The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [113]
Yet out of all the confusion, against daily reports of ripe, burning canes and violence in the towns, this was the very cry that came out and was echoed from one end of the island to the other: nationalization. The estates had to be nationalized for the sake of unity, for the sake of that freedom from exploitation about which so much had been said. The estates had to be nationalized to balance the good fortune of the new bauxite contract. The estates had to be nationalized to prevent such threats to order in the future. I was at the centre; the task was mine. Browne spoke and was ambiguous: the task was mine. My supporters, and there were many, no doubt hoped for a miracle. Nationalization was as impossible as getting rid of the expatriate civil servants: so much London had made clear. A delegation to London was proposed. The expected reply came: there was nothing to discuss. But the cry did not die down on the island; I could not ignore it. Nationalization had become a word. It had no meaning. It held only Asiatic threat and Asiatic hope; to some it was a word of fulfilment and to others a word of revenge. Nationalization became less than a word: it became an emotive sound. The sugar-cane fields burned; two or three police stations in the country were overrun; in the towns shops and houses were looted. We were in the midst of a racial disturbance, but we spoke of it as nationalization. And to everything said by friend and enemy I was committed: to nationalization, to unity, to dignity, to the sharing of distress.
Once before, as a young man, I had been in a situation where I would have had to laugh my way to death by a Luger on a sunless beach; to the end I would have had to pretend that it was a joke, because it might have been. So now I found myself imprisoned in pretence, when it was so clear what was being prepared. On both occasions I might have cried out: ‘No! You are not going to kill me!’ On both occasions the reply might have been: ‘But who is going to kill you?’ Better the pretence, the joke.
Every day of drifting made withdrawal less easy. Every day of drifting weakened me. The strength was mine: control awaited me, awaited my plain statement. I do not exaggerate. In a confused situation my position was as clear as it always had been, and from the very falseness of this position I could have drawn together sufficient of the elements of our island to make my power certain and to restore calm. There were the ideologues to whom The Socialist had remained as an organ of internal opposition; there were those who had seen in the bauxite contract the only true achievement of our government; there was the middle class, of all races, whom my presence in the cabinet had always reassured; there were the workers on the estates, who sought only a spokesman for their strength. All these looked to me; all these I let down. Control, the challenge to kill, was the only alternative to pretence. But control, the prospect of power, and its corollary, the prospect of keeping power in a situation which would always turn to air in my hands, the prospect wearied me.
My sense of drama failed. This to me was the true loss. For four years drama had supported me; now, abruptly, drama failed. It was a private loss; thoughts of irresponsibility or duty dwindled, became absurd. I struggled to keep drama alive, for its replacement was despair: the vision of a boy walking on an endless desolate beach, between vegetation living, rotting, collapsed, and a mindless, living sea. No calm then: