Collected Short Fiction by V. S. Naipaul Page B

children and you have a wife, and you can’t afford to go and dead now.’
    Morgan would roar like a bull and beat on the galvanized-iron fence.
    He would shout, ‘Everybody want to beat me. Everybody.’
    Hat said, ‘You know we hearing the real Morgan now.’
    These fits of craziness made Morgan a real terror. When the fits were on him, he had the idea that Bhakcu, the mechanical genius who was my uncle, was always ready to beat him, and at about eleven o’clock in the evenings the idea just seemed to explode in his head.
    He would beat on the fence and shout, ‘Bhakcu, you fat-belly good-for-nothing son-of-a-bitch, come out and fight like a man.’
    Bhakcu would keep on reading the
Ramayana
in his doleful singing voice, lying flat on his belly on his bed.
    Bhakcu was a big man, and Morgan was a very small man, with the smallest hands and the thinnest wrists in Miguel Street.
    Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘Morgan, why you don’t shut up and go to sleep?’
    Mrs Morgan would reply, ‘Hey, you thin-foot woman! You better leave my husband alone, you hear. Why you don’t look after your own?’
    Mrs Bhakcu would say, ‘You better mind your mouth. Otherwise I come up and turn your face with one slap, you hear.’
    Mrs Bhakcu was four feet high, three feet wide, and three feet deep. Mrs Morgan was a little over six foot tall and built like a weight-lifter.
    Mrs Morgan said, ‘Why you don’t get your big-belly husband to go and fix some more motor-car, and stop reading that damn stupid sing-song he always sing-songing?’
    By this time Morgan would be on the pavement with us,laughing in a funny sort of way, saying, ‘Hear them women and them!’ He would drink some rum from a hip-flask and say, ‘Just watch and see. You know the calypso?
    “The more they try to do me bad

Is the better I live in Trinidad”
    time so next year, I go have the King of England and the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.’
    And Hat or somebody else would ask, ‘You go make the fireworks for them?’
    Morgan would say, ‘Make
what
? Make nothing. By this time so next year, I go have the King of England the King of America paying me millions to make fireworks for them. The most beautiful fireworks anybody ever see.’
    And, in the meantime, in the back of the yard, Mrs Bhakcu was saying, ‘
He
have big belly. But what yours have? I don’t know what yours going to sit on next year this time, you hear.’
    And next morning Morgan was as straight and sober as ever, talking about his experiments.
    This Morgan was more like a bird than a man. It was not only that he was as thin as a match-stick. He had a long neck that could swivel like a bird’s. His eyes were bright and restless. And when he spoke it was in a pecking sort of way, as though he was not throwing out words, but picking up corn. He walked with a quick, tripping step, looking back over his shoulder at somebody following who wasn’t there.
    Hat said, ‘You know how he get so? Is his wife, you know. He fraid she too bad. Spanish woman, you know. Full of blood and fire.’
    Boyee said, ‘You suppose that is why he want to make fireworks so?’
    Hat said, ‘People funny like hell. You never know with them.’
    But Morgan used to make a joke of even his appearance, flinging out his arms and feet when he knew people were looking at him.
    Morgan also made fun of his wife and his ten children. ‘Is a miracle to me,’ he said, ‘that a man like me have ten children. I don’t know how I manage it.’
    Edward said, ‘How you sure is your children?’
    Morgan laughed and said, ‘I have my doubts.’
    *    *    *
    Hat didn’t like Morgan. He said, ‘Is hard to say. But it have something about him I can’t really take. I always feel he overdoing everything. I always feel the man lying about everything. I feel that he even lying to hisself.’
    I don’t think any of us understood what Hat meant. Morgan