A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [143]
“I will do what you say. And how are you, Ferdinand?”
“You don’t have to ask. You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they’re losing the place they can run back to. I began to feel the same thing when I was a cadet in the capital. I felt I had been used. I felt I had given myself an education for nothing. I felt I had been fooled. Everything that was given to me was given to me to destroy me. I began to think I wanted to be a child again, to forget books and everything connected with books. The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go to. I’ve been on tour in the villages. It’s a nightmare. All these airfields the man has built, the foreign companies have built—nowhere is safe now.”
His face had been like a mask at the beginning. Now he was showing his frenzy.
I said, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I will do what I have to do.”
That had always been his way.
On his desk there was a glass paperweight—small flowers set in a half-sphere of crystal. He put the paperweight on the flat palm of his left hand and looked at it.
He said, “And you must go and get your steamer ticket. That was where we last met. I’ve often thought about that day. There were four of us on the steamer. It was midday. We drank beer in the bar. There was the director’s wife—you left with her. There was the lecturer who was your friend. He travelled down with me. That was the best time. The last day, the day of leaving. It was a good journey. It became different at the other end. I’ve had a dream, Salim. I’ve had a terrible dream.”
He took the paperweight off his palm and rested it on the desk again.
He said, “An execution is to take place at seven in the morning. That is what we are meeting for. We are going to witness the execution. It is one of us who is going to be executed, but the man doesn’t know. He thinks he is going to watch. We are meeting in a place I can’t describe, It may be a family place—I feel the presence of my mother. I am in a panic. I have soiled something in a shameful way and I am trying hard to clean it or to hide it, because I have to be at the execution at seven. We wait for the man. We greet him in the usual way. Now, here is the problem in the dream. Are we going to leave the man alone, to be driven alone to the place of his execution? Will we have the courage to be with him, to talk in a friendly way to the last? Should we take one car, or should we go in two cars?”
“You must go in one car. If you go in two, it means you are halfway to changing your mind.”
“Go and get your steamer ticket.”
The steamer office was famous for its erratic hours. I sat on the wooden bench outside the door until the man came and opened up. The cabine de luxe was free; I booked it. This took most of the morning. The market outside the dock gates had built up: the steamer was due that afternoon. I thought of going to see Mahesh at Bigburger, but decided against it. The place was too open and central, and there were too many officials there at lunchtime. It was strange, having to think of the city in this way.
I had a snack at the Tivoli. It looked a little demoralized these