The Mystic Masseur by V. S. Naipaul

turned around. ‘You, haul your tail away from here quick, quick, before I break it up for you. Don’t meddle in what don’t concern you.’
    The crowd roared.
    Ramlogan bent down again to whisper. ‘You see, sahib, how you making me shame.’ This time his whisper promised tears. ‘You see, sahib, what you doing to my cha’acter and sensa values.’
    Ganesh didn’t move.
    The crowd was beginning to treat him like a hero.
    In the end Ganesh got from Ramlogan: a cow and a heifer, fifteen hundred dollars in cash, and a house in Fuente Grove. Ramlogan also cancelled the bill for the food he had sent to Ganesh’s house.
    The ceremony ended at about nine in the morning; but Ramlogan was sweating long before then.
    ‘The boy and I was only having a joke,’ he said again and again at the end. ‘He done know long time now what I was going to give him. We was only making joke, you know.’

    Ganesh returned home after the wedding. It would be three days before Leela could come to live with him and in that time The Great Belcher tried to restore order to the house. Most of the guests had left as suddenly as they had arrived; though from time to time Ganesh still saw a straggler who wandered about the house and ate.
    ‘King George gone to Arima yesterday,’ The Great Belcher told him. ‘Somebody dead there yesterday. I going tomorrow myself, but I send King George ahead to arrange everything.’
    Then she decided to give Ganesh the facts of life.
    ‘These modern girls is hell self,’ she said. ‘And from what I see and hear, this Leela is a modern girl. Anyway, you got to make the best of what is yours.’
    She paused to belch. ‘All she want to make she straight as a arrow is a little blows every now and then.’
    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.