The Mystic Masseur by V. S. Naipaul Page B

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.’
    ‘He write that down last night in a copy-book. And then, Pa, this morning he ask me for a photo of you and he have it now.’
    Ramlogan slid, practically fell, off his stool. ‘Oh God! Oh God! I didn’t know he was that sort of man. He look so quiet.’ He stamped up and down behind the counter. ‘Oh God! What I do to your husband to make him prosecute me in this way? What he going to do with the picture?’
    Leela was sobbing.
    Ramlogan looked at the glass case on the counter. ‘All that I do for him. Leela, I didn’t want any glass case in my shop.’
    ‘No, Pa, you didn’t want any glass case in the shop.’
    ‘It for he I get the glass case. Oh God! Leela, is only one thing he going to do with the picture. Work magic and obeah , Leela.’
    In his agitation Ramlogan was clutching at his hair, slapping his chest and belly, and beating on the counter. ‘And then he go want more property.’ Ramlogan’s voice palpitated with true anguish.
    Leela shrieked. ‘What you going to do to my husband, Pa? Is only three days now I married him.’
    ‘Soomintra, poor little Soomintra, she did tell me when we was going to take out the photos. “Pa, I don’t think we should take out any photos.” God, oh God! Leela, why I didn’t listen to poor little Soomintra?’
    Ramlogan passed a grubby hand over the brown-paper patch on the glass case, and shook away his tears.
    ‘And last night, Pa, he beat me.’
    ‘Come, Leela, come, daughter.’ He leaned over the counter and put his hands on her shoulder. ‘Is your fate, Leela. Is my fate too. We can’t fight it, Leela.’
    ‘Pa,’ Leela wailed, ‘what you going to do to him? He is my husband, you know.’
    Ramlogan withdrew his hands and wiped his eyes. He beat on the counter until the glass case rattled. ‘That is what they call education these days. They teaching a new subject. Pickpocketing.’
    Leela gave another shriek. ‘The man is my husband, Pa.’

    When, later that afternoon, Ganesh came back to Fourways, he was surprised to hear Ramlogan shouting, ‘Oh, sahib! Sahib! What happen that you passing without saying anything? People go think we vex.’
    Ganesh saw Ramlogan smiling broadly behind the counter. ‘What you want me to say when you have a sharpen cutlass underneath the counter, eh?’
    ‘Cutlass? Sharpen cutlass? You making joke,