V. Naipaul - Guerrillas

“But that was London. You could have told the publisher. There were all kinds of things you could have done.”

“Your England is different from mine. This man was very big. I keep on talking about his size. It isn’t only because I’m small. You know I’m not afraid of people. I’ve a good idea of what the odds are in any given situation, and I can be cautious. But I’m not afraid. It’s the way I am. It probably has to do with the school I went to. I suppose if you accept authority and believe in the rules, you aren’t afraid of any particular individual. But I was afraid of this man. I could see that he was enjoying himself, acting out the role a little. People in that kind of situation always put on a little style. Perhaps it was a hoax. But I didn’t think so. I took him seriously. I believed what he said.”

“Was that why you came here?”

Roche smiled. “It was a powerful incentive.”

“You didn’t come to do the job you told me you wanted to do? I thought that was why you left in such a rush.”

“Oh yes, the job. You had your own ideas of the job I was coming out to do. Meredith wanted to know about the job too.”

“But he’s right to want to know. You talked about working with what there is. So there is something in what they say about you here. You are a refugee.”

“The job offered itself. And it seemed the kind of thing I could do.”

“And now you’ll just leave Jimmy out there for those people to kill. Who’s going to give him a job? So Jimmy’s right. You’ve all turned him into a ‘playboy.’ A plaything. And now you’re throwing him to Meredith.”

“It’s what Jimmy’s turned himself into.”

“Well, I’ve news for you. I’ve news for both of you. He’s been my lover.”

The book had been resting on her breasts. She took it up again. Her face was as flushed as her arms.

Roche turned to face her. He said, “I don’t believe you’re lying.”

“Why should I lie to you?”

He stood up. “But I don’t think it would be news to Meredith.”

He went out of the room, closing the door behind him, remembering too late that she left it ajar, for the air.

Some time later he went and opened the door. She was still reading. He stood in the doorway. She looked and saw the satyr’s face.

He said, “Has he taken a picture of you naked? Did you pose for him with your legs open?”

A half-smile, of puzzlement and nervousness, settled on her face.

He said, “Isn’t that what they do with the women they’ve degraded? Keep them in their wallet to show the others? Or did he do the other thing? The other act of contempt.”

She didn’t reply. He left the door ajar and went back to his room.

HELLO MARJORIE, Well this will be a surprise to you I bet, I can see you holding this between your slender well-manicured fingers, you wouldn’t believe you use toilet paper and do other things (joke) and snorting, Is it Jimmy, what does he want this time, he’s had all he’s going to get from me. That is my Marge these days I know, different from the old days, older and wiser as you say, but I understand all that, sweetheart, and I don’t want anger to come between us anymore .

Sweetheart, I sit in the peace and stillness of this tropical night to pen these words to you, because I want to clear my heart, you are the only person I can write to, and I want you to know that you were right, what you prophesied is all coming true, I am dying alone and unloved and I will die in anger, no other way is possible now. That is a bad way to die, and Marjorie I feel death is close to me tonight, I can hear it in the tropical stillness, fitfully broken by the occasional hoot of an owl, and to tell you the truth sweetheart I feel relieved, I feel I should go now. When we were children and you heard an owl at night you stuck pins in the wick of the lamp to keep death away from the house, but I don’t think it stopped the coffins coming .

Will this letter get to you or will they clear it away with the rest of my possessions saying this is another piece of his junk, that is all he’s left, junk. No Marge don’t snort, I am not appealing for your sympathy or crying wolf as you may think. You can’t help me now, I know that at least, at least give me that, nobody can help me, and this letter may never get to you .

I will tell you Marjorie when I was a boy I used to think that childhood was just a time of disguise and that it was something I had to go through before I came into my own and that it was going to be all right when I became a man, what a laugh Marjorie what a laugh .

It is very black outside, in England you don’t know how black night can be here, I forgot myself when I was in London, and when I think of London and those places I cannot work out how I got here, so far from human habitation, and I cannot understand why I should end here like a ghost, this is my part of the world, I was born here, this is not London, it’s like a bad dream, but I know I’m not waking up .

I feel tonight, sitting here among my books and letters and other dead things, like the last man on the earth. I wish I was the last man, but in the darkness outside there is someone I love, someone who would frighten you, Bryant a young boy, I gave him so much Jove, now he’s gone mad with grief, a young boy mad think of it, think of what’s going on in his head and heart, I can feel it, and he wants to take it out on me. He blames me for everything, but I know that he is only sick of his life and of what he is, I understand him though we are so different, and he is waiting to kill me. I can go out and break his neck anytime, it would be easy, a slum boy’s neck. I can go out and challenge him and make him run, but then I think of the two of us alone here, and how the others would laugh if they could see us, two billy goats fighting it out for nothing at all, just amusing the crowd, it is what they would like, the last laugh. They mustn’t have that, and I am thinking now I will just walk out into the night and wait for him and turn my back and let him do what he wants to do. That would be the best way out, I’m tired .

I know that in life a man has always to keep on picking himself up when the count reaches nine. That is the test of a man, not when he’s on his feet but when he’s down, but I’ve picked myself up too often and I’ve nothing to show for it. The corridor of time is now a room of mirrors, it just shows me forever picking myself up, and this time I want them to count me out .

He’s been waiting outside for three days. Thrushcross Grange is empty, he goes there and back, there and back all the time, through the bush, but I know no cooking is going on in the Grange, nothing much in that line ever went on there, they were too pampered, I made it too easy for them, and he is shiftless and feckless like the others, a slum child and starving but they don’t mind, yam and breadfruit and salt fish is all they know about. I leave food for him outside the door, you would think he is a dog, and he comes like a dog and eats the food I leave out for him. The world is full of things like this that frighten you and make you ashamed, people always make you hate them, because I treat him like a dog he comes like a dog in the night and eats the food, I hear him, before he eats he rubs the cutlass on the concrete steps, like the giant in the story sharpening up his knife, just to let me know he has a cutlass, and the white plate is empty in the morning on the step .

You see how the pain comes Marjorie, you see how the glory of manhood ends. I picked him out of the gutter, you wouldn’t believe the sight, the poisonous black scarecrow with pigtails like macajuel snakes on his head. He thought he was dirt, dirt, I showed him his beauty, but he’s forgotten, he’s gone mad with his manhood. You understand the glory and pain of manhood Marjorie, you will understand that it was too much for me to bear, and every time I look at my nakedness I feel the pain and think of you, you showed me my manhood, you made me a man for the first time, never mind what the others said, to this day Marjorie when I look down at myself I think of you. I didn’t have to hide anything from you, I didn’t have to pretend I was anybody else, you do not know the joy. But I suffered more as a man. When I was a child I was a child, when you made me a man I couldn’t bear being that child in the back room of that shop. The things women do and can do they have no shame and thought for the children who come after them who will have to endure all that they did, women don’t know how men can hate them for the things they do, make sure your children don’t find out about you .