know, I could just smell a book and tell how old it is.’ He always held that the book with the best smell was the Harrap’s French and English dictionary, a book he had bought, as he told Beharry, simply for the sake of its smell. But paper-smelling was only part of his new passion; and when he bribed a policeman at Princes Town to steal a stapling-machine from the Court House, his joy was complete.

In the beginning, filling the note-books was frankly a problem. At this time Ganesh was reading four, sometimes five, books a week; and as he read he scored a line, a sentence, or even an entire paragraph, in preparation for his Sunday. This had become for him a day of ritual and perfect joy. He got up early, bathed, did his
puja
, ate; then, while it was still cool, he went to Beharry’s. He and Beharry read the newspaper and talked, until Suruj Mooma pushed an angry head through the shop door and said, ‘Suruj Poopa, your mouth always open. If it ain’t eating, is talking. Well, talk done now. Is time to eat.’

Ganesh would take the hint and leave.

The least pleasant part of Sunday was that walk back to his own house. The sun was wicked and the lumps of crude asphalt on the road were soft and hot underfoot. Ganesh played with the idea of covering all Trinidad with a huge canvas canopy to keep out the sun and to collect the water when it rained. This thought occupied him until he got home. Then he ate, bathed again, put on his good Hindu clothes, dhoti, vest, and
koortah
, and attended to his note-books.

He brought out the whole pile from a drawer in the bedroom bureau and copied out the passages he had marked during the week. He had evolved a system of note-taking. It had appeared simple enough in the beginning – white paper for notes on Hinduism, light blue for religion in general, grey for history, and so on – but as time went on the system became hard to maintain and he had allowed it to lapse.

He never used any note-book to the end. In each he began with the best of intentions, writing in a fine, sloping hand, but by the time he had reached the third or fifth page he lost interest in the note-book, the handwriting became a hasty, tired squiggle, and the note-book was abandoned.

Leela complained about the waste. ‘You go make we all paupers. Just as Beharry making Suruj Mooma a pauper.’

‘Girl, what you know about these things? Is not a shop-sign I copying out here, you know. Is copying right enough, but it have a lot of thinking I doing at the same time.’

‘I getting too tired hearing you talking, talking. You say you come here to write your precious books. You say you come here to massage people. How much people you massage? How much book you write? How much money you make?’

The questions were rhetorical and all Ganesh could say was: ‘You see! You getting to be just like your father, talking like a lawyer.’

Then, in the course of a week’s reading, he came upon the perfect reply. He made a note of it there and then, and the next time Leela complained he said, ‘Look, shut up and listen.’

He hunted about among his books and note-books until he got a pea-green note-book marked
Literature
.

‘Just let me sit down, man, before you start reading.’

‘And when you listen don’t fall asleep. Is one of your nasty habits, you know, Leela.’

‘Can’t help it man. The moment you start reading to me you does make me feel sleepy. I know some people does feel sleepy the moment they see a bed.’

‘They is people with clean mind. But listen, girl. A
man may turn over half a library to make one book
. It ain’t me who make that up, you know.’

‘How I know you ain’t fooling me, just as how you did fool Pa?’

‘But why for I go want to fool you, girl?’

‘I ain’t the stupid little girl you did married, you know.’

And when he brought the book and revealed the quotation on the printed page, Leela fell silent in pure wonder. For however much she complained and however much she reviled him, she never ceased to marvel at this husband of hers who read pages of print, chapters of print, why, whole big books; this husband who, awake in bed at nights, spoke, as though it were nothing, of one day writing a book of his own and having it
printed
!

But it was hard for her when she went to her father’s, as she did on most of the more important holidays. Ramlogan had long ago come to regard Ganesh as a total loss and a crook besides. And then there was Soomintra to be faced. Soomintra had married a hardware merchant in San Fernando and she was rich. More than that, she looked rich. She was having child after child, and growing plump, matronly, and important. She had a son whom she had called Jawaharlal, after the Indian leader; and her daughter was called Sarojini, after the Indian poetess.

‘The third one, the one coming, if he is a boy, I go call him Motilal; if she is a girl I go call she Kamala.’

Admiration for the Nehru family couldn’t go much farther.

More and more Soomintra and her children looked out of place in Fourways. Ramlogan himself grew dingier and the shop grew dingier with him. Left alone, he seemed to have lost interest in housekeeping. The oilcloth on the table in the back room was worn, crinkled, and cut about; the flour sack hammock had become brown, the Chinese calendars fly-blown. Soomintra’s children wore clothes of increasing cost and fussiness, and they made more noise; but when they were about Ramlogan had time for no one else. He petted them and pampered them, but they soon made it clear that they considered his attempts at pampering elementary. They wanted more than a sugar-coated sweet from one of the jars in the shop. So Ramlogan gave them lollipops. Soomintra got plumper and looked richer, and it was a strain for Leela not to pay too much attention when Soomintra crooked her right arm and jangled her gold bracelets or when, with the licence of wealth, she complained she was tired and needed a holiday.

‘The third one come,’ Soomintra said at Christmas. ‘I wanted to write and tell you, but you know how it hard.’

‘Yes, I know how it hard.’

‘Was a girl, and I call she Kamala, like I did say. Eh, girl, but I forgetting. How your husband? I ain’t see any of the books he writing. But then, you see, I isn’t a big reader.’

‘He ain’t finish the book yet.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is a big big book.’

Soomintra jangled her gold bracelets and at the same time coughed, hawked, but didn’t spit – another mannerism of wealth, Leela recognized. ‘Jawaharlal father start reading the other day too. He always say that if he had the time he would do some writing, but with all the coming and going in the shop he ain’t really have the time, poor man. I don’t suppose Ganesh so busy, eh?’

‘You go be surprise how much people does come for massage. If you hear anybody wanting a massage you must tell them about him. Fuente Grove not so hard to reach, you know.’

‘Child, you know I go do anything at all to help you out. But you go be surprise the number of people it have these days who going around calling theyself massagers. Is people like that who taking the work from really good people like Ganesh. But the rest of these little boys who taking up massaging, I feel they is only a pack of good-for-nothing idlers.’

Kamala, in the bedroom, began to cry; and little Jawaharlal, wearing a brand-new sailor suit, came and lisped, ‘Ma, Kamala wet sheself.’

‘Children!’ Soomintra exclaimed, thumping out of the room. ‘Leela girl, you ain’t know how lucky you is, not having any.’

Ramlogan came in from the shop with Sarojini on his hip. She was partly sucking a lemon lollipop, partly investigating its stickiness with her fingers.

‘I been listening,’ Ramlogan said. ‘Soomintra don’t mean anything bad. She just feeling a little rich and she got to show off a little.’

‘But he
going
to write the book, Pa. He tell me so heself. He reading and writing all the time. One day he go show all of all you.’

‘Yes, I know he going to write the book.’ Sarojini was dragging the lollipop over Leela’s uncovered head, and Ramlogan was making unsuccessful efforts to stop her. ‘But stop crying. Soomintra coming back.’

‘Ah, Leela! Sarojini take a liking to you. First person she take a liking to, just like that. Ah, you mischeevyus little girl, why for you playing with your auntie hair like that?’

Ramlogan surrendered Sarojini.

‘Looking prettish girlish,’ Soomintra said, ‘wif prettish namish. We having a famous family, you know, Leela. This little girl name after a woman who does write nice nice poetry and again it have your husband writing a big big book.’

Ramlogan said, ‘No, when you think about it, I think we is a good family. Once we keep cha’acter and sensa values, is all right. Look at me. Supposing people stop liking me and stop coming to my shop. That harm me? That change my –’

‘All right, Pa, but take it easy,’ Soomintra interrupted. ‘You go wake up Kamala again if you walk up and down like that and talk so loud.’

‘But still, man, the truth is the truth. It does make a man feel good to have all his family around him, and seeing them happy. I say that every family must have a radical in it, and I proud that we have Ganesh.’

‘So is that what Soomintra saying, eh?’ Ganesh was trying to be calm. ‘What else you expect? Money is all she and she father does think about. She don’t care about books and things. Is people like that did laugh at Mr Stewart, you know. And they call theyself Hindus! Now, if I was in India, I woulda have people coming from all over the place, some bringing me food, some bringing me clothes. But in Trinidad – bah!’

‘But, man, we got to think about money now. The time coming when we won’t have a cent remaining.’

‘Look, Leela. Look at this thing in a practical way. You want food? You have a little garden in the back. You want milk? You have a cow. You want shelter? You have a house. What more you want? Chut! You making me talk like your father now.’