A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [142]
“You must go in one car. If you go in two, it means you are halfway to changing your mind.”
“Go and get your steamer ticket.”
The steamer office was famous for its erratic hours. I sat on the wooden bench outside the door until the man came and opened up. The cabine de luxe was free; I booked it. This took most of the morning. The market outside the dock gates had built up: the steamer was due that afternoon. I thought of going to see Mahesh at Bigburger, but decided against it. The place was too open and central, and there were too many officials there at lunchtime. It was strange, having to think of the city in this way.
I had a snack at the Tivoli. It looked a little demoralized these days, as though awaiting radicalization. But it had kept its European atmosphere, and there were European artisans and their families at the tables and men drinking beer at the bar. I thought: What is going to happen to these people? But they were protected. I bought some bread and cheese and a few expensive tins—my last shopping in the town—and decided to spend the rest of the time at the flat. I wanted to do nothing else. I had no wish to go anywhere or look at anything or talk to anyone. Even the thought of having to telephone Mahesh was like a burden.
Late in the afternoon there were footsteps on the external staircase. Metty. I was surprised. Normally at this time he was with his family.
He came into the sitting room and said, “I heard they let you out, Salim.”
He looked wretched and confused. He must have spent some bad days after reporting me to Prosper. That was what he wanted me to talk about. But I didn’t want to talk about it. The shock of that moment of three days before had vanished. My head was full of other things.
We didn’t talk. And soon it was as though we had nothing to talk about. There had never been a silence like this between us before. He stood around for a little, went to his room, then came back.
He said, “You must take me with you, Salim.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t leave me here.”
“What about your family? And how can I take you with me, Metty? The world isn’t like that nowadays. There are visas and passports. I can hardly arrange these things for myself. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’ll do. I hardly have any money. I’m scarcely able to look after myself.”
“It’s going to be bad here, Salim. You don’t know what they’re talking about outside. It’s going to be very bad when the President comes. At first they were only going to kill government people. Now the Liberation Army say that isn’t enough. They say they have to do what they did the last time, but they have to do it better this time. At first they were going to have people’s courts and shoot people in the squares. Now they say they have to do a lot more killing, and everybody will have to dip their hands in the blood. They’re going to kill everybody who can read and write, everybody who ever put on a jacket and tie, everybody who put on a jacket de boy. They’re going to kill all the masters and all the servants. When they’re finished nobody will know there was a place like this here. They’re going to kill and kill. They say it is the only way, to go back to the beginning before it’s too late. The killing will last for days. They say it is better to kill for days than to die forever. It is going to be terrible when the President comes.”
I tried to calm him down. “They always talk like this. Ever since the insurrection they’ve been talking of the morning when the whole thing is going to go up in flames. They talk like that because that is what they would like to happen. But nobody knows what is going to happen. And the President is smart. You know that. He must know they’re preparing something for him here. So he’ll get them excited, and then he may not come. You know