“That was one portion,” the waitress said.
“That was one bamboo.”
He ordered more lager and the waitress sucked her teeth and went out, leaving the swing door swinging rapidly to and fro.
“One portion,” Mr. Burnett said. “They make it sound like hay. And this damned room is like a stall. I’m not worried. I’ve got other strings to my bow. You too. You could go back to your sign-writing. I leave, you leave. Let’s all leave.”
They laughed.
Mr. Biswas returned to the office in a state of great agitation. He had been associated, and zestfully, with some of the most frivolous excesses of the Sentinel. Now at the thought of each he felt a stab of guilt and panic. He was expecting to be summoned to mysterious rooms and told by their secure occupants that his services were no longer required. He sat at his desk-but it belonged to him no more than the columns of the Sentinel he filled-and listened to the noises made by the carpenters. Those were the noises he had heard on his first day in the office; building and rebuilding had gone on without interruption ever since. The newsroom came to its afternoon life. Reporters arrived, took off their jackets, opened notebooks and typed; groups gathered at the green water-cooler and broke up again; at some desks proofs were being corrected, the inner pages laid out. For more than four years he had been part of this excitement. Now, waiting for the summons, he could only observe it.
Getting to believe that by staying in the office he was increasing the risk of dismissal, he left early and cycled home. Fear led to fear. Suppose he had to send the children back to Hanuman House, would there be anyone to receive them? Suppose Mrs. Tulsi gave him notice-as Shama did so often to the tenement people-where would he go? How would he live?
The years stretched ahead, dark.
When he got home he mixed and drank some Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder, undressed, got into bed and began to read Epictetus.
But the days went by and no summons came. And at last it was time for Mr. Burnett to leave. Mr. Biswas wanted to make some gesture to show his gratitude and sympathy, but he could think of nothing. And after all Mr. Burnett was escaping; he was staying behind. The Sentinel reported Mr. Burnett’s departure on the society page. There was an unkind photograph of Mr. Burnett looking uncomfortable in a dinner jacket, his small eyes popping in the flash of the camera, a cigar stuck in his mouth as if for comic effect. He was reported as being sorry to leave; he had to take up an appointment in America; he had learned much from his association with Trinidad and the Sentinel, and he would take a great interest in the progress of both; he thought the standards of local journalism “surprisingly high”. It was left to the other newspapers to reveal the other strings to his bow that Mr. Burnett had spoken about. They reported that an Indian troupe, made up of dancers, a fire-walker, a snake-charmer and a man who could rest on a bed of nails, was accompanying Mr. Burnett, a former editor of a local newspaper, on his travels to America. One headline was THE CIRCUS MOVES ON.
And the new regime started at the Sentinel. The day after Mr. Burnett’s departure the newsroom was hung with posters which said DON”T BE BRIGHT, JUST GET IT RIGHT and NEWS NOT VIEWS and FACTS? IF NOT AXE and CHECK IT OR CHUCK IT. Mr. Biswas regarded them all as aimed at himself alone, and their whimsicality scared him. The office was subdued and everyone wore a look of earnestness, those who had gone up, those who had gone down. Mr. Burnett’s news editor had been made a sub-editor. His bright reporters had been variously scattered. One went to Today’s Arrangements, Invalids and The Weather, one to Shipping, one to Diana’s Diary on the society page, one to Classified Advertisements. Mr. Biswas joined Court Shorts.
“Write?” he said to Shama. “I don’t call that writing. Is more like filling up a form. X, aged so much, was yesterday fined so much by Mr. Y at this court for doing that. The prosecution alleged. Electing to conduct his own defence, X said. The magistrate, passing sentence, said. “
But Shama approved of the new regime. She said, “It will teach you to have some respect for people and the truth.”
“Hear you. Hear you! But you don’t surprise me. I expect you to talk like that. But let them wait. New regime, eh. Just see the circulation drop now.”
It was only to Shama that Mr. Biswas spoke about the changes. At the office the subject was never mentioned. Mr. Burnett’s favourites avoided one another and, fearing intrigue, mixed with no one else. Apart from the posters there had been no directive, but they had all, so far as their new duties permitted o writing, changed their styles. They wrote longer paragraphs of complete sentences with bigger words.
Presently the directives came, in a booklet called Rules for Reporters; and it was in keeping with the aloof severity of the new authorities that the booklets should have appeared on every desk one morning without explanation, with only the name of the reporter, preceded by a “Mr”, in the top right-hand corner.
“He must have got up early this morning,” Mr. Biswas said to Shama.
The booklet contained rules about language, dress, behaviour, and at the bottom of every page there was a slogan. On the front cover was printed “THE RIGHTEST NEWS IS THE BRIGHTEST NEWS”, the inverted commas suggesting that the statement was historical, witty and wise. The back cover said: REPORT NOT DISTORT.
“Report not distort,” Mr. Biswas said to Shama. “That is all the son of a bitch doing now, you know, and drawing a fat salary for it too. Making up those slogans. Rules for Reporters. Rules!”
A few days later he came home and said, “Guess what? Editor peeing in a special place now, you know. ‘Excuse me. But I must go and pee-alone.’ Everybody peeing in the same place for years. What happen? He taking a course of Dodd’s Kidney Pills and peeing blue or something?”
In Shama’s accounts Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder appeared more often, always written out in full.
“Just watch and see,” Mr. Biswas said. “Everybody going to leave. People not going to put up with this sort of treatment, I tell you.”
“When you leaving?” Shama asked.
And worse was to come.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose they just want to frighten me. I will henceforward-henceforward: you hear the sort of words that son of a bitch using-I will henceforward spend my afternoons at the cemeteries of Port of Spain. Just hand me that yellow book. Rules for Reporters! Let me see. Anything about funerals? By God! They damn well have it in! ‘The Sentinel reporter should be soberly dressed on these occasions, that is, in a dark suit.’ Dark suit! The man must think I haven’t got a wife and four children. He must think he paying me a fortune every fortnight. ‘Neither by his demeanour nor by his dress should the reporter offend the mourners, since this will certainly lose the paper much goodwill. The Sentinel reporter should remember that he represents the Sentinel. He should encourage trust. It cannot be stressed too often that the reporter should get every name right. A name incorrectly spelt is offensive. All orders and decorations should be mentioned, but the reporter should use his discretion in making inquiries about these. To be ignorant of an individual’s decorations is almost certain to offend him. To ask an OBE whether he is an MBE is equally likely to offend. Far better, in this hypothetical case, to make inquiries on the assumption that the individual is a CBE. After the immediate family, the names of all mourners should be set out in alphabetical order.’