Mr Sookhoo has a “master plan”. “All them children you does see singing carol singing for charity” – what if the money were never to reach the charity? Left in no suspense as to the outcome of so great a deception, we read on not for the plot but for Naipaul’s dialogue, which is as charming as it comes. Here is our protagonist, a Hindu, explaining his newfound interest in Christianity to the local headmaster in a bid to conscript pupils to his choir:
‘I don’t know how to say this, Head – it going to sound funny coming from a man like me – but, all the same, I think I finally see the light.’
‘What light?’
‘Head! How you mean “what light”? That don’t sound nice coming from a man like you, a man of education.’
Mr Archibald’s vanity was touched. ‘Sorry, Mr Sookhoo. But, as you yourself said, coming from a man like you…’
‘Sooner or later a man have to set his mind on higher things’, Mr Sookhoo intervened solemnly.
First published in the New Review, September 1974. Collected in Beyond the Dragon’s Mouth: Stories and Pieces, Hamish Hamilton, 1984
A Personal Anthology 