Half a Life_ A Novel - V. S. Naipaul [79]
Still, I felt sorry for Álvaro that he should be so exposed and pulled down in the estate houses where (leaving his African family at home) he wanted to be accepted. I wondered how that family were going to make out. They had got their marching orders and would soon have to leave their concrete house; it would be some time before they got accommodation like that again. Ana said, “He might take the opportunity to forget about them.” I didn't want to think about that too much, but it was probably true. Álvaro had never spoken of his family to me, had never given his children names or characters. I had seen them only from the road: African-looking children, some like village children, staring from the small verandah of the concrete house or running out from the grass-roofed kitchen hut at the back. I suppose if a new job came up Álvaro wouldn't have minded moving on and starting afresh with a new woman and new outside women in a new place. He might have considered an outcome like that a blessing; it would have reconciled him to everything.
I hadn't seen him for some weeks. We had long ago stopped making excursions together to places like the warehouse. And when one day we met on the asphalt road to the town he was subdued; the humiliation of his sacking and the worry showed on his face. He was defiant, though. He said, “I don't know who the hell these people think they are, Willie. It's all going up in smoke. They are going to Lisbon and Paris and London and talking about their children's education. They are living in a fool's paradise.” I thought he was copying the apocalyptic tone of his late master. But he had real news. He said, “The guerrillas are in camps just over the border. The government there is on their side. They are real guerrillas now, and they aren't playing. When they decide to move I don't see what's going to stop them.”
For some weeks there had been fewer soldiers in the town, and there had been talk about army manoeuvres deep in the bush to the north and the west. There was little in the newspapers. It was only later, some time after Álvaro had given me the news, that announcements were made of the successful army “sweep” to the north and west, right up to the border. The army began then to come back to the town; and things were as before. The places of pleasure were busy again. But by this time I had lost touch with Álvaro.
I had found less and less pleasure in the places of pleasure. Some of this would have had to do with my worry about seeing Júlio's daughter again. But the main reason was that the act of sex there, which used to excite me with its directness and brutality, had grown mechanical. For the first year I used to keep a tally, in my head, of the times I had been; again and again I would do the sums, associating outside events, lunches, visits, with these darker, brighter moments in the warm cubicles, creating as it were a special calendar of that year for myself. Gradually, then, it happened that I went not out of need but in order to add to the tally. At an even later stage I went just to test my capacity. Sometimes on those occasions I had to drive myself; I wished then not to extend the moment but to finish as soon as possible. The girls were always willing, always ready to demonstrate the tricks of strength and suppleness that had sent me away the first time with new sensations, a new idea of myself, and tenderness for everyone and everything. Now the sensation was of exhaustion and waste, of my lower stomach scraped dry; I needed a day or two to recover. It was in this enervated mood that I began to make love to Ana again, hoping to recover the closeness that had once seemed so natural. It couldn't be. That old closeness was not based on love-making, and now, not even rebuking me for my long absence,