Egbert Ramsaran stared vaguely at him and returned to his bedroom. He would be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Perhaps it was because of a strong mutual repulsion that the two men seemed to generate a sort of electricity between them.
It was Singh who first suggested Wilbert should come to the estate and spend some days with him. Wilbert was hesitant; reluctant to commit himself to such an adventure. His father never went there and, apart from the fruit it yielded and Singh’s monthly visitations, it did not impinge on their lives. To Wilbert, as a result, ‘the estate’ was something remote and unreal. It was only its association with Singh that kept it alive – undesirably alive – in his mind. He had no wish to go there. Singh had understood at once. He laughed loudly.
‘Imagine not wanting to see a property that going to be your own one day. Like you frighten of me?’ He turned to Rani. ‘Why this boy so frighten of me? He does behave as if I going to eat him every time he sees me. I is no cannibal.’
‘I sure he don’t think that of you,’ Rani said soothingly. ‘Is just a little shyness he have. That’s all.’
‘What he have to be shy with me for? After all we is …’ Singh, biting on his lower lip, gazed fiercely at him. However, he recovered himself quickly and laughed resoundingly. ‘So, is shy you shy. Well! Well! You coming with me? You will soon learn not to be shy.’ His mouth distended in a wide, scornful grin. ‘It have a lot of things a boy your age could do out in the country. I have a gun out there. We could go out and shoot birds. It have a river out there – a real river. Not like the little canal you have behind here. A real river with fish in it. We could go out and swim and catch fish. What you know about shooting birds and catching fish?’ He gazed scathingly at him. No one else would have dared to talk thus to the son and heir of Egbert Ramsaran. He turned again to Rani. ‘What you say? I sure you agree with me that is high time the young master learn about these things.’
‘I have no objection to him going with you, Singh. But is not up to me. Is his father permission you have to get.’
‘I will get that today self.’
When Egbert Ramsaran appeared, they performed the motions of their ritual, halting exchange while Singh sipped his tea.
Egbert Ramsaran got ready to depart. ‘If you ever want anything …’
‘Yes,’ Singh said, ‘it have something …’
Egbert Ramsaran, already in the doorway, stopped in surprise. ‘Oh? What is that?’ He cast a questioning, quizzical glance at Singh, touched with the faintest hint of irony.
‘This boy,’ Singh said, indicating Wilbert.
‘What about him?’
‘I was thinking what a nice thing it would be if he could come and spend some time with me on the estate.’
Egbert Ramsaran said nothing.
‘I could teach him a lot of things. Show him how to fish and shoot and catch birds. Show him another kind of life.’ Singh giggled. ‘But he frighten of me. He think I will eat him up.’
‘Is that so?’ Egbert Ramsaran looked at his son. ‘You frighten of Singh, child?’
‘Is ’fraid he ’fraid,’ Singh jeered.
‘When you was planning to take him with you?’
‘Today self – if you don’t mind. I have the jeep with me.’
‘A good idea, Singh. No point in postponing it. You take him back with you in the jeep today.’ Egbert Ramsaran studied Wilbert critically. ‘It will toughen him up a bit. Yes. Take him with you and toughen him up for me. Is exactly what he need. I glad you thought of it.’
So, it was decided. Settled. Singh leered triumphantly, showing his crooked, yellow teeth.
Egbert Ramsaran’s estate was by no means vast. Its meagre seventy-five acres were barely capable of comparison with the two and three hundred acre giants surrounding it. But it was not its limited acreage alone which distinguished it and put it in a different class altogether from its neighbours. What was inexplicable to Egbert Ramsaran’s fellow landowners was that he made no proper use of it at all. Their ordered and minutely tended cocoa and orange groves contrasted queerly with the disordered, untended wasteland wallowing in their midst. It was a blot on conscience. Over the years, several of them had offered to buy it at prices undeniably generous. ‘It’s a sin, Mr Ramsaran, to let good land like that go to waste. You could grow a hundred different crops on it if you really try. If you don’t want to sell it at least take some advice – free of charge.’ He rejected their offers out of hand. ‘You could keep your money and your advice,’ he told them bluntly. ‘Why you buy it for in the first place?’ they persisted in bewilderment. ‘That is nobody business but mine,’ he replied. ‘Is my land and I’ll do what the hell I want with it.’ ‘Shame on you, Mr Ramsaran,’ they said. ‘Shame on you to be like that.’
As was to be expected, their disapproval only had the effect of further strengthening his resolve. If such a thing was possible, he intensified his neglect of the estate and without Singh’s efforts it would have stopped producing even the few mangoes and oranges that it did. It was a shock after driving along rough country roads bordered on either side by industriously cultivated tracts to come suddenly upon this enclave given over to abandonment and decay, deadened in the heat of mid afternoon. Singh, who had driven all the way in uncompromising silence, spoke for the first time.
‘Well, young master, what you think?’ He lifted his hands off the steering wheel and embraced in expansive gesture the wilderness of grass and bush and tree confronting them. ‘That is what I does call home.’ He laughed. ‘Is no mansion but I hope a little bush not going to frighten you.’ He grinned pleasantly at Wilbert. They got out of the jeep and stood for a while in the burning sun, the heels of their shoes sinking into the road’s softened tar surface. Insects hummed, darting among the wild flowers, their wings lit up by the sun. Singh whistled long and piercingly. Two dogs rushed bounding through the grass, barking excitedly. He bent down to stroke the dogs who were nuzzling at his trousers. ‘You missed me?’ He pummelled them friendlily. ‘You missed your Singh?’ It was very still at that time of day and his voice, piercing the heat and stillness, was loud and startlingly sharp. The dogs whined. ‘Is food they after,’ he said. ‘Is only when they hungry that they like me. If another man was to feed them, they would forget about me straight away.’ He pushed them away and stood up. ‘Ungrateful bitches!’
Wilbert’s throat was parched after the long drive. He asked if there was any water.
‘Water!’ Singh grinned. ‘We have lots of that here. Come. I’ll show you water.’ He led him, running and stumbling, up a rutted dirt track, meandering through waist-high grass. The land climbed fairly steeply to the brow of a hill. This, commanding a fine view of much of the estate, had been cleared of all vegetation; an arena of beaten yellow earth on which had been built a small, wooden hut on stilts about ten feet off the ground. With its precipitously ridged, corrugated iron roof and the square holes covered with strips of canvas that passed for windows, it resembled a watchtower. To complete the resemblance, there was a ladder leading to the entrance which was also screened by a strip of canvas.
Holding his arm, Singh led Wilbert under the hut and pointed at three red oil drums balanced on bricks and standing side by side. Their tops were protected by sheets of corrugated iron. The ground around them was sodden and mossy. Singh removed one of the protective sheets. The drum was filled to the brim with greyish water. Insects hummed and darted over the surface. ‘Not to your liking?’ Singh asked. He removed the lids from the other two drums. In both of them drowned insects floated on the surface. Leaning carelessly against one of the pillars of the hut Singh watched him. ‘Well,’ he said quietly, ‘what you waiting for? Drink.’ Singh idly flicked open and shut the blades of his penknife. ‘What other water you suppose it have in a place like this? Eh?’ His voice grated. ‘We don’t have no clear spring water here, you know. Is why your father send you – to toughen you up. This is the water I does have to drink week in, week out.’ Wilbert moved away from t
he drums, his back to Singh. The blades of the penknife clicked. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Walking out from under the hut, Wilbert stood in the sunlight, his shadow a black dwarf in front of him. A few feet ahead, the narrow track up which they had recently climbed resumed its twisting, indecisive course through the grass, dropping swiftly to a muddy pond beyond which the land rose again, though not to as great a height. All around the trunks of tall trees rose like poles into the sky. He listened for the river which Singh had mentioned but could hear nothing except the indolent whirr of insects in the undergrowth. Singh relented. He came up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Lower down near the road it have some orange trees. I’ll pick some for you to suck.’ The harshness in his voice was muted. He seemed subdued.
They returned down the path to the road, the dogs trailing behind them and sniffing their footsteps. Singh plunged heedlessly into the tall grass, disappearing from view almost immediately. Wilbert followed, the grass closing over his head, irritating his bare arms and tickling his cheeks and nose. Somewhere in front of him and invisible, he could hear Singh crashing through the undergrowth. Unable to see where he was going, Wilbert moved more circumspectly. The noises ahead of him ceased. Wilbert stopped too. The latticework of blades was featureless, a uniform crackling green. ‘Singh!’ There was no answer. He panicked, thrashing uselessly as if he were drowning. ‘Singh! You there?’ This time Singh did reply but it was impossible to tell from which direction, his muffled voice came. The dogs were barking distantly. ‘I can’t see where you is,’ Wilbert shouted back blindly into the crackling latticework. Singh cursed. The crashing noises recommenced, coming nearer, and soon Singh’s dark, unsmiling face was hovering above him.
‘You should have waited for me out on the road like I had tell you to.’
‘You didn’t tell me nothing.’
‘You should have use your common sense and stay there. This is no place for a child. Is bad enough for me without having you to bother about.’
Wilbert did not say anything. His arms and face itched and he started to scratch them.
‘And all you could do is stand there and scratch!’ The blood flooded his face and his teeth pressed hard on his lower lip. He grew calmer. ‘Come.’ He grasped his hand roughly. ‘Next time make sure to listen to what I tell you. And if I don’t tell you anything, then use your common sense. Use what you have up there.’ He screwed his index finger into the side of his head.
They resumed their journey through the grass, Singh marching ahead with giant strides. ‘Just there,’ he said. The group of orange trees was nearly suffocated by the profusion of growth pressing in on them from all sides. Surprisingly, they were laden with pendulously drooping fruit which looked as if they had been artificially attached. Singh skirted the fringes of the group of trees, gazing up warily into the branches. ‘Watch out for the jackspaniards. They could sting you real bad if you not careful.’ Wilbert waited while he completed his examination. ‘Okay,’ Singh announced, ‘I don’t see any so we could start to pick oranges now.’ He smiled goldenly at Wilbert, becoming more expansive. ‘You see, young master, everything is a art. Everything! Take picking oranges, for instance.’ His head disappeared among the branches as he reached up on tiptoe leaning into the tree. He re-emerged with a grunt. ‘Is not just a simple matter of pulling them from the tree. You have to know about jackspaniards, then you got to know which is the right time to pick, then you got to know which will be the best and most juicy ones.’ He paused, staring intently at Wilbert. ‘Yes, young master, even the simplest thing like picking oranges is a art. Is very important for you of all peope to realize that. You will have to be worrying your head about all kinds of things which I will never have to worry about, so now is the best time for you to start learning.’ He laughed. ‘Because when you stop being the young master and become the real master … well, that is the biggest art of all, not so? You couldn’t afford to lose yourself in the grass then.’ Wilbert turned away from him. Singh giggled, but already his mood was changing; the expansiveness dying away. ‘Yes,’ he said morosely, staring at the fruit strewn on the ground, ‘I expect you will discover that for yourself in time. I think we have more than enough oranges now – even for a thirsty man like you.’
He gathered the fruit and bundling them in a pile next to his chest he retraced his path gloomily through the grass, muttering under his breath. They returned to the hut where, one by one, Singh peeled the oranges with his penknife and passed them on to his guest. When he had finished, he washed his hands in one of the drams and, from another, drank some water which he scooped up in his cupped palms.
‘It don’t kill me to do that,’ he said, scrubbing his lips and hands dry on the front of his shirt.
They slept in the hut that night, Singh drawing up the ladder after him. In one corner of the room there was a rusting, two-burner kerosene stove and, on a smoke-blackened shelf above it, pots and spoons and enamel plates. Ranged along the wall opposite the stove was a low, extremely narrow camp bed covered with a thin cotton bedspread. It looked uninviting and uncomfortable. There was a solitary chair in the room which Singh offered to Wilbert.
‘It don’t have much to do here after dark,’ he said, loosening the canvas flaps over the windows and rolling them up. ‘No radio. No newspaper. Out here in the country you does have to go to sleep with the chickens and get up with the chickens. Not like Victoria, eh?’ He uttered a choked but not unfriendly laugh. ‘Mind you, I don’t care for newspaper and electric light and that kind of thing. I’m a simple man with simple tastes. I like the country life. It have too many crooks in the city. A few hours in Port-of-Spain is enough for me.’ Lowering his head, he peered closely at Wilbert. ‘Like you sorry you come?’
Wilbert stared unblinkingly at him. He did not answer.
‘Ah! That’s good. That’s very good. Toughen you up. That’s what we have to do.’ Singh nodded vigorously. He bit round the edges of his thumbnail. ‘Who is your best friend, young master?’
‘I don’t have a best friend.’
‘But you must have a best friend. Everybody have to have a best friend.’
Wilbert was unblinking.
Singh chewed on the slivers of fingernail. ‘What about Julian Bholai?’ he queried. ‘They say he is a very bright boy. Going to be a doctor one day. You want to be a doctor too?’
‘I don’t know. Pa don’t like doctors.’
‘What you want to be then? A lawyer? A engineer?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know!’ Singh pretended to be amazed. ‘These is things you have to know, young master. Julian Bholai know he want to be a doctor.’
‘The only thing doctors good for is to cheat people.’ Wilbert was suddenly aggressive.
Singh laughed. ‘Who tell you that? Your father?’
Wilbert scowled. He and Julian went to the same school in Port-of-Spain, a deliberate choice on the part of Vishnu Bholai who had hoped they would become the greatest of friends. He was disappointed. ‘I going to be a doctor, Ramsaran,’ Julian had declared at the outset. ‘My father saving up for me to go to England. How about you?’ ‘I going to run my father business when he die,’ Wilbert had replied. Julian could not conceal his contempt. ‘That is all?’ ‘My father don’t like doctors,’ Wilbert said, ‘he say they only good for cheating people.’ Julian guffawed. ‘Your father must be a funny kind of man. He don’t know what he talking about.’ Wilbert squared, ready to settle for blows. ‘What about your father? Tell me what he does do.’ Julian backed down. ‘I don’t want to pick no fight with you, Ramsaran.’ A quiet, unspoken hostility developed between the two boys after this incident and they avoided each other’s company. For Wilbert, the memory was fresh and painful; an open wound which any discussion of the subject was likely to irritate. It did so now.
“A profession is what is important nowadays,’ Singh was saying. ‘Money alone is not enough. You need a education to really get on in this world. Take me. You suppose if I
had a little education I would have been shut up on this estate like some animal?’ He stopped speaking suddenly.
Wilbert was tired and sleepy. The day was dying fast. A blinding red sun was sinking beyond the most distant line of trees and the dust particles had turned golden. It was cooler too. After the brightness he had been gazing on, it was black in the room. Amoebic globules of colour floated before his eyes. He closed them, concentrating with drowsy stupor on the restless play of colour and shadow on his eyelids. Singh prodded him into wakefulness, his face melting and immaterial.
‘Education is the important thing, young master.’ His voice floated dreamily, wrapping itself around Wilbert and insinuating itself into the darkness. ‘You ever ask yourself why it is I does have to make do with that dirty rainwater which even a dog shouldn’t have to drink? You think is because I have a different kind of stomach from other people?’ His head swivelled slowly around the room. ‘You think is my fault I have nigger blood running in my veins? You think is I who put it there? You believe was me who was responsible for that?’ He spoke with mounting, importunate excitement; with a sense of relief. ‘Whatever happen to my nigger mother? I never see she face. I would like to see she face. Just once. I would like to see the face of my nigger mother.’ The ugly head leered at Wilbert, thick-lipped, with eyes like holes. Singh sank to his knees, head drooping. ‘Poor young master. No pity for Singh at all who never see his nigger mother. And if is anybody should have pity is you.’
It happened before he was aware of it. He had reached forward and slapped Singh hard across the mouth. Singh covered his lips with the back of his hand. Wilbert drew back, looking round him wildly. But Singh did not move. He remained as he was, kneeling on the dusty floor and rubbing his hands back and forth in a measured rhythm across his bruised lips.
The mosquitoes had invaded the room, their humming louder in Wilbert’s ears than the croaking of the frogs outside. He sat there in the darkness, numbed, hungry and afraid of what he had done, warding off the attacking mosquitoes feeding greedily on his arms and face while Singh brooded exhaustedly at his feet. At length, Singh roused himself and stood up. Wilbert listened to him blundering about the room and cursing as he groped among the pots and pans on the shelf above the stove. A match scraped and he was bathed momentarily in a flickering, yellow glow that cast mountainous shadows on the walls and ceiling. The match went out. Singh swore softly and lit a second which he held aloft while he searched in the cupboard near the stove and brought forth a sooted oil-lamp. The lamp flamed into life. Singh bent low over it. Having adjusted the height of the wick, he set it on the floor. Singh rolled down the strips of canvas but not before a bevy of insects had swarmed into the room, orbiting round the glass funnel and a large black moth with red markings on its wings had settled on the ceiling.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers Page 6
