Free Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul

already out in the street and in front of Morgan’s house. I never slept in pyjamas. I wasn’t in that class.
    The first thing I saw in the darkness of Morgan’s yard was the figure of a woman hurrying away from the house to the back gate that opened on to the sewage trace between Miguel Street and Alfonso Street.
    It was drizzling now, not very hard, and in no time at all quite a crowd had joined me.
    It was all a bit mysterious-the shout, the woman disappearing, the dark house.
    Then we heard Mrs Morgan shouting, ‘Teresa Blake, Teresa Blake, what you doing with my man?’ It was a cry of great pain.
    Mrs Bhakcu was at my side. ‘I always know about this Teresa, but I keep my mouth shut.’
    Bhakcu said, ‘Yes, you know everything, like your mother.’
    A light came on in the house.
    Then it went off again.
    We heard Mrs Morgan saying, ‘Why you fraid the light so for? Ain’t you is man? Put the light on, let we see the great big man you is.’
    The light went on; then off again.
    We heard Morgan’s voice, but it was so low we couldn’t make out what he was saying.
    Mrs Morgan said, ‘Yes, hero.’ And the light came on again.
    We heard Morgan mumbling again.
    Mrs Morgan said, ‘No, hero.’
    The light went off; then it went on.
    Mrs Morgan was saying, ‘Leave the light on. Come, let we show the big big hero to the people in the street. Come, let we show them what man really make like. You is not a anti-man, you is real man. You ain’t only make ten children with me, you going to make more with somebody else.’
    We heard Morgan’s voice, a fluting unhappy thing.
    Mrs Morgan said, ‘But what you fraid now for? Ain’t you is the funny man? The clown? Come, let them see see the clown and the big man you is. Let them see what man really make like.’
    Morgan was wailing by this time, and trying to talk.
    Mrs Morgan was saying, ‘If you try to put that light off, I break up your little thin tail like a match-stick here, you hear.’
    Then the front door was flung open, and we saw.
    Mrs Morgan was holding up Morgan by his waist. He was practically naked, and he looked so thin, he was like a boy with an old man’s face. He wasn’t looking at us, but at Mrs Morgan’s face, and he was squirming in her grasp, trying to get away. But Mrs Morgan was a strong woman.
    Mrs Morgan was looking not at us, but at the man in her arm.
    She was saying, ‘But this is the big man I have, eh? So this is the man I married and slaving all my life for?’ And then she began laughing in a croaking, nasty way.
    She looked at us for a moment and said, ‘Well, laugh now. He don’t mind. He always want people to laugh at him.’
    And the sight was so comic, the thin man held up so easily by the fat woman, that we did laugh. It was the sort of laugh that begins gently and then builds up into a bellowing belly laugh.
    For the first time since he came to Miguel Street, Morgan was really being laughed at by the people.
    And it broke him completely.
    All the next day we waited for him to come out to the pavement, to congratulate him with our laughter. But we didn’t see him.
    Hat said, ‘When I was little, my mother used to tell me, “Boy, you laughing all day. I bet you you go cry tonight.” ’
    That night my sleep was again disturbed. By shouts and sirens.
    I looked through the window and saw a red sky and red smoke.
    Morgan’s house was on fire.
    And what a fire! Photographers from the papers were climbing up into other people’s houses to get their pictures, and people were looking at them and not at the fire. Next morning there was a first-class picture with me part of the crowd in the top right-hand corner.
    But what a fire it was! It was the most beautiful fire in Port of Spain since 1933 when the Treasury (of all places) burnt down, and the calypsonian sang:
It was a glorious and a beautiful scenery
Was the burning of the Treasury.
    What really made the fire beautiful was Morgan’s fireworks going off. Then for the