The cast of hard-scrambling islanders so impressionistically drawn by Naipaul in Miguel Street is known affectionately around the world: Big Foot, Hat, Bogart, Laura, B.Wordsworth, Boyee. The colonial landscape in which they grew up – at least some aspects of its comedy and deprivation – has virtually receded from public consciousness. Hat would probably turn in his T & T grave, perplexed at today’s kidnappings & trash can bombs, narco & criminal enterprise, the Muslimeen Inc. and talk of incongruous bed fellowships; youth rudeness and traffic jams all over the place. He’d be intrigued by the World Cup soccer arrivants, the UWI., poet Derek Walcott and journalist Keith Smith; topeed & cornrowed heads, the airport’s Departure Lounge & the nation’s Arrival Days; and mass excitement at festivals of light and carnival. But ask the boy narrator how much human relations and values have “developed” after all these years, he might say, looking at you in wonder: you asking me? why you don’t go back to Miguel Street? judge for yourself: (WW)
1. A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say “Slum!” because he could see no more. But we, who lived there, saw our street as a world, where everybody was quite different from everybody else.
2. Every morning when he got up Hat would sit on the banister of his back verandah and shout across, “What happening there, Bogart?”
Bogart would turn in his bed and mumble softly, so that no one heard, “What happening there, Hat?”
3. His choice fell on a man called Razor. It was hard to think of a more suitable name for this man. He was small. He was thin. He had a neat, sharp moustache above neat, tiny lips. The creases on his trousers were always sharp and clean and straight. And he was supposed to carry a knife.
4. Ella sat down on the pavement, and said, “Yes boy. I think I going to take that exam again, and this year I going to be so good that this Mr. Cambridge go bawl when he read what I write for him.”
We were silent, in wonder.
“Is the English and litritcher that does beat me.”
In Elias’s mouth litritcher was the most beautiful word I heard. It sounded like something to eat, something rich like chocolate.
5. I went inside and I said, “Ma, you want to buy a poetry for four cents?”
My mother said, “Tell that blasted man to haul his tail away from my yard, you hear.”
I said to B.Wordsworth, “My mother say she ain’t have four cents.”
B. Wordsworth said, “It is the poet’s tragedy.”
And he put the paper back in his pocket. He didn’t seem to mind.
6. I couldn’t bear to look at the fight. I looked all the time at the only woman in the crowd. She was an American or a Canadian woman and she was nibbling at peanuts. She was so blonde, her hair looked like straw. Whenever a blow was landed, the crowd roared, and the woman pulled in her lips as though she had given the blow, and then she nibbled furiously at her peanuts. She never shouted or got up or waved her hands.
7. Morgan got really drunk that night and challenged everybody to fight. He even challenged me.
Mrs. Morgan had padlocked the front gate, so Morgan could only run about in his yard. He was as mad as a mad bull, bellowing and butting at the fence. He kept saying over and over again, “You people think I not a man, eh? My father had eight children. I is his son. I have ten. I better than all of you put together.”
Hat said, “He soon go start crying and then he go sleep.”
8. I suppose Laura holds a world record.
Laura had eight children.
There is nothing surprising in that.
These eight children had seven fathers.
Beat that!
9. She herself was quite gay about what was happening to her. She used to point to it, and say, “This thing happening again, but you get used to it after the first three four times. Is a damn nuisance though.”
She used to blame God, and speak about the wickedness of men.
For her first six children she tried six different men.
Hat used to say, “Some people hard to please.”
10. Eddoes was crazy about cleanliness.
He used to brush his teeth for hours.
In fact, if you were telling a stranger about Eddoes, you would say, “You know – the little fellow with a tooth-brush always in his mouth.”
This was one thing in Eddoes I really admired. Once I stuck a tooth brush in my mouth and walked about our yard in the middle of the day.
My mother said, “You playing man? But why you don’t wait until
your pee make froth?”
11. Eddoes said, “I was talking to one of the old boys today. He tell me he thing is to never throw away shoes. Always look in shoes that people throw away, and you go find all sort of thing.”
12. Nobody in the street knew Miss Hilton. While she lived, her front gate was always padlocked and no one ever saw her leave or saw anybody go in. So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t feel sorry and say that you missed Miss Hilton.
When I think of her house I see just two colours. Grey and green. The green of the mango tree, the grey of the house and the grey of the high galvanized-iron fence that prevented you from getting at the mangoes.
13. Mrs. Bhakcu would say, “You better mind your mouth. Otherwise I come up and turn your face with one slap, you hear.”
Mrs. Bhakcu was four feet high, three feet wide, and three feet deep. Mrs. Morgan was a little over six foot tall and built like a weight-lifter.
Mrs. Morgan said, “Why you don’t get your big-belly husband to go and fix some motor car and stop reading that damn stupid sing-song he always sing-songing?”
14. “I did everything for him. Everything. I gave up everything. Money and family. All for him. Tell me, is it right for him to treat me like this? Oh, God! What did I do to deserve all this?”
And so she wept and talked and wept.
15. But once Hat got into serious trouble for watering his milk.
He said, “The police and them come around asking me how the water get in the milk. As if I know. I ain’t know how the water get there. You know I does put the pan in water to keep the milk cool and prevent it from turning. I suppose the pan did have a hole, that’s all. A tiny little hole.”
Edward said, “It better to be frank and tell the magistrate that.”
Hat said, “Edward, you talking as if Trinidad is England . You ever hear that people tell truth in Trinidad and get away?”
16. “What happen to the car, Uncle Bhakcu?” I asked.
He didn’t reply.
“The tappet knocking?” I suggested.
One thing Bhacku had taught me about cars was that tappets were always knocking. Give Bhacku any car in the world, and the first thing he would tell you about it was, “The tappet knocking, you know. Hear. Hear it?”
17. Edward said, “And we better wear gloves. I know a man was catching crab one day and suddenly he see his right hand walking away from him. He look again and see four five crab carrying it away. This man jump up and begin one bawling.”
18. So late that night we all climbed into the Cocorite bus, Hat in his leggings, Edward in his, and the rest of us carrying cutlasses and big brown sacks.
The shovel Hat carried still stank from the cow-pen and people began squinging up their noses.
He said, “Let them smell it. They all does want milk when the cow give it.”
19. In the fading light the Trinidad fast bowler, Tyrell Johnson, was unplayable, and his success seemed to increase his speed.
A fat old woman on our left began screaming at Tyrell Johnson, and whenever she stopped screaming, she turned to us and said very quietly, “I know Tyrell since he was a boy so high. We used to pitch marble together.” Then she turned away and began screaming again.
20. My mother began to cry.
To me Ganesh said, “What you want to go abroad and study?”
I said, “I don’t want to study anything really. I just want to go away, that’s all.”
Ganesh smiled and said, “The Government not giving away that sort of scholarship yet. Only Ministers could do what you say. No, you have to study something.”
I said, “I never think about it really. Just let me think a little bit.”
21. I left them all and walked briskly towards the aeroplane, not looking back, looking only at my shadow before me, a dancing dwarf on the tarmac.
Extracts from Miguel Street: V.S. Naipaul: Penguin Books,1971
It's always there, around and beyond us: churning and receiving; washing up all the dead stuff of the world: sunken histories, green bottles with messages of lost ambitions, the loves we abort and throw away. On Sunday afternoons our islanders come down to the beach; they show off bathing costumes and muscles; they gleam and splash about like carefree porpoises; then, salty-skinned, with sand in their hair, they turn their backs on it and go home.
