The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [126]
It never occurred to me that the writing of this book might have become an end in itself, that the recording of a life might become an extension of that life. It never occurred to me that I would have grown to relish the constriction and order of hotel life, which previously had driven me to despair; and that the contrast between my unchanging room and the slow progression of what was being created there would have given me such satisfaction. Order, sequence, regularity: it is there every time the electric meter clicks, accepting one more of my shillings. In fourteen months the meter has swallowed hundreds of my shillings, now with a hollow sound, now with a full sound. I have seen the putting green in all weathers, preferring it best in winter, when our middle-aged ladies, mutton dressed as lamb, as our barman says, cease to sunbathe, and our homeless men no longer appear on it at week-ends in sporty clothes and make hearty conversation.
I know every line on the wallpaper above my table. I have seen no deterioration, but there is talk of redecorating. And the table itself: when I first sat at it I thought it rough and too narrow. The dark surface was stained and scratched, the indentations filled with grit and dirt; the drawer didn’t pull out, the legs had been cut down. It wasn’t part of the standard hotel furniture. It had been provided specially; it was a junkshop article, belonging to no one, without a function. Now it feels rehabilitated and clean; it is familiar and comfortable; even the scratches have acquired a shine. This is the gift of minute observation which has come to me with the writing of this book, one order, of which I form part, answering the other, which I create. And with this gift has come another, which I least expected: a continuous, quiet enjoyment of the passing of time.
I have fitted into the hotel; the fact has been remarked upon. Suspicion has disappeared; it had nothing to feed on since I learned to fill my day. I have breakfast. I work in my room. I walk to the public house for lunch. The beermats never change. Who comes here? A Grenadier. Sometimes in mid-afternoon I go to a restaurant where frying oil hangs in the still air like a mist; beyond the streaming glass the lorries, buses and motorcars pass ceaselessly in their own blue haze. I have tea and read an evening paper. On Sundays we all have tea in the lounge; it is the custom then for the ladies to serve the men. The older folk play cards; the rest of us read the newspapers. I read the characterless hand of a lady, lower-middle-class but nice, who was in India until 1947; now, after Kenya and Northern Rhodesia, her husband dead, her family scattered, she has given up the Empire. Like me. I frequently go down to the bar before dinner to have a drink and watch television. It is a private bar; postcards and souvenirs from residents who have gone abroad are reverentially displayed. I have my own table in the dining-room. It is behind a square pillar, clad with varnished pine. I like being behind the pillar. It is as wide as my table and gives me privacy of a sort. It also enables me, without giving offence, to observe the hands of the man I think of as Garbage.
Garbage also sits behind a pillar. His hands are all I can see of him. They are long, middle-aged, educated hands: and their primary concern appears to be to convert a plate of meat and vegetables into a plate of acceptable garbage. While chaos comes swiftly and simultaneously to other plates; while meat is hacked and pushed around and vegetables mangled and scattered on a spreading, muddy field of gravy; while knives and forks, restlessly preparing fresh, mixed mouthfuls, probe the chaos they have created, and cut and spear and plaster; those two hands are unhurriedly, scientifically,