A Bend in the River (9 page)

I began to understand how simple and uncomplicated the world was for me. For people like myself and Mahesh, and the uneducated Greeks and Italians in our town, the world was really quite a simple place. We could understand it, and if too many obstacles weren’t put in our way we could master it. It didn’t matter that we were far away from our civilization, far away from the doers and makers. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t make the things we liked to use, and as individuals were even without the technical skills of primitive people. In fact, the less educated we were, the more at peace we were, the more easily we were carried along by our civilization or civilizations.

For Ferdinand there was no such possibility. He could never be simple. The more he tried, the more confused he became. His mind wasn’t empty, as I had begun to think. It was a jumble, full of all kinds of junk.

With the arrival of the warrior boys, boasting had begun at the lycée, and I began to feel that Ferdinand—or somebody—had been boasting about me too. Or what had been got out of me. The word definitely appeared to have got around that term that I was interested in the education and welfare of young Africans.

Young men, not all of them from the lycée, took to turning up at the shop, sometimes with books in their hands, sometimes with
an obviously borrowed
Semper Aliquid Novi
blazer. They wanted money. They said they were poor and wanted money to continue their studies. Some of these beggars were bold, coming straight to me and reciting their requests; the shy ones hung around until there was no one else in the shop. Only a few had bothered to prepare stories, and these stories were like Ferdinand’s: a father dead or far away, a mother in a village, an unprotected boy full of ambition.

I was amazed by the stupidity, then irritated, then unsettled. None of these people seemed to mind being rebuffed or being hustled out of the shop by Metty; some of them came again. It was as if none of them cared about my reactions, as if somewhere out there in the town I had been given a special “character,” and what I thought of myself was of no importance. That was what was unsettling. The guilelessness, the innocence that wasn’t innocence—I thought it could be traced back to Ferdinand, his interpretation of our relationship and his idea of what I could be used for.

I had said to Mahesh, lightly, simplifying matters for the benefit of a prejudiced man: “Ferdinand’s an African.” Ferdinand had perhaps done the same for me with his friends, explaining away his relationship with me. And I felt now that out of his lies and exaggerations, and the character he had given me, a web was being spun around me. I had become prey.

Perhaps that was true of all of us who were not of the country. Recent events had shown our helplessness. There was a kind of peace now; but we all—Asians, Greeks and other Europeans—remained prey, to be stalked in different ways. Some men were to be feared, and stalked cautiously; it was necessary to be servile with some; others were to be approached the way I was approached. It was in the history of the land: here men had always been prey. You don’t feel malice towards your prey. You set a trap for him. It fails ten times; but it is always the same trap you set.

Shortly after I had arrived Mahesh had said to me of the local Africans: “You must never forget, Salim, that they are
malins”
He had used the French word, because the English words he
might have used—“wicked,” “mischievous,” “bad-minded”—were not right. The people here were
malins
the way a dog chasing a lizard was
malin,
or a cat chasing a bird. The people were
malins
because they lived with the knowledge of men as prey.

They were not a sturdy people. They were very small and slightly built. Yet, as though to make up for their puniness in that immensity of river and forest, they liked to wound with their hands. They didn’t use their fists. They used the flat of the hand; they liked to push, shove, slap. More than once, at night, outside a bar or little dance hall, I saw what looked like a drunken pushing and shoving, a brawl with slaps, turn to methodical murder, as though the first wound and the first spurt of blood had made the victim something less than a man, and compelled the wounder to take the act of destruction to the end.

I was unprotected. I had no family, no flag, no fetish. Was it something like this that Ferdinand had told his friends? I felt that the time had come for me to straighten things out with Ferdinand, and give him another idea of myself.

I soon had my chance, as I thought. A well-dressed young man came into the shop one morning with what looked like a business ledger in his hand. He was one of the shy ones. He hung around, waiting for people to go away, and when he came to me I saw that the ledger was less businesslike than it looked. The spine, in the middle, was black and worn from being held. And I saw too that the man’s shirt, though obviously his best, wasn’t as clean as I had thought. It was the good shirt he wore on special occasions and then took off and hung up on a nail and wore again on another special occasion. The collar was yellow-black on the inside.

He said, “Mis’ Salim.”

I took the ledger, and he looked away, puckering up his brows.

The ledger belonged to the lycée, and it was old. It was something from near the end of the colonial time: a subscription list for a gymnasium the lycée had been planning to build. On the inside of the cover was the lycée label, with the coat of arms and the motto. Opposite that was the principal’s appeal, in the stiff
and angular European handwriting style which had been passed down to some of the Africans here. The first subscriber was the governor of the province, and he had signed royally, on a whole page. I turned the pages, studying the confident signatures of officials and merchants. It was all so recent, but it seemed to belong to another century.

I saw, with especial interest, the signature of a man of our community about whom Nazruddin had talked a great deal. That man had had old-fashioned ideas about money and security; he had used his wealth to build a palace, which he had had to abandon after independence. The mercenaries who had restored the authority of the central government had been quartered there; now the palace was an army barracks. He had subscribed for an enormous amount. I saw Nazruddin’s signature—I was surprised: I had forgotten that he might be here, among these dead colonial names.

The gymnasium hadn’t been built. All these demonstrations of loyalty and faith in the future and civic pride had gone for nothing. Yet the book had survived. Now it had been stolen, its money-attracting properties recognized. The date had been altered, very obviously; and Father Huismans’s name had been written over the signature of the earlier principal.

I said to the man before me, “I will keep this book. I will give it back to the people to whom it belongs. Who gave you the book? Ferdinand?”

He looked helpless. Sweat was beginning to run down his puckered forehead, and he was blinking it away. He said, “Mis’ Salim.”

“You’ve done your job. You’ve given me the book. Now go.”

And he obeyed.

Ferdinand came that afternoon. I knew he would—he would want to look at my face, and find out about his book. He said, “Salim?” I didn’t acknowledge him. I let him stand. But he didn’t have to stand about for long.

Metty was in the storeroom, and Metty must have heard him. Metty called out: “Oo-oo!” Ferdinand called back, and went to the storeroom. He and Metty began to chat in the patois. My temper rose as I heard that contented, rippling, high-pitched
sound. I took the gymnasium book from the drawer of my desk and went to the storeroom.

The room, with one small barred window set high, was half in darkness. Metty was on a ladder, checking stock on the shelves on one wall. Ferdinand was leaning against the shelves on another wall, just below the window. It was hard to see his face.

I stood in the doorway. I made a gesture towards Ferdinand with the book and I said, “You are going to get into trouble.”

He said, “What trouble?”

He spoke in his flat, dead way. He didn’t mean to be sarcastic; he really was asking what I was talking about. But it was hard for me to see his face. I saw the whites of his eyes, and I thought I saw the corners of his mouth pulling back in a smile. That face, that reminder of frightening masks! And I thought: Yes—what trouble?

To talk of trouble was to pretend there were laws and regulations that everyone could acknowledge. Here there was nothing. There had been order once, but that order had had its own dishonesties and cruelties—that was why the town had been wrecked. We lived in that wreckage. Instead of regulations there were now only officials who could always prove you wrong, until you paid up. All that could be said to Ferdinand was: “Don’t harm me, boy, because I can do you greater harm.”

I began to see his face more clearly.

I said, “You will take this book back to Father Huismans. If you don’t, I will take it back myself. And I will see that he sends you home for good.”

He looked blank, as though he had been attacked. Then I noticed Metty on the ladder. Metty was nervous, tense; his eyes betrayed him. And I knew I had made a mistake, saving up all my anger for Ferdinand.

Ferdinand’s eyes went bright, and the whites showed clearly. So that, at this terrible moment, he seemed like a comic in an old-time film. He appeared to lean forward, to be about to lose his balance. He took a deep breath. His eyes never left my face. He was spitting with rage; his sense of injury had driven him mad. His arms hung straight and loose at his sides, so that they seemed
longer than usual. His hands curled without clenching. His mouth was open. But what I had thought was a smile was no smile at all. If the light had been better I would have seen that at the beginning.

He was frightening, and the thought came to me: This is how he will look when he sees his victim’s blood, when he watches his enemy being killed. And climbing on that thought was another: “This is the rage that flattened the town.”

I could have pushed harder, and turned that high rage into tears. But I didn’t push. I thought I had given them both a new idea of the kind of man I was, and I left them in the storeroom to cool down. After some time I heard them talking, but softly.

At four o’clock, closing time, I shouted to Metty. And he, glad of the chance to come out and be active, said,
“Patron,”
and frowned to show how seriously he took the business of closing up the shop.

Ferdinand came out, quite calm, walking with a light step. He said, “Salim?” I said, “I will take the book back.” And I watched him walk up the red street, tall and sad and slow below the leafless flamboyants, past the rough market shacks of his town.

Father Huismans wasn’t in when I went to the lycée with the book. There was a young Belgian in the outer office, and he told me that Father Huismans liked to go away for a few days from time to time. Where did he go? “He goes into the bush. He goes to all those villages,” the young man—secretary or teacher—said, with irritation. And he became more irritated when I gave him the gymnasium book.

He said, “They come and beg to be admitted to the lycée. As soon as you take them in they start stealing. They would carry away the whole school if you let them. They come and beg you to look after their children. Yet in the streets they jostle you to show you they don’t care for you.” He didn’t look well. He was
pale, but the skin below his eyes was dark, and he sweated as he talked. He said, “I’m sorry. It would be better for you to talk to Father Huismans. You must understand that it isn’t easy for me here. I’ve been living on honey cake and eggs.”

It sounded as though he had been put on an especially rich diet. Then I understood that he was really telling me he was starving.

He said, “Father Huismans had the idea this term of giving the boys African food. Well, that seemed all right. There’s an African lady in the capital who does wonderful things with prawns and shellfish. But here it was caterpillars and spinach in tomato sauce. Or what looked like tomato sauce. The first day! Of course, it was only for the boys, but the sight of it turned my stomach. I couldn’t stay in the hall and watch them chew. I can’t bring myself to eat anything from the kitchens now. I don’t have cooking facilities in my room, and at the van der Weyden there’s this sewer smell from the patio. I’m leaving. I’ve got to go. It’s all right for Huismans. He’s a priest. I’m not a priest. He goes into the bush. I don’t want to go into the bush.”

I couldn’t help him. Food was a problem for everybody here. My own arrangements were not of the happiest; I had had lunch that day with the couple from India, in a smell of asafoetida and oilcloth.

When, a week or so later, I went back to the lycée I heard that just two days after our meeting the young Belgian had taken the steamer and gone away. It was Father Huismans who gave me the news; and Father Huismans, sunburnt and healthy after his own trip, didn’t seem put out by the loss of one of his teachers. He said he was glad to have the gymnasium book back. It was part of the history of the town; the boys who had stolen the book would recognize that one day themselves.