A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [133]
There it was business as usual. Mahesh, a little plumper, was pulling coffees, and Ildephonse was jumping about and serving late breakfasts. I was surprised.
Mahesh said, “But this has been an African company for years. It can’t be radicalized any more. I just manage Bigburger for ’Phonse and a few others. They formed this African company and they gave me a little part in it, as manager, and then they bought a lease from me. That was during the boom. They owe the bank a lot. You wouldn’t believe it when you look at ’Phonse. But it’s true. That happened in a lot of places after Noimon sold out to the government. That gave us an idea which way the wind was blowing, and some of us decided to compensate ourselves in advance. It was easy enough then. The banks were flush with money.”
“Nobody told me.”
“It wasn’t the kind of thing people would talk a lot about. And your thoughts were elsewhere.”
That was true. There had been a coolness between us at that time; we had both been scratchy after Noimon’s departure.
I said, “What about the Tivoli? All that new kitchen equipment. They invested so much.”
“That’s crippled with debt. No African in his right mind would want to be the trustee of that. They queued up for yours, though. That was when I knew you hadn’t done anything. Théotime and another man actually came to blows, right here in Bigburger. There were a lot of fights like that. It was like a carnival after the President announced the measures. So many people just going into places, not saying anything to the people inside, just making marks on doors or dropping pieces of cloth on the floor, as though they were claiming a piece of meat in the market. It was very bad for a few days. One Greek burnt down his coffee plantation. They’ve calmed down now. The President issued a statement, just to let everybody know that what the Big Man gives the Big Man can take away. That’s how the Big Man gets them. He gives and he takes back.”
I spent the rest of the morning at Bigburger. It was strange for me, wasting the working day in chat, giving news, asking for news, watching the coming and going in Bigburger and the van der Weyden across the road, and all the time feeling myself separated from the life of the town.
Mahesh had little to tell me about Shoba. There was no change there. She still hid with her disfigurement in the flat. But Mahesh no longer fought against that situation or seemed irritated by it. It didn’t make him unhappy—as I had feared it might—to hear about London and my travels. Other people travelled; other people got away; he didn’t. For Mahesh it had become as simple as that.
I became Théotime’s manager. He seemed relieved and happy, and agreed to the salary I suggested for myself. I bought a table and chair and set them next to the pillar, so that it was almost like old times. I spent many days assembling old invoices, checking stock and preparing the inventory. It was a complicated document, and of course it was padded. But Théotime approved it so readily (sending me out of the storeroom while he struggled to sign Cit:Theot:) that I felt that Mahesh was right, that no compensation was going to be paid, that the most I could expect, if anybody remembered, were government bonds.
The inventory only reminded me of what I had lost. What remained? In a bank in Europe I had about eight thousand dollars, proceeds from my gold dealings in the old days; that money had just stayed and rotted, losing value. There was the flat in the town, for which there would be no buyer; but the car would fetch a few thousand dollars. And I had about half a million local francs in various banks—about fourteen thousand dollars at the official rate of exchange, and half that on the free market. That was all; it wasn’t a great deal. I had to make more, as fast as I could; and the little I had, I had to get out of the country.
As manager in the shop