The Chip-Chip Gatherers

by Shiva Naipaul

  ‘You taking it beyond a joke, Ramsaran.’ Julian kneeled among the shattered models. ‘Why you want to be doing a thing like this for?’ There was genuine bewilderment and anguish in his voice.

  An odd pity surged in Wilbert but he kicked at the planes again, grinding them under his heels so that the various bits were mauled beyond recognition.

  ‘A savage! That’s what you are. A savage like your father.’ Julian leapt on him.

  In a moment they were rolling on the floor and Wilbert was astride him, digging his shoes into Julian’s ribs and pummelling him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m a savage and I’ll show you what a savage can do. I’ll show you.’ His fingers gripped Julian’s tautened neck. Julian flailed his arms frantically and Wilbert sensed the weakness of the body writhing and squirming under him.

  ‘Surrender. Surrender.’ The choked appeals for mercy were barely audible. Julian’s eyes – so black! – flooded with fear. His hands pounded the floor. ‘Surrender … I surrender, Ramsaran.’ Tears trickled from the corner of his eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Ramsaran … for God’s sake …’

  Mrs Bholai came running into the room. She screamed when she saw them, flinging herself at Wilbert and attempting to draw his hands off her son’s neck. Wilbert was only aware of her as an irritant and pushed her away.

  ‘Oh God! Help us! It going to have murder here today. Bholai! Like you deaf? I tell you it going to have murder in this house today.’

  The Bholai girls crowded into the room. Shanty joined with her mother to free Julian from Wilbert’s grasp. Mr Bholai’s voice boomed in the distance. Wilbert relaxed his grip. Julian closed his eyes and groaned. His neck was red.

  ‘He dead. My Julian dead. Jules! Open your eyes and speak to me. Speak to your mother. I had tell you it was going to be murder in this house if you invite Wilbert to stay with we, Bholai. But you was deaf and now it too late. My Jules dead. Dead.’

  Mr Bholai stooped down beside them. ‘He not dead. You could see he still breathing.’

  Julian opened his puffed eyes and gazed sheepishly at his mother who was weeping copious tears. She crouched over him and taking a handkerchief from her bosom mopped his face.

  ‘Thank the Lord you still alive. Is a miracle how you survive. I really thought he had murder you.’ She cradled him. ‘And you,’ she said, turning on Wilbert, ‘you, a guest in this house, was going to murder my one and only son. For what? Tell me.’ She stared at the grey wreckage of the planes. ‘Look at that! It take Julian years to collect them and in a moment you mash it all up. Then you have the boldface to stand there grinning at me. Grinning!’

  Wilbert did not realize he had been smiling.

  ‘This is no grinning matter though. You haven’t hear the end of this yet. No sir!’ Mrs Bholai mopped Julian’s face with the handkerchief. ‘I going to make sure your father hear about this. Somebody will have to pay for the damage you cause.’

  ‘Now, now, Moon,’ Mr Bholai murmured soothingly. ‘You have no reason to turn on Wilbert like that. How you know is his fault alone? I sure they was only playing with one another. Boys like to fight and play rough.’ He scrupulously avoided looking at the wrecked planes and Julian’s neck where the red marks of Wilbert’s fingers still showed plainly.

  ‘That wasn’t playing, Bholai. Don’t think I was born yesterday. He was going to murder him. Look at Julian face. You see how swell-up it is? You don’t get that from playing.’ She lifted Julian’s head for inspection.

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ Mr Bholai said vaguely.

  ‘Boys will not be boys,’ Mrs Bholai answered hotly, ‘when it come to killing and murdering each other.’

  Mr Bholai was silent. He was hoping Julian would come to the rescue; and Wilbert too was hoping for something of the sort. The noble gesture would have been in keeping with his character. However, for reasons best known to himself, Julian remained quiet, submitting passively to the caresses of his mother.

  ‘I think you exaggerating the whole thing, Moon.’ He sighed and rested a flour-coated palm on Wilbert’s shoulder. ‘Still, you boys shouldn’t fight so rough. You might really hurt each other bad one of these days, and then it will be too late to be sorry.’

  ‘Huh! He nearly murder your son and that is all you have to say?’

  Mr Bholai would commit himself no sterner rebuke. Dusting his flour-stained palms, he walked slowly out of the room and returned downstairs to the grocery.

  Mrs Bholai assisted Julian to his feet. She directed a wrinkled finger at Wilbert. He thought of his mother’s fingers with nails like pink, seaside shells. Mrs Bholai’s did not resemble hers. They were harder; colder. Julian, his back to them, was looking out of the window. The cars went by steadily on the road below. ‘You listening to me, young man? My husband too frighten to tell you what I now going to tell you …’

  Wilbert was not listening to her. The cars went by: cars going to Port-of-Spain and San Fernando; San Fernando and Port-of-Spain.

  ‘… I don’t care who your father is. He could be Governor of Trinidad or king of the whole world for all I care. That don’t make the slightest difference to me …’

  Port-of-Spain and San Fernando; San Fernando and Port-of-Spain. Julian looked out of the window.

  ‘… but the next time you try and harm my son, it will be a different story. Make no mistake about that. Come, Julian. A cup of tea is what you need.’

  Mother and son left the room. The girls trailed after them.

  For some minutes Wilbert stood among the wreckage. He collected the bits in a heap on the top of the dresser. Overwhelmed with guilt and shame for the petty and senseless destruction he had wreaked, it occurred to him he should try and put them together again. He set to work, sitting cross-legged on the floor; but the task was a patently absurd one.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother.’ Julian leaned against the edge of the door watching him. His eyes were still puffed but his face was not as red and swollen as it had been.

  Wilbert dropped the pieces of mangled plastic he was holding. ‘I’ll pay you for them.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that, Ramsaran. Building them was the real fun. I’m not going to start all over again.’

  ‘But I want to pay you for them.’ He spoke roughly. ‘I break them so I must pay for them.’

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ Julian said.

  ‘There must be something else …’

  ‘For the moment I can’t think of anything. But if you insist …’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I think of something.’

  They looked not at each other but at the wrecked planes.

  Chapter Five

  1

  Sushila redecorated Rani’s room according to her peculiar taste, the junk she had scornfully discarded being replaced with junk of her own. She, no less than Rani, had her favourite photographs. However, they were not of snowy Swiss mountains. Instead, she had glossy photographs of famous Hollywood stars. These she obtained from a ‘friend’ who managed a cinema. Women, though, were excluded from her picture gallery. Egbert Ramsaran remarked on this.

  ‘You notice that, eh? Is a funny thing with me and my own sex. I don’t like them at all.’

  Egbert Ramsaran raised his eyebrows. ‘What about your daughter? You don’t like she?’

  ‘Is different with your own child. Though I wouldn’t mind telling you when Sita was born and I find it was a girl and not a boy that I had, I nearly dash she to the ground right there and then. For days I couldn’t bear to look at she.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I never make friends with a woman yet,’ Sushila boasted. ‘The worst kind of woman is those who have scrawny legs and breasts. They think is refined to be like that.’ She laughed. ‘But I know what men really like.’

  ‘What?’

  Sushila roared with laughter.

  At any one time Sushila would have at least a dozen photographs pinned in a wavering line along the walls of her room. They were a good bar
ometer of her inconstancy. By some mysterious process, the stars rose and fell in her estimation. Occasionally, the fallen might be reinstated (Errol Flynn had that distinction) but, usually, they disappeared without trace. Thus over a period of weeks, one set of faces might be completely supplanted in her affections by another. Egbert Ramsaran remarked on this too.

  ‘I just didn’t care for him any more,’ she would say.

  ‘How come?’ he persisted. ‘Last week …’

  ‘Last week was last week,’ she pontificated. ‘You should never think about what happen last week. What good that ever do? The important thing is the thing that happening right this very minute – like me talking to you. Nothing else concent me. Neither the past nor the future. About the one I can’t do nothing and about the other I just don’t know. The only sensible way to behave is to take life as it come and not ask too many questions.’ She smiled jauntily. ‘Worries does make you old. The only sensible way to behave is to take life as it come. I does never ask myself why I do this and why I do that. I does let other people do my worrying for me.’

  Sushila was infatuated to the point of obsession with adornment. It was as essential to her nature as regret and worry were inessential. Her metabolism seemed to crave it To adorn was not merely to improve and make more palatable. It was to make real. Everything, including herself, had to be embellished; heightened; and touched up. She used the heaviest, most scented powders and perfumes. Her lipsticks were brilliant and gaudy. She had developed unconventional ideas of value. For example, her jewellery, though for the most part cheap and tawdry stuff, was appreciated and treasured the more for being inlaid with coloured stones, immediately striking to the eye and of a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. The fact mat they were valueless meant nothing at all to her. Her fondness for frills and laces was inordinate. She had a child’s delight in objects that glittered, flashed and sparkled. Surface; appearance: these were the beginning and the end; the limits of her world. She cared for nothing else. Responsive only to the promptings of the fleeting urge, Sushila was neglectful, contemptuous and a little afraid of what might be lying beyond. She spoke truly when she said she let other people do her worrying for her.

  Yet, after the unrelieved aridity of Rani’s life, Sushila could not but come as a revelation. Her laughter rang through the Ramsaran house and dominated it. While she worked, she wore short, tight bodices, tied into a knot at the front, which left much of her stomach exposed; and her arms, burnt a reddish-brown by the sun, how firm and fleshy they were! It was necessary that someone be aware of her existence – even if that someone was herself. On several occasions Egbert Ramsaran caught Sushila unawares, riveted by the sight of her own breasts in the mirror; or lifting up her skirts and examining her thighs. Discovery did not embarrass her. She laughed full-throatedly when she saw him.

  All men elicited the same response in her. She demanded, if not to be admired, at least to be noticed; and, to achieve her ends, Sushila would flaunt herself shamelessly. A male presence transformed and enlivened her. It was a kind of sport with her; a challenge to her prowess. No man was too old, too young, too ugly, too inaccessible (possession of a wife simply enhanced his attraction) for her to bring her talents into play. It was a pursuit dictated by her own needs and convenience and there was neither tenderness nor regard for her prey. She aroused desire to no purpose beyond desire itself. It was a callous, cynical and selfish deployment of her powers.

  Egbert Ramsaran wilted under her provocations. Indeed, provocation is too weak a description of what was taking place between them. It was more like assault. Sushila pursued him ruthlessly and he seemed to have no defences against her. He did try to avoid too close a contact with her; too prolonged an exposure. But Sushila harried him, forcing a recognition of her presence on him. She would not allow him to forget she was there. Her laughter dogged him, penetrating the locked door of his bedroom and invading his dreams. A voluptuous ease was tempting him, clouding his concentration. It was wearing him down as inexorably as water wears down the toughest stone.

  Overnight (for so it appeared to him) his will had deteriorated and become flabby. It was unable to resist the new demands upon it. His balance had gone askew – like the almanac on his wall. Sometimes, in the midst of restless sleep, a whirlpool of bewitching urges formed in Egbert Ramsaran’s brain and, prisoned in its grip, he was spun round and round and dragged down to some point of explosive dissolution deep within himself. To break free, he had to mobilize every available resource of his faltering will in order to prise his eyes open and regain possession of his fragmented faculties. He would awake, bathed in sweat and afraid to surrender to the anarchy of sleep again. The temptation to let go was irresistible. What a relief it would be if he could abandon himself to these invisible tides washing round him and allow them to carry him wherever they chose. He was soon to realize how far down the path of dissolution he had already travelled.

  Singh continued to come to the house occasionally, bringing bags of fruit from the estate, which he would dump on the kitchen floor. But here was no Rani to whom he could give Trinidad one-cent stamps and talk after his own fashion. He was more incommunicable and silent than ever. Having failed to extract even a grudging admiration from him, Sushila began to hector and bully him. She dubbed him ‘Mr Gorilla’. She would circle about him trailing the scents of her rich powders and perfumes. ‘What big, hairy paws you have, Mr Gorilla!’ She touched his hand lightly and jumped back. ‘I hope you don’t put your big, hairy paws on me, Mr Gorilla.’ She danced and flitted about him, her squeals of merriment filling the house. ‘What nasty pointed teeth you have, Mr Gorilla. I hope you don’t bite me with your nasty pointed teeth. Mr Gorilla getting really angry with me. Grr … grr …’ She went on in this vein for as long as his visits lasted.

  The blood flooded Singh’s dark face and he bit hard on his lower lip. ‘You just wait,’ he muttered. ‘I know the kind of woman you is. You just wait.’

  Singh turned up at the house unexpectedly one evening. It was obvious that he had been drinking. He shuffled into the kitchen and propped himself up against the big window.

  ‘You should be in the zoo this time of night, Mr Gorilla,’ Sushila said. ‘You liable to frighten people to death roaming about in the dark.’

  ‘I is not a gorilla.’

  ‘You look like one though. And you does behave like one.’

  ‘I tell you I is not a gorilla.’

  Sushila laughed. ‘What you is then?’

  ‘I is a man! A man! Can’t you see?’

  ‘What get into you all of a sudden, Mr Gorilla?’ Sushila stared at him inquisitively. She was not quite so assured now.

  ‘I tell you I is not a gorilla,’ Singh yelled, ‘I is a man!’

  Sushila watched him warily.

  Singh heaved himself up from the windowsill. ‘Don’t mock me. I don’t like people mocking me.’ He lumbered towards her; menacing and begging.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you, Mr Gorilla, you wouldn’t make any trouble here.’ Sushila retreated towards the door. ‘You drunk.’

  Singh grinned, showing his uneven, yellowing teeth. ‘That’s right. I drunk. What you running away from me for? Don’t tell me you frighten of me.’

  Sushila halted. ‘You only going to make trouble for yourself tonight, Singh. I warning you.’

  ‘So I have a name after all.’

  ‘Keep away from me, Singh.’

  ‘Try and stop me.’ He lumbered towards her. ‘What you could do to stop me?’ He leered.

  Sushila resumed her retreat. ‘Is not what I could do. Is what he could do to you.’

  Singh stopped dead. ‘Is that how it is?’

  ‘Yes.’ Observing the effect her words had had, she was brazen again.

  ‘You lying.’

  ‘Try and see.’

  ‘You lying!’ He leapt at her.

  Sushila sidestepped him nimbly, sticking a foot out. Singh, moving clumsily and unsteadily in his boots, tripp
ed and fell on the tiles. He lay sprawled there, ridiculous and enraged. Sushila, her feet planted widely apart, her hands resting on her hips, stood over him laughing like a conqueror.

  ‘What’s all this noise and shouting?’ Egbert Ramsaran ran quickly into the kitchen. He stared in astonishment at Singh. ‘Singh! What is the meaning of this? What you doing there?’

  ‘He drunk,’ Sushila said.

  ‘Lying bitch,’ Singh muttered.

  ‘That’s enough, Singh. Get up at once.’ Egbert Ramsaran’s voice whistled. ‘I want an explanation.’

  Singh, grinning malevolently, hauled himself up painfully and dusted the seat of his trousers.

  ‘She was mocking me,’ Singh said. ‘And I don’t like people mocking me.’ He gazed fixedly at the spot where he had recently been sprawled so ignominiously.

  Egbert Ramsaran looked at Sushila. He turned again to Singh as if afraid to look at her too long. ‘How she been mocking you?’

  ‘She does mock me every time I come here. But I is not a gorilla. I is a man. Anybody could see I is a man. I have the same two arms and two legs and a head. Why she have to mock me for?’

  ‘It still don’t give you the right to come in here drunk.’

  ‘I is a man. Like other men. And I not going to let anybody mock me.’ He raised his head. ‘I know the kind of woman she is. You shouldn’t have a woman like she in your house. You should …’

  ‘Enough!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have she in this house. All she want from you is …’

  ‘Enough!’ Egbert Ramsaran advanced on him.

  ‘All she want from you is …’

  ‘Get the hell out of here, Singh! Get out! Get out!’ Egbert Ramsaran stalked the length of the kitchen. ‘Don’t set foot here again until I tell you. You understand me? I not going to have you coming in here drunk and …’ He piped a stream of imprecations at him.

  ‘So that’s how it is.’ Singh nodded as though the truth had just dawned on him. ‘That’s how it is.’