The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [0]
THE MIMIC MEN
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and since then he has followed no other profession. He is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Booker Prize in 1971 and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
Also by V. S. Naipaul
NONFICTION
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
Among the Believers
The Return of Eva Perón (with The Killings in Trinidad)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barracoon
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Passage
FICTION
A Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
A Flag on the Island
Mr Stone and the Knights Companion
A House for Mr. Biswas
Miguel Street*
The Suffrage of Elvira*
The Mystic Masseur*
* Published in an omnibus edition entitled Three Novels
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, AUGUST 2001
Copyright © 1967, copyright renewed 1995 by V. S. Naipaul
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in 1967, in the United States by Macmillan, New York, and in Great Britain by André Deutsch, London.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), 1932-
The mimic men / VS. Naipaul.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77656-3
1. Caribbean Area—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction.
3. Postcolonialism—Fiction. 4. Politicians—Fiction.
5. Exiles—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9272.9.N32 M55 2001
823′.914 — dc21 00-052753
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Three
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
ONE
1
WHEN I first came to London, shortly after the end of the war, I found myself after a few days in a boarding-house, called a private hotel, in the Kensington High Street area. The boarding-house was owned by Mr Shylock. He didn’t live there, but the attic was reserved for him; and Lieni, the Maltese housekeeper, told me he occasionally spent a night there with a young girl. ‘These English girls!’ Lieni said. She herself lived in the basement with her illegitimate child. An early postwar adventure. Between attic and basement, pleasure and its penalty, we boarders lived, narrowly.
I paid Mr Shylock three guineas a week for a tall, multi-mirrored, book-shaped room with a coffin-like wardrobe. And for Mr Shylock, the recipient each week of fifteen times three guineas, the possessor of a mistress and of suits made of cloth so fine I felt I could eat it, I had nothing but admiration. I was not used to the social modes of London or to the physiognomy and complexions of the North, and I thought Mr Shylock looked distinguished, like a lawyer or businessman or politician. He had the habit of stroking the lobe of his ear and inclining his head to listen. I thought the gesture was attractive; I copied it. I knew of recent events in Europe; they tormented me; and although I was trying to live on seven pounds a week I offered Mr Shylock my fullest, silent compassion.
In the winter Mr Shylock died. I knew nothing until I heard of his cremation from Lieni, who was herself affronted, and a little fearful for the future, that she had not been told by Mrs Shylock of the event