Vidiadhar Naipaul - A Way in the World

“It was just a week ago that I met Vallot. Today — would you believe? — when Bernard came back from the Council meeting he brought me a letter from a Swedish sailor in the new jail in the town. Not the old jail — that was pulled down four years ago by the Council, to prevent anyone seeing what Vallot’s old arrangements really were like. You have to ask and ask before they even show you where it was. The Swede is in jail for disorderly behaviour — that means drunkenness. They feel here that drunken — or ‘disguised’—sailors are bad for local discipline. ‘Disguised’ is the word they use. The alguazils get a small payment for every disguised sailor they pick up, and they are very eager.

“The Swede says he can’t pay the jail fees, and he is being kept on bread and water. He appeals to me as a friend of liberty to rescue him. That is easy enough to do. But his letter also makes me think of the day thirty-six years ago when I went aboard the Swedish frigate, the Prins Frederik, at La Guaira, and for the first time felt myself a free man. I had to get so many permits and certificates, from the Church and others, before I was allowed to leave Venezuela. There had been months of little worries and setbacks, even with my father’s influence, and I didn’t feel I was leaving until I was actually aboard the Prins Frederik . I can go back easily to that moment now: the hills behind the little town of La Guaira were like the hills I see here, and I can give this ever present wine-vat smell of Bernard’s estate house to the eight fanegas of cocoa beans in the frigate’s hold.

“And now, and now, Sally, after all these months, letters come from you and others that tell me plainly what I have always felt in my bones: that I have been wasting my time here. I used to be told that it was half the battle to be here, on the spot, and that I had to be patient. Now you write, and Rutherfurd writes, and Turnbull writes, and a few other people write as well, that I should get back to London as soon as possible. Things have changed, ideas have grown. An immense military action with a great commander is being planned, to seize the South American continent before the French do. This is the very idea I have been putting to British ministers these past few years. It has been taken up now, and I am so far away. All the letters agree — and they are already two months old — that if I am not in London at this stage of the discussions there may be no room for me in what is finally decided.

“So I stand to lose the fruit of a life’s dedication. Oh, Sally. I have been dwindling here; I have shown myself too often to these people. I have been dwindling in London as well; I haven’t shown myself to people there. You might think that a man carries his personality, his soul, within him. But here — like a man in prison, I suppose — I have grown to feel removed from both the world and myself. I have to discover myself again. It may take me time to be what I was, and I may discover that I have changed.

“Today Bernard, as secretary of the Council, brought back news from Hislop for Mister Miranda. Hislop says he is unwilling to give Mr. Miranda a passport. He thinks that to do so might expose him to criticism and perhaps to legal action because of Mr. Miranda’s dispute with the Leander men, who claim their wages, and the master of the Trimmer, who claims his fee for the hire of his sloop. He says also that there is a directive from Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, that nothing that can be construed as official British support is to be offered Mr. Miranda.

“Bernard said, ‘That’s what he has to say. That’s what will go on the record. But he really wants to talk to you. He has an idea that something is afoot in London and he wants to know what you can do for him. I think you should go and see him. He can’t actually detain you here, but he can delay you for many months. A letter to London for advice — six weeks. Another six weeks for a reply. A further six weeks for a letter seeking certain clarifications, and so on. Time is valuable to you. He can help there, and perhaps you can think of something to offer him.’

“This was Bernard’s last service to me, making it easy for me to deal with Hislop. I began to feel I was leaving, and I began to feel I was escaping, and lucky, as I had felt thirty-six years before when I had got all my permits and certificates and could go aboard the Prins Frederik at La Guaira.

“Bernard, whom I had sent here some years before, when he was the dependant and I the patron, was staying. He would never leave. He had nowhere else to go. I felt for him then all that I had felt when I had seen him in his London silk at Government House. I felt afresh all his pathos and anxiety, and the fragility of the life he had made for himself with his wife.

“We were standing after dinner in the verandah, looking across the narrow valley. This was what Bernard would always see or, if his circumstances changed, grieve for.

“His hand was resting on the banister of the verandah. I put my hand on his and told him, ‘I don’t know what would have happened to me here if you hadn’t come to see me that day a year ago at Government House.’

“He looked at me, considered me. Tears came to his eyes. He said, ‘I hope it goes well for you, General. I am sure it will.’

“Hislop will not refuse what I offer, Sally. I have something quite important to offer him. The ways of the world are returning to me already, and Leander might see his father even before you read this letter.”

WHERE THERE had been Africans in the grounds, speaking an African language, there were now Chinese. They were small, shrunken men with bony faces. They wore conical straw hats and long black pigtails. Their sun-browned arms were stringy and looked very thin in the very wide short sleeves of their cream-coloured tunics. Their wide, slack pants, in material of the same colour, came down to just below the knees. They looked very old; their eyes looked pulpy and vulnerable.

Some minutes after the servant had taken in Miranda’s name, Hislop came out to the verandah. And it was there, standing, that they talked. The rain and sun of a year had further darkened the pine floorboards, eaten away a little more of the soft wood between the ridges of the hard wood.

Hislop said, “I’ve got your letter, Mr. Miranda, but you will understand that my position is not easy. Be’nard will have told you about Lord Castlereagh’s directive.”

Miranda said, “The directives of ministers are variable, because they do not always remain pertinent. Lord Castlereagh sent his congratulations about the way you dealt with the slave conspiracy. But that has not prevented the free people of colour agitating this past year about one of their number whose ears were cut off. That is potentially a serious matter, and I think you will find that if it goes much further, Lord Castlereagh will distance himself from the action. In fact, I want to talk to you about legal matters. What I have to say will interest you.”

“That was what you said in your letter.”

“I campaigned against Picton when he was governor here, and to some extent I am responsible for his dismissal. Afterwards I sent out an agent here, Pedro Vargas. He didn’t attend to his obligations to me. The reports he sent me were dangerous lies and nonsense. He attached himself to the commissioner who was investigating Picton’s rule. He was described as an assessor in Spanish law and as such he became one of Picton’s accusers. His evidence at the trial condemned Picton. He said that Spanish law didn’t permit the torture of free men. This is nonsense, as we all know. But Vargas was the only man in London with a copy of the relevant Spanish lawbooks, and in a time of a great war it wasn’t easy to get another expert in Spanish law.”