A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [142]
Prosper came for me on Monday morning. I was expecting someone to come. But I wasn’t expecting Prosper, and he didn’t look too happy. The loot-glitter had gone from his eyes. I sat beside him in his Land-Rover and he said, almost companionably, as we drove through the jail gates, “This business could have been settled on Friday. But you’ve made it much worse for yourself. The commissioner has decided to take a particular interest in your case. All I can say is that I hope it goes well for you.”
I didn’t know whether this was good news or bad news. The commissioner might have been Ferdinand. His appointment had been announced some time before, but so far he had not appeared in the town; and it was possible that the appointment had been rescinded. If it was Ferdinand, however, this wasn’t the best way for me to meet him.
Ferdinand, progressing through the world, had, as I remembered, accepted all his roles, and lived them out: lycée boy, polytechnic student, new man of Africa, first-class passenger on the steamer. After four years, after his time as an administrative cadet in that capital so dominated by the President, where would he be? What would he have learned? What idea would he have about himself as one of the President’s officials? In his own eyes he would have risen; I would have got smaller. It had always unsettled me a little—the knowledge that the gap between us would get bigger as he grew older. I had often thought how ready-made and easy the world was for him, the village boy, starting from nothing.
Prosper delivered me to the people in the front office of the secretariat. There was a wide verandah all around the inner courtyard, and on three sides the verandah was screened from the sun by big reed blinds. It gave an odd feeling, walking through the thin stripes of light and shadow, watching them appear to move over you as you moved. The orderly let me into a room where, after the shifting verandah dazzle, spots of light momentarily danced before my eyes; and then I was let into the inner office.
It was Ferdinand, strange in his polka-dotted cravat and short-sleeved jacket, and unexpectedly ordinary. I would have expected style, a certain heartiness, a little arrogance, a little showing off. But Ferdinand looked withdrawn and ill, like a man recovering from fever. He wasn’t interested in impressing me.
On the newly painted white wall was a larger-than-life photograph of the President, just the face—that was a face full of life. Below that face, Ferdinand seemed shrunken, and characterless in the regulation uniform that made him look like all those officials who appeared in group photographs in the newspapers. He was, after all, like other high officials. I wondered why I thought he would be different. These men, who depended on the President’s favour for everything, were bundles of nerves. The great power they exercised went with a constant fear of being destroyed. And they were unstable, half dead.
Ferdinand said, “My mother told me you had gone away. I was surprised to hear that you were still here.”
“I went to London for six weeks. I haven’t seen your mother since I’ve come back.”
“She’s given up the business. And you must do that too. You must go. You must go right away. There’s nothing here for you. They’ve taken you into jail now. They haven’t done that before. Do you know what it means? It means they’ll take you in again. And I won’t always be here to get you out. I don’t know how much Prosper and the others wanted from you. But next time it will be more. That’s all that it is about now. You know that. They haven’t done anything to you in jail. That’s only because it hasn’t occurred to them. They still think you are not that kind of man. You are a foreigner; they are not interested in you in that way; they just beat up bush people. But one day they will rough you up and then they will discover that you are like everybody else, and then very