The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (6 page)

Baksh spoke only one sentence during the whole of this operation. ‘Have to get a proper stand for this damn loudspeaker thing,’ he said, resentfully.

After dinner that evening, Foam, with his twelve-year-old brother Rafiq, went in the van to Cordoba, a good three miles away, to do some more slogans. The Spaniards watched without interest while he daubed
VOTE HARBANS OR DIE!

The next evening he went to complete the job.

The first three words of his slogans had been covered over with whitewash and Cordoba was marked everywhere, in dripping red letters,
DIE! DIE! DIE!

‘That is Lorkhoor work,’ Foam said.

Then Rafiq pointed to a wall. The first three words of the slogan were only partially covered over. Three strokes with a dry brush had been used, and between each stroke there was a gap, and the sign read: —
TE
——
N
—
DIE!

‘Ten die,’ Rafiq said.

‘Come on, man,’ Foam said. ‘You letting a thing like that frighten you? You is a man now, Rafiq. And whatever you do,’ Foam added, ‘don’t tell Ma, you hear.’

But that was the first thing Rafiq did.

‘Ten
die!’ Mrs Baksh clapped her hand to her big bosom and sat on a bench, still holding the ash-rag with which she had been washing up.

Baksh swilled down some tea from a large enamel cup. ‘It don’t mean nothing, man. Somebody just trying to be funny, that’s all.’

‘Oh, God, Baksh, this election sweetness!’

The little Bakshes came into the kitchen.

‘Don’t mean nothing,’ Baksh said. ‘It say ten die. It only have nine of we in this house. The seven children and you and me. Was just a accident, man.’

‘Was
no
accident,’ Rafiq said.

‘Oh, God, Baksh, see how the sweetness turning sour!’

‘Is only that traitor Lorkhoor playing the fool,’ Foam said. ‘Let him wait. When
he
start putting up signs for Preacher …’

‘How it could mean anything?’ Baksh laughed. ‘It say ten die and it only have nine of we here.’

Mrs Baksh became cooler. A thought seemed to strike her and she looked down at herself and cried, ‘Oh, God, Baksh, how we know is only nine?’

*

Though he didn’t care for the ‘Ten die!’ sign and for Mrs Baksh’s fears, Foam didn’t go out painting any more slogans. Instead he concentrated on the first meeting of the campaign committee.

He decided not to hold the meeting at Chittaranjan’s house. The place made him too uncomfortable and he still remembered the malicious smile Nelly Chittaranjan had given him when he knocked his sweet drink over. His own house, the London Tailoring Establishment, was out of the question: Mrs Baksh didn’t even want to hear about the election. He decided then to have the meeting in the old wooden bungalow of Dhaniram, the Hindu pundit, who had also been made a member of the committee. At least there would be no complications with Dhaniram’s family. Dhaniram’s wife had been paralysed for more than twenty years. The only other person in the house was a meek young daughter-in-law who had been deserted by Dhaniram’s son only two months after marriage. That was some time ago. Nobody knew where the boy had got to; but Dhaniram always gave out that the boy was in England, studying something.

On the evening of the meeting Foam and Baksh, despite protests from Mrs Baksh, drove over in the loudspeaker van.

From the road Foam could see two men in the veranda. One was
Dhaniram, a large man in Hindu priestly dress lying flat on his belly reading a newspaper by an oil lamp. The other man drooped on a bench. This was Mahadeo.

Neither Dhaniram nor Mahadeo was really important. They had been drafted into the committee only to keep them from making mischief. Dhaniram was the best known pundit in Elvira, but he was too fond of gossip and religious disputation, and was looked upon as something of a buffoon. Mahadeo was an out and out fool; everybody in Elvira knew that. But Mahadeo could be useful; he worked on what remained of the Elvira Estate as a sub-overseer, a ‘driver’ (not of vehicles or slaves, but of free labourers), and as a driver he could always put pressure on his labourers.

When Foam and Baksh came into the veranda Dhaniram jumped up and the whole house shook. It was a shaky house and the veranda was particularly shaky. Dhaniram had kept on extending it at one end, so that the veranda opened out into something like a plain; there were gaps in the floor where the uncured, unplaned cedar planks had shrunk.

‘Ah,’ Dhaniram said, rubbing his hands. ‘Campaign manager. Come to discuss the campaign, eh?’

Everything about the election thrilled Dhaniram. Words like campaign, candidate, committee, constituency, legislative council, thrilled him especially. He was a big exuberant man with a big belly that looked unnecessary and almost detachable.

Mahadeo didn’t get up or say anything. He drooped on his bench, a plump little man in tight clothes, his large empty eyes staring at the floor.

There was an explosion of coughing inside the house and a woman’s voice, strained and querulous, asked in Hindi, ‘Who’s there?’

Dhaniram led Foam and Baksh to the small drawing-room and made them look through an open door into a dark bedroom. They saw a woman stretched out on a four-poster. It was Dhaniram’s wife. She was lying on her left side and they couldn’t see her face.

‘Election committee,’ Dhaniram said to the room.

‘Oh.’ She didn’t turn.

Dhaniram led Foam and Baksh back to the veranda and seated them on a bench opposite Mahadeo.

Dhaniram sat down beside Mahadeo and began to shake his legs until the veranda shook. ‘So the goldsmith fix up, eh? Everything?’

Foam didn’t understand.

‘I mean, Chittaranjan see the boy? You know, Harbans son.’

‘Oh, yes, that fix up,’ Baksh said. ‘Chittaranjan went to Port of Spain day before yesterday.’

Dhaniram lit a cigarette and pulled at it in the Brahmin way, drawing the smoke through his closed hand. ‘Chittaranjan really believe Harbans going to let his son marry Nelly?’

Baksh seized this. ‘You hear anything?’

Dhaniram shrugged his shoulders. ‘We want some light.
Doolahin,
bring the Petromax,’ Dhaniram called.

Baksh noted that though she had been deserted for so long, Dhaniram still called his daughter-in-law
doolahin,
bride.

‘How Hari?’ Baksh asked. ‘He write yet?’

Hari was Dhaniram’s son.

‘Boy in England, man,’ Dhaniram said. ‘Studying. Can’t study and write letters.’

The
doolahin
brought the Petromax. She looked a good Hindu girl. She had a small soft face with a wide mouth. About eighteen perhaps; barefooted, as was proper; a veil over her forehead, as was also proper. She hung the Petromax on the hook from the ceiling and went back to the kitchen, a smoky room boarded off at one corner of the vast veranda.

Baksh asked, ‘How she taking it these days? Still crying?’

Dhaniram wasn’t interested. ‘She getting over it now. So Chittaranjan really believe that Nelly going to marry Harbans son?’

Mahadeo sat silent, his head bent, his full eyes staring at his unlaced black boots. Foam wasn’t interested in the conversation. In the light of the Petromax he studied Dhaniram’s veranda walls. There were many Hindu coloured prints; but by far the biggest thing
was a large Esso calendar, with Pundit Dhaniram’s religious commitments written in pencil above the dates. It looked as though Dhaniram’s practice was falling off. It didn’t matter; Foam knew that Dhaniram also owned the fifth part of a tractor and Baksh said that was worth at least two hundred dollars a month.

Harbans came, agitated, looking down at the ground, and Foam saw at once that something was wrong.

Dhaniram rose. Mahadeo rose and spoke for the first time: ‘Good night, Mr Harbans.’

Dhaniram took Harbans into the drawing-room and Foam heard Harbans saying, ‘Ooh, ooh,
how
you is,
maharajin?
We just come to talk over this election nonsense.’

But he looked dejected like anything when he came out and sat on a blanket on the floor.

Dhaniram shouted,
‘Doolahin,
candidate here. We want some tea. What sort of tea you want, eh, Mr Harbans? Chocolate, coffee or green tea?’

‘Green tea,’ Harbans said distractedly.

‘What happen, Mr Harbans?’ Foam asked.

Harbans locked his fingers. ‘Can’t understand it, Foam. Can’t understand it. I is a old old man. Why everybody down against me?’

Dhaniram was thrilled. He gave a little laugh, realized it was wrong, and tried to look serious. But his eyes still twinkled.

‘I drive through Cordoba,’ Harbans said, talking down to his hands, his voice thin and almost breaking. ‘As soon as the Spanish people see the lorry, they turn their back. They shut their window. And I did think they was going to vote for me. Can’t understand it, Foam. I ain’t do the Spanish people nothing.’

‘Is that traitor Lorkhoor,’ Baksh said.

*

Then Chittaranjan came. He wore his visiting outfit and carried a green book in his hand. He seemed to know the house well because he didn’t wait for Dhaniram to introduce him to the invalid inside.
As he came up the steps he shouted, ‘How you feeling these days,
maharajin?
Is me, Chittaranjan, the goldsmith.’

When he came back out to the veranda, it seemed that Chittaranjan too had bad news. His smile was there, as fixed as his flush; but there was anger and shame in his narrow eyes.

‘Dhaniram,’ Chittaranjan said, as soon as he sat down and took off his vast grey felt hat, ‘we got to make new calculations.’

Dhaniram took Chittaranjan at his word.
‘Doolahin!’
he shouted. ‘Pencil and paper. New calculations. Committee waiting. Candidate and committee waiting.’

Harbans looked at Chittaranjan. ‘What I do the Spanish people for them to turn their back on me?’

Chittaranjan forced the words out: ‘Something happen, Mr Harbans. This thing not going to be so easy …’

‘It don’t surprise me, Goldsmith,’ Harbans interrupted. ‘Loudspeaker van. Campaign manager. Rum-account. Lorkhoor. People turning their back on me. Nothing don’t surprise me at all.’

The
doolahin
brought some brown shop-paper. ‘I ain’t have no pencil. I look everywhere.’

Dhaniram forgot about the election. ‘But this is craziness,
doolahin.
I have that pencil six months now.’

‘Is only a pencil,’ the
doolahin
said.

‘Is what you think,’ Dhaniram said, the smile going out of his eye. ‘Is more than just a pencil. Is the principle. Is only since you come here that we start losing things.’

‘Your son, fust of all,’ Baksh said.

Dhaniram looked at Baksh and the smile came into his eyes again. He spat, aiming successfully at a gap in the floor.

Foam said, ‘This is the pencil you was looking for?’ From the floor he picked up an indelible pencil of the sort used in government offices. A length of string was attached to a groove at the top.

Dhaniram began to rub himself. ‘Ah, yes. Was doing the crossword just before you come in.’

The
doolahin
tossed her head and went back to her kitchen.

Harbans brooded.

All of a sudden he said, ‘Chittaranjan, I thought
you
was the big controller of the Spanish vote?’

Everyone noticed that Harbans had called Chittaranjan by his name, and not ‘goldsmith.’ It was almost an insult.

Yet Chittaranjan didn’t seem to feel it. He fidgeted with the book he had brought and said not a word.

Harbans, not getting an answer, addressed his hands. ‘In the 1946 elections none of the candidates I know did spend all this money. I have to have loudspeaker van and rum-account with Ramlogan?’

Baksh looked offended. ‘I know you mean me, boss. The moment you start talking about loudspeaker van. What you say about 1946 is true. Nobody did spend much money. But that was only the fust election. People did just go and vote for the man they like. Now is different. People learning. You have to spend on them.’

‘Yes, you have to spend on them,’ Dhaniram said, his legs shaking, his eyes dancing. He relished all the grand vocabulary of the election. ‘Otherwise somebody else going to spend on them.’

Mahadeo, the estate driver, raised his right hand, turned his large eyes on Harbans and twitched his thick little moustache and plump little mouth. ‘You spending your money in vain, Mr Harbans,’ he said gently. ‘We win already.’

Harbans snapped, ‘Is arse-talk like that does lose election. (Oh God, you see how this election making me dirty up my mouth.) But you, Mahadeo, you go around opening your big mouth and saying Harbans done win already. You think that is the way to get people vote?’

‘Exactly,’ said Dhaniram. ‘People go say, “If he done win, he ain’t want my vote.” ‘

‘Foam,’ Harbans said. ‘How much vote you giving me today? Was six thousand when I first see you. Then was five thousand. Is
four
thousand today?’

Foam didn’t have a chance to reply because Chittaranjan spoke up at last: ‘Yes, Mr Harbans, is four thousand.’

Harbans didn’t take it well. ‘Look at the mess I getting myself in, in my old old age. Why I couldn’t go away and sit down quiet and dead somewhere else, outside Elvira? Foam, take the pencil and paper and write this down. It have eight thousand votes in Naparoni. Four thousand Hindu, two thousand Negro, one thousand Spanish, and a thousand Muslim. I ain’t getting the Negro vote and I ain’t getting a thousand Hindu vote. That should leave me with five thousand. But now, Goldsmith, you say is only four thousand. Tell me, I beg you, where we drop this thousand vote between last week Friday and today?’

‘In Cordoba,’ Chittaranjan said penitently. ‘You see for youself how the Spanish people playing the fool. Just look at this book.’

He showed the green book he had been turning over.

Mahadeo wrinkled his brow and read out the title slowly:
‘Let—God—Be—True.
’

As a pundit Dhaniram regarded himself as an expert on God. He looked at the book quizzically and said, ‘Hmh.’

‘That is all that the Spanish talking about now,’ Chittaranjan said, pointing to the book. ‘I did know something was wrong the moment I land in Cordoba. Everywhere I look I only seeing red signs saying, “Die! Die!” ’