The Mystic Masseur (7 page)

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.’