The Mystic Masseur by V. S. Naipaul Page A

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