Miguel Street - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,41
blocks, pinning Bhakcu to ground without injuring him.
When Bhakcu came out he looked at his clothes. These were a pair of khaki trousers and a sleeveless vest, both black and stiff with engine grease.
Bhakcu said to his wife, ‘They really dirty now, eh?’
She regarded her husband with pride. ‘Yes, man,’ she said. ‘They really dirty.’
Bhakcu smiled.
Hat said, ‘Look, I just sick of lifting up motor-car from off you, you hear. If you want my advice, you better send for a proper mechanic’
Bhakcu wasn’t listening.
He said to his wife, ‘The crank-shaft was all right. Is something else.’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Well, you must eat first.’
She looked at Hat and said, ‘He don’t eat when he working on the car unless I remind he?’
Hat said, ‘What you want me do with that? Write it down with a pencil on a piece of paper and send it to the papers?’
I wanted to watch Bhakcu working on the car that evening, so I said to him, ‘Uncle Bhakcu, your clothes looking really dirty and greasy. I wonder how you could bear to wear them.’
He turned and smiled at me. ‘What you expect, boy?’ he said. ‘Mechanic people like me ain’t have time for clean clothes.’
‘What happen to the car, Uncle Bhakcu?’ I asked.
He didn’t reply.
‘The tappet knocking?’ I suggested.
One thing Bhacku had taught me about cars was that tappets were always knocking. Give Bhakcu any car in the world, and the first thing he would tell you about it was, ‘The tappet knocking, you know. Hear. Hear it?’
‘The tappet knocking?’ I asked.
He came right up to me and asked eagerly, ‘What, you hear it knocking?’
And before I had time to say, ‘Well, something did knocking,’ Mrs Bhakcu pulled him away, saying, ‘Come and eat now, man. God, you get your clothes really dirty today.’
The car that fell on Bhakcu wasn’t really a new car, although Bhakcu boasted that it very nearly was.
‘It only do two hundred miles,’ he used to say.
Hat said, ‘Well, I know Trinidad small, but I didn’t know it was so small.’
I remember the day it was bought. It was a Saturday. And that morning Mrs Bhakcu came to my mother and they talked about the cost of rice and flour and the black market. As she was leaving, Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘He gone to town today. He say he got to buy a new car.’
So we waited for the new car.
Midday came, but Bhakcu didn’t.
Hat said, ‘Two to one, that man taking down the engine right this minute.’
About four o’clock we heard a banging and a clattering, and looking down Miguel Street towards Docksite we saw the car. It was a blue Chevrolet, one of the 1939 models. It looked rich and new. We began to wave and cheer, and I saw Bhakcu waving his left hand.
We danced into the road in front of Bhakcu’s house, waving and cheering.
The car came nearer and Hat said, ‘Jump, boys! Run for your life. Like he get mad.’
It was a near thing. The car just raced past the house and we stopped cheering.
Hat said, ‘The car out of control. It go have a accident if something don’t happen quick.’
Mrs Bhakcu laughed. ‘What you think it is at all?’ she said.
But we raced after the car, crying after Bhakcu.
He wasn’t waving with his left hand. He was trying to warn people off.
By a miracle, it stopped just before Ariapita Avenue.
Bhakcu said, ‘I did mashing down the brakes since I turn Miguel Street, but the brakes ain’t working. Is a funny thing. I overhaul the brakes just this morning.’
Hat said, ‘It have two things for you to do. Overhaul your head or haul your arse away before you get people in trouble.’
Bhakcu said, ‘You boys go have to give me a hand to push the car back home.’
As we were pushing it past the house of Morgan, the pyrotechnicist, Mrs Morgan shouted, ‘Ah, Mrs Bhakcu, I see you buy a new car today, man.’
Mrs Bhakcu didn’t reply.
Mrs Morgan said, ‘Ah, Mrs Bhakcu, you think your husband go give me a ride in his new car?’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Yes, he go give you a ride, but first your husband must give me a ride on his donkey-cart when he buy it.’
Bhakcu said to Mrs Bhakcu, ‘Why you don’t shut your mouth up?’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘But how you want me to shut my mouth up? You is my husband, and I have to stand up for you.’
Bhakcu said very sternly, ‘You only stand up for me when I