Collected Short Fiction Read online

  In a trench he saw the body of an Alsatian.

  The bicycle rolled down into the trench and over the thick tail of the dog. The dog rose and, without looking at Hari, shook himself. Then Hari saw another Alsatian. And another. Steering to avoid them he ran into more. They lay in the trenches and all over the verge. They were of varying colours; one was brown-black. Hari had not pedalled since he had seen the first dog and was now going so slowly he felt he was losing his balance. From behind came a low, brief bark, like a sneeze. At this, energy returned to him. He rode on to the asphalt and it was only then, as though they too had just recovered from their surprise, that the Alsatians all rose and came after him. He pedalled, staring ahead, not looking at what was behind him or beside him. Three Alsatians, the brown-black one among them, were running abreast of his bicycle. Calmly, as he pedalled, Hari waited for their attack. But they only ran beside him, not barking. The bicycle hummed; the dogs’ paws on the asphalt sounded like pigeons’ feet on a tin roof. And then Hari felt that the savagery of the Alsatians was casual, without anger or malice: an evening gathering, an evening’s pleasure. He fixed his eyes on the main road at the end, with the street lamps just going on, the lighted trolley-buses, the motor-cars, the people.

  Then he was there. The Alsatians had dropped behind. He didn’t look for them. It was only when he was in the main road, with the trolley-poles sparking blue in the night already fallen, that he realized how frightened he had been, how close to painful death from the teeth of those happy dogs. His heart beat fast, from the exertion. Then he felt a sharp pain he had never known before. He gave a choked, deep groan and fell off the bicycle.

  * * *

  He spent a month in a nursing home and didn’t go to school for the rest of that term. But he was well enough again when the new term began. It was decided that he should give up the bicycle; and his father changed his hours of work so that he could drive Hari to and from the school.

  His birthday fell early that term, and when he was driven home from school in the afternoon his mother handed him a basket and said, ‘Happy birthday!’

  It was a puppy.

  ‘He won’t bite you,’ his mother said. ‘Touch him and see.’

  ‘Let me see you touch him,’ Hari said.

  ‘You must touch him,’ his mother said. ‘He is yours. You must get him used to you. They are one-man dogs.’

  He thought of the old lady with the squeaky voice and he held out his hand to the puppy. The puppy licked it and pressed a damp nose against it. Hari was tickled. He burst out laughing, felt the puppy’s hair and the puppy rubbed against his hand; he passed his hand over the puppy’s muzzle, then he lifted the puppy and the puppy licked his face and Hari was tickled into fresh laughter.

  The puppy had small sharp teeth and liked to pretend that he was biting. Hari liked the feel of his teeth; there was friendliness in them, and soon there would be power. His power. ‘They are one-man dogs,’ his mother said.

  He got his father to drive to school down Rupert Street. Sometimes he saw the Alsatians. Then he thought of his own dog, and felt protected and revenged. They drove up and down the street with grass verges along which he had been chased by the Alsatians. But he never again saw any Alsatian there.

  The puppy was always waiting when they got back home. His father drove right up to the gate and blew his horn. His mother came out to open the gate, and the puppy came out too, wagging his tail, leaping up against the car even as it moved.

  ‘Hold him! Hold him!’ Hari cried.

  More than anything now he feared losing his dog.

  He liked hearing his mother tell visitors about his love for the puppy. And he was given many books about dogs. He learned with sadness that they lived for only twelve years; so that when he was twenty-three, a man, he would have no dog. In the circumstances training seemed pointless, but the books all recommended training, and Hari tried it. The puppy responded with a languor Hari thought enchanting. At school he was moved almost to tears when they read the poem beginning ‘A barking sound the shepherd hears’. He went to see the film Lassie Come Home and wept. From the film he realized that he had forgotten an important part of the puppy’s training. And, to prevent his puppy eating food given by strangers, he dipped pieces of meat in pepper-sauce and left them about the yard.

  The next day the puppy disappeared. Hari was distressed and felt guilty, but he got some consolation from the film; and when, less than a week later, the puppy returned, dirty, scratched and thinner, Hari embraced him and whispered the words of the film: ‘You’re my Lassie – my Lassie come home.’

  He abandoned all training and was concerned only to see the puppy become healthy again. In the American comic books he read, dogs lived in dog-houses and ate from bowls marked DOG. Hari didn’t approve of the dog-houses because they looked small and lonely; but he insisted that his mother should buy a bowl marked DOG.

  When he came home for lunch one day she showed him a bowl on which DOG had been painted. Hari’s father said he was too hot to eat and went upstairs; his mother followed. Before Hari ate he washed the bowl and filled it with dog-food. He called for the puppy and displayed the bowl. The puppy jumped up, trying to get at the bowl.

  Hari put the bowl down and the puppy, instantly ignoring Hari, ran to it. Disappointed, Hari squatted beside the puppy and waited for some sign of recognition. None came. The puppy ate noisily, seeming to catch his food for every chew. Hari passed his hand over the puppy’s head.

  The puppy, catching a mouthful of food, growled and shook his head.

  Hari tried again.

  With a sharper growl the puppy dropped the food he had in his mouth and snapped at Hari’s hand. Hari felt teeth sinking into his flesh; he could sense the anger driving the teeth, the thought that finally held them back. When he looked at his hand he saw torn skin and swelling blobs of blood. The puppy was bent over the bowl again, catching and chewing, his eyes hard.

  Hari seized the bowl marked DOG and threw it with his girl’s throw out of the kitchen door. The puppy’s growl abruptly ended. When the bowl disappeared he looked up at Hari, puzzled, friendly, his tail swinging slowly. Hari kicked hard at the puppy’s muzzle and felt the tip of his shoe striking the bone. The puppy backed away to the door and looked at Hari with bewilderment.

  ‘Come,’ Hari said, his voice thick with saliva.

  Swinging his tail briskly, the puppy came, passing his neat pink tongue over his black lips, still oily from the food. Hari held out his bitten hand. The puppy licked it clean of blood. Then Hari drove his shoe up against the puppy’s belly. He kicked again, but the puppy had run whining out of the kitchen door, and Hari lost his balance and fell. Tears came to his eyes. His hands burned at those points where the puppy’s teeth had sunk, and he could still feel the puppy’s saliva on his hand, binding the skin.

  He got up and went out of the kitchen. The puppy stood by the gate, watching him. Hari bent down, as though to pick up a stone. The puppy made no move. Hari picked up a pebble and flung it at the puppy. It was a clumsy throw and the pebble rose high. The puppy ran to catch it, missed, stopped and stared, his tail swinging, his ears erect, his mouth open. Had threw another pebble. This one kept low and struck the puppy hard. The puppy whined and ran into the front garden. Hari followed. The puppy ran around the side of the house and hid among the anthurium lilies. Hari aimed one stone after another, and suddenly he had a sense of direction. Again and again he hit the puppy, who whined and ran until he was cornered below the narrow trellis with the Bleeding Heart vine. There he stood still, his eyes restless, his tail between his legs. From time to time he licked his lips. This action infuriated Hari. Blindly he threw stone after stone and the puppy ran from tangle to tangle of Bleeding Heart. Once he tried to rush past Hari, but the way was too narrow and Hari too quick. Hari caught him a drumming kick and he ran back to the corner, watching, faintly whining.

  In a choked voice Hari said, ‘Come.’

  The puppy raised its ears.
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  Hari smiled and tried to whistle.

  Hesitantly, his legs bent, his back curved, the puppy came. Hari stroked his head until the puppy stood erect. Then he held the muzzle with both his hands and squeezed it hard. The puppy yelped and pulled away.

  ‘Hari!’ He heard his mother’s voice. ‘Your father is nearly ready.’

  He had had no lunch.

  ‘I have no appetite,’ Hari said. They were words his father often used.

  She asked about the broken bowl and the food scattered about the yard.

  ‘We were playing,’ Hari said.

  She saw his hand. ‘Those animals don’t know their own strength,’ she said.

  It was his resolve to get the puppy to allow himself to be stroked while eating. Every refusal had to be punished, by beating and stoning, imprisonment in the cupboard below the stairs or imprisonment behind the closed windows of the car, when that was available. Sometimes Hari took the puppy’s plate, led the puppy to the lavatory, emptied the plate into the toilet bowl and pulled the flush. Sometimes he threw the food into the yard; then he punished the puppy for eating off the ground. Soon he extended his judgment to all the puppy’s actions, punishing those he thought unfriendly, disobedient or ungrateful. If the puppy didn’t come to the gate when the car horn sounded, he was to be punished; if he didn’t come when called, he was to be punished. Hari kept a careful check of the punishments he had to inflict because he could punish only when his parents were away or occupied, and he was therefore always behindhand. He feared that the puppy might run away again; so he tied him at nights. And when his parents were about, Hari was enraged, as enraged as he had been by that licking of the oily lips, to see the puppy behaving as though unaware of the punishments to come: lying at his father’s feet, yawning, curling himself into comfortable positions, or wagging his tail to greet Hari’s mother. Sometimes, then, Hari stooped to pick up an imaginary stone, and the puppy ran out of the room. But there were also days when punishments were forgotten, for Hari knew that he controlled the puppy’s power and made it an extension of his own, not only by his punishments but also by the complementary hold of affection.

  Then came the triumph. The puppy, now almost a dog, attacked Hari one day and had to be pulled back by Hari’s parents. ‘You can never trust those dogs,’ Hari’s mother said, and the dog was permanently chained. For days, whenever he could get the chance, Hari beat the dog. One evening, when his parents were out, he beat the dog until it ceased to whine. Then, knowing he was alone, and wishing to test his strength and fear, he unchained the dog. The dog didn’t attack, didn’t growl. It ran to hide among the anthurium lilies. And after that it allowed itself to be stroked while it ate.

  Hari’s birthday came again. He was given a Brownie 6-20 camera and wasted film on absurd subjects until his father suggested that a photograph should be taken of Hari and the dog. The dog didn’t stand still; eventually they put its collar on and Hari held on to that and smiled for the camera.

  Hari’s father was busy that Friday and couldn’t drive Hari home. Hari stayed at school for the meeting of the Stamp Club and took a taxi home. His father’s car was in the drive. He called for the dog. It didn’t come. Another punishment. His parents were in the small dining-room next to the kitchen; they sat down to tea. On the dining table Hari saw the yellow folder with the negatives and the prints. They had not come out well. The dog looked strained and awkward, not facing the camera; and Hari thought he himself looked very fat. He felt his parents’ eyes on him as he went through the photographs. He turned over one photograph. On the back of it he saw, in his father’s handwriting: In memory of Rex. Below that was the date.

  ‘It was an accident,’ his mother said, putting her arms around him. ‘He ran out just as your father was driving in. It was an accident.’

  Tears filled Hari’s eyes. Sobbing, he stamped up the stairs.

  ‘Mind, son,’ his mother called, and Hari heard her say to his father, ‘Go after him. His heart. His heart.’

  1960

  10 THE BAKER’S STORY

  LOOK AT ME. Black as the Ace of Spades, and ugly to match. Nobody looking at me would believe they looking at one of the richest men in this city of Port-of-Spain. Sometimes I find it hard to believe it myself, you know, especially when I go out on some of the holidays that I start taking the wife and children to these days, and I catch sight of the obzocky black face in one of those fancy mirrors that expensive hotels have all over the place, as if to spite people like me.

  Now everybody – particularly black people – forever asking me how this thing start, and I does always tell them I make my dough from dough. Ha! You like that one? But how it start? Well, you hearing me talk, and I don’t have to tell you I didn’t have no education. In Grenada, where I come from – and that is one thing these Trinidad black people don’t forgive a man for being: a black Grenadian – in Grenada I was one often children, I believe – everything kind of mix up out there – and I don’t even know who was the feller who hit my mother. I believe he hit a lot of women in all the other parishes of that island, too, because whenever I go back to Grenada for one of those holidays I tell you about, people always telling me that I remind them of this one and that one, and they always mistaking me for a shop assistant whenever I in a shop. (If this thing go on, one day I going to sell somebody something, just for spite.) And even in Trinidad, whenever I run into another Grenadian, the same thing does happen.

  Well, I don’t know what happen in Grenada, but mammy bring me alone over to Trinidad when she was still young. I don’t know what she do with the others, but perhaps they wasn’t even she own. Anyway, she get a work with some white people in St Ann’s. They give she a uniform; they give she three meals a day; and they give she a few dollars a month besides. Somehow she get another man, a real Trinidad ’rangoutang, and somehow, I don’t know how, she get somebody else to look after me while she was living with this man, for the money and the food she was getting was scarcely enough to support this low-minded Trinidad rango she take up with.

  It used to have a Chinee shop not far from this new aunty I was living with, and one day, when the old girl couldn’t find the cash no how to buy a bread – is a hell of a thing, come to think of it now, that it have people in this island who can’t lay their hands on enough of the ready to buy a bread – well, when she couldn’t buy this bread she send me over to this Chinee shop to ask for trust. The Chinee woman – eh, but how these Chinee people does make children! – was big like anything, and I believe I catch she at a good moment, because she say nothing doing, no trust, but if I want a little work that was different, because she want somebody to take some bread she bake for some Indian people. But how she could trust me with the bread? This was a question. And then I pull out my crucifix from under my dirty merino that was more holes than cloth and I tell she to keep it until I come back with the money for the bake bread. I don’t know what sort of religion these Chinee people have, but that woman look impressed like anything. But she was smart, though. She keep the crucifix and she send me off with the bread, which was wrap up in a big old châle-au-pain, just two or three floursack sew together. I collect the money, bring it back, and she give me back the crucifix with a few cents and a bread.

  And that was how this thing really begin. I always tell black people that was God give me my start in life, and don’t mind these Trinidadians who does always tell you that Grenadians always praying. Is a true thing, though, because whenever I in any little business difficulty even these days I get down bam! straight on my two knees and I start praying like hell, boy.

  Well, so this thing went on, until it was a regular afternoon work for me to deliver people bread. The bakery uses to bake ordinary bread – hops and pan and machine – which they uses to sell to the poorer classes. And how those Chinee people uses to work! This woman, with she big-big belly, clothes all dirty, sweating in front of the oven, making all this bread and making all this money, and I don’t know what they doing with it, b
ecause all the time they living poor-poor in the back room, with only a bed, some hammocks for the young ones, and a few boxes. I couldn’t talk to the husband at all. He didn’t know a word of English and all the writing he uses to write uses to be in Chinee. He was a thin nashy feller, with those funny flapping khaki short pants and white merino that Chinee people always wear. He uses to work like a bitch, too. We Grenadians understand hard work, so that is why I suppose I uses to get on so well with these Chinee people, and that is why these lazy black Trinidadians so jealous of we. But was a funny thing. They uses to live so dirty. But the children, man, uses to leave that ramshackle old back room as clean as new bread, and they always had this neatness, always with their little pencil-case and their little rubbers and rulers and blotters, and they never losing anything. They leaving in the morning in one nice little line and in the afternoon they coming back in this same little line, still cool and clean, as though nothing at all touch them all day. Is something they could teach black people children.

  But as I was saying this bakery uses to bake ordinary bread for the poorer classes. For the richer classes they uses to bake, too. But what they would do would be to collect the dough from those people house, bake it, and send it back as bread, hot and sweet. I uses to fetch and deliver for this class of customer. They never let me serve in the shop; it was as though they couldn’t trust me selling across the counter and collecting money in that rush. Always it had this rush. You know black people: even if it only have one man in the shop he always getting on as if it have one hell of a crowd.

  Well, one day when I deliver some bread in this châle-au-pain to a family, there was a woman, a neighbour, who start saying how nice it is to get bread which you knead with your own hands and not mix up with all sort of people sweat. And this give me the idea. A oven is a oven. It have to go on, whether it baking one bread or two. So I tell this woman, was a Potogee woman, that I would take she dough and bring it back bake for she, and that it would cost she next to nothing. I say this in a sort of way that she wouldn’t know whether I was going to give the money to the Chinee people, or whether it was going to cost she next to nothing because it would be I who was going to take the money. But she give me a look which tell me right away that she wanted me to take the money. So matter fix. So. Back in the châle-au-pain the next few days I take some dough, hanging it in the carrier of the bakery bicycle. I take it inside, as though I just didn’t bother to wrap up the châle-au-pain, and the next thing is that this dough mix up with the other dough, and see me kneading and baking, as though all is one. The thing is, when you go in for a thing like that, to go in brave-brave. It have some people who make so much fuss when they doing one little thing that they bound to get catch. So, and I was surprise like hell, mind you. I get this stuff push in the oven, and is this said Chinee man, always with this sad and sorrowful Chinee face, who pulling it out of the oven with the long-handle shovel, looking at it, and pushing it back in.