A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [170]
‘Write?’ he said to Shama. ‘I don’t call that writing. Is more like filling up a form. X, aged so much, was yesterday fined so much by Mr Y at this court for doing that. The prosecution alleged. Electing to conduct his own defence, X said. The magistrate, passing sentence, said.’
But Shama approved of the new régime. She said, ‘It will teach you to have some respect for people and the truth.’
‘Hear you. Hear you! But you don’t surprise me. I expect you to talk like that. But let them wait. New régime, eh. Just see the circulation drop now.’
It was only to Shama that Mr Biswas spoke about the changes. At the office the subject was never mentioned. Mr Burnett’s favourites avoided one another and, fearing intrigue, mixed with no one else. Apart from the posters there had been no directive, but they had all, so far as their new duties permitted writing, changed their styles. They wrote longer paragraphs of complete sentences with bigger words.
Presently the directives came, in a booklet called Rules for Reporters; and it was in keeping with the aloof severity of the new authorities that the booklets should have appeared on every desk one morning without explanation, with only the name of the reporter, preceded by a ‘Mr’, in the top righthand corner.
‘He must have got up early this morning,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama.
The booklet contained rules about language, dress, behaviour, and at the bottom of every page there was a slogan. On the front cover was printed ‘THE RIGHTEST NEWS IS THE BRIGHTEST NEWS’, the inverted commas suggesting that the statement was historical, witty and wise. The back cover said:REPORT NOT DISTORT.
‘Report not distort,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama. ‘That is all the son of a bitch doing now, you know, and drawing a fat salary for it too. Making up those slogans. Rules for Reporters. Rules!’
A few days later he came home and said, ‘Guess what? Editor peeing in a special place now, you know. “Excuse me. But I must go and pee – alone.” Everybody peeing in the same place for years. What happen? He taking a course of Dodd’s Kidney Pills and peeing blue or something?’
In Shama’s accounts Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder appeared more often, always written out in full.
‘Just watch and see,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Everybody going to leave. People not going to put up with this sort of treatment, I tell you.’
‘When you leaving?’ Shama asked.
And worse was to come.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose they just want to frighten me. I will henceforward – henceforward: you hear the sort of words that son of a bitch using – I will henceforward spend my afternoons at the cemeteries of Port of Spain. Just hand me that yellow book. Rules for Reporters! Let me see. Anything about funerals? By God! They damn well have it in! “The Sentinel reporter should be soberly dressed on these occasions, that is, in a dark suit.” Dark suit! The man must think I haven’t got a wife and four children. He must think he paying me a fortune every fortnight. “Neither by his demeanour nor by his dress should the reporter offend the mourners, since this will certainly lose the paper much goodwill. The Sentinel reporter should remember that he represents the Sentinel. He should encourage trust. It cannot be stressed too often that the reporter should get every name right. A name incorrectly spelt is offensive. All orders and decorations should be mentioned, but the reporter should use his discretion in making inquiries about these. To be ignorant of an individual’s decorations is almost certain to offend him. To ask an OBE whether he is an MBE is equally