Mr. Biswas gave him three in a square of white paper.
Moti didn’t go away. He put a Paradise Plum in his mouth and said, “I am glad you don’t stock lard. I respect you for it.” He paused and, closing his eyes, crushed the Paradise Plum between his jaws. “I am glad to see a man in your position not giving up his religion for the sake of a few cents. Do you know that these days some Hindu shopkeepers are actually selling salt beef with their own hands? Just for the few extra cents.”
Mr. Biswas knew, and regretted the squeamishness which prevented him from doing the same.
“And look at that other thing,” Moti said, talking through the crushed Paradise Plum. “Did you hear about the pig?”
“The Tulsi pig? Doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“Still, the blessing is that not everyone is like that. You, for instance. And Seebaran. Do you know Seebaran?”
“Seebaran?”
“Don’t know Seebaran! L. S. Seebaran? The man who has been handling practically all the work in the Petty Civil.”
“Oh, him,” Mr. Biswas said, still in the dark.
“Very strict Hindu. And one of the best lawyers here too, I can tell you. We should be proud of him. The man who was here before you-what’s his name?-anyway, the man before you had a lot to thank Seebaran for. He would be a pauper today if it hadn’t been for Seebaran.”
Moti put another Paradise Plum in his mouth and absently considered the meagrely filled shelves. Mr. Biswas followed Mod’s gaze, which came to rest on the tins with half-eaten labels, left there by the man Seebaran had assisted.
“So everybody going to Dookhie, eh?” Moti said, more familiar now, and speaking in English. Dookhie was the newest shopkeeper in The Chase. “Is a shame. Is a shame the way some people spend their whole life living on credit. Is a form of robbery. Take Mungroo. You know Mungroo?”
Mr. Biswas knew him well.
“A man like Mungroo should be in jail,” Moti said.
“I think so too.”
“Is not,” Moti said judiciously, closing his eyes and cracking the Paradise Plum, “as if he was a pauper and can’t afford to pay. Mungroo richer than you and me could ever hope to be, you hear.” This was news to Mr. Biswas.
“Man should be in jail,” Moti repeated.
Mr. Biswas was about to say that he hadn’t been fooled by Mungroo when Moti said, “He don’t rob the rude and crude shopkeepers, people like himself. He frighten they give him a good dose of licks. No, he does look for nice people with nice soft heart, and is them he does rob. Mungroo see you, he think you look nice, and next day his wife come round for two cents this and three cents that, and she forget that she ain’t got no money, and if you could wait till next pay day. Well, you wrap up the goods in good strong paper-bag, you send she home happy, and you sit down and wait till next day. Next pay day Mungroo forget. His wife forget. They too busy killing chicken and buying rum to remember you. Two-three days later, eh-eh, wife suddenly remember you. She bawling again. She want more trust. Don’t tell me about Mungroo. I know him too good. Man should be in jail, if anybody had the guts to throw him there.”
The account was telescoped and dramatized, but Mr. Biswas recognized its truth. He felt exposed, and said nothing.
“Just show me your accounts,” Moti said. “Just to see how much Mungroo owe you.”
Mr. Biswas took down the spike from the nail between the shelves where it hung above a faded advertisement for Cydrax, a beverage which had not caught the village’s fancy. The spike was now a tall, feathery, multi-coloured brush, with the papers at the bottom as brittle and curling as dead leaves.
“Pappa!” Moti said, and became graver and graver as he looked through the papers. He could not look very far because to get at the lower papers he would have had to remove those at the top altogether. He turned away from Mr. Biswas and contemplated the blackness outside, staring past the doorway against which the rear wheel of his decrepit bicycle could be seen. Sadly he sucked his Paradise Plum. “Pity you don’t know Seebaran. Seebaran woulda fix you up in two twos. He help out the man before you. Otherwise the man would be a pauper now, man. A pauper. Is a funny thing, but you don’t expect to find people getting fat and rich on credit while the poor shopkeeper, who give the credit, not getting enough to eat, wearing rags, watching his children starve, watching them sick.”
Mr. Biswas, seeing himself as the hero of one of Misir’s stories, could scarcely hide his alarm.
“All right, then, man.” Moti fixed his bicycle clips around his ankles. “I got to go. Thanks for the chat. I hope everything go all right with you.”
“But you know Seebaran,” Mr. Biswas said.
“Know him, yes. But I don’t know whether I could just go and ask him to help out a friend of mine. Busy man, you know. Handling nearly all the work in the Petty Civil.”
“Still, you could tell him?”
“Yes,” Moti said, without conviction. “I could tell him. But Seebaran is a big man. You can’t.go troubling him with just one or two little things.”
Mr. Biswas brushed his hand up and down the papers on the spike. “It have a lot of work here for him,” he said aggressively. “You tell him.”
“All right. I go tell him.” Moti got on his cycle. “But I ain’t promising nothing.”
Savi was asleep when Mr. Biswas went to the back room.
“Going to settle Mungroo and the rest of them,” Mr. Biswas said to Shama. “Putting Seebaran on their tail.”
“Who is Seebaran?”
“Who is Seebaran! You mean you don’t know Seebaran? The man who handling practically all the work in the Petty Civil.”
“I know all that. I hear what the man was saying too.”
“Why the hell you ask me then for?”
“You don’t think you better get advice before you start bringing up people?”
“Advice? Who from? The old thug and the old she-fox? I know they know everything. You don’t have to tell me that. But they know law?”
“Seth bring up a lot of people.”
“And every time he bring somebody up, he lose. You don’t have to tell me that either. Everybody in Arwacas know about Seth and the people he bring up. He don’t know everything.”
“He used to study doctor. Doctor or druggist.”
“Used to study doctor! Horse-doctor, if you ask me. He look like a doctor to you? You ever look at his hands? Fat, thick. Can’t even hold a pencil properly.”
“He cut open that boil Chanrouti had the other day.”
“And yes. That is another thing I want to tell you, eh. In advance. In advance. I don’t want Seth cutting open any boil on any of my children. And I don’t want him prescribing any blasted sulphur and condensed milk for any of them either.”
Mungroo was the leader of the village stick-fighters. He was a tall, wiry, surly man, made ferocious in appearance by a large handlebar moustache, for which the villagers called him Moush, then Moach. As a stickman he was a champion. He had reach and skill, and his responses were miraculous. He converted a parry into a lunge so fluently it seemed to be a single action. He fought every duel as though he had rehearsed its every development. It was Mungroo who had organized the young men of The Chase into a fighting band, ready to defend the honour of the village on the days of the Christian Carnival and the Muslim Hosein. Under his direction and in his yard they practised assiduously in the evenings by the light of flambeaux. The village boys went to watch this evening practice. So, despite Shama’s disapproval, did Mr. Biswas.
As much as the game he liked the making of the sticks. Designs were cut into the bark of the poui, which was then roasted in a bonfire; the burnt bark was peeled off, leaving the design burnt into the white wood. There was no scent as pleasant as that of barely roasted poui: faint, yet so lasting it seemed to come from afar, from some immeasurable depth captive within the wood: as faint as the scent of the pouis Raghu roasted in the village like this, in a yard like this, in a bonfire like this: bringing sensations, not pictures, of an evening meal being cooked over a fire that shone on a mud wall and kept out the night, of cool, new, unused mornings, of rain muffled on a thatched roof and warmth below it: sensations as faint as the scent of the poui itself, but sadly evanescent, refusing to be seized or to be translated into a concrete memory.