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

“It’s not real,” Vidia said. “One is supposed to see it from the window, but up close — look! It is just a folly. It tricks the eye.”

Pat emerged, chafing her red hands, looking harassed, always the nervous cook: she was obviously flustered in her cooking.

“This is for you, Vidia.” I gave him the bottle of Beaune and my advance copy of Sinning with Annie , inscribed To Vidia and Pat, with love, Paul .

“Paul, Paul.” He glanced at the label. His phrase for such a gesture was “swiftly assessed.” He saw everything in a flash. The wine passed. He commented on the car, a Singer, and on my shirt, my jacket.

“How well you look,” Vidia said. “So young, and you are working so hard.”

“Such a long way,” Pat was saying to my wife in her purring voice as she led her into the house. Women with women, men with men.

“Vidia, you have something on your nose.”

I did not want to say “in your nostrils,” but his fingers went to his nostrils.

“Snuff,” he said. “I’m passionate about it. Want to try some?”

The snuff was in small tins that looked like pillboxes. Vidia had five or six of them — different flavors. But this was not the time for snuff; that was for after lunch. He was tapping the containers of snuff and puffing his pipe as Pat finished setting the table, my wife helping. Vidia and I, the men, were kicking our heels, waiting to be fed. I felt awkward doing nothing, but Vidia chatted happily about snuff. He always converted an enthusiasm into a study. Last year it had been muesli, next year it would be vintage port or the stock market or his garden.

“Do sit down,” Pat said.

We had soup, then poached salmon and potatoes and brussels sprouts. There was a green salad in a bowl that went untouched. Pat was too frazzled and anxious to meet the implacable demands of a kitchen, too unconfident to juggle cookbooks. An insecure person is lost in front of a stove. Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation — experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way. And Vidia was a challenge: a vegetarian food snob who could not cook and who never helped. He sat and was served.

“I want you to try some of this, Paul.”

He poured. I sipped.

“Hold it in your mouth. There — do you taste the almonds, the peaches? It’s a complex finish, oaken with a hint of chalk. Do you get it? Isn’t it delicious? It must be savored.”

He tipped some into my wife’s glass.

“I won’t have any,” Pat said.

He sipped from his own glass. “And just the slightest hint of rose petals.”

“It’s very good,” my wife said.

“Have some salad,” Pat said. “Vidia is so difficult. He won’t eat salad. Just fusses.”

Vidia shrugged. He was fastidious, unyielding, always on the lookout for any sign of meat. Meat disgusted him. It was flesh, it was sinew, it reduced the eater to the level of a cannibal. I always had the sense that he was talking about much more than meat when he was talking about meat. Gravy was just as bad, for the way it tainted vegetables. “Tainted” was a favorite word.

“Do you get up to London much?” my wife asked.

“When I need a haircut,” Vidia said.

“But you must miss your London house,” I said.

“It’s over. I have been paid. It’s in the bank. My ‘house money,’ I call it.”

“We’d love to move. All our things are in storage,” Pat said.

That explained the starkness of The Bungalow, the small bookcase, the few pictures, the bed-sitter atmosphere.

“Where to live?” Vidia said. He raised his arms in the Italian way. “Where?”

My wife said, “Swinging London.”

“London does not swing for me,” Vidia said. “This is serious, man. Where can one live? Tell me, Paul. Do you think I should live in America?”

“You might like it. You said you liked New York City.”

“I have been thinking of something wild, someplace rugged. Mountains. Large tracts of land.”

“Montana?”

“Montana! I shall go to Montana.”

“Cold winters,” I said.

“Lovely.”

“Snow. Ice storms. Blizzards.”

“I adore snow. I adore dramatic weather.”

“What about me?” I asked. “Where should I go?”

Vidia was never flippant. He frowned, he thought a moment, he stopped eating. “You must make your name here,” he said. “Forget America for the moment. It’s just depressing. The display of ego. The Mailer business. Roth — the sour grapes of Roth. And what these people don’t understand when they praise Hemingway and Fitzgerald is that Hemingway and Fitzgerald are bad writers, man. Bad, bad!”

My wife said, “I quite like Tender Is the Night .”

“Bogus emotion. Bogus style. All forced. His letters to his daughter are excellent — no bogus display there. Just a father addressing his daughter. But his novels say nothing. And all this nonsense about his wife.”

“Zelda,” my wife said.

“She was crazy,” Vidia said. “Out of her mind.”

“Oh, Vidia,” Pat said, beginning to scold.

“I am explaining to Paul why he will find a greater degree of appreciation of his work in England. He does not indulge in bogus displays of ego.”

“I am not talking about that,” Pat said.

“Can I pass anyone the salad?” I said.

“Zelda,” Vidia said. “I am so bored with the self-dramatization of the female soul. It is really just a way of pleasuring the body.”

“She wrote a novel, Save Me the Waltz ,” my wife said.

“I am speaking in general, not about any particular book. I am speaking about this bogus feminism, the way it makes women trivial-minded.”

My wife said quietly, “Women are trying to liberate themselves from traditional roles that have confined them. That’s why a job—”

“Women long for witnesses, that is all,” Vidia said. “Witnesses to their pleasure or their distress.”

“Vidia, do stop,” said Pat. “You are being such a bore.”

He smiled and said, “Why are women so obsessed with their bodies? Men are like that in adolescence, but these women are adults.”

“A lot of women are unhappy, I suppose,” I said.

“No, no. Deep down they are very happy. Give them their witnesses and they will be even happier.”

My wife had fallen silent.

Pat said, “I have a lovely apple pie that Mrs. Griggs made.”

Vidia said, “Where is Griggs? I haven’t seen her today.”

“She’s got the brasses today at the church. There’s a christening, one of her nieces. She’s polishing the brasses.”

“I won’t have any pie, thank you,” my wife said.

“Coffee then,” Pat said. “Now Vidia, go into the parlor. I won’t have you ranting.”

“What are you chuntering on about?” Vidia got up from the table. “Paul, let’s try some snuff.”

Again I was acutely aware that Pat and my wife had been left behind to clear the table and make coffee. I made an attempt to help, but Pat waved me away. She said, “Vidia has been dying to see you.”

He showed me how to take snuff. I tried several flavors, tapped some on the back of my hand and snorted it, and I sneezed explosively.

Vidia did not sneeze. The snuff vanished into his nose. He could not explain the anticlimax. He just laughed. Then he and I went for a walk to the old water meadows, and he explained how they had been made. He had become acquainted with the shrubs, he knew the names of the wildflowers, the different grasses, and even the trees that were dead and covered with ivy. He knew which were oaks and which were yews and which were ash. He talked a bit about his landlord, but in the most respectful way; he mentioned the Skulls.