A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [85]
He had also bought five tins of sardines, one for each day of the journey, I suppose; two tins of evaporated milk; a tin of Nescafe, a Dutch cheese, some biscuits and a quantity of Belgian honey cake.
He said, “The honey cake was Yvette’s idea. She says it’s full of nourishment.”
She said, “It keeps in the heat.”
I said, “There was a man at the lycée who used to live on honey cake.”
Ferdinand said, “That’s why we smoke nearly everything. Once you don’t break the crust it lasts a long time.”
“But the food situation in this place is appalling,” Indar said. “Everything in the shops is imported and expensive. And in the market, apart from the grubs and things that people pick up, all you have are two sticks of this and two ears of that. And people are coming in all the time. How do they make out? You have all this bush, all this rain. And yet there could be a famine in this town.”
The cabin was more crowded than it had been. A squat barefooted man had come in to introduce himself as the steward of the cabine de luxe, and after him the purser had come in, with a towel over one shoulder and a folded tablecloth in his hand. The purser shooed away the steward, spread the tablecloth on the table—lovely old material, but mercilessly laundered. Then he addressed Yvette.
“I see that the gentleman has brought his own food and water. But there is no need, madame. We follow the old rules still. Our water is purified. I myself have worked on ocean liners and been to countries all over the world. Now I am old and work on this African steamer. But I am accustomed to white people and know their ways well. The gentleman has nothing to fear, madame. He will be looked after well. I will see that the gentleman’s food is prepared separately, and I will serve him with my own hands in his cabin.”
He was a thin, elderly man of mixed race; his mother or father might have been a mulatto. He had conscientiously used the forbidden words—monsieur, madame; he had spread a tablecloth. And he stood waiting to be rewarded. Indar gave him two hundred francs.
Ferdinand said, “You’ve given him too much. He called you monsieur and madame, and you tipped him. As far as he’s concerned, his account has been settled. Now he will do nothing for you.”
And Ferdinand seemed to be right. When we went down one deck to the bar, the purser was there, leaning against the counter, drinking beer. He ignored all four of us; and he did nothing for us when we asked for beer and the barman said, “Termine.” If the purser hadn’t been drinking, and if another man with three well-dressed women hadn’t been drinking at one of the tables, it would have looked convincing. The bar—with a framed photograph of the President in chief’s clothes, holding up the carved stick with the fetish—was stripped; the brown shelves were bare.
I said to the barman, “Citoyen.” Ferdinand said, “Citoyen.” We got a palaver going, and beer was brought from the back room.
Indar said, “You will have to be my guide, Ferdinand. You will palaver for me.”
It was past noon, and very hot. The bar was full of reflected river light, with dancing veins of gold. The beer, weak as it was, lulled us. Indar forgot his aches and pains; a discussion he started with Ferdinand about the farm at the Domain that the Chinese