A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [30]
I could have pushed harder, and turned that high rage into tears. But I didn’t push. I thought I had given them both a new idea of the kind of man I was, and I left them in the storeroom to cool down. After some time I heard them talking, but softly.
At four o’clock, closing time, I shouted to Metty. And he, glad of the chance to come out and be active, said, “Patron,” and frowned to show how seriously he took the business of closing up the shop.
Ferdinand came out, quite calm, walking with a light step. He said, “Salim?” I said, “I will take the book back.” And I watched him walk up the red street, tall and sad and slow below the leafless flamboyants, past the rough market shacks of his town.
4
Father Huismans wasn’t in when I went to the lycée with the book. There was a young Belgian in the outer office, and he told me that Father Huismans liked to go away for a few days from time to time. Where did he go? “He goes into the bush. He goes to all those villages,” the young man—secretary or teacher—said, with irritation. And he became more irritated when I gave him the gymnasium book.
He said, “They come and beg to be admitted to the lycée. As soon as you take them in they start stealing. They would carry away the whole school if you let them. They come and beg you to look after their children. Yet in the streets they jostle you to show you they don’t care for you.” He didn’t look well. He was pale, but the skin below his eyes was dark, and he sweated as he talked. He said, “I’m sorry. It would be better for you to talk to Father Huismans. You must understand that it isn’t easy for me here. I’ve been living on honey cake and eggs.”
It sounded as though he had been put on an especially rich diet. Then I understood that he was really telling me he was starving.
He said, “Father Huismans had the idea this term of giving the boys African food. Well, that seemed all right. There’s an African lady in the capital who does wonderful things with prawns and shellfish. But here it was caterpillars and spinach in tomato sauce. Or what looked like tomato sauce. The first day! Of course, it was only for the boys, but the sight of it turned my stomach. I couldn’t stay in the hall and watch them chew. I can’t bring myself to eat anything from the kitchens now. I don’t have cooking facilities in my room, and at the van der Weyden there’s this sewer smell from the patio. I’m leaving. I’ve got to go. It’s all right for Huismans. He’s a priest. I’m not a priest. He goes into the bush. I don’t want to go into the bush.”
I couldn’t help him. Food was a problem for everybody here. My own arrangements were not of the happiest; I had had lunch that day with the couple from India, in a smell of asafoetida and oilcloth.
When, a week or so later, I went back to the lycée I heard that just two days after our meeting the young Belgian had taken the steamer and gone away. It was Father Huismans who gave me the news; and Father Huismans, sunburnt and healthy after his own trip, didn’t seem put out by the loss of one of his teachers. He said he was glad to have the gymnasium book back. It was part of the history of the town; the boys who had stolen the book would recognize that one day themselves.
Father Huismans was in his forties. He wasn’t dressed like a priest, but even in ordinary trousers and shirt there was something about him of the man apart. He had the “unfinished” face which I have noticed that certain Europeans—but never Arabs or Persians or Indians—have. In these faces there is a baby-like quality about the cut of the lips and the jut of the forehead. It might be that these people were born prematurely; they seem to have passed through some very early disturbance, way back. Some of these people are as fragile as they look; some are very tough. Father Huismans was tough. The impression he gave was of incompleteness, fragility, and toughness.
He had been out on the river, visiting some villages he knew, and he had brought back two