Collected Short Fiction by V. S. Naipaul Page A

afternoon making up this letter,’ he said.
    I wrote: ‘… and in this state of despair I was rescued by a Mr Titus Hoyt, of Miguel Street. This only goes to show, dear Mr Editor, that human kindness is a quality not yet extinct in this world.’
    The
Guardian
never printed the letter.
    When I next saw Titus Hoyt he said, ‘Well, never mind. One day, boy, one day, I go make them sit up and take notice of every word I say. Just wait and see.’
    And before he left he said, ‘Drinking your milk?’
    He had persuaded my mother to give me half a pint of milk every day. Milk was good for the brains.
    It is one of the sadnesses of my life that I never fulfilled Titus Hoyt’s hopes for my academic success.
    I still remember with tenderness the interest he took in me. Sometimes his views clashed with my mother’s. There was the business of the cobwebs, for instance.
    Boyee, with whom I had become friendly very quickly, was teaching me to ride. I had fallen and cut myself nastily on the shin.
    My mother was attempting to cure this with sooty cobwebs soaked in rum.
    Titus Hoyt was horrified. ‘You ain’t know what you doing,’ he shouted.
    My mother said, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, I will kindly ask you to mind your own business. The day you make a baby yourself I go listen to what you have to say.’
    Titus Hoyt refused to be ridiculed. He said, ‘Take the boy to the doctor, man.’
    I was watching them argue, not caring greatly either way.
    In the end I went to the doctor.
    Titus Hoyt reappeared in a new role.
    He told my mother, ‘For the last two three months I been taking the first-aid course with the Red Cross. I go dress the boy foot for you.’
    That really terrified me.
    For about a month or so afterwards, people in Miguel Street could tell when it was nine o’clock in the morning. By my shrieks. Titus Hoyt loved his work.
    All this gives some clue to the real nature of the man.
    The next step followed naturally.
    Titus Hoyt began to teach.
    It began in a small way, after the fashion of all great enterprises.
    He had decided to sit for the external arts degree of London University. He began to learn Latin, teaching himself, and as fast as he learned, he taught us.
    He rounded up three or four of us and taught us in the verandah of his house. He kept chickens in his yard and the place stank.
    That Latin stage didn’t last very long. We got as far as the fourth declension, and then Boyee and Errol and myself began asking questions. They were not the sort of questions Titus Hoyt liked.
    Boyee said, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, I think you making up all this, you know, making it up as you go on.’
    Titus Hoyt said, ‘But I telling you, I not making it up. Look, here it is in black and white.’
    Errol said, ‘I feel, Mr Titus Hoyt, that one man sit down one day and make all this up and have everybody else learning it.’
    Titus Hoyt asked me, ‘What is the accusative singular of
bellum
?’
    Feeling wicked, because I was betraying him, I said to Titus Hoyt, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, when you was my age, how you woulda feel if somebody did ask you that question?’
    And then Boyee asked, ‘Mr Titus Hoyt, what is the meaning of the ablative case?’
    So the Latin lessons ended.
    But however much we laughed at him, we couldn’t deny that Titus Hoyt was a deep man.
    Hat used to say, ‘He is a thinker, that man.’
    Titus Hoyt thought about all sorts of things, and he thought dangerous things sometimes.
    Hat said, ‘I don’t think Titus Hoyt like God, you know.’
    Titus Hoyt would say, ‘The thing that really matter is faith. Look, I believe that if I pull out this bicycle-lamp from my pocket here, and set it up somewhere, and really really believe in it and pray to it, what I pray for go come. That is what I believe.’
    And so saying he would rise and leave, not forgetting to say, ‘Cheerio!’
    He had the habit of rushing up to us and saying, ‘Silence, everybody. I just been thinking. Listen to what I just been thinking.’
    One day