Vidiadhar Naipaul - A Way in the World

“Pastrycook! The things you can get people to do these days!”

Bernard began to go down the steps. Miranda (never forgetting, with a remnant of shame, how, thirty-five years ago, eight fanegas, four hundred and fifty pounds, of Venezuelan cocoa had been converted in Cadiz into nothing more than a silk handkerchief and a silk umbrella) noticed how carefully, even with all the rain, the chevalier’s son-in-law had dressed for the occasion: the pale yellow pantaloons, the white ruffed shirt, the blue silk jacket. Before he got to the bottom of the broad, semi-rotting wooden steps (the driver of the calash getting ready, shaking the wet off the reins), he turned and looked at Miranda. It was the moment Miranda — wondering about the purpose of the call — had thought would never come.

Bernard said, “General. The clerk of the Council died last week. Did Governor Hislop tell you? It means there is a vacancy. The fees are small. Over a month they wouldn’t purchase you a dinner in London. But it’s a position of some local dignity. It matters to me, to be something in my own right. You’ll understand. I hope you’ll feel able to recommend me for it.”

AT DINNER Hislop said, “I know what he wants. You don’t have to tell me. So far, when the messages have come I’ve pretended not to hear. Let’s leave it like that. Let’s have some wine now, to celebrate your homecoming. Because that’s what it is: a homecoming after thirty-five years. And that’s what I hope it will turn out to be in a lasting way.”

Miranda said, “No wine for me, General. Just sugar and water. It’s all I’ve had for years. It’s what we used to drink in Caracas as children.”

“Almost the only commodities we’re not short of here. But sugar-and-water isn’t the kind of story we hear about you.”

“It’s strange about those stories. I started some of them, or at any rate encouraged them. Now they’re like stories about someone else. When I went to Spain in 1771, wine was one of the things I was travelling to know. It was something the poets wrote about. The wine of Europe, not the brackish church stuff we had in Caracas. I thought a lot about wine on the Prins Frederik. I expected nectar. As soon as I got to Cadiz I started to make notes about every wine I had, as I made notes about the women, the churches, the pictures. I don’t know now how much I was acting for the sake of my journal. Acting being a man of culture. I was twenty-one.”

“So the chevalier’s son-in-law came in his calash. A famous calash. With its shop-sign coat of arms. I hope he was friendly.”

“I don’t know. He threatened me. He said I had a revolutionary past. He said he knew more about that past than anyone here, and some people might easily be made to feel that property wasn’t safe with me.”

Hislop said, “Unfortunately, he’s right. It could be very damaging. The Spaniards have also been spreading rumours. The local Spaniards are already keeping out, and unless these stories are checked, your French volunteers might also drop away. They’re refugees from the islands, aristocrats without money, and they’re going into this business for the sake of property. Land and Negroes. To re-establish their fortunes. We all know that. I wish it were otherwise, but in this part of the world it always comes down to land and Negroes, as I told you. We have to take Be’nard’s threat seriously. I’ll find ways of letting him know that you’ve spoken to me, and that I’ve agreed to let him have the clerkship, but that I won’t be making the appointment for a month. That should keep him out of mischief and give you enough time. Ah, the calash! Be’nard will feel it did the trick again.”

“I couldn’t really afford the money I gave him when I sent him out here in 1799. And yet when I saw him this morning I had to pretend to be stiff with him. It was strange. I felt no animosity towards him. And right at the end, as he was going down the steps and he turned and I saw how carefully he had dressed, my heart went out to him. He looked so vulnerable, so easy to hurt. It would have been so easy to call his bluff, to laugh at the calash and the barefoot Negro driving it. And simply because it was so easy I didn’t want to do it. There’s always a touch of pathos in someone like that. He’s so exposed. I felt I was looking at a younger version of myself.

“I too had a coat of arms at one time. You need one to get a commission in a Spanish regiment. There are people in Spain who do these things. The man my father employed was called Zazo y Ortega. Zazo’s method was simple. He linked the Mirandas of Caracas and the Canary Islands to the twelfth-century Mirandas of Old Castile. And although I knew precisely who I was, and was proud of my father, and very proud of our money, I also passionately believed when I got on the Prins Frederik at La Guaira that I was another kind of person, and that I was travelling to Spain to claim my rightful inheritance, of which the coat of arms was a part. The Prins Frederik was a Swedish frigate. It was utterly foreign. It helped me to feel that I had undergone a transformation. For years I lived like this, knowing who I was and at the same time believing myself to be somebody else. Holding those two different ideas in my head at the same time, even drawing the Miranda arms on the expensive books I bought.

“I will tell you something even more absurd. When I was twenty-five — just two weeks after my twenty-fifth birthday — I wrote to the king of Spain asking to be invested with the red cross of the Order of Santiago. This is a very grand order. The king himself appoints a commission to look into the nobility of your descent. The painter Velázquez was admitted to the order when he was sixty, and at the height of his reputation. I knew who we were, what we had come from in Caracas and the Canary Islands. I knew exactly how Zazo had gone about creating that genealogy for me. But I also thought quite seriously with another part of my mind that Zazo had turned up the truth, and I was worthy of the king’s investigation. I thought there was something wonderful within me, and I felt that the king would discover this. I was twenty-five, a captain in the Princess Regiment in Africa.

“Later I became ashamed of all of this. I was glad there was no reply from the king. I even forgot about it, until the other day. And now I can look back on that whole business with calm. But I can still see the logic of the young man and understand why he did what he did. Something of that came back to me when I saw Bernard go down the steps, about to splash his delicate shoes and to spot his very expensive silk jacket with the drips from the old calash hood.”

Hislop said, “It’s easy to look back at the past. It’s not so easy to be clear-sighted about the present. We don’t always know what we are doing now. We can just get dragged along.”

“General, you’re frightening me. Of course I know it’s strange to be going on a campaign of liberation with these French aristocratic adventurers who only want land and Negroes. But that’s looking at it from the outside. I know the logic of what I’m doing. I know how I’ve got here. You know. You and I know all the twists and turns of events that have brought me here.”

“I was thinking of myself. I intended no rebuke to you. I am a military man. That has been my ambition since childhood. My last active service was in Gibraltar. That was twenty years ago. I have been becalmed in these parts for ten years. I still think of myself as a military man, still think I have a future. But really I no longer know what I’m doing. They put you in a place called Government House and they call you the governor, but you’re really only a jailer for these planters. I would much rather be with you. There, General. I’ve said what’s been on my mind these many months. I have longed for this meeting. For the last four months I have been learning Spanish. Learning Spanish one hour a day, and for the last year or two I’ve been dreaming of an elegant society, with fine houses and polished floors and beautiful Spanish ladies, where I might one day practise this Spanish. I have not seen action recently. But I could be on your staff. I could smooth things for you with our admirals and generals. I know many of them. I know their characters. I would know the words to use. The correct words are important with military people. That could be of value to you.”