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

this poet was never born, because the girl died, and the young poet died with her, inside her. And the girl’s husband was very sad, and he said he would never touch a thing in the girl’s garden. And so the garden remained, and grew high and wild.’
    I looked at B. Wordsworth, and as he told me this lovely story, he seemed to grow older. I understood his story.
    We went for long walks together. We went to the Botanical Gardens and the Rock Gardens. We climbed Chancellor Hill in the late afternoon and watched the darkness fall on Port of Spain, and watched the lights go on in the city and on the ships in the harbour.
    He did everything as though he were doing it for the first time in his life. He did everything as though he were doing some church rite.
    He would say to me, ‘Now, how about having some ice-cream?’
    And when I said yes, he would grow very serious and say, ‘Now, which café shall we patronize?’ As though it were a veryimportant thing. He would think for some time about it and finally say, ‘I think I will go and negotiate the purchase with that shop.’
    The world became a most exciting place.
    One day, when I was in his yard, he said to me, ‘I have a great secret which I am now going to tell you.’
    I said, ‘It really secret?’
    ‘At the moment, yes.’
    I looked at him, and he looked at me. He said, ‘This is just between you and me, remember. I am writing a poem.’
    ‘Oh.’ I was disappointed.
    He said, ‘But this is a different sort of poem. This is the greatest poem in the world.’
    I whistled.
    He said, ‘I have been working on it for more than five years now. I will finish it in about twenty-two years from now, that is, if I keep on writing at the present rate.’
    ‘You does write a lot, then?’
    He said, ‘Not any more. I just write one line a month. But I make sure it is a good line.’
    I asked, ‘What was last month’s good line?’
    He looked up at the sky and said,
‘The past is deep.’
    I said, ‘It is a beautiful line.’
    B. Wordsworth said, ‘I hope to distil the experiences of a whole month into that single line of poetry. So, in twenty-two years, I shall have written a poem that will sing to all humanity.’
    I was filled with wonder.
    Our walks continued. We walked along the sea-wall at Docksite one day, and I said, ‘Mr Wordsworth, if I drop this pin in the water, you think it will float?’
    He said, ‘This is a strange world. Drop your pin, and let us see what will happen.’
    The pin sank.
    I said, ‘How is the poem this month?’
    But he never told me any other line. He merely said, ‘Oh, it comes, you know. It comes.’
    Or we would sit on the sea-wall and watch the liners come into the harbour.
    But of the greatest poem in the world I heard no more.
    *    *    *
    I felt he was growing older.
    ‘How you does live, Mr Wordsworth?’ I asked him one day.
    He said, ‘You mean how I get money?’
    When I nodded, he laughed in a crooked way.
    He said, ‘I sing calypsoes in the calypso season.’
    ‘And that last you the rest of the year?’
    ‘It is enough.’
    ‘But you will be the richest man in the world when you write the greatest poem?’
    He didn’t reply.
    One day when I went to see him in his little house I found him lying on his little bed. He looked so old and so weak that I found myself wanting to cry.
    He said, ‘The poem is not going well.’
    He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking through the window at the coconut tree, and he was speaking as though I wasn’t there. He said, ‘When I was twenty I felt the power within myself.’ Then, almost in front of my eyes, I could see his face growing older and more tired. He said, ‘But that – that was a long time ago.’
    And then – I felt it so keenly, it was as though I had been slapped by my mother. I could see it clearly on his face. It was there for everyone to see. Death on the shrinking face.
    He looked at me, and saw my tears and sat up.
    He said, ‘Come.’ I went