The Mystic Masseur

by V. S. Naipaul

  ‘But I was going to come later, man.’

  ‘Tell me, what go happen if somebody come to the shop and beat up little Suruj and Suruj Mooma and thief everything?’

  ‘Was going to come, Beharry. Only thing I was doing a little thinking first.’

  ‘No, you wasn’t. You just getting conceited now, that is all. Is the trouble with Indians all over the world.’

  ‘But this new thing I handling is something really big.’

  ‘You sure you could handle it? But look, you see how stupid I is, still letting myself be interested in your affairs! You could handle it?’

  ‘God will give me a little help.’

  ‘All right, all right. Give me all this flashy talk. But don’t come round begging me for anything, you hear.’

  And Beharry left.

  Ganesh read and thought deeply all that day and most of the night.

  ‘I don’t know why for you wasting all this time on one little black boy,’ Leela said. ‘Anybody would think you was a schoolchild doing homework.’

  When Ganesh saw the boy next morning he felt he had never seen anyone so tormented. It was torment heightened by a deep sense of helplessness. Though the boy was thin now and his arms looked bony and brittle, it was clear that he had once been strong and healthy. His eyes were dead, lack-lustre. In them you could see not the passing shock of momentary fear, but fear as a permanent state, fear so strong that it had ceased to thrill.

  The first thing Ganesh said to the boy was, ‘Look, son, you mustn’t worry. I want you to know that I can help you. You believe I can help you?’

  The boy didn’t move but it seemed to Ganesh that he had recoiled a little. ‘How I know that you not laughing at me, just as everybody else laughing at the back of their mind?’

  ‘You see me laughing? I believe in you, but you must believe in me too.’

  The boy looked down at Ganesh’s feet. ‘Something tell me you is a good man and I believe in you.’

  Ganesh asked the boy’s mother to leave the room and when she left he asked, ‘You see the cloud now?’

  The boy looked Ganesh in the face for the first time. ‘Yes.’ The voice was part whisper, part scream. ‘It here now and the hands it reaching out getting longer and longer.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Ganesh gave a sudden shriek. ‘I see it now too. Oh, God!’

  ‘You see it? You see it?’ The boy put his arms around Ganesh. ‘You see how it chasing me? You see the hands it have? You hear what it saying?’

  ‘You and me is one,’ Ganesh said, still a little breathlessly, breaking into pure dialect. ‘God! Hear my heart beating. Only you and me see it because you and me is one. But, listen to something I going to tell you. You fraid the cloud, but the cloud fraid me. Man, I been beating clouds like he for years and years. And so long as you with me, it not going to harm you.’

  The boy’s eyes filled with tears and he tightened his embrace on Ganesh. ‘I know you is a good man.’

  ‘It just can’t touch you with me around. I have powers over these things, you know. Look around at all these books in this room, and look at all those writings on the wall and all the pictures and everything. These things help me get the power I have and cloud fraid these things. So don’t frighten. And now tell me how it happen.’

  ‘Tomorrow is the day.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘It coming to get me tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t talk stupidness. It coming tomorrow all right, but how it could take you away if you with me?’

  ‘It saying so for a year.’

  ‘What, you seeing it for a whole year?’

  ‘And it getting bigger all the time.’

  ‘Now, look, man. We must stop talking about it as though we fraid it. These things know when you fraid them, you know, and then they does behave like real bad Johns. How you getting on at school?’

  ‘I stop.’

  ‘What about your brothers and sisters?’

  ‘I ain’t have no sisters.’

  ‘And your brothers?’

  The boy broke into a loud cry. ‘My brother dead. Last year. I didn’t want him to dead. I never want Adolphus to dead.’

  ‘Eh, eh, but who saying you want him to dead?’

  ‘Everybody. But it ain’t true.’

  ‘He dead last year?’

  Tomorrow go make one year exact.’

  ‘Tell me how he dead.’

  ‘A truck knock him down. Ram him against a wall, break him up and mash him up. But he was trying to get away even then. He try to pull hisself away and all he could do was take his foot out of the shoe, the left foot. He didn’t want to dead either. And the ice only melting in the hot sun and running down on the pavement next to the blood.’

  ‘You see this?’

  ‘I didn’t see it happen. But it was really me that shoulda go to buy the ice, not he. Ma ask me to go and buy some ice for the grapefruit juice and I ask my brother to go instead and he go and this thing happen to him. The priest and everybody else say was my fault and I have to pay for my sins.’

  ‘What sort of damn fool tell you that? Well, anyway, you mustn’t talk about it now. Remember, you wasn’t responsible. Wasn’t your fault. Is clear as anything to me that you didn’t want your brother to dead. As for this cloud, we go fix him tomorrow self, when he get so close to you I could reach him and settle him.’

  ‘You know, Mr Ganesh, I think he getting fraid of you now.’

  ‘Tomorrow we go make him run, you watch and see. You want to sleep here tonight?’

  The boy smiled and looked a little perplexed.

  ‘All right. Go home. Tomorrow we go settle this Mister Cloud. What time you say he was coming to get you?’

  ‘I didn’t tell you. Two o’clock.’

  ‘By five past two you go be the happiest boy in the world, believe me.’

  On the verandah the boy’s mother and the taxi-driver sat silently, the taxi-driver on the floor with his feet on the step.

  ‘The boy go be all right,’ Ganesh said.

  The taxi-driver rose, dusting the seat of his trousers, and spat into the yard, just missing the display of Ganesh’s books. The boy’s mother also rose and put her arm around her son’s shoulders. She looked without expression at Ganesh.

  After they had gone away Leela said, ‘Man, I hope you could help the lady out. I feel too sorry for she. She just sit down quiet all the time, not saying anything, she face small with sadness.’

  ‘Girl, this is the most important case anybody ever handle in the world. I know that that boy going to dead tomorrow unless I do something for him. It give you a funny feeling, you know. Is like watching a theatre show and then finding out afterwards that they was really killing people on the stage.’

  ‘I was thinking, man. I didn’t like the taxi-driver. He come here, he see all the books, he never mention them once. He ask for water and for this and that and he ain’t even say, “Thank you.” And he making a pile of money bringing these poor people here every day.’

  ‘Girl, but why you have to be like your father for? Why you have to try to take my mind off what I doing? You want me to start driving taxi now?’

  ‘I was just thinking.’

  When he had washed his hands after eating, Ganesh said, ‘Leela, take out my clothes – the English clothes.’

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘It have a man I want to see in the Oilfields.’

  ‘What for, man?’

  ‘Tonerre! But you full of questions today. You and Beharry is one.’

  She asked no more questions and did as she was told. Ganesh changed from dhoti and koortah to trousers and shirt. Before he left he said, ‘You know, sometimes I glad I get a college education.’

  He came back radiant later in the afternoon and immediately began clearing out the bedroom. He paid no attention to Leela’s objections. He placed the bed in the drawing-room, the study; and took the table from the study into the bedroom. He turned the table over on its top and arranged a
three-sided screen round the legs. He made Leela hang a heavy curtain over the window, and he went over the wooden walls systematically, blocking up every chink and cranny that let in light. He rearranged the pictures and quotations, giving the goddess Lakshmi pride of place just above the screened and upturned table. Below the goddess he placed a candle-bracket.

  ‘It look frightening,’ Leela said.

  He walked about the darkened room, rubbing his hands, and humming a song from a Hindi film. ‘It don’t matter if we have to sleep in the study.’

  Then they agreed on arrangements for the next day.

  All that night camphor and incense burned in the bedroom and in the morning Ganesh, rising early, went to see how the room smelled.

  Leela was still asleep. He shook her by the shoulder. ‘It look all right and it smell all right, girl. Get up and milk the cow. I hear the calf bawling.’

  He bathed while Leela milked the cow and cleaned out the cow-pen; did his puja while Leela made tea and roti; and when Leela started to clean the house, he went for a walk. The sun was not yet hot, the leaves of razor-grass still looked frosted with the dew, and the two or three dusty hibiscus shrubs in the village carried fresh pink flowers that were to quail before midday. ‘This is the big day,’ Ganesh said aloud, and prayed again for success.

  Shortly after twelve the boy, his mother and father arrived, in the same taxi as before. Ganesh, dressed once more in his Hindu garments, welcomed them in Hindi, and Leela interpreted, as arranged. They took off their shoes in the verandah and Ganesh led them all to the darkened bedroom, aromatic with camphor and incense, and lit only by the candle below the picture of Lakshmi on her lotus. Other pictures were barely visible in the semi-darkness: a stabbed and bleeding heart, a putative likeness of Christ, two or three crosses, and other designs of dubious significance.

  Ganesh seated his clients before the screened table, then he himself sat down out of view behind the screen. Leela, her long black hair undone, sat in front of the table and faced the boy and his parents. In the dark room it was hard to see more than the white shirts of the boy and his father.

  Ganesh began to chant in Hindi.

  Leela asked the boy, ‘He ask whether you believe in him.’

  The boy nodded, without conviction.

  Leela said to Ganesh in English, ‘I don’t think he really believe in you.’ And she said it in Hindi afterwards.

  Ganesh spoke in Hindi again.

  Leela said to the boy, ‘He say you must believe.’

  Ganesh chanted.

  ‘He say you must believe, if only for two minutes, because if you don’t believe in him completely, he will dead too.’

  The boy screamed in the darkness. The candle burned steadily. ‘I believe in him, I believe in him.’

  Ganesh was still chanting.

  ‘I believe in him. I don’t want him to dead too.’

  ‘He say he go be strong enough to kill the cloud only if you believe in him. He want all the strength you could give him.’

  The boy hung his head. ‘I don’t doubt him.’

  Leela said, ‘He change the cloud. It not following you now. It chasing him. If you don’t believe, the cloud will kill him and then it will kill you and then me and then your mother and then your father.’

  The boy’s mother shouted, ‘Hector go believe! Hector go believe!’

  Leela said, ‘You must believe, you must believe.’

  Ganesh suddenly stopped chanting and the room was shocked by the silence. He rose from behind his screen and, chanting once more, went and passed his hands in curious ways over Hector’s face, head, and chest.

  Leela still said, ‘You must believe. You beginning to believe. You giving him your strength now. He getting your strength. You beginning to believe, he getting your strength, and the cloud getting frighten. The cloud still coming, but it getting frighten. As it coming it getting frighten.’

  Ganesh went back behind the screen.

  Leela said, ‘The cloud coming.’

  Hector said, ‘I believe in him now.’

  ‘It coming closer. He drawing it now. It not in the room yet, but it coming. It can’t resist him.’

  Ganesh’s chants were becoming more frenzied.

  Leela said, ‘The fight beginning between them. It starting now. Oh, God! He get the cloud. It not after you. It after him. God! The cloud dying,’ Leela screamed, and as she screamed there seemed to be a muffled explosion, and Hector said, ‘Oh God, I see it leaving me. I can feel it leaving me.’

  The mother said, ‘Look at the ceiling. At the ceiling. I see the cloud. Oh, Hector, Hector. It ain’t a cloud at all. Is the devil.’

  Hector’s father said, ‘And I see forty little devils with him.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Hector said. ‘See how they kill the cloud. Look how it breaking up, Ma. You see it now?’

  ‘Yes, son. I see it. It getting finer and finer. It dead.’

  ‘You see it, Pa.’

  ‘Yes, Hector, I see it.’

  And mother and son began to cry their relief, while Ganesh still chanted, and Leela collapsed on the floor.

  Hector was crying, ‘Ma, it gone now. It really gone.’

  Ganesh stopped chanting. He got up and led them to the room outside. The air was fresher and the light seemed dazzling. It was like stepping into a new world.

  ‘Mr Ganesh,’ Hector’s father said. ‘I don’t know what we could do to thank you.’

  ‘Do just what you want. If you want to reward me, I don’t mind, because I have to make a living. But I don’t want you to strain yourself.’

  Hector’s mother said, ‘But you save a whole life.’

  ‘It is my duty. If you want to send me anything, send it. But don’t go around telling all sorts of people about me. You can’t take on too much of this sort of work. A case like this does tire me out for a whole week sometimes.’

  ‘I know how it is,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry. We go send you a hundred dollars as soon as we get home. Is what you deserve.’

  Ganesh hurried them away.

  When he came back to the little room the window was open and Leela was taking down the curtains.

  ‘You ain’t know what you doing, girl,’ he shouted. ‘You losing the smell. Stop it, man. Is only the beginning. In no time at all, mark my words, this place go be full of people from all over Trinidad.’

  ‘Man, I take back all the bad things I say and think about you. Today you make me feel really nice. Soomintra could keep she shopkeeper and she money. But, man, don’t again ask me to let down my hair and go through all that rigmarole again.’

  ‘We not going to do that again. I only wanted to make sure this time. It make them feel good, you know, hearing me talk a language they can’t understand. But it not really necessary.’

  ‘Manwa, I did see the cloud too, you know.’

  ‘The mother see one devil, the father forty little devil, the boy see one cloud, and you see one cloud. Girl, whatever Suruj Mooma say about education, it have it uses sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, man, don’t tell me you use a trick on them.’

  Ganesh didn’t say.

  There was no report of this incident in the newspapers, yet within two weeks all Trinidad knew about Ganesh and his Powers. The news went about on the local grapevine, the Niggergram, an efficient, almost clairvoyant, news service. As the Niggergram noised the news abroad, the number of Ganesh’s successes were magnified, and his Powers became Olympian.

  The Great Belcher came from Icacos, where she had been mourning at a funeral, and wept on Ganesh’s shoulder.

  ‘At long last you find your hand,’ she said.

  Leela wrote to Ramlogan and Soomintra.

  Beharry came to Ganesh’s house to offer his congratulations and make up his quarrel. He conceded that it was no longer fitting that Ganesh should go to the shop to talk.

  ‘From the first Suruj Mooma believe that you had some sort of Powers.’

  ‘So I did feel too. But ain’t it strange
though that for so long I did feel I had a hand for massaging people?’

  ‘But you was dead right, man.’

  ‘How you mean?’

  Beharry nibbled. ‘You is the mystic massager.’

  8. More Trouble with Ramlogan

  WITH IN A MONTH Ganesh was getting as many clients as he could handle.

  He had never imagined there were so many people in Trinidad with spiritual problems. But what surprised him even more was the extent of his own powers. No one could lay evil spirits better, even in Trinidad, where there were so many that people had acquired especial skill in dealing with them. No one could tie a house better, bind it, that is, in spiritual bonds proof against the most resolute spirit. If he ran up against a particularly tough spirit there were always the books his aunt had given him. So, balls-of-fire, soncouyants, loups-garoux, all became as nothing.

  In this way he made most of his money. But what he really liked was a problem which called for all his intellectual and spiritual strength. Like the Woman Who Couldn’t Eat. This woman felt her food turn to needles in her mouth; and her mouth actually bled. He cured her. And there was Lover Boy. Lover Boy was a Trinidad character. Racehorses and racing-pigeons were named after him. But it was an embarrassment to his friends and relations that a successful racing-cyclist should fall in love with his cycle and make love to it openly in a curious way. He cured him too.

  So, Ganesh’s prestige had risen until people who came to him sick went away well. Sometimes even he didn’t know why.

  His prestige was secured by his learning. Without this he might easily have been lumped with the other thaumaturges who swarmed over Trinidad. They were nearly all fakes. They knew an ineffectual charm or two but had neither the intelligence nor sympathy for anything else. Their method of tackling spirits remained primitive. A sudden kick in the back of a person possessed was supposed to take the spirit by surprise and drive it out. It was because of these ignorant people that the profession had a bad name. Ganesh elevated the profession by putting the charlatans out of business. Every obeah-man was quick enough to call himself a mystic, but the people of Trinidad knew that Ganesh was the only true mystic in the island.