Read Online The Mystic Masseur by V. S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page A

potted plant at his side, standing against a background of Greek ruins.
    The counter of Ramlogan’s shop was covered with copies of the Trinidad Sentinel and the Port of Spain Herald. Ramlogan didn’t look up when Ganesh came into the shop. He was gazing intently at the photograph and trying to frown.
    ‘Don’t bother with the Herald,’ Ganesh said. ‘I didn’t give them the story.’
    Ramlogan didn’t look up. He frowned more severely and said, ‘Hmmh!’ He turned the page over and read a brief item about the danger of tubercular cows. ‘They pay you anything?’
    ‘The man wanted me to pay.’
    ‘Son of a bitch.’
    Ganesh made an approving noise.
    ‘So, sahib.’ Ramlogan looked up at last. ‘Was really this you wanted the money for?’
    ‘Really really.’
    ‘And you really going to write books at Fuente Grove and everything?’
    ‘Really going to write books.’
    ‘Yes, man. Been reading it here, sahib. Is a great thing, and you is a great man, sahib.’
    ‘Since when you start reading?’
    ‘I learning all all the time, sahib. I does read only a little tiny little bit. Smatterer fact, it have a hundred and one words I just can’t make head or tail outa. Tell you what, sahib. Why you don’t read it out to me? When you read I could just shut my eyes and listen.’
    ‘You does behave funny afterwards. Why you just don’t look at the photo, eh?’
    ‘Is a nice photo, sahib.’
    ‘You look at it. I got to go now.’

    Ganesh and Leela moved to Fuente Grove that afternoon; but just before they left Fourways a letter arrived. It contained the oil royalties for the quarter; and the information that his oil had been exhausted and he was to receive no more royalties.
    Ramlogan’s dowry seemed providential. It was another remarkable coincidence that gave Ganesh fresh evidence that big things were ahead of him.
    ‘Great things going to happen in Fuente Grove,’ Ganesh told Leela. ‘Really great things.’

5. Trials
    F OR MORE THAN two years Ganesh and Leela lived in Fuente Grove and nothing big or encouraging happened.
    Right from the start Fuente Grove looked unpromising. The Great Belcher had said it was a small, out of the way place. That was only half true. Fuente Grove was practically lost. It was so small, so remote, and so wretched, it was marked only on large maps in the office of the Government Surveyor; the Public Works Department treated it with contempt; and no other village even thought of feuding with it. You couldn’t really like Fuente Grove. In the dry season the earth baked, cracked, and calcined; and in the rainy season melted into mud. Always it was hot. Trees would have made some difference, but Ganesh’s mango tree was the only one.
    The villagers went to work in the cane-fields in the dawn darkness to avoid the heat of day. When they returned in the middle of the morning the dew had dried on the grass; and they set to work in their vegetable gardens as if they didn’t know that sugar-cane was the only thing that could grow in Fuente Grove. They had few thrills. The population was small and there were not many births, marriages, or deaths to excite them. Two or three times a year the men made a noisy excursion to a cinema in distant, wicked San Fernando. Little happened besides. Once a year, at the ‘crop-over’ harvest festival, when the sugar-cane had been reaped, Fuente Grove made a brave show of gaiety. The half-dozen bullock carts in the village were decorated with pink and yellow and green streamers made from crêpe paper; the bullocks themselves, sad-eyed as ever, wore bright ribbons in their horns; and men, women, and children rattled the piquets on the carts and beat on pans, singing about the bounty of God. It was like the gaiety of a starving child.
    Every Saturday evening the men gathered in Beharry’s shop and drank a lot of bad rum. They became sufficiently enthusiastic about their wives to beat them that night. On Sunday they woke sick, cursing Beharry and