The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [43]
In the new house, of course, there was no sign of home manufacture. I believe Cecil regretted this. He was Bella Bella and Coca-Cola. He didn’t like anyone to forget it and he didn’t like to forget it himself. He had all the facts and figures about Coca-Cola sales, being admitted even when very young to the family’s business secrets; and he was full of stories about Coca-Cola. It was Cecil who told me either that Coca-Cola was an aphrodisiac or that it was regarded as such in certain Eastern countries. And I believe it was Cecil who told me that, to prevent the Coca-Cola secret formula from perishing for all time in a single ghastly accident, the American directors never travelled together, even in an elevator; though this might be a later story, from a different person, about another company. Of Cecil himself it was told that once, going by launch to a children’s picnic on one of the islets near Isabella, he became so enraged by the sight of cases of Pepsi-Cola, destined for this very picnic, that he threw them all overboard before anyone realized what he was up to; and sought to justify his behaviour to his bemused hosts and their outraged guests by a prolonged show of temper at what he claimed was their discourtesy to his family. I heard the story many times; it acquired the nature of legend. Cecil himself told it often when he was a young man and already, sadly, looking back to his childhood as to his great days. As a child Cecil was licensed to a degree. He liked to think of himself as eccentric and violent, and in this he was encouraged by his family, who relished the resulting stories. He was naturally aggressive; I feel the passion for real-life story-making permanently unsettled him. He was the only person I knew who even as a child tried to be a ‘character’.
My father hated Cecil. It was a lukewarm response to Cecil’s contempt; Cecil had no respect for age. My father often said, ‘That little brute is going to end up swinging on the gallows, you mark my words.’ Hating Cecil, he hated Coca-Cola, and made a vow, which I believe he kept, never to touch it. I reported the vow and the abstention to Cecil, who said, ‘It’s a young man’s drink.’ I reported this back to my father, who raged. But each was piqued by the other’s contempt; each wished to put down the other; and between the middle-aged man and the young boy I acted as go-between.
‘Nana,’ I said one day, referring in this way to Cecil’s father, ‘Nana went to America to buy a pipe.’
‘Do you really believe that? He probably bought a pipe when he was in America. He didn’t go to America to buy a pipe.’
‘It was what Cecil said.’
‘If you believe that you are a bigger damn fool than that damn big fool.’
On another day, when my father heard that I was going on a tour of the Bella Bella works, he went to the mousetrap and brought out a dead mouse and with a worrying smile whispered into my ear, ‘I bet you six cents, a shilling, you wouldn’t drop this in the vat or whatever it is they use. I bet you you wouldn’t.’
Part of the trouble was that my mother’s family had made their money five or six years too late. When my father married my mother the condescension had all been his. He was over thirty, had already made some mark in missionary circles, and was considered a rising man in the Education Department. The proof of this early glory was to be found in my father’s bookcase, in a slender old-fashioned