The Mystic Masseur

by V. S. Naipaul

  When it was all over – his father burnt, the ashes scattered, and everybody, including his aunt, gone away – Ramlogan said, ‘Well, Ganesh, you is a man now.’

  Ganesh took stock of his position. First he considered money. He owed Mrs Cooper eleven dollars for two weeks board and lodging, and he found that of his own money he had no more than sixteen dollars and thirty-seven cents. He had about twenty dollars to collect from the school, but he had made up his mind not to ask for it and to return it if it were sent him. He had not stopped at the time to think who had paid for the cremation; it was only later, just before his marriage, he found that his aunt had paid for it. Money was not an immediate problem, now that he had the oil royalties – nearly sixty dollars a month – which made him practically a rich man in a place like Fourways. Still, the royalties could dry up at any moment; and although he was twenty-one, and educated, he had no means of earning a living.

  One thing gave him hope. As he wrote afterwards in The Years of Guilt: ‘In conversation with Shri Ramlogan I learnt a curious fact. My father had died that Monday morning between five minutes past ten and a quarter past ten – just about the time, in short, when I had the dispute with Miller, and was deciding to give up my teaching job. I was much struck by the coincidence, and it was only then, for the first time, I felt I had something big ahead of me. For it was indeed a singular conspiracy of events that pulled me away from the emptiness of urban life back into the stimulating peace and quiet of the country.’

  Ganesh was happy to get away from Port of Spain. He had spent five years there but he had never become used to it or felt part of it. It was too big, too noisy, too alien. It was better to be back in Fourways, where he was known and respected and had the double glamour of a college education and a father recently dead. They called him ‘sahib’, and some parents encouraged their children to call him ‘Teacher Ganesh’, but this brought back unhappy memories and Ganesh made them stop it.

  ‘It wrong to call me that,’ he said, adding cryptically, ‘I feel I was teaching the wrong things to the wrong people.’

  For more than two months he loafed. He didn’t know what he wanted to do or what he could do, and he was beginning to doubt the value of doing anything at all. He ate at the houses of people he knew and, for the rest, merely wandered around. He bought a second-hand bicycle and went for long rides in the hilly lanes near Fourways.

  People said, ‘He doing a lot of thinking, that boy Ganesh. He full with worries, but still he thinking thinking all the time.’

  Ganesh would have liked his thoughts to be deep and it disturbed him that they were simple things, concerned with passing trifles. He began to feel a little strange and feared he was going mad. He knew the Fourways people, and they knew him and liked him, but now he sometimes felt cut off from them.

  But he couldn’t escape Ramlogan. Ramlogan had a sixteen-year-old daughter he wanted married, and wanted married to Ganesh. It was an open secret in the village. Ganesh was always getting little gifts from Ramlogan – a special avocado pear, a tin of Canadian salmon or Australian butter – and whenever he passed the shop Ramlogan was sure to call him in.

  ‘Eh, eh, sahib. What happening that you passing without saying a word? People go think we vex.’

  Ganesh could not find it in his heart to refuse Ramlogan’s invitation, though he knew that whenever he looked at the doorway leading to the room at the back of the shop he was going to see Ramlogan’s daughter peering through the grimy lace curtains. He had seen her on the night of his father’s death, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her then. Now he saw that the girl behind the curtains was tall; sometimes, when she peered too closely, he could see her eyes wide with mischief, simplicity, and awe, all at once.

  He couldn’t link the girl with her father. She was thin and fair, Ramlogan fat and almost black. He seemed to have only one shirt, a dirty striped blue thing which he wore collarless and open down his hairy chest to just where his round and big belly began. He looked of a piece with his shop. Ganesh got the impression that every morning someone went over everything in it – scales, Ramlogan, and all – with a greased rag.

  ‘It ain’t dirty,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It just look dirty. Sit down, sahib, sit down. You ain’t have to blow any dust or anything away. You just sit down on that bench against the wall and let we have a good chat. I is not a educated man, but I like to hear educated people talk.’

  Ganesh, reluctantly seated, did not at once respond.

  ‘It have nothing like a good chat,’ Ramlogan began, slipping off his stool and dusting the counter with his fat hands. ‘I like hearing educated people giving off ideas.’

  Meeting with further silence, Ramlogan remounted his stool and spoke about the death. ‘Your father, sahib, was a good man.’ His voice was heavy with grief. ‘Still, we give him a good funeral. Fust funeral I attend in Fourways, you know, sahib. I see a lot of funeral in my time, but I go say now and I don’t care who hear me say it, that your father funeral was the best I see. Smatterer fact, Leela – my daughter, you know, second and best – Leela say is the best funeral she see. She say she count more than five hundred people from all over Trinidad at the funeral, and it had a lot of cars following the body. People did like your father, sahib.’

  Then they both fell silent, Ramlogan out of respect for the dead, Ganesh because he didn’t know what he was expected to say; and the conversation ended.

  ‘I like these little chats we does have, sahib,’ Ramlogan would say, walking to the door with Ganesh. ‘I ain’t educated meself but I like to hear educated people giving off ideas. Well, sahib, why you don’t drop in again? Let we say, tomorrow?’

  Ramlogan later solved the conversation problem by pretending that he couldn’t read and getting Ganesh to read the newspapers for him; and he listened, elbows on the counter, his hands holding his greasy head, his eyes filling with tears.

  ‘This reading, sahib, is a great great thing,’ Ramlogan once said. ‘Just think. You take up this paper that to me just look like a dirty sheet with all sort of black mark and scrawl all over the place’ – he gave a little self-deprecating laugh – ‘you take this up and – eh! eh! – before I have time to even scratch my back, man, I hear you reading from it and making a lot of sense with it. A great thing, sahib.’

  Another day he said, ‘You does read real sweet, sahib. I could just shut my eye and listen. You know what Leela tell me last night, after I close up the shop? Leela ask me, “Pa, who was the man talking in the shop this morning? He sound just like a radio I hear in San Fernando.” I tell she, “Girl, that wasn’t a radio you was hearing. That was Ganesh Ramsumair. Pundit Ganesh Ramsumair,” I tell she.’

  ‘You making joke.’

  ‘Ah, sahib. Why I should make joke with you, eh? You want me call Leela here self, and you could ask she?’

  Ganesh heard a titter behind the lace curtain. He looked down quickly at the floor and saw it littered with empty cigarette boxes and discarded paper bags. ‘Nah, nah. Don’t bother the girl.’

  A week after that Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Something happen to Leela foot, sahib. I wonder if you would mind having a look at it.’

  ‘I ain’t a doctor, man. I ain’t know anything about people foot.’

  Ramlogan laughed and almost slapped Ganesh on the back. ‘Man, how you could say a thing like that, sahib? Ain’t you was learning learning all all the time at the town college? And too besides, don’t think I forgetting that your father was the best massager we had.’

  For years old Mr Ramsumair had this reputation until, his luck running out, he massaged a young girl and killed her. The Princes Town doctor diagnosed appendicitis and Mr Ramsumair had to spend a lot of money to keep out of trouble. He never massaged afterwards.

  ‘Wasn’t his fault,’ Ramlogan said, leading Ganesh behind the counter to the curtained doorway. ‘He was still the best massager we ever had, and I too too proud that I know his one and only son.’

  Leela was sitting in a hammock made from
a sugar sack. She was wearing a clean cotton frock and her long black hair looked washed and combed.

  ‘Why you don’t have a look at Leela foot, sahib?’

  Ganesh looked at Leela’s foot, and a curious thing happened. ‘I just seemed to touch it,’ he wrote, ‘and it was all right.’

  Ramlogan did not hide his admiration. ‘Like I tell you, sahib. You is your father son. Is only special people who could do that sort of thing. I wonder why you don’t take up massaging.’

  Ganesh remembered the queer feeling he had of being separated from the village people, and he felt that there was something in what Ramlogan said.

  He didn’t know what Leela thought because as soon as he had fixed her foot she giggled and ran away.

  Thereafter Ganesh was a more willing visitor at Ramlogan’s, and with every visit he noted improvements in the shop. The most spectacular of these was the introduction of a new glass case. It was given pride of place in the middle of the counter; it was so bright and clean it looked out of place.

  ‘Is really Leela idea,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It does keep out the flies from the cakes and it more modern.’

  The flies now congregated inside the case. Presently a pane was broken and patched up again with brown paper. The glass case now belonged.

  Ramlogan said, ‘I doing my best to make this Fourways a modern place – as you see – but is hard, man, sahib.’

  Ganesh still went out cycling, his thoughts maundering between himself, his future, and life itself; and it was during one of his afternoon wanderings that he met the man who was to have a decisive influence on his life.

  The first meeting was not happy. It happened on the dusty road that begins at Princes Town and wriggles like a black snake through the green of sugar-cane to Debe. He was not expecting to see anyone on the road at that dead time of day when the sun was almost directly overhead and the wind had ceased to rustle the sugar-cane. He had passed the level-crossing and was freewheeling down the incline just before the small village of Parrot Trace when a man ran into the middle of the road at the bottom of the incline and waved to him to stop. He was a tall man and looked altogether odd, even for Parrot Trace. He was covered here and there in a yellow cotton robe like a Buddhist monk and he had a staff and a bundle.

  ‘My brother!’ the man shouted in Hindi.

  Ganesh stopped because he couldn’t do anything else; and, because he was afraid of the man, he was rude. ‘Who you is, eh?’

  ‘Indian,’ the man said in English, with an accent Ganesh had never heard before. His long thin face was fairer than any Indian’s and his teeth were bad.

  ‘You only lying,’ Ganesh said. ‘Go away and let me go.’

  The man tightened his face into a smile. ‘I am Indian. Kashmiri. Hindu too.’

  ‘So why for you wearing this yellow thing, then?’

  The man fidgeted with his staff and looked down at his robe. ‘It isn’t the right thing, you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps in Kashmir. Not here.’

  ‘But the pictures – they look like this. I would very much like to talk with you,’ he added, with sudden warmth.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ganesh said soothingly, and before the man could say anything he was on his bicycle saddle and pedalling away.

  When Ramlogan heard about the encounter he said, ‘That was Mr Stewart.’

  ‘He just did look crazy crazy to me. He had funny cateyes that frighten me, and you shoulda see the way the sweat was running down his red face. Like he not used to the heat.’

  ‘I did meet him in Penal,’ Ramlogan said. ‘Just before I move here. Eight nine months back. Everybody say he mad.’

  Ganesh learnt that Mr Stewart had recently appeared in South Trinidad dressed as a Hindu mendicant. He claimed that he was Kashmiri. Nobody knew where he came from or how he lived, but it was generally assumed that he was English, a millionaire, and a little mad.

  ‘He a little bit like you, you know, sahib. He does think a lot. But I say, when you have so much money you could damn well afford to do a lot of thinking. Sahib, my people make me shame the way they does rob the man just because he have a lot of money and like to give it away. He does stay in one village, give away money, and then he does move somewhere else and start giving there.’

  When Ganesh next saw Mr Stewart, in the village of Swampland, Mr Stewart was in distress, the object of a scrimmage of little boys who were doing their best to unwind his yellow robe. Mr Stewart was not resisting or protesting. He was simply looking about him in a bemused way. Ganesh quickly got off his cycle and picked up a handful of blue-metal stone from a pile left on the verge by the Public Works Department and no doubt given up for lost.

  ‘Don’t hurt them,’ Mr Stewart shouted, as Ganesh pursued the boys. ‘They are only children. Put down the stones.’

  The boys routed, Ganesh came up to Mr Stewart. ‘You all right?’

  ‘My dress is a little dusty,’ Mr Stewart admitted, ‘but I am still sound in wind and limb.’ He brightened. ‘I knew I was going to meet you again. Do you remember our first meeting?’

  ‘I really sorry about that.’

  ‘Oh, I understand. But we must have a talk soon. I feel I can talk to you. The vibrations are right. No, don’t deny it. The vibrations are there all right.’

  Ganesh smiled at the compliment and in the end accepted an invitation to tea. He did so only out of politeness and had no intention of going, but a talk with Ramlogan made him change his mind.

  ‘He is a lonely man, sahib,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It have nobody here who really like him and, believe me, I don’t think he half as mad as people say. I would go if I was you. You go get on all right with him, seeing that both of you is educated people.’

  So Ganesh went to the thatched hut outside Parrot Trace where Mr Stewart now lived. From the outside it looked like any other hut, grass roof and mud walls, but inside it was all order and simplicity. There was a small bed, a small table, and a small chair.

  ‘A man needs no more,’ Mr Stewart said.

  Ganesh was about to sit in the chair without being asked when Mr Stewart said, ‘Nooh! Not that one.’ He lifted up the chair and showed it. ‘Something I made myself, but I fear it is a trifle unreliable. Made from local materials, you know.’

  Ganesh was more interested in Mr Stewart’s clothes. He was dressed conventionally, khaki trousers and white shirt, and there was no sign anywhere of the yellow robe.

  Mr Stewart divined Ganesh’s interest. ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear. No spiritual significance, I’ve decided.’

  Mr Stewart showed Ganesh some day statuettes he had made of Hindu gods and goddesses and Ganesh was astonished, not by the artistry, but by the fact that Mr Stewart had made them at all.

  Mr Stewart pointed to a water-colour on the wall. ‘I’ve been working on that picture for years. Once or twice a year I get a new idea for it and it has to be drawn all over again.’

  The water-colour, done in blues and yellows and browns, depicted a number of brown hands reaching out for a yellow light in the top left-hand corner.

  ‘This, I think, is rather interesting.’ Ganesh followed Mr Stewart’s finger and saw a blue shrunk hand curling backwards from the yellow light. ‘Some see Illumination,’ Mr Stewart explained. ‘But they do sometimes get burnt and withdraw.’

  ‘Why all the hands brown?’

  ‘Hindu hands. Only people really striving after the indefinite today. You look worried.’

  ‘Yes, I worried.’

  ‘About life?’

  ‘I think so,’ Ganesh said. ‘Yes, I think I worried about life.’

  ‘Doubts?’ Mr Stewart probed.

  Ganesh only smiled because he didn’t know what Mr Stewart meant.

  Mr Stewart sat down on the bed next to him and said, ‘What do you do?’

  Ganesh laughed. ‘Nothing at all. I guess I just doing a lot of thinking.’

  ‘Meditating?’

  ‘Yes, meditating.’

  Mr Stewart jumped
up and clasped his hands before the water-colour. ‘Typical!’ he said, and closed his eyes as if in ecstasy. ‘Typical!’

  Then he opened his eyes and said, ‘But now – tea.’

  He had taken a lot of trouble to prepare tea. There were sandwiches of three sorts, biscuits, and cakes. And although Ganesh was beginning to like Mr Stewart and wanted to eat his food, all his Hindu instincts rose high and he was nauseated to bite into a cold egg-and-cress sandwich.

  Mr Stewart saw. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, I like it. But I more thirsty than hungry, that’s all.’

  They talked, and talked. Mr Stewart was anxious to learn all of Ganesh’s problems.

  ‘Don’t think you are wasting your time meditating,’ he said. ‘I know the things that are worrying you, and I think one day you may find the answer. One day you may even bring it all out in a book. If I weren’t so terribly afraid of getting involved I might have written a book myself. But you must find your own spiritual rhythm before you start doing anything. You must stop being worried about life.’

  ‘All right,’ Ganesh said.

  Mr Stewart talked like a man who had saved up conversation for years. He told Ganesh all about his life, his experiences in the First World War, his disillusionment, his rejection of Christianity. Ganesh was entranced. Apart from the insistence that he was a Kashmiri Hindu, Mr Stewart was as sane as any of the masters at the Queen’s Royal College; and as the afternoon wore on, his blue eyes ceased to be frightening and looked sad.

  ‘Why you don’t go to India then?’ Ganesh asked.

  ‘Politics. Don’t want to get involved in any way. You can’t imagine how soothing it is here. One day you may go to London – I pray not – and you will see how sick you can get gazing from your taxi at the stupid, cruel faces of the mob on the pavements. You can’t help being involved there. Here there is no such need.’

  The tropical night fell suddenly and Mr Stewart lit an oil lamp. The hut felt very small and very sad, and Ganesh was sorry that soon he had to go and leave Mr Stewart to his loneliness.