The silence that follows lasts a few minutes.
And then only Bhakcu’s voice is heard, as he does a solo from the Ramayana.
But don’t think that Mrs Bhakcu lost any pride in her husband. Whenever you listened to the rows between Mrs Bhakcu and Mrs Morgan, you realised that Bhakcu was still his wife’s lord and master.
Mrs Morgan would say, ‘I hear your husband talking in his sleep last night, loud loud.’
‘He wasn’t talking,’ Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘he was singing.’
‘Singing? Hahahahaaah! You know something, Mrs Bhakcu?’
‘What, Mrs Morgan? ’
‘If your husband sing for his supper, both of all you starve like hell.’
‘He know a damn lot more than any of the ignorant man it have in this street, you hear. He could read and write, you know. English and Hindi. How you so ignorant you don’t know that the Ramayana is a holy book? If you coulda understand all the good thing he singing, you wouldn’t be talking all this nonsense you talking now, you hear.’
‘How your husband this morning, anyway? He fix any new cars lately?’
‘I not going to dirty my mouth arguing with you here, you hear. He know how to fix his car. Is a wonder nobody ain’t tell your husband where he can fix all his so-call fireworks.’
* * *
Mrs Bhakcu used to boast that Bhakcu read the Ramayana two or three times a month. ‘It have some parts he know by heart,’ she said.
But that was little consolation, for money wasn’t coming in. The man she had hired to drive the second taxi was playing the fool. She said, ‘He robbing me like hell. He say that the taxi making so little money I owe him now.’ She sacked the driver and sold the car.
She used all her financial flair. She began rearing hens. That failed because a lot of the hens were stolen, the rest attacked by street dogs, and Bhakcu hated the smell anyway. She began selling bananas and oranges, but she did that more for her own enjoyment than for the little money it brought in.
My mother said, ‘Why Bhakcu don’t go out and get a work?’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘But how you want that?’
My mother said, ‘I don’t want it. I was thinking about you.’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘You could see he working with all the rude and crude people it have here in Port of Spain?’
My mother said, ‘Well, he have to do something. People don’t pay to see a man crawling under a motor-car or singing Ramayana?’
Mrs Bhakcu nodded and looked sad.
My mother said, ‘But what I saying at all? You sure Bhakcu know the Ramayana?’
‘I sure sure.’
My mother said, ‘Well, it easy easy. He is a Brahmin, he know the Ramayana, and he have a car. Is easy for him to become a pundit, a real proper pundit.’
Mrs Bhakcu clapped her hands. ‘Is a first-class idea. Hindu pundits making a lot of money these days.’
So Bhakcu became a pundit.
He still tinkered with his car. He had to stop beating Mrs Bhakcu with the cricket bat, but he was happy.
I was haunted by thoughts of the dhoti-clad Pundit Bhakcu, crawling under a car, attending to a crank-shaft, while poor Hindus waited for him to attend to their souls.
14. CAUTION
It was not until 1947 that Bolo-believed that the war was over. Up till then he used to say, ‘Is only a lot of propaganda. Just lies for black people.’
In 1947 the Americans began pulling down their camp in the George V Park and many people were getting sad.
I went to see Bolo one Sunday and while he was cutting my hair he said, ‘I hear the war over.’
I said, ‘So I hear too. But I still have my doubts.’
Bolo said, ‘I know what you mean. These people is master of propaganda, but the way I look at it is this. If they was still fighting they woulda want to keep the camp.’
‘But they not keeping the camp,’ I said.
Bolo said, ‘Exactly. Put two and two together and what you get? Tell me, what you get?’
I said, ‘Four.’
He clipped my hair thoughtfully for a few moments.
He said, ‘Well, I glad the war over.’
When I paid for my trim I said, ‘What you think we should do now, Mr Bolo? You think we should celebrate?’
He said, ‘Gimme time, man. Gimme time. This is a big thing. I have to think it over.’
And there the matter rested.
I remember the night when the news of peace reached Port of Spain. People just went wild and there was a carnival in the streets. A new calypso sprang out of nothing and everybody was dancing in the streets to the tune of:
All day and all night Miss Mary Ann
Down by the river-side she taking man.
Bolo looked at the dancers and said, ‘Stupidness! Stupidness! How black people so stupid?’
I said, ‘But you ain’t hear, Mr Bolo? The war over.’
He spat. ‘How you know? You was fighting it?’
‘But it come over on the radio and I read it in the papers.’
Bolo laughed. He said, ‘Anybody would think you was still a little boy. You mean you come so big and you still does believe anything you read in the papers?’
I had heard this often before. Bolo was sixty and the only truth he had discovered seemed to be, ‘You mustn’t believe anything you read in the papers.’
It was his whole philosophy, and it didn’t make him happy. He was the saddest man in the street.
I think Bolo was born sad. Certainly I never saw him laugh except in a sarcastic way, and I saw him at least once a week for eleven years. He was a tall man, not thin, with a face that was a caricature of sadness, the mouth curling downwards, the eyebrows curving downwards, the eyes big and empty of expression.
It was an amazement to me that Bolo made a living at all after he had stopped barbering. I suppose he would be described in a census as a carrier. His cart was the smallest thing of its kind I knew.
It was a little box on two wheels and he pushed it himself, pushed with his long body in such an attitude of resignation and futility you wondered why he pushed it at all. On this cart he could take just about two or three sacks of flour or sugar.
On Sundays Bolo became a barber again, and if he was proud of anything he was proud of his barbering.
Often Bolo said to me, ‘You know Samuel?’
Samuel was the most successful barber in the district. He was so rich he took a week’s holiday every year, and he liked everybody to know it.
I said, ‘Yes, I know Samuel. But I don’t like him to touch my hair at all at all. He can’t cut hair. He does zog up my head.’
Bolo said, ‘You know who teach Samuel all he know about cutting hair? You know?’
I shook my head.
‘I. I teach Samuel. He couldn’t even shave hisself when he start barbering. He come crying and begging, “Mr Bolo, Mr Bolo, teach me how to cut people hair, I beg you.’ ‘Well, I teach him, and look what happen, eh. Samuel rich rich, and I still living in one room in this break-down old house. Samuel have a room where he does cut hair, I have to cut hair in the open under this mango tree.’
I said, ‘But it nice outside, it better than sitting down in a hot room. But why you stop cutting hair regular, Mr Bolo?’