V. Naipaul - The nightwatchman's occurrence book - and other comic inventions

We began by talking, not about my condition, but about her sewing lessons. She said, ‘I will be able to earn a little money with my sewing after these lessons.’

I said, ‘I can’t see you earning a penny with your sewing.’

She said, ‘Every evening in the country my aunt would sit down by the oil lamp and embroider. She looked very happy when she did this, very contented. And I promised myself that when I grew up I too would sit down every evening and embroider. But really I wonder, Frank, who is afraid for who.’

Again the undistorted reflection. I said, ‘Selma, I don’t think you have ever been nicer than you were tonight when you let me in.’

‘I did nothing.’

‘You were very nice.’ Emotion is foolish and dangerous; the sweetness of it carried me away. ‘If anyone ever hurts you, I’ll kill him.’

She looked at me with amusement.

‘I really will, I’ll kill him.’

She began to laugh.

‘Don’t laugh.’

‘I am not really laughing. But for this, for what you’ve just said, let us make a bargain. You will leave soon. But after you leave, whenever we meet again, and whatever has happened, let us make a bargain that we will spend the first night together.’

We left it at that.

So now there gathered at Henry’s, more for the company than for the pleasure, and to celebrate what was changing, the four of us whose interests seemed to coincide: Henry, Blackwhite, Selma and myself. What changes, changes. We were not together for long. Strangers were appearing every day now on the street, and one day there appeared two who split us up, it seemed, forever.

We were at Henry’s one day when a finely-suited middle-aged man came up hesitantly to our table and introduced himself as Mr de Ruyter of the Council for Colonial Cultures. He and Blackwhite got on well from the start. Blackwhite spoke of the need to develop the new island language. He said he had already done much work on it. He had begun to carry around with him a few duplicated sheets: a glossary of words he had made up.

‘I make up new words all the time. What do you think of squinge? I think that’s a good word.’

‘A lovely word,’ Mr de Ruyter said. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means screwing up your eyes. Like this.’

‘An excellent word,’ Mr de Ruyter said.

‘I visualize,’ Blackwhite said, ‘an institute which would dedicate itself to translating all the great books of the world into this language.’

‘Tremendous job.’

‘The need is tremendous.’

I said to Henry and Selma: ‘You know, I feel that all three of us are losing Blackwhite.’

‘I think you are wrong,’ Mr de Ruyter said. ‘This is just the sort of thing that we must encourage. We have got to move with the times.’

‘One of my favourite expressions,’ Blackwhite said.

Mr de Ruyter said, ‘I have a proposal which I would like to put to you, though I do so with great diffidence. How would you like to go to Cambridge to do some more work on your language? Oxford of course has a greater reputation for philology but—’ Mr de Ruyter laughed.

And Blackwhite laughed with him, already playing the Oxford and Cambridge game. Almost before the question had been completed I could see that he had succumbed. Still he went down fighting. ‘Cambridge, Oxford? But my work is here, among my people.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’ Mr de Ruyter said. ‘But you will see the Cam.’

‘A hell of a long way to go to see a Cam,’ Henry said.

‘It’s a river,’ Mr de Ruyter said.

‘Big river?’ Henry said.

‘In England we think big things are rather vulgar.’

‘It sounds a damn small river,’ Henry said.

Mr de Ruyter went on, ‘You will see King’s College Chapel. You will see the white cliffs of Dover.’

With every inducement Blackwhite’s eyes lit up with increased wattage.

Mr de Ruyter threw some more switches. ‘You will cross the Atlantic. You will sail down the Thames. You will see the Tower of London. You will see snow and ice. You will wear an overcoat. You will look good in an overcoat.’

At the same time Henry, rising slowly and furtively, began to excuse himself. He said, ‘I never thought I would see this.’

At the end of the room we saw a fat and ferocious woman who was looking closely at the darkened room as though searching for someone. She was the woman whose picture Henry often showed and around whom he had been in the habit of weaving stories of romance and betrayal. Even now, in this moment of distress, he found time to say, ‘She wasn’t fat when I did know she.’

Success, the columns in the newspapers, had betrayed him. He got away that evening, but within a fortnight he had been recaptured, cleaned up and brought back. And now it was Mrs Henry, if she was a Mrs Henry, who ruled. She worked like a new broom in the establishment, introducing order, cleanliness, cash registers, bill-pads, advertisements in the newspapers, and a signboard: THE COCONUT GROVE— Overseas Visitors Welcome.

No place for us now. Change, change. It was fast and furious. Through mine-free, dangerless channels ships came from Europe and the United States to the island: some grey, some still with their wartime camouflage, but one or two already white: the first of the tourist boats.

And on the base, where before there had been stern notices about a 5 mph speed limit and about the dangers to unauthorized persons, there now appeared a sign: TO BE SOLD BY PUBLIC AUCTION.

The base was sold and a time was fixed for local possession. Until that time my authority still mattered. From house to house in the street I went. And in that no man’s time — between the last Retreat and the arrival of the local buyer who had put up a new board:

To Be Erected Here Shortly

THE FLORIDA SHIRT FACTORY

— in that no man’s time, at dawn, through the open unguarded gates of the base the people of the street came in and took away whatever they could carry. They took away typewriters, they took away stoves, they took away bathtubs, wash-basins, refrigerators, cabinets. They took away doors and windows and panels of wire-netting.

I saw the buildings bulldozed. I saw the quick tropical grass spreading into the cracks on the asphalted roads. I saw the flowers, the bougainvillaea, poinsettia, the hibiscus, grow straggly in the tropics we had created.

In a house stuffed with refrigerators and wash-basins and stoves and typewriters I took my leave.

‘It is our way,’ Selma said. ‘Better this than that.’ She pointed to Henry’s, where Henry stood, miserable in his own doorway, Mrs Henry, you could feel, oppressive in the background. ‘That is how love and the big thing always ends.’

Blackwhite was typing when I left.

In the doorway now stood the bouncer.

‘I’ve been keeping my eye on you.’

‘Me too. You are very pretty.’

He made a gesture.

‘As pretty as a picture in a magazine. What are you advertising today? Bourbon?’

‘You can’t come in here.’

‘No, I don’t think bourbon. I think rice.’

‘Even with a tie I don’t think you could come in here.’

‘Bourbon, rice: I’m not interested. I’m turning the page over to the funnies.’

‘You can’t come in here.’

‘You’ve a nice place to break up.’

It was lush inside, like the film set of an old musical. There were waiters dressed in fancy clothes which I took to be a type of folk costume. There were tourists at candlelit tables; there was a stage with a thatched roof. And sitting at a long table in the company of some expensively-dressed elderly men was Mr Blackwhite.

‘You can’t come in here without a tie.’