Collected Short Fiction

by V. S. Naipaul

  But most of the time she talked about Toni; and from the way she talked, anybody would believe that Toni was just an ordinary man.

  She said, ‘Toni is thinking about leaving Trinidad. We could start a hotel in Barbados.’

  Or, ‘As soon as Toni gets well again, we will go for a long cruise.’

  And again, ‘Toni is really a disciplined man, you know. Great will-power, really. We’ll be all right when he gets his strength back.’

  Toni still behaved as though he didn’t know about all these plans for himself. He refused to settle down. He got wilder and more unpleasant.

  Hat said, ‘He behaving like some of those uncultured people from John John. Like he forget that latrines make for some purpose.’

  And that wasn’t all. He appeared to develop an extraordinary dislike for the human race. One look at a perfect stranger was enough to start Toni cursing.

  Hat said, ‘We have to do something about Toni.’

  I was there the evening they beat him up.

  For a long time afterwards the beating-up was on Hat’s mind.

  It was a terrible thing, really. Hat and the rest of them were not angry. And Toni himself wasn’t angry. He wasn’t anything. He made no effort to return the blows. And the blows he got made no impression on him. He didn’t look frightened. He didn’t cry. He didn’t plead. He just stood up and took it.

  He wasn’t being brave.

  Hat said, ‘He just too damn drunk.’

  In the end Hat was angry with himself. He said, ‘Is taking advantage. We shouldnta do it. The man ain’t have feelings, that’s all.’

  And from the way Mrs Hereira talked, it was clear that she didn’t know what had happened.

  Hat said, ‘That’s a relief, anyway.’

  And through all these weeks, one question was always uppermost in our minds. How did a woman like Mrs Hereira get mixed up with Toni?

  Hat said he knew. But he wanted to know who Mrs Hereira was, and so did we all. Even my mother wondered aloud about this.

  Boyee had an idea.

  He said, ‘Hat, you know the advertisements people does put out when their wife or their husband leave them?’

  Hat said, ‘Boyee, you know you getting too damn big too damn fast. How the hell a little boy like you know about a thing like that?’

  Boyee took this as a compliment.

  Hat said, ‘How you know anyway that Mrs Hereira leave she husband? How you know that she ain’t married to Toni?’

  Boyee said, ‘I telling you, Hat. I used to see that woman up Mucurapo way when I was delivering milk. I telling you so, man.’

  Hat said, ‘White people don’t do that sort of thing, putting advertisement in the paper and thing like that.’

  Eddoes said, ‘You ain’t know what you talking about, Hat. How much white people you know?’

  In the end Hat promised to read the paper more carefully.

  Then big trouble started.

  Mrs Hereira ran out of her house screaming one day, ‘He’s going mad! He’s going mad, I tell you. He will kill me this time sure.’

  She told my mother, ‘He grabbed a knife and began chasing me. He was saying, “I will kill you, I will kill you.” Talking in a very quiet way.’

  ‘You do him something?’ my mother asked.

  Mrs Hereira shook her head.

  She said, ‘It is the first time he threatened to kill me. And he was serious, I tell you.’

  Up till then Mrs Hereira hadn’t been crying, but now she broke down and cried like a girl.

  She was saying, ‘Toni has forgotten all I did for him. He has forgotten how I took care of him when he was sick. Tell me, you think that’s right? I did everything for him. Everything. I gave up everything. Money and family. All for him. Tell me, is it right for him to treat me like this? Oh, God! What did I do to deserve all this?’

  And so she wept and talked and wept.

  We left her to herself for some time.

  Then my mother said, ‘Toni look like the sort of man who could kill easy, easy, without feeling that he really murdering. You want to sleep here tonight? You could sleep on the boy bed. He could sleep on the floor.’

  Mrs Hereira wasn’t listening.

  My mother shook her and repeated her offer.

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘I am all right now, really. I will go back and talk to Toni. I think I did something to offend him. I must go back and find out what it is.’

  ‘Well, I really give up,’ my mother said. ‘I think you taking this love business a little too far, you hear.’

  So Mrs Hereira went back to her house. My mother and I waited for a long time, waiting for a scream.

  But we heard nothing.

  And the next morning Mrs Hereira was composed and refined as ever.

  But day by day you could see her losing her freshness and saddening her beauty. Her face was getting lined. Her eyes were red and swollen, and the dark patches under them were ugly to look at.

  Hat jumped up and said, ‘I know it! I know it! I know it a long time now.’

  He showed us the Personal column in the classified advertisements. Seven people had decided to leave their spouses. We followed Hat’s finger and read:

  I, Henry Hubert Christiani, declare that my wife, Angela Mary Christiani, is no longer under my care and protection, and I am not responsible for any debt or debts contracted by her.

  Boyee said, ‘Is the selfsame woman.’

  Eddoes said, ‘Yes, Christiani. Doctor fellow. Know him good good. Used to pick up rubbish for him.’

  Hat said, ‘Now I ask you, why, why a woman want to leave a man like that for this Toni?’

  Eddoes said, ‘Yes, know Christiani good good. Good house, nice car. Full of money, you know. It have a long time now I see him. Know him from the days when I used to work Mucurapo way.’

  And in about half an hour the news had spread through Miguel Street.

  My mother said to Mrs Hereira, ‘You better call the police.’

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘No, no. Not the police.’

  My mother said, ‘Like you fraid police more than you fraid Toni.’

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘The scandal—’

  ‘Scandal hell!’ my mother said. ‘Your life in trouble and you thinking about scandal. Like if this man ain’t disgrace you enough already.’

  My mother said, ‘Why you don’t go back to your husband?’

  She said it as though she expected Mrs Hereira to jump up in surprise.

  But Mrs Hereira remained very calm.

  She said, ‘I don’t feel anything about him. And I just can’t stand that clean doctor’s smell he has. It chokes me.’

  I understood her perfectly, and tried to get my mother’s eye.

  Toni was growing really wild.

  He used to sit on his front steps with a half bottle of rum in his hand. The dog was with him.

  He appeared to have lost touch with the world completely. He seemed to be without feeling. It was hard enough to imagine Mrs Hereira, or Mrs Christiani, in love with him. But it was impossible to imagine him being in love with anybody.

  I thought he was like an animal, like his dog.

  One morning Mrs Hereira came over and said, very calmly, ‘I have decided to leave Toni.’

  She was so calm I could see my mother getting worried.

  My mother said, ‘What happen now?’

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘Nothing. Last night he made the dog jump at me. He didn’t look as if he knew what he was doing. He didn’t laugh or anything. I think he is going mad, and if I don’t get out I think he will kill me.’

  My mother said, ‘Who you going back to?’

  ‘My husband.’

  ‘Even after what he print in the papers?’

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘Henry is like a boy, you know, and he thinks he can frighten me. If I go back today, he will be glad to have me back.’

  And saying that, she looked different, and hard.

  My mother said, ‘Don’t be so sure. He kn
ow Toni?’

  Mrs Hereira laughed in a crazy sort of way. ‘Toni was Henry’s friend, not mine. Henry brought him home one day. Toni was sick like anything. Henry was like that, you know. I never met a man who liked doing good works so much as Henry. He was all for good works and sanitation.’

  My mother said, ‘You know, Mrs Hereira, I really wish you was like me. If somebody did marry you off when you was fifteen, we wouldnta been hearing all this nonsense, you hear. Making all this damn fuss about your heart and love and all that rubbish.’

  Mrs Hereira began to cry.

  My mother said, ‘Look, I didn’t want to make you cry like this. I sorry.’

  Mrs Hereira sobbed, ‘No, it isn’t you, it isn’t you.’

  My mother looked disappointed.

  We watched Mrs Hereira cry.

  Mrs Hereira said, ‘I have left about a week’s food with Toni.’

  My mother said, ‘Toni is a big man. You mustn’t worry about him.’

  He made terrible noises when he discovered that she had left him. He bayed like a dog and bawled like a baby.

  Then he got drunk. Not drunk in the ordinary fashion; it got to the stage where the rum was keeping him going.

  He forgot all about the dog, and it starved for days.

  He stumbled drunk and crying from house to house, looking for Mrs Hereira.

  And when he got back he took it out on the dog. We used to hear the dog yelping and growling.

  In the end even the dog turned on him.

  Somehow it managed to get itself free and it rushed at Toni.

  Toni was shocked into sense.

  The dog ran out of the house, and Toni ran after it. Toni squatted and whistled. The dog stopped, pricked up its ears, and turned round to look. It was funny seeing this drunk crazy man smiling and whistling at his dog, trying to get him back.

  The dog stood still, staring at Toni.

  Its tail wagged twice, then fell.

  Toni got up and began walking towards the dog. The dog turned and ran.

  We saw him sprawling on a mattress in one of the rooms. The room was perfectly empty. Nothing but the mattress and the empty rum bottles and the cigarette ends.

  He was drunk and sleeping, and his face was strangely reposed.

  The thin and wrinkled hands looked so frail and sad.

  Another FOR SALE sign was nailed to the mango tree. A man with about five little children bought the house.

  From time to time Toni came around to terrify the new people.

  He would ask for money, for rum, and he had the habit of asking for the radio. He would say, ‘You have Angela’s radio there. I charging rent for that, you know. Two dollars a month. Give me two dollars now.’

  The new owner was a small man, and he was afraid of Toni. He never answered.

  Toni would look at us and laugh and say, ‘You know about Angela’s radio, eh, boys? You know about the radio? Now, what this man playing at?’

  Hat said, ‘Who will tell me why they ever have people like Toni in this world!’

  After two or three months he stopped coming to Miguel Street.

  I saw Toni many years later.

  I was travelling to Arima, and just near the quarry at Laventille I saw him driving a lorry.

  He was smoking a cigarette.

  That and his thin arms are all I remember.

  And riding to Carenage one Sunday morning, I passed the Christianis’ house, which I had avoided for a long time.

  Mrs Christiani, or Mrs Hereira, was in shorts. She was reading the paper in an easy chair in the garden. Through the open doors of the house I saw a uniformed servant laying the table for lunch.

  There was a black car, a new, big car, in the garage.

  13 THE MECHANICAL GENIUS

  MY UNCLE BHAKCU was very nearly a mechanical genius. I cannot remember a time when he was not the owner of a motor vehicle of some sort. I don’t think he always approved of the manufacturers’ designs, however, for he was always pulling engines to bits. Titus Hoyt said that this was also a habit of the Eskimos. It was something he had got out of a geography book.

  If I try to think of Bhakcu I never see his face. I can see only the soles of his feet as he worms his way under a car. I was worried when Bhakcu was under a car because it looked so easy for the car to slip off the jack and fall on him.

  One day it did.

  He gave a faint groan that reached the ears of only his wife.

  She bawled, ‘Oh God!’ and burst into tears right away. ‘I know something wrong. Something happen to he.’

  Mrs Bhakcu always used this pronoun when she spoke of her husband.

  She hurried to the side of the yard and heard Bhakcu groaning.

  ‘Man,’ she whispered, ‘you all right?’

  He groaned a little more loudly.

  He said, ‘How the hell I all right? You mean you so blind you ain’t see the whole motor-car break up my arse?’

  Mrs Bhakcu, dutiful wife, began to cry afresh.

  She beat on the galvanized-iron fence.

  ‘Hat,’ Mrs Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, come quick. A whole motor-car fall on he.’

  Hat was cleaning out the cow-pen. When he heard Mrs Bhakcu he laughed. ‘You know what I always does say,’ Hat said. ‘When you play the ass you bound to catch hell. The blasted car brand-new. What the hell he was tinkering with so?’

  ‘He say the crank-shaft wasn’t working nice.’

  ‘And is there he looking for the crank-shaft?’

  ‘Hat,’ Bhakcu shouted from under the car, ‘the moment you get this car from off me, I going to break up your tail.’

  ‘Man,’ Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘how you so advantageous? The man come round with his good good mind to help you and now you want to beat him up?’

  Hat began to look hurt and misunderstood.

  Hat said, ‘It ain’t nothing new. Is just what I expect. Is just what I does always get for interfering in other people business. You know I mad to leave you and your husband here and go back to the cow-pen.’

  ‘No, Hat. You mustn’t mind he. Think what you would say if a whole big new motor-car fall on you.’

  Hat said, ‘All right, all right. I have to go and get some of the boys.’

  We heard Hat shouting in the street. ‘Boyee and Errol!’

  No answer.

  ‘Bo-yee and Ehhroll!’

  ‘Co-ming, Hat.’

  ‘Where the hell you boys been, eh? You think you is man now and you could just stick your hands in your pocket and walk out like man? You was smoking, eh?’

  ‘Smoking, Hat?’

  ‘But what happen now? You turn deaf all of a sudden?’

  ‘Was Boyee was smoking, Hat.’

  ‘Is a lie, Hat. Was Errol really. I just stand up watching him.’

  ‘Somebody make you policeman now, eh? Is cut-arse for both of you. Errol, go cut a whip for Boyee. Boyee, go cut a whip for Errol.’

  We heard the boys whimpering.

  From under the car Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, why you don’t leave the boys alone? You go bless them bad one of these days, you know, and then they go lose you in jail. Why you don’t leave the boys alone? They big now.’

  Hat shouted back, ‘You mind your own business, you hear. Otherwise I leave you under that car until you rotten, you hear.’

  Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘Take it easy, man.’

  But it was nothing serious after all. The jack had slipped but the axle rested on a pile of wooden blocks, pinning Bhakcu to ground without injuring him.

  When Bhakcu came out he looked at his clothes. These were a pair of khaki trousers and a sleeveless vest, both black and stiff with engine grease.

  Bhakcu said to his wife, ‘They really dirty now, eh?’

  She regarded her husband with pride. ‘Yes, man,’ she said. ‘They really dirty.’

  Bhakcu smiled.

  Hat said, ‘Look, I just sick of lifting up motor-car from off you, you hear. If you want my advice, you better sen
d for a proper mechanic.’

  Bhakcu wasn’t listening.

  He said to his wife, ‘The crank-shaft was all right. Is something else.’

  Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Well, you must eat first.’

  She looked at Hat and said, ‘He don’t eat when he working on the car unless I remind he.’

  Hat said, ‘What you want me do with that? Write it down with a pencil on a piece of paper and send it to the papers?’

  I wanted to watch Bhakcu working on the car that evening, so I said to him, ‘Uncle Bhakcu, your clothes looking really dirty and greasy. I wonder how you could bear to wear them.’

  He turned and smiled at me. ‘What you expect, boy?’ he said. ‘Mechanic people like me ain’t have time for clean clothes.’

  ‘What happen to the car, Uncle Bhakcu?’ I asked.

  He didn’t reply.

  ‘The tappet knocking?’ I suggested.

  One thing Bhakcu had taught me about cars was that tappets were always knocking. Give Bhakcu any car in the world, and the first thing he would tell you about it was, ‘The tappet knocking, you know. Hear. Hear it?’

  ‘The tappet knocking?’ I asked.

  He came right up to me and asked eagerly, ‘What, you hear it knocking?’

  And before I had time to say, ‘Well, something did knocking,’ Mrs Bhakcu pulled him away, saying, ‘Come and eat now, man. God, you get your clothes really dirty today.’

  The car that fell on Bhakcu wasn’t really a new car, although Bhakcu boasted that it very nearly was.

  ‘It only do two hundred miles,’ he used to say.

  Hat said, ‘Well, I know Trinidad small, but I didn’t know it was so small.’

  I remember the day it was bought. It was a Saturday. And that morning Mrs Bhakcu came to my mother and they talked about the cost of rice and flour and the black market. As she was leaving, Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘He gone to town today. He say he got to buy a new car.’

  So we waited for the new car.

  Midday came, but Bhakcu didn’t.

  Hat said, ‘Two to one, that man taking down the engine right this minute.’

  About four o’clock we heard a banging and a clattering, and looking down Miguel Street towards Docksite we saw the car. It was a blue Chevrolet, one of the 1939 models. It looked rich and new. We began to wave and cheer, and I saw Bhakcu waving his left hand.