Read Online Collected Short Fiction by V. S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page A

poetry for four cents?’
    My mother said, ‘Tell that blasted man to haul his tail away from my yard, you hear.’
    I said to B. Wordsworth, ‘My mother say she ain’t have four cents.’
    B. Wordsworth said, ‘It is the poet’s tragedy.’
    And he put the paper back in his pocket. He didn’t seem to mind.
    I said, ‘Is a funny way to go round selling poetry like that. Only calypsonians do that sort of thing. A lot of people does buy?’
    He said, ‘No one has yet bought a single copy.’
    ‘But why you does keep on going round, then?’
    He said, ‘In this way I watch many things, and I always hope to meet poets.’
    I said, ‘You really think I is a poet?’
    ‘You’re as good as me,’ he said.
    And when B. Wordsworth left, I prayed I would see him again.
    About a week later, coming back from school one afternoon, I met him at the corner of Miguel Street.
    He said, ‘I have been waiting for you for a long time.’
    I said, ‘You sell any poetry yet?’
    He shook his head.
    He said, ‘In my yard I have the best mango tree in Port of Spain. And now the mangoes are ripe and red and very sweet and juicy. I have waited here for you to tell you this and to invite you to come and eat some of my mangoes.’
    He lived in Alberto Street in a one-roomed hut placed right in the centre of the lot. The yard seemed all green. There was the big mango tree. There was a coconut tree and there was a plum tree. The place looked wild, as though it wasn’t in the city at all. You couldn’t see all the big concrete houses in the street.
    He was right. The mangoes were sweet and juicy. I ate about six, and the yellow mango juice ran down my arms to my elbows and down my mouth to my chin and my shirt was stained.
    My mother said when I got home, ‘Where you was? You think you is a man now and could go all over the place? Go cut a whip for me.’
    She beat me rather badly, and I ran out of the house swearing that I would never come back. I went to B. Wordsworth’s house. I was so angry, my nose was bleeding.
    B. Wordsworth said, ‘Stop crying, and we will go for a walk.’
    I stopped crying, but I was breathing short. We went for a walk. We walked down St Clair Avenue to the Savannah and we walked to the race-course.
    B. Wordsworth said, ‘Now, let us lie on the grass and look up at the sky, and I want you to think how far those stars are from us.’
    I did as he told me, and I saw what he meant. I felt like nothing, and at the same time I had never felt so big and great in all my life. I forgot all my anger and all my tears and all the blows.
    When I said I was better, he began telling me the names of the stars, and I particularly remembered the constellation ofOrion the Hunter, though I don’t really know why. I can spot Orion even today, but I have forgotten the rest.
    Then a light was flashed into our faces, and we saw a policeman. We got up from the grass.
    The policeman said, ‘What you doing here?’
    B. Wordsworth said, ‘I have been asking myself the same question for forty years.’
    We became friends, B. Wordsworth and I. He told me, ‘You must never tell anybody about me and about the mango tree and the coconut tree and the plum tree. You must keep that a secret. If you tell anybody, I will know, because I am a poet.’
    I gave him my word and I kept it.
    I liked his little room. It had no more furniture than George’s front room, but it looked cleaner and healthier. But it also looked lonely.
    One day I asked him, ‘Mister Wordsworth, why you does keep all this bush in your yard? Ain’t it does make the place damp?’
    He said, ‘Listen, and I will tell you a story. Once upon a time a boy and girl met each other and they fell in love. They loved each other so much they got married. They were both poets. He loved words. She loved grass and flowers and trees. They lived happily in a single room, and then one day the girl poet said to the boy poet, “We are going to have another poet in the family.” But