The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book (4 page)

‘Yes, man. Buy him a sweet drink. Cost me six cents. But in five years’ time it getting me one vote. Buy one sweet drink for a different child every day for five years. At the end of five years, what you have? Everybody, but everybody, man, saying, “We going to vote for Foam.” Is the only way, Mr Harbans.’

‘Is a lil too late for me to start buying sweet drink for poorer people children now.’

They were near Chittaranjan’s now, and the Dodge slowed down not far from Ramlogan’s rumshop.

Ramlogan, a big greasy man in greasy trousers and a greasy vest, was leaning against his shop door, his fat arms crossed, scowling at the world.

‘Wave to him,’ Foam ordered.

Harbans, his thin hands gripped nervously to the steering wheel, only nodded at Ramlogan.

‘You have to do better than that. Particularly that Ramlogan and Chittaranjan don’t get on too good.’

‘Aah. But why this disunity in our people, Foam? People should be uniting these days, man.’

The Dodge came to a halt. Harbans struggled to put it in neutral.

Foam pointed. ‘See that Queen of Flowers tree in Chittaranjan yard, just next door to Ramlogan?’

‘Ooh, ooh, is a nice one.’ It made him feel Chittaranjan must be a nice man. ‘I didn’t know that Chittaranjan did like flowers.’

‘Chittaranjan
ain’t
like flowers.’

Harbans frowned at the Queen of Flowers.

‘Chittaranjan say flowers does give cough.’

‘Is true.’

‘Huh! Don’t start talking to Chittaranjan about flowers, eh. Look at the Queen of Flowers again. Flowers in Chittaranjan yard. But look where the root is.’

The root was in Ramlogan’s yard. But about eight inches from the ground the Queen of Flowers—just out of perversity, it seemed—had decided to change course. It made almost a right angle, went through the wide-meshed wire fence and then shot up and blossomed in Chittaranjan’s yard.

‘And look at that Bleeding Heart,’ Foam went on. ‘Root in Ramlogan yard, but the flowers crawling all up by Chittaranjan bedroom window. And look at the breadfruit tree. Whole thing in Ramlogan yard, but all the breadfruit only falling in Chittaranjan yard. And look at the zaboca tree. Same thing. It look like
obeah
and magic, eh?’

‘Ooh, ooh.’

‘Now, whenever Ramlogan plant a tree, he planting it right in the middle middle of his yard. But what does happen then? Look at that soursop tree in the middle of Ramlogan yard.’

It was stunted, wilting.

‘Ramlogan blight. If you know, Mr Harbans, the amount of row it does have here on account of those trees. One day Chittaranjan say he want to cut the trees down. Ramlogan chase him with a cutlass, man. Another day Ramlogan say
he
want to go in Chittaranjan yard to collect the breadfruit and the zaboca and flowers from
his
trees. Chittaranjan take up a stick and chase Ramlogan all down Elvira main road.’

Harbans began to get worried about Chittaranjan.

All this while Ramlogan had been eyeing the lorry, heavy brows puckered over deep-set disapproving eyes, fat cheeks sagging sourly,
massive arms still crossed. From time to time he hawked leisurely, and hissed out the spittle between the gap in his top teeth.

‘Foam,’ Harbans said, ‘is a good thing I have a campaign manager like you. I only know about Elvira roads. I ain’t know about the people.’

‘It have nothing like the local expert,’ Foam agreed. ‘Look out, Mr Harbans, the lorry rolling in the drain!’

The lorry was moving forward, locked towards the gutter at the right. Harbans dived for the hand-brake and pulled it back with a loud ripping sound. ‘Oh God, I did
know
I was taking my life in my hands today.’ His alarm was double; he knew then that the sign he had had was being confirmed.

Ramlogan gave a short laugh, so sharp and dry it was almost like a word: ‘Ha.’

The commotion brought Chittaranjan to his veranda upstairs. The half-wall hid most of his body, but what Foam and Harbans could see looked absurdly small and shrivelled. Spectacles with thin silver rims and thin silver arms emphasized Chittaranjan’s diminutiveness.

Foam and Harbans got out of the lorry.

The awning of Chittaranjan’s shop had been pulled back; the ground had already been combed that afternoon by children; and only two toy anvils set in the concrete terrace remained of the day’s workshop.

‘Is you, Mr Harbans?’

‘Is me, Goldsmith.’

‘Who is the little boy you have with you?’

‘Campaign …’ But Harbans was ashamed to go on. ‘Baksh son.’

‘And not so little either,’ Foam muttered to himself. But he was anxious. He had been talking freely about Chittaranjan in the lorry, dropping the ‘Mr,’ but like nearly everyone else in Elvira he was awed by Chittaranjan, had been ever since he was a boy. He had never set foot in the Big House.

‘What Baksh son want with me? He want to see me in any pussonal?’

‘Not in any pussonal, Goldsmith. He just come with me.’

‘Why he come with you?’

Harbans was beside himself with shyness.

‘About the elections,’ Foam boomed up.

‘Ha,’ Ramlogan said from his shop door. ‘Ha.’

Chittaranjan turned to talk to someone in his veranda; then he shouted down, ‘All right, come up the both of all-you,’ and disappeared immediately.

Foam nudged Harbans and pointed to one side of Chitaranjan’s yard. The ground under the breadfruit tree and the zaboca tree was mushy with rotting fruit. ‘See what I did tell you,’ Foam whispered. ‘One frighten to eat it, the other ’fraid to come and get it.’

They went up the polished red steps at the side of the house and came into the large veranda. Chittaranjan was rocking in a morris rocking-chair. He looked even tinier sitting down than he did hunched over the ledge of the veranda wall. He didn’t get up, didn’t look at them, didn’t greet them. He rocked measuredly, serenely, as though rocking gave him an exclusive joy. Every time he rocked, the heels of his sabots clacked on the tiled floor.

‘Is a big big house you have here, Goldsmith,’ Harbans cooed.

‘Tcha!’ Chittaranjan sucked his teeth. He had three gold teeth and many gold fillings. ‘Biggest house in Elvira, that’s all.’ His voice was as thin as Harbans’s, but there was an edge to it.

Harbans sought another opening. ‘I see you is in your home clothes, Goldsmith. Like you ain’t going out this evening at all.’

Like Foam, Harbans was struck by the difference between the appearance of the house and the appearance of the owner. Chittaranjan’s white shirt was mended and remended; the sleeves had been severely abridged and showed nearly all of Chittaranjan’s stringy arms. The washed-out khaki trousers were not patched, but there was a tear down one leg from knee to ankle that looked as
though it had been there a long time. This shabbiness was almost grand. It awed at once.

Chittaranjan, rocking, smiling, didn’t look at his visitors. ‘What it have to go out for?’ he asked at last.

Harbans didn’t know what to say.

Chittaranjan continued to smile. But he wasn’t really smiling; his face was fixed that way, the lips always parted, the gold teeth always flashing.

‘If you ask me,’ Chittaranjan said, having baffled them both into silence, ‘I go tell you it have nothing to go out for.’

‘Depending,’ Foam said.

‘Yes,’ Harbans agreed quickly. ‘Depending, Goldsmith.’

‘Depending on what?’ Chittaranjan’s tone seemed to take its calmness from the evening settling on Elvira.

Harbans was stumped again.

Foam came to the rescue. ‘Depending on who you have to meet and what you going to give and what you going to get.’

Chittaranjan relented. ‘Sit down. The both of all-you. You want some sweet drink?’

Harbans shook his head vigorously.

Chittaranjan ignored this. ‘Let me call the girl.’ For the first time he looked at Harbans. ‘Nelly! Nalini! Bring some sweet drink.’

‘Daughter?’ Harbans asked. As though he didn’t know about Nalini, little Nelly; as though all Elvira didn’t know that Chittaranjan wanted Nelly married to Harbans’s son, that this was the bargain to be settled that afternoon.

‘Yes,’ Chittaranjan said deprecatingly. ‘Daughter. One and only.’

‘Have a son myself,’ Harbans said.

‘Look at that, eh.’

‘Ambitious boy. Going to take up doctoring. Just going on eighteen.’

Foam sat silent, appreciating the finer points of the bargaining. He knew that in normal circumstances Chittaranjan, as the girl’s father, would have pleaded and put himself out to please. But the
elections were not normal circumstances and now it was Harbans who had to be careful not to offend.

Nelly Chittaranjan came and placed two wooden Negro waiters next to Harbans and Foam. She was small, like her father; and her long-waisted pink frock brought out every pleasing aspect of her slimness. She placed bottles of coloured liquid on the waiters; then went and got some tumblers.

Chittaranjan became a little more animated. He pointed to the bottles. ‘Choose. The red one or the orange one?’

‘Red for me,’ Foam said briskly.

Harbans couldn’t refuse. ‘Orange,’ he said, but with so much gloom, Chittaranjan said, ‘You could have the red if you want, you know.’

‘Is all right, Goldsmith. Orange go do me.’

Nelly Chittaranjan made a quick face at Foam. She knew him by sight and had had to put up with his daring remarks when she passed him on the road. Foam had often ‘troubled’ her, that is, whistled at her; he had never ‘rushed’ her, made a serious pass at her. She looked a little surprised to see him in her father’s house. Foam, exaggeratedly relaxed, tried to make out he didn’t value the honour at all.

She poured the sweet drinks into the tumblers.

Harbans looked carefully at the wooden waiter next to his chair. But in fact he was looking at Nelly Chittaranjan; doing so discreetly, yet in a way to let Chittaranjan know he was looking at her.

Chittaranjan rocked and clacked his sabots on the floor.

‘Anything else, Pa?’

Chittaranjan looked at Harbans. Harbans shook his head.

‘Nothing else, Nelly.’

She went inside, past the curtains into the big blue drawing-room where on one wall Harbans saw a large framed picture of the Round Table Conference with King George V and Mahatma Gandhi sitting together, the King formally dressed and smiling, the Mahatma in a loincloth, also smiling. The picture made Harbans easier. He himself had a picture like that in his drawing-room in Port of Spain.

Then Foam had an accident. He knocked the Negro waiter down and spilled his red sweet drink on the floor.

Chittaranjan didn’t look. ‘It could wipe up easy. Tiles, you know.’

Nelly came out, smiled maliciously at Foam and cleaned up the mess.

Chittaranjan stood up. Even in his sabots he looked no more than five feet tall. He went to a corner of the veranda, his sabots clicking and clacking, took up a tall chromium-plated column and set it next to Foam’s chair.

‘Kick it down,’ he said. He looked flushed, as though he was going to break out in sweat.

Harbans said, ‘Ooh.’

‘Come on, Baksh son, kick this down.’

‘Goldsmith!’ Harbans cried.

Foam got up.

‘Foam! What you doing?’

‘No, Mr Harbans. Let him kick it down.’

The column was kicked.

It swayed, then sprang back into an upright position.

‘You can’t kick this down.’ Chittaranjan took the ashtray with the weighted bottom back to its corner, and returned to his rocking-chair. ‘Funny the modern things they making these days, eh? Something my brother in Port of Spain give me.’ Chittaranjan looked at Harbans. ‘Barrister, you know.’

Foam sat down in some confusion.

Harbans said, ‘Your daughter look bright like anything, Goldsmith.’

‘Tcha!’ Chittaranjan didn’t stop rocking. ‘When people hear she talk, they don’t want to believe that she only have sixteen years. Taking typing-lesson
and
shorthand from Teacher Francis, you know. She could take down prescription
and
type them out. This doctor son you have …’

‘Oh, he ain’t a doctor
yet.
’

‘You shoulda bring him with you, you know. I like children with ambition.’

‘He was learning today. Scholar and student, you see. But you must come and see him. He
want
to see you.’

‘I want to see him too.’

So it was settled.

Harbans was so relieved that Chittaranjan had made no fresh demands, he took a sip of his orange liquid.

Chittaranjan rocked. ‘You ain’t have to worry about the election. Once I for you’—he made a small dismissing gesture with his right hand—‘you win.’

‘The boy father say he for me too.’

Chittaranjan dismissed Baksh with a suck of gold teeth. ‘Tcha! What
he
could do?’

Foam’s loyalty was quick. ‘He control a thousand votes.’

Harbans made peace. ‘In these modern days, everybody have to unite. I is a Hindu. You, Goldsmith, is a Hindu. Baksh is Muslim. It matter?’

Chittaranjan only rocked.

Foam said, ‘We got to form a committee.’

Chittaranjan widened his smile.

‘Committee to organize. Meetings, canvassers, posters.’

Harbans tried to laugh away Foam’s speech. ‘Things getting modern these days, Goldsmith.’

Chittaranjan said, ‘I don’t see how committee could bring in more votes than me. If I go to a man in Elvira and I tell him to vote for so-and-so, I want to see him tell me no.’

The cool threatening tone of Chittaranjan’s last sentence took Harbans aback. He didn’t expect it from such a small man.

‘What about that traitor Lorkhoor?’ he asked.

But he got no reply because at that moment a loud crash on the galvanized-iron roof startled them all. The Negro waiters shuddered. There was a sound of breaking glass.

From inside a woman’s voice, weary, placid—Mrs. Chittaranjan’s—said, ‘Breadfruit again. Break a glass pane this time.’

Chittaranjan jumped up, his sabots giving the loudest clack. ‘Is that son-of-a-bitch Ramlogan!’ He ran to the veranda wall, stood on tiptoe and hunched himself over the ledge. Harbans and Foam looked out with him.

Ramlogan was picking his teeth with unconcern. ‘Ha. Ha.’