Collected Short Fiction

by V. S. Naipaul

  I always looked upon Hat as a man of settled habits, and it was hard to think of him looking otherwise than he did. I suppose he was thirty-five when he took me to that cricket-match, and forty-three when he went to jail. Yet he always looked the same to me.

  In appearance, as I have said, he was dark-brown in complexion, of medium height and medium build. He had a slightly bow-legged walk and he had flat feet.

  I was prepared to see him do the same things for the rest of his life. Cricket, football, horse-racing; read the paper in the mornings and afternoons; sit on the pavement and talk; get noisily drunk on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

  He didn’t appear to need anything else. He was self-sufficient, and I didn’t believe he even needed women. I knew, of course, that he visited certain places in the city from time to time, but I thought he did this more for the vicious thrill than for the women.

  And then this thing happened. It broke up the Miguel Street Club, and Hat himself was never the same afterwards.

  In a way, I suppose, it was Edward’s fault. I don’t think any of us realized how much Hat loved Edward and how heartbroken he was when Edward got married. He couldn’t hide his delight when Edward’s wife ran away with the American soldier, and he was greatly disappointed when Edward went to Aruba.

  Once he said, ‘Everybody growing up or they leaving.’

  Another time he said, ‘I think I was a damn fool not go and work with the Americans, like Edward and so much other people.’

  Eddoes said, ‘Hat going to town a lot these nights.’

  Boyee said, ‘Well, he is a big man. Why he shouldn’t do what he want to do?’

  Eddoes said, ‘It have some men like that. As a matter of fact, it does happen to all man. They getting old and they get frighten and they want to remain young.’

  I got angry with Eddoes because I didn’t want to think of Hat in that way and the worst thing was that I was ashamed because I felt Eddoes was right.

  I said, ‘Eddoes, why you don’t take your dirty mind somewhere else, eh? Why you don’t leave all your dirtiness in the rubbish-dump?’

  And then one day Hat brought home a woman.

  I felt a little uneasy now in Hat’s company. He had become a man with responsibility and obligations, and he could no longer give us all his time and attention. To make matters worse, everybody pretended that the woman wasn’t there. Even Hat. He never spoke about her and he behaved as though he wanted us to believe that everything was just the same.

  She was a pale-brown woman, about thirty, somewhat plump, and her favourite colour was blue. She called herself Dolly. We used to see her looking blankly out of the windows of Hat’s house. She never spoke to any of us. In fact, I hardly heard her speak at all, except to call Hat inside.

  But Boyee and Edward were pleased with the changes she brought.

  Boyee said, ‘Is the first time I remember living with a woman in the house, and it make a lot of difference. Is hard to explain, but I find it nicer.’

  My mother said, ‘You see how man stupid. Hat see what happen to Edward and you mean to say that Hat still get hisself mix up with this woman?’

  Mrs Morgan and Mrs Bhakcu saw so little of Dolly they had little to dislike in her, but they agreed that she was a lazy good-for-nothing.

  Mrs Morgan said, ‘This Dolly look like a old madame to me, you hear.’

  It was easy enough for us to forget that Dolly was there, because Hat continued living as before. We still went to all the sports and we still sat on the pavement and talked.

  Whenever Dolly piped, ‘Hat, you coming?’ Hat wouldn’t reply.

  About half an hour later Dolly would say, ‘Hat, you coming or you ain’t coming?’

  And Hat would say then, ‘I coming.’

  I wondered what life was like for Dolly. She was nearly always inside the house and Hat was nearly always outside. She seemed to spend a great deal of her time at the front window looking out.

  They were really the queerest couple in the street. They never went out together. We never heard them laughing. They never even quarrelled.

  Eddoes said, ‘They like two strangers.’

  Errol said, ‘Don’t mind that, you hear. All you seeing Hat sitting quiet quiet here, but is different when he get inside. He ain’t the same man when he talking with Dolly. He buy she a lot of joolry, you know.’

  Eddoes said, ‘I have a feeling she a little bit like Matilda. You know, the woman in the calypso:

  “Matilda, Matilda,

  Matilda, you thief my money

  And gone Venezuela.”

  Buying joolry! But what happening to Hat? He behaving as though he is a old man. Woman don’t want joolry from a man like Hat, they want something else.’

  Looking on from the outside, though, one could see only two changes in Hat’s household. All the birds were caged, and the Alsatian was chained and miserable.

  But no one spoke about Dolly to Hat. I suppose the whole business had come as too much of a surprise.

  What followed was an even bigger surprise, and it was some time before we could get all the details. At first I noticed Hat was missing, and then I heard rumours.

  This was the story, as it later came out in court. Dolly had run away from Hat, taking all his gifts, of course. Hat had chased her and found her with another man. There was a great quarrel, the man had fled, and Hat had taken it out on Dolly. Afterwards, the police statement said, he had gone, in tears, to the police station to give himself up. He said, ‘I kill a woman.’

  But Dolly wasn’t dead.

  We received the news as though it was news of a death. We couldn’t believe it for a day or two.

  And then a great hush fell on Miguel Street. No boys and men gathered under the lamp-post outside Hat’s house, talking about this and that and the other. No one played cricket and disturbed people taking afternoon naps. The Club was dead.

  Cruelly, we forgot all about Dolly and thought only about Hat. We couldn’t find it in our hearts to find fault with him. We suffered with him.

  We saw a changed man in court. He had grown older, and when he smiled at us he smiled only with his mouth. Still, he put on a show for us and even while we laughed we were ready to cry.

  The prosecutor asked Hat, ‘Was it a dark night?’

  Hat said, ‘All night dark.’

  Hat’s lawyer was a short fat man called Chittaranjan who wore a smelly brown suit.

  Chittaranjan began reeling off Portia’s speech about mercy, and he would have gone on to the end if the judge hadn’t said, ‘All this is interesting and some of it even true but, Mr Chittaranjan, you are wasting the court’s time.’

  Chittaranjan made a great deal of fuss about the wild passion of love. He said Antony had thrown away an empire for the sake of love, just as Hat had thrown away his self-respect. He said that Hat’s crime was really a crime passionel. In France, he said – and he knew what he was talking about, because he had been to Paris – in France, Hat would have been a hero. Women would have garlanded him.

  Eddoes said, ‘Is this sort of lawyer who does get man hang, you know.’

  Hat was sentenced to four years.

  We went to Frederick Street jail to see him. It was a disappointing jail. The walls were light cream, and not very high, and I was surprised to see that most of the visitors were very gay. Only a few women wept, but the whole thing was like a party, with people laughing and chatting.

  Eddoes, who had put on his best suit for the occasion, held his hat in his hand and looked around. He said to Hat, ‘It don’t look too bad here.’

  Hat said, ‘They taking me to Carrera next week.’

  Carrera was the small prison-island a few miles from Port of Spain.

  Hat said, ‘Don’t worry about me. You know me. In two three weeks I go make them give me something easy to do.’

  * * *

  Whenever I went to Carenage or Point Cumana for a bathe, I looked across the green water to the island of Carrera, rising high out of
the sea, with its neat pink buildings. I tried to picture what went on inside those buildings, but my imagination refused to work. I used to think, ‘Hat there, I here. He know I here, thinking about him?’

  But as the months passed I became more and more concerned with myself, and I wouldn’t think about Hat for weeks on end. It was useless trying to feel ashamed. I had to face the fact that I was no longer missing Hat. From time to time when my mind was empty, I would stop and think how long it would be before he came out, but I was not really concerned.

  I was fifteen when Hat went to jail and eighteen when he came out. A lot happened in those three years. I left school and I began working in the customs. I was no longer a boy. I was a man, earning money.

  Hat’s homecoming fell a little flat. It wasn’t only that we boys had grown older. Hat, too, had changed. Some of the brightness had left him, and conversation was hard to make.

  He visited all the houses he knew and he spoke about his experiences with great zest.

  My mother gave him tea.

  Hat said, ‘Is just what I expect. I get friendly with some of the turnkey and them, and you know what happen? I pull two three strings and – bam! – they make me librarian. They have a big library there, you know. All sort of big book. Is the sort of place Titus Hoyt would like. So much book with nobody to read them.’

  I offered Hat a cigarette and he took it mechanically.

  Then he shouted, ‘But, eh-eh, what is this? You come a big man now! When I leave you wasn’t smoking. Was a long time now, though.’

  I said, ‘Yes. Was a long time.’

  A long time. But it was just three years, three years in which I had grown up and looked critically at the people around me. I no longer wanted to be like Eddoes. He was so weak and thin, and I hadn’t realized that he was so small. Titus Hoyt was stupid and boring, and not funny at all. Everything had changed.

  When Hat went to jail, part of me had died.

  17 HOW I LEFT MIGUEL STREET

  MY MOTHER SAID, ‘You getting too wild in this place. I think is high time you leave.’

  ‘And go where? Venezuela?’ I said.

  ‘No, not Venezuela. Somewhere else, because the moment you land in Venezuela they go throw you in jail. I know you and I know Venezuela. No, somewhere else.’

  I said, ‘All right. You think about it and decide.’

  My mother said, ‘I go go and talk to Ganesh Pundit about it. He was a friend of your father. But you must go from here. You getting too wild.’

  I suppose my mother was right. Without really knowing it, I had become a little wild. I was drinking like a fish, and doing a lot besides. The drinking started in the customs, where we confiscated liquor on the slightest pretext. At first the smell of spirits upset me, but I used to say to myself, ‘You must get over this. Drink it like medicine. Hold your nose and close your eyes.’ In time I had become a first-class drinker, and I began suffering from drinker’s pride.

  Then there were the sights of the town Boyee and Errol introduced me to. One night, not long after I began working, they took me to a place near Marine Square. We climbed to the first floor and found ourselves in a small crowded room lit by green bulbs. The green light seemed as thick as jelly. There were many women all about the room, just waiting and looking. A big sign said: OBSCENE LANGUAGE FORBIDDEN.

  We had a drink at the bar, a thick sweet drink.

  Errol asked me, ‘Which one of the women you like?’

  I understood immediately, and I felt disgusted. I ran out of the room and went home, a little sick, a little frightened. I said to myself, ‘You must get over this.’

  Next night I went to the club again. And again.

  We made wild parties and took rum and women to Maracas Bay for all-night sessions.

  ‘You getting too wild,’ my mother said.

  I paid her no attention until the time I drank so much in one evening that I remained drunk for two whole days afterwards. When I sobered up, I made a vow neither to smoke nor drink again.

  I said to my mother, ‘Is not my fault really. Is just Trinidad. What else anybody can do here except drink?’

  About two months later my mother said, ‘You must come with me next week. We going to see Ganesh Pundit.’

  Ganesh Pundit had given up mysticism for a long time. He had taken to politics and was doing very nicely. He was a minister of something or the other in the Government, and I heard people saying that he was in the running for the M.B.E.

  We went to his big house in St Clair and we found the great man, not dressed in dhoti and koortah, as in the mystic days, but in an expensive-looking lounge suit.

  He received my mother with a good deal of warmth.

  He said, ‘I do what I could do.’

  My mother began to cry.

  To me Ganesh said, ‘What you want to go abroad to study?’

  I said, ‘I don’t want to study anything really. I just want to go away, that’s all.’

  Ganesh smiled and said, ‘The Government not giving away that sort of scholarship yet. Only ministers could do what you say. No, you have to study something.’

  I said, ‘I never think about it really. Just let me think a little bit.’

  Ganesh said, ‘All right. You think a little bit.’

  My mother was crying her thanks to Ganesh.

  I said, ‘I know what I want to study. Engineering.’ I was thinking about my uncle Bhakcu.

  Ganesh laughed and said, ‘What you know about engineering?’

  I said, ‘Right now, nothing. But I could put my mind to it.’

  My mother said, ‘Why don’t you want to take up law?’

  I thought of Chittaranjan and his brown suit and I said, ‘No, not law.’

  Ganesh said, ‘It have only one scholarship remaining. For drugs.’

  I said, ‘But I don’t want to be a druggist. I don’t want to put on a white jacket and sell lipstick to woman.’

  Ganesh smiled.

  My mother said, ‘You mustn’t mind the boy, Pundit. He will study drugs.’ And to me, ‘You could study anything if you put your mind to it.’

  Ganesh said, ‘Think. It mean going to London. It mean seeing snow and seeing the Thames and seeing the big Parliament.’

  I said, ‘All right. I go study drugs.’

  My mother said, ‘I don’t know what I could do to thank you, Pundit.’

  And, crying, she counted out two hundred dollars and gave it to Ganesh. She said, ‘I know it ain’t much, Pundit. But it is all I have. Is a long time I did saving it up.’

  Ganesh took the money sadly and he said, ‘You mustn’t let that worry you. You must give only what you can afford.’

  My mother kept on crying and in the end even Ganesh broke down.

  When my mother saw this, she dried her tears and said, ‘If you only know, Pundit, how worried I is. I have to find so much money for so much thing these days, and I don’t really know how I going to make out.’

  Ganesh now stopped crying. My mother began to cry afresh.

  This went on for a bit until Ganesh gave back a hundred dollars to my mother. He was sobbing and shaking and he said, ‘Take this and buy some good clothes for the boy.’

  I said, ‘Pundit, you is a good man.’

  This affected him strongly. He said, ‘Is when you come back from England, with all sort of certificate and paper, a big man and a big druggist, is then I go come round and ask you for what you owe me.’

  I told Hat I was going away.

  He said, ‘What for? Labouring?’

  I said, ‘The Government give me a scholarship to study drugs.’

  He said, ‘Is you who wangle that?’

  I said, ‘Not me. My mother.’

  Eddoes said, ‘Is a good thing. A druggist fellow I know – picking up rubbish for him for years now – this fellow rich like anything. Man, the man just rolling in money.’

  The news got to Elias and he took it badly. He came to the gate one evening and shouted, ‘Bribe, bribe. Is all
you could do. Bribe.’

  My mother shouted back, ‘The only people who does complain about bribe is those who too damn poor to have anything to bribe with.’

  In about a month everything was fixed for my departure. The Trinidad Government wrote to the British Consul in New York about me. The British Consul got to know about me. The Americans gave me a visa after making me swear that I wouldn’t overthrow their government by armed force.

  The night before I left, my mother gave a little party. It was something like a wake. People came in looking sad and telling me how much they were going to miss me, and then they forgot about me and attended to the serious business of eating and drinking.

  Laura kissed me on the cheek and gave me a medallion of St Christopher. She asked me to wear it around my neck. I promised that I would and I put the medallion in my pocket. I don’t know what happened to it. Mrs Bhakcu gave me a sixpenny piece which she said she had had specially consecrated. It didn’t look different from other sixpenny pieces and I suppose I spent it. Titus Hoyt forgave me everything and brought me Volume Two of the Everyman edition of Tennyson. Eddoes gave me a wallet which he swore was practically new. Boyee and Errol gave me nothing. Hat gave me a carton of cigarettes. He said, ‘I know you say you ain’t smoking again. But take this, just in case you change your mind.’ The result was that I began smoking again.

  Uncle Bhakcu spent the night fixing the van which was to take me to the airport next morning. From time to time I ran out and begged him to take it easy. He said he thought the carburettor was playing the fool.

  Next morning Bhakcu got up early and was at it again. We had planned to leave at eight, but at ten to, Bhakcu was still tinkering. My mother was in a panic and Mrs Bhakcu was growing impatient.

  Bhakcu was underneath the car, whistling a couplet from the Ramayana. He came out, laughed, and said, ‘You getting frighten, eh?’

  Presently we were all ready. Bhakcu had done little damage to the engine and it still worked. My bags were taken to the van and I was ready to leave the house for the last time.

  My mother said, ‘Wait.’

  She placed a brass jar of milk in the middle of the gateway.