Ganesh saw Ramlogan smiling broadly behind the counter. ‘What you want me to say when you have a sharpen cutlass underneath the counter, eh?’
‘Cutlass? Sharpen cutlass? You making joke, sahib. Come in, man, sahib, and sit down. Yes, sit down, and let we have a chat. Eh, but is just like old times, eh, sahib?’
‘Things change now.’
‘Ah, sahib. Don’t say you vex with me.’
‘I ain’t vex with you.’
‘Is for stupid illiterate people like me to get vex. And when illiterate people get vex they does start thinking about working magic against people and all that sort of thing. Educated people don’t do that sort of thing.’
‘You go be surprised.’
Ramlogan tried to draw Ganesh’s attention to the glass case. ‘Is a nice modern thing, ain’t so, sahib? Nice, pretty, little modern thing.’ A drowsy fly was buzzing on the outside, anxious to join its fellows inside. Ramlogan brought down his hand quickly on the glass and killed the fly. He threw it out of the side window and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘These flies is a botheration, sahib. What is a good way of getting rid of these botherations, sahib?’
‘I ain’t know anything about flies, man.’
Ramlogan smiled and tried again. ‘How you like being a married man, sahib?’
‘These modern girls is hell self. They does keep forgetting their place.’
‘Sahib, I have to hand it to you. Only three days you married and you find that out already. Is the valua education. You want some salmon, sahib? Is just as good as any salmon in San Fernando.’
‘Don’t like San Fernando people.’
‘How business there for you, sahib?’
‘Tomorrow, please God, we go see what happen.’
‘Oh God! Sahib, I didn’t mean anything bad last night. Was only a little drunk I was, sahib. A old man like me can’t hold his liquor, sahib. I don’t mind how much you want from me. I is a good good Hindu, sahib. Take away everything from me and it don’t make no difference, once you leave me with my cha’acter.’
‘You is a damn funny sort of man, you know.’
Ramlogan slapped at another fly and missed. ‘What go happen tomorrow, sahib?’
Ganesh rose from the bench and dusted the seat of his trousers. ‘Oh, tomorrow is one big secret.’
Ramlogan rubbed his hands along the edge of the counter.
‘Why you crying?’
‘Oh, sahib, I is a poor man. You must feel sorry for me.’
‘Leela go be all right with me. You mustn’t cry for she.’
He found Leela in the kitchen, squatting before the low chulha fire, stirring boiling rice in a blue enamel pot.
‘Leela, I have a good mind to take off my belt and give you a good dose of blows before I even wash my hand or do anything else.’
She adjusted the veil over her head before turning to him. ‘What happen now, man?’
‘Girl, how you let all your father bad blood run in your veins, eh? How you playing you don’t know what happen, when you know that you run around telling Tom, Dick, and Harry my business?’
She faced the chulha again and stirred the pot. ‘Man, if we start quarrelling now, the rice go boil too soft and you know you don’t like it like that.’
‘All right, but I go want you answer me later on.’
After the meal she confessed and he surprised her by not beating her.
So she was emboldened to ask, ‘Man, what you do with Pa photo?’
‘I think I settle your father. Tomorrow it wouldn’t have one man in Trinidad who wouldn’t know about him. Look, Leela, if you start this crying again, I go make you taste my hand again. Start packing. Tomorrow self we moving to Fuente Grove.’
And the next morning the Trinidad Sentinel carried this story on page five:
BENEFACTOR ENDOWS CULTURAL INSTITUTE
Shri Ramlogan, merchant, of Fourways, near Debe, has donated a considerable sum of money with the view of founding a Cultural Institute at Fuente Grove. The aim of the proposed Institute, which has yet to be named, will be the furthering of Hindu Cultural and Science of Thought in Trinidad.
The President of the Institute, it is learnt, will be Ganesh Ramsumair, B.A.
And there was, in a prominent place, a photograph of a formally attired and slimmer Ramlogan, a potted plant at his side, standing against a background of Greek ruins.
The counter of Ramlogan’s shop was covered with copies of the Trinidad Sentinel and the Port of Spain Herald. Ramlogan didn’t look up when Ganesh came into the shop. He was gazing intently at the photograph and trying to frown.
‘Don’t bother with the Herald,’ Ganesh said. ‘I didn’t give them the story.’
Ramlogan didn’t look up. He frowned more severely and said, ‘Hmmh!’ He turned the page over and read a brief item about the danger of tubercular cows. ‘They pay you anything?’
‘The man wanted me to pay.’
‘Son of a bitch.’
Ganesh made an approving noise.
‘So, sahib.’ Ramlogan looked up at last. ‘Was really this you wanted the money for?’
‘Really really.’
‘And you really going to write books at Fuente Grove and everything?’
‘Really going to write books.’
‘Yes, man. Been reading it here, sahib. Is a great thing, and you is a great man, sahib.’
‘Since when you start reading?’
‘I learning all all the time, sahib. I does read only a little tiny little bit. Smatterer fact, it have a hundred and one words I just can’t make head or tail outa. Tell you what, sahib. Why you don’t read it out to me? When you read I could just shut my eyes and listen.’
‘You does behave funny afterwards. Why you just don’t look at the photo, eh?’
‘Is a nice photo, sahib.’
‘You look at it. I got to go now.’
Ganesh and Leela moved to Fuente Grove that afternoon; but just before they left Fourways a letter arrived. It contained the oil royalties for the quarter; and the information that his oil had been exhausted and he was to receive no more royalties.
Ramlogan’s dowry seemed providential. It was another remarkable coincidence that gave Ganesh fresh evidence that big things were ahead of him.
‘Great things going to happen in Fuente Grove,’ Ganesh told Leela. ‘Really great things.’
5. Trials
FOR MORE THAN two years Ganesh and Leela lived in Fuente Grove and nothing big or encouraging happened.
Right from the start Fuente Grove looked unpromising. The Great Belcher had said it was a small, out of the way place. That was only half true. Fuente Grove was practically lost. It was so small, so remote, and so wretched, it was marked only on large maps in the office of the Government Surveyor; the Public Works Department treated it with contempt; and no other village even thought of feuding with it. You couldn’t really like Fuente Grove. In the dry season the earth baked, cracked, and calcined; and in the rainy season melted into mud. Always it was hot. Trees would have made some difference, but Ganesh’s mango tree was the only one.
The villagers went to work in the cane-fields in the dawn darkness to avoid the heat of day. When they returned in the middle of the morning the dew had dried on the grass; and they set to work in their vegetable gardens as if they didn’t know that sugar-cane was the only thing that could grow in Fuente Grove. They had few thrills. The population was small and there were not many births, marriages, or deaths to excite them. Two or three times a year the men made a noisy excursion to a cinema in distant, wicked San Fernando. Little happened besides. Once a year, at the ‘crop-over’ harvest festival, when the sugar-cane had been reaped, Fuente Grove made a brave show of gaiety. The half-dozen bullock carts in the village were decorated with pink and yellow and green streamers made from crêpe paper; the bullocks themselves, sad-eyed as ever, wore bright ribbons in their horns; and men, women, and children rattled the piquets on the carts and beat on pans, singing about the bo
unty of God. It was like the gaiety of a starving child.
Every Saturday evening the men gathered in Beharry’s shop and drank a lot of bad rum. They became sufficiently enthusiastic about their wives to beat them that night. On Sunday they woke sick, cursing Beharry and his rum, continued sick all day, and rose fresh and strong early Monday morning, ready for the week’s work.
It was only this Saturday drinking that kept Beharry’s shop going. He himself never drank because he was a good Hindu and because, as he told Ganesh, ‘it have nothing like a clear head, man’. Also, his wife didn’t approve.
Beharry was the only person in Fuente Grove with whom Ganesh became friendly. He was a little man, scholarly in appearance, with a neat little belly and thin, greying hair. He alone in Fuente Grove read the newspapers. A day-old copy of the Trinidad Sentinel came to him every day by cyclist from Princes Town and Beharry read it from end to end, sitting on a high stool in front of his counter. He hated being behind the counter. ‘It does make me feel I is in a pen, man.’
The day after he arrived in Fuente Grove Ganesh called on Beharry and found that he knew all about the Institute.
‘Is just what Fuente Grove want,’ Beharry said. ‘You going to write books and thing, eh?’
Ganesh nodded and Beharry shouted, ‘Suruj!’
A boy of about five ran into the shop.
‘Suruj, go bring the books. They under the pillow.’
‘All the books, Pa?’
‘All.’
The boy brought the books and Beharry passed them one by one to Ganesh: Napoleon’s Book of Fate, a school edition of Eothen which had lost its covers, three issues of the Booker’s Drug Stores Almanac, the Gita, and the Ramayana.
‘People can’t fool me,’ Beharry said. ‘Tom is a country-bookie but Tom ain’t a fool. Suruj!’
The boy ran up again.
‘Cigarette and match, Suruj.’
‘But they on the counter, Pa.’
‘You think I can’t see that? Hand them to me.’
The boy obeyed, then ran out of the shop.
‘What you think of the books?’ Beharry asked, pointing with an unlighted cigarette.
When Beharry spoke he became rather like a mouse. He looked anxious and worked his small mouth nervously up and down as though he were nibbling.
‘Nice.’
A big woman with a tired face came into the shop. ‘Suruj Poopa, you ain’t hear me calling you to eat?’
Beharry nibbled. ‘I was just showing the pundit the books I does read.’
‘Read!’ Her tired face quickened with scorn. ‘Read! You want to know how he does read?’
Ganesh didn’t know where to look.
‘He does close up the shop if I don’t keep a eye on him, and he does jump into bed with the books. I ain’t know him read one book to the end yet, and still he ain’t happy unless he reading four five book at the same time. It have some people it dangerous learning them how to read.’
Beharry replaced the cigarette in the box.
‘This world go be a different and better place the day man start making baby,’ the woman said, sweeping out of the shop. ‘Life hard enough with you one, leave alone your three worthless children.’
There was a short silence after she had gone.
‘Suruj Mooma,’ Beharry explained.
‘They is like that,’ Ganesh agreed.
‘But she right, you know, man. If everybody did start behaving like me and you it would be a crazy kinda world.’
Beharry nibbled, and winked at Ganesh. ‘I telling you, man. This reading is a dangerous thing.’
Suruj ran into the shop again. ‘She calling you, Pa.’ His tone carried his mother’s exasperation.
As Ganesh left he heard Beharry saying, ‘She? Is how you does call your mother? Who is she? The cat mother?’
Ganesh heard a slap.
He went often to Beharry’s shop. He liked Beharry and he liked the shop. Beharry made it bright with coloured advertisements for things he didn’t stock; and it was as dry and clean as Ramlogan’s shop was greasy and dirty.
‘It beat me what you does see in this Beharry,’ Leela said. ‘He think he could run shop, but he does only make me laugh. I must write and tell Pa about the sort of shop it have in Fuente Grove.’
‘It have one thing you must write and tell your father to do. Tell him to go and open a stall in San Fernando market.’
Leela cried. ‘You see the sort of thing Beharry putting in your head. The man is my father.’ And she cried again.
But Ganesh still went to Beharry’s.
When Beharry heard that Ganesh was going to set himself up as a masseur he nibbled anxiously and shook his head. ‘Man, you choose a hard hard thing. These days nearly everybody you bouncing up is either massager or dentist. One of my own cousin – really Suruj Mooma cousin, but Suruj Mooma family is like my own family – a really nice boy he is, he too starting in this thing.’
‘As another massager?’
‘Wait, you go hear. Last Christmas Suruj Mooma take up the children by their grandmooma and this boy just come up to she cool cool and say he taking up dentistry. You could imagine how Suruj Mooma was surprise. And the next thing we hear is that he borrow money to buy one of them dentist machine thing and he start pulling out people teeth, just like that. The boy killing people left and right, and still people going. Trinidad people is like that.’
‘It ain’t people teeth I want to pull out. But the boy doing all right, eh?’
‘For the time, yes. He done pay back for the machine. But Tunapuna is a busy place, remember. Eh, I see the time coming when quack go find it hard getting two cent to buy a bread and some cheap red butter.’
Suruj Mooma came in hot and dusty from the yard with a cocoye broom. ‘I was coming with a good good mind to sweep out the shop – eh! – and look at the first thing I hearing. Why for you must call the boy quack? It ain’t as if he not trying.’ She looked at Ganesh. ‘You know what wrong with Suruj Poopa? He just jealous the boy. He can’t even cut toenail, and a little boy pulling out big people teeth. Is just jealous he jealous the boy.’
Ganesh said, ‘You have something there, maharajin. Is like me and my massaging. I ain’t just rushing into it like that, you know. I learn and stop and study a lot about it, from my own father. It ain’t quack work.’
Beharry, on the defensive, nibbled. ‘Wasn’t that I did mean at all. I was just telling the pundit here that if he set hisself up as a massager in Fuente Grove he go have it hard.’
It didn’t take Ganesh long to find out that Beharry was right. There were too many masseurs in Trinidad, and it was useless to advertise. Leela told her friends, The Great Belcher told hers, Beharry promised to write to all the people he knew; but few cared to bring their ailments to a place as far away as Fuente Grove. The villagers themselves were very healthy.
‘Man,’ Leela said. ‘I don’t think you really make for massage.’
And the time came when he himself began to doubt his own powers. He could cure a nara, a simple stomach dislocation, as well as any masseur, and he could cure stiff joints. But he could never bring himself to risk bigger operations.
One day a young girl with a twisted arm came to see him. She looked happy enough but her mother was weeping and miserable. ‘We try everybody and everything, pundit. Nothing happen. And every day the girl getting older, but who go want to married she?’
She was a pretty girl, too, with lively eyes in an impassive face. She looked only at her mother, not once at Ganesh.
‘Twenty time people break over the girl hand, if they break it over one time,’ the mother continued. ‘But still the hand can’t set.’
He knew what his father would have done. He would have made the girl lie down, he would have placed his foot on her elbow, levered the arm upwards till it broke, then set it again. But all Ganesh said, after examining the hand, was, ‘It have nothing wrong with the girl, maharajin. She only have a little bad blood, that is all. And too
besides, God make she that way and is not for me to interfere in God work.’
The girl’s mother stopped sobbing and pulled her pink veil over her head. ‘Is my fate,’ she said, without sadness.
The girl never spoke a word.
Afterwards Leela said, ‘Man, you shoulda at least try to fix the hand first, and then you coulda start talking about God work. But you don’t care what you doing to me. It look as though you only want to drive away people now.’
Ganesh continued to offend his patients by telling them that nothing was wrong with them; he spoke more and more about God’s work; and, if he was pressed, he gave out a mixture he had made from one of his father’s prescriptions, a green fluid made mostly from shining-bush and leaves of the neem tree.
He said, ‘Facts is facts, Leela. I ain’t have a hand for massage.’
There was another disappointment in his life. After a year it was clear that Leela couldn’t have children. He lost interest in her as a wife and stopped beating her. Leela took it well, but he expected no less of a good Hindu wife. She still looked after the house and in time became an efficient housekeeper. She cared for the garden at the back of the house and minded the cow. She never complained. Soon she was ruler in the house. She could order Ganesh about and he didn’t object. She gave him advice and he listened. He began to consult her on nearly everything. In time, though they would never had admitted it, they had grown to love each other. Sometimes, when he thought about it, Ganesh found it strange that the tall hard woman with whom he lived was the saucy girl who had once asked, ‘You could write too, sahib?’
And always there was Ramlogan to be mollified. The newspaper cutting with his photograph hung, mounted and framed, in his shop, above Leela’s notice concerning the provision of chairs for female shop assistants. Already the paper was going brown at the edges. Whenever Ganesh went, for one reason or another to Fourways, Ramlogan was sure to ask, ‘How the Institute going, man?’
‘Thinking about it all the time,’ Ganesh would say. Or, ‘Is all in my head, you know. Don’t rush me.’