Afterwards, the sticks, their heads carved, were soaked in coconut oil in bamboo cylinders, to give them greater strength and resilience. Then Mungroo took the sticks to an old stickman he knew, to have them “mounted” with the spirit of a dead Spaniard. So that the ritual ended in romance, awe and mystery. For the Spaniards, Mr. Biswas knew, had surrendered the island one hundred years before, and their descendants had disappeared; yet they had left a memory of reckless valour, and this memory had passed to people who came from another continent and didn’t know what a Spaniard was, people who, in their huts of mud and grass where time and distance were obliterated, still frightened their children with the name of Alexander, of whose greatness they knew nothing.
By profession Mungroo was a roadmender. He preferred to say that he worked for the government, and he preferred not to work at all. He made it plain that because he defended the honour of the village, the village owed him a living. He exacted contributions for pitch-oil for the flambeaux, for the “mounting” fees, and for the expensive costumes the stick-fighters wore on days of battle. At first Mr. Biswas contributed willingly. Then Mungroo, the better to devote himself to his art, abandoned the road-gang for weeks at a time and lived on credit from Mr. Biswas and other shopkeepers. Mr. Biswas admired Mungroo. He felt it would be disloyal to refuse Mungroo credit, unbecoming to remind him of his debts, and dangerous to do either. Mungroo became steadily more demanding. Mr. Biswas complained to other customers; they told Mungroo. Mungroo didn’t reply, as Mr. Biswas had feared, with violence, but with a dignity which, though it struck Mr. Biswas as hollow, hurt him as deeply as the silences and sighs of Shama. Mungroo refused to speak to Mr. Biswas and spat, casually, whenever he passed the shop. Mungroo’s bills remained unpaid; and Mr. Biswas lost a few more customers.
Earlier than Mr. Biswas had expected, Moti returned and said, “You are a lucky man. Seebaran has decided to help you. I told him you were a friend of mine and a good Hindu, and he’s a very strict Hindu himself, as you know. He is going to help you. Even though he’s busy.” He took out the papers from his shirt pocket, found the one he wanted and slapped it down on the counter. At the top a mauve stamp, slightly askew, said that L. S. Seebaran was a solicitor and conveyancer. Below that there were many dotted lines between printed sentences. “Seebaran going to full up those for you as soon as he get your papers,” Moti said, using English, the language of the law.
Unless this sum, Mr. Biswas read with a thrill, together with One Dollar and Twenty Cents ($1,020), the cost of this letter, is paid within ten days, legal proceedings shall be instituted against you. And there was another dotted line below that, where L. S. Seebaran was to sign himself yours faithfully.
“Powerful, powerful, man,” Mr. Biswas said. “Legal proceedings, eh. I didn’t know it was so easy to bring people up.”
Moti gave a knowing little grunt.
“One dollar and twenty cents, the cost of this letter,” Mr. Biswas said. “You mean I don’t even have to pay that?”
“Not with Seebaran fighting your case for you.”
“One dollar and twenty cents. You mean Seebaran getting that just for fulling up those dotted lines? Education, boy. It have nothing like a profession.”
“You is your own boss, if you is a professional man,” Moti said, his voice touched with a remote sadness.
“But one twenty, man. Five minutes’ writing for one twenty.”
“You forgetting that Seebaran had to spend years and years studying all sort of big and heavy books before they allow him to send out papers like this.”
“You know, the thing to do is to have three sons. Make one a doctor, one a dentist, and one a lawyer.”
“Nice little family. If you have the sons. And if you have the money. They don’t give trust in those places.”
Mr. Biswas brought out Shama’s accounts. Moti asked to see the credit slips again, and his face fell as he looked through them. “A lot of these ain’t signed,” he said.
Mr. Biswas had for long thought it discourteous to ask his creditors to do so. He said, “But they wasn’t signed the last time either.”
Moti gave a nervous laugh. “Don’t worry. I know cases where Seebaran recover people money even without paper or anything. But is a lot of work here, you know. You got to show Seebaran that you serious.”
Mr. Biswas went to the drawer below the shelves. The drawer was large but not heavy, and pulled out in an easy, awkward way; the wood inside was oily but surprisingly white. “A dollar and twenty cents?” he said.
A throat was cleared. Shama’s.
“Maharajin,” Moti said.
There was no reply.
Mr. Biswas didn’t turn. “One twenty?” he repeated, rattling the coins in the drawer.
Moti said unhappily, “You can’t give a man like Seebaran one twenty to fight a case for you.”
“Five,” Mr. Biswas said.
“That would be good,” Moti said, as though he had hoped to get ten.
“Two,” Mr. Biswas said, walking briskly to the counter and laying down a red note.
“Is all right,” Moti said. “Don’t bother to count it.”
“And one is three.” Mr. Biswas put down a blue note. “And one is four. And one is five.”
“Five,” Moti said.
“Tell Seebaran I send that.”
Moti put the notes in his side pocket and Shama’s Shorthand Reporter’s Notebook in his hip pocket. He fixed on his bicycle clips and, looking up, said, “Maharajin,” directing a brief smile over Mr. Biswas’s shoulder. Then, briskly, not looking back, he wheeled his shaky bicycle across the yellow dirt yard, dusty and cracked, with here and there a bleached and flattened Anchor cigarette packet. “Right,” he called from the road, hopping on the saddle and pedalling rapidly away.
“Right, man, Moti!” Mr. Biswas called back.
He remained where he was, palms pressed against the edge of the counter, staring at the road, at the mango tree and the side wall of the hut in the lot obliquely opposite, and the sugarcane fields stretching away with an occasional blob of trees, to the low hills of the Central Range.
“All right!” he said. “Somebody turn you into a statue?”
Shama sighed.
“I suppose I is my own boss.”
“And a professional man,” she said.
“Shoulda give him ten dollars.”
“Is not too late. Why you don’t empty the drawer and run after him?”
And having stimulated his rage and his appetite for argument, she left the doorway and went to the back room, where after much thumping and sighing she began to sing a popular Hindi song:
Slowly, slowly,
Brothers and sisters,
Bear his corpse to the water’s edge.
He didn’t have the Hindu delight in tragedy and the details of death, and he had often asked Shama not to sing this cremation song. Now he had to listen while she sang with sweet lugubriousness to the end. And when, fretted to defeat, he went to the back room, he found Shama, in her best satin bodice and most elaborately worked veil, putting bootees on a fully dressed Savi.