Mr. Biswas thought of estate-driver, exalted it to overseer, rejected it, rejected shopkeeper, rejected unemployed. He said, “Sign-painter.”
The editor rose. “I have just the job for you.”
He led Mr. Biswas out of the office, through the newsroom (the group around the water-cooler had broken up), past a machine unrolling sheets of typewritten paper, into a partially dismantled room where carpenters were at work, through more rooms, and then into a yard. Down the lane at one end Mr. Biswas could see the street he had left a few minutes before.
The editor walked about the yard, pointing. “Here and here,” he said. “And here.”
Mr. Biswas was given paint and a brush, and he spent the rest of the afternoon writing signs: No Admittance to Wheeled Vehicles, No Entry, Watch out for Vans, No Hands Wanted.
Around him machinery clattered and hummed; the carpenters beat rhythms on the nails as they drove them in.
Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when…
“Tcha!” he exclaimed angrily.
Amazing scenes were witnessed yesterday when Mohun Biswas, 31, a sign-painter, set to work on the offices of the TRINIDAD SENTINEL. Passers-by stopped and stared as Biswas, father of four, covered the walls with obscene phrases. Women hid their faces in their hands, screamed and fainted. A traffic jam was created in St. Vincent Street and police, under Superintendent Grieves, were called in to restore order. Interviewed by our special correspondent late last night, Biswas said…
“Didn’t even know who Marcus Aurelius was, the crab-catching son of a bitch.”
… interviewed late last night, Biswas… Mr. Biswas said, “The ordinary man cannot be expected to know the meaning of ‘No Admittance’.”
“What, still here?”
It was the editor. He was less pink, less oiled, and his clothes were dry. He was smoking a short fat cigar; it repeated and emphasized his shape.
The yard was in shadow; the light was going. Machinery clattered more assertively: a series of separate noises; the carpenters’ rhythms had ceased. In the street traffic had subsided, footsteps resounded; the passing of a motor, the trilling of a bicycle bell could be heard from afar.
“But that is good,” the editor said. “Very good indeed.”
You sound surprised, you little chunk of lard. “I got the letters from a magazine.” You think you are the only one laughing, eh?
“I could eat the Gill Sans R,” the editor said. “You know, I don’t really see why you should want to give up your job.”
“Not enough money.”
“Not much in this either.”
Mr. Biswas pointed to a sign. “No wonder you are doing your best to keep people out.”
“Oh. No Hands Wanted.”
“A nice little sign,” Mr. Biswas said.
The editor smiled and then was convulsed with laughter.
And Mr. Biswas, the clown again, laughed too.
“That was for carpenters and labourers,” the editor said. “Come tomorrow, if you are serious. We’ll give you a month’s trial. But no pay.”
A chance encounter had led him to sign-writing. Sign-writing had taken him to Hanuman House and the Tulsis. Sign-writing found him a place on the Sentinel. And neither for the Tulsi Store signs nor for those at the Sentinel was he paid.
He worked with enthusiasm. His reading had given him an extravagant vocabulary but Mr. Burnett, the editor, was patient. He gave Mr. Biswas copies of London papers, and Mr. Biswas studied their style until he could turn out presentable imitations. It was not long before he developed a feeling for the shape and scandalizing qualities of every story. To this he added something of his own. And it was part of his sudden good fortune that he was working for the Sentinel and not for the Guardian or the Gazette. For the facetiousness that came to him as soon as he put pen to paper, and the fantasy he had hitherto dissipated in quarrels with Shama and in invective against the Tulsis, were just the things Mr. Burnett wanted.
“Let them get their news from the other papers,” he said. “That is exactly what they are doing at the moment anyway. The only way we can get readers is by shocking them. Get them angry. Frighten them. You just give me one good fright, and the job is yours.”
Next day Mr. Biswas turned in a story.
Mr. Burnett said, “You made this one up?”
Mr. Biswas nodded.
“Pity.”
The story was headlined:
Four Children Roasted in Hut Blaze
Mother, Helpless, Watches
“I liked the last paragraph,” Mr. Burnett said.
This read: “Sightseers are pouring into the stricken village, and we do not feel we are in a position to divulge its name as yet. ‘In times like this,’ an old man told me last night, ‘we want to be left alone.’ “
Abandoning fiction, Mr. Biswas persevered. And Mr. Burnett continued to give advice.
“I think you’d better go a little easy on the amazing scenes being witnessed. And how about turning your passers-by into ordinary people every now and then? ‘Considerably’ is a big word meaning ‘very’, which is a pointless word any way. And look. ‘Several’ has seven letters. ‘Many’ has only four and oddly enough has exactly the same meaning. I liked your piece on the Bonny Baby Competition. You made me laugh. But you haven’t frightened me yet.”
“Anything funny happen at the Mad House?” Mr. Biswas asked Ramchand that evening.
Ramchand looked annoyed.
And Mr. Biswas gave up the idea of an exposure piece on the Mad House.
On his way to the Sentinel next morning he called at a police station. From there he went to the mortuary, then to the City Council’s stable-yard. When he got to the Sentinel he sat down at a free desk-no desk was yet his-and wrote in penciclass="underline"
Last week the Sentinel Bonny Baby Competition was held at Prince’s Building. And late last night the body of a dead male baby was found, neatly wrapped in a brown paper parcel, on the rubbish dump at Cocorite.
I have seen the baby and I am in a position to say that it did not win a prize in our Bonny Baby Competition.
Experts are not yet sure whether the baby was specially taken to the rubbish dump, or simply put out with the rubbish in the usual way.
Hezekiah James, 43, unemployed, who discovered the dead baby, told me…
“Good, good,” Mr. Burnett said. “But heavy. Heavy. Why not ‘I am able’ instead of ‘I am in a position’?”
“I got that from the Daily Express.”
“All right. Let it pass. But promise me that for a whole week you won’t be in a position to do or say anything. It’s going to be hard. But try. What sort of baby?”
“Sort?”
“Black, white, green?”
“White. Blueish when I saw it, really. I thought, though, that we didn’t mention race, except for Chinese.”
“Listen to the man. If I ran across a black baby on the rubbish dump at Banbury, do you think I would just say a baby?”
And the headlines the next day read:
White Baby Found on Rubbish Dump
In Brown Paper Parcel
Did Not Win Bonny Baby Competition
“Just one other thing,” Mr. Burnett said. “Lay off babies for a while.”
The job was urgent: the paper had to be printed every evening; by early morning it had to be in every part of the island. This was not the false urgency of writing signs for shops at Christmas or looking after crops. And even after a dozen years Mr. Biswas never lost the thrill, which he then felt for the first time, at seeing what he had written the day before appear in print, in the newspaper delivered free.
“You haven’t given me a real shock yet,” Mr. Burnett said.
And Mr. Biswas wanted to shock Mr. Burnett. It seemed unlikely that he would ever do so, for in his fourth week he was made shipping reporter, taking the place of a man who had been killed at the docks by a crane load of flour accidentally falling from a great height. It was the tourist season and the harbour was full of ships from America and Europe. Mr. Biswas went aboard German ships, was given excellent lighters, saw photographs of Adolf Hitler, and was bewildered by the Heil Hitler salutes.