The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [92]
Sanyasi, yellow-robed, among woods! Woods hymned endlessly in Aryan chants and found here on an island surrounded by a brown-green sea. It was his day of silence. When he came back to the hut from his shrine he greeted me without recognition at first. But then he put his arms around me. I remembered the embrace of his arms before, the day he towed me on the crossbar of his bicycle. He was gentle and silent. He went to the inner room of the hut. The sympathy that remained was for the idea of him. Gurudeva, asvamedha: these were the inspired moments, the fulfilment in a few weeks of a promise that had festered long.
But I had also come to repay a debt. It couldn’t really be repaid, but the gesture was necessary. I said to the woman, ‘I would like to leave this for Gurudeva.’ I gave her a prepared wad of a hundred dollars. Then I gave her three ten-dollar bills. ‘My father borrowed this from your son Dalip.’ Clad in white, the colour of purity, she took the money, showing no surprise.
Afterwards I went for a walk on the beach. The coast here was wild and untidy. The water at times frothed yellow with mud. The beach was littered with driftwood and other debris from the mighty South American rivers which, in flood, pushed their discolouring fresh waters as far north as this. The sand was black and pebbly and sharp. Another cloudy day, the clouds as dirty and ragged as the sea and the beach. I walked. The woods of crown lands gave way to the mangy coconut grove of a rundown estate. The trunks of the trees had orange blotches; beyond them were the white wooden houses of the labourers, white distemper streaked with the running salt rust of old tin roofs. There was a car on the beach. And in a little huddle in the shallows, as though in the vastness of sky and sea and sand they had come together for protection, was a white family, made up it seemed only of women and girls. A man, clearly of the party, was standing on the beach. A man burdened by women. We walked towards one another.
He said, as one sharing a joke, ‘You went to Gurudeva’s camp?’
‘I’ve just been to see him. I am his son.’
‘Oh! Deschampsneufs told me you went to see him.’
‘His son asked me to tea.’
He was not more than forty, but he had the used-up look of a man who had found his niche early and could already look back to a stupendous twenty years’ experience.
‘How did you like old Des?’ he asked.
‘He was all right.’
‘He told you about his ancestress?’
‘I heard about her.’
‘Poor Deschampsneufs.’
‘I don’t see how anybody can call Deschampsneufs poor.’
‘It’s pathetic, really. He’s got this French thing.’
‘I know.’
‘But of course, as you know, the Niger is a tributary of that Seine.’
The phrase came out whole: it had been used before. I felt choked. I wanted fresh air. I wished to be among people of greater fears.
‘Des told me you were going abroad to further your studies.’ He used the newspaper words. His thin hair fell crinkly and wet over his sallow forehead, above eyes hollow from glasses. ‘You know, it’s an odd thing. But I’ve never been abroad. All my friends they go abroad and come back and say what a wonderful time they had. But I note they all come back. I tell you, boy, this place is a paradise.’ That word again. ‘I suppose you going to do like all the others and come back with a whitey-pokey.’ Again that word.
He lifted his hand to his forehead to push back the loose hair. I studied his veins. They were like the map of a river. Whitey-pokey: I had learned to read that word. The Niger was a tributary of that Seine, in paradise. Fresh air! Escape! To bigger fears, to bigger men, to bigger lands, to continents with mountains five miles high and rivers so wide you couldn’t see the other bank, to journeys that took two days and a night. Goodbye to this encircling, tainted sea!
My friends from Isabella Imperial planned a dinner for me. I was overwhelmed by the gesture. It was sweet to find that after all the fumbling with relationships I had friends who wished to mark