A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [136]
It was strange. He wanted me to acknowledge him as the boss. At the same time he wanted me to make allowances for him as an uneducated man and an African. He wanted both my respect and my tolerance, even my compassion. He wanted me, almost, to act out my subordinate role as a favour to him. Yet if, responding to his plea, I did so, if I took some simple shop document to him, the authority he put on then was very real. He added it to his idea of his role; and he would use that authority later to extort some new concession. As he had done with the car.
It was worse than dealing with a malin official. The official who pretended to be offended—and bawled you out, for instance, for resting your hand on his desk—was only asking for money. Théotime, moving quickly from a simple confidence in his role to an understanding of his helplessness, wanted you to pretend that he was another kind of man. It wasn’t funny. I had resolved to be calm about my dispossession, to keep my mind on the goal I had given myself. But it wasn’t easy to be calm. The shop became a hateful place to me.
It was worse for Metty. The little services that he had done for Théotime in the beginning became things that he was required to do, and they multiplied. Théotime began sending Metty out on quite pointless errands.
Late one evening, when he returned to the flat after being with his family, Metty came into my room and said, “I can’t take it, patron. I will do something terrible one of these days. If Théo doesn’t stop it, I’ll kill him. I’d rather hoe in the fields than be his servant.”
I said, “It won’t last long.”
Metty’s face twisted with exasperation, and he did a silent stamp with one foot. He was close to tears. He said, “What do you mean? What do you mean?” and went out of the room.
In the morning I went to collect Théotime to drive him to the shop. As a well-to-do and influential local man, Théotime had three or four families in different parts of the town. But since becoming a state trustee he had (like other trustees) picked up a number of new women, and he lived with one of them in one of the little back houses in a cité yard—bare red ground intersected with shallow black drains all down one side, scraped-up earth and rubbish pushed to the edge, mango and other trees scattered about, cassava and maize and clumps of banana between the houses.
When I blew the horn, children and women from the various houses came out and watched while Théotime walked to the car, with his comic book rolled up. He pretended to ignore the watchers and spat casually on the ground once or twice. His eyes were reddened with beer and he tried to look offended.
We drove out of the bumpy cité lane to the levelled red main road, where the buildings were freshly painted for the President’s visit—each building done in one colour (walls, window frames, doors), and each building a different colour from its neighbour.
I said, “I want to talk to you about Citizen Metty’s duties in our establishment, citizen. Citizen Metty is the manager’s assistant. He is not a general servant.”
Théotime had been waiting for this. He had a speech prepared. He said, “You astonish me, citizen. I am the state trustee,appointed by the President. Citizen Metty is an employee of a state establishment. It is for me to decide how the half-caste is to be used.” He used the word métis, to play on the adopted name of which Metty had once been so proud.
The vivid colours of the buildings became even more unreal to me. They became the colours of my rage and anguish.
I had been growing smaller and