Miguel Street - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,15

the big concrete houses in the street.

He was right. The mangoes were sweet and juicy. I ate about six, and the yellow mango juice ran down my arms to my elbows and down my mouth to my chin and my shirt was stained.

My mother said when I got home, ‘Where you was? You think you is a man now and could go all over the place? Go cut a whip for me.’

She beat me rather badly, and I ran out of the house swearing that I would never come back. I went to B. Wordsworth’s house. I was so angry, my nose was bleeding.

B. Wordsworth said, ‘Stop crying, and we will go for a walk.’

I stopped crying, but I was breathing short. We went for a walk. We walked down St Clair Avenue to the Savannah and we walked to the race-course.

B. Wordsworth said, ‘Now, let us lie on the grass and look up at the sky, and I want you to think how far those stars are from us.’

I did as he told me, and I saw what he meant. I felt like nothing, and at the same time I had never felt so big and great in all my life. I forgot all my anger and all my tears and all the blows.

When I said I was better, he began telling me the names of the stars, and I particularly remembered the constellation of Orion the Hunter, though I don’t really know why. I can spot Orion even today, but I have forgotten the rest.

Then a light was flashed into our faces, and we saw a policeman. We got up from the grass.

The policeman said, ‘What you doing here?’

B. Wordsworth said, ‘I have been asking myself the same question for forty years.’

We became friends, B. Wordsworth and I. He told me, ‘You must never tell anybody about me and about the mango tree and the coconut tree and the plum tree. You must keep that a secret. If you tell anybody, I will know, because I am a poet.’

I gave him my word and I kept it.

I liked his little room. It had no more furniture than George’s front room, but it looked cleaner and healthier. But it also looked lonely.

One day I asked him, ‘Mister Wordsworth, why you does keep all this bush in your yard? Ain’t it does make the place damp?’

He said, ‘Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time a boy and girl met each other and they fell in love. They loved each other so much they got married. They were both poets. He loved words. She loved grass and flowers and trees. They lived happily in a single room, and then one day the girl poet said to the boy poet, “We are going to have another poet in the family.” But this poet was never born, because the girl died, and the young poet died with her, inside her. And the girl’s husband was very sad, and he said he would never touch a thing in the girl’s garden. And so the garden remained, and grew high and wild.’

I looked at B. Wordsworth, and as he told me this lovely story, he seemed to grow older. I understood his story.

We went for long walks together. We went to the Botanical Gardens and the Rock Gardens. We climbed Chancellor Hill in the late afternoon and watched the darkness fall on Port of Spain, and watched the lights go on in the city and on the ships in the harbour.

He did everything as though he were doing it for the first time in his life. He did everything as though he were doing some church rite.

He would say to me, ‘Now, how about having some ice-cream?’

And when I said yes, he would grow very serious and say, ‘Now, which café shall we patronise?’ As though it were a very important thing. He would think for some time about it and finally say, ‘I think I will go and negotiate the purchase with that shop.’

The world became a most exciting place.

One day, when I was in his yard, he said to me, ‘I have a great secret which I am now going to tell you.’

I said, ‘It really secret?’

‘At the moment, yes.’

I looked at him, and he looked at me. He said, ‘This is just between you and me, remember. I am writing a poem.’

‘Oh.’ I was disappointed.

He said, ‘But this is a different sort of poem. This is the