Half a Life_ A Novel - V. S. Naipaul [19]
One day he sees a group of tribal people passing in front of the temple compound. They are black and small, bony from starvation, and almost naked. Hunger has driven these people from their habitations and made them careless of old rules. They should not pass so close to the temple because the shadow of these people, their very sight, even the sound of their voices, is polluting. The brahmin has an illumination. He finds out where the tribal encampment is. He goes there at night with his face hidden by his shawl. He seeks out the headman and in the name of charity and religion he offers to buy one of the half-dead tribal children. He makes this deal with the tribal headman: the child is to be drugged and taken to a certain low cave in the rocky wilderness and left there. If this is fairly and honestly done, a week later the tribal man will find a piece of old treasure in the cave, enough to take all his followers out of their distress.
The sacrifice is done, the piece of old treasure laid down; and from year to year this ritual goes on, for the brahmin, and for the tribals.
One year the headman, now better fed and better dressed, with shiny oiled hair, comes to the brahmin's temple. The brahmin is rough. He says, “Who are you?” The headman says, “You know me. And I know you. I know what you are up to. I have known all along. I recognised you that first night and understood everything. I want half your treasure.” The brahmin says, “You know nothing. I know that for fifteen years you and your tribe have been carrying out child-sacrifice in a certain cave. It is part of your tribal ways. Now that you have all prospered and become townsmen you are ashamed and frightened. So you have come and confessed to me and asked for my understanding. I have given you that, because I understand your tribal ways, but I cannot say I am not horrified, and if I choose I can lead anyone to the cave with the bones of many children. Now get out. Your hair is oiled, but your very shadow pollutes this sacred place.” The headman cringes and backs away. He says, “Forgive, forgive.” The brahmin says, “And don't forget your pledge.”
The time comes for the brahmin's annual sacrifice. He makes his way at night to the cave of bones. He turns over and polishes every kind of story in case the tribal chief has informed on him and people are waiting for him. No one is waiting. He is not surprised. In the dark cave there are two drugged children. The headman has, after all, behaved well. With a practised hand the brahmin sacrifices the two to the spirit of the cave. When he comes to burn the little corpses he sees by the light of his wood torch that they are his own children.
This was where the story ended. Willie's father had read without skipping. And when, mechanically, he turned back to the beginning he saw—what he had forgotten during the reading—that the story was called “A Life of Sacrifice.”
He thought, “His mind is diseased. He hates me and he hates his mother, and now he's turned against himself. This is what the missionaries have done to him with Mom and Pop and Dick Tracy and the Justice Society of America comic magazine, and Christ on the Cross movies in Passion Week, and Bogart and Cagney and George Raft the rest of the time. I cannot deal rationally with this kind of hatred. I will deal with it in the way of the mahatma. I will ignore it. I will keep a vow of silence so far as he is concerned.”
Two or three weeks later the boy's mother came to him and said, “I wish you would break that vow of silence. It is making Willie very unhappy.”
“The boy is lost. There is nothing I can do for him.” She said, “You have to help him. No one else can. Two days ago I found him sitting in the dark. When I put the light on I saw he was crying. I asked him why. He said, ‘I just feel that everything in the world is so sad. And it is all that we have. I don't know what to do.' I didn't know what to say to him. It's something he gets from your side. I tried to comfort him. I told him that everything