A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [167]
Presently the directives came, in a booklet called Rules for Reporters; and it was in keeping with the aloof severity of the new authorities that the booklets should have appeared on every desk one morning without explanation, with only the name of the reporter, preceded by a ‘Mr’, in the top righthand corner.
‘He must have got up early this morning,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama.
The booklet contained rules about language, dress, behaviour, and at the bottom of every page there was a slogan. On the front cover was printed ‘THE RIGHTEST NEWS IS THE BRIGHTEST NEWS’, the inverted commas suggesting that the statement was historical, witty and wise. The back cover said:REPORT NOT DISTORT.
‘Report not distort,’ Mr Biswas said to Shama. ‘That is all the son of a bitch doing now, you know, and drawing a fat salary for it too. Making up those slogans. Rules for Reporters. Rules!’
A few days later he came home and said, ‘Guess what? Editor peeing in a special place now, you know. “Excuse me. But I must go and pee – alone.” Everybody peeing in the same place for years. What happen? He taking a course of Dodd’s Kidney Pills and peeing blue or something?’
In Shama’s accounts Maclean’s Brand Stomach Powder appeared more often, always written out in full.
‘Just watch and see,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘Everybody going to leave. People not going to put up with this sort of treatment, I tell you.’
‘When you leaving?’ Shama asked.
And worse was to come.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose they just want to frighten me. I will henceforward – henceforward: you hear the sort of words that son of a bitch using – I will henceforward spend my afternoons at the cemeteries of Port of Spain. Just hand me that yellow book. Rules for Reporters! Let me see. Anything about funerals? By God! They damn well have it in! “The Sentinel reporter should be soberly dressed on these occasions, that is, in a dark suit.” Dark suit! The man must think I haven’t got a wife and four children. He must think he paying me a fortune every fortnight. “Neither by his demeanour nor by his dress should the reporter offend the mourners, since this will certainly lose the paper much goodwill. The Sentinel reporter should remember that he represents the Sentinel. He should encourage trust. It cannot be stressed too often that the reporter should get every name right. A name incorrectly spelt is offensive. All orders and decorations should be mentioned, but the reporter should use his discretion in making inquiries about these. To be ignorant of an individual’s decorations is almost certain to offend him. To ask an OBE whether he is an MBE is equally likely to offend. Far better, in this hypothetical case, to make inquiries on the assumption that the individual is a CBE. After the immediate family, the names of all mourners should be set out in alphabetical order.”
‘God! God! Isn’t this just the sort of arseness to make you go and dance on the grave afterwards? You know, I could turn the funeral column into a bright little feature. Yesterday’s Undertakings. By Gravedigger. Just next to Today’s Arrangements. Or set it next to Invalids. Heading: Going Going, Gone. How about this? Photo of weeping widow at graveside. Later, photo of widow hearing about will and laughing. Caption: “Smiling, Mrs X? We thought so. Where there’s a will there is a way.” Two photos side by side.’
In the meantime he bought a dark serge suit on credit. And while Anand walked beside the wall of Lapeyrouse Cemetery on his way to the Dairies in the afternoon, Mr Biswas was often inside the cemetery, moving solemnly among the tombstones and making discreet inquiries about names and decorations. He came home tired, complaining of headaches, his stomach rising.
‘A capitalist rag,’ he began to say. ‘Just another capitalist rag.’
Anand remarked that his name no longer appeared in it.
‘Glad like hell,’ Mr Biswas said.
And on four Saturdays in succession he was sent to unimportant cricket matches, just to get the scores. The game of cricket meant