V. Naipaul - Guerrillas

Words alone: again he stopped.

At the beach one day of glorious sunshine amid the sands and dunes and motorcars below the coconut trees, the splendor of the scene marred only by a gang of louts …

He heard footsteps in the road, and waited. Bryant came in from the front porch, red-eyed, exhausted, null. His movements were abrupt, as though, having hurried to the house, he wanted now only to draw attention to his own mood. Saying nothing, not looking at Jimmy, he sat down heavily on one of the furry chairs with his legs wide apart, rested his head on the top of the back cushion and looked up at the ceiling. There were fresh tears in the corners of his eyes.

Jimmy said, “You went to the pictures, Bryant?”

Bryant didn’t reply.

“For the Love of Ivy?”

Bryant wiped the corner of one eye with a long, crooked finger.

Jimmy knew the film and he knew the effect it had on Bryant. He said, “Go and make yourself a little Ovaltine.”

Bryant didn’t move.

Jimmy said, “Stay and watch the milk. Don’t let it boil.”

He watched Bryant rise, his movements less abrupt now, and he watched him leave the room. He sat for some time looking at the door through which Bryant had gone. Then he faced the desk and turned over to a new page on the pad.

Dear Roy, In my last I sent you some clippings form the local rags which I thought would amuse you and give you some idea of our activities. No one here who is in charge seems to know how close the crisis is, how this whole world is about to blow up, and when I consider the world as it is presently constituted, when I think of the boys I work with here at Thrushcross Grange, I feel that to destroy the world is the only course of action that is now open to sane men .

The destructive urge comes on me at times like this, I want to see fire everywhere, when I stop and think that there is no hope of creative endeavor being appreciated, it is all for nothing, and on a night like this I feel I could weep for our world and for the people who find themselves unprotected in it. When I think how much I expected of my life at one time, and when I think how quickly that time of hope dies, I get sad, and more so when I think of the people who never expected anything. We are children of hell .

Perhaps after all, Roy, the world is only made for the people who possess it now, and there are some people who will never possess anything. The people who will win are the people who have won already and they’re not taking chances now, like the liberals. You know better than I how they let me down when the crisis came, you would think that after making me their playboy and getting me deported from England they would leave me alone. But they do not. Even here they are coming after me, well I ask you. These liberals who come flashing their milk white thighs and think they’re contributing to the cause .

Still everybody has their uses, even Mr. Peter Roche, I call him massa but he doesn’t see the joke. He’s the great white revolutionary and torture hero of South Africa. He’s written this book which I don’t think you would know about, but over here of course he is a world-shaking best-selling author, and now he is working for one of our old imperialist firms, Sablich’s great slave traders in the old days, they now pretend that black is beautiful, and wait for it they employ Mr. Roche to prove it. I play along, what can you do—

He broke off. The charm did not work. Words, which at some times did so much for him, now did not restore him to himself. He was a lost man, more lost than he had been as a boy, in his father’s shop, at school, in the streets of the city, when he saw only what he saw and knew nothing.

Bryant, sitting quietly in the furry chair, had been watching him. The empty Ovaltine mug stood on the glass-topped table. Bryant’s eyes had cleared; expression had come back to his face and he was calmer; his pigtails looked limp.

“Bryant, did you ask the lady for money?”

“Jim?”

“Did you ask her?”

“Jimmy, you know it isn’t the sort of thing I does do.”

He offered comfort to others, but he needed their comfort more. He went to Bryant, the very ugly, damaged from birth, who expressed all that he saw of himself in certain moods. He embraced Bryant.

IT WAS fashionable here, in the new houses on the Ridge, to have instead of glass windows louvers of redwood which, when closed, created total darkness. It was in this darkness, the louvers closed to keep out insects, that Jane awoke in her own room every day, and recaptured for a moment something of the mystery of her arrival. The long airplane journey through the night: the noise of the engines that obliterated past and distance; the memories — more like dreams than memories of actual events — of getting off at various airports, brilliantly illuminated; excitement then going, fatigue deadening response; so that, just hours away from London, she felt she had entered another life.

The strangeness had begun at the London airport. They had all boarded the plane; then there had been a fog alert and they had all got out; then they had got in again and there for five hours they had stayed, on the ground. London was outside; but they inside were already in another world, of passengers and stewardesses, stewardesses who, on the ground part of London and not noticeable, in the airplane became English and exotic, wearing a particular uniform. Change came to the passengers as well: the restless and the assertive began to stand out, mainly men who had taken off their jackets and slackened their ties; and among the black passengers differences of clothes, manner, and speech became more pronounced.

London all afternoon; New York at some time of the night or early morning. Some Americans got on, and two men sat in the empty seats beside Jane. She was too tired to mind, too tired to do more than note the pornographic books, their titles printed small on plain white covers, that both men were always reading whenever she awakened from her doze. Nassau airport: the transit lounge closed, a dim light in a kind of corridor, a half-embarrassed Negro, a workman in spite of his jacket and tie, trying to pick up a red-haired girl. Later, in the plane, Jane had reached out for Easy Lay, now resting in a seat pocket; but the American beside her, to whom the book belonged, had put his plump hand on hers and taken away the book, saying, “Not for little girls. It’s the hard stuff.” Awake again, connected sleep no longer possible, bright light in some windows; trays, brisk stewardesses now with aprons over their uniforms, so that their character changed again. The American said to Jane, “You need intensive care.”

After the landing — black men in khaki uniforms, continuing a loud conversation of their own, hurrying into the plane to spray it — after the sting of insecticide and the shock of light and heat, the Americans had taken Jane with them through concrete corridors to the immigration hall, her clothes getting sticky as she walked, her eyes registering the bad French signs. They had taken her to the head of the queue that had already formed; and they must have been important men, because they were let through without formality, and Jane had been let through with them, without handing over her disembarkation card or showing her return ticket or having her passport stamped.

In the customs hall, waiting for her luggage, Jane had begun to be more alert. She had begun to think of one of the Americans: He is a candidate. He had given his local address; she noted it was not in the city. He asked where she was staying and who was meeting her. She mentioned Roche’s name, speaking it as a famous name, casually, and expecting that it would get some response, of surprise or apprehension, from the Americans, whom she now judged to be business types. But they hadn’t heard of Roche or the firm he worked for.