Then there were the sights of the town Boyee and Errol introduced me to. One night, not long after I began working, they took me to a place near Marine Square. We climbed to the first floor and found ourselves in a small crowded room lit by green bulbs. The green light seemed as thick as jelly. There were many women all about the room, just waiting and looking. A big sign said: OBSCENELANGUAGE FORBIDDEN.
We had a drink at the bar, a thick sweet drink.
Errol asked me, ‘Which one of the women you like?’
I understood immediately, and I felt disgusted. I ran out of the room and went home, a little sick, a little frightened. I said to myself, ‘You must get over this.’
Next night I went to the club again. And again.
We made wild parties and took rum and women to Maracas Bay for all-night sessions.
‘You getting too wild,’ my mother said.
I paid her no attention until the time I drank so much in one evening that I remained drunk for two whole days afterwards. When I sobered up, I made a vow neither to smoke nor drink again.
I said to my mother, ‘Is not my fault really. Is just Trinidad. What else anybody can do here except drink?’
About two months later my mother said, ‘You must come with me next week. We going to see Ganesh Pundit.’
Ganesh Pundit had given up mysticism for a long time. He had taken to politics and was doing very nicely. He was a minister of something or the other in the Government, and I heard people saying that he was in the running for the M.B.E.
We went to his big house in St Clair and we found the great man, not dressed in dhoti and koortah, as in the mystic days, but in an expensive-looking lounge suit.
He received my mother with a good deal of warmth.
He said, ‘I do what I could do.’
My mother began to cry.
‘To me Ganesh said, What you want to go abroad to 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.’
Ganesh said, ‘All right. You think a little bit.’
My mother was crying her thanks to Ganesh.
I said, ‘I know what I want to study. Engineering.’ I was thinking about my uncle Bhakcu.
‘Ganesh laughed and said, What you know about engineering?’
I said, ‘Right now, nothing. But I could put my mind to it.’
‘My mother said, Why don’t you want to take up law?’
I thought of Chittaranjan and his brown suit and I said, ‘No, not law.’
Ganesh said, ‘It have only one scholarship remaining. For drugs.’
I said, ‘But I don’t want to be a druggist. I don’t want to put on a white jacket and sell lipstick to woman.’
Ganesh smiled.
My mother said, ‘You mustn’t mind the boy, Pundit. He will study drugs.’ And to me, ‘You could study anything if you put your mind to it.’
Ganesh said, ‘Think. It mean going to London. It mean seeing snow and seeing the Thames and seeing the big Parliament.’
I said, ‘All right. I go study drugs.’
My mother said, ‘I don’t know what I could do to thank you, Pundit.’
And, crying, she counted out two hundred dollars and gave it to Ganesh. She said, ‘I know it ain’t much, Pundit. But it is all I have. Is a long time I did saving it up.’
Ganesh took the money sadly and he said, ‘You mustn’t let that worry you. You must give only what you can afford.’
My mother kept on crying and in the end even Ganesh broke down.
When my mother saw this, she dried her tears and said, ‘If you only know, Pundit, how worried I is. I have to find so much money for so much thing these days, and I don’t really know how I going to make out.’
Ganesh now stopped crying. My mother began to cry afresh.
This went on for a bit until Ganesh gave back a hundred dollars to my mother. He was sobbing and shaking and he said, ‘Take this and buy some good clothes for the boy.’
I said, ‘Pundit, you is a good man.’
This affected him strongly. He said, ‘Is when you come back from England, with all sort of certificate and paper, a big man and a big druggist, is then I go come round and ask you for what you owe me.’
I told Hat I was going away.
He said, ‘What for? Labouring?’
I said, ‘The Government give me a scholarship to study drugs.’
He said, ‘Is you who wangle that?’
I said, ‘Not me. My mother.’
Eddoes said, ‘Is a good thing. A druggist fellow I know — picking up rubbish for him for years now-this fellow rich like anything. Man, the man just rolling in money.’
The news got to Elias and he took it badly. He came to the gate one evening and shouted, ‘Bribe, bribe. Is all you could do. Bribe.’
My mother shouted back, ‘The only people who does complain about bribe is those who too damn poor to have anything to bribe with.’
In about a month everything was fixed for my departure. The Trinidad Government wrote to the British Consul in New York about me. The British Consul got to know about me. The Americans gave me a visa after making me swear that I wouldn’t overthrow their government by armed force.
The night before I left, my mother gave a little party. It was something like a wake. People came in looking sad and telling me how much they were going to miss me, and then they forgot about me and attended to the serious business of eating and drinking.
Laura kissed me on the cheek and gave me a medallion of St Christopher. She asked me to wear it around my neck. I promised that I would and I put the medallion in my pocket. I don’t know what happened to it. Mrs Bhakcu gave gave me a sixpenny piece which she said she had had specially consecrated. It didn’t look different from other sixpenny pieces and I suppose I spent it. Titus Hoyt forgave me everything and brought me Volume Two of the Everyman edition of Tennyson. Eddoes gave me a wallet which he swore was practically new. Boyee and Errol gave me nothing. Hat gave me a carton of cigarettes. He said, ‘I know you say you ain’t smoking again. But take this, just in case you change your mind.’ The result was that I began smoking again.
Uncle Bhakcu spent the night fixing the van which was to take me to the airport next morning. From time to time I ran out and begged him to take it easy. He said he thought the carburettor was playing the fool.
Next morning Bhakcu got up early and was at it again. We had planned to leave at eight, but at ten to, Bhakcu was still tinkering. My mother was in a panic and Mrs Bhakcu was growing impatient.
Bhakcu was underneath the car, whistling a couplet from the Ramayana. He came out, laughed, and said, ‘You getting frighten, eh?’
Presently we were all ready. Bhakcu had done little damage to the engine and it still worked. My bags were taken to the van and I was ready to leave the house for the last time.
My mother said, ‘Wait.’
She placed a brass jar of milk in the middle of the gateway.
I cannot understand, even now, how it happened. The gateway was wide, big enough for a car, and the jar, about four inches wide, was in the middle. I thought I was walking at the edge of the gateway, far away from the jar. And yet I kicked the jar over.