The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (19 page)

Chittaranjan was leaning on the wall of his veranda.

Ramlogan shouted, ‘Hello, brothers!’

Chittaranjan waved and widened his smile. ‘You all right, brothers?’

‘Yes, brothers. She bring the breadfruit and the zaboca for me. Ripe zaboca too, brothers.’

‘They did look ripe to me too.’

Ramlogan was near the wire fence. He hesitated.

‘Is all right, brothers,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘Is much your fence as mine.’

‘Nice fence, brothers.’

Chittaranjan’s two workmen were so astonished they stopped working and looked on, sitting flat on the concrete terrace under the awning, the bracelets which they were fashioning held between their toes.

Ramlogan spoke sharply to them: ‘What the hell happen to all-you? The goldsmith paying all-you just to meddle in other people business?’

They hurriedly began tapping away at their bracelets.

From the veranda Chittaranjan said, ‘Let them wait until I come down.’ He clattered down the front steps. ‘Is this modern age. Everybody want something for nothing. I work for every penny I have, and now you have these people complaining that they is poor and behaving as though other people depriving them.’

Ramlogan, grasping the fence firmly, agreed. ‘The march of time, brothers. As the saying goes. Everybody equal. People who ain’t got brain to work and those who use their brain to work. Everybody equal.’

Ramlogan invited Chittaranjan over to the shop and seated him on an empty rum crate in front of the counter. He gave him a glass of grapefruit juice because he knew Chittaranjan didn’t drink hard liquor.

They talked of the degeneracy of the modern age; they agreed that democracy was a stupid thing; then they came to the elections and to Baksh.

Chittaranjan, sipping his grapefruit juice without great relish—he still had a low opinion of Ramlogan’s cleanliness—said: ‘This democracy just make for people like Baksh. Fact, I say it just make for Negro and Muslim. They is two people who never like to make anything for theyself, and the moment
you
make something, they start begging. And if you ain’t give them, they vex.’

Ramlogan, thinking of Haq, assented with conviction.

‘And if you give them,’ Chittaranjan went on, ‘they is ungrateful.’

‘As the saying goes, however much you wash a pig, you can’t make it a cow.
As
the saying goes.’

‘Look at Baksh. Everybody else in Elvira just asking for one little piece of help before they vote for any particular body. Baksh is the only man who want three.’

Ramlogan scratched his head. ‘Three bribe, brothers?’

‘Three. Baksh done calculate everything ready.’

‘The old people was old-fashion, but they was right about a lot of things. My father, when he was deading, tell me never to trust a Muslim.’

‘Muslim, Negro. You can’t trust none of them.’

They told tales of the ingratitude and treachery of these races. When Chittaranjan left, he and Ramlogan were good friends.

After that, every morning when Ramlogan got up he went out into his yard and called, ‘How you is, brothers?’ And Chittaranjan came to his veranda and said, ‘All right, brothers. And how
you
is?’

Soon they started calling each other ‘bruds’.

*

Then Ramlogan had an unfortunate idea. He wanted among other things to make some gesture that would seal his friendship with Chittaranjan. One day he announced that he was going to give a case of whisky to the committee of the winning candidate. He didn’t make it more specific than that because he wished to preserve his impartiality, but he had no doubt that Harbans would win. Chittaranjan understood and was grateful. And the rest of Elvira was astonished by this act of the laxest generosity from someone who was not even a candidate. Which was one of Ramlogan’s subsidiary intentions.

He talked a lot about his offer. This was to have disastrous consequences.

*

It was not until the week before nomination day that Baksh showed his hand. Two indirect messages came from him.

First, Foam announced: ‘Pa say he thinking of going up for the elections hisself.’

‘Damn traitor!’ Harbans said, and added calmly, ‘But he ain’t got a chance. He only control the thousand Muslim votes.’

‘Is that he say hisself,’ Foam said. ‘He say is the only thing that keeping him back.’

And then Ramlogan hurried across to Chittaranjan one lunch-time and said in a whisper, although there was no need to whisper: ‘Bruds, Baksh was in the shop today. He ask me whether I would vote for him if he went up for the elections.’

Chittaranjan said, ‘He ask you to tell me?’

Ramlogan said in a softer whisper, ‘He particularly ask me
not
to tell you, bruds.’

‘But he ask you about three four times not to tell me?’

Ramlogan looked surprised at Chittaranjan’s sagacity. ‘He did
keep
on asking me not to tell you. Is the reason
why
I come over to tell you.’

Chittaranjan said simply, ‘Well, Baksh just got to get bribe number two now, that is all.’

And when Harbans came to Elvira Chittaranjan told him, ‘Mr Harbans, you could take it from Chittaranjan that you win the elections.’

Harbans preferred not to show any excitement.

Chittaranjan said, ‘Baksh send a message.’

‘Another message again?’

‘He want to go up.’

‘Ooh.’

‘You have to go and see him and make it appear that you begging him to go up for the elections hisself. Once the Muslims don’t vote for Preacher, we all right.’

Harbans smiled and wagged a finger at Chittaranjan. ‘Ooh, but you is a smart man, Goldsmith. Ooh, ooh. Split the opposition vote, eh?’

Chittaranjan nodded. ‘But when you go to see him, don’t just dip your hand in your pocket. Don’t do nothing until you see everything in black and white.’

Harbans went to see Baksh.

He was sitting at his sewing-machine near the door, to get the light, and working with honest concentration.

Harbans cooed. ‘Aah, Baksh. How you is? I hear that you thinking of going up for this election stupidness yourself.’

Baksh bit off a piece of loose thread from the shirt he was making. Thread between his teeth, he gave a dry laugh. ‘Ho! Me? Me go up for election, a poor poor man like me? Whoever give you that message give it to you wrong. I ain’t got no money to go up for no election. Election ain’t make for poor people like me.’

Harbans cooed again. ‘Still, the fact that you was even thinking of going up show, Baksh, that you is a ambitious man. I like people with ambition.’

‘Is very nice of you to say those few kind words, Mr Harbans. But the fact is, and as the saying goes, I just ain’t got the money. Two hundred and fifty dollars deposit alone. Posters. Canvassers. Agents. Is a lot of money, Mr Harbans.’

‘Ooh, not more than five hundred dollars.’ Harbans paused. ‘For a fust try.’

‘Don’t forget the two hundred and fifty dollars deposit.’

‘No, man. Two hundred and fifty and five hundred. All right?’

The machine hummed again. Baksh sewed thoughtfully, shaking his head. ‘Elections is a lot more expensive than that, Mr Harbans. You know that yourself.’ He took up the shirt and bit off another piece of thread. ‘I would say three thousand dollars, plus the deposit money.’

Harbans laughed nervously and almost put his hand on Baksh’s bowed shoulder. ‘Ooh, ooh, Baksh. You making joke, man. Three thousand for your fust little try? A thousand.’

‘Two thousand five hundred, plus the deposit money.’

‘Two five. Ooh, Baksh. Come, man. One five.’

Baksh was sewing again. ‘In the old days, as you know, Mr Harbans, before the war, you coulda take up six cents and go in a shop and buy a bread and some butter and a tin of sardine, and even a pack of cigarettes into the bargain. Today all you could buy with six cents is a Coca-Cola. I is a man with a big family. I can’t fight elections with one thousand five hundred dollars.’

‘You don’t
want
more than two thousand dollars, Baksh,’ Harbans said, the coo gone from his voice. ‘And if you ain’t careful you damn well have to find the deposit money out of that same two thousand.’ He cooed again: ‘Two thousand, eh, Baksh?’

‘Plus
the deposit money.’

‘Plus the deposit money.’

‘It not going to be much of a fight for two thousand dollars, Mr Harbans. I warning you. I is a man with a big big family.’

‘Is a fust try,’ Harbans said. ‘You could always try again. This democracy not going to get up and run away.’

Baksh sewed and bit thread, sewed and bit thread. ‘It would be nice if I could start off my campaign right away.’

Harbans remembered Chittaranjan’s warning. ‘Ooh, but you is
impatient, man. Right away? Give it a little time, man, Baksh. We never know what could happen between now and nomination day, eh?’

Baksh was surprisingly complaisant. ‘Fair is fair. Nothing until after nomination day. Two thousand, plus the deposit money.’

‘Plus the deposit money.’

Mrs Baksh came into the shop, combing out her long hair with a large gap-toothed comb.

Harbans went absent-minded.

Mrs Baksh held her hair in front of her bodice and combed. Particles of water sped about the room. She cleared the comb of loose hair, rolled the hair into a ball, spat on it a few times and flung it among the dusty scraps in a corner.

The sewing-machine hummed.

Mrs Baksh said, ‘I was wondering who was doing all the talking.’

Harbans looked up. ‘Ah. Ooh. How you is, Mrs Baksh?’

‘Half and half. How the campaign?’

‘Ooh, so-so. We trying to get your husband to go up hisself.’

Mrs Baksh stopped combing and tossed her hair over her shoulders.

Baksh sewed, not stopping to bite thread.

‘Baksh, what the hell I hearing?’

‘Hearing, man? Mr Harbans here come and beg me to go up for elections, that is all.’

‘Mr Harbans beg you? Baksh, you know you talking arseness?’

‘It go be a good experience for him.’ Harbans smiled at Mrs Baksh. He got no response. ‘Ooh. Two thousand dollars.’

‘Plus the deposit money.’ Baksh said to Mrs Baksh.

‘It look as if your brains drop to your bottom, Baksh. This election riding you like a fever.’

‘Is for your sake I doing it, man. For your sake and the children sake. And I doing it to help out Mr Harbans here.’

This was too much for Mrs Baksh.

‘Oh God, Baksh! You go land me in court before this election over. Oh God! Sweetness! Sourness!’

*

And that was not all. When Harbans went back to his committee he found Harichand the printer with them.

‘If Baksh going up, you go want new posters,’ Harichand said. ‘In all your present posters your symbol is the star and your slogan is “Hitch your wagon to the star”. But they does give out the symbols in alphabetical order. Your name was fust and your symbol was the star. Now Baksh name going to be fust and
his
symbol going to be the star. Yours going to be the heart. Preacher going to be the shoes.’

Chittaranjan said, ‘We want a new slogan.’

But Harbans had gone absent-minded.

‘Do your part and vote the heart,’ Foam said.

‘Fust-class,’ Harichand said.

Harbans was talking to the back of his hands. ‘New symbol eh? New slogan. New posters. What sin I do to get myself in this big big mess in my old old age?’

Chittaranjan saw the danger sign of approaching tears. ‘Is nothing, Mr Harbans. Nothing at all if it make you win the election. And Foam here give you a much nicer slogan. Do your part and vote the heart. Is much nicer.’

‘He should take up poetry,’ Harichand said.

Harbans looked up from his hands to Harichand. ‘I know why you so damn glad, Harichand. I ain’t got to go to a university to know why you glad.’

‘Glad? Me? Me glad? I ain’t glad, Mr Harbans.’

‘You sorry?’

‘Mr Harbans, it have no reason why you should start getting suckastic and insultive in my pussonal. Is only help I want to help you out.’

When Harbans was leaving Elvira he was stopped by Mahadeo, and lacked spirit even to make his little joke: ‘How much Hindu sick today? And what-and-what is the various entrance fee?’ Mahadeo offered his list sadly and received the entrance fees a little more sadly.

When Harbans had left Elvira and was in County Caroni, he stopped the lorry and shook his small fist at the dark countryside behind him.

‘Elvira!’ he shouted. ‘You is a bitch! A bitch! A bitch!’

E
VERYONE IN
E
LVIRA
now knew about Tiger and almost everyone accepted him as a mascot against future evil and
obeah.
Tiger thrived. His coat became thicker; not that he was a hairy, fluffy puppy, for after all he was only a common mongrel; but his coat became thick enough. His strength increased. He could sit and get up and walk and run and jump without pain and with increasing zest. But no amount of feeding and care could make him put on flesh to hide his ribs. No amount of feeding could make him lose his rangy figure. He looked the sort of puppy who would grow up into the perfect street dog, noisy but discreet, game for anything, from chasing a chicken to nosing about a dustbin at night. Still, he was Tiger and he was healthy and he was friendly. Herbert was pleased. So was Foam. Mrs Baksh was relieved. The growing health of the dog she interpreted as the weakening of any
obeah
and magic against her family.

Tiger still lived in the cocoa-house. In the early days of his recovery he had been anxious to leave it for the wider world; but stern talkings-to, some slaps and finally a length of rope had taught him that the cocoa-house was home. In time he appreciated his position. He had all the freedom of the freelance with none of the anxieties. But he never tired of reproaching Herbert and Foam. When they were leaving him for the night he would look at them and whine, softly, almost apologetically; and when they came to him in the morning he would wag his tail at first, then lie down and whine, loudly this time, looking away from them.

And now Tiger had to have his first bath. It couldn’t be hidden from anyone, not even Herbert, that Tiger was full of fleas. You had
only to pass a finger down Tiger’s back to see whole platoons of fleas dispersing and taking cover.