The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (14 page)

And halted.

There, limping out of Chittaranjan’s yard into the hot afternoon sun, was the animal all Elvira had heard about. Tiny, rickety. Dangerous. Tiger.

‘Where that dog going?’ Haq cried. And he hoped it wasn’t to his place.

*

Tiger came out into the road and turned left.

It was nearly half past three. Children were coming back from school, labourers from the estate. Only people in government service were still at work; they would knock off at four.

The news ran through Elvira. Baksh’s puppy, the
obeah-dog,
the one that had been sent away, was back.

Tiger limped on. Schoolchildren and labourers stood silently at the verge to let him pass. Faces appeared behind raised curtains. People ran up from the traces to watch. No one interfered with Tiger and he looked at no one. His hiccoughs had gone. He tottered, wobbled,
and went on, as though some force outside him were pushing him on to a specific destination.

Mr Cuffy saw and was afraid.

Rampiari’s husband was afraid. ‘You is my witness, Ma,’ he said to his mother-in-law, ‘that when the goldsmith come yesterday to ask for my vote, I tell him I didn’t want to meddle in this politics business. You is my witness that he beg and beg me to vote.’

Mahadeo, his thoughts on the sick and dying Negroes of Elvira, saw. When he passed Mr Cuffy he didn’t look up.

Mr Cuffy shouted, ‘Remember, Mahadeo, if anybody dead before this elections …’

Mahadeo walked on.

Tiger walked on.

Baksh, Mrs Baksh, Foam and all the six young Bakshes knew.

‘Shut up the shop!’ Baksh ordered. ‘And shut up the gate. Nobody dog ain’t walking in my yard as they well please.’

Mrs Baksh was pale. ‘This sweetness, man, this election sweetness.’

Baksh said, ‘Foam, I ain’t want to get Bible and key again. You did or you didn’t take away that dog last night?’

‘I tell you, man.’

‘Oh God, Foam! Things serious. Don’t lie to me at this hour, you know.’

Foam sucked his teeth.

Herbert said, ‘But we ain’t even know is the same dog.’

‘Yes,’ Baksh said eagerly. ‘Exactly. How we know is the same dog?’

Mrs Baksh beat her bosom. ‘I
know,
Baksh.’

Tiger came on, indifferent as sea or sky. He didn’t walk in the centre of the road, as people wished he would; he walked at the edge, as if he wished to hide in the grass.

Christians, Hindus and Muslims crossed themselves. To make sure, some Hindus muttered
Rama, Rama
as well.

Tiger came around the bend of the road.

‘Is Tiger!’ Herbert said.

‘Sweetness! Sourness!’

Rafiq said, ‘Ten die.’

‘But look how small the mister man dog is, eh?’ Baksh said. ‘You know, he get even smaller now. Small as a rabbit and thin as a match-stick.’

Herbert said, ‘Still, small as he is, he coming.’

‘Herbert,’ Mrs Baksh pleaded, ‘you ain’t cause enough trouble and misery?’

Baksh said, ‘Not to worry, man. For all we know, the dog just going to walk straight past the house. After all, that fellow in Tamana did well
jharay
Herbert.’

‘I
know,
Baksh. And everybody in Elvira know too. Look how they looking. They looking at the dog and then they looking at we. And they laughing in their belly, for all the serious face they putting on. Oh God, Baksh, this sweetness!’

Foam said, ‘I don’t see why all-you making this big set of fuss for. All I could see is a thin thin dog, break-up like hell, that look as though he ain’t eat nothing since he born.’

Tiger staggered on.

Baksh said, ‘Look, man. What you worried for? He ain’t even trying to cross the road yet.’

‘Baksh, I know. He go cross when he want to cross. That dog know his business, I telling you. Oh, Baksh, the mess you get me in!’

Herbert said, ‘Oh. He ain’t even stopping.’

Mrs Baksh, crying, asked, ‘You want it to stop, Herbert? Just answer me that. My own child want the dog to stop?’

Herbert said, ‘Well, it ain’t stopping.’

‘What I did tell you?’ Baksh said. He laughed. ‘Wonder
who
house little mister man dog going to. Come to think of it, you know, man, it ain’t even the same dog. The one we did have had a white spot on the right foot in front. This one ain’t have no white spot. Not the same dog really.’ He turned his back to the veranda wall and faced his family. ‘Don’t know why everybody was getting so excited. All right, all right, the show over.’ He clapped his hands and snapped his fingers at the young Bakshes. ‘Show over. Back to your reading and
your studies. Homework. Educate youself. Jawgraphy and jawmetry. Nobody did give
me
a opportunity to educate myself …’

‘Dog coming back,’ Foam said. ‘He stop and turning.’

They all scrambled to look.

Tiger was limping brokenly across the road.

‘Somebody feed that dog here!’ Baksh shouted. ‘Nobody not going to tell me that somebody ain’t feed that dog here.’

Tiger dragged himself across the plank over the gutter. Then the strength that had driven him so far was extinguished; he collapsed on his side, his eyes vacant, his chest and belly heaving.

‘He behaving as if he come home,’ Herbert said.

‘Herbert, my son, my own son,’ Mrs Baksh said. ‘What come over you, son? Tell me what they do to you, to make you
want
that dirty dog. Tell me, my son.’

Herbert didn’t reply.

Mrs Baksh broke down completely. She cried and her breasts and belly shook. ‘Something going to happen, Baksh. In this house.’

‘Ten die,’ Rafiq said.

Baksh slapped him.

‘Suppose that dog just lay down there and dead,’ Baksh said. ‘Oh God, Foam, you want me to believe that you ain’t feed that dog here? That dog behave too much as if he know where his bread butter, you hear.’

Foam shrugged his shoulders.

Baksh said, ‘Man, what going to be the best thing? For the dog to live or dead?’

Mrs Baksh pressed her hands against her eyes and shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Baksh. I just don’t know what is the best thing.’

But Herbert knew what he wanted. ‘Oh, God,’ he prayed, ‘don’t let Tiger dead.’

*

Ramlogan didn’t know about Tiger’s passage through Elvira. After Haq left he remained in his narrow dark room, savouring the news
Haq had brought. He couldn’t go back to sleep. He remained on his bed, completely happy, looking up at the corrugated-iron roof until the alarm clock went off on the empty rum crate at his bedside. It was an alarm clock he had got many years before for collecting empty Anchor Cigarette packets; the dial had letters in the place of eleven numerals and read
SMOKE ANCHOR 6
. The dial was yellow and the glass, surprisingly uncracked, was scratched and blurred. Every midday when he shut his shop Ramlogan set the alarm for a quarter to four. That gave him time to anoint himself with Canadian Healing Oil, dress and make some tea before he opened the shop again at four.

That afternoon, routine became delicious ritual. He was lavish with the Canadian Healing Oil. He rubbed it over his face and worked it into his scalp; he poured some into his palm and held it to his nostrils to inhale the therapeutic vapours; the only thing Ramlogan didn’t do with Canadian Healing Oil was drink it. He dressed leisurely, humming the song from
Jhoola.
He made his tea, drank it; and having some moments to spare, went out into his yard. The stunted and dead plants in the centre didn’t offend him that afternoon, and he looked almost with love on the breadfruit tree and the zaboca tree at the edge of the yard. He was particularly fond of the zaboca tree. He had stolen it not long after he had come to Elvira, from a lorry that was carrying a whole load of small zaboca trees in bamboo pods. The lorry had had a puncture just outside his shop; he had gone out to look; and when the driver went off to look for a pump, Ramlogan had taken a bamboo pod and walked off with it into his own yard. The tree had grown well. Its fruit was high-grade. You could tell that by just looking at it. It was none of your common zaboca, all stringy and waterlogged. That afternoon it didn’t grieve Ramlogan at all that he hadn’t tasted one of the fruit.

It was time to open the shop. He climbed over the greasy counter, thinking, as he did so, that after the election, when Harbans had settled his account, he would get a nice zinc counter. And perhaps even a refrigerator. For lager. People were drinking more lager and it
didn’t do for him to keep ice wrapped up in the dirty sugar-sack. And sometimes the ice-lorry didn’t even come.

He lifted the solid bar that kept the shaky front doors secure, humming the song from
Jhoola.
He remembered he had picked up the song from Mrs Chittaranjan next door, and stopped humming. He opened the doors, squinting against the sudden dazzle of the afternoon sun. He looked down.

Before him, laid squarely in the middle of his doorway, was a dead chicken.

H
E RECOGNIZED THE CHICKEN
at once.

It was one of Mrs Chittaranjan’s clean-necked chickens, white and grey, an insistent, impertinent thing that, despite repeated shooings and occasional lucky hits with stones and bits of wood and empty Canadian Healing Oil bottles, continued to come into his yard, eat his grass, dig up his languishing plants and leave its droppings everywhere, sometimes even in the back room and in the shop.

It was the chicken Foam had hit earlier that day.

Ramlogan had known the chicken since it was hatched. He had known its mother and managed to maim her in the leg when she came into his yard one day with all her brood. The rest of that particular brood had disappeared. They had been stolen, they had grown up and been eaten or they had just died. Only the hardy clean-necked chicken had survived.

For a moment Ramlogan was sad to see it lying dead at his feet.

He looked up at Chittaranjan’s veranda.

Chittaranjan was waiting for him. ‘Look at it good, Ramlogan. It not going to worry you again. That fowl on
your
nasty conscience.’

Ramlogan was taken by surprise.

‘You is a fat blow-up beast. You can’t touch no human, so you take it outa a poor chicken. You is a bad wicked beast. Look at it good. Take it up. Cook it. Eat it. Eat it and get more fat. Ain’t is that you say you want to do for a long long time? Now is your chance. Cook it and eat it and I hope it poison you. You kill it, you wicked beast, you Nazi spy.’

Ramlogan hadn’t recovered. ‘Who you calling a Nazi spy?’

‘You. You is a Nazi spy. You is wuss than Hitler.’

‘And because I is wuss than Hitler, you come and put this dead fowl on my doorstep?’

‘But ain’t it make your heart satisfy, you wuthless beast? Ain’t it bring peace and satisfaction inside your fat dirty heart to see the poor little chicken dead?’

‘Eh! But who tell you I kill your fowl? I ain’t kill nobody fowl, you hearing me?’

‘You is a wuthless liar.’

Ramlogan lifted his leg to kick the chicken from his doorstep. But something Chittaranjan said arrested him.

‘Kick it,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘And I bet your whole fat foot drop off and rotten. Go ahead and kick it.’

Ramlogan was getting angry. ‘You just want to put something on me, eh? You is a big big fighter, and all you could do is put magic and
obeah
on me, eh? You is a Supreme Court fighter?’

‘What you asking me for?
You
ever see the inside of any court?’

Ramlogan strode over the dead chicken and walked slowly to the edge of his yard. He said, genially, ‘Chittaranjan, come down a little bit. Come down and tell me I is a Nazi spy.’

And Ramlogan put his hand on the wire fence.

‘Take your fat dirty hand offa my fence!’

Ramlogan smiled. ‘Come down and take my hand off. Come down, take my hand offa your fence and tell me I is a Nazi spy.’

Chittaranjan was puzzled. Ramlogan had never before refused to take his hands off the fence. He had contented himself either with crying and promising to build his own fence, or with saying, ‘All right, I taking my hand offa your fence, and I going inside to wash it with carbolic soap.’

‘Come down,’ Ramlogan invited.

‘I not going to dirty my hands on you.’ Chittaranjan paused. ‘But is my fence still.’

Inspiration came to Ramlogan. ‘Why you don’t put a fence around your daughter too?’

He scored.

‘Nalini?’ Chittaranjan asked, and his tone was almost conversational.

‘Yes, Nalini self. Little Nelly. Ha.’ Ramlogan gave his dryest laugh.

‘Ramlogan! What you want with my daughter?’

Ramlogan shook the wire fence. ‘Ha.
I
don’t want nothing with your daughter. But I know who want though.’

‘Ramlogan! Who you is to take my daughter name in your mouth in vain? You, a man like you, who should be running about kissing the ground in case she walk on it.’

‘
Walk?
Ha. Little Nelly tired with walking man. She lying down now.’

‘Ramlogan! You mean you sell everything from that rumshop of yours? You ain’t even keep back a penny shame? Is the sort of language to hear from a old, hardback, resign man like you?’

Ramlogan addressed Chittaranjan’s workmen under the awning. They had been studiously inattentive throughout. ‘Tell me, is something
I
make up?’

The workmen didn’t look at him.

Ramlogan said, ‘When girl children small, they does crawl, as the saying goes. Then they does start walking. Then they does lie down.
As
the saying goes. Ain’t something I sit down and invent.’

‘Who invent it?’ Chittaranjan screamed. ‘Your mother?’

Ramlogan said solemnly, ‘Chittaranjan, I beg you, don’t cuss my mother. Cuss me upside down as much as you want, but leave my mother alone.’ He paused, and laughed. ‘But if you want to learn more about Nelly, why you don’t ask Foam?’

‘Foam? Foreman? Baksh son?’

‘Campaign manager. Ha.
Nice
boy. Nice
Muslim
boy.’

Chittaranjan lost his taste for battle. ‘Is true? Is true, Ramlogan? You ain’t making this up?’

‘Why you asking me for? Ha. Ask little Nelly. Look, little Nelly coming back from school. Ask she.’ Ramlogan pointed.