The nightwatchman's occurrence book_ and other comic inventions - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,62

for Progress and Unity. On the day before the first general election the P.P.U hired five hundred cars and toured the island. It was the P.P.U.’s finest moment. The party had been founded two months before the parade; it died two days after it. It won one seat out of twelve; ten of the candidates lost their deposits; the president and the funds disappeared. But Trinidad had been impressed by the parade and after that no election, whether for city council, county council or local road board, was complete without a parade.

But parades were expensive.

Chittaranjan, seeing Harbans work his way back and forth across the veranda, wished once again he could manage the campaign without having to manage the candidate as well.

He thought he would be casual. He said, ‘You doing anything on Sunday, Mr Harbans?’

Harbans didn’t reply.

Chittaranjan said, ‘I hope you not doing anything, because we having a little parade for you.’

Harbans stopped walking.

‘Small parade really.’

Harbans locked his fingers, looked at them and then at his shoes, cracked his fingers, and continued to walk.

‘Motorcade,’ Dhaniram said.

‘About fifty cars.’ Chittaranjan began to write. ‘Fifteen dollars a car. And you could give them a few gallons of gas. You got to have food to give the people. And you have to have music.’

Harbans, still jerking about the veranda, only cracked his fingers.

‘You can’t disappoint the people, Mr Harbans,’ Chittaranjan said. ‘It go cost you about fifteen hundred dollars, but at the same time it going to make the people who want to vote for you feel good, seeing their candidate at the head of a big big parade.’

‘Must have a motorcade,’ Dhaniram said. ‘Must must. Keep up with the times.’ He laughed. ‘Pay the entrance fee.’

Harbans sat down.

When Foam came in they worked out details.

*

The only member of the committee who didn’t turn up for that meeting was Mahadeo. Of late he had begun to stay away from committee meetings. It embarrassed him to be continually offering up lists of sick Hindus; much of Harbans’s anger had been directed against him and he had had to defend himself more than once: ‘I didn’t start up this democracy business, Mr Harbans.’

Old Sebastian was getting more difficult too. Concurrently with a series of unexpected ailments Sebastian had developed a sprightliness that should have heartened Mahadeo. It sickened him with worry. He could no longer rely on Sebastian to stay at home and make fish-pots. He often found him now in Ramlogan’s rumshop, drinking free rum with the rest. Mahadeo didn’t know where Sebastian got his rum vouchers. (He got them from Harichand, who had printed the vouchers and kept a few.) It didn’t take much to get Sebastian drunk. He had lived for too long on an old age pension that had cramped his drinking style.

Mahadeo said, ‘This democracy ain’t a good thing for a man like Sebastian, you hear.’

And Mr Cuffy said, ‘Mahadeo, I ain’t know what sort of magic you working on Sebastian, but he acting damn funny. A candle does burn bright bright before it go out, remember. And Sebastian burning it at both ends.’

Sebastian’s behaviour also distressed his drinking companion, Haq. Haq had with relief sacrificed his religious scruples so far as to drink in public. It wasn’t the drink, he said; he wanted to be in a crowd, otherwise Foam would beat him up. He and Sebastian sat silently side by side on the bench against one wall of Ramlogan’s rumshop and drank. They looked curiously alike; only, Sebastian smiled all the time, while Haq looked grumpy and uncompromising behind his spectacles; and Haq’s bristle of white beard and whiskers was more impressive than the stray kinky brownish-grey hairs on Sebastian’s chin that looked as though they had been despairingly planted by someone who hadn’t enough seed to go round.

Mahadeo did his best. He bribed Sebastian to stay home; but Sebastian insisted that one bribe was good enough for only one day; and the days he stayed away from the rumshop he was very ill and alarmed Mahadeo more. He gave Sebastian money to go to the D.M.O. for a check-up. Sebastian said he went but Mahadeo didn’t believe him. He bribed the D.M.O. to go to Sebastian. The D.M.O. reported, ‘He’ll last for a bit,’ and left Mahadeo just as worried. ‘A candle does burn bright bright before it go out,’ he thought, and remembered Mr Cuffy and the whitewash brush on his face.

Mahadeo was a devout Hindu. He did his puja every morning and evening. In