The Mystic Masseur (21 page)

The deputation was the work of Beharry.

Two men and a boy came out one Sunday afternoon to Ganesh’s residence. One man was tall, black, and fat. He looked a little like Ramlogan; only, he was dressed in spotless white: his belly was so big it hung over his black leather belt and hid it. In his shirt pocket he carried a letter and a whole row of pens and pencils. The other man was thin, fair, and good-looking. The boy wore short trousers and his shirt-sleeves were buttoned at his wrists. Ganesh had often met the men and knew them as organizers. The boy he didn’t know.

The deputation sat down carefully on the morris chairs in the verandah and Ganesh shouted for Leela to bring put some CocaCola.

The deputation looked through the drawing-room doors and examined the pictures and the two big Coca-Cola calendars on the walls.

Then they saw Leela, thin and elegant in her sari, opening the refrigerator. The fat man nudged the boy sitting next to him on the couch; and the whole deputation stopped staring.

The fat man became businesslike. ‘Sahib, we ain’t come here to beat about the bush. Beharry and your aunt – a nice
nice
woman, sahib – they ask me to come because of the amount of experience I have organizing prayer-meetings and things like that –’

The Coca-Cola came. Four frosted bottles on a glass-bottomed tray. Leela sighed. ‘Wait jirst one moment. I are going to get the glasses.’

The fat man looked at the bottles. The thin fair man fingered the strip of adhesive-plaster above his left eye. The boy looked at the tassels on Ganesh’s scarf. Ganesh smiled at them all in turn and they all smiled back, except the boy.

On another glass-bottomed tray Leela brought expensive-looking glasses of great beauty, arabesqued in gold, red, and green and ringed with gold bands.

The deputation held their glasses in both hands.

There was an awkward silence until Ganesh asked the fat man, ‘What you doing these days, Swami?’

Swami took a sip of Coca-Cola, a refined lilliputian sip. ‘Jirst living, sahib.’

‘Jirst living, eh?’ Ganesh smiled.

Swami nodded and smiled back.

‘And what happen to you, Partap? I see you cut yourself, man.’

‘A little accident in Parcel Post,’ Partap said, fingering the adhesive-plaster.

Ganesh had always thought of this man as Partap of Parcel Post. He managed to bring in the Parcel Post into almost any conversation, and Ganesh knew that to annoy him you only had to suggest that he worked in the Post Office. ‘Parcel Post, please,’ he would say coldly.

Silence, for three little sips of Coca-Cola.

Swami put down his glass with decision, but with unintentioned violence, and Leela came and stood at one of the drawing-room doors. Swami took up his glass again and smiled. ‘Yes, sahib,’ he said, with great cheerfulness. ‘We ain’t come here to beat about the bush. You is the only man with authority among all Trinidad Indians to stand up to Narayan. We don’t approve of the way Narayan attacking you. We come here today, sahib’ – Swami became solemn – ‘to ask you to form up your own own association. We go make you President straightaway and – you ain’t have to look very far – you have three Assistant-Presidents sitting down quiet quiet in front of you drinking Coca-Cola.’

‘What Narayan do you so?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Partap said surlily. ‘Nasty attack on me and my family, pundit. Accusing my own father of bribery
and
corruption in the local Road Board. And he always does call me a Post Office man, just for spite. I write letters, but he don’t print them.’

‘And me he accusing of robbing poor people.’ Swami looked pained. ‘Sahib, it have more than eighteen months now you know me. I organize a hundred and one prayer-meetings for you. Sahib, a man of my standing go ever rob poor people?’ Swami was a solicitor’s tout in Couva.

‘And what Narayan do the boy?’

Swami laughed and took a big gulp of Coca-Cola. The boy looked down into his glass. ‘Narayan ain’t do him anything
yet
, sahib. He only here for the experience.’

The boy’s face grew darker with embarrassment.

‘But he is a bright little boy, you know.’ The boy frowned into his glass. ‘My sister son. A genius, man, sahib. First shot, he get a first grade in the Cambridge School Certificate.’

Ganesh thought of his own second grade at the age of nineteen. He said, ‘Ummh,’ and took his first sip of Coca-Cola.

Partap went on, ‘It not right, sahib. Every day you open the
Sentinel
, two to one you find something on page three about Narayan sending off greeting cables.’

Ganesh took a long draught of Coca-Cola.

Swami said, ‘You must do something, sahib. Start up your own association. Or bring out a paper. Is another thing where I have a whole ton of experience. When I was young, man, sahib, in the nineteen-twenties, a year didn’t pass off without Swami bringing out a new paper. I had to go up to Port of Spain – law business, you know – and I went to the Registrar office. Man, it surprise me self the number of paper I bring out. But I change now. I say you must bring out a paper only when you have a good good reason.’

Everybody drank some Coca-Cola.

‘But I must stop talking about myself. This little boy here, sahib, he is a born writer. Man, if you does hear the English word he does use – word as long as my hand, man!’ Swami held out his right arm until his shirt tautened at the arm-pit.

Ganesh looked at the boy.

‘He shy today,’ Swami said.

‘But don’t let that fool you,’ Partap said. ‘He thinking all the time.’

They drank a lot more Coca-Cola and talked a lot more, but Ganesh refused to be convinced, although there was in their arguments much that attracted him. That business of bringing out his own newspaper, for example, had repeatedly crossed his mind. In fact, sometimes on Sundays he had shouted to Leela to bring him paper and red pencils and he had made up dummy issues of newspapers. He had ruled columns, indicated which were for advertisements, which for edification. But this pleasure, like that of making note-books, was a private one.

Shortly afterwards, however, two things occurred that decided him to take action against Narayan.

You might say that the first began in the offices of the London
Messenger
. The war ended, throwing journalists more or less upon their own resources. The
Messenger
flew a correspondent to South America to cover a revolution that looked promising. Considering that the only human interest story he could get there was from a woman in a night-club who said, ‘You are in bed. You hear bim-bam-bom. You say, “Revolution”, and you go to sleep again,’ the correspondent had done well. Having covered that revolution he flew back by way of Para, Georgetown, and Port of Spain, and uncovered crises in all three places. Apparently Trinidad natives were planning a revolt and British officials and their wives were taking revolvers to dances. The libel was publicity and pleased Trinidad. Ganesh was more concerned with the correspondent’s analysis of the political situation, as reported back in the
Trinidad Sentinel
. Narayan was described as President of the extremist Hindu Association. Narayan, ‘who received me at his party headquarters’, was the leader of the Indian community. Ganesh didn’t mind that. He didn’t mind the disparaging reference to the Hindu fanatics of South Trinidad. But he was needled when the correspondent lingered over romantic details when speaking of Narayan and described him as ‘chain-smoking, balding C. S. Narayan, veteran journalist’, and much more. He could take any amount of abuse from Narayan himself. England could, if it wished, think of Narayan as the leader of Trinidad Indians. But that England would read and remember that C. S. Narayan was chain-smoking, balding, and a veteran journalist was more than he could bear.

‘I know is unreasonable, Beharry. But is how I feel.’

Beharry sympathized. ‘A man could take big things. Is the little things like that what does cut up a man tail.’

‘Something go have to happen, and then I go do for Narayan.’

Beharry nibbled. ‘Is the way I like to hear you talk, pundit.’

And then, most opportunely, The Great Belcher brought great news.

‘Oh, Ganesh, the shame! The shame to Indians that Narayan bringing!’ She was so overcome she could only belch and ask for water. She got Coca-Cola. It made her burp between belches and she remained uncommunicative for some time. ‘I done with CocaCola,’ she said at last. ‘I ain’t modern enough for it. Next time is only water for me.’

‘What shame?’

‘Ah, boy. The Home for Destitutes Fund. You know Narayan start that?’

‘The Little Bird talking about it for months now.’

‘Home for Destitutes! As fast as the money collecting, the man buying estates. And was only by a chance I get to find out. I ain’t know if you know how hard Gowrie having it these days. She is a sort of relation to Narayan. So, when I met Gowrie at Doolarie wedding and she start this big bawling and crying about money, I say, “Gowrie, why you don’t go to Narayan and ask him? He having this fund for destitute.” She say no, she can’t go, because she got she pride and the fund still open. But I talk she into going and so when I see she yesterday at Daulatram funeral, I ask she, “You ask Narayan?” She say yes, she ask Narayan. “And what he do?” I ask. She say Narayan just begin one crying and losing his temper when she ask him, saying that everybody think that because he open one little fund he is a rich man. He say, “Gowrie, I poorer than you. How you could look at me and think I is rich? Just last week I had to buy a whole estate for fourteen thousand dollars. Where I go find all that money?” So he say and so he begin one long crying and Gowrie say in the end she feel that
he
was going to ask she for money.’

Throughout the long speech The Great Belcher hadn’t belched once. ‘Is the Coca-Cola, you think?’ Ganesh asked.

‘No, so it does happen when I get carry away.’

‘But how people ain’t making a row about this fund, man?’

‘Ah, boy, don’t tell me you ain’t know Trinidad. When people give money, you think they care who get it? Once they open they mouth and skin their teeth for a photo in the papers, they happy, you hear. And too besides, you believe they want this thing to come out for people to start laughing at them?’

‘It ain’t right. I ain’t saying this because I is a mystic and all that, but I think that to any outsider it can’t look right.’

‘Is just how I feel,’ The Great Belcher said.

So the deputation came again and sat, not in the verandah, but at the dining-table in the drawing-room. They looked at the pictures on the walls again. Once more Leela went through the ritual of taking out Coca-Cola from the refrigerator and pouring it into the beautiful glasses.

Swami was still dressed in white; there was the same array of pens and pencils in his shirt pocket, and the same letter. Partap had lost his adhesive plaster. The boy had discarded his short trousers for a double-breasted brown suit a size or two bigger than he required. He had a copy of
Time
magazine and the
New Statesman and Nation
.

Partap said, ‘Narayan so smart he stupid. He playing right in we hand now, pundit. He changing his name, man. With Indians he is Chandra Shekar Narayan.’