Ganesh said, ‘You know, I think Ramlogan really vex with me now after the kedgeree business.’
‘Wasn’t a nice thing to do, but it serve Ramlogan right. When a man start taking over woman job, match-making, he deserve all he get.’
‘But I go have to leave here now. You know Fuente Grove? It have a house there Ramlogan give me.’
‘But what you want in a small outa the way place like that? All the work it have doing there is work in the cane-field.’
‘It ain’t that I want to do.’ Ganesh paused, and added hesitantly, ‘I thinking of taking up massaging people.’
She laughed so much she belched. ‘This wind, man, and then you — you want to kill me or what, boy? Massaging people! What you know about massaging people?’
‘Pa was a good massager and I know all he did know.’
‘But you must have a hand for that sort of thing. Think what go happen if any-and everybody start running round saying, “I thinking of taking up massaging people.” It go have so much massagers in Trinidad they go have to start massaging one another.’
‘I feel I have a hand for it. Just like King George.’
‘She have her own sort of hand. She born that way.’
Ganesh told her about Leela’s foot.
She twisted her mouth. ‘It sound good. But a man like you should be doing something else. Bookwork, man.’
‘I going to do that too.’ And then it came out again. ‘I thinking of writing some books.’
‘Good thing. It have money in books, you know. I suppose the man who write the Macdonald Farmer’s Almanac just peeling money. Why you don’t try your hand at something like the Napoleon Book of Fate? I just feel you could do that sort of thing good.’
‘People go want to buy that sort of book?’
‘Is exactly what Trinidad want, boy. Take all the Indians in the towns. They ain’t have any pundit or anything near them, you know. How they go know what to do and what not to do, when and not when? They just have to guess.’
Ganesh was thoughtful. ‘Yes, is that self I go do. A little bit of massaging and a little bit of writing.’
‘I know a boy who could make anything you write sell as hot cakes all over Trinidad. Let we say, you selling the book at two shillings, forty-eight cents. You give the boy six cents a book. Let we say now, you print four five thousand —’
‘It make about two thousand dollars, but — wait, man! I ain’t even write the book yet.’
‘I know you, boy. Once you put your mind to it, you go write nice nice books.’
She belched.
As soon as Leela had come to live with Ganesh and the last guest had left the village, Ramlogan declared war on Ganesh and that very evening ran through Fourways crying out, chanting, his declaration. ‘See how he rob me. Me with my wife dead, me now without children, me a poor widow. See how he forget everything I do for him. He forget all that I give him, he forget how I help burn his father, he forget all the help I give him. See how he rob me. See how he shame me. Watch me here now, so help me God, if I don’t here and now do for the son of a bitch.’
Ganesh ordered Leela to bolt the doors and windows and put out the lights. He took one of his father’s old walking-sticks and remained in the middle of the front room.
Leela began to cry. ‘The man is my own father and here you is taking up big stick to beat him.’
Ganesh heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, you damn little piss-in-tail boy, you want property, eh? You know the only place you could take my property? You going to take it away on your chest, six foot of it.’
Ganesh said, ‘Leela, in the bedroom it have a little copy-book. Go bring it. And it have a pencil in the table drawer. Bring that too.’
She brought the book and pencil and Ganesh wrote, Carry away his property on my chest. Below he wrote the date. He had no particular reason for doing this except that he was afraid and felt he had to do something.
Leela cried. ‘You working magic on my own father!’
Ganesh said, ‘Leela, why you getting ‘fraid? We not staying in this place long. In a few days we moving to Fuente Grove. Nothing to ‘fraid.’
Leela continued to cry and Ganesh loosened his leather belt and beat her.
She cried out, ‘Oh God! Oh God! He go kill me today self!’
It was their first beating, a formal affair done without anger on Ganesh’s part or resentment on Leela’s; and although it formed no part of the marriage ceremony itself, it meant much to both of them. It meant that they had grown up and become independent. Ganesh had become a man; Leela a wife as privileged as any other big woman. Now she too would have tales to tell of her husband’s beatings; and when she went home she would be able to look sad and sullen as every woman should.
The moment was precious.
Leela cried for a bit and said, ‘Man, I really getting worried about Pa.’
This was another first: she had called him ‘man’. There could be no doubt about it now: they were adults. Three days before Ganesh was hardly better than a boy, anxious and diffident. Now he had suddenly lost these qualities and he thought, ‘My father was right. I shoulda get married long before now.’
Leela said, ‘Man, I getting really worried about Pa. Tonight he not going to do you anything. He just go shout a lot and go away, but he won’t forget you. I see him horsewhip a man in Penal really bad one time.’
They heard Ramlogan shouting from the road, ‘Ganesh, this is the last time I warning you.’
Leela said, ‘Man, you must do something to make Pa feel nice. Otherwise I don’t know.’
Ramlogan’s shout sounded hoarse now. ‘Ganesh, tonight self I sharpening up a cutlass for you. I make up my mind to send you to hospital and go to jail for you. Look out, I warning you.’
And then, as Leela had said, Ramlogan went away.
The next morning, after Ganesh had done his puja and eaten the first meal that Leela had cooked for him, he said, ‘Leela, you got any pictures of your father?’
She was sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning rice for the midday meal. ‘Why you want it for?’ she asked with alarm.
‘You forgetting yourself, girl. Somebody make you a policeman now to ask me question? Is a old picture?’
Leela wept over the rice. ‘Not so old, man. Two three years now Pa did go to San Fernando and Chong take out a photo of Pa by hisself and another one with Pa and Soomintra and me. Just before Soomintra did get married. They was pretty photos. Paintings behind and plants in front.’
‘I just want a picture of your father. What I don’t want is your tears.’
He followed her to the bedroom, and while he put on his town clothes — khaki trousers, blue shirt, brown hat, brown shoes — Leela pulled out her suitcase, an Anchor Cigarettes coupons-gift, from under the bed and looked for the photograph.
‘Gimme,’ he said, when she had found it, and snatched it away. ‘This go settle your father.’
She ran after him to the steps. ‘Where you going, man?’
‘Leela, you know, for a girl who ain’t married three days yet you too damn fast.’
He had to pass Ramlogan’s shop. He took care to swing his father’s walking stick, and behaved as though the shop didn’t exist.
And sure enough, he heard Ramlogan calling out, ‘Ganesh, you playing man this morning, eh? Swinging walking-stick as if you is some master-stickman. But, boy, when I get after you, you not going to run fast enough.’
Ganesh walked past without a word.
Leela confessed later that she had gone to the shop that morning to warn Ramlogan. She found him mounted on his stool and miserable.
‘Pa, I have something to tell you.’
‘I have nothing to do with you or your husband. I only want you to take a message to him. Tell him for me that Ramlogan say the only way he going to get my property is to take it away on his chest.’