Vidiadhar Naipaul - A Way in the World

“And now a funny thing happen. In his mind Antonio stop talking to the Syrian man, and he start talking to himself. ‘Why this man scorn me so? Somebody tell him something. I can’t send this man home when his heart so full of scorn for me. The girl tell him something, to give him this strength over me. What she tell him?’ All kinds of private things pass through his head. The power flow out of him, and he begin to feel cold, standing there in the shop. He begin to feel he want to cry. The Syrian man say, ‘Yes, Pepe?’ Calling him Pepe to insult him, in front of the other people, even though he wearing his uniform. And Antonio could only turn and leave.

“Somehow he live through the next few days. He send a message to me, asking me to come and see him. I find him in a state, and the house in a state. Is only the second time I see the house. The first time they had it so nice for me. The girl was in her nice clothes, and she was respectful. Now she not there, and everything that I see make me think of her. The little shed in the yard, with the plants and the ferns, make me think of her. It was there that we sit out and take tea.

“So when Antonio tell me the story I feel in my own self a little bit of what he feel. He say he think he will have to leave the Guardia — he too mash up inside to do that kind of work now. He start crying. I don’t know what to tell him. Though I miss the girl and feel a little bit of what he feel, I don’t have the experience to tell him anything. I can’t tell him what to do to get people to like him or to stay with him.

“I grow up in the old days, with different ways. The older people used to look after that side for you. When I was twenty-two — it was the war, and I was working on the American base at Cumuto — my father just say to me one Friday when I come home for the weekend, ‘You getting too damn big. Is high time you get married. I have my eye on one or two girls for you. I will go and talk to the families.’ And that was that. I was a big man on the base, working with the Americans and everything, but I wasn’t man enough to tell my father no. Before I could turn around, I have a wife and I start having children. It was like something that just happen to me, like something somebody give me. I didn’t go out looking for it.

“And you could say something like that happen again after I cut loose from over there and bust it to here. I was living a runaway kind of life in Maturin, and I used to take my meals with this Indian family. I never talk nice to the daughter. I hardly talk to her at all. Somehow I just move in with them, and then she move out with me, and everybody agree, and nobody talk too much. And I must tell you I never touch the lady until we start living together.

“The funny thing is, as the children start growing up, it wasn’t the boys I worry about so much as the girls. We can’t arrange anything for them here, and they don’t want anything old-fashioned like that. They want the modern way, to choose their own, and you know how girl children foolish. One piece of sweet talk, and their head turn. And when a girl have a child, that isn’t something she can take back. Good or bad, is what she have, and her life follow that direction. But Dolores and the other girl was all right. They have the right kind of looks, and they get a lot of offers, and they could pick and choose, and they settle down. And I know the other girls going to be all right, because that good example set.

“Was different for the boys. The girls could just sit and wait. The boys have to go out and get. They have to be men in a new way, and they don’t really know what to do. They don’t have the example from me. They just copying people outside without really understanding. And is extra hard for them, because all the time they still have the old-fashioned bashfulness which they get from me.

“It was easier for Antonio to get into the Guardia than for him to get that girl, and then he was so bashful about it he didn’t tell me for a long time. He wasn’t being sly. He wasn’t worried about the girl. He just bashful. He feel it wouldn’t be showing me respect, it would look as though he running me competition.

“And when he tell me, and I go to see them, I too was so damn bashful I can’t bring myself to look the girl in the face, and Antonio so bashful he pretending he hardly know the girl. The only person who not bashful is the girl. And I think afterwards that all I know of the girl is what I see, that the girl is really a stranger, and that Antonio don’t know much more about her either. And I feel now, as he and I talk in the house, that this is part of the mess he is in.

“We talk all day, and we talk until late at night. We talk and talk. We say the same things ten, twelve times, and then we start all over again, he is in such a state.

“I tell him God was with him that day, when his finger didn’t pull the trigger, and then when he walk out of the Syrian man shop. I tell him that he don’t really know the girl, and he can’t talk of shame and disgrace. He must only think he make a mistake with her. The next time he wouldn’t make a mistake. The girl probably make her own mistakes already, and the Syrian man, too. Everybody going out to look for boy friend and girl friend among strangers must make a mistake. And my feeling is that in the end what is really for you you will get.

“I say, ‘I never had the kind of excitement in my life that you and your generation looking for in yours. Yours is the modern way, and I must tell you I jealous you a little bit for it, for the freedom it give. But if you want this kind of excitement, you have to pay the price. Other people must have their excitement and freedom too. You can’t tie them down. You can’t start thinking of fair and unfair. Once you start looking for this excitement, you have to put away this idea of fair and unfair.’

“So we sit down in the dark, in the shed with the fern baskets and the plants, talking and talking, and I search my mind for things to say to him, some true, some half true.

“People passing in the road all the time. They are like shadows against the lights of the other houses. I suppose some of them pick up the drama by now, and they know that the Guardia Nacional man and his father sitting and talking about the little girl and the Syrian man. I feel I can tell when people know. They don’t want to look, and they walk as though they don’t want to make any noise. They treat the house as though it is a house of sickness. Nobody mock. It is a side of the people here I never know about or had cause to look for, and it make me appreciate and respect them.

“I feel that as we talk, and as he get more and more tired, Antonio start calming down. But every now and then he break down and say that he will have to leave the Guardia. I don’t really believe him now, but at the same time I have the feeling that, just because I am taking his grief very seriously, and because he is calmer, and because of all the sympathy he must know he is getting from the neighbours, he might want to show off and do something dramatic. I feel this is the most dangerous time.

“I tell him, ‘I will say some prayers for you.’

“The idea did just come to me. And as soon as I say it, I see it was the right thing to say. He know that I have special prayers in mind. He don’t know much about these prayers, but he know they are very important to his mother, and I take them seriously too.

“I say to him, ‘I want you to promise that you won’t do anything until I say these prayers for you.’

“He don’t say anything, but I feel he agree. And that take a weight off my mind.”

The special prayers Manuel Sorzano meant were readings from the Hindu scriptures. They required a pundit chanting in Sanskrit (or what in this far-off part of the world passed for Sanskrit), sitting in front of a low, decorated earthen altar, stuck with a young banana tree, and with sugar and clarified butter burning on an aromatic pitch-pine fire: old emblems of fertility and sacrifice. These prayers couldn’t be arranged in Venezuela: Manuel Sorzano had had to return to Trinidad, where in an earlier life he had had another, and now unspoken, name. It was from those prayers that he was now returning, freshly cleansed in his own mind, not eating meat and not drinking, with the souvenir raffia basket with the jars and bottles of lime pickle and mango pickle and pepper sauce; and with the devotional Hindi records.