The nightwatchman's occurrence book_ and other comic inventions - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,203

poor. You think the only thing they want is money. All-you wrong, you know.’

One day while we were coming back in procession from the park, Mano pumping away beside us past the crocodile of Ma-Ho’s children, we were horrified to see Mr Lambert stretched out on the pavement like a dead man. He was not dead; that was a relief. He was simply drunk, very complicatedly drunk. Selma ran to Mrs Lambert and brought back a cool message: ‘Mrs Lambert says we are not to worry our heads with that good-for-nothing idler.’

Henry said, ‘We are not doing Lambert any good by being so friendly with him. Mrs Lambert, I would say, is hostile to us all, definitely hostile.’

Mr Lambert at this stage revived a little and said, ‘They say I am black. But black I am not. I tell you, good sirs, I am a Scot.’

Henry said, ‘Is not so funny, you know. His grandfather was a big landowner, a big man. We even hear a rumour some years before the war that according to some funny law of succession Mr Lambert was the legal head of some Scottish clan.’

The house went up. The day of the sports meeting came. Mano was extremely nervous. As the time drew nearer he even began to look frightened. This was puzzling, because I had always thought him quite withdrawn, indifferent to success, failure or encouragement.

Henry said, ‘You know, Mano never read the papers. On the road yesterday some crazy thing make him take up the evening paper and he look at the horoscope and he read: “You will be exalted today.” ‘

‘But that’s nice,’ I said.

‘It get him frightened. Was a damn funny word for the paper to use. It make Mano think of God and the old keys of the kingdom.’

Mano was very frightened when we started for the sports ground. There was no sign in the street of Mr Lambert and we felt that he had in the end been scared off by Mrs Lambert and that to save face he had gone away for a little. But at the sports ground, after the meeting had begun and Mano was started on his walk—it was a long walk, and you must picture it going on and on, with lots of other sporting activities taking place at the same time, each activity unrelated to any other, creating a total effect of a futile multifarious frenzy—it was when Mano was well on his walk that we heard the bell begin to ring. To us it rang like doom.

‘Mano will not run today, Mano will walk to heaven today.’

Exaltation was not in Mr Lambert’s face alone or in his bell or in his words. It was also in his dress.

‘On me some alien blood has spilt. I make a final statement, I wear a kilt.’ And then came all his old rhymes.

And Mano didn’t run. He walked and won. And Mr Lambert rang his bell and chanted: ‘Mano will not run today. He will walk into the arms of his Lord today.’

We had worked for Mano’s victory. Now that it had come it seemed unnatural. He himself was like a stunned man. He rejected congratulations. We offered him none. When we looked for Mr Lambert we couldn’t find him. And with a sense of a double and deep unsettling of what was fixed and right, we walked home. We had a party. It turned into more than a party. We did not notice when Mano left us.

Later that night we found Mr Lambert drunk and sprawling on the pavement.

He said, ‘I led her up from the gutter. I gave her bread. I gave her butter. And this is how she pays me back. White is white and black is black.’

We took him to his house. Henry went to see Mrs Lambert. It was no use. She refused to take him in. She refused to come out to him.

‘To my own house I have no entrance. Come, friends, all on my grave dance.’

We had a double funeral the next day. Mano had done what so many others on the island had done. He had gone out swimming, far into the blue waters, beyond the possibility of return.

‘You know,’ Henry said, as we walked to the cemetery, ‘the trouble with Mano was that he never had courage. He didn’t want to be a walker. He really wanted to be a runner. But he didn’t have the courage. So when he won the walking race, he went