Mrs Hereira began to cry.
My mother said, ‘Look, I didn’t want to make you cry like this. I sorry.’
Mrs Hereira sobbed, ‘No, it isn’t you, it isn’t you.’
My mother looked disappointed. We watched Mrs Hereira cry.
Mrs Hereira said, ‘I have left about a week’s food with Toni.’
My mother said, ‘Toni is a big man. You mustn’t worry about him.’
He made terrible noises when he discovered that she had left him. He bayed like a dog and bawled like a baby.
Then he got drunk. Not drunk in the ordinary fashion; it got to the stage where the rum was keeping him going.
He forgot all about the dog, and it starved for days.
He stumbled drunk and crying from house to house, looking for Mrs Hereira.
And when he got back he took it out on the dog. We used to hear the dog yelping and growling.
In the end even the dog turned on him.
Somehow it managed to get itself free and it rushed at Toni.
Toni was shocked into sense.
The dog ran out of the house, and Toni ran after it. Toni squatted and whistled. The dog stopped, pricked up its ears, and turned round to look. It was funny seeing this drunk crazy man smiling and whistling at his dog, trying to get him back.
The dog stood still, staring at Toni.
Its tail wagged twice, then fell.
Toni got up and began walking towards the dog. The dog turned and ran.
We saw him sprawling on a mattress in one of the rooms. The room was perfectly empty. Nothing but the mattress and the empty rum bottles and the cigarette ends.
He was drunk and sleeping, and his face was strangely reposed.
The thin and wrinkled hands looked so frail and sad.
Another FOR SALE sign was nailed to the mango tree. A man with about five little children bought the house.
From time to time Toni came around to terrify the new people.
He would ask for money, for rum, and he had the habit of asking for the radio. He would say, ‘You have Angela’s radio there. I charging rent for that, you know. Two dollars a month. Give me two dollars now.’
The new owner was a small man, and he was afraid of Toni. He never answered.
Toni would look at us and laugh and say, ‘You know about Angela’s radio, eh, boys? You know about the radio? Now, what this man playing at? ’
Hat said, ‘Who will tell me why they ever have people like Toni in this world!’
After two or three months he stopped coming to Miguel Street.
I saw Toni many years later.
I was travelling to Arima, and just near the quarry at Laventille I saw him driving a lorry.
He was smoking a cigarette.
That and his thin arms are all I remember.
And riding to Carénage one Sunday morning, I passed the Christianis’ house, which I had avoided for a long time.
Mrs Christiani, or Mrs Hereira, was in shorts. She was reading the paper in an easy chair in the garden. Through the open doors of the house I saw a uniformed servant laying the table for lunch.
There was a black car, a new, big cai, in the garage.
13. THE MECHANICAL GENIUS
My Uncle Bhakcu was very nearly a mechanical genius. I cannot remember a time when he was not the owner of a motor vehicle of some sort. I don’t think he always approved of the manufacturers’ designs, however, for he was always pulling engines to bits. Titus Hoyt said that this was also a habit of the Eskimos. It was something he had got out of a geography book.
If I try to think of Bhakcu I never see his face. I can see only the soles of his feet as he worms his way under a car. I was worried when Bhakcu was under a car because it looked so easy for the car to slip off the jack and fall on him.
One day it did.
He gave a faint groan that reached the ears of only his wife.
She bawled, ‘Oh God!’ and burst into tears right away. ‘I know something wrong. Something happen to he’
Mrs Bhakcu always used this pronoun when she spoke of her husband.
She hurried to the side of the yard and heard Bhakcu groaning.
‘Man,’ she whispered, ‘you all right?’
He groaned a little more loudly.
He said, ‘How the hell I all right? You mean you so blind you ain’t see the whole motor-car break up my arse?’
Mrs Bhakcu, dutiful wife, began to cry afresh.
She beat on the galvanized-iron fence.
‘Hat,’ Mrs Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, come quick. A whole motor-car fall on he?’
Hat was cleaning out the cow-pen. When he heard Mrs Bhakcu he laughed. ‘You know what I always does say,’ Hat said. ‘When you play the ass you bound to catch hell. The blasted car brand-new. What the hell he was tinkering with so?’
‘He say the crank-shaft wasn’t working nice.’
‘And is there he looking for the crank-shaft?’
‘Hat,’ Bhakcu shouted from under the car, ‘the moment you get this car from off me, I going to break up your tail.’
‘Man,’ Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘how you so advantageous? The man come round with his good good mind to help you and now you want to beat him up?’
Hat began to look hurt and misunderstood.
Hat said, ‘It ain’t nothing new. Is just what I expect. Is just what I does always get for interfering in other people business. You know I mad to leave you and your husband here and go back to the cow-pen.’
‘No, Hat. You mustn’t mind he. Think what you would say if a whole big new motor-car fall on you.’
Hat said, ‘All right, all right. I have to go and get some of the boys.’
We heard Hat shouting in the street. ‘Boyee and Errol!’
No answer.
‘Bo-yee and Ehhroll!’
‘Co-ming, Hat.’
‘Where the hell you boys been, eh? You think you is man now and you could just stick your hands in your pocket and walk out like man? You was smoking, eh?’
‘Smoking, Hat?’
‘But what happen now? You turn deaf all of a sudden?’
‘Was Boyee was smoking, Hat.’
‘Is a lie, Hat. Was Errol really. I just stand up watching him.’
‘Somebody make you policeman now, eh? Is cut-arse for both of you. Errol, go cut a whip for Boyee. Boyee, go cut a whip for Errol.’
We heard the boys whimpering.
From under the car Bhakcu called, ‘Hat, why you don’t leave the boys alone? You go bless them bad one of these days, you know, and then they go lose you in jail. Why you don’t leave the boys alone? They big now.’
Hat shouted back, ‘You mind your own business, you hear. Otherwise I leave you under that car until you rotten, you hear.’
Mrs Bhakcu said to her husband, ‘Take it easy, man.’
But it was nothing serious after all. The jack had slipped but the axle rested on a pile of wooden blocks, pinning Bhakcu to ground without injuring him.
When Bhakcu came out he looked at his clothes. These were a pair of khaki trousers and a sleeveless vest, both black and stiff with engine grease.
Bhakcu said to his wife, ‘They really dirty now, eh?’
She regarded her husband with pride. ‘Yes, man,’ she said. ‘They really dirty.’
Bhakcu smiled.
Hat said, ‘Look, I just sick of lifting up motor-car from off you, you hear. If you want my advice, you better send for a proper mechanic’
Bhakcu wasn’t listening.
He said to his wife, ‘The crank-shaft was all right. Is something else.’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Well, you must eat first.’
She looked at Hat and said, ‘He don’t eat when he working on the car unless I remind he?’