A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [56]
He said, “I heard some years ago in London that you were here. I wondered what you were doing.” His expression was cool, balanced between irritation and a sneer, and it seemed to say that he didn’t have to ask now, and that he wasn’t surprised by what he had found.
It had happened so quickly. When Metty came running in saying, “Salim! Salim! Guess who’s here,” I had at once had an idea that it would be someone we had both known in the old days. I thought it would be Nazruddin, or some member of my family, some brother-in-law or nephew. And I had thought: But I can’t cope. The life here is no longer the old life. I cannot accept this responsibility. I don’t want to run a hospital.
Expecting, then, someone who was about to make a claim on me in the name of family and community and religion, and preparing a face and an attitude for that person, I was dismayed to find Metty leading Indar into the shop, Metty beside himself with joy, not pretending now, but for that moment delighted to recreate something of the old days, being the man in touch with great families. And from being myself the man full of complaint, the man who was going to pour out his melancholy in harsh advice to a new arrival who was perhaps already half crushed—“There is no place for you here. There is no place here for the homeless. Find somewhere else”—from being that kind of man, I had to be the opposite. I had to be the man who was doing well and more than well, the man whose drab shop concealed some bigger operation that made millions. I had to be the man who had planned it all, who had come to the destroyed town at the bend in the river because he had foreseen the rich future.
I couldn’t be any other way with Indar. He had always made me feel so backward. His family, though new on the coast, had outstripped us all; and even their low beginnings—the grandfather who was a railway labourer, then a market money-lender—had become (from the way people spoke) a little sacred, part of their wonderful story. They invested adventurously and spent money well; their way of living was much finer than ours; and there was their unusual passion for games and physical exercise. I had always thought of them as “modern” people, with a style quite different from ours. You get used to differences like that; they can even begin to appear natural.
When we had played squash that afternoon, and Indar had told me he was going to England to a university, I hadn’t felt resentful or jealous of him for what he was doing. Going abroad, the university—that was part of his style, what might have been expected. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a man who felt left behind, unprepared for what was coming. And my resentment of him had to do with the insecurity he had made me feel. He had said, “We’re washed up here, you know.” The words were true; I knew they were true. But I disliked him for speaking them: he had spoken as someone who had foreseen it all and had made his dispositions.
Eight years had passed since that day. What he had said would happen had happened. His family had lost a lot; they had lost their house; they (who had added the name of the town on the coast to their family name) had scattered, like my own family. Yet now, as he came into the shop, it seemed that the distance between us had remained the same.
There was London in his clothes, the trousers, the striped cotton shirt, the way his hair was cut, his shoes (oxblood in colour, thin-soled but sturdy, a little too narrow at the toes). And I—well, I was in my shop, with the red dirt road and the market square outside. I had waited so long, endured so much, changed; yet to him I hadn’t changed at all.
So far I had remained sitting. As I stood up I had a little twinge of fear. It came to me that he had reappeared only to bring me bad news. And all I could find to say was: “What brings you to the back of beyond?”
He said, “I wouldn’t say that. You are where it’s at.”
“ ‘Where it’s at’?”
“Where big things are happening. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
That was a relief. At least he wasn’t giving me my marching