V. Naipaul - Guerrillas

Roche didn’t want to say any more. They came out into the lobby. The policeman with the rifle stiffened; and the big middle-aged brown woman half rose from her chair.

Outside the light was soft. But they stepped from the air-conditioned building into heat, rising from the black, newly laid asphalt forecourt. No view of the hills and the sea from here, only the tops of a few royal palms against the sunset sky: charcoal streaks, dark-red rainless clouds.

A great exhausted melancholy came to Roche: the sense of the end of the day, a feeling of futility, of being physically lost in an immense world. Melancholy, at the same time, for the others, more rooted than himself: for the studio manager, the man from the country, for the policeman with the rifle and the woman at the desk who were both so deferential to Meredith, melancholy for Meredith: an overwhelming exasperation, almost like contempt, confused with a sense of the fragility of their world.

Meredith said, “Am I taking you back to Sablich’s? Is your car there?”

“No, Jane’s using it today.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

They didn’t talk. As soon as they were out in the streets and people began to look at them, Meredith appeared to remember his earlier uncertainty; and his excitement abated. Roche’s melancholy subsided into concern about what he had said. He thought he had managed well, except for that slip at the very end, when he had spoken about the gangs. But as they drove through the populous flat areas of the city, one or two lights coming on in the open stands at crossroads, as they climbed up to the cooler air of the Ridge, he remembered other things; and what had seemed to him, in the suffocating studio, a logical and controlled performance appalled him more and more. Meredith had gone far; he wondered now that he had allowed Meredith to go so far. Roche felt he was coming out of a stupor; in that stupor he had trapped himself. And by the time they came to the house he had begun to have the feeling that a calamity had befallen him.

The car was in the garage.

Meredith, already less uncertain up here on the Ridge, in the growing dark, away from the crowds, said, “Jane must be in. I’ll go in and greet her.”

Roche didn’t take Meredith in through the garage door. He led him across the lawn, past the ivy-hung, rough-rendered concrete wall and the picture window, to the front door, which was little used; through the hall into the almost empty back room, used for nothing; and out onto the brick-floored porch.

Jane was there, in trousers and blouse. The evening paper, a glass of lager, cigarettes, and her blue lighter were on the metal table.

She said, “Hello, Meredith.” She barely turned her head; her voice was casual.

The city below was in darkness. But up here the light still lasted. The hibiscus flowers glowed.

Meredith smiled, that smile at once self-satisfied and wounded.

Jane said, “How did it go?”

Meredith said, “It went very well. Peter’s worried, but he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”

Jane said, “Peter talks very well.” She spoke neutrally, stating a fact.

Meredith sat down heavily in one of the metal chairs and picked up the newspaper. Jane looked down at the dark city: lights coming on.

“We ranged far and wide,” Meredith said. “We talked about mutual acquaintances.” He folded the paper and dropped it on the table. “So you’re leaving us, Jane.”

Adela came through the back room to the porch. Jane raised her head and looked at Adela.

Meredith said, “I hope we haven’t frightened you away.”

Jane said, “Adela?”

Adela, not looking at Jane, stood beside Meredith’s chair. She bent softly, deferentially, toward him and said, in a coaxing voice neither Jane nor Roche had heard her use, “Mr. Herbert would like to use a beer?”

Meredith stood up, rising on his toes. “No, thank you, Adela. I’ve got to be going.”

Adela was approving. The look on her face suggested that her deference, and the polite words she had used, had been rewarded.

For some seconds Meredith rocked on his toes. “You must come back, Jane. Come back as a tourist. For a holiday.”

She looked at him with moist eyes and nodded. She appeared to hesitate, but then she said, “Good-by, Meredith.”

Roche didn’t move to interfere.

The light had gone. The hibiscus flowers were lost in the darkness. The sky in the east was a very dark blue. The mood of sunset was on Roche, the sense of the fragility of all their worlds. The studio manager, secure in the respectability of his clothes and his radio job; the policeman with the rifle in the lobby of the radio building; the woman at the desk, so deferential to Meredith; Meredith, Jane, himself. For all of them the world was fragile. And there had been a calamity.

Meredith, acting out his exit, his leather heels rapping on terrazzo and parquet, said loudly, as Roche walked with him to the front door, “You must listen tomorrow, Peter. It’s better than you think.”

ROCHE SAID, “It was awful.”

They were still sitting on the porch.

Jane said, “But why did you do it? There was nothing to make you stay there.”

“Vanity. The terrible vanity that makes you behave so stupidly on these occasions. And there was a third person there. A big black man from the country. He was in the cubicle. That’s always fatal: a third person. You start acting for this third person. You can’t let yourself down. You slip into a kind of lunacy, and it’s all of your own making. You think it’s all very logical and that you’re acting sensibly. But that man in the cubicle wasn’t even listening. Meredith called him the studio manager. Those people only hear sound and level. I don’t think he noticed anything.”

“Do you think they were in it together?”

“I don’t know. I thought at first that Meredith had had the air conditioning turned off deliberately. Then I thought I was wrong. Then again I thought he had done it deliberately. And then, you see, I wasn’t really surprised. I was half expecting something like that.”

“You didn’t ask them to check to see whether the thing was working?”

“No. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to mention it.”

“You didn’t even say This room’s very hot,’ or something like that?”

“I said that. I said the room needed vacuuming. But I didn’t want to mention the air conditioning. It’s one of those things that gets fixed in your mind. Vanity. Exasperation. Rage, contempt. I was half expecting something like that — I thought they had prepared something for me — but I was amazed that Meredith should want to try it on. And I can’t tell you how quickly on these occasions you begin to feel you have nothing to defend.”

Jane said with decision, “He did it deliberately. You made it very easy for him. And after that he wants to come to your house?”

“They like doing that. I could see so clearly what he was doing. That made it much worse. This nervous little man. Being anti-imperialist, antiwhite. Mopping up after the riots. The government man doing the black populist thing, laying all the enemies low. And so nervous. I could see him believing and not believing in what he was doing and saying — just like a lawyer. I found it so stupid, I can’t tell you. I was exasperated. Because Harry is right, you know. They’re just fattening up Meredith to throw him to the crowd at some future date.”

On the porch it was already cold. The fluorescent light from the kitchen fell on the back garden.

Jane said, “The water’s on. Go and have a good shower. You’ll feel much better.”

She spoke briskly, and she got up after she had spoken, picking up her lighter and cigarettes. But the tone of command in her voice went with a tenderness he hadn’t expected. He was comforted; he rose to obey her.