Collected Short Fiction Part 22

He said, 'Well, I glad the war over.'

When I paid for my trim I said, 'What you think we should do now, Mr Bolo? You think we should celebrate?'

He said, 'Gimme time, man. Gimme time. This is a big thing. I have to think it over.'

And there the matter rested.

I remember the night when the news of peace reached Port of Spain. People just went wild and there was a carnival in the streets. A new calypso sprang out of nothing and everybody was dancing in the streets to the tune of: All day and all night Miss Mary Ann.

Down by the river-side she taking man.

Bolo looked at the dancers and said, 'Stupidness! Stupidness! How black people so stupid?'

I said, 'But you ain't hear, Mr Bolo? The war over.'

He spat. 'How you know? You was fighting it?'

'But it come over on the radio and I read it in the papers.'

Bolo laughed. He said, 'Anybody would think you was still a little boy. You mean you come so big and you still does believe anything you read in the papers?'

I had heard this often before. Bolo was sixty and the only truth he had discovered seemed to be, 'You mustn't believe anything you read in the papers.'

It was his whole philosophy, and it didn't make him happy. He was the saddest man in the street.

I think Bolo was born sad. Certainly I never saw him laugh except in a sarcastic way, and I saw him at least once a week for eleven years. He was a tall man, not thin, with a face that was a caricature of sadness, the mouth curling downwards, the eyebrows curving downwards, the eyes big and empty of expression.

It was an amazement to me that Bolo made a living at all after he had stopped barbering. I suppose he would be described in a census as a carrier. His cart was the smallest thing of its kind I knew.

It was a little box on two wheels and he pushed it himself, pushed with his long body in such an att.i.tude of resignation and futility you wondered why he pushed it at all. On this cart he could take just about two or three sacks of flour or sugar.

On Sundays Bolo became a barber again, and if he was proud of anything he was proud of his barbering.

Often Bolo said to me, 'You know Samuel?'

Samuel was the most successful barber in the district. He was so rich he took a week's holiday every year, and he liked everybody to know it.

I said, 'Yes, I know Samuel. But I don't like him to touch my hair at all at all. He can't cut hair. He does zog up my head.'

Bolo said, 'You know who teach Samuel all he know about cutting hair? You know?'

I shook my head.

'I. I teach Samuel. He couldn't even shave hisself when he start barbering. He come crying and begging, "Mr Bolo, Mr Bolo, teach me how to cut people hair, I beg you." Well, I teach him, and look what happen, eh. Samuel rich rich, and I still living in one room in this break-down old house. Samuel have a room where he does cut hair, I have to cut hair in the open under this mango tree.'

I said, 'But it nice outside, it better than sitting down in a hot room. But why you stop cutting hair regular, Mr Bolo?'

'Ha, boy, that is asking a big big question. The fact is, I just can't trust myself.'

'Is not true. You does cut hair good good, better than Samuel.'

'It ain't that I mean. Boy, when it have a man sitting down in front of you in a chair, and you don't like this man, and you have a razor in your hand, a lot of funny things could happen. I does only cut people hair these days when I like them. I can't cut any-and-everybody hair.'

Although in 1945 Bolo didn't believe that the war was over, in 1939 he was one of the great alarmists. In those days he bought all three Port of Spain newspapers, the Trinidad Guardian, the Port of Spain Gazette, and the Evening News. When the war broke out and the Evening News began issuing special bulletins, Bolo bought those too.

Those were the days when Bolo said, 'It have a lot of people who think they could kick people around. They think because we poor we don't know anything. But I ain't in that, you hear. Every day I sit down and read my papers regular regular.'

More particularly, Bolo was interested in the Trinidad Guardian. At one stage Bolo bought about twenty copies of that paper every day.

The Guardian was running a Missing Ball Compet.i.tion. They printed a photograph of a football match in progress, but they had rubbed the ball out. All you had to do to win a lot of money was to mark the position of the ball with an X.

Spotting the missing ball became one of Bolo's pa.s.sions.

In the early stages Bolo was happy enough to send in one X a week to the Guardian.

It was a weekly excitement for all of us.

Hat used to say, 'Bolo, I bet you forget all of us when you win the money. You leaving Miguel Street, man, and buying a big house in St Clair, eh?'

Bolo said, 'No, I don't want to stay in Trinidad. I think I go go to the States.'

Bolo began marking two X's. Then three, four, six. He never won a penny. He was getting almost constantly angry.

He would say, 'Is just a big baccha.n.a.l, you hear. The paper people done make up their mind long long time now who going to win the week prize. They only want to get all the black people money.'

Hat said, 'You mustn't get discouraged. You got to try really hard again.'

Bolo bought sheets of squared paper and fitted them over the Missing Ball photograph. Wherever the lines crossed he marked an X. To do this properly Bolo had to buy something like a hundred to a hundred and fifty Guardians every week.

Sometimes Bolo would call Boyee and Errol and me and say, 'Now, boys, where you think this missing ball is? Look, I want you to shut your eyes and mark a spot with this pencil.'

And sometimes again Bolo would ask us, 'What sort of things you been dreaming this week?'

If you said you didn't dream at all, Bolo looked disappointed. I used to make up dreams and Bolo would work them out in relation to the missing ball.

People began calling Bolo 'Missing Ball'.

Hat used to say, 'Look the man with the missing ball.'

One day Bolo went up to the offices of the Guardian and beat up a sub-editor before the police could be called.

In court Bolo said, 'The ball not missing, you hear. It wasn't there in the first place.'

Bolo was fined twenty-five dollars.

The Gazette ran a story:.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING BALL.

Penalty for a foul.

Altogether Bolo spent about three hundred dollars trying to spot the missing ball, and he didn't even get a consolation prize.

It was shortly after the court case that Bolo stopped barbering regularly and also stopped reading the Guardian.

I can't remember now why Bolo stopped reading the Evening News, but I know why he stopped reading the Gazette.

A great housing shortage arose in Port of Spain during the war, and in 1942 a philanthropist came to the rescue of the unhoused. He said he was starting a co-operative housing scheme. People who wished to take part in this venture had to deposit some two hundred dollars, and after a year or so they would get brand-new houses for next to nothing. Several important men blessed the new scheme, and lots of dinners were eaten to give the project a good start.

The project was heavily advertised and about five or six houses were built and handed over to some of the people who had eaten the dinners. The papers carried photographs of people putting keys into locks and stepping over thresholds.

Bolo saw the photographs and the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the Gazette, and he paid in his two hundred dollars.

In 1943 the Director of the Co-operative Housing Society disappeared and with him disappeared two or three thousand dream houses.

Bolo stopped reading the Gazette.

It was on a Sunday in November that year that Bolo made his announcement to those of us who were sitting under the mango tree, waiting for Bolo to cut our hair.

He said, 'I saying something now. And so help me G.o.d, if I ever break my word, it go be better if I lose my two eyes. Listen. I stop reading papers. If even I learn Chinese I ain't go read Chinese papers, you hearing. You mustn't believe anything you read in the papers.'

Bolo was cutting Hat's hair at the moment, and Hat hurriedly got up and left.

Later Hat said, 'You know what I think. We will have to stop getting trim from Bolo. The man get me really frighten now, you hear.'

We didn't have to think a lot about Hat's decision because a few days later Bolo came to us and said, 'I coming round to see you people one by one because is the last time you go see me.'

He looked so sad I thought he was going to cry.

Hat said, 'What you thinking of doing now?'

Bolo said, 'I leaving this island for good. Is only a lot of d.a.m.n crooks here.'

Eddoes said, 'Bolo, you taking your box-cart with you?'

Bolo said, 'No. Why, you like it?'

Eddoes said, 'I was thinking. It look like good materials to me.'

Bolo said, 'Eddoes, take my box-cart.'

Hat said, 'Where you going, Bolo?'

Bolo said, 'You go hear.'

And so he left us that evening.

Eddoes said, 'You think Bolo going mad?'

Hat said, 'No. He going Venezuela. That is why he keeping so secret. The Venezuelan police don't like Trinidad people going over.'

Eddoes said, 'Bolo is a nice man and I sorry he leaving. You know, it have some people I know who go be glad to have that box-cart Bolo leave behind.'

We went to Bolo's little room that very evening and we cleaned it of all the useful stuff he had left behind. There wasn't much. A bit of oil-cloth, two or three old combs, a cutla.s.s, and a bench. We were all sad.

Hat said, 'People really treat poor Bolo bad in this country. I don't blame him for leaving.'

Eddoes was looking over the room in a practical way. He said, 'But Bolo take away everything, man.'

Next afternoon Eddoes announced, 'You know how much I pick up for that box-cart? Two dollars!'

Hat said, 'You does work d.a.m.n fast, you know, Eddoes.'

Then we saw Bolo himself walking down Miguel Street.

Hat said, 'Eddoes, you in trouble.'

Eddoes said, 'But he give it to me. I didn't thief it.'

Bolo looked tired and sadder than ever.

Hat said, 'What happen, Bolo? You make a record, man. Don't tell me you go to Venezuela and you come back already.'

Bolo said, 'Trinidad people! Trinidad people! I don't know why Hitler don't come here and bomb all the sons of b.i.t.c.hes it have in this island. He bombing the wrong people, you know.'

Hat said, 'Sit down, Bolo, and tell we what happen.'

Bolo said, 'Not yet. It have something I have to settle first. Eddoes, where my box-cart?'

Hat laughed.

Bolo said, 'You laughing, but I don't see the joke. Where my box-cart, Eddoes? You think you could make box-cart like that?'

Eddoes said, 'Your box-cart, Bolo? But you give it to me.'

Bolo said, 'I asking you to give it back to me.'

Eddoes said, 'I sell it, Bolo. Look the two dollars I get for it.'