The mimic men - V. S. Naipaul [97]
The essay about my father for The Socialist wrote itself. It was the work of an evening. It came easily, I realized later, because it was my first piece of writing. Every successive piece was a little less easy, though I never lost my facility. But at the time, as my pen ran over the paper, I thought that the sentences flowed, in sequence and without error, because I was making a confession, proclaiming the name, making an act of expiation. The irony doesn’t escape me: that article was, deeply, dishonest. It was the work of a convert, a man just created, just presented with a picture of himself. It was the first of many such pieces: balanced, fair, with the final truth evaded, until at last this truth was lost. The writing of this book has been more than a release from those articles; it has been an attempt to rediscover that truth.
So, pettily and absurdly, with the publication of the anniversary issue of the new-look Socialist, our political movement started. Consider the stir we made. Consider the peculiar power of my name. Add to this my reputation as a dandy and then the more forbidding reputation as a very young ‘Isabella millionaire’ who ‘worked hard and played hard’. Consider Browne’s licensed status as a renegade and romantic, a ‘radical’, for whose acknowledged gifts our island provided no outlet. See then how, though as individuals we were politically nothing, we supported one another and together appeared as a portent no one could dismiss. Certain ideas overwhelm by their simplicity. In three months – just six issues of the new Socialist, its finances and organization regulated by me – we found ourselves at the centre less of a political awakening than a political anxiety, to which it was left to us merely to give direction.
It has happened in twenty countries. I don’t want to exaggerate our achievement. Sooner or later, with or without us, something similar would have occurred. But I feel we might claim credit for our courage. The nature of the political life of our island must be understood. We were a colony, a benevolently administered dependency. So long as our dependence remained unquestioned our politics were a joke. A man like my father, extravagant as he was, had been a passing disturber of the peace. He fitted into the pattern of dependence, as did those who came after him, taking advantage of the limited constitution we were granted just before the end of the war. These politicians were contractors and merchants in the towns, farmers in the country, small people offering no policies, offering only themselves. They were not highly regarded. Their names and photographs appeared frequently in the newspapers, but they were slightly ridiculous figures; stories about their illiteracy or crookedness constantly circulated.
To go into politics then was not as simple a decision as it might seem now. We might easily have made the error of appearing to compete with the established politicians. And that would have been disastrous. We would have covered ourselves with ridicule. Instead, we ignored them. We said they were dead and unimportant. We not only made public a public joke; we were a demonstration of what was desirable and possible. We had the resources, in intellect and offers of support, to question the system itself. We denied competition; and indeed there was none. Simply by coming forward – Browne and myself and The Socialist, all together – we put an end to the old order. It was like that.
Courage: this is all I would claim now for our movement in its early stages. It takes courage to destroy any system, however shabby, which has permitted one to grow. We did not see this shabbiness as a type of order appropriate to our circumstances. That we were to see only when we had swept it away. And yet, equally, this shabbiness did not represent us; it could not have lasted. Did we then act? Or were we acted upon? When we were done it was no longer possible for someone like my mother’s father,