A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [68]
“I asked him to bring her to me. She was middle-aged rather than old. She worked as a maid in the big hotel in the capital, and she had come to see me about her son. She belonged to one of the smaller tribes, people with no say in anything, and I suppose she had no one of her own kind to turn to. The boy had left school. He had joined some political club and had done various odd jobs. But he had given up all that. He was doing nothing at all. He was just staying in the house. He didn’t go out to see anybody. He suffered from headaches, but he wasn’t ill. I thought she was going to ask me to get the boy a job. But no. All she wanted me to do was to see the boy and talk to him.
“She impressed me a great deal. Yes, the dignity of that hotel maid was quite remarkable. Another woman would have thought that her son was bewitched, and taken appropriate measures. She, in her simple way, saw that her son’s disease had been brought on by his education. That was why she had come to me, the teacher at the college.
“I asked her to send the boy to me. He didn’t like the idea of his mother talking to me about him, but he came. He was as nervous as a kitten. What made him unusual—I would even say extraordinary—was the quality of his despair. It wasn’t just a matter of poverty and the lack of opportunity. It went much deeper. And, indeed, to try to look at the world from his point of view was to begin to get a headache yourself. He couldn’t face the world in which his mother, a poor woman of Africa, had endured such humiliation. Nothing could undo that. Nothing could give him a better world.
“I said to him, ‘I’ve listened to you, and I know that one day the mood of despair will go and you will want to act. What you mustn’t do then is to become involved in politics as they exist. Those clubs and associations are talking shops, debating societies, where Africans posture for Europeans and hope to pass as evolved. They will eat up your passion and destroy your gifts. What I am going to tell you now will sound strange, coming from me. You must join the Defence Force. You won’t rise high, but you will learn a real skill. You will learn about weapons and transport, and you will also learn about men. Once you understand what holds the Defence Force together, you will understand what holds the country together. You might say to me, “But isn’t it better for me to be a lawyer and be called maître?” I will say, “No. It is better for you to be a private and call the sergeant sir.” This isn’t advice I will want to give to anybody else. But I give it to you.’ ”
Raymond had held us all. When he stopped speaking we allowed the silence to last, while we continued to look at him as he sat on the dining chair in his safari jacket, distinguished, his hair combed back, his eyes tired, a bit of a dandy in his way.
In a more conversational voice, as though he was commenting on his own story, Raymond said at last, breaking the silence, “He’s a truly remarkable man. I don’t think we give him enough credit for what he’s done. We take it for granted. He’s disciplined the army and brought peace to this land of many peoples. It is possible once again to traverse the country from one end to the other—something the colonial power thought it alone had brought about. And what is most remarkable is that it’s been done without coercion, and entirely with the consent of the people. You don’t see policemen in the streets. You don’t see guns. You don’t see the army.”
Indar, sitting next to Yvette, who was still smiling, seemed about to change the position of his legs prior to saying something. But Raymond raised his hand, and Indar didn’t move.
“And there’s the freedom,” Raymond said. “There’s the remarkable welcome given to every kind of idea from every kind of system. I don’t think,” he said, addressing Indar directly, as though making up to him for keeping him quiet, “that anyone has even hinted to you that there are certain things you