Miguel Street Read Online Free PDF

little glad when Elias sat the examination for the third time, and failed.
    Hat said, ‘You see how we catch these Englishmen and them. Nobody here can tell me that the boy didn’t pass the exam, but you think they go want to give him a better grade? Ha!’
    And everybody said, ‘Is a real shame.’
    And when Hat asked Elias, ‘What you going to do now, boy?’ Elias said, ‘You know, I think I go take up a job. I think I go be a sanitary inspector.’
    We saw him in khaki uniform and khaki topee, going from house to house with a little notebook.
    ‘Yes,’ Elias said. ‘Sanitary inspector, that’s what I going to be.’
    Hat said, ‘It have a lot of money in that, I think. I hear your father George uses to pay the sanitary inspector five dollars a month to keep his mouth shut. Let we say you get about ten or even eight people like that. That’s—let me see … ten fives is fifty, eight fives is forty. There, fifty, forty dollars straight. And mark you, that ain’t counting your salary.’
    Elias said, ‘Is not the money I thinking about. I really like the work.’
    It was easy to understand that.
    Elias said, ‘But it have a exam, you know.’
    Hat said, ‘But they don’t send the papers to England for that?’
    Elias said, ‘Nah, but still, I fraid exams and things, you know. I ain’t have any luck with them.’
    Boyee said, ‘But I thought you was thinking of taking up doctoring.’
    Hat said, ‘Boyee, I going to cut your little tail if you don’t shut up.’
    But Boyee didn’t mean anything bad.
    Elias said, ‘I change my mind. I think I want to be a sanitary inspector. I really like the work.’
    *   *   *
    For three years Elias sat the sanitary inspectors’ examination, and he failed every time.
    Elias began saying, ‘But what the hell you expect in Trinidad? You got to bribe everybody if you want to get your toenail cut.’
    Hat said, ‘I meet a man from a boat the other day, and he tell me that the sanitary inspector exams in British Guiana much easier. You could go to B.G . and take the exams there and come back and work here.’
    Elias flew to B.G ., wrote the exam, failed it, and flew back.
    Hat said, ‘I meet a man from Barbados. He tell me that the exams easier in Barbados. It easy, easy, he say.’
    Elias flew to Barbados, wrote the exam, failed it, and flew back.
    Hat said, ‘I meet a man from Grenada the other day ’
    Elias said, ‘Shut your arse up, before it have trouble between we in this street.’
    A few years later I sat the Cambridge Senior School Certificate Examination myself, and Mr Cambridge gave me a second grade. I applied for a job in the Customs, and it didn’t cost me much to get it. I got a khaki uniform with brass buttons, and a cap. Very much like the sanitary inspector’s uniform.
    Elias wanted to beat me up the first day I wore the uniform.
    ‘What your mother do to get you that?’ he shouted, and I was going for him when Eddoes put a stop to it.
    Eddoes said, ‘He just sad and jealous. He don’t mean anything.’
    For Elias had become one of the street aristocrats. He was driving the scavenging carts.
    ‘No theory here,’ Elias used to say. ‘This is the practical. I really like the work.’

V
MAN-MAN
    Everybody in Miguel Street said that Man-man was mad, and so they left him alone. But I am not so sure now that he was mad, and I can think of many people much madder than Man-man ever was.
    He didn’t look mad. He was a man of medium height, thin; and he wasn’t bad-looking, either. He never stared at you the way I expected a mad man to do; and when you spoke to him you were sure of getting a very reasonable reply.
    But he did have some curious habits.
    He went up for every election, city council or legislative council, and then he stuck posters everywhere in the district. These posters were well printed. They just had the word ‘Vote’ and below that, Man-man’s picture.
    At every election he got exactly three votes. That I couldn’t