V. Naipaul - Guerrillas

Again there was the sound of bells from the beach. It rose and fell with the wind; and then it disappeared.

Harry said, “I hate music.”

Roche said, “This is a lovely rum punch, Harry. I love the nutmeggy flavor.”

Jane recognized his dry, precise, rebuking tone. It puzzled her; she dismissed it.

Harry said, “It’s well cured. Most of the stuff you get in bars is raw like hell.”

Jane said, “I didn’t mind those people down on the beach. I was fascinated. I thought I could watch that man and that woman all day.”

“And they could keep it up all day,” Harry said. “Those people would dance their way to hell, man. Do you know, Jane, I have never tapped my feet to music. Never.”

Roche said, “When I was in jail I would play whole symphonies in my head.”

Jane said, “But, Harry, I thought you would be a marvelous dancer.”

“In Toronto, you know what they call me? Calypso Harry. Up there as soon as you tell people where you come from they think you’re crazy about music.”

Roche said, “Harry, you were born in the wrong place.”

“No, man, Peter. You can’t say that. But I mean. How the hell can you respect a guy who starts tapping his feet to music and jigging up in his chair? Apart from everything else, I find it looks so damn common. Especially if the guy is a little old. You feel the feller has no control at all, and that at any moment he is going to tear his clothes off and start prancing about the room. You were saying something about jail, Peter?”

“I used to play whole scores in my head. From beginning to end. No cheating. And I would time myself.”

“That’s the only place where it should be permitted. In jail, and in your head. But, Peter, you are serious?”

“Other people did physical exercises. Other people kept diaries. I arranged concerts for myself.”

“Better you than me. But that is a hell of a thing you are telling me, man, Peter. Jane, is this true?”

“I don’t know. But I suppose I can believe it.”

“If I had my way I would ban music. And dancing. Make it a crime. Six months for every record you play. And hard labor for the reggae. Jane, I am serious. This is a country that has been destroyed by music. You just have to think of what is going on right now on that beach. And think how lovely and quiet it would be, eh. None of that reggae-reggae the whole blasted day.”

Jane, sitting forward, said quickly, “I know what Marie-Thérèse is doing now. She’s tapping her feet to music.”

Harry said, “What’s that guy’s technique?” He sat up in his hammock. His legs, slender, brown, and sharp-shinned below the fringed Bermuda shorts, hung free; his white canvas shoes looked very big. “Ever since that girl cut loose, the language, Jane. The language that girl now uses to me. I’m ashamed to tell you. What do you suppose they’re doing now? At it, eh?” He lay back in the hammock and looked at the ceiling of the porch. “At it all the time.”

Jane said, “They’re probably having a terrific quarrel at this minute. Sunday’s a bad day for rebels. They’re probably not even talking this morning.”

“Calypso Harry.” Harry swayed in his hammock, considering the hammock hook. “I give up explaining now. People always call you what they want. They always call you by the last place you’ve been. Do you know, Jane, Peter, that the surname I carry is really the name of a town in South America? Tunja. When we were in Tunja we were called de Cordoba. And I suppose in Cordoba it was Ben-something-or-the-other. Always the last place you run from.”

Roche said, “Tunja?”

“It’s in Colombia. I don’t know. I never went looking for the place. Nobody has heard of Tunja. And I suppose that’s why it was a good place to leave. Those wars, too, you know—1830, 1840. It was the time the Siegerts were taking their Angostura business from Venezuela to Trinidad. We came here. The British Empire, the English language: I suppose it made a lot of sense. And now at least I can go anywhere. And I suppose the time has come to move on.”

Jane said, with an old brightness, “The airport. Every day I look at the airport and wonder when it will close down.”

“Mrs. Grandlieu,” Roche said. “I don’t think it will come to that.”

“But you’ve had a good run for your money,” Jane said to Harry.

Roche said, “Not better than you.”

Jane leaned back in her chair. Her lips closed slowly over her teeth.

After a pause Harry said, “I don’t want to go. I love this country. But when you feel the ground move below you it is damn foolishness to pretend you feel nothing. The other day I was standing outside the office with old man Sebastien. I don’t know whether you know him. He is one of those manic-depressives — all their madness come out in property. He was in one of his manic moods. And when he is like that the family can’t control him. Everybody selling or trying to sell, but Sebastien just want to buy now. The man come to your house at midnight. He suddenly want to buy this or he suddenly decide to buy that. I was standing up with him on the pavement, trying to cool him down and prevent him coming inside the office. And this old black feller come down the street, pushing a little box cart. Old black feller, old rummy face — thousands like him. When he reach us he stop in the road, he raise his hand and point at me and he say, ‘You! You is a Jew.’ Just like that, and then he move on, pushing his little cart. He didn’t make any big scene. It was as though he just stop to ask me the time. Now why the hell should an old black man stop and accost me like that? He make me feel I get off the ship in 1938 with a pack on my back.”

Roche said, “He was probably drunk.”

“Well, yes. Drunk. But what the hell does it mean to him? What kind of funny ideas are going around this place? I don’t know whether you notice how suspicious everybody is these days. Everybody nervous and a little tense. You don’t feel it? Everybody feel that the other guy have some important kind of secret. Look, like the way I know people feel about me since this landed-immigrant status. Like the way I too feel about Meredith these past two-three weeks. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that Merry is up to something, and I have to be a little careful. Sometimes in this place, you know, you can wonder what century you living in. Mrs. Grandlieu ever tell you how her father-in-law died? He was going round one of the estates one morning. In the middle of the morning he went back to the estate house for breakfast. He drank some water from his own icy-hot — a thermos flask, nuh — and straightaway he feel he want to vomit. You know the first thing he ask for? A basin, to vomit in. It took him six hours to die. Six hours.”

“Poison,” Roche said. “That’s very African.”

“The man vomiting up his guts. He is a dying man, and you know all he could think of? He want people to save his vomit — all his vomit — and take it to the police. That is the only thing he is talking about. And that is how he spent his last hours on earth: thinking about Negroes and the police and punishment. As though on the last day of his life he went back a hundred and fifty years and was a slave owner again. I don’t want to die with thoughts like that in my head, man. And that was just in 1938, you know. You know how they catch the poisoner? A month later, Christmas week, a crazy old black woman start parading through the town, shouting and crying, ‘I see Jesus! I see Mary!’ She was the poisoner. And she nearly cause a riot, eh, before they put her away in the madhouse. She had nothing to do with the estate. She’d just seen old Grandlieu in the morning, that’s all. When I hear people shouting about Jesus and Mary, and I see candles on the beach, I feel funny.”