by Sam Selvon
‘That’s a lot of nonsense, man. In this day and age, how can such a thing happen? I think Faizull is exploiting your gullibility. We should go straight to the police and make a clean breast.’
‘Who shall bell the cat?’
‘We’ll go together.’
‘Not me. Maybe Faizull bluffing, but I am not going to be the one to find out. In my experience, nothing is impossible, and whilst you might think of all this as a horrible nightmare, truth is stranger than fiction, and the fact of the matter is that he got us by the balls.’
‘Maybe we should try and find out more about the whole set-up. We might discover a way out.’
‘I don’t want to find out nothing. That’s how it all started.’
‘Well,’ Bob say, ‘let’s try and see Farouk. It seems he has more authority than Faizull.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I say.
Bob went into the bedroom to try and get some rest, leaving me to wrestle with the problem. Suddenly I hear bragadam, biff, and other extraordinary noises, and when I went to see what happening, I see one of the Asians on the landing outside. He had his sleeping mat with him, and he was just rising from the floor, having been precipitated violently from the room.
I was in a quandary. ‘Speakee English?’ I try.
‘Fuck off,’ he say, giving me a nasty look.
It was not the most auspicious phrase in the Queen’s language, but it was handy and in everyday use, and at least I knew he was linguistic.
‘What happen?’ I ask.
‘Those two bastards in there are infidels,’ he say. ‘I refuse to stay in their company any longer. I am already contaminated and will have to be cleansed by a pundit. There is no god but the god, and Mohammed is his prophet.’
Whereupon he spread his sleeping mat and squat down facing East.
‘But what happened?’ I ask. ‘You can tell me, I am one of the Faithful.’
‘I told Faizull I did not want to mix with the others ever since we were in Amsterdam. He said it would be extremely difficult, and that he could not do anything until we arrived in England, and that it would cost me extra. I agreed and gave him twenty pounds more. Now we are in England, and I should not have to suffer the presence and proximity of disbelievers, You pays your money and you takes your choice. Have you got any Dettol?’
I went to look for Faizull, but he wasn’t in the house. I come back and try the door, but it was lock. I bang, but nobody won’t answer.
‘You chaps have got to settle your differences,’ I told Paki. ‘You’re not in Pakistan any more.’
‘I am not spending another minute in that room,’ Paki say.
‘You can’t sleep on the landing,’ I say.
‘Since I left the bonny banks of the Ganges,’ Paki say, ‘I have slept in all manner of places. Besides, I do not need any sleep. I might just go into a trance and catch up with my meditation.’
And so saying, Paki take up the lotus position and lose himself from worldly care and woe; he didn’t even know when I left.
It’s a good trick, that. Imagine when things grim and you are catching your arse, all you have to do is cross your legs and sit down, and look for the middle of your forehead, and all your worries are over.
The next morning he was still there, in the same position. I don’t know how he didn’t catch cramp.
And not only next morning he was still there, but Paki take up residence in the house, living in Faizull room. It seem that Faizull needed a man on the spot to organize the traffic, and he and Paki come to some sort of agreement. All this time I never see Mister Farouk once, and when I ask Faizull, he say that he was in Amsterdam handling operations from that end.
In the space of a month, twelve orientals came to Shepherd’s Bush and thank God, fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away. I never knew where they went, or what happen to them after they leave the house. Twelve times twenty is two hundred and forty pounds, and even when you discount Bob’s cut, you can see that I was laughing all the way to the bank.
But it must not be imagined that I accept this blood money without trepidation and qualms. Although the other tenants appear to be minding their own business, all this nocturnal activity was arousing suspicion, and any day I expected the police to make a raid. I plan I would pretend ignorant and say that I don’t know nothing, or tell them I holding a meeting of orientals to indoctrinate them into our way of life. But I know that I was helplessly and hopelessly entangled and ensnared, and that monkey would smoke my pipe if the law get wind of what was happening.
Them was perilous days, days of walking tip-toe, days of jumping up out of bed in a nightmare, days of living dangerously and starting at shadows. One night I dream I was in a Persian market surrounded by millions of the Faithful and the unfaithful, and I was asking each one if he was Farouk, and they all smiling and shaking their heads. Then Faizull appear in the dream in one of them big removal vans, and the whole horde start to fight to scramble in, and I was helping to push them, and counting in my mind forty times twenty, forty-one times twenty, fifty times twenty. The van didn’t have space for me in the end and I had to sit down on the bonnet, but fifty times twenty make a thousand pounds, and I was now in the four-figure bracket. And then I start to get cold sweat wondering how we going to house fifty of them in Shepherd’s Bush.
I wake up from the dream in this cold sweat, and lo, there was a soft rap at the door, and when I went it was Faizull.
‘Man,’ I tell him, ‘I just had a terrible nightmare.’
‘Never mind,’ he say, ‘there will be no more sleep for you tonight. I have a bunch of tulips from Amsterdam.’
Faizull appear as if he too, had a nightmare, for he was sweating enough to water the tulips.
‘You had a rough crossing?’ I ask.
He went to the window and shift the curtains and peep out before he answer.
‘After this trip, Farouk is going to give Shepherd’s Bush a rest,’ he say.
‘You mean you are releasing me from bondage?’ I ask joyfully.
‘Things are getting hot,’ he say. ‘We will have to operate in another district.’
I start to hum a little ditty. I was wide awake now, almost ready to take pleasure in my work.
‘Wake your friend Bob,’ Faizull say, ‘while I bring them in.’ I rouse Bob.
‘Action stations,’ I tell him gleefully.
Bob grumble and rub his eyes. ‘Do I detect a note of joy in your voice?’ he ask.
‘Aye,’ I say, ‘you do. This is going to be the last train to San Fernando.’
The news perk him up too. In a little while he had the kettle on and was lining up cups.
‘How many?’ he ask cheerfully.
‘I don’t know yet,’ I say, rubbing my hands contentedly. ‘But this is the last time, Bob. Happy days are here again.’
‘Moses,’ Bob say solemnly, ‘don’t ever get yourself in such a situation again. I have lost weight worrying about it. The tenants have been asking embarrassing questions. And more than once I have seen policemen loitering about the corner.’
‘It will all be over soon,’ I say, ‘and we shall revert to our former way of life.’
‘I hope so,’ Bob say. ‘Peace of mind is better than all the money in the world.’
‘I agree,’ I say, ‘you know that my hand was forced into this affair. When we get rid of this last batch, we shall fumigate the house and wash our hands of the whole business.’
Faizull shepherd in the refugees, and I begin to count as they come in. Twenty pounds, forty pounds, sixty, two hundred and forty.
A cold shiver run up and down my spine.
‘Faizull,’ I say, with a tremor in my voice, ‘how many are there?’
‘That’s the lot,’ he say.
I laugh hollowly. ‘I count twelve. Even if I had a mansions, I wouldn’t have place to hoard them.’
‘You will have to do the best you could,’ he say with a note of finality.
; I can tell you, that of all the Easterners who shelter under my roof, this dozen was the most fantastic and incredible shipment of humanity that I ever set eyes upon. I did think I had a nightmare in the Persian market before Faizull come, but that was a dream of delight. The nightmare was now happening for true. It is hard enough to try and fathom one or two with their dark, scowling faces, piercing resentful eyes, and their general inscrutable miens and bearings. When you are faced with a dozen of the best, closely packed together; when is not only men but woman too – three females was there; when it have a babe-in-arms too (that make twelve and a half, my monetary instinct quickly calculate); when is after midnight and you are in London, a civilized capital metropolis where you do not expect such things to happen – need I go on, dear R? Can you blame me for my tremulous voice and my hollow laughter? Can you blame me if I saw this cluster of beings as in a blur, unable to distinguish one from the other?
‘There is no god but Allah,’ I mutter under my breath, giving myself some solacement, ‘and Mohammed is his prophet.’
Bob wade through the crowd like a white man on safari striding through a recalcitrant mob of native bearers.
‘Good gracious,’ he say, ‘what’s this then? What are all these people doing here?’
‘I was just telling Faizull we cannot cope,’ I say.
Faizull was still acting nervously. This was the first delivery that I ever see him look so uneasy and restless, and it was getting contagious.
‘Don’t keep them standing here,’ he say. ‘They have not slept for two nights.’
‘Correction,’ I say. ‘Three nights, because I don’t know where they will rest their heads tonight.’
‘We must have a talk, Moses,’ Faizull say. ‘Put them all in Bob’s room for a few minutes while we discuss the matter.’
So that’s what we do, although it had a overspill and some was standing on the landing, with the door to the room open. Give the devil his due, these orientals didn’t make any noise, they didn’t say a word, just shuffle into Bob’s room – gentlemen first, of course, the women making up the overspill, Clive of India would of been proud to see their docile servile behaviour. If to say that was a dozen hustlers from the Caribbean, I do not have to tell you they would of started to make rab and kick up rarse long time.
Bob start a tea-trek, using cup and glass and milk bottle and anything that would hold a cuppa, while Faizull and me sit down at the table to sort out the confusion.
‘It’s impossible,’ I start off with.
Faizull haul out a wad of sterling, lick his thumb and start counting.
‘You can’t make me change my mind with a show of filthy lucre,’ I say stoutly – I mean weakly. ‘I have no place to keep them. Two or three is okay, but when you start bringing in a battalion, it is a horse of a different colour.’
‘I can’t dally,’ Faizull say. ‘I have to be out of London tonight. I have to get rid of the van quickly. Listen carefully to your instructions. They are not to leave the house under any circumstances. In two or three days, we shall be taking them away – not all at once, but in little groups. It may be sooner, and we might be able to cart the lot off together – it just depends on luck. When we have gotten rid of them, you will never see me again.’
‘How will I live without you?’ I say. But I never have much luck with my sarcasms.
‘And if I were you,’ he went on, ‘I would forget everything that has happened. Just carry on your life as usual.’
‘You don’t have to remind me,’ I say. ‘But how do I know for sure that this is the end?’
Faizull was sipping a cup of hot tea and it seem to make him sweat even more.
‘I told you the trail is hot,’ he say. ‘It is in our own interests to function in another different locale.’
‘Try to be reasonable, Faizull,’ I plead. ‘What do you expect me to do with all these people? We would have to slaughter a flock of sheep to feed them.’
‘Paki will take care of all the petty details,’ he say. ‘Leave all that to him.’
As he mention Paki I get an inspiration. ‘How about allocating some of them in Paki’s room?’
Faizull shake his head. No. It won’t work out. He is very difficult to live with, being an Untouchable.
‘Then there is no solution,’ I say in despair.
Bob brought me a cup of tea.
‘How are they getting on?’ I ask anxiously, remembering the time when the two infidels did catapult Paki out of the room.
‘They are practising segregation already,’ he said sadly. ‘They are standing around in little groups glaring at each other. I took some milk for the baby, but the mother is breast-feeding it. Right there, in front of everybody. What is to be done, Moses?’
Faizull answer for me. ‘They are definitely here for the night,’ he say firmly. ‘We are planning to get a big house in the country, where new arrivals can lay low.’
‘That’s all well and good,’ I say, ‘but it does not solve the immediate problem.’
‘How would you like to be in charge of the country house?’ Faizull ask me. ‘You will double what you are getting now. You and your friend,’ he nod at Bob. ‘It is always good to have a white man around, it allays suspicion.’
‘I appreciate your offer, but I’m afraid we’ll have to decline,’ I say. ‘I cannot wait for the day when I regain my freedom.’
‘You chaps from the West Indies are always full of talk,’ he sneer. ‘You go around as if you were worldly-wise and sophisticated, but when it comes to the crunch and there is a big deal, you chicken out.’
‘Don’t get racial, Faizull,’ I say. ‘We have conducted our business so far irregardless of race, colour or creed, in serenity and amicability. And don’t change the subject. Where are we going to house these people?’
‘You are creating a problem when there is none,’ he say, waving his hand airily in the air, encompassing the penthouse.
I do not have to tell you, gentle and perspicacious R, what was being suggested in that significant gesture.
Bob and me had was to walk up the Bayswater road, being as it was too late for bus or tube. Bob had his stripe pyjamas fold up under his arm, and he was in a evil, ranting mood. All I had was this piece of hardboard with a heavy clip on the top holding down my precious annotations. I get in the habit of travelling all about with it, like a trigger-happy photographer waiting for some catastrophy to happen and he would go click click and sell the pictures to the newspapers.
‘This is ridiculous, Moses,’ Bob rant. ‘Furthermore, it is utterly fantastic and unbelievable. If someone came to me relating similar circumstances I would call him a born liar.’
I was not exactly hilarious, either. But you know how sometimes when two people in the same mood, how one try to be the opposite? So I was falling back on some philosophical reflections to sustain me in these desperate hours.
‘It is only for the rest of the night,’ I say. ‘Tomorrow we will have to make some sort of arrangements.’
‘Indeed,’ Bob say. ‘But look at our situation now. A landlord and his lackey wandering the streets, having given up their rooms to a bunch of illegal immigrants.’
‘It is certainly a unique situation,’ I agree. ‘But there is no need to lose your cool. It does not help matters.’
‘So what are we going to do, sleep in the park?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ I say. Though if push come to shove, it was not such a remote possibility. But I was remembering my early immigrant days when I sheltered many a destitute out of the kindness of my heart. Where were they now? Not a one of them could I think of, but Galahad. It hurt me that I had to go and beg him to sleep in his basement room in Bayswater. But surely he would recall those days of yore, when hungry, lonely and sleepy, he came a’knocking and I fed and clothed him, and gave him the old armchair to sleep in.
‘We will go to Galahad’s room,’ I tell Bob.
He made a grimace of distaste. ‘That filthy basement!’
‘I prefer the park,’ Bob say. ‘It’s a hot summer’s night, and we may find a vacant bench. It’s healthier than breathing the foul air in that basement.’
‘Sleeping in the park has dreadful connotations of poverty,’ I objected. ‘We may be homeless tonight, but let’s don’t behave like hippies and drop-outs.’
And so we wend our way to Galahad’s pad, and in truth, descending those basement steps, buffeted by a powerful stench from the dustbins, I had half a mind to turn back and look for a vacancy in Kensington gardens. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure what sort of story I was going to tell Galahad. I did already tell Bob to let me do all the talking.
A twenty-watt light went on when we rap the door, and Galahad come and open it. He didn’t look surprise or anything. He just stand there in his drawers scratching his testicles.
‘What you doing here at this hour, Moses?’ he ask.
‘Looking for a place to sleep,’ I say. ‘Me and Bob.’
Galahad laugh as if is a joke. ‘What happen, you bankrupt?’
‘Have you got anybody with you?’ I ask.
‘No. Come in. It so hot I wasn’t sleeping.’
We went inside and Bob sit in the armchair, and I sit on the edge of the bed, and Galahad lay back down on the pillow.
‘What happen, you get put out?’ He was enjoying himself. You know how sometimes you could sense a person in trouble, and it make you feel good that it ain’t you, and you not in a hurry to find out, you know that by and by the sufferer will tell his tale of woe. So Galahad hunch up at the head of the bed, looking at Bob and me with a smile of contentment and anticipation.
‘It’s a long story,’ I say. I was longing to talk to somebody. I was wondering if I should take him into my confidence and confess the whole affair. A man-about-town like him might have some useful ideas.
‘Can I sleep in this armchair?’ Bob ask in an aggressive tone.
‘Sure.’ Galahad wave his hand and dismiss Bob. Bob start to take off his clothes and put on his pyjamas, muttering to himself.