Ramlogan passed his hand over his forehead and behind his neck. ‘I know is hard to believe, sahib. But is the gospel truth. I think is a good idea, sahib, for you to married Leela.’
‘All right,’ Ganesh said.
He never saw Leela again until the night of their wedding, and both he and Ramlogan pretended he had never seen her at all, because they were both good Hindus and knew it was wrong for a man to see his wife before marriage.
He still had to go to Ramlogan’s, to make arrangements for the wedding, but he remained in the shop itself and never went to the back room.
‘You is not like Soomintra damn fool of a husband,’ Ramlogan told him. ‘You is a modern man and you must have a modern wedding.’
So he didn’t send the messenger around to give the saffron-dyed rice to friends and relations and announce the wedding. ‘That old-fashion,’ he said. He wanted printed invitations on scalloped and gilt-edged cards. ‘And we must have nice wordings, sahib.’
‘But you can’t have nice wordings on a thing like a invitation.’
‘You is the educated man, sahib. You could think of some.’
‘R.S.V.P.?’
‘What that mean?’
‘It don’t mean nothing, but it nice to have it.’
‘Let we have it then, man, sahib! You is a modern man, and too besides, it sound as pretty wordings.’
Ganesh himself went to San Fernando to get the cards printed. The printer’s shop was, at first sight, a little disappointing. It looked black and bleak and seemed to be manned only by a thin youth in ragged khaki shorts who whistled as he operated the hand-press. But when Ganesh saw the cards go in blank and come out with his prose miraculously transformed into all the authority of type, he was struck with something like awe. He stayed to watch the boy set up a cinema hand-bill. The boy, whistling without intermission, ignored Ganesh altogether.
‘Is on this sort of machine they does print books?’ Ganesh asked.
‘What else you think it make for?’
‘You print any good books lately?’
The boy dabbed some ink on the roller. ‘You ever hear of Trinidad people writing books?’
‘I writing a book.’
The boy spat into a bin full of ink-stained paper. ‘This must be a funny sort of shop, you know. The number of people who come in here and ask me to print the books they writing in invisible ink, man!’
‘What you name?’
‘Basdeo.’
‘All right, Basdeo, boy. The day go come when I go send you a book to print.’
‘Sure, man. Sure. You write it and I print it.’
Ganesh didn’t think he liked Basdeo’s Hollywood manner, and he instantly regretted what he had said. But so far as this business of writing books was concerned, he seemed to have no wilclass="underline" it was the second time he had committed himself. It all seemed pre-ordained.
‘Yes, they is pretty invitation cards,’ Ramlogan said, but there was no joy in his voice.
‘But what happen now to make your face long long as mango?’
‘Education, sahib, is one hell of a thing. When you is a poor illiterate man like me, all sort of people does want to take advantage on you.’
Ramlogan began to cry. ‘Right now, right right now, as you sitting down on that bench there and I sitting down on this stool behind my shop counter, looking at these pretty pretty cards, you wouldn’t believe what people trying to do to me. Right now it have a man in Siparia trying to rob my two house there, all because I can’t read, and the people in Penal behaving in a funny way.’
‘What they doing so?’
‘Ah, sahib. That is just like you. I know you want to help me, but is too late now. All sort of paper with fine fine writing they did make me sign and everything, and now — now everything lost.’
Ganesh had not seen Ramlogan cry so much since the funeral. He said, ‘Well, look. If is the dowry you worried about, you could stop. I don’t want a big dowry.’
‘Is the shame, sahib, that eating me up. You know how with these Hindu weddings everybody does know how much the boy get from the girl father. When, the morning after the wedding the boy sit down and they give him a plate of kedgeree, with the girl father having to give money and keep on giving until the boy eat the kedgeree, everybody go see what I give you, and they go say, “Look, Ramlogan marrying off his second and best daughter to a boy with a college education, and this is all the man giving.” Is that what eating me up, sahib. I know that for you, educated and reading books night and day, it wouldn’t mean much, but for me, sahib, what about my cha’acter and sensa values?’
‘You must stop crying and listen. When it come to eating the kedgeree, I go eat quick, not to shame you. Not too quick, because that would make people think you poor as a church-rat. But I wouldn’t take much from you.’
Ramlogan smiled through his tears. ‘Is just like you, sahib, just what I did expect from you. I wish Leela did see you and then she woulda know what sort of man I choose for she husband.’
‘I wish I did see Leela too.’
‘Smatterer fact, sahib, I know it have some modern people nowadays who don’t even like waiting for money before they eat the kedgeree.’
‘But is the custom, man.’
‘Yes, sahib, the custom. But still I think is a disgrace in these modern times. Now, if it was I was getting married, I wouldn’t want any dowry and I woulda say, “To hell with the kedgeree, man.” ’
As soon as the invitations were out Ganesh had to stop visiting Ramlogan altogether, but he wasn’t alone in his house for long. Dozens of women descended on him with their children. He had no idea who most of them were; sometimes he recognized a face and found it hard to believe that the woman with the children hanging about her was the same cousin who was only a child herself when he first went to Port of Spain.
The children treated Ganesh with contempt.
A small boy with a running nose said to him one day, ‘They tell me is you who getting married.’
‘Yes, is me.’
The boy said, ‘Ahaha!’ and ran away laughing and jeering.
The boy’s mother said, ‘Is something we have to face these days. The children getting modern.’
Then one day Ganesh discovered his aunt among the women, she who had been one of the principal mourners at his father’s funeral. He learnt that she had not only arranged everything then, but had also paid for it all. When Ganesh offered to pay back the money she became annoyed and told him not to be stupid.
‘This life is a funny thing, eh,’ she said. ‘One day somebody dead and you cry. Two days later somebody married, and then you laugh. Oh, Ganeshwa boy, at a time like this you want your own family around you, but what family you have? Your father, he dead; your mother, she dead too.’
She was so moved she couldn’t cry; and for the first time Ganesh realized what a big thing his marriage was.
Ganesh thought it almost a miracle that so many people could live happily in one small house without any sort of organization. They had left him the bedroom, but they swarmed over the rest of the house and managed as best they could. First they had made it into an extended picnic site; then they had made it into a cramped camping site. But they looked happy enough and Ganesh presently discovered that the anarchy was only apparent. Of the dozens of women who wandered freely about the house there was one, tall and silent, whom he had learnt to call King George. It might have been her real name for all he knew: he had never seen her before. King George ruled the house.