Mr. Persad did not miss any opportunity when he and the boy were alone. The once-reserved man walked urgently around his property with an arm around the boy’s shoulder, ushering him here and there to see and to learn. His attention and trust made the boy feel older than he was. Mr. Persad showed his books to the boy to prove that he had the money and collateral to buy at least the two stations he had his eyes on.
Mr. Persad had a little car that he seldom drove himself, hiring instead one of the younger attendants to take him or Dolly wherever it was they needed to be. One evening, citing the urge to eat blood pudding and fresh hops bread, he told the boy to accompany him. Uncharacteristically, he drove to the most reputable seller of blood pudding, whose business was housed a fair distance by car on the other side of Marion. But rather than returning home directly after purchasing the heavy steaming coils of aromatic pudding and a quart of yeasty rolls, he took the boy on a drive. He wanted to show him something, he said. They drove up a road that zigzagged across the face of a hill. It took them into a hillside residential area. The houses on the side of this terraced hill were large and extravagantly built, with gardens that had been landscaped and were enclosed by high fences. The stillness in the area was underlined only by the twitter of birds. Every house had an unobstructed view of the town far below and the ocean in the distance. They came to a piece of land that had yet to be built on. Here Mr. Persad stopped the car. They got out to admire the view. The houses were sprawling and were designed, it seemed, to hide away the interiors, unlike the houses of the town that had welcoming verandahs, and windows and doors that in the daytime were left wide open to the eyes of passersby. Unlike the wood houses of the town, these were constructed of steel, stone, and concrete. The fanciest house the boy had seen until these was that of the Sanghas. Mr. Persad clasped his hands behind his head and arched his back for a stretch. The boy was uneasy. He wondered if he was about to be told that Mr. Persad had purchased the property in front of which they stood. This was not an area where he would feel comfortable, would know how to carry himself. His mother would be angry, he thought. Mr. Persad put his arm around the boy’s shoulder.
The way things were going in Marion, he said, it was not good enough these days to simply make a living. A businessman, he said, must nowadays drive a nice car. He gestured to the car behind them and said, “Not that anything is wrong with this car, you know, it is good enough for me, but a real businessman should have a brighter, bigger one. A bigger engine, you understand?
“And he must live in a house in an area like this, with a view of the sea. The kind of house and home he can invite customers and fellow businessmen to. You know, a nice wife who can cook, make a nice party, and make people feel comfortable. Could fix up flowers in a vase nice and set a table pretty-pretty.”
Dolly Persad did not fit this image of the “nice” wife. Her son wondered with dread if she was what this man who had married her really wanted for himself. But Mr. Persad soon clarified without prompting.
“But I self, I never wanted to be involved in all this, you know. This is not for me. I never had desire nor fire to mix in society and that sort of thing. But today things are different, and today a real businessman must be able to do these kinds of things. You see, my fire was small.
“But you, you must have the means to send your wife into town to buy nice things for herself and for yourself. Nice clothes, nice shoes, a little perfume from abroad once in a while. Not so, child? You must be able not only to afford but also to choose nice pretty jewelry, nice earrings and bangles, bring these things home for your wife and daughters without them having to ask you for them. You see? You have to have a little style, taste. That is the kind of thing you can learn if you want to, you know. Some people are born into circumstances where they grow up with these things and with opportunities in their midst. But I don’t believe anybody is born with style. Style, a person can learn, you learn best when you are young. So I would say, above all, son, to be a real businessman nowadays, you have to be able to go abroad and see how they do things abroad.”
The boy could wait no longer. He asked Mr. Persad if he was planning to leave where they lived. Mr. Persad said he was set in his ways, and the house they lived in was good enough for them. He wouldn’t be comfortable in a house that had a room for every occasion, but that he, the boy, was from a different generation, and when he took over the gas stations—as if he already had more than the one next to the house—he hoped that the boy would live in a place like this, with a big garden landscaped by a professional who had vision, and a house that was designed by a reputable architect with vision, too, and built by a big-time contractor who knew materials and could install modern plumbing and other conveniences.
“You mustn’t live in a box,” he said, “not one of those make-do things put up by a fellow who has no idea about convenience or comfort, nothing more than how to bang two pieces of wood together. You know, they see no value, no function in prettiness. But prettiness is not slackness, it is a way to call and honor God. God willing, I and your mother will live to see you settled in a nice place, eh?” His arm still around the boy’s back, he directed him back to the car, which now smelled of yeast and hot bread.
Back home, the boy saw their house differently. He realized that although he and his mother had bettered their circumstances through the move to Marion, everything was relative. In the eyes of the owners of the houses they had just seen, she and he were probably only a little better off than when they lived in Raleigh.