A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [79]
‘You don’t think you better get advice before you start bringing up people?’
‘Advice? Who from? The old thug and the old she-fox? I know they know everything. You don’t have to tell me that. But they know law?’
‘Seth bring up a lot of people.’
‘And every time he bring somebody up, he lose. You don’t have to tell me that either. Everybody in Arwacas know about Seth and the people he bring up. He don’t know everything.’
‘He used to study doctor. Doctor or druggist.’
‘Used to study doctor! Horse-doctor, if you ask me. He look like a doctor to you? You ever look at his hands? Fat, thick. Can’t even hold a pencil properly.’
‘He cut open that boil Chanrouti had the other day.’
‘And yes. That is another thing I want to tell you, eh. In advance. In advance. I don’t want Seth cutting open any boil on any of my children. And I don’t want him prescribing any blasted sulphur and condensed milk for any of them either.’
Mungroo was the leader of the village stick-fighters. He was a tall, wiry, surly man, made ferocious in appearance by a large handlebar moustache, for which the villagers called him Moush, then Moach. As a stickman he was a champion. He had reach and skill, and his responses were miraculous. He converted a parry into a lunge so fluently it seemed to be a single action. He fought every duel as though he had rehearsed its every development. It was Mungroo who had organized the young men of The Chase into a fighting band, ready to defend the honour of the village on the days of the Christian Carnival and the Muslim Hosein. Under his direction and in his yard they practised assiduously in the evenings by the light of flambeaux. The village boys went to watch this evening practice. So, despite Shama’s disapproval, did Mr Biswas.
As much as the game he liked the making of the sticks. Designs were cut into the bark of the poui, which was then roasted in a bonfire; the burnt bark was peeled off, leaving the design burnt into the white wood. There was no scent as pleasant as that of barely roasted poui: faint, yet so lasting it seemed to come from afar, from some immeasurable depth captive within the wood: as faint as the scent of the pouis Raghu roasted in the village like this, in a yard like this, in a bonfire like this: bringing sensations, not pictures, of an evening meal being cooked over a fire that shone on a mud wall and kept out the night, of cool, new, unused mornings, of rain muffled on a thatched roof and warmth below it: sensations as faint as the scent of the poui itself, but sadly evanescent, refusing to be seized or to be translated into a concrete memory.
Afterwards, the sticks, their heads carved, were soaked in coconut oil in bamboo cylinders, to give them greater strength and resilience. Then Mungroo took the sticks to an old stickman he knew, to have them ‘mounted’ with the spirit of a dead Spaniard. So that the ritual ended in romance, awe and mystery. For the Spaniards, Mr Biswas knew, had surrendered the island one hundred years before, and their descendants had disappeared; yet they had left a memory of reckless valour, and this memory had passed to people who came from another continent and didn’t know what a Spaniard was, people who, in their huts of mud and grass where time and distance were obliterated, still frightened their children with the name of Alexander, of whose greatness they knew nothing.
By profession Mungroo was a roadmender. He preferred to say that he worked for the government, and he preferred not to work at all. He made it plain that because he defended the honour of the village, the village owed him a living. He exacted contributions for pitch-oil for the flambeaux, for the ‘mounting’ fees, and for the expensive costumes the stick-fighters wore on days of battle. At first Mr Biswas contributed willingly. Then Mungroo, the better to devote himself to his art, abandoned the road-gang for weeks at a time and lived on credit from Mr Biswas and other shopkeepers. Mr Biswas admired Mungroo. He felt it would be disloyal