The Chip-Chip Gatherers

by Shiva Naipaul

  She had not been able to discover the formula which would transmute the squalor into glory. Her special brand of realism could not come to her aid. It had been, despite its austerity, a realism rooted in her longings and it was of no use to her now that she had to rid herself of those longings or perish. ‘B.A. Languages!’ she exclaimed to herself and laughed bitterly. ‘Isolde!’ She was stranded and there was nothing she could point to and say: ‘That is what I wish to be.’ Door after door had been closed against her and bolted tight. What she was having to face had been foretold on the day she was born; written in the dust and mire of the Settlement. Her friendship with Julian and her having come to live with her mother in Victoria had merely postponed the evil day. It had been tempting to confuse postponement with cancellation. Unhappily, postponement was not cancellation. Happiness was a chimera.

  All those books she had devoured so avidly – what were they to her now? Folly and vanity. She could not bear the sight of a book and so she stopped reading. Her convent uniform mocked her and so she tossed it into the dustbin. Delay undermined her power of decision and apathy descended on her. Everything, herself included, was equally flat and dull and insipid; riddled with futility. No one thing or course of action was superior to another: it would be a delusion to pretend she felt otherwise. The world was a dead and arid place. Sita explored the empty spaces in her head. Morning and afternoon she wheeled Egbert Ramsaran out to the verandah and dutifully provided him with the newspaper and detective novel he never touched. The marble eyes did not thank or recognize her.

  Even before she had left the convent, Sita had been seeing less and less of Julian. He was working hard for his final examination. The intervals between his visits to the house in Victoria lengthened. Finally, the visits stopped altogether. Now and again they met on the street – usually after school was finished for the day – but these encounters were accidental and brief. ‘Sorry I can’t stop to talk,’ Julian would say, ‘but I have a hell of a lot of work to get through this week.’ He tapped the books he was carrying and smiled apologetically. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘Ma would kick up a fuss if I was late. Anything for peace in that madhouse!’ Sita did not try to detain him. Both the excuses he offered – his work and his mother – were true; but she knew their truth was superficial. The deeper truth was that their friendship had passed its climax and there was nowhere else for it to go. She could not pinpoint the moment of climax or the moment it had started to go into decline. They had been going down a blind alley and they had reached the journey’s end. There was no cause for surprise in that.

  When she left the convent Julian did not enquire after her. He wrote no letters signing himself Tristan and calling her Isolde. When the examination results were published in the Trinidad Chronicle, she scanned the minutely printed columns for his name. He had passed according to plan. She folded the paper neatly and laid it on Egbert Ramsaran’s lap. Julian seemed to have forgotten about her. Sita did not mind. It could not be long now before he left the island. Now, however, the thought that this departure must be imminent elicited neither fright nor pain in her. It did not matter. Nothing mattered.

  She was wheeling Egbert Ramsaran in from his afternoon session when she heard a rattle at the front gate. Sita looked round and saw Julian standing at the top of the path and grinning at her.

  ‘Can I come in? Is Wilbert …?’

  ‘Wilbert’s at the Depot.’

  ‘What about him?’ Julian indicated Egbert Ramsaran.

  ‘He’s not going to prevent you.’ She spoke levelly. Her hands still rested on the back of the wheelchair.

  Julian ventured cautiously up the path. ‘I was hoping to find you alone.’ He climbed up the steps.

  ‘You have,’ she said.

  Julian leaned negligently against the verandah railings endeavouring to disguise his unease. ‘So, you’re playing nursemaid these days.’

  ‘I suppose you could call it that.’

  ‘I always thought you had the hands of a nurse.’ He was bantering but almost immediately recognized he had struck the wrong note. ‘What I mean is …’ He gave up the attempt at explanation.

  Sita looked at her hands; at the bony, tapering fingers and protruding knuckles. Then she looked up at him. She said nothing.

  ‘How is the patient?’

  ‘The patient is fine. As fine as can be expected.’

  They were silent. Sita did not take her hands off the back of the wheelchair, a figure fleetingly arrested in its motion.

  ‘It’s been a long time since I last … since we last …’

  ‘Yes – it has.’ Sita regarded him dully.

  ‘How long would you say?’

  ‘I haven’t been counting.’

  Julian smiled his apologetic smile. ‘I couldn’t help it. I wanted to come before. But I …’

  ‘You don’t have to make excuses.’

  Julian shied away from her gaze. It was cold; remote. She might hardly have been seeing him. He dropped his eyes to the shrivelled statue on the wheelchair.

  ‘How much can he understand?’ he asked.

  Sita shrugged. ‘Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. I don’t know.’

  Julian lowered his voice. ‘I heard about everything,’ he said. ‘Your mother running off all of a sudden – that was a very strange thing to do – and then your leaving the convent …’

  ‘Let’s not talk about all that. It’s over and done with now.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said solemnly. ‘Perhaps it’s better not to. What’s the use of crying over spilt milk?’

  ‘I see you passed your exam. Congratulations. You must be leaving soon.’

  His solemnity vanished: Sita’s troubles were instantly dismissed. ‘In two weeks. That’s why I came to see you today as a matter of fact. I didn’t know when I might get another chance and I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye properly.’ He showed her a blue plastic folder stuffed with an assortment of papers. ‘It’s all inside there. Passport – you should see the horrible picture they took of me – cabin number and smallpox vaccination. All I have to do is walk on the boat at this end and walk off the other.’ She took the folder from him but did not open it. The plastic was cloying to her moist fingers.

  ‘So,’ she said stupidly, ‘you leave in two weeks.’

  ‘That’s right. In two weeks that boat will blow its whistle and I’ll be waving good-bye to Trinidad. I can hardly believe it.’ Julian paced the length of the verandah in quick, jaunty strides. ‘During the summer vacations I’m going to visit all those places we used to read and talk about so much. Paris. Venice. Rome. I have it all planned.’

  The summer vacations. Summer. What was it? The phrase had tripped so lightly and easily off Julian’s tongue: as if he had a privileged access to its inner meaning. Summ-er. Summer. Su-mmer He was receding from her, rising higher and higher. Julian was looking down on her – if he looked at all – from an immeasurable height. She was a tiny speck blundering through the nightmarish tropical interchange of wet and dry seasons. He was talking but she was not listening to him any more. She watched the ragged file of cows going past the gate on their homeward journey. The street lamps came on.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to go now,’ she said, interrupting his flow. ‘I must get him ready for bed.’

  Julian stopped speaking and glanced at his watch. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It’s late. I don’t want to keep you from your duties.’

  ‘The best of luck.’

  ‘The same to you.’

  They hesitated. Then Julian waved and went down the steps. Sita turned her back on him and wheeled Egbert Ramsaran through the curtains.

  2

  To mark Julian’s departure, Mrs Bholai announced her intention of having a farewell dinner. Wilbert was among those she planned to invite. Julian was not pleased.

  ‘If he’s coming I’d rather not have a party.’

  ‘I will invite whoever I care to invite. You have no say in the matter.’
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br />   ‘But why Wilbert? Why you have to invite him for? You still hoping that he will marry Shanty?’

  Mrs Bholai evaded the question. ‘I inviting him,’ she said, ‘and that’s that.’

  Wilbert no less than Julian had grave misgivings.

  ‘I would be out of place, Mrs Bholai. I wouldn’t fit in.’

  ‘Don’t talk stupidness, boy. Some of my family from San Fernando going to be there and they dying to meet you. And,’ she assured him, ‘not only I would be disappointed but Shanty, Mynah, Gita and Bholai himself. If all of we want you to come, how you going to be out of place?’

  Wilbert was bludgeoned into consent.

  Unfortunately, her San Fernando relatives cried off at the last minute, pleading the most transparent excuses. Their refusal stung to the quick and Mrs Bholai permitted herself a few harsh words against them, inveighing against their conceit. ‘But never mind,’ she said, ‘is all the more food for we. Let them play high and mighty. When Jules come back a doctor they going to have to change they tune.’

  ‘Perhaps we better cancel it,’ Mr Bholai suggested meekly. ‘You can’t call it a party with only one guest. It would make we look foolish.’

  ‘You must be crazy. Bholai. After all the work I put in you expect me to cancel it? Not on your life. Even if we had no guests I still wouldn’t cancel it. I must give my one and only son a good send-off.’

  Wilbert thereby acquired the dubious distinction of being the sole guest at the farewell party.

  ‘Right at the last minute it turn out that nobody else could make it.’ Mrs Bholai giggled embarrassedly, appealing to her family for confirmation and support. ‘So is only you. You could ask the rest of them how angry I was.’

  No one shared her forced gaiety. Wilbert fidgeted in his chair and stared glumly at the floor. Shanty smirked and giggled until silenced by her mother. Julian, after uttering a few frigid words of welcome, had disappeared into his bedroom. Mynah, prim and disapproving, filed her nails. Gita drooped palely. Mr Bholai, who once or twice had essayed a feeble hilarity and met with no response, was sunk in torpor. Finally, he took refuge in the court cases in the Trinidad Chronicle. It had been altogether a most inauspicious start to the night’s entertainment. Mrs Bholai, infected by the prevailing gloom, lapsed into taciturnity.

  A crisp, white cloth covered the dining table. In the centre, providing a splash of colour, was a vase of Mynah’s flowers, an overflowing cascade of red and yellow petals and jungle of green stalks. Serried ranks of knives and forks and plates reflected the electric light. The dinner was brought in by Mrs Bholai: a roasted leg of goat; a large bowl of boiled rice; and smaller dishes of curried vegetables. As a special concession to the ‘men’ there were bottles of chilled beer brought that day from the Palace of Heavenly Delights. For the ‘ladies’ there were glasses of fizzing Coca-Cola.

  ‘Take your nose out of that damn newspaper, Bholai. Is time to eat.’ Mrs Bholai fretted and bustled about the table. ‘Julian! If is starve you want to starve you better say. We not going to wait for you.’ Mrs Bholai shoved them into their assigned seats. Julian was to preside at the head of the table. Wilbert was placed next to Shanty along one side; while Mrs Bholai shared the other with her two remaining daughters. Mr Bholai sat at the foot. Julian emerged from his bedroom and sauntered to the table. Scraping back his chair noisily, he slumped into the seat. He blinked blearily and rubbed his eyes, yawning at the company.

  ‘Go and wash your face,’ Mrs Bholai said. ‘Try and remember this is a special occasion.’

  The chair scraped and Julian hauled himself up and went into the bathroom to do as his mother had bid. He returned, his face washed and his hair uncharacteristically smarmed across his forehead. With a wry smile, he scraped his chair for the third time, slumped into his seat and looked around drumming with his fingers. Mrs Bholai, stern and unsmiling, cut slices of the meat and doled them out on the plates held up to her. Knives and forks were picked up and heads lowered in anticipation over plates.

  ‘Wait! Wait’ You can’t begin just like that. First we must all drink a toast to Julian. That is what the beer is for.’ Mr Bholai deftly opened the bottles of beer provided.

  ‘What about us?’ Shanty asked. ‘We don’t have any beer. I never hear of anybody drinking a toast with Coca-Cola before. Come to that, I never hear of anybody drinking a toast with beer either. We should have champagne.’ She pronounced it ‘sharmpagne’. Her knees rubbed against Wilbert’s.

  ‘We don’t have any sharmpagne, Mr Bholai replied, ‘so is nothing we could do about that. You could drink a toast with anything as far as I know – a cup of tea even. Stop making a fuss and raise your glasses.’

  Glasses were reluctantly raised. Mr Bholai stood up. Holding his bottle of beer aloft, he cleared his throat. ‘To Julian, wishing him all the health, good fortune and happiness it have in the world.’ He brought the bottle to his lips. ‘Honoured ladies and gentlemen, I give you the future Doctor Julian Bholai. Hip, Hip …’

  No one answered.

  ‘Hooray,’ he responded himself. ‘Hip, hip … hooray! Hip, hip … hooray!’ The beer gurgled in his throat. He dried his mouth and sat down. ‘Now we could start to eat,’ he said.

  Julian and Wilbert had not touched their beer. Mr Bholai – he was not accustomed to drink and the first sips seemed to have gone straight to his head – clapped Wilbert across the shoulder. ‘Drink up, man! Drink up! Don’t be bashful. We is all big men around here now. Watch how I do it and follow me.’ Mr Bholai raised the bottle to his lips again and poured some more beer down his throat. He belched. ‘That’s what you must do.’

  ‘You could use the glass I provide for you, Bholai, and stop showing off to Wilbert. You don’t have to behave like a animal.’ Mrs Bholai pushed one of the glasses over to him.

  ‘I don’t find the beer does taste the same when you pour it into a glass. Straight from the bottle! That’s the way to drink beer.’ Rebellion glimmering faintly from his flushed face, he swallowed from the bottle.

  ‘If you want to drink like that you should go to Farouk,’ Mrs Bholai snapped. ‘Is a blessing in disguise my family not here tonight to see you make a disgrace of yourself.’

  Wilbert poured his beer into a glass.

  ‘Can I have a taste?’ Shanty begged him. Their knees rubbed: it was a small table and Wilbert could do nothing.

  ‘Shanty!’ Mrs Bholai was appalled. ‘Beer is not for ladies. You see Mynah asking for beer?’

  Mynah smiled into her plate.

  ‘I’m not a high-class lady like Mynah is – as you well know.’ Defying her mother, Shanty borrowed Wilbert’s glass and drank from it. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘I like beer.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, girl. Don’t believe that because Wilbert here I wouldn’t hit you two good slaps across that mouth of yours.’

  ‘Peace,’ Mr Bholai murmured. ‘Peace.’

  ‘You keep your peace to yourself, shopkeeper.’ She glared at him. ‘This is your fault, Bholai. I tell you not to buy any beer.’

  ‘Stop pestering me, Moon.’ He looked at Julian. ‘Come on, son. Drink up like your father.’

  ‘I don’t like beer. You have it.’ He passed the bottle over and Mr Bholai accepted it with a shrug.

  ‘You shouldn’t encourage him to be a drunkard, Jules.’

  ‘It was only going to waste,’ Julian said.

  They ate in silence for a while.

  ‘How is your father progressing?’ Mr Bholai chomped on his food with gusto.

  ‘Much the same,’ Wilbert replied.

  Mr Bholai clucked his tongue. ‘Is a sad thing that. That man was as strong as a horse. What muscles he used to have.’ He thought of all those exhibitions of prowess Egbert Ramsaran had inflicted on him and it afforded him a secret pleasure.

  Mrs Bholai brightened: the reference to Egbert Ramsaran shifted her attention away from the beer and helped to restore her flagging spirits. The recent events in Victoria had surpassed her expectations. R
ighteousness had prevailed and God had put himself squarely on her side. She could barely restrain the exultation in her voice as she turned towards Wilbert and said: ‘You hear anything about Sushila?’

  Wilbert shook his head.

  ‘Not a word?’

  Mrs Bholai dislodged a sliver of bone from her teeth and set it on the rim of her plate. ‘What Sita planning to do now?’ Sita’s continuing presence in the Ramsaran house was the one aspect of the situation that worried her.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She can’t look after your father forever.’

  ‘No,’ Wilbert agreed.

  ‘The thing is what she going to do after he die.’

  Wilbert said nothing. Shanty’s knee was jammed against his.

  ‘Come now, Moon,’ Mr Bholai appealed. ‘That is not a nice thing to say to Wilbert. Stop cross-examining him and let him eat.’

  Mrs Bholai noted Wilbert’s uneasy silence. ‘Still,’ she added placatingly, ‘is only right she should be looking after him. It was because of him that she reach as far as she reach – she couldn’t really have expect to be a B.A. Languages. Sita have nothing to complain about.’ Mrs Bholai felt that her assessment was both just and magnanimous.

  She switched her attentions to Julian. ‘Have some more to eat, Jules.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You won’t get goat meat in England, you know.’ She smiled with sugary sweetness at him. ‘Have some more.’

  ‘I don’t want any more,’ he answered bad-temperedly. ‘I don’t like goat meat.’