The Chip-Chip Gatherers

by Shiva Naipaul

  ‘Get out!’

  Still nodding to himself, Singh walked out of the kitchen and went slowly down the back steps and out into the yard.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Sushila said.

  Egbert Ramsaran eyed her gloomily.

  That he should have quarrelled with Singh and actually expelled him from the house was unbelievable. It marked a definite break with the past. The whole tenor of his life was shattering and he, Egbert Ramsaran, was assisting at the process. It was a macabre spectacle. His clarity had not deserted him. But what good was it to him now? It only added to his mortification because he could not act in conformity with its dictates. No enemy, had he heartily wished it, could have contrived his destruction so skilfully; could have reduced him to such a predicament.

  Egbert Ramsaran was choked with an impotent rage against this woman who had descended from nowhere to haunt him. ‘It would be so easy,’ he told himself over and over again, ‘to send her away. So easy.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘I just have to say the word and she would be out of here. God is my witness that if I could send Singh away, I could pack she back to where she come from too. I just have to say the word.’ The word was on the tip of his tongue but the word was never said, dying before it could pass his lips. ‘I will bide my time. Give her enough rope and she bound to hang herself.’

  The opportunity slipped away. It became remote. And, finally, it slipped away altogether. Getting rid of Sushila would have solved nothing. Uncontrollable forces had been unleashed in him. Sushila had set in motion age-old desires and he was powerless in their grasp.

  Sushila sensed the imminence of victory. To have secured the expulsion of Singh was a signal triumph. She who had sacrificed nothing stood to gain all. These last nights, ever since the quarrel with Singh, she had lain awake tense with expectancy. Another trophy was about to be added to her collection. Without having to exert herself unduly, she had watched Egbert Ramsaran crumble day by day before her eyes. It had been so easy. The chief threat had been the possibility of her dismissal but that hurdle was safely behind her. It was now out of the question. He had virtually offered himself up to her. Sushila laughed. She was too excited to sleep. Tossing the blanket to one side, she sat up and clasped her arms about her knees.

  There passed in review all those hostile faces in the Settlement and particularly that of Mrs Bholai sheltering behind her newspaper and whipping her son away from the verandah rail as if the mere sight of her, Sushila, would cause him to drop dead on the spot. Revenge would be sweet. If she could bring Sita to live here, that would add a new edge to the sweetness. Sushila and Sita living in the house of Egbert Ramsaran! Sushila giggled.

  But after that consummation, what? Sushila did not know. Events would take their course and she would act accordingly. For the moment, she was comfortable, settled and extremely pleased with herself. Life had always been kind to her. Extraordinarily kind. Things had never failed to turn out to her advantage. Pleasure, happiness and freedom had fallen into her lap. She had been an amazingly lucky woman. She congratulated herself, putting a complacent trust in the protection of her guardian angel. She had never stayed long enough in one place to witness the price exacted for her amazing good fortune. Sushila, allergic to pain – her own and other people’s – had invariably departed in good time, fleeing before suffering like a leaf chased by the wind. She lived on a mounting accumulation of credit. But, so far, her method had worked and Sushila could see no reason why it should not continue to do so in the future. The world was sufficiently vast to accommodate the depredations of someone like her. There would always be somewhere to hide; somewhere to run to. Thus, her arms clasped about her knees, she sat there surrounded by her ephemeral gallery of photographs and waited for events to take their predestined course.

  Wilbert listened to the hollow thud of his father’s footsteps across the creaking floorboards. They stopped outside his door. Was he coming to see him at this hour of the night? To explain the rupture with Singh perhaps? No. That was unlikely. It might be that an acute attack of indigestion was keeping him awake. His indigestion had been geting worse: he hardly ever stopped complaining about how bad it was. None of these explanations convinced Wilbert and he quelled the temptation to call out. Straining his ears, he listened. The silence seemed to deepen. Then the footsteps moved off, retracing their path towards the front of the house, the floorboards creaking.

  He heard his father open the door to his bedroom but he did not hear it click shut. Then, with abrupt decision, the footsteps returned, padding hollowly. This time they did not pause but faded rapidly towards the back of the house. Sushila must have been expecting him for the door to her room opened and closed; and, without a word or whisper being exchanged, his father’s footsteps were swallowed up within. After that all was quiet and Wilbert ceased to listen.

  2

  Sita rocked on the hammock watching the cars go by on the road. A book was open on her lap and her legs dangled over the sides. Her shoes scraped the pounded earth floor. The air was warm and aromatic with the smell of dust and dry grass. Phulo sat on the steps of her hut combing through the hair of one of her children and searching for lice. The heat of early afternoon had smothered activity and when there was a lull in the traffic the only sounds would come from the clucking hens and the monotonous whirr of Sharma’s sewing-machine. Basdai was asleep. Beyond the dilapidated fringe of houses hugging the curves of the main road were the green and dismal rectangles of sugarcane. Staring at that burning, offensive green, Sita’s eyes acquired a remoteness of depth and a brooding melancholy. She swayed back and forth on the hammock.

  A taxi stopped with a screech of brakes. Sita gazed at it idly but her expression changed to one of interest when she saw her mother step out and come quickly down the path. Sita got up from the hammock. Sushila smiled broadly at her as she entered the compound.

  ‘Go and pack your clothes, Sita.’

  ‘Why?’ Sita asked. ‘Where we going?’ As if she did not know too well.

  Phulo looked up.

  ‘I come to take you away. Today self you going from here.’

  Phulo thrust her child to one side. ‘Well, well,’ she said. ‘It didn’t take you long to bamboozle him.’

  Sushila glanced at her, not deigning to answer. ‘Go on, Sita. Go and pack your clothes. We don’t have time to waste.’

  ‘Ma!’ Phulo yelled. ‘Wake up! Come and hear the big news! Wake up!’

  Sharma’s machine stopped its whirring. ‘What big news?’ She poked her good-natured face through the window.

  ‘Sushila taking Sita to live with she.’

  Basdai groaned inside the hut. ‘What’s all that racket out there? I trying to get some rest.’

  ‘Big news,’ Phulo yelled hoarsely. ‘Sushila come to take Sita with she.’

  The children, galvanized into life, poured into the compound and joined in the chant. ‘Sushila come to take Sita with she … Sushila come to take Sita with she …’

  Basdai, rubbing her eyes, came outside. ‘Eh? What’s that you telling me?’ She was bemused.

  ‘I say Sushila come to take Sita with she,’ Phulo yelled. ‘At last.’

  ‘For truth?’ Basdai asked, comprehension slowly dawning. ‘For truth?’

  Sushila nodded. ‘Today self.’

  ‘It didn’t take she long to bamboozle him,’ Phulo said.

  ‘And not only that,’ Sushila said. She surveyed them proudly. ‘He going to pay for she education too.’

  Sita stared at her mother.

  ‘You joking with me,’ Basdai murmured.

  Sushila shook her head. ‘He going to pay for she education and, what is more, he going to send she to a Port-of-Spain school.’

  ‘Well I never!’ Basdai exclaimed. ‘Even I never thought …’ She was too overcome to go on.

  Phulo’s mouth hung open. Sita continued to stare at her mother with a robot-like rigidity.

  Basdai conquered her astonishment. She cackled joyously. ‘I had tell y
ou it would work out but you didn’t believe me.’ She turned to Sita. ‘Is me you have to thank for this. I hope you know that.’

  ‘Why she have to thank you?’ Sushila asked.

  ‘How you mean?’ Basdai’s ardour cooled. ‘Is I who arrange for you to go there in the first place.’

  Sushila shrugged. ‘So what? Is nothing compared to what I had to do.’

  ‘Ungrateful wretch. After all I do for you …’

  Sushila laughed. ‘If he was to throw me out, you wouldn’t waste any tears on me,’ she said. ‘Is I who running all the risk.’

  ‘Ungrateful wretch! It gone to your head. But remember what so easy to go up easy to fall down too.’

  ‘I not going to fall anywhere.’

  ‘I will expose you.’ Basdai was on the verge of tears.

  Sushila protruded her lips. ‘That won’t do you any good. But feel free to try.’

  Phulo’s mouth curled bitterly. ‘He will see through your tricks.’

  ‘Jealousy!’

  ‘Me! Jealous of you!’ Phulo wrung her hands. ‘At least I is a decent and respectable woman and don’t have to use trickery to get what I want. I have a husband I could call my own.’

  Sushila sneered. ‘I wouldn’t let any man do to me what I does see him doing to you.’

  ‘My children don’t have to run and hide they face when somebody say father.’

  ‘A fat lot of good that doing you – and them.’ She looked at Sita. ‘You going to be better than the rest of them put together. You going to be somebody from now on and they all wishing they was in your shoes. That is the long and short of it. Now go and pack your clothes. We don’t have time to waste here.’

  Sita went inside.

  Egbert Ramsaran had been pacing the verandah restlessly all afternoon, looking at his watch and muttering. ‘She should have been back by now,’ he said to Wilbert. ‘What you think keeping she?’ He had asked the identical question a dozen times. ‘All she had to do was go and pick up she daughter. That shouldn’t take so long. What she could be doing? Is nearly four hours since she left and she say it wouldn’t take more than two.’ He walked down the path to the front gate and looked up and down the road. ‘What could be keeping she so long? What?’ He returned up the path and resumed his pacing. ‘It getting dark already.’ He sat down on a rocking chair; got up; and sat down again. The first stars glimmered. Egbert Ramsaran glanced at his watch. The cows were on their way home from pasture, marching in stately single file. The leader, a bit of rope trailing from its neck, meandered towards the gate which Egbert Ramsaran had not closed. ‘Sonofabitch!’ He rushed at the animal. It stood its ground. Egbert Ramsaran picked up a stone and aimed it at the animal’s head.

  ‘What’s all this?’ Sushila grinned at him from the road. ‘Why you want to kill the poor thing?’ She clapped her hands and grimaced at the cow. ‘Shush! Shush!’

  The cow backed away from the gate.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘That’s all you have to do. Simple!’

  Egbert Ramsaran dropped the stone. ‘What keep you so long? I been waiting for you all afternoon.’

  ‘That was a stupid thing to do. I tell you it would take a little time. Sita had to say goodbye to everybody.’ She giggled. ‘It had a lot of kissing and hugging going on.’

  ‘You was kissing and hugging for nearly five hours?’

  Sushila frowned. ‘I didn’t know I had a timetable and that you was my timekeeper.’

  They climbed the steps to the verandah. ‘Never mind,’ Egbert Ramsaran said. ‘I was just a little nervous. The dark and all that.’ He was placatory. ‘So! This is the Sita I’ve been hearing so much about.’ He smiled at her. ‘Welcome to your new home, Sita. Your mother tell me so much about you I feel like I known you for years.’ His unreasonable agitation was being replaced by an equally unreasonable exhilaration now that Sushila had come back. He folded his arms round Sita in a clumsy, muscular embrace, kissing her on either cheek. ‘You nearly as tall as me.’

  Sita, despite these overtures, carried herself stiffly and her eyes did not relinquish their stern, unsmiling seriousness. She submitted to his caresses with an aloof and dignified resignation.

  Sushila, detached and ironical, observed the performance from a distance.

  ‘From now on you must treat me exactly as if I was your father,’ Egbert Ramsaran said. ‘And Wilbert as your brother.’ Egbert Ramsaran pointed at his son. ‘Let me introduce you properly to one another. The two of you must get to know each other and become friends.’

  Sita smiled at Wilbert and inclined her head with that same slight movement with which she had greeted him before. ‘We met already,’ she said.

  ‘Oh? When was that?’

  Sita looked at Wilbert as if to suggest it was his turn to speak.

  ‘When I was staying with the Bholais,’ Wilbert explained reluctantly.

  ‘So much the better! So much the better! It make me happy to know the two of you is not perfect strangers.’ Egbert Ramsaran spoke eagerly. He wished to ingratiate himself with this girl, to win her favour and approval. ‘Your mother was telling me that you is a bright child. That you want to be a B.A. Languages – whatever that is.’

  Sita twisted her body and stared at her mother. She seemed annoyed. ‘That is something I could never hope to be,’ she said.

  ‘You never know,’ Egbert Ramsaran replied cheerfully. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you I going to send you to one of them big schools in Port-of-Spain?’

  Sita averted her head. ‘Yes,’ she said in the merest whisper. ‘It’s very … it’s very kind of you.’

  Egbert Ramsaran laughed. ‘Well then, that’s the first step, not so?’

  ‘You could look a little more pleased than that,’ Sushila said, casting a lowering glance at her daughter.

  ‘Is only shyness,’ Egbert Ramsaran said. ‘Don’t bother she. But here we is talking about B.A. Languages and what not and I don’t even know what it is.’ He could not stop talking. A curious impulsion drove him on. He was aware of it but he could do nothing.

  Sita unbent a little. She smiled pallidly at him. ‘It stands for Bachelor of Arts,’ she said.

  ‘I thought only men could be bachelors.’ It was not often Egbert Ramsaran tried to joke.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re a man or woman.’ She looked at Wilbert as if seeking confirmation for what she had said.

  He stared at her blankly.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ Sushila said. ‘Let’s go inside.’ She yawned. ‘It’s been a very tiring day.’

  The conference broke up.

  Within a month, Sita had left her country school and was enrolled as a student at a Port-of-Spain convent. Her reserve, however, did not break down. It was never easy to discover what she was thinking or feeling. She betrayed no particular pleasure at Egbert Ramsaran’s paying for her to attend a ‘good’ school; but neither did she seem displeased by his generosity. Her behaviour towards him was, at all times, formal and correct. He had insisted that she call him ‘Pa’ (or failing that, ‘Uncle’) but Sita, while not explicitly refusing to do his bidding, clearly executed his wish only under duress; and then it was not ‘Pa’ but ‘Uncle’ which she preferred. She lived like a stranger in the house, setting off for school early in the morning with her books and pink plastic lunch-box and dressed in her neat pleated uniform. When she returned in the evening she helped her mother in the kitchen; and, after dinner, she retired to her room at the first opportunity and worked until she went to bed.

  ‘You enjoying your new school?’ Egbert Ramsaran would enquire.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you does get on well with your teachers?’

  ‘Yes. They’re all very nice to me.’

  ‘You have a lot of friends?’

  ‘A few. Not too many. I don’t like having too many friends.’

  ‘That’s sensible,’ Egbert Ramsaran said approvingly. ‘The few friends you have – they want to be B.A. Lang
uages too?’

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘You is the brightest girl in your class?’

  Sita fidgeted. ‘I wouldn’t say so.’

  ‘Who brighter than you?’

  ‘Nearly everybody.’

  ‘I sure that is not true.’

  Sita laughed deprecatingly.

  ‘You must invite your friends to come and see you here if you lonely. You mustn’t be bashful.’

  ‘I’m not lonely.’

  ‘Still, you must invite them.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sita said.

  But she never did. Her reserve remained impenetrable and, in spite of his efforts, Egbert Ramsaran could coax nothing more out of her. She was just as guarded with Wilbert. What was happening between her mother and Egbert Ramsaran could not be ignored. It fell like a poisonous shadow between them, blocking the development of friendship. If anything, her embarrassment with regard to him was greater than it was with his father. Sita could not confront Wilbert without that poisonous shadow obtruding itself; and neither could he confront her. As if by mutual agreement, they avoided each other’s company. When they did meet there was confusion and hesitation on both sides.

  Sushila was deeply irritated by her daughter’s behaviour.

  ‘You don’t like living here?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Sita said.

  ‘That is all you have to say? You have no gratitude for the man who paying for your education?’

  ‘I’m very grateful for everything he’s doing for me. But you must see it’s not easy for me.’

  ‘How? You should be happy as the day is long.’

  ‘It’s not so easy,’ Sita repeated. ‘Put yourself in my position. If you do that you might realize …’

  ‘I realize,’ Sushila sneered. ‘Is all that false pride you have.’

  ‘It’s not false pride.’ Sita was adamant. ‘If you can’t see …’

  Sushila lost her temper. ‘I could see well enough,’ she shouted at her. ‘Like you prefer living in the Settlement with Basdai and Phulo and Sharma? If that is what you want I could arrange to send you back there straight away. They would be only too glad.’