The nightwatchman's occurrence book_ and other comic inventions - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,4

campaign manager.’

‘Campaign what? Ooh. Nothing so fancy for me, man. You and I, Baksh, we is very simple people. Is the community we have to think about.’

‘Thinking about them all the time,’ Baksh said.

‘Time go come, you know, Baksh, and you too, Foam, time go come when you realize that money ain’t everything.’

‘But is a damn lot,’ Foam boomed, and took up his tacking again.

‘True,’ Harbans fluted.

‘Must have a loudspeaking van,’ Baksh said. ‘The other man have a loudspeaking van. Come to think of it, you could use my loudspeaker.’ He looked hard at Harbans. ‘And you could use my van.’

Harbans looked back hard into the darkness. ‘What you saying, Baksh? You ain’t got no loudspeaker.’

Baksh stood up. Foam stopped tacking.

‘You ain’t got no loudspeaker,’ Harbans repeated. ‘And you ain’t got no van.’

Baksh said, ‘And you ain’t got no Muslim vote.’ He went back to his counter and took up the yellow chalk in a businesslike way.

‘Haa!’ Harbans chuckled. ‘I was only fooling you. Haa! I was only making joke, Baksh.’

‘Damn funny sorta joke,’ Foam said.

‘You going to get your van,’ Harbans said. ‘And you going to get your loudspeaker. You sure we want loudspeaker?’

‘Bound to have one, man. For the boy.’

‘Boy?’

‘Who else?’ Foam asked. ‘I did always want to take up loud-speaking. A lot of people tell me I have the voice for it.’

‘Hundred per cent better than that Lorkhoor,’ Baksh said.

Lorkhoor was the brightest young man in Elvira and Foam’s natural rival. He was only two-and-a-half years older than Foam but he was already making his mark on the world. He ran about the remoter districts of Central Trinidad with a loudspeaker van, advertising for the cinemas in Caroni.

‘Lorkhoor is only a big show-offer,’ Foam said. ‘Ever hear him, Mr Harbans? “This is the voice of the ever popular Lorkhoor,” he does say, “begging you and imploring you and entreating you and beseeching you to go to the New Theatre.” Is just those three big words he knew, you know. Talk about a show-offer!’

‘The family is like that,’ Baksh said.

‘We want another stand-pipe in Elvira,’ Harbans said. ‘Elvira is a big place and it only have one school. And the roads!’

Foam said, ‘Mr Harbans, Lorkhoor start loudspeaking against you, you know.’

‘What! But I ain’t do the boy or the boy family nothing at all. Why he turning against a old man like me?’

Neither Baksh nor Foam could help him there. Lorkhoor had said so often he didn’t care for politics that it had come as a surprise to all Elvira when he suddenly declared for the other candidate, the man they called Preacher. Even Preacher’s supporters were surprised.

‘But I is a Hindu,’ Harbans cried. ‘Lorkhoor is a Hindu. Preacher is Negro.’

Baksh saw an opening. ‘Preacher giving out money hands down. Lorkhoor managing Preacher campaign. Hundred dollars a month.’

‘Where Preacher getting that sort of money?’

Baksh began to invent. ‘Preacher tell me pussonal’—the word had enormous vogue in Elvira in 1950—‘that ever since he was a boy, even before this democracy and universal suffrage business, he had a ambition to go up to the Legislative Council. He say God send him this chance.’ Baksh paused for inspiration. It didn’t come. ‘He been saving up,’ Baksh went on lamely. ‘Saving up for a long long time.’ He shifted the subject. ‘To be frank with you, Mr Harbans, Preacher have me a little worried. He acting too funny. He ain’t making no big noise or nothing. He just walking about quiet quiet and brisk brisk from house to house. He ain’t stick up no posters or nothing.’

‘House-to-house campaign,’ Harbans said gloomily.

‘And Lorkhoor,’ Foam said. ‘He winning over a lot of stupid people with his big talk.’

Harbans remembered the sign he had had that afternoon: the women, the dog, the engine stalling twice. And he hadn’t been half an hour in Elvira before so many unexpected things had happened. Baksh wasn’t sticking to the original bargain. He was demanding a loudspeaker van; he had brought Foam in and Harbans felt that Foam was almost certain to make trouble. And there was this news about Lorkhoor.

‘Traitor!’ Harbans exclaimed. ‘This Lorkhoor is a damn traitor!’

‘The family is like that,’ Baksh said, as though it were a consolation.

‘I ain’t even start my campaign proper yet and already I spend more than two thousand dollars. Don’t ask me what on, because I ain’t know.’

Baksh laughed. ‘You talking like Foam mother.’

‘Don’t worry, Mr Harbans,’ Foam said. ‘When we put you in the Leg. Co. you going to make