The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (27 page)

Foam rose. ‘Is the best thing. And I agree with the goldsmith that the people of Elvira should give something to their own Onble Member.’

That really caused the trouble.

Rampiari’s husband didn’t mind when Chittaranjan had said it. Everyone respected Chittaranjan as an honourable man, and everyone knew that he hadn’t got a penny from Harbans. But when Foam said it, that was different.

‘Is all right for
you
to talk, Foreman Baksh,’ Rampiari’s husband said. ‘Your pocket full. You get your two hundred dollars a month campaign-managing for Harbans.’

‘And your father get a whole loudspeaking van,’ Harichand chipped in. ‘And everybody in Elvira damn well know that out of the fifty-six votes your father get, your father vote was one.’

Baksh danced to the front of the crowd.

‘What loudspeaking van?’ he asked.

Chittaranjan was on his feet again. ‘And we, the members of the committee, going to give back the case of whisky to Mr Ramlogan.’

This made Mahadeo lose his temper.

‘Why? Why for we must give back the case of whisky?’

‘And how the hell you know I ain’t vote for Harbans, Harichand?’

‘The clerk tell me,’ Harichand said.

For a moment Baksh was nonplussed. Than he shouted, ‘Harbans, if you going to give money for a Hindu
kattha,
you damn well got to give the Muslims a
kitab.’

Mahadeo said, ‘Goldsmith, why for we must give back the whisky?’

‘Hush your mouth, you damn fool,’ Chittaranjan whispered. ‘We not giving it back really.’

Haq had limped right up to the whisky and was saying, ‘Muslim vote for Harbans too. What happen? They stop counting Muslim vote these days?’

‘All right,’ Harbans cooed. ‘All you Muslim make your collection for your
kitab.
And for every dollar you put, I go put one. Eh?’

Then somebody else leapt up and asked what about the Christians.

Rampiari’s husband shouted, ‘Haq, what the hell you doing there? You vote for Harbans?’

‘Who I vote for is my business. Nobody ain’t make you a policeman yet.’

Then it was chaos. Rampiari’s husband switched his attack to Baksh. Baksh was attacking Harbans. Foam was being attacked by innumerable anonymous people. Mahadeo was being attacked by people whose illness he had spurned. Haq was poking questions directly under Harbans’s nose. Harbans was saying, ‘Ooh, ooh,’ and trying to pacify everybody. Only two objects remained immovable and constant: Chittaranjan and the case of whisky.

Somehow, after minutes of tortuous altercation, something was
decided. The committee were to give back the case of whisky. The people of Elvira were to get religious consolation. The Muslims were to get their
kitab,
the Hindus their
kattha,
the Christians their service.

But nobody was really pleased.

Ramlogan insisted that Harbans should give him back the case of whisky ceremonially.

Harbans said, “Ladies and gentlemen, was nice of all-you to ask me down here today to give away this whisky. But I can’t tell you how happy and proud it make me to see that the committee ain’t want it. Committee do their duty, and duty is their reward.’

There was some derisory cheering.

‘So, Mr Ramlogan, I give you back your whisky. And I glad to see that at this moment the people of Elvira putting God in their heart.’

Foam said, ‘Three cheers for the Onble Surujpat Harbans. Hip-hip.’

He got no response.

Only, Baksh ran up.

‘Jordan sick, Mr Harbans.’

‘I hope he get better.’

‘For the last time, Mr Harbans. Jordan sick.’

The crowd pressed forward silently around the committee.

Harbans buttoned his over-large coat and prepared to leave. He put his hand on the arm of Rampiari’s husband, to show that he wasn’t cowed. ‘Give me a little break. Let me get through.’

Rampiari’s husband folded his arms.

‘Give me a break, man. Last time I come to Elvira, I telling you. All you people driving me away.’

Rampiari’s husband said, ‘We know you is a Onble and thing now, but you deaf? You ain’t hear what the man saying? Jordan sick.’ Rampiari’s husband turned his back to Harbans and addressed the crowd. ‘All-you see Jordan tonight?’

The reply came in chorus:
‘No, we ain’t see Jordan.’

‘What happen to Jordan?’ Rampiari’s husband asked.

‘Jordan sick,’
the crowd replied.

Harbans looked at Chittaranjan.

Chittaranjan said, ‘You better go.’

Jordan lived in one of the many traces off the main road. It was a moonless night and the occasional oil lamps in the houses far back from the trace only made the darkness more terrible. At the heels of Harbans and his committee there was nearly half the crowd that had gathered outside Chittaranjan’s shop. Tiger ran yapping in and out of the procession. One horrible young labourer with glasses, gold teeth and a flowerpot hat pushed his face close to Harbans and said, ‘Don’t worry with the old generation. Is the young generation like me you got to worry about.’

Jordan was waiting for them, reclined on a couch in his front room, a plump sleepy-faced young Negro with a pile of stiff kinky hair. He wore pyjamas that looked suspiciously new. Chittaranjan was surprised. Nobody in Elvira wore pyjamas.

‘Jordan,’ Harbans called. ‘You sick?’

‘Yes, man,’ Jordan said. ‘Stroke. Hit me all down here.’ He ran his hand along his left side.

‘The man break up bad,’ Rampiari’s husband said. ‘He can’t do no more work for a long time to come.’

‘It come sudden sudden,’ Jordan said. ‘I was drinking a cup of water and it come. Bam! just like that.’

An old woman, a young woman and a boy came into the room.

‘Mother, wife, brother,’ Baksh explained.

‘Jordan supporting all of them,’ Harichand said.

Chittaranjan regarded Jordan and Jordan’s family with contempt. He said, ‘Give him ten dollars and let we go.’

‘Ten!’ Jordan exclaimed acidly. ‘Fifty.’

‘Fifty at least,’ Baksh said.

‘At least,’ said Rampiari’s husband.

‘Is not something just for Jordan,’ Baksh said. ‘You could say is a sort of thank-you present for everybody in Elvira.’

‘Exactly,’ Harichand said. ‘Can’t just come to a place and collect people good good vote and walk away. Don’t look nice. Don’t sound nice.’

Harbans said, ‘This election making me a pauper. They should pass some sort of law to prevent candidates spending too much money.’ But he pulled out his wallet.

Jordan said, ‘God go bless you, boss.’

Harbans took two twenty-dollar notes and one ten-dollar note, crackled them separately and handed them to Jordan.

Without warning Tiger sprang on the couch, trampled over Jordan’s new pyjamas, put his front paws on the window-sill and barked.

Almost immediately there was a loud explosion from the main road. Seconds later there were more explosions.

The crowd in the trace shouted, ‘Fire!’

Jordan’s stroke was forgotten. Everybody scrambled outside, committee, mother, wife, brother. Jordan himself forgot about his stroke and knelt on his couch to look out of the window. In the direction of the main road the sky was bright; the glare teased out houses and trees from the darkness.

Somebody cried, ‘Mr Harbans! Goldsmith!’

But Harbans was already in the trace and running, awkwardly, like a woman in a tight skirt.

He found the crowd standing in a wide silent circle around the burning Jaguar. It was a safe spectacle now; the petrol tanks had blown up. The firelight reddened unsmiling, almost contemplative, faces.

Harbans stopped too, to watch the car burn. The fire had done its work swiftly and well, thank to the Jaguar’s reserve petrol tank, which Harbans liked to keep full. That was little smoke now; the flames burned pure. Behind the heat waves faces were distorted.

The people from the trace ran up in joyful agitation, flowed
around the car, settled, and became silent. Harbans was wedged among them.

Foam acted with firmness.

He beat his way through to Harbans.

‘Mr Harbans, come.’

Harbans followed without thinking. They got into the loudspeaker van. It wasn’t until Foam drove off that the people of Elvira turned to look. They didn’t cheer or boo or do anything. Only Tiger, missing Foam, ran barking after the van.

‘Is okay now, Mr Harbans,’ Foam said. ‘If you did stay you woulda want to start asking questions. If you did start asking questions you woulda only cause more trouble.’

‘Elvira, Elvira.’ Harbans shook his head and spoke to the back of his hands, covered almost up to the knuckles by the sleeves of his big grey coat. ‘Elvira, you is a bitch.’

And he came to Elvira no more.

The Jaguar was less than a week old. The insurance company bought him a new one.

*

It made Lorkhoor’s reputation. He was living with the
doolahin
in a dingy furnished room in Henry Street in Port of Spain. He had already applied, without success, for jobs on the
Trinidad Guardian
and the
Port of Spain Gazette
when, on Saturday, the news of the burning Jaguar broke. Lorkhoor took a taxi down to Harichand’s printery in Couva and got the facts from Harichand. That, and his own inside knowledge, gave him material for a splendid follow-up story which he submitted to the
Trinidad Sentinel.
It appeared in the Sunday issue. Lorkhoor wrote the headline himself: ‘A Case of Whisky, the New Jaguar and the Suffrage of Elvira’. He had fallen under the influence of William Saroyan.

On Monday Lorkhoor was on the staff of the
Sentinel.
He began to contribute a regular Sunday piece for the
Sentinel
‘s magazine section,
Lorkhoor’s Log.

Foam had his wish. He got Lorkhoor’s old job, announcing for the cinemas in Caroni. In addition, he had earned two hundred and twenty-five dollars as Harbans’s campaign manager; and he had been able to snub Teacher Francis.

Teacher Francis deteriorated rapidly. In the Christmas holidays he married into one of the best coloured families in Port of Spain, the Smiths. He renounced all intellectual aspirations, won the approval of the Education Department and an appointment as Schools Inspector.

And Ramlogan. He had won his largest rum-account. He could buy that refrigerator now. Now, too, he could pick his own flowers and eat his own breadfruit and zaboca.

And Dhaniram. He had some luck. His brother-in-law died in September, and his sister came to live with him.

And Tiger. He had won a reprieve. He was to live long and querulously.

And Chittaranjan. But he had lost. He sent many messages to Harbans but got no reply. At last he went to see Harbans in Port of Spain; but Harbans kept him waiting so long in the veranda and greeted him so coldly, he couldn’t bring himself to ask about the marriage. It was Harbans who brought the point up. Harbans said, ‘Chittaranjan, the Hindus in Trinidad going downhill fast. I say, let those who want to go, go quick. If only one hundred good Hindu families remain, well, all right. But we can’t let our children marry people who does run about late at night with Muslim boys.’ Chittaranjan accepted the justice of the argument. And that was that.

But if Chittaranjan had lost, Nelly had won. In September of that year she went to London and joined the Regent Street Polytechnic. She went to all the dances and enjoyed them. She sent home presents that Christmas, an umbrella for her father, and a set of four china birds for her mother. The birds flew on the wall next to the
picture of Mahatma Gandhi and King George V. The umbrella became part of Chittaranjan’s visiting outfit.

*

So, Harbans won the election and the insurance company lost a Jaguar. Chittaranjan lost a son-in-law and Dhaniram lost a daughter-in-law. Elvira lost Lorkhoor and Lorkhoor won a reputation. Elvira lost Mr Cuffy. And Preacher lost his deposit.

I
T WAS
T
HURSDAY,
Miss Millington’s afternoon off, and Mr Stone had to let himself in. Before he could switch on the hall light, the depthless green eyes held him, and in an instant the creature, eyes alone, leapt down the steps. Mr Stone cowered against the dusty wall and shielded his head with his briefcase. The cat brushed against his legs and was out through the still open door. Mr Stone stood where he was, the latchkey in one ungloved hand, and waited for the beating of his heart, the radiation of fine pain through his body, to subside.

The cat belonged to the family next door, people who had moved into the street just five years before and were still viewed by Mr Stone with suspicion. It had come to the house as a kitten, a pet for the children; and as soon as, ceasing to chase paper and ping-pong balls and balls of string, it began to dig up Mr Stone’s garden, its owners having no garden worth digging up, Mr Stone had transferred his hostility from the family to their cat. When he returned from the office he examined his flowerbeds—strips of earth between irregular areas of crazy paving—for signs of the animal’s obscene scuttlings and dredgings and buryings. ‘Miss Millington! Miss Millington!’ he would call. ‘The cat pepper!’ And heavy old Miss Millington, aproned down to her ankles, would shuffle out with a large tin of pepper dust (originally small tins had been thought sufficient: the picture of the terrified cat on the label looked so convincing) and would ritually sprinkle all the flowerbeds, the affected one more than the others, as though to obscure rather than prevent the animal’s activities. In time the flowerbeds had become discoloured; it was as if
cement had been mixed with the earth and dusted on to the leaves and stems of plants.

Now the cat had penetrated into the house itself.

The beating of Mr Stone’s heart moderated and the shooting pain receded, leaving a trail of exposed nerves, a lightness of body below the heavy Simpson’s overcoat, and an urge to decisive action. Not closing the front door, turning on no lights, not taking off his overcoat or hat, depositing only his gloves and briefcase on the hall table, he went to the kitchen, where in darkness he opened the larder door and took out the cheese, still in its Sainsbury wrapping, from its accustomed place—Miss Millington shopped on Thursday mornings. He found a knife and carefully, as though preparing cocktail savouries, chopped the cheese into small cubes. These he took outside, to the front gate; and glancing about him in the sodden murk—some windows alight, no observer about—he laid a trail of cheese from gate to door, up the dark carpeted hall, now bitterly cold, and up the steps to the bathroom. Here, sitting on the cover of the lavatory bowl, still in his hat and overcoat, he waited, poker in hand. The poker was not for attack but self-defense. Often, walking down that cat-infested street, he had been surprised by a cat sitting sedately on a fence post at the level of his head, and he had always made as if to shield his face. It was a disgraceful action, but one he could never control. He feared the creatures; and there were all those stories of cornered cats, of cats growing wild and attacking men.