A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [145]
‘Let them get their news from the other papers,’ he said. ‘That is exactly what they are doing at the moment anyway. The only way we can get readers is by shocking them. Get them angry. Frighten them. You just give me one good fright, and the job is yours.’
Next day Mr Biswas turned in a story.
Mr Burnett said, ‘You made this one up?’
Mr Biswas nodded.
‘Pity.’
The story was headlined:
FOUR CHILDREN ROASTED IN HUT BLAZE
Mother, Helpless, Watches
‘I liked the last paragraph,’ Mr Burnett said.
This read: ‘Sightseers are pouring into the stricken village, and we do not feel we are in a position to divulge its name as yet. “In times like this,” an old man told me last night, “we want to be left alone.” ’
Abandoning fiction, Mr Biswas persevered. And Mr Burnett continued to give advice.
‘I think you’d better go a little easy on the amazing scenes being witnessed. And how about turning your passers-by into ordinary people every now and then? “Considerably” is a big word meaning “very”, which is a pointless word any way. And look. “Several” has seven letters. “Many” has only four and oddly enough has exactly the same meaning. I liked your piece on the Bonny Baby Competition. You made me laugh. But you haven’t frightened me yet.’
‘Anything funny happen at the Mad House?’ Mr Biswas asked Ramchand that evening.
Ramchand looked annoyed.
And Mr Biswas gave up the idea of an exposure piece on the Mad House.
On his way to the Sentinel next morning he called at a police station. From there he went to the mortuary, then to the City Council’s stable-yard. When he got to the Sentinel he sat down at a free desk – no desk was yet his – and wrote in pencil:
Last week the Sentinel Bonny Baby Competition was held at Prince’s Building. And late last night the body of a dead male baby was found, neatly wrapped in a brown paper parcel, on the rubbish dump at Cocorite.
I have seen the baby and I am in a position to say that it did not win a prize in our Bonny Baby Competition.
Experts are not yet sure whether the baby was specially taken to the rubbish dump, or simply put out with the rubbish in the usual way.
Hezekiah James, 43, unemployed, who discovered the dead baby, told me …
‘Good, good,’ Mr Burnett said. ‘But heavy. Heavy. Why not “I am able” instead of “I am in a position”?’
‘I got that from the Daily Express.’
‘All right. Let it pass. But promise me that for a whole week you won’t be in a position to do or say anything. It’s going to be hard. But try. What sort of baby?’
‘Sort?’
‘Black, white, green?’
‘White. Blueish when I saw it, really. I thought, though, that we didn’t mention race, except for Chinese.’
‘Listen to the man. If I ran across a black baby on the rubbish dump at Banbury, do you think I would just say a baby?’
And the headlines the next day read:
WHITE BABY FOUND ON RUBBISH DUMP
In Brown Paper Parcel
Did Not Win Bonny Baby Competition
‘Just one other thing,’ Mr Burnett said. ‘Lay off babies for a while.’
The job was urgent: the paper had to be printed every evening; by early morning it had to be in every part of the island. This was not the false urgency of writing signs for shops at Christmas or looking after crops. And even after a dozen years Mr Biswas never lost the thrill, which he then felt for the first time, at seeing what he had written the day before appear in print, in the newspaper delivered free.
‘You haven’t given me a real shock yet,’ Mr Burnett said.
And Mr Biswas wanted to shock Mr Burnett. It seemed unlikely that he would ever do so, for in his fourth week he was made shipping reporter, taking the place of a man who had been killed at the docks by a crane load of flour accidentally falling from a great height. It was the tourist season and the harbour was full of ships from America and Europe. Mr Biswas went aboard