Each morning during the pre-election period, the Manager gazed out from his gallery and thought of the power and wealth he could access as a county councillor. In spite of his setbacks, he knew that if he bribed a sufficient number of people, his chances would be excellent. He had pulled himself out of poverty through his constantly replenished faith in shortcuts and bobol. When his wife and six of his seven children, fed up with his bribing, deserted him, he accused them of treachery but also of stupidity. Kamini was his jewel because she had remained with him, and he routinely promised her all his ill-gotten assets.
One morning as he was staring at his goat, he called out to his daughter. She emerged from her room dressed in pants and a jersey instead of her usual bodice and skirt. He glanced disapprovingly at her new outfit. “Aray!”
“I am going to the post office.”
“Eh? Who you posting letter to every day now? Mahatma Gandhi?”
“The guy is dead, I think. Gee, look at the time. I gotta run.”
She walked past the postal agency, crossed the road, and headed for Lalbeharry trace. At about four p.m. that afternoon Janak, returning from a trip to Princes Town, spotted her walking to the trace. He drove on for a while, then made an abrupt U-turn into the direction of Lalbeharry trace.
When the Manager heard of Narpat’s candidacy, he began his campaign in earnest. He greeted villagers he had never spoken to with an effusiveness that made them instantly suspicious. “But ay-ay how Nabes, how? Just the other day I tell you boy from school to tell you hello on my behalf, but children these days too forgetful.”
One day he drove his Bedford up the hill to his house and brought it to an abrupt stop. He slammed the door. “Tick. Nothing but tick. This whole village fulla tick. The minute they hear a honest man taking up politiscing, they does sharpen they teeth to start sucking. They wouldn’t be happy until they suck me dry.” The first week of campaigning had been a disaster. Initially he had been met with a stony silence, but as his intentions became clearer, he was forced to listen to a litany of complaints. He walked up the stairs grumbling. “Every blasted body in the village have a sick son or daughter or some debt they can’t afford to pay. Tick on all side. This whole blasted place only fulla tick and crazy kissmeass people. Diggers and jookers!”
Kamini looked up. “Is exactly what David—I mean Teacher Doon—say.”
“Eh? He say that? Who the ass he think he is to criticize poor people for no rhyme and reason?” But after his anger had cooled, he asked his daughter, “You think Teach might be interested in writing one or two small speech for me? Nothing too fancy. Just a few words for the election.”
“I will ask him. I guess he will.”
The Manager was astonished at his daughter’s confidence. He dug into an ear and flicked his finger. “Maybe we could get him to draw up a few poster. Stick them up in Polly rumshop and Hakim parlour and in the post office.”
“Gee, I think mebbe you will need a photograph for that. I think mebbe Partap son does do photographing part time.”
“Who? That damn kissmeass scamp? I don’t want to hear nothing about him. He crooked just like he lazy, hop-and-drop father.” But the Manager couldn’t discount the appeal of his daughter’s idea, and later in the night he rummaged through the cardboard grip beneath his bed. He threw aside unpaid bills and an old summons to appear in the Princes Town court. Finally, he turned up a photograph taken when he was a driver at Baboo’s bus company. The photograph, taken during an excursion to Maracas bay, showed him kneeling before a pot, his belly almost covering the rim. He gazed at the picture fondly, then threw it aside. Eventually he went to Yip’s photo studio and posed fussily for two passport-size pictures. “For election,” he told Yip, a short, harassed-looking Chinese with long, skinny arms. “Need a nice background. You have any waterfall? Or some palace like the Taj Mahal?”
“No background for passport.”
“Eh? Not even a small stupid mountain self?” He left the studio in a bad mood. “What the hell he think this place is? Hong Kong? Can’t give a man a small stupid background self.”
Every night he dictated the day’s expenses to his daughter, grumbling about ticks and chisellers. “They only dreamsanhope is to suck out a honest man like a ripe mango, then pelt him away. But let them continue sucking.” Sometimes he had an inspirational moment and would command his daughter, “Prabble number ninety-four. Dog that ‘custom sucking egg never stop until they see a bigger dog reflection in the water, then they leggo the bone.”
During every meeting he withdrew glasses with thick foggy lenses and, adjusting and readjusting to much applause, read from a light blue binder, “I, Ramsoondar Samodie Loknath Sookdeo Esq., known to all and each as the popular and humble Manager, do honestly, candidly, and single-handedly give a guarantee to right the wrongs, and good the bad, of this little bower we call Lengua.” The crowd clapped and hooted at the slippery Indian accent he slipped into whenever he read from one of Kamini’s binders, seducing him into even more promises.
Most mornings of that month he stood in his gallery, smoking and surveying the men and women limping up the slope toward him, their faces contorted into bogus suffering. He greeted each with a controlled cheerfulness, and it was only after they had left that the bind of his anger tightened. “Kamini, come here and write down this prabble: The road to poordom is paved with wicked bitches. And this: Selfsame bitches will squeeze out every last drop of milk from a honest man breast. Okay, read it over for me. And you better change milk into sweat.” But even while Kamini was reading, his depression lifted, transformed into robust images of him being chauffeur driven, the window rolled up while he listened to the day’s news on the radio. He imagined foreign news, not brimming with troublesome demands but soothing and romantic. This morning a volcano suddenly erupted in Rome, killing a million people. The war between India and Pakistan has wiped out another five cities. An earthquake destroyed half of Venezuela.
One day he had an unexpected visitor. “How you father, old man Partap, going? It cross me mind this very said morning to visit him, but the election business have me too busy.” He crumbled his hat and stared sorrowfully at the ground. “These days I visiting all the hop-and-drop, brokofoot people in the district. All the ‘digent people too. And them what husband leave them and wife leave them and neemakaram children ‘bandon them.” He slammed his hat on his knee. “All these bitches. All the jookers and diggers.” He glanced up suddenly and wiped his eyes with his crumbled hat. “But that is me job. If the Manager don’t see ’bout these people, who else will see ’bout them?”
Partap’s son fished into his lab coat and brought out a chewed-down pencil. “I would like to get some meaty thoughts on the campaign. How do you plan to combat the boondoggle in agriculture? And what steps have you contemplated to bring the different races together in the district of Lengua?”
“Races? Bring them together? Why?” The Manager glanced suspiciously at the journalist.
“Routine questions. Must be asked. At all cost.” He nibbled his pencil. “Okay then, do you intend to be a partisan or a mugwump?”
“A mugwump, man? You mean I reach so low now where a honourable journalist could just walk in my house and call me these insultive names cool-cool.” After Partap’s son had left, the Manager shouted to his daughter. “Aray, where you dress up and going?”
“To the post office.”
“Go, go!” He flicked his wrist. “And if you see any of them mugwumpy bitches coming up here, tell them to haul they jooking and digging ass away.” But Partap’s son had given him an idea, and early the next morning he journeyed to Dogpatch, the Outsiders’ settlement. The men lounging on their steps gazed indifferently at his approach and at the bags of sweets in his hand. “Where all the little children gone?” He peeked around sourly. “Have some gifts for them. Paradise plum and cough drops.” A shirtless boy emerged with a dog from beneath a house. The boy took the bag of sweets.
“I want a dollar.”
“Eh? A dollar?”
“Gimme a dollar.”
“Nice sweets.” The Manager shook a bag.
“Gimme a dollar.”
The Manager glanced at the man watching lazily from the step and at a woman with a dress hitched high on her broad hips standing at the doorway. “Children nowadays. They too smart.” He dipped into his pocket, fishing for the smallest coins. “Two ten cent and three one cent. That make it twenty-three cent.” He hurried away, mumbling and cursing. “Hello Partap son, you neemakaram bitch, I have a nice article for you. Write down this: The Manager today bring all the race together when he donate twenty-three cents to a damn blasted little scamp.” He never returned to Dogpatch, and in each subsequent speech he now vowed to “put a complete full stop and next punctuation too on all them outside people who soaking inside the bower of Lengua.”
Narpat addressed just one meeting, held in the small post office used also for village council assemblies. He came to the meeting directly from the field and wore his rough khakis and tall tops caked with mud and bits of straw. “I didn’t have time to change in fancy clothes,” he said as he strode to the front. “I am a working man. Just like most of the people here.” He glanced at the crowd. “And working people have to be strong in mind and body. Look at me. Not one drop of oil and not one spoon of sugar in this body for the last five years.” He rolled up his sleeves and shifted to a wide-legged stance. “That is why nobody in this mashup post office could last more than two minutes against me. Not even these little children”—his lips curled into a mocking smile as he gestured to a row of young men—“half my age.” He grasped a handful of hair. “Thick like the day I born. This chin here could take a thousand blows.” He cuffed himself, rocking backward, and the young men, those who didn’t know him well, straightened in their seats and gaped at this slim, well-built man who may have been good-looking when he was younger, before the harshness set in.
“Take a good glance around you, and see how much unhealthy people it have here. Watch how puffy and sickly Kumkaran is. That big belly full of gas and bile acid and pollution just waiting to explode.” Kumkaran tried to maintain his dignity, but his sleepy eyes and slack features didn’t lend themselves to his effort. He was trembling with rage, and if anyone but Narpat had insulted him in this manner, he would have strode to the front and knocked him down.
“Kumkaran can’t help it because it in his blood. No different from the majority of Indians in this village. Soft and sickly looking. Puff up from all that sugar and oil. Fry this, fry that. Bile and mucus leaking from every outlet. Muscles turn to pap. Gallbladder and kidney trouble. Indigestion and peptic ulcer. Now compare that with the things Indians use to eat long ago when they wasn’t afraid of anything. When nobody could come to their village and outsmart them.” He tapped his chest and reeled off a list of unfamiliar grains: kamut, spelt, amaranth, teff. “And that is the exact reason why these black people, the kirwals, so healthy. Boil yam, boil dasheen, boil plantain, boil breadfruit. Everything boil.” Humphrey, one of the three blacks in the crowd, crossed his legs and elegantly dusted his trousers. “Don’t mind they does borrow all these things from their neighbour backyard.” The crowd erupted. Humphrey stopped dusting. The villagers who knew Narpat well realized that his irritation was shifting and inclusive. His criticisms of local Indians included everyone not only in the village but in the entire island. Sometimes they suspected the span of his dismay encompassed every single person but himself; all who had lived and died since his Aryans fell from grace.
“In this campaign you will hear all sort of promise about building road and draining field and repairing bridge. But what that will change? Anything at all? The road will cave again in the next rainy season, the drain will clog up in a week or two, and the bridge will collapse when one loaded Farmall pass over it.” He paused, then added, “I want to make a different kind of promise tonight. What I promise to do is to wipe out prejudice, superstition, laziness, jealousy, and with Janak help, gossip too. Mauvais langue. People running their mouth without knowing the facts and figures.” The young men, mistaking this for humour, exploded with laughter, and Janak sank in his chair and looked around furtively. “But in order to do this we have to start with our own children. Pound it in their head.” He hammered a fist on his open palm. “Pound, pound, pound. ”
Kumkaran placed his hands on his belly and drummed his saffron-coloured shirt. “You talking my language exactly.”
Narpat ignored Kumkaran. “When last anybody here went to Port of Spain?”
Janak raised a hand.
“That don’t count. You is a taxi driver. That is your job.”
Janak folded his arms.
“Anybody know who is the Prime Minister?”
“Rawlin Gibbons. Short little fella. Write one setta history book. Does talk like if he have to pay for every single word. Like a duck that gone to school and learn to quack out a few nursery rhymes. Talking now all the time ’bout this independence nonsense. My understanding is that he don’t like Indians.” Janak spoke slowly, emphasizing each word as if he were teaching a slightly deaf child.
“And who elect him? Who put him there?”
“Cane farmers catching we ass as usual and everybody looking in the next direction. For six months of the year we in the field from morning to night. And what we have to show for it?”
Soogrim, a balding cherubic man with uneven handlebar whiskers, looked around pleadingly. “That is why it have so much ‘bandon field all around. All the help going to Port of Spain. All them illegal immigrant from Grenada and Antigua and Guyana getting more help than we own Trinidadian people. And the worse thing is that they settling all over the place like crazy ants.”
Narpat’s smile broadened, giving him a mocking, inquisitory expression. “I apologize. I see that people here up to date. We know exactly who to blame. For flood, for drought, for bad debt, for our sickly children, for the land deed, for everything. A village of complainers looking for a excuse. My ambition is for everybody in this crowd”—Narpat gestured with his hand—“to start thinking more progressive. To become futurists. To concentrate on what we could change rather than what already happen. Futurists. Remember that word good.” He tugged at his lower lip and surveyed the crowd imperiously.
Ali, a perpetually drunk worker at Chin Lee’s sawmill, struggled up. “Like a prophet?”
“A prophet is a salesman. Retailing salvation. A futurist prepare for tomorrow by proper planning. When was the last time anybody here had an idea?” Several hands went up. “Something that nobody think of before.” Some of the hands went down. “An idea that could stand the test of time.” Only Huzaifa kept his hand up. Narpat gestured to him with his chin.
“My idea,” Huzaifa began, rising with a purposeful slowness to his feet, “is passive resistance.” He gazed meditatively at the ceiling and smacked his lips after each word. “I believe we should block all the roads and prevent incoming and outgoing vehicles from using the village. Scatter some log and light up some old tire. Give the children some placard to hold up too. No representation without land deed.”
Janak raised his hand angrily. Narpat ignored him. “The few cars that use the roads are all from the village. You think we should block them from coming and going? Besides, passive resistance is not a new idea. Gandhi thought of it already.”
“Yes, Gandhi.” Huzaifa shifted from foot to foot. Reluctantly he sat.
“Now you all go to your homes and think of what I propose for this village.”
“How you going to settle the land deed?” Premsingh asked.
“The land deed is one part of the puzzle. You can’t settle it without fixing the other pieces.”
After most of the crowd had drifted away, a tall young man with a ginger moustache, and long hair parted in the centre, came up to Narpat. “Could I bother you for a minute, sir?”
Narpat had noticed him sitting at the back with Partap’s son. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I am writing a paper on Panchayat and the politics of the village, and—”
“Where you from, young man?”
“From the University of Edinburgh. It’s in Scotland.”
“And you want to know about Panchayats? Well, this is not a Panchayat. Is a meeting which suppose to tell everybody who was here that nobody will help them if they don’t make the first move.”
“So, was anything settled here tonight?”
Narpat smiled. “That depend on how much business the rumshops do tonight.”
Later that night in the rumshops, the farmers put aside their disappointment that Narpat had not really dealt with the land settlement issue and made jokes about his dietary obsessions; nevertheless, they were reassured by his easy confidence and brashness. For the remainder of the election period, Narpat made no other public speeches. He sat on the Pavilion after returning from the field and considered the measures he might implement to improve the lives of the villagers. His wife tried to draw him into easy conversations, but he said nothing and after a while she too fell into the mood.
At nights, when Narpat was away, Jeeves would see tiny sparks flitting in the kitchen, and he would know that his mother was before the chulha, slowly stirring the burnt wood. At Chin Lee’s sawmill some of the older boys had spoken of the election, and when Quashie boasted about the violent campaigns in Port of Spain, Danny had countered with a story about a policeman who had been set ablaze during a particularly riotous contest. Now Jeeves wondered whether his mother was worrying about this danger and whether she would be consoled if she understood that this whole election business was nothing more than a test. One afternoon he asked Kala, “Why Pappy fighting in this election?”
“To help people from the village.”
“Why?”
“I think he want to make them more independent.”
“How he could do that? He will quarrel with them? Or tell them stories?”
“Teach them about history.” She diverted to a confusing lecture on Columbus, slavery, indentureship, sugar, the mercantile system, and independence, and at the end of it all Jeeves decided he would no longer ask his sister for any clarification. In the late evenings he would listen to Sushilla singing the proposed national anthem, which he’d also heard at school: “Forged from the fires of whip and chain / The spark burning bright on the freedom train …” In class he listened to Mr. Haroon murmuring to Lakshmikant and Pyarelal about the projected benefits of independence.
Danny whispered to Jeeves, “Wouldn’t surprise me if them morocoy jump out of the tank and run away again.”
Jeeves said nothing, but after school he told his friend, “Was me who take them out. I wanted to tell you long time now.”
He felt safe with this belated confession, but Danny stared at him disbelievingly, then turned away, kicked a pebble on the road, and skipped over a pothole. Jeeves quickened his stride to catch up with his friend. Then Danny told him, “Kevin and some of the other boys say it was me who do it?”
“They stupid. I will tell them it wasn’t you.”
“You will really tell them? Why?”
“Because it was me who let them out.”
Danny glanced at Jeeves before he said, “I don’t care. Let them think what they want.” He spotted Dev Anand, one of the village characters, and crossed the street to join the man. “I will catch up with you tomorrow,” he shouted to Jeeves.
But the next day he did not show up at school. And in the two months preceding independence, Jeeves noticed that his friend was increasingly absent from class.