1. Fuente Grove Fountain Grove seemed a curious name. There was no hint of fountain anywhere, no hint even of water. For miles around the land was flat, treeless, and hot. You drove through miles and miles of sugar-cane; then the sugar-cane stopped abruptly to make room for Fuente Grove.
2. “I been thinking. I have a cousin working in the Licensing Office. He could get you a job there, I think. You could drive motor car?”
“I can’t even drive donkey cart, Mrs. Cooper.”
“It don’t matter. He could always get a licence for you, and then you ain’t have to do much driving. You just have to test other drivers, and if you anything like my cousin, you could make a lot of money giving out licence to all sort of fool with money.”
3. “Since when you start reading?”
“I learning all the time, sahib. I does read only a little tiny little bit.
Smatterrer fact, it have a hundred and one words I just can’t make head or tail outa. Tell you what, sahib. Why you don’t read it out to me? When you read I could just shut my eyes and listen.”
“You does behave funny afterwards. Why you just don’t look at the photo,
eh?”
“Is a nice photo, sahib.”
“You look at it. I got to go now.”
4. And then there was Soomintra to be faced. Soomintra had married a hardware merchant in San Fernando and she was rich. More than that, she looked rich. She was having child after child, and growing plump, matronly, and important. She had a son whom she had called Jawaharlal, after the Indian leader; and her daughter was called Sarojini, after the Indian poetess.
5. “But, man, we got to think about money now. The time coming when we won’t have a cent remaining.”
“Look, Leela. Look at this thing in a practical way. You want food? You have a little garden in the back. You want milk? You have a cow. You want shelter? You have a house. What more you want?”
6. “Leela, is not only come I come for you; but I have something to tell you, and I want to tell you first.
“Say it quick. But I must say you was able to keep it to yourself a damn long time. Eh, eh, is nearly three months now you drive me away from your house and in all that time you never bother to send a message to ask me, ‘Dog, how you is?’ or ‘Cat, how you is?’ So why for you come now, eh?”
7. 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 have admitted it, they had grown to love each other.
8. “I was thinking, man. I didn’t like the taxi-driver. He come here, he see all the books, he never mention them once. He ask for water and for this and for that and he ain’t even say, ‘Thank you.’ And he making a pile of money bringing these poor people here every day.”
9. You never felt that he was a fake and you couldn’t deny his literacy or learning not with all those books. And he hadn’t only book learning. He could talk on almost every subject. For instance, he had views about Hitler and knew how the war could be ended in two weeks. “One way,” he used to say. “Only one. And in fourteen days, even thirteen bam! no more war.” But he kept the way a secret.
10. “Is what life is, sahib.” Ramlogan followed Ganesh’s gaze. “Years does pass. People does born. People does married. People does dead. Is enough to make anybody a proper philosopher, sahib.”
“Philosophy is my job. Today is Sunday
.”
11. 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.
12. He spoke in Hindi but the books he showed in this way were in English, and people were awed by this display of learning.
His main point was that desire was a source of misery and therefore desire ought to be suppressed. Occasionally he went off at a tangent to discuss whether the desire to suppress desire wasn’t itself a desire; but usually he tried to be as practical as possible.”
13. The boy ran up the steps. “The meeting starting to start, sahib.”
14. Then the mood of the meeting changed.
The bearded negro stood up and made a long speech. He said that he had been attracted to Hinduism because he liked Indians; but the corruption he had seen that day was entirely repugnant to him. It had, as a matter of fact, decided him to join the Muslims, and the Hindus had better look out when he was a Muslim.
15. “You don’t know how lucky you is,” he began, and jumped up immediately, saying, “Gimme a chance. It have a boy here I must give a good cut-arse to. Just gimme a chance.”
He squeezed his way between desks to a boy in the back row. The class was instantly silent and it was possible to hear the noise from the other classrooms. Then Ganesh heard the boy squealing behind the blackboard.
The headmaster was sweating when he came back to Ganesh. He wiped his big face with a mauve handkerchief and said, “Yes, I was telling you that you is a lucky man.”
16. He was in a temper when he returned late that night to Fuente Grove. “Just wanted to make a fool of me,” he muttered, “fool of me.”
“Leela!” he shouted. “Come, girl, and give me something to eat.”
She came out, smiling sardonically. “But, man, I thought you was dining with the Governor.”
“Don’t make joke, girl. Done dine. Want to eat now. Going to show them,” he mumbled, as his fingers ploughed through the rice, and dal and curry, “going to show them.”
17. “Suruj Mooma right, you know. Too much of this education is a bad bad thing. You remain here, educate yourself and yet you is a bigger man than Indarsingh for all the Ox-ford he say he go to.”
18. They brought their sadnesses to Fuente Grove, but they made the place look gay. Despite the sorrow in their faces and attitudes they wore clothes as bright as any wedding crowd: veils, bodices, skirts all strident pink, yellow, blue or green.
Excerpts taken from The Mystic Masseur: V.S. Naipaul: Penguin Edition, 1964
