The Mystic Masseur

by V. S. Naipaul

  ‘King George got a hand,’ his aunt said.

  ‘A hand?’

  ‘She got a hand for sharing things out. Give King George a little penny cake and give she twelve children to share it out to, and you could bet your bottom dollar that King George share it fair and square.’

  ‘You know she, then?’

  ‘Know she! Is I who take up King George. Mark you, I think I was very lucky coming across she. Now I take she everywhere with me.’

  ‘She related to us?’

  ‘You could say so. Phulbassia is a sort of cousin to King George and you is a sort of cousin to Phulbassia.’

  The aunt belched, not the polite after-dinner belch, but a long, stuttering thing. ‘Is the wind,’ she explained without apology. ‘It have a long time now – since your father dead, come to think of it – I suffering from this wind.’

  ‘You see a doctor?’

  ‘Doctor? They does only make up things. One of them tell me – you know what? – that I have a lazy liver. Is something I asking myself a long time now: how a liver could be lazy, eh?’

  She belched again, said, ‘You see?’ and rubbed her hands over her breasts.

  Ganesh thought of this aunt as Lady Belcher and then as The Great Belcher. In a few days she had a devastating effect on the other women in the house. They all began belching and rubbing their breasts and complaining about the wind. All except King George.

  Ganesh was glad when the time came for him to be anointed with saffron. For those days he was confined to his room, where his father’s body had lain that night, and where now The Great Belcher, King George, and a few other anonymous women gathered to rub him down. When they left the room they sang Hindi wedding songs of a most pessimistic nature, and Ganesh wondered how Leela was putting up with her own seclusion and anointing.

  All day long he remained in his room, consoling himself with The Science of Thought Review. He read through all the numbers Mr Stewart had given him, some of them many times over. All day he heard the children romping, squealing, and being beaten; the mothers beating, shouting, and thumping about on the floor.

  On the day before the wedding, when the women had come in to rub him down for the last time, he asked The Great Belcher, ‘I never think about it before, but what those people outside eating? Who paying for it?’

  ‘You.’

  He almost sat up in bed, but King George’s strong arm kept him down.

  ‘Ramlogan did say that we mustn’t get you worried about that,’ The Great Belcher said. ‘He say your head hot with enough worries already. But King George looking after everything. She got a account with Ramlogan. He go settle with you after the wedding.’

  ‘Oh God! I ain’t even married the man daughter yet, and already he start!’

  Fourways was nearly as excited at the wedding as it had been at the funeral. Hundreds of people, from Fourways and elsewhere, were fed at Ramlogan’s. There were dancers, drummers, and singers, for those who were not interested in the details of the night-long ceremony. The yard behind Ramlogan’s shop was beautifully illuminated with all sorts of lights, except electric ones; and the decorations – mainly fruit hanging from coconut-palm arches – were pleasing. All this for Ganesh, and Ganesh felt it and was pleased. The thought of marriage had at first embarrassed him, then, when he spoke with his aunt, awed him; now he was simply thrilled.

  All through the ceremony he had to pretend, with everyone else, that he had never seen Leela. She sat at his side veiled from head to toe, until the blanket was thrown over them and he unveiled her face. In the mellow light under the pink blanket she was as a stranger. She was no longer the giggling girl simpering behind the lace curtains. Already she looked chastened and impassive, a good Hindu wife.

  Shortly afterwards it was over, and they were man and wife. Leela was taken away and Ganesh was left alone to face the kedgeree-eating ceremony the next morning.

  Still in all his bridegroom’s regalia, satin robes, and tasselled crown, he sat down on some blankets in the yard, before the plate of kedgeree. It looked white and unpalatable, and he knew it would be easy to resist any temptation to touch it.

  Ramlogan was the first to offer money to induce Ganesh to eat. He was a little haggard after staying awake all night, but he looked pleased and happy enough when he placed five twenty-dollar bills in the brass plate next to the kedgeree. He stepped back, folded his arms, looked from the money to Ganesh to the small group standing by, and smiled.

  He stood smiling for nearly two minutes; but Ganesh didn’t even look at the kedgeree.

  ‘Give the boy money, man,’ Ramlogan cried to the people around. ‘Give him money, man. Come on, don’t act as if you is all poor poor as church-rat.’ He moved among them, laughing, and rallying them. Some put down small amounts in the brass plate.

  Still Ganesh sat, serene and aloof, like an over-dressed Buddha.

  A little crowd began to gather.

  ‘The boy have sense, man.’ Anxiety broke into Ramlogan’s voice. ‘When you think a college education is these days?’

  He put down another hundred dollars. ‘Eat, boy, eat it up. I don’t want you to starve. Not yet, anyway.’ He laughed, but no one laughed with him.

  Ganesh didn’t eat.

  He heard a man saying, ‘Well, this thing was bound to happen some day.’

  People said, ‘Come on, Ramlogan. Give the boy money, man. What you think he sitting down there for? To take out his photo?’

  Ramlogan gave a short, forced laugh, and lost his temper. ‘If he think he going to get any more money from me he damn well mistaken. Let him don’t eat. Think I care if he starve? Think I care?’

  He walked away.

  The crowd grew bigger; the laughter grew louder.

  Ramlogan came back and the crowd cheered him.

  He put down two hundred dollars on the brass plate and, before he rose, whispered to Ganesh, ‘Remember your promise, sahib. Eat, boy; eat, son; eat, sahib; eat, pundit sahib. I beg you, eat.’

  A man shouted, ‘No! I not going to eat!’

  Ramlogan stood up and turned around. ‘You, haul your tail away from here quick, quick, before I break it up for you. Don’t meddle in what don’t concern you.’

  The crowd roared.

  Ramlogan bent down again to whisper. ‘You see, sahib, how you making me shame.’ This time his whisper promised tears. ‘You see, sahib, what you doing to my cha’acter and sensa values.’

  Ganesh didn’t move.

  The crowd was beginning to treat him like a hero.

  In the end Ganesh got from Ramlogan: a cow and a heifer, fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and a house in Fuente Grove. Ramlogan also cancelled the bill for the food he had sent to Ganesh’s house.

  The ceremony ended at about nine in the morning; but Ramlogan was sweating long before then.

  ‘The boy and I was only having a joke,’ he said again and again at the end. ‘He done know long time now what I was going to give him. We was only making joke, you know.’

  Ganesh returned home after the wedding. It would be three days before Leela could come to live with him and in that time The Great Belcher tried to restore order to the house. Most of the guests had left as suddenly as they had arrived; though from time to time Ganesh still saw a straggler who wandered about the house and ate.

  ‘King George gone to Arima yesterday,’ The Great Belcher told him. ‘Somebody dead there yesterday. I going tomorrow myself, but I send King George ahead to arrange everything.’

  Then she decided to give Ganesh the facts of life.

  ‘These modern girls is hell self,’ she said. ‘And from what I see and hear, this Leela is a modern girl. Anyway, you got to make the best of what is yours.’

  She paused to belch. ‘All she want to make she straight as a arrow is a little blows every now and then.’

  Ganesh said, ‘You know, I think Ramlogan really vex with me now after the kedgeree business.’

  ‘Wasn’t a nice thing to do, but it serve Ramlo
gan right. When a man start taking over woman job, match-making, he deserve all he get.’

  ‘But I go have to leave here now. You know Fuente Grove? It have a house there Ramlogan give me.’

  ‘But what you want in a small outa the way place like that? All the work it have doing there is work in the cane-field.’

  ‘It ain’t that I want to do.’ Ganesh paused, and added hesitantly, ‘I thinking of taking up massaging people.’

  She laughed so much she belched. ‘This wind, man, and then you – you want to kill me or what, boy? Massaging people! What you know about massaging people?’

  ‘Pa was a good massager and I know all he did know.’

  ‘But you must have a hand for that sort of thing. Think what go happen if any-and everybody start running round saying, “I thinking of taking up massaging people.” It go have so much massagers in Trinidad they go have to start massaging one another.’

  ‘I feel I have a hand for it. Just like King George.’

  ‘She have her own sort of hand. She born that way.’

  Ganesh told her about Leela’s foot.

  She twisted her mouth. ‘It sound good. But a man like you should be doing something else. Bookwork, man.’

  ‘I going to do that too.’ And then it came out again. ‘I thinking of writing some books.’

  ‘Good thing. It have money in books, you know. I suppose the man who write the Macdonald Farmer’s Almanac just peeling money. Why you don’t try your hand at something like the Napoleon Book of Fate? I just feel you could do that sort of thing good.’

  ‘People go want to buy that sort of book?’

  ‘Is exactly what Trinidad want, boy. Take all the Indians in the towns. They ain’t have any pundit or anything near them, you know. How they go know what to do and what not to do, when and not when? They just have to guess.’

  Ganesh was thoughtful. ‘Yes, is that self I go do. A little bit of massaging and a little bit of writing.’

  ‘I know a boy who could make anything you write sell as hot cakes all over Trinidad. Let we say, you selling the book at two shillings, forty-eight cents. You give the boy six cents a book. Let we say now, you print four five thousand –’

  ‘It make about two thousand dollars, but – wait, man! I ain’t even write the book yet.’

  ‘I know you, boy. Once you put your mind to it, you go write nice nice books.’

  She belched.

  As soon as Leela had come to live with Ganesh and the last guest had left the village, Ramlogan declared war on Ganesh and that very evening ran through Fourways crying out, chanting, his declaration. ‘See how he rob me. Me with my wife dead, me now without children, me a poor widow. See how he forget everything I do for him. He forget all that I give him, he forget how I help burn his father, he forget all the help I give him. See how he rob me. See how he shame me. Watch me here now, so help me God, if I don’t here and now do for the son of a bitch.’

  Ganesh ordered Leela to bolt the doors and windows and put out the lights. He took one of his father’s old walking-sticks and remained in the middle of the front room.

  Leela began to cry. ‘The man is my own father and here you is taking up big stick to beat him.’

  Ganesh heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, you damn little piss-in-tail boy, you want property, eh? You know the only place you could take my property? You going to take it away on your chest, six foot of it.’

  Ganesh said, ‘Leela, in the bedroom it have a little copy-book. Go bring it. And it have a pencil in the table drawer. Bring that too.’

  She brought the book and pencil and Ganesh wrote, Carry away his property on my chest. Below he wrote the date. He had no particular reason for doing this except that he was afraid and felt he had to do something.

  Leela cried. ‘You working magic on my own father!’

  Ganesh said, ‘Leela, why you getting ‘fraid? We not staying in this place long. In a few days we moving to Fuente Grove. Nothing to ‘fraid.’

  Leela continued to cry and Ganesh loosened his leather belt and beat her.

  She cried out, ‘Oh God! Oh God! He go kill me today self!’

  It was their first beating, a formal affair done without anger on Ganesh’s part or resentment on Leela’s; and although it formed no part of the marriage ceremony itself, it meant much to both of them. It meant that they had grown up and become independent. Ganesh had become a man; Leela a wife as privileged as any other big woman. Now she too would have tales to tell of her husband’s beatings; and when she went home she would be able to look sad and sullen as every woman should.

  The moment was precious.

  Leela cried for a bit and said, ‘Man, I really getting worried about Pa.’

  This was another first: she had called him ‘man’. There could be no doubt about it now: they were adults. Three days before Ganesh was hardly better than a boy, anxious and diffident. Now he had suddenly lost these qualities and he thought, ‘My father was right. I shoulda get married long before now.’

  Leela said, ‘Man, I getting really worried about Pa. Tonight he not going to do you anything. He just go shout a lot and go away, but he won’t forget you. I see him horsewhip a man in Penal really bad one time.’

  They heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, this is the last time I warning you.’

  Leela said, ‘Man, you must do something to make Pa feel nice. Otherwise I don’t know.’

  Ramlogan’s shout sounded hoarse now. ‘Ganesh, tonight self I sharpening up a cutlass for you. I make up my mind to send you to hospital and go to jail for you. Look out, I warning you.’

  And then, as Leela had said, Ramlogan went away.

  The next morning, after Ganesh had done his puja and eaten the first meal that Leela had cooked for him, he said, ‘Leela, you got any pictures of your father?’

  She was sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning rice for the midday meal. ‘Why you want it for?’ she asked with alarm.

  ‘You forgetting yourself, girl. Somebody make you a policeman now to ask me question? Is a old picture?’

  Leela wept over the rice. ‘Not so old, man. Two three years now Pa did go to San Fernando and Chong take out a photo of Pa by hisself and another one with Pa and Soomintra and me. Just before Soomintra did get married. They was pretty photos. Paintings behind and plants in front.’

  ‘I just want a picture of your father. What I don’t want is your tears.’

  He followed her to the bedroom, and while he put on his town clothes – khaki trousers, blue shirt, brown hat, brown shoes – Leela pulled out her suitcase, an Anchor Cigarettes coupons-gift, from under the bed and looked for the photograph.

  ‘Gimme,’ he said, when she had found it, and snatched it away. ‘This go settle your father.’

  She ran after him to the steps. ‘Where you going, man?’

  ‘Leela, you know, for a girl who ain’t married three days yet you too damn fast.’

  He had to pass Ramlogan’s shop. He took care to swing his father’s walking stick, and behaved as though the shop didn’t exist.

  And sure enough, he heard Ramlogan calling out, ‘Ganesh, you playing man this morning, eh? Swinging walking-stick as if you is some master-stickman. But, boy, when I get after you, you not going to run fast enough.’

  Ganesh walked past without a word.

  Leela confessed later that she had gone to the shop that morning to warn Ramlogan. She found him mounted on his stool and miserable.

  ‘Pa, I have something to tell you.’

  ‘I have nothing to do with you or your husband. I only want you to take a message to him. Tell him for me that Ramlogan say the only way he going to get my property is to take it away on his chest.’

  ‘He write that down last night in a copy-book. And then, Pa, this morning he ask me for a photo of you and he have it now.’

  Ramlogan slid, practically fell, off his stool. ‘Oh God! Oh God! I didn’t know he was that sort of man. He look so quiet.’ He stamped up
and down behind the counter. ‘Oh God! What I do to your husband to make him prosecute me in this way? What he going to do with the picture?’

  Leela was sobbing.

  Ramlogan looked at the glass case on the counter. ‘All that I do for him. Leela, I didn’t want any glass case in my shop.’

  ‘No, Pa, you didn’t want any glass case in the shop.’

  ‘It for he I get the glass case. Oh God! Leela, is only one thing he going to do with the picture. Work magic and obeah, Leela.’

  In his agitation Ramlogan was clutching at his hair, slapping his chest and belly, and beating on the counter. ‘And then he go want more property.’ Ramlogan’s voice palpitated with true anguish.

  Leela shrieked. ‘What you going to do to my husband, Pa? Is only three days now I married him.’

  ‘Soomintra, poor little Soomintra, she did tell me when we was going to take out the photos. “Pa, I don’t think we should take out any photos.” God, oh God! Leela, why I didn’t listen to poor little Soomintra?’

  Ramlogan passed a grubby hand over the brown-paper patch on the glass case, and shook away his tears.

  ‘And last night, Pa, he beat me.’

  ‘Come, Leela, come, daughter.’ He leaned over the counter and put his hands on her shoulder. ‘Is your fate, Leela. Is my fate too. We can’t fight it, Leela.’

  ‘Pa,’ Leela wailed, ‘what you going to do to him? He is my husband, you know.’

  Ramlogan withdrew his hands and wiped his eyes. He beat on the counter until the glass case rattled. ‘That is what they call education these days. They teaching a new subject. Pickpocketing.’

  Leela gave another shriek. ‘The man is my husband, Pa.’

  When, later that afternoon, Ganesh came back to Fourways, he was surprised to hear Ramlogan shouting, ‘Oh, sahib! Sahib! What happen that you passing without saying anything? People go think we vex.’