A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [125]
He had chosen well once again. That had always been his gift, to suggest that he had chosen well. At one time it had made me anxious to find the world he had found. Nazruddin’s example, or the way in which I had secretly interpreted his experience, had after all helped to determine my life. Now in London, glad though I was to find him in good spirits, that gift of his depressed me. It made me feel that after all these years I had never caught up with him, and never would; that my life would always be unsatisfactory. It could send me back to my hotel room in an agony of solitude and dread.
Sometimes as I was falling asleep I was kicked awake by some picture that came to me of my African town—absolutely real (and the airplane could take me there tomorrow), but its associations made it dream-like. Then I remembered my illumination, about the need of men only to live, about the illusion of pain. I played off London against Africa until both became unreal, and I could fall asleep. After a time I didn’t have to call up the illumination, the mood of that African morning. It was there, beside me, that remote vision of the planet, of men lost in space and time, but dreadfully, pointlessly busy.
It was in this state of indifference and irresponsibility—like the lost Gloucester Road people Nazruddin had spoken about—that I became engaged to Kareisha.
One day, near the end of my time in London, Kareisha said, “Have you been to see Indar? Are you going to see him?”
Indar! His name had come up often in our talk, but I didn’t know that he was in London.
Kareisha said, “That’s just as well. I wouldn’t recommend a visit or trying to get in touch or anything like that. He can be difficult and aggressive when he’s in the mood, and it isn’t funny. He’s been like that ever since his outfit folded.”
“His outfit folded?”
“About two years ago.”
“But he knew it was going to fold. He talked as though he expected it to fold. Lecturers, universities, African interchange—he knew the excitement couldn’t last, that no local government really cared one way or the other. But I thought he had his plans. He said he could exploit himself in lots of other ways.”
Kareisha said: “It was different when the time came. He cared more about his outfit than he pretended. Of course, there are many things he can do. But he’s determined not to do them. He can get a job in a university, certainly in America. He has the contacts. He can write for the papers. We don’t talk about it now when we see him. Naz’ says Indar’s become help-resistant. The trouble is he invested too much in that outfit of his. And after it folded he had that bad experience in America. A bad experience for him anyway.
“You know Indar. You know that when he was young the most important thing to him was that his family was rich. You remember the house they lived in. When you live in a house like that, I suppose you think ten or twelve or twenty times a day that you are very rich or that you are richer than nearly everybody else. And you remember how he used to get on. Not talking about money, but it was always there. You would say that he felt that money had made him holy. All rich people are like that, I suppose. And that was one idea about himself that Indar never lost. His outfit didn’t give him back his money, but it made him holy again. It raised him again above everybody else and made him equal with the big boys of Africa, being a guest of the government in this place and that place, meeting foreign ministers and presidents. So it was a