Paul Theroux - Sir Vidia's Shadow - A Friendship Across Five Continents

“Yes. If you buy it, I want a pombe ,” the woman said, and joined me.

“So what are you doing?” I asked.

“I have been waiting for you,” she said.

This is how it should always be, I thought, because I knew that it would not be a question of if or when, but merely of finding a quiet place afterwards where we would not be disturbed.

The car the Naipauls had acquired before leaving Kampala, the tan Peugeot, was a popular model in East Africa; it was used as a bush taxi because of its solid suspension and reliable engine. Their driver’s name was Aggrey. His English was poor. He often told me in Swahili what he wished to communicate to the bwana . When, as frequently happened, Vidia was annoyed with him, he pleaded with me to explain why the bwana was angry. I was never privy to Vidia’s petulance, and it could last for days at a time, like the master-servant fury in a Russian novel. While it was in progress, Vidia drove the car himself and made Aggrey sit in the back seat. It was a cruel reversal of roles, and as Vidia was an erratic driver — he had never before owned a car — it was a peculiarly humiliating punishment for the driver to be turned into a passenger, stuck in the traditional bwana’ s seat while the bwana blunderingly chauffeured him.

To Vidia, all of East Africa was a single maddening place, but anyone who lived there knew it was three distinct countries. Uganda Protectorate had had a peaceful transition to independence. Tanzania, perversely ideological, was a Maoist experiment throughout the sixties: the leaders wore Mao suits and parroted Chinese slogans, and in return for this flattery (the Cultural Revolution had just begun) the Chinese began building a railway that would connect Dar es Salaam with Zambia. Kenya was a cranky tribalistic place with polarized political parties and deep regional and ethnic resentments. The Mau Mau conflict, still fresh in people’s memories, had been violent and divisive, full of rumors of ritual murder and blood ceremonies and cannibalism. Kenya had been a battleground and was now presided over by the sly and sententious old warrior Jomo Kenyatta, who regularly extorted money from foreign governments and Indian businessmen. The governments played along, but sometimes businessmen jibbed and refused to pay up.

Six Indian businessmen who refused to pay were deported from Kenya while Vidia was at the Kaptagat Arms. Vidia inquired and discovered what we had known all along, that Indians in Nairobi had helped lead the Kenyan struggle for independence. They had been discriminated against by the British, barred from living in certain areas, forbidden to grow cash crops, and kept out of clubs. After uhuru (independence) they were treated shabbily by Kenyatta’s government. Now some were being thrown out.

Vidia was visibly a muhindi , an Indian. Even he said that he had gone several shades darker in the equatorial sun. His bush hat and walking stick were a poor disguise. He was now living in a country where a muhindi was unwelcome. “Bloody Asian” was one of the less offensive ways Africans in Kenya referred to Indians, and muhindi was what the Kaptagat’s servants called Vidia when they spoke among themselves.

Tough-minded, Vidia reacted in much the same way as he had in Uganda. Whenever he met Indians in Kenya, he challenged them, demanding to know their backup plans in case of trouble. He called it “crunch time.” “Very well then,” he would say after the first pleasantries, “what are you going to do when crunch time comes?” He urged them to leave for India or Britain and to take their money with them — to teach the Africans a lesson. He quoted the Gita . He said, “You must act.” But they smiled uneasily and said that he did not understand. He decided that Pat and I should go with him to Nairobi to discuss this matter with the Indian high commissioner and the U.S. ambassador.

“Do you remember what I told you?” he said to me as we drove through the Rift Valley (Beware of Fallen Rocks ) toward Nairobi. “Hate the oppressor, but always fear the oppressed.”

I recognized the tone of voice from the main character in his novel in progress. It was also often Vidia’s own tone of voice. Vidia and his hero agreed on most things, it seemed. They even used the same expressions, or “locutions,” as they called them: “latterly,” “crunch time,” “some little time.”

“I have been contemplating this visit to Nairobi for some little time,” Vidia said. “Yes. Some little time.”

Nearer the Rift Valley escarpment we saw a sign saying Hussain Co. Ltd. Sheepskin Coats for Sale . Vidia said he wanted to see them, though I suspected he merely wished to lecture Mr. Hussain. The coats were cheap. They were thick and bulky. Mr. Hussain took our measurements and said he would make the coats to order. He would send them in a month or so.

“And what are you going to do when the crunch comes?” Vidia said to Mr. Hussain after we paid our money.

“I have plan,” Mr. Hussain said, wagging his head ambiguously.

When we were back on the road Vidia said, “He was lying, of course,” and then, “I wonder if I can bring it off?”

He was speaking of the sheepskin coat.

“Of course you can,” Pat said from the back seat, always the encouraging spouse.

“Perhaps in Scotland,” Vidia said.

There were giraffes in the distance, crossing the valley, and a herd of grazing zebras and clusters of gazelles.

“Frosty weather. Snow. I can see that coat being useful. But I don’t know whether I can bring it off. I don’t think I’m big enough in the shoulders.” After a moment he said, “Paul, you must come to London. Meet real people. Bring your sheepskin.”

Nairobi was a small town with wide streets and a colonial air. “Mimicry,” Vidia said, but he liked the Norfolk Hotel, its cleanness, its comfort. He quoted his narrator on the subject of hotels. After we checked in, he said he had the address of a Nigerian man here in Nairobi who had access to the Kenyans. At first Vidia wondered if it might be too much trouble — Pat had already decided to stay behind in the hotel room — but then he grew curious. It was always this curiosity that overcame his reluctance. The Nigerian at the very least would have a West African point of view. His name was Muhammed, and he was a Hausa, from the north of his country. He met us at the door of his apartment wearing a blue pinstriped double-breasted suit. Vidia introduced himself.

“Jolly good,” Muhammed said. He led us to a room with a large bookcase and offered us tea.

“That would be very nice,” Vidia said.

“What about some music?”

There were stacks of record albums on one shelf.

“No music. No music.”

“Jolly good.”

While we drank tea, Muhammed spoke with Vidia about the persecution of Indians in Nairobi, but instead of interrogating him, Vidia grew laconic and impatient. I just looked at the books. I saw Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, The Kama Sutra, Naked Lunch, Lolita, Lollipop Lady, A Manual for Lovers , and others — variations on a theme.

Vidia was rising. “We must go.”

Muhammed, stopped in midsentence, said, “Jolly good.”

In the car, Vidia said he was disgusted.

“What’s wrong?”

He made a nauseated face at Muhammed’s building and said, “Masturbator!”

It took him a while to calm down, but when his mood eased I said, “I have to see Tom Hopkinson.”

“Hopkinson? The chap who was editor of Picture Post ? He’s in Bongo-Wongo?”

“Yes. Want to come?”

“One has no interest.”

I dropped Vidia at the hotel and spent the afternoon with Tom Hopkinson. He was a well-known editor and journalist, and his highly successful Picture Post had been Britain’s answer to Life magazine. Hopkinson, in vigorous semi-retirement, ran the Institute of Journalism in Nairobi. It was my hope that he would come to Kampala and speak about freedom of the press at a conference I was trying to organize. A tall, thin, white-haired man, he was friendly and straightforward and clearly a Londoner: wearing a tie and long trousers and black shoes, he was overdressed for Kenya. We talked about novels — he had published two. He said he was too busy to give the lecture, but I suspected the rumors of violence in Uganda put him off. Most people in Kenya regarded Uganda as the bush.