The Mystic Masseur

4. The Quarrel with Ramlogan

‘I SUPPOSE,’ Ganesh wrote in The Years of Guilt, ‘I had always, from the first day I stepped into Shri Ramlogan’s shop, considered it as settled that I was going to marry his daughter. I never questioned it. It all seemed preordained.’

What happened was this.

One day when Ganesh called Ramlogan was wearing a clean shirt. Also, he looked freshly washed, his hair looked freshly oiled; and his movements were silent and deliberate, as though he were doing a puja. He dragged up the small bench from the corner and placed it near the table; then sat on it and watched Ganesh eat, all without saying a word. First he looked at Ganesh’s face, then at Ganesh’s plate, and there his gaze rested until Ganesh had eaten the last handful of rice.

‘Your belly full, sahib?’

‘Yes, my belly full.’ Ganesh wiped his plate clean with an extended index finger.

‘It must be hard for you, sahib, now that your father dead.’

Ganesh licked his finger. ‘I don’t really miss him, you know.’

‘No, sahib, don’t tell me. I know is hard for you. Supposing, just supposing — I just putting this up to you as a superstition, sahib — but just supposing you did want to get married, it have nobody at all to fix up things for you.’

‘I don’t even know if I want to get married.’ Ganesh rose from the table, rubbing his belly until he belched his appreciation of Ramlogan’s food.

Ramlogan rearranged the roses in the vase. ‘Still, you is a educated man, and you could take care of yourself. Not like me, sahib. Since I was five I been working, with nobody looking after me. Still, all that do something for me. Guess what it do for me, sahib.’

‘Can’t guess. Tell me what it do.’

‘It give me cha’acter and sensa values, sahib. That’s what it give me. Cha’acter and sensa values.’

Ganesh took the brass jar of water from the table and went to the Demerara window to wash his hands and gargle.

Ramlogan was smoothing out the oilcloth with both hands and dusting away some crumbs, mere specks. ‘I know,’ he said apologetically, ‘that for a man like you, educated and reading books night and day, shopkeeping is a low thing. But I don’t care what people think. You, sahib, answer me this as a educated man: you does let other people worry you?’

Ganesh, gargling, thought at once of Miller and the row at the school in Port of Spain, but when he spat out the water into the yard he said, ‘Nah. I don’t care what people say.’

Ramlogan pounded across the floor and took the brass jar from Ganesh. ‘I go put this away, sahib. You sit down in the hammock. Ooops! Let me dust it for you first.’

When he had seated Ganesh, Ramlogan started to walk up and down in front of the hammock.

‘People can’t harm me,’ he said, holding his hands at his back. ‘All right, people don’t like me. All right, they stop coming to my shop. That harm me? That change my cha’acter? I just go to San Fernando and open a little stall in the market. No, don’t stop me, sahib. Is exactly what I would do. Take a stall in the market. And what happen? Tell me, what happen?’

Ganesh belched again, softly.

‘What happen?’ Ramlogan gave a short crooked laugh. ‘Bam! In five years I have a whole chain of grocery shop. Who laughing then? Then you go see them coming round and begging, “Mr Ramlogan” — that’s what it go be then, you know: Mister Ramlogan — “Mr Ramlogan, gimme this, gimme that, Mr Ramlogan.” Begging me to go up for elections and a hundred and one stupid things.’

Ganesh said, ‘You ain’t have to start opening stall in San Fernando market now, thank God.’

‘That is it, sahib. Just just as you say. Is all God work. Count my property now. Is true I is illiterate, but you just sit down in that hammock and count my property.’

Ramlogan was walking and talking with such unusual energy that the sweat broke and shone on his forehead. Suddenly he halted and stood directly in front of Ganesh. He took away his hands from behind his back and started to count off his fingers. ‘Two acres near Chaguanas. Good land, too. Ten acres in Penal. You never know when I could scrape together enough to make the drillers put a oil-well there. A house in Fuente Grove. Not much, but is something. Two three houses in Siparia. Add up all that and you find you looking at a man worth about twelve thousand dollars, cool cool.’

Ramlogan passed his hand over his forehead and behind his neck. ‘I know is hard to believe, sahib. But is the gospel truth. I think is a good idea, sahib, for you to married Leela.’

‘All right,’ Ganesh said.

He never saw Leela again until the night of their wedding, and both he and Ramlogan pretended he had never seen her at all, because they were both good Hindus and knew it was wrong for a man to see his wife before marriage.

He still had to go to Ramlogan’s, to make arrangements for the wedding, but he remained in the shop itself and never went to the back room.

‘You is not like Soomintra damn fool of a husband,’ Ramlogan told him. ‘You is a modern man and you must have a modern wedding.’

So he didn’t send the messenger around to give the saffron-dyed rice to friends and relations and announce the wedding. ‘That old-fashion,’ he said. He wanted printed invitations on scalloped and gilt-edged cards. ‘And we must have nice wordings, sahib.’

‘But you can’t have nice wordings on a thing like a invitation.’

‘You is the educated man, sahib. You could think of some.’

‘R.S.V.P.?’

‘What that mean?’

‘It don’t mean nothing, but it nice to have it.’

‘Let we have it then, man, sahib! You is a modern man, and too besides, it sound as pretty wordings.’

Ganesh himself went to San Fernando to get the cards printed. The printer’s shop was, at first sight, a little disappointing. It looked black and bleak and seemed to be manned only by a thin youth in ragged khaki shorts who whistled as he operated the hand-press. But when Ganesh saw the cards go in blank and come out with his prose miraculously transformed into all the authority of type, he was struck with something like awe. He stayed to watch the boy set up a cinema hand-bill. The boy, whistling without intermission, ignored Ganesh altogether.

‘Is on this sort of machine they does print books?’ Ganesh asked.

‘What else you think it make for?’

‘You print any good books lately?’

The boy dabbed some ink on the roller. ‘You ever hear of Trinidad people writing books?’

‘I writing a book.’

The boy spat into a bin full of ink-stained paper. ‘This must be a funny sort of shop, you know. The number of people who come in here and ask me to print the books they writing in invisible ink, man!’

‘What you name?’

‘Basdeo.’

‘All right, Basdeo, boy. The day go come when I go send you a book to print.’

‘Sure, man. Sure. You write it and I print it.’

Ganesh didn’t think he liked Basdeo’s Hollywood manner, and he instantly regretted what he had said. But so far as this business of writing books was concerned, he seemed to have no will: it was the second time he had committed himself. It all seemed pre-ordained.

‘Yes, they is pretty invitation cards,’ Ramlogan said, but there was no joy in his voice.

‘But what happen now to make your face long long as mango?’

‘Education, sahib, is one hell of a thing. When you is a poor illiterate man like me, all sort of people does want to take advantage on you.’

Ramlogan began to cry. ‘Right now, right right now, as you sitting down on that bench there and I sitting down on this stool behind my shop counter, looking at these pretty pretty cards, you wouldn’t believe what people trying to do to me. Right now it have a man in Siparia trying to rob my two house there, all because I can’t read, and the people in Penal behaving in a funny way.’

‘What they doing so?’

‘Ah, sahib. That is just like you. I know you want to help me, but is too late now. All sort of paper with fine fine writing they did make me sign and everything, and now — now everything lost.’

Ganesh had not seen Ramlogan cry so much since the funeral. He said, ‘Well, look. If is the dowry you worried about, you could stop. I don’t want a big dowry.’

‘Is the shame, sahib, that eating me up. You know how with these Hindu weddings everybody does know how much the boy get from the girl father. When, the morning after the wedding the boy sit down and they give him a plate of kedgeree, with the girl father having to give money and keep on giving until the boy eat the kedgeree, everybody go see what I give you, and they go say, “Look, Ramlogan marrying off his second and best daughter to a boy with a college education, and this is all the man giving.” Is that what eating me up, sahib. I know that for you, educated and reading books night and day, it wouldn’t mean much, but for me, sahib, what about my cha’acter and sensa values?’

‘You must stop crying and listen. When it come to eating the kedgeree, I go eat quick, not to shame you. Not too quick, because that would make people think you poor as a church-rat. But I wouldn’t take much from you.’

Ramlogan smiled through his tears. ‘Is just like you, sahib, just what I did expect from you. I wish Leela did see you and then she woulda know what sort of man I choose for she husband.’

‘I wish I did see Leela too.’

‘Smatterer fact, sahib, I know it have some modern people nowadays who don’t even like waiting for money before they eat the kedgeree.’

‘But is the custom, man.’

‘Yes, sahib, the custom. But still I think is a disgrace in these modern times. Now, if it was I was getting married, I wouldn’t want any dowry and I woulda say, “To hell with the kedgeree, man.” ’

As soon as the invitations were out Ganesh had to stop visiting Ramlogan altogether, but he wasn’t alone in his house for long. Dozens of women descended on him with their children. He had no idea who most of them were; sometimes he recognized a face and found it hard to believe that the woman with the children hanging about her was the same cousin who was only a child herself when he first went to Port of Spain.

The children treated Ganesh with contempt.

A small boy with a running nose said to him one day, ‘They tell me is you who getting married.’

‘Yes, is me.’

The boy said, ‘Ahaha!’ and ran away laughing and jeering.

The boy’s mother said, ‘Is something we have to face these days. The children getting modern.’

Then one day Ganesh discovered his aunt among the women, she who had been one of the principal mourners at his father’s funeral. He learnt that she had not only arranged everything then, but had also paid for it all. When Ganesh offered to pay back the money she became annoyed and told him not to be stupid.

‘This life is a funny thing, eh,’ she said. ‘One day somebody dead and you cry. Two days later somebody married, and then you laugh. Oh, Ganeshwa boy, at a time like this you want your own family around you, but what family you have? Your father, he dead; your mother, she dead too.’

She was so moved she couldn’t cry; and for the first time Ganesh realized what a big thing his marriage was.

Ganesh thought it almost a miracle that so many people could live happily in one small house without any sort of organization. They had left him the bedroom, but they swarmed over the rest of the house and managed as best they could. First they had made it into an extended picnic site; then they had made it into a cramped camping site. But they looked happy enough and Ganesh presently discovered that the anarchy was only apparent. Of the dozens of women who wandered freely about the house there was one, tall and silent, whom he had learnt to call King George. It might have been her real name for all he knew: he had never seen her before. King George ruled the house.

‘King George got a hand,’ his aunt said.

‘A hand?’

‘She got a hand for sharing things out. Give King George a little penny cake and give she twelve children to share it out to, and you could bet your bottom dollar that King George share it fair and square.’

‘You know she, then?’

‘Know she! Is I who take up King George. Mark you, I think I was very lucky coming across she. Now I take she everywhere with me.’

‘She related to us?’

‘You could say so. Phulbassia is a sort of cousin to King George and you is a sort of cousin to Phulbassia.’

The aunt belched, not the polite after-dinner belch, but a long, stuttering thing. ‘Is the wind,’ she explained without apology. ‘It have a long time now — since your father dead, come to think of it — I suffering from this wind.’

‘You see a doctor?’

‘Doctor? They does only make up things. One of them tell me — you know what? — that I have a lazy liver. Is something I asking myself a long time now: how a liver could be lazy, eh?’

She belched again, said, ‘You see?’ and rubbed her hands over her breasts.

Ganesh thought of this aunt as Lady Belcher and then as The Great Belcher. In a few days she had a devastating effect on the other women in the house. They all began belching and rubbing their breasts and complaining about the wind. All except King George.

Ganesh was glad when the time came for him to be anointed with saffron. For those days he was confined to his room, where his father’s body had lain that night, and where now The Great Belcher, King George, and a few other anonymous women gathered to rub him down. When they left the room they sang Hindi wedding songs of a most pessimistic nature, and Ganesh wondered how Leela was putting up with her own seclusion and anointing.

All day long he remained in his room, consoling himself with The Science of Thought Review. He read through all the numbers Mr Stewart had given him, some of them many times over. All day he heard the children romping, squealing, and being beaten; the mothers beating, shouting, and thumping about on the floor.

On the day before the wedding, when the women had come in to rub him down for the last time, he asked The Great Belcher, ‘I never think about it before, but what those people outside eating? Who paying for it?’

‘You.’

He almost sat up in bed, but King George’s strong arm kept him down.

‘Ramlogan did say that we mustn’t get you worried about that,’ The Great Belcher said. ‘He say your head hot with enough worries already. But King George looking after everything. She got a account with Ramlogan. He go settle with you after the wedding.’

‘Oh God! I ain’t even married the man daughter yet, and already he start!’

Fourways was nearly as excited at the wedding as it had been at the funeral. Hundreds of people, from Fourways and elsewhere, were fed at Ramlogan’s. There were dancers, drummers, and singers, for those who were not interested in the details of the night-long ceremony. The yard behind Ramlogan’s shop was beautifully illuminated with all sorts of lights, except electric ones; and the decorations — mainly fruit hanging from coconut-palm arches — were pleasing. All this for Ganesh, and Ganesh felt it and was pleased. The thought of marriage had at first embarrassed him, then, when he spoke with his aunt, awed him; now he was simply thrilled.

All through the ceremony he had to pretend, with everyone else, that he had never seen Leela. She sat at his side veiled from head to toe, until the blanket was thrown over them and he unveiled her face. In the mellow light under the pink blanket she was as a stranger. She was no longer the giggling girl simpering behind the lace curtains. Already she looked chastened and impassive, a good Hindu wife.

Shortly afterwards it was over, and they were man and wife. Leela was taken away and Ganesh was left alone to face the kedgeree-eating ceremony the next morning.

Still in all his bridegroom’s regalia, satin robes, and tasselled crown, he sat down on some blankets in the yard, before the plate of kedgeree. It looked white and unpalatable, and he knew it would be easy to resist any temptation to touch it.

Ramlogan was the first to offer money to induce Ganesh to eat. He was a little haggard after staying awake all night, but he looked pleased and happy enough when he placed five twenty-dollar bills in the brass plate next to the kedgeree. He stepped back, folded his arms, looked from the money to Ganesh to the small group standing by, and smiled.

He stood smiling for nearly two minutes; but Ganesh didn’t even look at the kedgeree.

‘Give the boy money, man,’ Ramlogan cried to the people around. ‘Give him money, man. Come on, don’t act as if you is all poor poor as church-rat.’ He moved among them, laughing, and rallying them. Some put down small amounts in the brass plate.

Still Ganesh sat, serene and aloof, like an over-dressed Buddha.

A little crowd began to gather.

‘The boy have sense, man.’ Anxiety broke into Ramlogan’s voice. ‘When you think a college education is these days?’

He put down another hundred dollars. ‘Eat, boy, eat it up. I don’t want you to starve. Not yet, anyway.’ He laughed, but no one laughed with him.

Ganesh didn’t eat.

He heard a man saying, ‘Well, this thing was bound to happen some day.’

People said, ‘Come on, Ramlogan. Give the boy money, man. What you think he sitting down there for? To take out his photo?’

Ramlogan gave a short, forced laugh, and lost his temper. ‘If he think he going to get any more money from me he damn well mistaken. Let him don’t eat. Think I care if he starve? Think I care?’

He walked away.

The crowd grew bigger; the laughter grew louder.

Ramlogan came back and the crowd cheered him.

He put down two hundred dollars on the brass plate and, before he rose, whispered to Ganesh, ‘Remember your promise, sahib. Eat, boy; eat, son; eat, sahib; eat, pundit sahib. I beg you, eat.’

A man shouted, ‘No! I not going to eat!’

Ramlogan stood up and turned around. ‘You, haul your tail away from here quick, quick, before I break it up for you. Don’t meddle in what don’t concern you.’

The crowd roared.

Ramlogan bent down again to whisper. ‘You see, sahib, how you making me shame.’ This time his whisper promised tears. ‘You see, sahib, what you doing to my cha’acter and sensa values.’

Ganesh didn’t move.

The crowd was beginning to treat him like a hero.

In the end Ganesh got from Ramlogan: a cow and a heifer, fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and a house in Fuente Grove. Ramlogan also cancelled the bill for the food he had sent to Ganesh’s house.

The ceremony ended at about nine in the morning; but Ramlogan was sweating long before then.

‘The boy and I was only having a joke,’ he said again and again at the end. ‘He done know long time now what I was going to give him. We was only making joke, you know.’

Ganesh returned home after the wedding. It would be three days before Leela could come to live with him and in that time The Great Belcher tried to restore order to the house. Most of the guests had left as suddenly as they had arrived; though from time to time Ganesh still saw a straggler who wandered about the house and ate.

‘King George gone to Arima yesterday,’ The Great Belcher told him. ‘Somebody dead there yesterday. I going tomorrow myself, but I send King George ahead to arrange everything.’

Then she decided to give Ganesh the facts of life.

‘These modern girls is hell self,’ she said. ‘And from what I see and hear, this Leela is a modern girl. Anyway, you got to make the best of what is yours.’

She paused to belch. ‘All she want to make she straight as a arrow is a little blows every now and then.’

Ganesh said, ‘You know, I think Ramlogan really vex with me now after the kedgeree business.’

‘Wasn’t a nice thing to do, but it serve Ramlogan right. When a man start taking over woman job, match-making, he deserve all he get.’

‘But I go have to leave here now. You know Fuente Grove? It have a house there Ramlogan give me.’

‘But what you want in a small outa the way place like that? All the work it have doing there is work in the cane-field.’

‘It ain’t that I want to do.’ Ganesh paused, and added hesitantly, ‘I thinking of taking up massaging people.’

She laughed so much she belched. ‘This wind, man, and then you — you want to kill me or what, boy? Massaging people! What you know about massaging people?’

‘Pa was a good massager and I know all he did know.’

‘But you must have a hand for that sort of thing. Think what go happen if any-and everybody start running round saying, “I thinking of taking up massaging people.” It go have so much massagers in Trinidad they go have to start massaging one another.’

‘I feel I have a hand for it. Just like King George.’

‘She have her own sort of hand. She born that way.’

Ganesh told her about Leela’s foot.

She twisted her mouth. ‘It sound good. But a man like you should be doing something else. Bookwork, man.’

‘I going to do that too.’ And then it came out again. ‘I thinking of writing some books.’

‘Good thing. It have money in books, you know. I suppose the man who write the Macdonald Farmer’s Almanac just peeling money. Why you don’t try your hand at something like the Napoleon Book of Fate? I just feel you could do that sort of thing good.’

‘People go want to buy that sort of book?’

‘Is exactly what Trinidad want, boy. Take all the Indians in the towns. They ain’t have any pundit or anything near them, you know. How they go know what to do and what not to do, when and not when? They just have to guess.’

Ganesh was thoughtful. ‘Yes, is that self I go do. A little bit of massaging and a little bit of writing.’

‘I know a boy who could make anything you write sell as hot cakes all over Trinidad. Let we say, you selling the book at two shillings, forty-eight cents. You give the boy six cents a book. Let we say now, you print four five thousand —’

‘It make about two thousand dollars, but — wait, man! I ain’t even write the book yet.’

‘I know you, boy. Once you put your mind to it, you go write nice nice books.’

She belched.

As soon as Leela had come to live with Ganesh and the last guest had left the village, Ramlogan declared war on Ganesh and that very evening ran through Fourways crying out, chanting, his declaration. ‘See how he rob me. Me with my wife dead, me now without children, me a poor widow. See how he forget everything I do for him. He forget all that I give him, he forget how I help burn his father, he forget all the help I give him. See how he rob me. See how he shame me. Watch me here now, so help me God, if I don’t here and now do for the son of a bitch.’

Ganesh ordered Leela to bolt the doors and windows and put out the lights. He took one of his father’s old walking-sticks and remained in the middle of the front room.

Leela began to cry. ‘The man is my own father and here you is taking up big stick to beat him.’

Ganesh heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, you damn little piss-in-tail boy, you want property, eh? You know the only place you could take my property? You going to take it away on your chest, six foot of it.’

Ganesh said, ‘Leela, in the bedroom it have a little copy-book. Go bring it. And it have a pencil in the table drawer. Bring that too.’

She brought the book and pencil and Ganesh wrote, Carry away his property on my chest. Below he wrote the date. He had no particular reason for doing this except that he was afraid and felt he had to do something.

Leela cried. ‘You working magic on my own father!’

Ganesh said, ‘Leela, why you getting ‘fraid? We not staying in this place long. In a few days we moving to Fuente Grove. Nothing to ‘fraid.’

Leela continued to cry and Ganesh loosened his leather belt and beat her.

She cried out, ‘Oh God! Oh God! He go kill me today self!’

It was their first beating, a formal affair done without anger on Ganesh’s part or resentment on Leela’s; and although it formed no part of the marriage ceremony itself, it meant much to both of them. It meant that they had grown up and become independent. Ganesh had become a man; Leela a wife as privileged as any other big woman. Now she too would have tales to tell of her husband’s beatings; and when she went home she would be able to look sad and sullen as every woman should.

The moment was precious.

Leela cried for a bit and said, ‘Man, I really getting worried about Pa.’

This was another first: she had called him ‘man’. There could be no doubt about it now: they were adults. Three days before Ganesh was hardly better than a boy, anxious and diffident. Now he had suddenly lost these qualities and he thought, ‘My father was right. I shoulda get married long before now.’

Leela said, ‘Man, I getting really worried about Pa. Tonight he not going to do you anything. He just go shout a lot and go away, but he won’t forget you. I see him horsewhip a man in Penal really bad one time.’

They heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, this is the last time I warning you.’

Leela said, ‘Man, you must do something to make Pa feel nice. Otherwise I don’t know.’

Ramlogan’s shout sounded hoarse now. ‘Ganesh, tonight self I sharpening up a cutlass for you. I make up my mind to send you to hospital and go to jail for you. Look out, I warning you.’

And then, as Leela had said, Ramlogan went away.

The next morning, after Ganesh had done his puja and eaten the first meal that Leela had cooked for him, he said, ‘Leela, you got any pictures of your father?’

She was sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning rice for the midday meal. ‘Why you want it for?’ she asked with alarm.

‘You forgetting yourself, girl. Somebody make you a policeman now to ask me question? Is a old picture?’

Leela wept over the rice. ‘Not so old, man. Two three years now Pa did go to San Fernando and Chong take out a photo of Pa by hisself and another one with Pa and Soomintra and me. Just before Soomintra did get married. They was pretty photos. Paintings behind and plants in front.’

‘I just want a picture of your father. What I don’t want is your tears.’

He followed her to the bedroom, and while he put on his town clothes — khaki trousers, blue shirt, brown hat, brown shoes — Leela pulled out her suitcase, an Anchor Cigarettes coupons-gift, from under the bed and looked for the photograph.

‘Gimme,’ he said, when she had found it, and snatched it away. ‘This go settle your father.’

She ran after him to the steps. ‘Where you going, man?’

‘Leela, you know, for a girl who ain’t married three days yet you too damn fast.’

He had to pass Ramlogan’s shop. He took care to swing his father’s walking stick, and behaved as though the shop didn’t exist.

And sure enough, he heard Ramlogan calling out, ‘Ganesh, you playing man this morning, eh? Swinging walking-stick as if you is some master-stickman. But, boy, when I get after you, you not going to run fast enough.’

Ganesh walked past without a word.

Leela confessed later that she had gone to the shop that morning to warn Ramlogan. She found him mounted on his stool and miserable.

‘Pa, I have something to tell you.’

‘I have nothing to do with you or your husband. I only want you to take a message to him. Tell him for me that Ramlogan say the only way he going to get my property is to take it away on his chest.’

‘He write that down last night in a copy-book. And then, Pa, this morning he ask me for a photo of you and he have it now.’

Ramlogan slid, practically fell, off his stool. ‘Oh God! Oh God! I didn’t know he was that sort of man. He look so quiet.’ He stamped up and down behind the counter. ‘Oh God! What I do to your husband to make him prosecute me in this way? What he going to do with the picture?’

Leela was sobbing.

Ramlogan looked at the glass case on the counter. ‘All that I do for him. Leela, I didn’t want any glass case in my shop.’

‘No, Pa, you didn’t want any glass case in the shop.’

‘It for he I get the glass case. Oh God! Leela, is only one thing he going to do with the picture. Work magic and obeah, Leela.’

In his agitation Ramlogan was clutching at his hair, slapping his chest and belly, and beating on the counter. ‘And then he go want more property.’ Ramlogan’s voice palpitated with true anguish.

Leela shrieked. ‘What you going to do to my husband, Pa? Is only three days now I married him.’

‘Soomintra, poor little Soomintra, she did tell me when we was going to take out the photos. “Pa, I don’t think we should take out any photos.” God, oh God! Leela, why I didn’t listen to poor little Soomintra?’

Ramlogan passed a grubby hand over the brown-paper patch on the glass case, and shook away his tears.

‘And last night, Pa, he beat me.’

‘Come, Leela, come, daughter.’ He leaned over the counter and put his hands on her shoulder. ‘Is your fate, Leela. Is my fate too. We can’t fight it, Leela.’

‘Pa,’ Leela wailed, ‘what you going to do to him? He is my husband, you know.’

Ramlogan withdrew his hands and wiped his eyes. He beat on the counter until the glass case rattled. ‘That is what they call education these days. They teaching a new subject. Pickpocketing.’

Leela gave another shriek. ‘The man is my husband, Pa.’

When, later that afternoon, Ganesh came back to Fourways, he was surprised to hear Ramlogan shouting, ‘Oh, sahib! Sahib! What happen that you passing without saying anything? People go think we vex.’

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.’