The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [84]
The taunting, as I saw it, began. Dalip was red with drink and his face was swollen, the eyes heavy-lidded. He threw some sand at my feet and said, ‘The son of the great leader. Well, let me tell you. I don’t think he is any great damn leader, you hear. He is a skunk. A crook. A vagabond. They should have locked him up long time.’
Strange this taunting. What was said left me cold. Yet I responded to it because I knew it was taunting.
Cecil, reclined against the tree trunk, that silver strap so noticeable on his bare arm, grinned in his breath-holding way. His valet grinned with him.
I began a sentence: ‘Who the hell do you think –’ and then gave it up, overcome by the weariness of thinking out and speaking a sentence to its end.
‘I will tell you something,’ Dalip said. ‘Your father owes me thirty dollars. Thirty dollars.’
When? Facing execution, my own helplessness, my own acceptance. When? I tried to imagine this other life my father had created, this rediscovery of himself and those gifts the missionary’s lady had seen: that other life, with its own familiar bonds, so familiar that they might include a request for money. In weakness, as a suppliant? Or out of the prophet’s strength and contempt for the things men held to be of value?
‘Thirty dollars.’
Tears came to my eyes. So suddenly I had taken on my father’s pain. It was a debt that had to be repaid, and instantly. Before the future took its course. Thirty dollars. What a sum! But it had once been needed. It had once been asked for. Poor Gurudeva! The tears were tears of my own humiliation as well. For all my wish to repay this debt, to wipe out this insult, I did not have this sum. But I ran to the car as though I had the money. I took out the dollar-notes from my trouser-pockets. Just about twelve. In the car, crouching over the seat behind the open door, I thought: the Luger. But I didn’t have the bullet. I remembered: that was in Cecil’s shirt. But I was unwilling to touch that shirt. Would I know how to insert the bullet? And perhaps the word and the horror lay only in my own mind. It was an absurd situation. The absurdity didn’t lighten me. I would have to go laughing to my death, and up to the last I would have to pretend that death was in no one’s mind. I left the Luger in the glove compartment. I ran back with the dollar notes and offered them to Dalip.
He said, ‘That’s not thirty dollars.’
‘I will give you the rest later.’
‘I just want my thirty dollars.’
I threw the notes at his feet. And of course, I thought, as they fell to rest on the dry sand, they won’t stay there when this is all over.
He hit me. I hit him, though I wished to go without a fight. And he was drunk. Cecil and his valet, side by side now against the tree trunk, laughed. Dalip threw himself on me. He was heavy, uncontrolled. He missed me and stumbled. He lifted a twisted and polished piece of driftwood. With this he tried to hit me. It was too heavy for him. It fell of its own weight and I was able to get out of the way. Cecil threw some sand on me. His valet did likewise. They had come closer.
Cecil said: ‘The Luger. The bullet in my shirt.’
And, really, I hadn’t thought he had left it in his shirt. The Negro ran easily to the car, a man with much time. I ceased to fight. I let Cecil and Dalip hit me. They threw me on the ground and punched me and kicked me. And even then I could not be sure of their aim.
‘Thirty dollars. Your father owes me thirty dollars.’ Dalip repeated the sentence over and over.
And I only thought: the sea, the sand, the green waves,