The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [64]
I wonder if I would have said anything, if I would have made some statement of gratitude or sympathy, if I had known that that was to be our last contact, that afterwards we were both to follow our separate destinies and that mine, for all my unwillingness, was to be linked to his.
My mother had a theory about the lower classes. She needed one because on our street we were surrounded by them. Apart from one or two very rich areas and three or four very poor areas, all our city was like this, with the slum shack in the unfenced lot next to the two-storeyed mansion. The system or lack of system had its points. Since for most of us there was nothing like a good address or a bad address, everyone submitted to an individual assessment, and this was invariably fair. Everyone received his due and there was harmony. My mother’s theory was that the lower classes respected only those who respected themselves. She used to tell the story of a middle-aged white woman who had lived on the street for years, respected by all; but had then so enraged the lower classes by briefly taking one of their number as a lover that she had had to move. Her house was stoned and broken into; when she walked down the street she was insulted by the very people who before would have been delighted to help with the garden or with a heavy box or suitcase. And now, without warning, we found ourselves in the position of that woman. We were not stoned or abused. But we fell definitely into the category of those who had ceased to respect themselves.
Not long after that cycle ride through the rain, my father failed to return home one afternoon. We kept the news to ourselves. The next day he wasn’t at the Education Department. We continued to keep the news to ourselves. It was only at the end of the week that we discovered that what was unknown to us and had become our secret was known to a large section of the island. We were waiting anxiously at home; we went out and found we had become notorious. It was like that. We went out and found that my father, so far from disappearing quietly, had become a figure of sorts. He was in the hills, a preacher, a leader, with a growing frenzied following.
We read about people leaving their homes ‘one day’. This is the fact, and beyond this we can seldom go. The literal side of my mind has tried a hundred times to work out satisfactorily the events of that day and that week; and a hundred times I am left with the facts minutely established, and their mystery. My father obviously intended to return home when he left for the Education Department that morning. Some of the department files he had brought home were on his desk; his clothes were in the wardrobe; his bankbook was in his drawer. What happened? A fit at the office, a rage, a storming out of the building? Or was it in a lower key? Did he leave the Austin behind because he thought of the city centre, and remembered the traffic congestion there? He was unbalanced, in a temper; he walked. He walked to the city centre, to Waterloo Square. He found himself among the idle and the unemployed. He found himself among the striking dockworkers. They talked among themselves. He broke in and told his own story. He told of his early life, of the missionary and his lady and the aboriginal young man in a clearing in the forest. He told of the years of darkness that followed his abandonment. He told of his marriage and his service with the government. He had never spoken of these things before; he held his audience. He told these men as despairing as himself of his decision, perhaps made even as he was speaking, to turn his