A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [25]
I was in the flat one day when I heard them come in. Metty was explaining his connection with me and the shop, explaining his journey from the coast.
Metty said: “My family used to know his family. They used to call me Billy. I was studying bookkeeping. I’m not staying here, you know. I am going to Canada. I’ve got my papers and everything. I’m just waiting for my medical.”
Billy! Well, it was close to Ali. Canada—that was where one of my brothers-in-law had gone; in a letter I received shortly after Metty joined me I had heard about the anxiety of the family about that brother-in-law’s “medical.” That was no doubt where Metty had picked up the talk about Canada.
I made a noise to let them know I was in the flat, and when they came into the sitting room I pretended I had heard nothing.
Not long after this, on an afternoon of settled rain, Ferdinand came to the shop and abruptly, wet and dripping as he was, said, “Salim, you must send me away to America to study.”
He spoke like a desperate man. The idea had burst inside him; and he clearly had felt that if he didn’t act right away, he might never act. He had come through the heavy rain and the flooded streets; his clothes were soaked. I was surprised by the abruptness and the desperation, and by the bigness of his request. To me, going abroad to study was something rare and expensive, something beyond the means of my own family.
I said, “Why should I send you to America? Why should I spend money on you?”
He had nothing to say. After the desperation and the trip through the rain, the whole thing might just have been another attempt at conversation.
Was it only his simplicity? I felt my temper rising—the rain and the lightning and the unnatural darkness of the afternoon had something to do with that.
I said, “Why do you think I have obligations to you? What have you done for me?”
And that was true. His attitude, since he had begun to feel towards a character, was that I owed him something, simply because I seemed willing to help.
He went blank. He stood still in the darkness of the shop and looked at me without resentment, as though he had expected me to behave in the way I was behaving, and had to see it through. For a while his eyes held mine. Then his gaze shifted, and I knew he was going to change the subject.
He pulled the wet white shirt—with the lycée monogram embroidered on the pocket—away from his skin, and he said, “My shirt is wet.” When I didn’t reply, he pulled the shirt away in one or two other places and said, “I walked through the rain.”
Still I didn’t reply. He let the shirt go and looked away to the flooded street. It was his way of recovering from a false start: his attempts at conversation could end with these short sentences, irritating observations about what he or I was doing. So now he looked out at the rain and spoke scattered sentences about what he saw. He was pleading to be released.
I said, “Metty is in the storeroom. He will give you a towel. And ask him to make some tea.”
That was not the end of the business, though. With Ferdinand now, things seldom ended neatly.
Twice a week I had lunch with my friends Shoba and Mahesh in their flat. Their flat was gaudy and in some ways like themselves. They were a beautiful couple, certainly the most beautiful people in our town. They had no competition, yet they were always slightly overdressed. So, in their flat, to the true beauty of old Persian and Kashmiri carpets and old brassware they had added many flimsy, glittery things—crudely worked modern Moradabad brass, machine-turned wall plaques of Hindu gods, shiny three-pronged wall lights. There was also a heavy carving in glass of a naked woman.