The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book
Read The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book Online
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and since then he has followed no other profession. He is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in 2001, the Booker Prize in 1971, and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
A
LSO BY
V. S. N
AIPAUL
NONFICTION
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
Among the Believers
The Return of Eva Perón (
with
The Killings in Trinidad
)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barracoon
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Passage
FICTION
Half a Life
A Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
The Mimic Men
A House for Mr. Biswas
Miguel Street
The Mystic Masseur
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JUNE
2002
A Flag on the Island,
copyright © 1967, copyright renewed 1995 by V. S. Naipaul
Mr Stone and the Knight’s Companion,
copyright © 1963, copyright renewed 1991 by V. S. Naipaul
The Suffrage of Elvira,
copyright © 1958, copyright renewed 1986 by V. S. Naipaul
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain as three separate works,
The Suffrage of Elvira, Mr Stone and the Knights Companion,
and
A Flag on the Island
by Andre Deutsch Limited, London, respectively in 1958, 1963, and 1967.
All but two of the shorter pieces in this collection have appeared in periodicals in England or the United States. “The Enemy” was written in part of my book
Miguel Street.
It was not used there, and some of the episodes were developed in later books; the present story was published in American
Vogue.
“The Raffle” was written for the London
Evening Standard series
“Did it Happen?” The answer was no; the autobiographical detail is deliberately misleading. “A Flag on the Island” was specially written for a film company. The story they required was to be “musical” and comic and set in the Caribbean; it was to have a leading American character and many subsidiary characters; it was to have much sex and much dialogue; it was to be explicit.
In
The Suffrage of Elvira,
the song “My Heart and I” is quoted by permission of Lawrence Wright Music Co. Ltd. The song “Swinging on a Star” is quoted by permission of Edwin H. Morris & Co. Ltd and Messrs Burke & Van Heusen Inc.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77652-5
v3.1
For Pat
Contents
2. The Bargain with Chittaranjan
9. The Retreat of the Witnesses
13. Democracy Takes Root in Elvira
T
HAT AFTERNOON
M
R
Surujpat Harbans nearly killed the two white women and the black bitch.
When he saw the women he thought of them only as objects he must try not to hit, and he didn’t stop to think how strange it was to see two blonde women forcing red American cycles up Elvira Hill, the highest point in County Naparoni, the smallest, most isolated and most neglected of the nine counties of Trinidad.
The heavy American bicycles with their pudgy tyres didn’t make cycling up the hill easier for the women. They rose from their low saddles and pressed down hard on the pedals and the cycles twisted all over the narrow road.
Harbans followed in a nervous low gear. He didn’t like driving and didn’t feel he was ever in control of the old Dodge lorry banging and rattling on the loose dirt road. Something else about the lorry worried him. It was bright with red posters:
Vote Harbans for Elvira.
There were two on the front bumper; two on the bonnet; one on each wing; the cab-doors were covered except for an oblong patch which was painted
HARBANS TRANSPORT SERVICE.
The posters, the first of his campaign so far, had arrived only that morning. They made him shy, and a little nervous about the reception he was going to get in Elvira.
Just before the brow of the hill he decided he needed more power and stepped a little harder on the accelerator. At the same time the women wobbled into the middle of the road, decided they couldn’t cycle up any further, and dismounted. Harbans stamped on his brakes, his left foot missed the clutch, and the engine stalled.
The bumper covered with two
Vote Harbans for Elvira
posters hit the back mudguard of one cycle and sent the cyclist stumbling forward, her hands still on the handlebars. But she didn’t fall.
The women turned to the lorry. They were both young and quite remarkably good-looking. Harbans had seen nothing like it outside the cinema. Perhaps it was the effect of the sun-glasses they both wore. The trays of both cycles were packed with books and magazines, and from the top of each tray a stiff pennant said:
AWAKE!
The taller woman, who had been knocked forward, composed herself quickly and smiled. ‘Good brakes, mister.’ She spoke with an American accent—or it might have been Canadian: Harbans couldn’t tell. She sounded unreasonably cheerful.
‘Fust time it happen,’ Harbans said, almost in a whisper. ‘Fust time in more than twenty years.’ That wasn’t hard to believe. He had the face of the extra-careful driver, thin, timid, dyspeptic. His hair was thin and grey, his nose thin and long.
The shorter woman smiled too. ‘Don’t look so worried, mister.
We’
re all right.’
In a difficult position Harbans had the knack of suddenly going absent-minded. He would look down at the grey hairs on the back of his hands and get lost studying them.
‘Eh?’ he said to his hands, and paused. ‘Eh? All right?’ He paused again. ‘You sure?’
‘We’re
always
all right,’ the taller woman said.
‘We’re Witnesses,’ said the other.
‘Eh?’ But the legal sound of the word made him look up. ‘You is.…’ He waved a wrinkled hand. ‘Election nonsense.’ He was coy and apologetic; his thin voice became a coo. ‘My head a little hot with worries. Election worries.’
The taller woman smiled back. ‘We
know
you’re worried.’
‘We’re Witnesses,’ said the other.
Harbans saw the
AWAKE!
pennants for the first time and understood. The women dragged their red bicycles to the verge and waved him on. He managed somehow to move the Dodge off and got it to
the top of Elvira Hill, where the black and yellow board of the Trinidad Automobile Association announces the district as ‘The Elvira.’ This is short for The Elvira Estate, named after the wife of one of the early owners, but everyone who knows the district well says Elvira.
From the top of Elvira Hill you get one of the finest views in Trinidad, better even than the view from Tortuga in South Caroni. Below, the jungly hills and valleys of the Central Range. Beyond, to the south, the sugar-cane fields, the silver tanks of the oil refinery at Pointe-à-Pierre, and the pink and white houses of San Fernando; to the west, the shining rice-fields and swamps of Caroni, and the Gulf of Paria; the Caroni Savannah to the north, and the settlements at the foot of the Northern Range.
