Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [273]
Paris was silent for a moment, looking at this man to whom he was close but who would never fully be his friend. Nadri was tall – the eyes that looked back at him were on a level with his own. They were the eyes that had looked into his in pain and bewilderment on the slaveship as Nadri was whipped forward to be examined and branded. He was naked now above the waist and the brandmark of Kemp showed livid on his chest. He had been the first that Paris had violated with his touch, as Tabakali had been the first of the women he had looked at and wanted. Now they shared her together. The woman had forgiven him, or so it seemed – perhaps because he had needed her so much; but for the man there could be no forgetting that first encounter, for all the affection that had grown between them.
‘It is a great pity that what you say of traps is not true also of people,’ Paris said. ‘At least then we would not be deceived.’
Nadri spread his hands, revealing the paler, vulnerable-seeming skin of the palms. ‘Trap is a very simple thing,’ he said. ‘Only has one purpose. When we say the name of it we say what it is. People are not like that. I dunno why it is, Matthew, you are all the time wanting to make some kind of laws for people. Why you never content to look at one person then another person?’
There was a note of reproof in this, stronger, as it seemed to Paris, than his own rather mild words had warranted. Some of the warmth left his face. He took no more kindly now than he ever had to being told how to shape his thoughts, and Nadri’s constitutional unwillingness to generalize about human behaviour had caused arguments between them before. ‘If we cannot proceed from particular truths to general ones our thoughts will get nowhere,’ he said.
‘Better for us you get nowhere,’ Nadri said. ‘Partikklar to gen’ral is story of the slave trade, I think.’
‘That is not fair, Nadri. If you bring everything down to that, we cannot discuss things at all.’ However, he had seen quite suddenly that Nadri’s resentment came from wanting to be separate and free, not wanting to be herded as it were into a law of human nature. ‘It is only an attempt at understanding,’ he said more gently. ‘We are all here by accident.’
‘No, excuse me, you are here by accident, I am here because you bringed me. For accident there must be choosing somewhere. That is one big difference between us, Matthew. The crew people here because they kill the captain. You say an attempt understanding but it is only an attempt proving your ideas the right ones. First you bringed us, say we are free, then you want to make us serve some idea in your head. But the people cannot serve your idea, you cannot make them do that.’
Paris did not reply at once. He was not so much dashed by the argument – he could not see how he could be held guilty of coercion simply by virtue of his own mental processes – as hurt in some obscure way by Nadri’s remark about the difference between them. It was true he bore a responsibility that none of the black people could be expected to share. Even the people of the crew he felt to be less accountable than himself. They had shared the physical misery of the negroes in a way he had not, they had been flogged in the negroes’ view, they had begged from the negroes’ bowls. No doubt it was for this reason they had been able to settle here together on equal terms. Paris had found happiness here, he knew himself to be useful and respected. But he knew also that in certain essential respects he was quite alone.
‘Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere,’ Nadri said in a different tone. ‘A wise man know his limits. Like the trokki, you know?’
‘What is trokki?’
Nadri was fond of Paris and had seen that he was hurt. He allowed his face to assume the expression, sly and slightly ironic, which it always wore on his