V. S. Naipaul is the world?s writer, a master of language and
perception.? ?The New York Times Book Review
As delightful as anything Naipaul has written.? ?The New York
Review of Books
V. S. Naipaul has a substantial claim as a comic writer. . . .
This humor, conducted throughout with the utmost stylistic
quietude, is completely original.? ?Kingsley Amis, The Spectator --
Review
內容簡介：
V. S. Naipaul’s legendary command of broad comedy and acute
social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of
fiction–two novels and a collection of stories–that capture the
rhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressive
subtlety and humor.
The Suffrage of Elvira is Naipaul’s hilarious take on an
electoral campaign in the back country of Trinidad, where the
candidates’ tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernatural
sabotage. The eponymous protagonist of Mr. Stone and the Knights
Companion is an aging Englishman of ponderously regular habits
whose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage and
unanticipated professional advancement. And the stories in A
Flag on the Island take us from a Chinese bakery in
Trinidad–whose black proprietor faces bankruptcy until he takes a
Chinese name–to a rooming house in London–where the genteel
landlady plays a nasty Darwinian game with her budgerigars.
Unfailingly stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here is
the work of a writer who can do just about anything that can be
done with language.
目錄：
The Suffrage of Elvira
Mr Stone and the Knights Comlanion
A Flag on the lsland 3
內容試閱：
i. The Bakshes
Democracy had come to Elvira four years before, in 1946; but it had
taken nearly everybody by surprise and it wasn''t until 1950, a few
months before the second general election under universal adult
franchise, that people began to see the possibilities.
Until that time Baksh had only been a tailor and a man of reputed
wealth. Now he found himself the leader of the Muslims in Elvira.
He said he controlled more than a thousand Muslim votes. There were
eight thousand voters in County Naparoni, that is, in Elvira and
Cordoba. Baksh was a man of power.
It was a puzzle: how Baksh came to be the Muslim leader. He wasn''t
a good Muslim. He didn''t know all the injunctions of the Prophet
and those he did know he broke. For instance, he was a great
drinker; when he went to Ramlogan''s rumshop he made a point of
ordering white puncheon rum, the sort you have to swallow quickly
before it turns to vapour in your mouth. He had none of the dignity
of the leader. He was a big talker: in Elvira they called him ''the
mouther''.
Chittaranjan, now, the other power in Elvira, was aloof and stiff,
and whenever he talked to you, you felt he was putting you in your
place. Baksh mixed with everybody, drank and quarrelled with
everybody. Perhaps it was this that helped to make Baksh the Muslim
leader, though the position should have gone in all fairness to
Haq, a fierce black little man who wore a bristle of white beard
and whiskers, and whose eyes flashed behind steel-rimmed spectacles
when he spoke of infidels. Haq was orthodox, or so he led people to
believe, but Haq was poor. He ran a grubby little stall, just twice
the size of a sentry-box, stocked only with cheap sweets and soft
drinks.
Baksh made money. It was hard not to feel that for all his
conviviality Baksh was a deep man. He was a talker, but he did
things. Like that shirt-making business. For months Baksh talked.
''Make two three dozen cheap khaki shirts,'' he told them in
Ramlogan''s rumshop. ''Take them to Princes Town and Rio Claro on
market day. A cool seventy dollars. Some damn fool or the other
come up to you. You tell him that the shirts not really good enough
for him. You say you going to make something especially to fit him
pussonal. You pretend you taking his measure, and when you go back
the next week you give the damn fool the same shirt. Only, you
charge him a little extra.'' He talked like that for months. And
then one day he actually did it all as he had said. And made
money.
He lived in a tumbledown wooden house of two storeys, an elaborate
thing with jalousies and fretwork everywhere, built for an overseer
in the days of the Elvira Estate; but he used to say that he could
put up something bigger than Chittaranjan''s any day he chose.
''Only,'' he used to say, ''they just ain''t have the sort of materials
I want for my house. This Trinidad backward to hell, you hear.'' He
kept the designs of Californian-style houses from American
magazines to show the sort of house he wanted. ''Think they could
build like that in Trinidad?'' he would ask, and he would answer
himself: ''Naah!'' And if he were at the door of his tailoring
establishment he would spit straight across the ragged little patch
of grass into the deep gutter at the roadside.
For a tailor he dressed badly and he said this was so because he
was a tailor; anyway, ''only poorer people does like dressing up, to
try and pretend that they ain''t so poor.'' He dressed his children
badly because he didn''t want them ''running about thinking they is
superior to poorer people children''.
In June 1950, when Harbans drove into Elvira to see Baksh, there
were seven young Bakshes. The eldest was seventeen; he would be
eighteen in August. The boy''s name was not generally known but
everyone called him Foam, which was short for Foreman.
*
The decorated Dodge lorry came to a stop in a narrow trace opposite
Baksh''s shop. Harbans saw the sign:
m. baksh
London Tailoring Est.
Tailoring and Cutting
Suits Made and Repair at City Prices
A flock of poorer people''s children, freed from school that Friday
afternoon, had been running after the lorry ever since it entered
the Elvira main road. Many of them were half-dressed according to
the curious rural prudery which dictated that the top should be
covered, not the bottom. They shouted, ''Vote Harbans for Elvira,
man!'' and made a chant of it. Harbans resented the whole thing as
an indignity and was tempted to shoo the children away when he got
out of the lorry, but he remembered the election and pretended not
to hear.
He wasn''t a tall man but looked taller than he was because he was
so thin. He walked with a clockwork jerkiness, seeming to move only
from the knees down. His white shirt, buttoned at the wrist, was
newly ironed, like his trousers. The only rakish touch in his dress
was the tie he used as a trousers-belt. Altogether, there was about
him much of the ascetic dignity of the man who has made
money.
Foam, Baksh''s eldest son, sat at the Singer sewing-machine near the
door, tacking a coat; an overgrown bony boy with a slab-like face:
you felt that the moment he was born someone had clapped his face
together.
Foam said, ''Candidate coming, Pa.''
''Let him come,'' Baksh said. If Harbans had heard he would have
recognized the casual aggressiveness he had been fearing all
afternoon. Baksh stood at a counter with a tape-measure round his
neck, consulting a bloated copy-book and making marks with a
triangular piece of yellow chalk on some dark blue material. At one
end of the counter there was a pile of new material, already cut. A
yardstick, its brass tips worn smooth, was screwed down at the
other end.
Light came into the shop only through the front door and didn''t
reach everywhere. Age had given the unpainted wallboards the barest
curve; darkness had made them a dingy russet colour; both had given
the shop a moist musty smell. It was this smell, warm and sharp in
the late afternoon, not the smell of new cloth, that greeted
Harbans when he walked over the shaky plank spanning the gutter and
came into the yard.
Foam kept on tacking. Baksh made more marks on his cloth.
Two months, one month ago, they would have jumped up as soon as
they saw him coming.
Harbans suffered.
''Aah, Baksh.'' He used his lightest coo. ''How you is?'' He flashed
his false teeth at Foam and added all at once, ''And how the boy is?
He doing well? Ooh, but he looking too well and too nice.''
Foam scowled while Harbans ruffled his hair.
''Foam,'' Baksh said, very gently, ''get up like a good boy and give
Mr Harbans your bench.''
Baksh left his chalk and cloth and came to the doorway. He had the
squat build of the labourer and didn''t look like a leader or even
like the father of seven children. He seemed no more than thirty.
He seated Harbans and spat through the door into the gutter. ''Ain''t
got much in the way of furnishings, you see,'' he said, waving his
hands about the dark windowless room with its gloomy walls and high
sooty ceiling.
''It matters?'' Harbans said.
''It matter when you ain''t have.''
Harbans said, ''Aah.'' Baksh frightened him a little. He didn''t like
the solid square face, the thick eyebrows almost meeting at the
bridge of a thick nose, the thick black moustache over thick lips.
Especially he didn''t like Baksh''s bloodshot eyes. They made him
look too reckless.
Harbans put his hands on his thin knees and looked at them. ''I take
my life in my hands today, Baksh, to come to see you. If I tell you
how I hate driving!''
''You want some suit and things?''
''Is talk I want to talk with you, Baksh.''
Baksh tried to look surprised.
''Foam,'' Harbans said, ''go away a lil bit. It have a few things,
pussonal, I want to say to your father.''
Foam didn''t move.
Baksh laughed. ''No, man. Foam is a big man now. Eh, in two three
years we have to start thinking about marrying him off.''
Foam, leaning against the wall under a large Coca-Cola calendar,
said, ''Not me, brother. I ain''t in that bacchanal at all. I ain''t
want to get married.''
Harbans couldn''t protest. He said, ''Ooh,'' and gave a little
chuckle. The room was too dark for him to see Foam''s expression.
But he saw how tall and wiry the boy was, and he thought his
posture a little arrogant. That, and his booming voice, made him
almost as frightening as his father. Harbans''s hands began to tap
on his knees. ''Ooh, ooh. Children, eh, Baksh?'' He chuckled again.
''Children. What you going to do?''
Baksh sucked his teeth and went back to his counter. ''Is the modern
generation.''
Harbans steadied his hands. ''Is that self I come to talk to you
about. The modern world, Baksh. In this modern world everybody is
one. Don''t make no difference who you is or what you is. You is a
Muslim, I is a Hindu. Tell me, that matter?'' He had begun to coo
again.
''Depending.''
''Yes, as you say, depending. Who you for, Baksh?''
''In the election, you mean?''
Harbans looked ashamed.
Baksh lay down on a low couch in the darkest corner of the dark
room and looked up at the ceiling. ''Ain''t really think about it
yet, you know.''
''Oh. Ooh, who you for, Foam?''
''Why for you bothering the boy head with that sort of talk,
man?''
Foam said, ''I for you, Mr Harbans.''
''Ooh, ooh. Ain''t he a nice boy, Baksh?''
Baksh said, ''The boy answer for me.''
Harbans looked more ashamed.
Baksh sat up. ''You go want a lot of help. Microphone. Loudspeaking
van. Fact, you go want a whole campaign manager.''
''Campaign what? Ooh. Nothing so fancy for me, man. You and I,
Baksh, we is very simple people. Is the community we have to think
about.''
''Thinking about them all the time,'' Baksh said.
''Time go come, you know, Baksh, and you too, Foam, time go come
when you realize that money ain''t everything.''
''But is a damn lot,'' Foam boomed, and took up his tacking
again.
''True,'' Harbans fluted.
''Must have a loudspeaking van,'' Baksh said. ''The other man have a
loudspeaking van. Come to think of it, you could use my
loudspeaker.'' He looked hard at Harbans. ''And you could use my
van.''
Harbans looked back hard into the darkness. ''What you saying,
Baksh? You ain''t got no loudspeaker.''
Baksh stood up. Foam stopped tacking.
''You ain''t got no loudspeaker,'' Harbans repeated. ''And you ain''t
got no van.''
Baksh said, ''And you ain''t got no Muslim vote.'' He went back to his
counter and took up the yellow chalk in a businesslike way.
''Haa!'' Harbans chuckled. ''I was only fooling you. Haa! I was only
making joke, Baksh.''
''Damn funny sorta joke,'' Foam said.
''You going to get your van,'' Harbans said. ''And you going to get
your loudspeaker. You sure we want loudspeaker?''
''Bound to have one, man. For the boy.''
''Boy?''
''Who else?'' Foam asked. ''I did always want to take up loudspeaking.
A lot of people tell me I have the voice for it.''
''Hundred per cent better than that Lorkhoor,'' Baksh said.
Lorkhoor was the brightest young man in Elvira and Foam''s natural
rival. He was only two-and-a-half years older than Foam but he was
already making his mark on the world. He ran about the remoter
districts of Central Trinidad with a loudspeaker van, advertising
for the cinemas in Caroni.
''Lorkhoor is only a big show-offer,'' Foam said. ''Ever hear him, Mr
Harbans? "This is the voice of the ever popular Lorkhoor," he does
say, "begging you and imploring you and entreating you and
beseeching you to go to the New Theatre." Is just those three big
words he knew, you know. Talk about a show-offer!''
''The family is like that,'' Baksh said.
''We want another stand-pipe in Elvira,'' Harbans said. ''Elvira is a
big place and it only have one school. And the roads!''
Foam said, ''Mr Harbans, Lorkhoor start loudspeaking against you,
you know.''
''What! But I ain''t do the boy or the boy family nothing at all. Why
he turning against a old man like me?''
Neither Baksh nor Foam could help him there. Lorkhoor had said so
often he didn''t care for politics that it had come as a surprise to
all Elvira when he suddenly declared for the other candidate, the
man they called Preacher. Even Preacher''s supporters were
surprised.
''But I is a Hindu,'' Harbans cried. ''Lorkhoor is a Hindu. Preacher
is Negro.''
Baksh saw an opening. ''Preacher giving out money hands down.
Lorkhoor managing Preacher campaign. Hundred dollars a
month.''
''Where Preacher getting that sort of money?''
Baksh began to invent. ''Preacher tell me pussonal''--the word had
enormous vogue in Elvira in 1950--''that ever since he was a boy,
even before this democracy and universal suffrage business, he had
a ambition to go up to the Legislative Council. He say God send him
this chance.'' Baksh paused for inspiration. It didn''t come. ''He
been saving up,'' Baksh went on lamely. ''Saving up for a long long
time.'' He shifted the subject. ''To be frank with you, Mr Harbans,
Preacher have me a little worried. He acting too funny. He ain''t
making no big noise or nothing. He just walking about quiet quiet
and brisk brisk from house to house. He ain''t stick up no posters
or nothing.''
''House-to-house campaign,'' Harbans said gloomily.
''And Lorkhoor,'' Foam said. ''He winning over a lot of stupid people
with his big talk.''
Harbans remembered the sign he had had that afternoon: the women,
the dog, the engine stalling twice. And he hadn''t been half an hour
in Elvira before so many unexpected things had happened. Baksh
wasn''t sticking to the original bargain. He was demanding a
loudspeaker van; he had brought Foam in and Harbans felt that Foam
was almost certain to make trouble. And there was this news about
Lorkhoor.
''Traitor!'' Harbans exclaimed. ''This Lorkhoor is a damn
traitor!''
''The family is like that,'' Baksh said, as though it were a
consolation.
''I ain''t even start my campaign proper yet and already I spend more
than two thousand dollars. Don''t ask me what on, because I ain''t
know.''
Baksh laughed. ''You talking like Foam mother.''
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