The Mystic Masseur Part 6

'People can't fool me,' Beharry said. 'Tom is a country-bookie but Tom ain't a fool. Suruj!'

The boy ran up again.

'Cigarette and match, Suruj.'

'But they on the counter, Pa.'

'You think I can't see that? Hand them to me.'

The boy obeyed, then ran out of the shop.

'What you think of the books?' Beharry asked, pointing with an unlighted cigarette.

When Beharry spoke he became rather like a mouse. He looked anxious and worked his small mouth nervously up and down as though he were nibbling.

'Nice.'

A big woman with a tired face came into the shop. 'Suruj p.o.o.pa, you ain't hear me calling you to eat?'

Beharry nibbled. 'I was just showing the pundit the books I does read.'

'Read!' Her tired face quickened with scorn. 'Read! You want to know how he does read?'

Ganesh didn't know where to look.

'He does close up the shop if I don't keep a eye on him, and he does jump into bed with the books. I ain't know him read one book to the end yet, and still he ain't happy unless he reading four five book at the same time. It have some people it dangerous learning them how to read.'

Beharry replaced the cigarette in the box.

'This world go be a different and better place the day man start making baby,' the woman said, sweeping out of the shop. 'Life hard enough with you one, leave alone your three worthless children.'

There was a short silence after she had gone.

'Suruj Mooma,' Beharry explained.

'They is like that,' Ganesh agreed.

'But she right, you know, man. If everybody did start behaving like me and you it would be a crazy kinda world.'

Beharry nibbled, and winked at Ganesh. 'I telling you, man. This reading is a dangerous thing.'

Suruj ran into the shop again. 'She calling calling you, Pa.' His tone carried his mother's exasperation. you, Pa.' His tone carried his mother's exasperation.

As Ganesh left he heard Beharry saying, 'She? Is how you does call your mother? Who is she she? The cat mother?'

Ganesh heard a slap.

He went often to Beharry's shop. He liked Beharry and he liked the shop. Beharry made it bright with coloured advertis.e.m.e.nts for things he didn't stock; and it was as dry and clean as Ramlogan's shop was greasy and dirty.

'It beat me what you does see in this Beharry,' Leela said. 'He think he could run shop, but he does only make me laugh. I must write and tell Pa about the sort of shop it have in Fuente Grove.'

'It have one thing you must write and tell your father to do. Tell him to go and open a stall in San Fernando market.'

Leela cried. 'You see the sort of thing Beharry putting in your head. The man is my my father.' And she cried again. father.' And she cried again.

But Ganesh still went to Beharry's.

When Beharry heard that Ganesh was going to set himself up as a ma.s.seur he nibbled anxiously and shook his head. 'Man, you choose a hard hard thing. These days nearly everybody you bouncing up is either ma.s.sager or dentist. One of my own cousin really Suruj Mooma cousin, but Suruj Mooma family is like my own family a really nice boy he is, he too starting in this thing.'

'As another another ma.s.sager?' ma.s.sager?'

'Wait, you go hear. Last Christmas Suruj Mooma take up the children by their grandmooma and this boy just come up to she cool cool and say he taking up dentistry. You could imagine how Suruj Mooma was surprise. And the next thing we hear is that he borrow money to buy one of them dentist machine thing and he start pulling out people teeth, just like that. The boy killing people left and right, and still people going. Trinidad people is like that.'

'It ain't people teeth teeth I want to pull out. But the boy doing all right, eh?' I want to pull out. But the boy doing all right, eh?'

'For the time, yes. He done pay back for the machine. But Tunapuna is a busy place, remember. Eh, I see the time coming when quack go find it hard getting two cent to buy a bread and some cheap red b.u.t.ter.'

Suruj Mooma came in hot and dusty from the yard with a cocoye cocoye broom. 'I was coming with a good good mind to sweep out the shop eh! and look at the first thing I hearing. Why for you must call the boy quack? It ain't as if he not trying.' She looked at Ganesh. 'You know what wrong with Suruj p.o.o.pa? He just jealous the boy. He can't even cut toenail, and a little boy pulling out big people teeth. Is just jealous he jealous the boy.' broom. 'I was coming with a good good mind to sweep out the shop eh! and look at the first thing I hearing. Why for you must call the boy quack? It ain't as if he not trying.' She looked at Ganesh. 'You know what wrong with Suruj p.o.o.pa? He just jealous the boy. He can't even cut toenail, and a little boy pulling out big people teeth. Is just jealous he jealous the boy.'

Ganesh said, 'You have something there, maharajin maharajin. Is like me and my ma.s.saging. I ain't just rus.h.i.+ng into it like that, you know. I learn and stop and study a lot about it, from my own father. It ain't quack work.'

Beharry, on the defensive, nibbled. 'Wasn't that I did mean at all. I was just telling the pundit here that if he set hisself up as a ma.s.sager in Fuente Grove he go have it hard.'

It didn't take Ganesh long to find out that Beharry was right. There were too many ma.s.seurs in Trinidad, and it was useless to advertise. Leela told her friends, The Great Belcher told hers, Beharry promised to write to all the people he knew; but few cared to bring their ailments to a place as far away as Fuente Grove. The villagers themselves were very healthy.

'Man,' Leela said. 'I don't think you really make for ma.s.sage.'

And the time came when he himself began to doubt his own powers. He could cure a nara nara, a simple stomach dislocation, as well as any ma.s.seur, and he could cure stiff joints. But he could never bring himself to risk bigger operations.

One day a young girl with a twisted arm came to see him. She looked happy enough but her mother was weeping and miserable. 'We try everybody and everything, pundit. Nothing happen. And every day the girl getting older, but who go want to married she?'

She was a pretty girl, too, with lively eyes in an impa.s.sive face. She looked only at her mother, not once at Ganesh.

'Twenty time people break over the girl hand, if they break it over one time,' the mother continued. 'But still the hand can't set.'

He knew what his father would have done. He would have made the girl lie down, he would have placed his foot on her elbow, levered the arm upwards till it broke, then set it again. But all Ganesh said, after examining the hand, was, 'It have nothing wrong with the girl, maharajin maharajin. She only have a little bad blood, that is all. And too besides, G.o.d make she that way and is not for me to interfere in G.o.d work.'

The girl's mother stopped sobbing and pulled her pink veil over her head. 'Is my fate,' she said, without sadness.

The girl never spoke a word.

Afterwards Leela said, 'Man, you shoulda at least try to fix the hand first, and then you coulda start talking about G.o.d work. But you don't care what you doing to me. It look as though you only want to drive away people now.'

Ganesh continued to offend his patients by telling them that nothing was wrong with them; he spoke more and more about G.o.d's work; and, if he was pressed, he gave out a mixture he had made from one of his father's prescriptions, a green fluid made mostly from s.h.i.+ning-bush and leaves of the neem neem tree. tree.

He said, 'Facts is facts, Leela. I ain't have a hand for ma.s.sage.'

There was another disappointment in his life. After a year it was clear that Leela couldn't have children. He lost interest in her as a wife and stopped beating her. Leela took it well, but he expected no less of a good Hindu wife. She still looked after the house and in time became an efficient housekeeper. She cared for the garden at the back of the house and minded the cow. She never complained. Soon she was ruler in the house. She could order Ganesh about and he didn't object. She gave him advice and he listened. He began to consult her on nearly everything. In time, though they would never had admitted it, they had grown to love each other. Sometimes, when he thought about it, Ganesh found it strange that the tall hard woman with whom he lived was the saucy girl who had once asked, 'You could write too, sahib?'

And always there was Ramlogan to be mollified. The newspaper cutting with his photograph hung, mounted and framed, in his shop, above Leela's notice concerning the provision of chairs for female shop a.s.sistants. Already the paper was going brown at the edges. Whenever Ganesh went, for one reason or another to Fourways, Ramlogan was sure to ask, 'How the Inst.i.tute going, man?'

'Thinking about it all the time,' Ganesh would say. Or, 'Is all in my head, you know. Don't rush me.'

Everything seemed to be going wrong and Ganesh feared that he had misread the signs of fate. It was only later that he saw the providential pattern of these disappointing months. 'We never are what we want to be,' he wrote, 'but what we must be.'

He had failed as a ma.s.seur. Leela couldn't have children. These disappointments, which might have permanently broken another man, turned Ganesh seriously, dedicatedly, to books. He had always intended to read and write, of course, but one wonders whether he would have done so with the same a.s.siduity if he had been a successful ma.s.seur or the father of a large family.

'Going to write a book,' he told Leela. 'Big book.'

There is a firm of American publishers called Street and Smith, versatile, energetic people who had pushed their publications as far as South Trinidad. Ganesh was deeply impressed by Street and Smith, had been since he was a boy; and, without saying a word to Beharry or Leela, he sat down one evening at the little table in the drawing room, turned up the oil lamp, and wrote a letter to Street and Smith. He told them that he was thinking of writing books and wondered whether either of them was interested.

The reply came within a month. Street and Smith said they were very interested.

'You must tell Pa,' Leela said.

Beharry said, 'The Americans is nice people. You must write this book for them.'

Ganesh framed the Street and Smith letter in pa.s.se-partout and hung it on the wall above the table where he had written his letter.

'Is only the beginning,' he told Leela.

Ramlogan came all the way from Fourways and when he gazed on the framed letter his eyes filled with tears. 'Sahib, this is something else for the papers. Yes, man, sahib, write the books for them.'

'Is just what Beharry, Fuente Grove so-call shopkeeper, tell him,' Leela said.

'Never mind.' Ramlogan said. 'I still think he should write the books. But I bet it make you feel proud, eh, sahib, having the Americans begging you to write a book for them?'

'Nah,' Ganesh said quickly. 'You wrong there. It don't make me feel proud at all at all. You know how it make me feel? It make me feel humble, if I tell the truth. Humble humble.'

'Is the sign of a great man, sahib.'

The actual writing of the book worried Ganesh and he kept putting it off. When Leela asked, 'Man, why you ain't writing the book the American people begging you to write?' Ganesh replied, 'Leela, is talk like that that does break up a man science of thought. You mean you can't see that I thinking, thinking about it all all the time?'

He never wrote the book for Street and Smith.

'I didn't promise promise anything,' he said. 'And don't think I waste my time.' anything,' he said. 'And don't think I waste my time.'

Street and Smith had made him think about the art of writing. Like many Trinidadians Ganesh could write correct English but it embarra.s.sed him to talk anything but dialect except on very formal occasions. So while, with the encouragement of Street and Smith, he perfected his prose to a Victorian weightiness he continued to talk Trinidadian, much against his will.

One day he said, 'Leela, is high time we realize that we living in a British country and I think we shouldn't be shame to talk the people language good.'

Leela was squatting at the kitchen chulha chulha, coaxing a fire from dry mango twigs. Her eyes were red and watery from the smoke. 'All right, man.'

'We starting now self, girl.'

'As you say, man.'

'Good. Let me see now. Ah, yes. Leela, have you lighted the fire? No, just gimme a chance. Is "lighted" or "lit", girl?'

'Look, ease me up, man. The smoke going in my eye.'

'You ain't paying attention, girl. You mean the smoke is is going in your eye.' going in your eye.'

Leela coughed in the smoke. 'Look, man. I have a lot more to do than sit scratching, you hear. Go talk to Beharry.'

Beharry was enthusiastic. 'Man, is a master idea, man! Is one of the troubles with Fuente Grove that it have n.o.body to talk good to. When we starting?'

'Now.'

Beharry nibbled and smiled nervously. 'Nah, man, you got to give me time to think.'

Ganesh insisted.

'All right then,' Beharry said resignedly. 'Let we go.'

'It is hot today.'

'I see what you mean. It is very very hot today.' hot today.'

'Look, Beharry. This go do, but it won't pay, you hear. You got to give a man some help, man. All right now, we going off again. You ready? The sky is very blue and I cannot see any clouds in it. Eh, why you laughing now?'

'Ganesh, you know you look d.a.m.n funny.'

'Well, you look d.a.m.n funny yourself, come to that.'

'No, what I mean is that it funny seeing you so, and hearing you talk so.'

Rice was boiling on the chulha chulha when Ganesh went home. 'Mr Ramsumair,' Leela asked, 'where have you been?' when Ganesh went home. 'Mr Ramsumair,' Leela asked, 'where have you been?'

'Beharry and me was having a little chat. You know, Beharry did look real funny trying to talk good.'

It was Leela's turn to laugh. 'I thought we was starting on this big thing of talking good English.'

'Girl, you just cook my food good, you hear, and talk good English only when I tell you.'

This was the time when Ganesh felt he had to respond to every advertiser's request to fill in coupons for free booklets. He came across the coupons in American magazines at Beharry's shop; and it was a great thrill for him to send off about a dozen coupons at once and await the arrival, a month later, of a dozen bulging packets. The Post Office people didn't like it and Ganesh had to bribe them before they sent a postman cycling down with the packets to Fuente Grove in the evenings, when it was cool.

Beharry had to give the postman a drink.

The postman said, 'The two of all you getting one set of big fame in Princes Town. Everywhere I turn it have people asking me, "Who is these two people? They come just like Americans, man."' He looked down at his emptied gla.s.s and rocked it on the counter. 'And guess what I does do when they ask me?'

It was his manner of asking for a second drink.

'What I does do?' He downed his second gla.s.s of rum at a gulp, made a wry face, asked for water, got it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, 'Man, I does tell them straight off who you is!'

Both Beharry and Ganesh were excited by the booklets and handled them with sensuous reverence. 'That America, boy, is the place to live in,' Beharry said. 'They does think nothing of giving away books like this.'

Ganesh shrugged a knowing shoulder. 'Is nothing at all for them, you know. Before you twist and turn three times bam! a book done print.'