The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (7 page)

‘That is Lorkhoor work,’ Foam said.

Chittaranjan shook his head. ‘I don’t know if any of all-you see two white women riding about on big red bicycles. If I tell you the havoc they causing!’

‘Witnesses!’ Harbans exclaimed. ‘I know. I had a sign. I shoulda run them over that day.’

No one knew what he was talking about.

‘Who they campaigning for?’ Baksh asked. ‘For Preacher?’

‘For Jehovah,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘They can’t touch the Hindus or the Muslims or the Negroes, but they wreaking havoc with the Spanish. Everywhere I go in Cordoba, the Spanish people telling me that the world going to end in 1976. I ask them how they know the date so exact and they tell me the Bible say so.’

Dhaniram slapped his thigh. ‘Armageddon!’ Pundit Dhaniram had been educated at one of the Presbyterian schools of the Canadian Mission where he had been taught hymns and other Christian things. He cherished the training. ‘It make me see both sides,’ he used to say; and even now, although he was a Hindu priest, he often found himself humming hymns like ‘Jesus loves me, yes I know.’ He slapped his thigh and exclaimed, ‘Armageddon!’

‘Something like that,’ Chittaranjan said. And these white woman telling the Spanish that they mustn’t take no part in politics and the Spanish taking all what these woman say as a gospel.’ Chittaranjan sounded hurt. ‘I telling you, it come as a big big pussonal blow, especially as I know the Spanish people so long. Look, I go to see old Edaglo, you know, Teresa father. The man is my good good friend. For years he eating my food, drinking my whisky, and borrowing my money. And now he tell me he ain’t voting. So I ask him, “Why you ain’t voting, Edaglo?” And he answer me back, man. He say, “Politics ain’t a divine thing.” Then he ask me, “You know who start politics?” You could imagine how that take me back. “Somebody start politics?” I say. He laugh in a mocking sorta way as though he know more than everybody else and say, “You see how you ain’t know these little things. Is because you ain’t study enough.” He, Edaglo, talking like that to me, Chittaranjan! “Go home,” he say, “and study the Bible and you go read and see that the man who start politics was Nimrod.” ’

‘Who is Nimrod?’ Baksh asked.

Pundit Dhaniram slapped his thigh again. ‘Nimrod was a mighty hunter.’

They pondered this.

Harbans was abstracted, disconsolate.

Baksh said, ‘What those woman want is just man, you hear. The minute they get one good man, all this talk about mighty hunting gone with the wind.’

Dhaniram was pressing Chittaranjan: ‘You didn’t tell them about Caesar? The things that are Caesar’s. Render unto Caesar. That sort of thing.’

Chittaranjan lifted his thin hands. ‘I don’t meddle too much in all that Christian bacchanal, you hear. And as I was leaving, he, Edaglo, call me back. Me, Chittaranjan. And he give me this green book. Let God be true. Tcha!’

Mahadeo shook his head and clucked sympathetically. ‘Old Edaglo really pee on you, Goldsmith.’

‘Not only pee,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘He shake it.’

And having made his confession, Chittaranjan gathered about him much of his old dignity again.

*

‘Even if the Spanish ain’t voting,’ Foam said, ‘we have four thousand votes. Three thousand Hindu and one thousand Muslim. Preacher only getting three thousand. Two thousand Negro and a thousand Hindu. I don’t see how we could lose.’

Dhaniram said, ‘I don’t see how a whole thousand Hindus going to vote for Preacher. Lorkhoor don’t control so much votes.’

‘Don’t fool your head,’ Foam said quickly. ‘Preacher help out a lot of Hindu people in this place. And if the Hindus see a Hindu like Lorkhoor supporting Preacher, well, a lot of them go want to vote for Preacher. Lorkhoor going about telling people that they mustn’t think about race and religion now. He say it ain’t have nothing wrong if Hindu people vote for a Negro like Preacher.’

‘This Lorkhoor want a good cut-arse,’ Baksh said.

Chittaranjan agreed. ‘That sort of talk dangerous at election time. Lorkhoor ain’t know what he saying.’

Harbans locked and unlocked his fingers. ‘Nothing I does touch does turn out nice and easy. Everybody else have life easy. I don’t know what sin I commit to have life so hard.’

Everyone fell silent in the veranda, looking at Harbans, waiting for him to cry. Only the Petromax hissed and hummed and the moths dashed against it.

Then the
doolahin
thumped out bringing tea in delightfully ornamented cups so wide at the mouth that the tea slopped over continually.

Dhaniram said, ‘Tea, Mr Harbans. Drink it. You go feel better.’

‘Don’t want
no
tea.’

Dhaniram gave his little laugh.

Two or three tears trickled down Harbans’s thin old face. He took the cup, blew on it, and put it to his lips; but before he drank he broke down and sobbed. ‘I ain’t got no friends or helpers or nothing. Everybody only want money money.’

Mahadeo was wounded. ‘You ain’t giving
me
nothing, Mr Harbans.’ He hadn’t thought of asking.

Dhaniram, who had been promised something—contracts for his tractor—pulled at his cigarette. ‘Is not as though you giving things to we pussonal, Mr Harbans. You must try and feel that you giving to the people. After all, is the meaning of this democracy.’

‘Exactly,’ said Baksh. ‘Is for the sake of the community we want you to get in the Legislative Council. You got to think about the community, boss. As you yourself tell me the other day, money ain’t everything.’

‘Is true,’ Harbans fluted. ‘Is true.’ He smiled and dried his eyes. ‘You is all faithful. I did just forget myself, that is all.’

They sipped their tea.

To break the mood Dhaniram scolded his daughter-in-law. ‘You was a long time making the tea,
doolahin.’

She said, ‘I had to light the fire and then I had to boil the water and then I had to draw the tea and then I had to cool the tea.’

She had cooled the tea so well it was almost cold. It was the way Dhaniram liked it; but the rest of the committee didn’t care for cool tea. Only Harbans, taking small, noisy sips, seemed indifferent.

Dhaniram’s wife called querulously from her room. The
doolahin
sucked her teeth and went.

Foam said, ‘If Lorkhoor getting Hindus to vote for Preacher, I don’t see why we can’t get Negroes to vote for we.’

They sipped their tea and thought.

*

Dhaniram pulled hard at his cigarette and slapped his dhoti-clad thigh. ‘Aha! Idea!’

They looked at him in surprise.

‘It go take some money …’ Dhaniram said apologetically.

Harbans took a long sip of cool tea.

‘It go take some money. But not much. Here in Elvira the campaign committee must be a sort of social welfare committee. Supposing one of those Negroes fall sick.
We
go go to them.
We
go take them to doctor in
we
taxi.
We
go pay for their medicine.’

Chittaranjan sucked his teeth and became like the formidable Chittaranjan Foam had seen rocking and smiling in his tiled veranda. ‘Dhaniram, you talking like if you ain’t know how hard these Negroes is in Elvira. You ever see any Negro fall sick? They just does drop down and dead. And that does only happen when they about eighty or ninety.’

‘All right. They don’t get sick. But even you say they does dead sometimes. Well, two three bound to dead before elections.’

‘You going to kill some of them?’ Baksh asked.

‘Well, if even
one
dead,
we
go bury him.
We
go hold the wake.
We
go take
we
coffee and
we
biscuits.’

Baksh said, ‘And you think that go make the Negroes vote for you?’

‘It go make them feel shame if they ain’t vote for we,’ Dhaniram said. ‘And if they ain’t vote, well, the next time they start bawling for help, they better not come round here.’

Mahadeo lifted his right hand as a warning that he was about to speak again. ‘Old Sebastian is one Negro who look as though he might dead before elections.’

‘Is a good idea,’ Foam said. ‘And every one of we could buy just one sweet drink for some Negro child every day until elections. Different child every day. And the parents. We mustn’t only help them if they fall sick or if they dead. If they can’t get a work or something. If they going to have a wedding or something. Take the
goldsmith here. He could make a little present for Negroes getting married.’

Chittaranjan said animatedly, ‘Foam, you talking as if I does make jewellery with my own gold. I ain’t have no gold of my own. When people want things make, they does bring their own gold.’

And Chittaranjan destroyed an illusion which Foam had had since he was a boy; he had always believed that the gold dust and silver shavings the children collected from Chittaranjan’s workshop belonged to Chittaranjan.

Harbans said, ‘Foam, take the pencil and paper and write down all those who sick in Elvira.’

Dhaniram said, ‘Mungal sick like anything.’

Mahadeo lifted his hand. ‘It have a whole week now that Basdai and Rampiari ain’t come out to work. They must be sick too.’

Harbans said, ‘Mahadeo, you know you is a damn fool. You think is
Hindu
sick I want Foam to write down?’

Chittaranjan said, ‘Like I say, it ain’t have no Negro sick in Elvira.’

‘All right.’ Harbans was getting annoyed again. ‘Who getting married?’

Chittaranjan said, ‘Only Hindu and Muslim getting married. Is the wedding season now. The Negro people don’t get married so often. Most of them just living with woman. Just like that, you know.’

Harbans said, ‘And you can’t damn well start taking round wedding-ring to those people as wedding present. So, all we could do is to keep a sharp look-out for any Negro who fall sick or who fall dead. That may you talk about, Mahadeo.’

‘Sebastian?’

‘Keep a eye on him.’

Foam said, ‘I believe Mahadeo should handle the whole of that job. He could make a list of all Negro who sick or going to dead.’

‘Yes.’ And Harbans added sarcastically, ‘You sure that job ain’t too big for you, Mahadeo?’

Mahadeo stared at the floor, his big eyes filling with determination. ‘I could manage, Mr Harbans. Old Sebastian is one Negro who bound to dead.’

They finished their tea and had some more. Then Harbans sent Foam to get the new posters he had brought in the lorry.

The posters said:
HITCH YOUR WAGON TO THE STAR VOTE SURUJPAT (
‘
PAT
’
) HARBANS CHOOSE THE BEST AND LEAVE THE REST.
And there was a photograph of Harbans; below that, his name and the star, his symbol.

Mahadeo said, ‘It must make a man feel really big sticking his photo all over the place.’

Harbans, unwillingly, smiled.

Chittaranjan asked, ‘Where you get those posters print?’

‘Port of Spain.’

‘Wrong move, Mr Harbans. You shoulda get that boy Harichand to print them.’

‘But Harichand ain’t got no sorta printery at all,’ Harbans said.

‘Never mind,’ said Chittaranjan. ‘People in Elvira wouldn’t like that you get your posters print in Port of Spain when it have a Elvira boy who could do them.’

And then Harbans knew. No one in Elvira was fighting
for
him. All Elvira—Preacher, Lorkhoor, Baksh, Chittaranjan, Dhaniram and everybody else—all of them were fighting
him.

He was nearly seized with another fit of pessimism.

But deep down, despite everything, he knew he was going to win. He cried and raged; but he wanted to fool, not tempt, fate. Then he thought of the sign he had had: the white women and the stalled engine, the black bitch and the stalled engine. He had seen what the first meant. The women had stalled him in Cordoba.

But the dog. What about the dog? Where was that going to stall him?

S
OME DAYS PASSED.
The new posters went up. The campaign proceeded. Nothing terrible happened to Mrs Baksh. She became calmer and Foam thought he could start painting slogans again. But now he didn’t paint
VOTE HARBANS OR DIE!
He had had his lesson; it was too easy for the enthusiasm of the slogan to be mistaken for a threat. He painted straight things like
WIN WITH HARBANS
and
WE WANT HARBANS.

One night when Baksh had taken out the loudspeaker van—he said it was to do some campaigning but Mrs Baksh said it was to do some drinking—one night Foam took up his pot of paint and a large brush and went about Elvira, painting new slogans and refurbishing old ones. He didn’t take the excitable and untrustworthy Rafiq with him. He took Herbert instead. Herbert was ten and politically and psychically undeveloped. He didn’t care for signs or election slogans; and while Foam painted Herbert whistled and wandered about.

Foam did his job with love. He painted even on houses whose owners had gone to bed; and only when he had got as far as the old cocoa-house did he decide it was time to go home.

Herbert hung back a little and Foam noticed that he was walking in a peculiar way, arching his back and keeping his hands on his belly. His belly looked more swollen than usual.

‘Your belly hurting, Herbert?’

‘Yes, man, Foam. Is this gas breaking me up.’

‘Don’t worry about it too much. All of we did get gas in we belly when we was small. It does pass.’

‘Hope so for truth, man.’

Lights were still on when they got home. They went around to the back of the house. The door was locked from the inside but it wasn’t barred; and if you pressed on the middle and pulled and shook at the same time, it fell open. Foam put down the paint-pot and the brush.

‘Herbert, when I press down, you pull hard and shake.’

Foam pressed down. Herbert, clutching his belly with one hand, pulled and shook with the other. The door unlocked, and as it did, something fell from Herbert’s shirt. In the darkness Foam couldn’t see what it was. When he pulled the door open and let out the thin light of the oil lamp inside, he saw.

It was a puppy.

A tiny rickety puppy, mangy, starved; a loose, ribby bundle on the ground. It made no noise. It tried to lift itself up. It only collapsed again, without complaint, without shame.