A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [84]
From the rear end of the deck, looking past the lifeboats, we could see people going aboard the barge with their crates and bundles. Above the roof of the customs sheds the town showed mainly as trees or bush—the town which, when you were in it, was full of streets and open spaces and sun and buildings. Few buildings showed through the trees and none rose above them. And from the height of the first-class deck you could see—from the quality of the vegetation, the change from imported ornamental trees to undifferentiated bush—how quickly the town ended, what a narrow strip of the riverbank it occupied. If you looked the other way, across the muddy river to the low line of bush and the emptiness of the other bank, you could pretend that the town didn’t exist. And then the barge on this bank was like a miracle, and the cabins of the first-class deck an impossible luxury.
At either end of that deck was something even more impressive—a cabine de luxe. That was what the old, paint-spattered metal plates above the doors said. What did these two cabins contain? Ferdinand said, “Shall we have a look?” We went into the one at the back. It was dark and very hot; the windows were sealed and heavily curtained. A baking bathroom; two armchairs, rather beaten up, and one with an arm missing, but still armchairs; a table with two shaky chairs; sconces with bulbs missing; torn curtains screening off the bunks from the rest of the cabin; and an air conditioner. Who, in that crowd outside, had such a ridiculous idea of his needs? Who required such privacy, such cramping comforts?
From the forward end of the deck came the sound of a disturbance. A man was complaining loudly, and he was complaining in English.
Ferdinand said, “I think I hear your friend.”
It was Indar. He was carrying an unusual load, and he was sweating and full of anger. With his forearms held out at the horizontal—like the fork of a fork-lift truck—he was supporting a shallow but very wide cardboard box, open at the top, on which he could visibly get no grip. The box was heavy. It was full of groceries and big bottles, ten or twelve bottles; and after the long walk from the dock gates and up all the steamer steps, Indar seemed to be at the end of all physical resource and on the verge of tears.
With a backward lean he staggered into the cabine de luxe, and I saw him drop—almost throw—the cardboard box on the bunk. And then he began to do a little dance of physical agony, stamping about the cabin and flexing his arms violently from the elbows down, as though to shake out the ache from all kinds of yelping muscles.
He was overdoing the display, but he had an audience. Not me, whom he had seen but was yet in no mood to acknowledge. Yvette was behind him. She was carrying his briefcase. He shouted at her, with the security that the English language gave him here, “The suitcase—is the bugger bringing the suitcase?” She looked sweated and strained herself, but she said soothingly, “Yes, yes.” And a man in a flowered shirt whom I had taken to be a passenger appeared with the suitcase.
I had seen Indar and Yvette together many times, but never in such a domestic relationship. For a dislocating moment the thought came to me that they were going away together. But then Yvette, straightening up, and remembering to smile, said to me, “Are you seeing someone off too?” And I understood that my anxiety was foolish.
Indar was now squeezing his biceps. Whatever he had planned for this moment with Yvette had been destroyed by the pain of the cardboard box.
He said, “They had no carrier bags. They had no bloody carrier bags.”
I said, “I thought you had taken the plane.”
“We waited for hours at the airport yesterday. It was always coming and coming. Then at midnight they gave us a beer and told us that the plane had been taken out of service. Just like that. Not delayed. Taken away. The Big Man wanted it. And no one knows when he is going to send it back. And then buying this steamer ticket—have you ever done that? There are all kinds of rules about when they can sell