The Mystic Masseur

8. More Trouble with Ramlogan

WITH IN A MONTH Ganesh was getting as many clients as he could handle.

He had never imagined there were so many people in Trinidad with spiritual problems. But what surprised him even more was the extent of his own powers. No one could lay evil spirits better, even in Trinidad, where there were so many that people had acquired especial skill in dealing with them. No one could tie a house better, bind it, that is, in spiritual bonds proof against the most resolute spirit. If he ran up against a particularly tough spirit there were always the books his aunt had given him. So, balls-of-fire, soncouyants, loups-garoux, all became as nothing.

In this way he made most of his money. But what he really liked was a problem which called for all his intellectual and spiritual strength. Like the Woman Who Couldn’t Eat. This woman felt her food turn to needles in her mouth; and her mouth actually bled. He cured her. And there was Lover Boy. Lover Boy was a Trinidad character. Racehorses and racing-pigeons were named after him. But it was an embarrassment to his friends and relations that a successful racing-cyclist should fall in love with his cycle and make love to it openly in a curious way. He cured him too.

So, Ganesh’s prestige had risen until people who came to him sick went away well. Sometimes even he didn’t know why.

His prestige was secured by his learning. Without this he might easily have been lumped with the other thaumaturges who swarmed over Trinidad. They were nearly all fakes. They knew an ineffectual charm or two but had neither the intelligence nor sympathy for anything else. Their method of tackling spirits remained primitive. A sudden kick in the back of a person possessed was supposed to take the spirit by surprise and drive it out. It was because of these ignorant people that the profession had a bad name. Ganesh elevated the profession by putting the charlatans out of business. Every obeah-man was quick enough to call himself a mystic, but the people of Trinidad knew that Ganesh was the only true mystic in the island.

You never felt that he was a fake and you couldn’t deny his literacy or learning — not with all those books. And he hadn’t only book-learning. He could talk on almost any subject. For instance, he had views about Hitler and knew how the war could be ended in two weeks. ‘One way,’ he used to say. ‘Only one. And in fourteen days, even thirteen — bam! — no more war.’ But he kept the way a secret. And he could discuss religion sensibly as well. He was no bigot. He took as much interest in Christianity and Islam as in Hinduism. In the shrine, the old bedroom, he had pictures of Mary and Jesus next to Krishna and Vishnu; a crescent and star represented iconoclastic Islam. ‘All the same God,’ he said. Christians liked him, Muslims liked him, and Hindus, willing as ever to risk prayers to new gods, didn’t object.

But more than his powers, learning, or tolerance, people liked his charity. He had no fixed fee and accepted whatever was given him. When someone complained that he was poor and at the same time persecuted by an evil spirit, Ganesh took care of the spirit and waived the fee. People began to say, ‘He not like the others. They only hot after your money. But Ganesh, he is a good man.’

He was a good listener. People poured out their souls to him and he didn’t make them feel uncomfortable. His speech became flexible. With simple folk he spoke dialect. With people who looked pompous or sceptical or said, ‘Is the first time in my life I come to anybody like you,’ he spoke as correctly as possible, and his deliberate delivery gave weight to what he said and won confidence.

So clients came to Fuente Grove from every corner of Trinidad. Soon he had to pull down the book-shed and put up a canvas-roofed bamboo tent to shelter them. They brought their sadnesses to Fuente Grove, but they made the place look gay. Despite the sorrow in their faces and attitudes they wore clothes as bright as any wedding crowd: veils, bodices, skirts all strident pink, yellow, blue, or green.

The Niggergram had it that even the Governor’s wife had consulted Ganesh. When he was asked about this he grew stern and changed the subject.

On Saturdays and Sundays he rested. On Saturday he went to San Fernando and bought about twenty dollars’ worth of books, almost six inches; and on Sunday, from habit, he took down Saturday’s new books and underlined passages at random, although he no longer had the time to read the books as thoroughly as he would have liked.

On Sunday, too, Beharry came in the morning, to talk. But a change had come over him. He seemed shy of Ganesh and wasn’t as ready with talk as before. He just sat on the verandah and nibbled and agreed with everything Ganesh said.

Now that Ganesh had stopped going to Beharry’s, Leela began. She had taken to wearing a sari and it made her look thinner and frailer. She spoke to Suruj Mooma about Ganesh’s work and her own fatigue.

As soon as Leela left, Suruj Mooma exploded. ‘Suruj Poopa, you was listening to she? You see how Indian people does get conceited quick quick? Mind you, it ain’t he I mind, but she. You hear all that big talk she giving we about wanting to break down the old house and build up a new one? And why all this damn nonsense about wearing sari? All she life she knocking about in bodice and long skirt, and now she start with sari?’

‘Man, was your idea Ganesh should wear dhoti and turban. It ain’t have anything wrong if Leela wear sari.’

‘Suruj Poopa, you ain’t have no shame. They does treat you like dog and still you sticking up for them. And too besides, he wearing dhoti and Leela wearing sari is two different things. And what about the other set of nonsense she sit down on she thin tail here and giving we? All about feeling tired and wanting holiday. She ever had holiday before? Me ever had holiday? Ganesh ever had holiday? You ever had holiday? Holiday! She working hard all the time cleaning out cow-pen and doing a hundred and one things I wouldn’t dirty myself doing, and we ain’t hear not one single squeak about tiredness and holiday. Is only because she feeling a little money in she purse that she start with this nonsense, you hear.’

‘Man, it ain’t nice to talk like this. If people hear you they go think you just jealous.’

‘Me jealous? Me jealous she? Eh, but what is this I hearing in my old age?’

Beharry looked away.

‘Tell me, Suruj Poopa, what cause I have to jealous a thin little woman who can’t even make a baby? I never leave my husband and run away from my responsibility, you hear. Is not me you got to complain about. Is them who is the ungrateful ones.’ She paused, then continued, solemnly. ‘I remember how we did take in Ganesh and help him and feed him and do a hundred and one other things for him.’ She paused again, before snapping, ‘And now what we get?’

‘Man, we wasn’t looking for anything in return. We was just doing we duty.’

‘You see what we getting. Tiredness. Holiday.’

‘Yes, man.’

‘Suruj Poopa, you ain’t listening to me. Every Sunday morning bright and early you jump out of your bed and running over to kiss the man foot as though he is some Lord Laloo.’

‘Man, Ganesh is a great man and I must go and see him. If he treat me bad, is on his head, not mine.’

And when Beharry went to see Ganesh he said, ‘Suruj Mooma not well this morning. Otherwise she woulda come. But she send to say how.’

For Ganesh the most satisfying thing about these early mystic months was the success of his Questions and Answers.

It was Basdeo, the printer, who pointed out the possibilities. He came to Fuente Grove one Sunday morning and found Ganesh and Beharry sitting on blankets in the verandah. Ganesh, in dhoti and vest, was reading the Sentinel — he had the paper sent to him every day now. Beharry just stared and nibbled.

‘Like I tell you,’ Basdeo said, after the salutations. He was a little more than plump now and when he sat down he could cross his legs only with difficulty. ‘I still keeping the print of your book, pundit. Remember, I did tell you I did feel something special about you. Is a good good book, and is my opinion that more people should have a chance to read it.’

‘It still have more than nine hundred copies remaining.’

‘Sell those at a dollar a copy, pundit. People go snap them up, I tell you. It have nothing to shame about. After you sell off those I print another edition —’

‘Revise edition,’ Beharry said, but very softly, and Basdeo paid no attention.

‘Another edition, pundit. Cloth cover, jacket, thicker paper, more pictures.’

‘De luxe edition,’ Beharry said.

‘Exactly. Nice de luxe edition. What you say, sahib?’

Ganesh smiled and folded the Sentinel with great care. ‘How much the Elite Electric Printery going to make out of this?’

Basdeo didn’t smile. ‘This is the idea, sahib. I print the book at my own expense. A nice big de luxe edition. We bring them here. You ain’t pay a cent so far. You sell the book at two dollars a copy. Every copy you sell you keep a dollar. You ain’t even have to lift your little finger. And is a good holy book, sahib.’

‘What about other sellers?’ Beharry asked.

Basdeo turned apprehensively. ‘What other sellers? No body but the pundit sahib going to handle the books. Only me and Ganesh pundit sahib.’

Beharry nibbled. ‘Is a good idea, and is a good book.’

So 101 Questions and Answers on the Hindu Religion became the first best-seller in the history of Trinidad publishing. People were willing to pay the money for it. The simple-minded bought it as a charm; the poor because it was the least they could do for Pundit Ganesh; but most people were genuinely interested. The book was sold only at Fuente Grove and there was no need of Bissoon’s selling hand.

He came, though, to ask for a few copies. He looked longer, thinner, and at a hundred yards couldn’t be mistaken for a boy. He had grown very old. His suit was frayed and dusty, his shirt was dirty, and he wore no tie.

‘People just ain’t buying from me these days, sahib. Something gone wrong. I feel your kyatechism go bring back my hand and my luck.’

Ganesh explained that Basdeo was responsible for distribution. ‘And he don’t really want any sellers. It have nothing I could do, Bissoon. I sorry.’

‘Is my luck, sahib.’

Ganesh turned up the edge of the blanket on which he was sitting and brought out some five-dollar notes. He counted four and offered them to Bissoon.

To his surprise Bissoon rose, very much like the old Bissoon, dusted his coat, and straightened his hat. ‘You think I come to beg you for charity, Ganesh? I was a big big man when you was wetting your diaper, and you want now to give me charity?’

And he walked away.

It was the last Ganesh saw of him. For a long time no one, not even The Great Belcher, knew what became of him, until Beharry brought the news one Sunday morning that Suruj Mooma thought she had glimpsed him in a blue uniform in the ground of the Poor House on the Western Main Road in Port of Spain.

One Sunday Beharry said, ‘Pundit, it have something I feel I must tell you, but I don’t know how to tell you. But I must tell you because it does hurt me to hear people dirtying your name.’

‘Oh.’

‘People saying bad things, pundit.’

Leela came out to the verandah, tall, thin, and fragile in her sari. ‘Oh, Beharry. But you looking well today. How you is? And how Suruj Mooma? And Suruj and the children, they well too?’

‘Ah,’ Beharry said apologetically. ‘They well. But how you is, Leela? You looking very sick these days.’

‘I don’t know, Beharry. One foot in the grave, as they does say. I ain’t know what happening, but I so tired these days. It have so much things to do these days. I feel I have to take a holiday.’ She flopped down at the other end of the verandah and began to fan herself with the Sunday Sentinel.

Beharry said, ‘Ahh, maharajin,’ and turned to Ganesh, who was paying no attention to Leela. ‘Yes, pundit. People complaining.’

Ganesh said nothing.

‘It have some people even saying you is a robber.’

Ganesh smiled.

‘Is not you they complaining about, pundit.’ Beharry nibbled anxiously. ‘Is the taxi-drivers they don’t like. You know how it hard to get up here, and the taxi-drivers charging anything up to five shillings.’

Ganesh stopped smiling. ‘Is true?’

‘Is true true, pundit, so help me God. And the thing, pundit, is that people saying that you own the taxis, and that if you don’t charge people for the help you does give them, you does take it out of them in taxi fare.’

Leela got up. ‘Man, I think I go go and lie down a little bit. Beharry, tell Suruj Mooma how for me.’

Ganesh didn’t look at her.

‘All right, maharajin,’ Beharry said. ‘You must take good care of yourself.’

‘But, Beharry, it have a lot of taxis coming here, man.’

‘Is where you wrong, pundit. Is only five. The same five. And all of them charging the same price.’

‘But who taxis they is?’

Beharry nibbled and played with the edge of his blanket. ‘Ah, pundit, that is the hard part. Wasn’t me did notice it, you know, pundit. Was Suruj Mooma. These woman and them, pundit, they does notice thing we can’t even see with magnifying glass. They sharp as razor-grass, man.’ Beharry laughed and looked at Ganesh. Ganesh was serious. Beharry looked down at his blanket.

‘Who taxis?’

‘It make me shame to say, pundit. Your own father-in-law. Is what Suruj Mooma say. Ramlogan, from Fourways. It have a good three months now he running those taxis here.’

‘Oho!’ Ganesh rose quickly from his blanket and went inside.

Beharry heard him shouting. ‘Look, girl, I ain’t care how tired you is, you hear. You never too tired to count money. What I want is the facts. You and your father is proper traders. Buy, sell, make money, money.’

Beharry listened, pleased.

‘Wasn’t your father idea. He too stupid. Was your idea, not so? You and your father ain’t care what sort of name I have in this place once you making your money. And, eh, eh, is my money. A year back, how much motor car coming to Fuente Grove in a whole month? One, two. Today? Fifty, sometimes a hundred. Who is the cause of that? Me or your father?’

Beharry heard Leela crying. Then he heard a slap. The crying stopped. He heard Ganesh walking heavily back to the verandah.

‘You is a good good friend, Beharry. I go see about this right away.’

Before midday he had eaten, dressed — not in English clothes but in his normal Hindu attire — and was on his way to Fourways in a taxi. It was one of Ramlogan’s. The driver, a fat little man bumping cheerfully up and down in his seat, handled the steering-wheel almost as if he loved it. When he wasn’t talking to Ganesh he sang a Hindi song, which apparently had only four words. Let us praise God.

He explained, ‘Is like this, pundit. We five taxi-boys does remain in Princes Town or San Fernando, and we does tell people that if they going to see you they must only use these taxis, because you say so. Is what Mr Ramlogan say. But even I say is better for them, seeing how you bless the taxi yourself.’

He sang Let us praise God a few times. ‘What you think of your pictures, sahib?’

‘Pictures?’

The driver sang the song again. ‘Picture on the door, hanging by where other taxi does have the tariff.’

It was a framed picture, issued by the Gita Press of Gorakhpur in India, of the goddess Lakshmi standing, as usual, on her lotus. There was no tariff.

‘Is a too nice idea, sahib. Mr Ramlogan say was your own idea, and all five of we taxi-boys take we old hat off to you, sahib.’ He became earnest. ‘It does make a man feel good, sahib, driving a car with a holy picture inside it, especially when said picture bless by you. And the people like it too, man.’

‘But what about the other taxi-drivers and them?’

‘Ah, sahib. Is we biggest problem. How to keep the son-of-a-bitches away? You have to be very very careful with them. Pappa, they could lie too, you know. Eh, Sookhoo find one man the other day who did sticking up he own holy picture.’

‘What Sookhoo do?’

The driver laughed and sang. ‘Sookhoo smart, sahib. He drive the man car on the grass one day and take up the crank and he go over and tell him cool cool that if he don’t stop playing the fool, you was going to make the car bewitch.’

Ganesh cleared his throat.

‘Sookhoo is like that, sahib. But listen to the upshot. Two days good ain’t pass before the man car get in an accident. A bad accident too.’

The driver began to sing again.

Ramlogan kept his shop open all week. The laws forbade him to sell groceries on Sunday; but there was no regulation against the selling of cakes, aerated water, or cigarettes on that day.

He was sitting on his stool behind the counter, doing nothing at all, just staring out into the road, when the taxi pulled up and Ganesh stepped out. Ramlogan held out his arms across the counter and began to cry. ‘Ah, sahib, sahib, you forgive a old, old man. I didn’t mean to drive you away that day, sahib. All the time since that day I only thinking and saying, “Ramlogan, what you do your cha’acter? Ramlogan, oh Ramlogan, what you go and do your sensa values?” Night and day, sahib, I praying for you to forgive me.’

Ganesh tossed the tasselled end of his green scarf over his shoulder. ‘You looking well, Ramlogan. You getting fat, man.’

Ramlogan wiped his tears away. ‘Is just wind, sahib.’ He blew his nose. ‘Just wind.’ He had grown fatter and greyer, oilier and dingier. ‘Ah, sit down, sahib. Don’t bother about me. I is all right. You remember, sahib, how when you was a little boy you use to come in Ramlogan shop and sit down right there and talk to the old man? You was a fust-class talker, sahib. It use to flubbergast me, sitting down behind the counter here and hearing you giving off ideas. But now’ — Ramlogan waved his hands around the shop and fresh tears came to his eyes — ‘everybody gone and leave me. Me one. Soomintra don’t even want to come by me now.’

‘Is not about Soomintra I come to talk —’

‘Ah, sahib. I know you just come to comfort a old man left to live by hisself. Soomintra say I too old-fashion. And Leela, she always by you. Why you don’t sit down, sahib? It ain’t dirty. Is just how it does look.’

Ganesh didn’t sit down. ‘Ramlogan, I come to buy over your taxis.’

Ramlogan stopped crying and got off his stool. ‘Taxi, sahib? But what you want with taxi?’ He laughed. ‘A big, educated man like you.’

‘Eight hundred dollars apiece.’

‘Ah, sahib, I know is help you want to help me out. Especially these days when taxi ain’t making any money at all. Is not the sort of job you, a famous mystic, want. I buy the taxi and them, sahib, only because when you getting old and lonely it must have something for you to do. You remember this glass case, sahib?’

It looked so much part of the shop now that Ganesh hadn’t noticed it. The woodwork was grimy, the glass in many places patched and repatched with brown paper and, in one instance, with part of the cover of The Illustrated London News. The short legs stood in four salmon tins filled with water, to keep out ants. It required memory rather than imagination to believe the glass case was once new and spotless.

‘I glad I do my little piece to help modernize Fourways, but nobody ain’t appreciate me, sahib. Nobody.’

Ganesh, for the moment forgetting his mission, looked at the newspaper-cutting and Leela’s notice. The cutting was so brown it looked scorched. Leela’s notice had faded and was almost unreadable.

‘Is what life is, sahib.’ Ramlogan followed Ganesh’s gaze. ‘Years does pass. People does born. People does married. People does dead. Is enough to make anybody a proper philosopher, sahib.’

‘Philosophy is my job. Today is Sunday —’

Ramlogan shrugged. ‘You ain’t really want the taxis, sahib.’

‘It go surprise you how much time I have on my hand these days. Let we say we make a bargain right now, eh?’

Ramlogan became very sad. ‘Sahib, why for you want to make me a pauper? Why for you want to make me sad and miserable in my old, old age? Why for you prosecuting a old illiterate man who don’t know A from B?’

Ganesh frowned.

‘Sahib, wasn’t a trick I was working back on you.’

‘Working back? Trick? What trick you have to work back? Anybody passing in the road this hot Sunday afternoon and hearing you talk like this go swear I work some trick on you.’

Ramlogan placed the palms of his hands on the counter. ‘Sahib, you know you getting me vex now. I ain’t like other people, you know. I know you is a mystic, but don’t provoke me, sahib. When I get vex, I don’t know what I could do.’

Ganesh waited.

‘If you wasn’t my son-in-law, you know I take up your little tail and fling it through that door?’

‘Ramlogan, ain’t you does ever get a little tired of being smart smart all the time, even in your old age?’

Ramlogan thumped the counter. ‘When at your wedding you rob me, we didn’t get any of this damn mystical stupidness. Look, move out of here before I lose my temper. And too besides, is Government road and anybody can run taxi to Fuente Grove. Ganesh, you just try and do anything and I put you in the papers, you hear.’

‘Put me in the papers?’

‘One time you did put me in the papers. Remember? But it ain’t going to be nice for you, I guarantee you. Oh, God! But I take enough from you in my lifetime! Just just because you married one daughter I did have. If you was a reasonable man, we coulda sit down, open a tin of salmon, and talk this thing over. But you too greedy. You want to rob the people yourself.’

‘Is a favour I want to do you, Ramlogan. I giving you money for the taxis. If I buy my own, you think you could find people to drive your taxis from Princes Town and San Fernando to Fuente Grove? Tell me.’

Ramlogan became insulting. Ganesh only smiled. Then, when it was too late, Ramlogan appealed to Ganesh’s good nature. Ganesh only smiled.

Ramlogan sold, in the end.

But when Ganesh was leaving, he burst out. ‘All right, Ganesh, you making me a pauper. But watch. Watch and see if I don’t put you in the papers and tell everybody everything about you.’

Ganesh got into his taxi.

‘Ganesh!’ Ramlogan shouted. ‘Is war now!’

He might have run the taxis as part of his service to the public, and not charge for it; but Leela made difficulties and he had to give in. It was her idea, after all. He charged four shillings for the trip from Princes Town and San Fernando to Fuente Grove; and if this was a little more than it ought to have been, it was because the roads were bad. At any rate the fare was cheaper than Ramlogan’s, and the clients were grateful.

Leela tried to explain away Ramlogan’s threats. ‘He getting old now, man, and it ain’t have much for him to live for. You mustn’t mind all the things he say. He don’t mean it.’

But Ramlogan was good as his word.

One Sunday, when The Great Belcher had called at Fuente Grove, Beharry came with a magazine, ‘Pundit, you see what they write about you in the papers?’

He passed the magazine to Ganesh. It was a ragged thing called The Hindu, printed atrociously on the cheapest paper. Advertisements took up most of the space, but there were lots of quotations from the Hindu scriptures in odd corners, stale Information Office hand-outs about the British War Effort, repeated urgings to ‘Read The Hindu’; and a column of original scandal headed A Little Bird Tells Us. It was to this that Beharry drew Ganesh’s attention.

‘Suruj Mooma bring it back from Tunapuna. She say you should hear the amount of scandal it causing.’

There was one item that began, ‘A little bird tells us that the so-called mystic in South Trinidad has taken up driving taxis. The little bird also twittered into our ears that the said so-called mystic was party to a hoax played on the Trinidad public concerning a certain so-called Cultural Institute …’

Ganesh passed the paper to The Great Belcher. ‘Leela father,’ he said.

The Great Belcher said, ‘Is why I come, boy. People talking about it. He call you the business Man of God. But you mustn’t get worried, Ganesh. Everybody know that Narayan, the man who edit it, just jealous you. He think he is a mystic too.’

‘Yes, pundit. Suruj Mooma say that Narayan went up to Tunapuna and start telling people that with just a little bit of practice he could be just as good as you in the mystic business.’

The Great Belcher said, ‘Is the thing about Indians here. They hate to see another Indian get on.’

‘I ain’t worried,’ Ganesh said.

And, really, he wasn’t. But there were things in The Hindu that people remembered, such as the description of Ganesh as the business Man of God; and the accusation was parroted about by people who didn’t know better.

He didn’t have the business mind. In fact, he despised it. The taxi-service was Leela’s idea. So was the restaurant, and that could hardly be called a business idea. Clients had to wait so long now when they came to see Ganesh that it seemed only considerate to give them food. So Leela had built a great bamboo tent at the side of the house where she fed people; and since Fuente Grove was so far from anywhere else, she had to charge a little extra.

And then people made a lot of fuss about Beharry’s shop.

To understand the affair — some people made it the scandal — of Beharry’s shop, you must remember that for years most of Ganesh’s clients had been used to fake spirit-charmers who made them burn camphor and ghee and sugar and rice, and kill cocks and goats. Ganesh had little use for that sort of silly ritual. But he found that his clients, particularly the women, loved it; so he too ordered them to burn things two or three times a day. They brought the ingredients and begged him, and sometimes paid him, to offer them up on their behalf.

He wasn’t really surprised when, one Sunday morning, Beharry said, ‘Pundit, sometimes me and Suruj Mooma does stop and think and get worried about the things people bringing to you. They is poor people, they don’t know whether the stuff they getting is good or not, whether it clean or not. And I know that it have a lot of shopkeepers who wouldn’t mind giving them the wrong sort of stuff.’

Leela said, ‘Yes, man. Is something Suruj Mooma been telling me she worried about for a long long time.’

Ganesh smiled. ‘Suruj Mooma doing a lot of worrying these days.’

‘Yes, pundit. I know you woulda see my point. The poor people ain’t educated up to your standard and is up to you to see that they getting the right stuff from the proper shopkeeper.’

Leela said, ‘I think it would make the poor people feel nicer if they could buy the stuff right here in Fuente Grove.’

‘Why you don’t keep it by you then, maharajin?’

‘It wouldn’t look nice, Beharry. People go start thinking we working a trick on them. Why not at your shop? Suruj Mooma done tell me that it wouldn’t be any extra work. In fact, I think that you and Suruj Mooma is the correctest people to handle the stuff. And I so tired these days, besides.’

‘You overworking yourself, maharajin. Why you don’t take a rest?’

Ganesh said, ‘Is nice for you to help me out this way, Beharry.’

So clients bought the ingredients for offerings only from Beharry’s shop. ‘Things not cheap there,’ Ganesh told them. ‘But is the only place in Trinidad where you sure of what you getting.’

Nearly everything Beharry sold came to Ganesh’s house. A fair amount was used for ritual. ‘And even that,’ Ganesh said, ‘is a waste of good good food.’ Leela used the rest in her restaurant.

‘I want to give the poor people only the best,’ she said.

Fuente Grove prospered. The Public Works Department recognized its existence and resurfaced the road to a comparative evenness. They gave the village its first stand-pipe. Presently the stand-pipe, across the road from Beharry’s shop, became the meeting-place of the village women; and children played naked under the running water.

Beharry prospered. Suruj was sent as a boarder to the Naparima College in San Fernando. Suruj Mooma started a fourth baby and told Leela about her plans for rebuilding the shop.

Ganesh prospered. He pulled down his old house, carried on business in the restaurant, and put up a mansion. Fuente Grove had never seen anything like it. It had two stories; its walls were of concrete blocks; the Niggergram said that it had more than a hundred windows and that if the Governor got to hear, there was going to be trouble because only Government House could have a hundred windows. An Indian architect came over from British Guiana and built a temple for Ganesh in proper Hindu style. To make up for the cost of all this building Ganesh was forced to charge an entrance fee to the temple. A professional sign-writer was summoned from San Fernando to rewrite the GANESH, Mystic sign. At the top he wrote, in Hindi, Peace to you all; and below, Spiritual solace and comfort may be had here at any time on every day except Saturday and Sunday. It is regretted, however, that requests for monetary assistance cannot be entertained. In English.

Every day Leela became more refined. She often went to San Fernando to visit Soomintra, and to shop. She came back with expensive saris and much heavy jewellery. But the most important change was in her English. She used a private accent which softened all harsh vowel sounds; her grammar owed nothing to anybody, and included a highly personal conjugation of the verb to be.

She told Suruj Mooma, ‘This house I are building, I doesn’t want it to come like any erther Indian house. I wants it to have good furnitures and I wants everything to remain prutty prutty. I are thinking about getting a refrigerator and a few erther things like that.’

‘I are thinking too,’ Suruj Mooma said. ‘I are thinking about building up a brand-new modern shop, a real proper grocery like those in Suruj Poopa books, with lots of tins and cans on good good shelf —’

‘— and all that people says about Indians not being able to keep their house properly is true true. But I are going to get ours painted prutty prutty —’

‘— a long time now Suruj Poopa say that, and we going to paint up the shop, paint it up from top to bottom, and we going to keep it prutty prutty, with a nice marble-top counter. But, mark you, we not going to forget where we live. That going to be prutty prutty too —’

‘— with good carpets like therse Soomintra and I see in Gopal’s, and nice curtains —’

‘— morris chairs and spring-cushions. But look, I hear the baby crying and I think he want his feed. I has to go now, Leela, my dear.’

With so much to say to each other now, Leela and Suruj Mooma remained good friends.

And Leela wasn’t talking just for the sake of talk. Once the house was completed — and that, for a Trinidad Indian, is in itself an achievement — she had it painted and she expressed her Hindu soul in her choice of bright and clashing colours. She commissioned one house-painter to do a series of red, red roses on the blue drawing-room wall. She had the British Guianese temple-builder execute a number of statues and carvings which she scattered about in the most unlikely places. She had him build an ornate balustrade around the flat roof, and upon this he was later commissioned to erect two stone elephants, representing the Hindu elephant god Ganesh. Ganesh thoroughly approved of Leela’s decorations and designed the elephants himself.

‘I don’t give a damn what Narayan want to say about me in The Hindu,’ he said. ‘Leela, I going to buy that refrigerator for you.’

And he did. He placed it in the drawing-room, where it hid part of the rose-design on the wall but could be seen from the road.

He didn’t forget the smaller things. From an Indian dealer in San Fernando he bought two sepia reproductions of Indian drawings. One represented an amorous scene; in the other God had come down to earth to talk to a sage. Leela didn’t like the first drawing. ‘It are not going to hang in my drawing-room.’

‘You have a bad mind, girl.’ Under the amorous drawing he wrote, Will you come to me like this? And under the other, or like this?

The drawings went up.

And after they had settled that they really began hanging pictures. Leela started with photographs of her family.

‘I ain’t want Ramlogan picture in my house,’ Ganesh said.

‘I are not going to take it down.’

‘All right, leave Ramlogan hanging up. But see what I going to put up.’

It was a photograph of a simpering Indian film-actress.

Leela wept a little.

Ganesh said blandly, ‘It does make a change to have a happy face in the house.’

The one feature of the new house which thrilled them for a long time was the lavatory. It was so much better than the old cess-pit. And one Saturday, in San Fernando, Ganesh came upon an ingenious toy which he decided to use in the lavatory. It was a musical toilet-paper rack. Whenever you pulled at the paper, it played Yankee Doodle Dandy.

This, and the sepia drawings, were to inspire two of Ganesh’s most successful writings.

Narayan’s attacks increased, and varied. One month Ganesh was accused of being anti-Hindu; another month of being racialist; later he was a dangerous atheist; and so on. Soon the revelations of The Little Bird threatened to swamp The Hindu.

‘And still he are calling it a little bird.’

‘You right, girl. The little bird grow up and come a big black corbeau.’

‘Dangerous man, pundit,’ Beharry warned. When Beharry came now to see Ganesh he had to go to the fern-smothered verandah upstairs. Downstairs was one large room where clients waited. ‘The time go come when people go start believing him. Is like a advertising campaign, you know.’

‘If you ask me,’ said Leela, in her fatigued, bored manner, ‘the man is a disgrace to Hindus in this place.’ She rested her head on her right shoulder and half-shut her eyes. ‘I remember how my father did give a man a proper horse-whipping in Penal. It are just what Narayan want.’

Ganesh leaned back in his morris chair. ‘The way I look at it is this.’

Beharry nibbled, all attention.

‘What would Mahatma Gandhi do in a situation like this?’

‘Don’t know, pundit.’

‘Write. That’s what he would do. Write.’

So Ganesh took up pen again. He had considered his writing career almost over; and was only planning, in a vague way, a spiritual autobiography on the lines of the Hollywood Hindus. But this was going to be a big thing, to be attempted much later, when he was ready for it. Now he had to act immediately.

He wanted to do things properly. He went to Port of Spain — his courage failed him at the last moment and he wore English clothes — to the Registrar-General’s Office in the Red House. There he registered Ganesh Publishing Company, Limited. The insignia of the firm was an open lotus.

Then he began to write again and found, to his delight, that the desire to write had not died, but was only submerged. He worked hard at his book, sitting up late at night after treating clients all day; and often Leela had to call him to bed.

Beharry rubbed his hands. ‘Oh, this Narayan going to get it good.’

The book, when it came out two months later, was a surprise to Beharry. It looked like a real book. It had hard covers; the type was big and the paper thick; and the whole thing looked substantial and authoritative. But Beharry was dismayed at the subject. The book was called The Guide to Trinidad.

‘Basdeo do a nice job this time,’ Ganesh said.

Beharry agreed, but looked doubtful.

‘It go knock hell out of Narayan. It go do you a lot of good and it go do Leela a lot of good.’

Beharry dutifully read The Guide to Trinidad. He found it good. The history, geography, and population of Trinidad were described in a masterly way. The book spoke about the romance of Trinidad’s many races. In a chapter called The East in the West, readers were told that they would be shocked to find a mosque in Port of Spain; and even more shocked to find, in a village called Fuente Grove, a genuine Hindu temple which looked as if it had been bodily transported from India. The Fuente Grove Hindu temple was considered well worth a visit, for spiritual and artistic reasons.

The anonymous author of the Guide was enthusiastic about the island’s modernity. The island, he stressed, had three up-to-date daily newspapers, and foreign advertisers could consider them good investments. But he deplored the absence of any influential weekly or monthly paper, and he warned foreign advertisers to be wary of the mushroom monthlies which claimed to be organs of certain sections of the community.

Ganesh sent free copies of the Guide to all the American Army camps in Trinidad, ‘to welcome’, as he wrote, ‘our brave brothers-in-arms’. He also sent copies to export agencies and advertising agencies in America and Canada which dealt with Trinidad.

Beharry did his best to hide his bewilderment.

Leela said, ‘It are beat me, if I see why for you doing all this.’

He left her to her worries; ordered her to get tablecloths, lots of knives, forks, and spoons; and warned her to look after the restaurant properly. He told Beharry it would be wise for him to lay in large stocks of rum and lager.

Presently the American soldiers began to pour into Fuente Grove and the village children had their first chew of gum. The soldiers came in jeeps and army lorries, some in taxis with girl-friends. They saw elephants in stone and were reassured, if not satisfied, but when Ganesh took them on a tour of his temple — he used the word ‘tour’ — they felt they had their money’s worth.

Leela counted more than five thousand Americans.

Beharry had never been so busy in all his life.

‘Is like what I did think,’ Ganesh said. ‘Trinidad is a small place and it ain’t have much for the poor Americans to do.’

Many of them asked for spiritual advice and all who asked received it.

‘Sometimes,’ Ganesh said, ‘I does feel that these Americans is the most religious people in the world. Even more than Hindus.’

‘Hollywood Hindus,’ muttered Beharry, but he nibbled so badly Ganesh didn’t catch what he was saying.

After three months The Hindu announced that it had to cut the number of its pages because it wished to help the war effort. Not many people besides Ganesh noticed that there were fewer advertisements for patent medicines and other internationally known products. The Hindu lost the glamour of illustrated advertisements; and Narayan was making money only from plain statements about small shops here and there in Trinidad.

But The Little Bird still twittered.