V. Naipaul - The Mimic Men

What did we talk about? We were, of course, of the left. We were socialist. We stood for the dignity of the working man. We stood for the dignity of distress. We stood for the dignity of our island, the dignity of our indignity. Borrowed phrases! Left-wing, right-wing: did it matter? Did we believe in the abolition of private property? Was it relevant to the violation which was our subject? We spoke as honest men. But we used borrowed phrases which were part of the escape from thought, from that reality we wanted people to see but could ourselves now scarcely face. We enthroned indignity and distress. We went no further.

I am not sure that the wild men of our party did not speak more honestly than we did. They promised to abolish poverty in twelve months. They promised to abolish bicycle licences. They promised to discipline the police. They promised intermarriage. They promised farmers higher prices for sugar and copra and cocoa. They promised to renegotiate the bauxite royalties and to nationalize every foreign-owned estate. They promised to kick the whites into the sea and send the Asiatics back to Asia. They promised; they promised; and they generated the frenzy of the street-corner preacher who thrills his hearers with a vision of the unattainable rich world going up in a ball of fire. We disapproved, of course. But what could we do? We were awed, I say. We were helpless with our awe. It wasn’t dishonesty. Detachment alone would have shown us that in the very success of our movement lay the pointlessness and hopelessness of our situation. In our very success lay that disorder which, daily, we feared more.

THE election was at hand. The frenzy was heightened and given acute point. To the victors would go the spoils: further constitutional conferences in London and, after that, independence. More night meetings, more processions, demonstrations, motorcades; tedious journeys by motorcar; late meetings in the Roman house. Among our supporters, among our court, there were occasional alarms. We let them play with visions of defeat which, in the frenzy, must have appeared total; they were encouraged to greater effort.

It all led to the inevitable: the success of election night, the cheering, the flag-waving, the drinking. It led to that moment of success which, after long endeavour, is so shatteringly brief: a moment that can almost be fixed by the clock, and recedes and recedes, leaving emptiness, exhaustion, even distaste: dissatisfaction that nags and nags and at last defines itself as apprehension and unease.

Unease: with us, even during those first hours of victory in the Roman house, this centred on Browne. The thought came to us at intervals that in just a few hours, between the colleague of the day before and the Chief Minister of a few hours hence, he had been set apart. He had been set apart by our efforts. The play was over. Exhilaration went. We could no longer draw strength from one another. It was one of those occasions when each person looks down into himself and finds only weakness, sees the boy or child he was and has never ceased to be.

From this awareness of weakness — strength only when it was in combat with something we judged to be strong — we arrived at dismay. It was as though, in a tug-of-war contest, the other side had suddenly let go. It has happened in twenty countries like ours: the sobering moment of success, when playacting turns out to be serious. Our grievances were our reality, what we knew, what had permitted us to grow, what had made us. We wondered at the ease of our success; we wondered why no one had called our bluff. We felt our success to be fraudulent. But none of this would have mattered as much if we hadn’t also understood that in the game we had embarked on there could be no withdrawal. And each man was now alone.

That morning saw the end of the life of the Roman house. In the moment of success the feminine atmosphere vanished. Everyone was easily irritated. Innumerable jealousies were at last expressed. There were one or two open quarrels. The wand had been waved: the prince had become a toad again.

On such occasions we look for someone to give the lead and set the new mood. We looked to Browne. He made an effort. He tried to heighten both aspects of his manner, the authoritative and the colloquial. Selfconscious ourselves, we studied him critically, and no more so than when he returned that afternoon from Government House after his consultations with the Governor. We looked for weakness and found it. It amazed us a little to find that he behaved like a man socially graced. I knew that this was an extension of the Browne who spoke with familiarity of the writers and commentators who contributed to the journals he read. It was part of his literalness and part of his enthusiasm, finding something new to feed on. But it delighted the foolish women in our court for another reason. They saw in this a complete vindication of the movement, a triumph of the race, Browne their representative speaking on terms of equality with the representative of the ruling power. In normal circumstances Browne would have dismissed their pleasure as servile. But now he seemed not at all displeased.

He had an analytic mind that dealt in abstractions; he had no descriptive gift. Now he revealed a descriptive talent. His story of his encounter with the Governor reminded me of nothing so much as the talk of my mother’s father after he had returned from an air trip to Jamaica. It was the first time anyone in our family had been in an aeroplane, and that too had made a dry man flourish.

Now Browne held us with his talk of furnishings and rituals, of views of our own city through windows and doors, of paintings. There was a moment when the Governor, leading Browne to an alcove, had said: ‘But we rather like this little thing.’ The little thing was a view of a pink-and-white Mediterranean fishing village, a gift to the Governor, mentioned by his first name, ‘from Winston’. We shared Browne’s admiration: this was an ennobling link with the world, with a great man and great events. Then Browne remembered his new role. Earnestness replaced delight.

‘To think,’ he said, in the pause our admiration had created, ‘that decisions concerning our future have been made for so long in a room like that.’

It was disappointing. But I wonder whether we were right to be disappointed by Browne’s delight or by his emphasis that day on legality and ritual. Our disappointment was part of our simplicity. Ritual was a link with the security of the past. Browne, like the rest of us, required reassurance; he too was made irritable by the thought that his behaviour might be misinterpreted. Later I was to say that my betrayal had been thought out beforehand, but I never believed this. We never operated with such sophistication.

A crowd had gathered outside the Roman house. Various businessmen came to pay their respects. There were also petitioners seeking better jobs or houses or the reversal of court decisions. We were quickly fatigued; we ordered that no more people should be admitted. But there was an old Negro who would not be denied. He shouted out slogans and added religious texts. He was crazed with distress and passionate for justice. He was almost in tears when he was allowed in.

He ignored us all and went straight to Browne, redeemer of the race. He unwrapped a parcel he was carrying and offered the contents: a small bookstand, which he said he had made himself. He began to tell his story. But his distress did not abate and his words could not always be followed. For years, he said, he had been working for an English contracting firm. For years he had been passed over when it came to promotion. Inferior Negroes were the ones his employers selected for promotion, to prove that Negroes couldn’t do responsible jobs well. For years he had been subjected to insult and had kept his peace. Now he could speak. All the insults he had secreted over the years he now poured out, in proof of his virtue and merit. He had worked in the evenings on the bookstand; he had despaired of finding someone worthy to give it to. This was no longer so. Look: the bookstand was made of four interlocking, detachable pieces: no glue had been used.