A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [57]
I couldn’t be any other way with Indar. He had always made me feel so backward. His family, though new on the coast, had outstripped us all; and even their low beginnings—the grandfather who was a railway labourer, then a market money-lender—had become (from the way people spoke) a little sacred, part of their wonderful story. They invested adventurously and spent money well; their way of living was much finer than ours; and there was their unusual passion for games and physical exercise. I had always thought of them as “modern” people, with a style quite different from ours. You get used to differences like that; they can even begin to appear natural.
When we had played squash that afternoon, and Indar had told me he was going to England to a university, I hadn’t felt resentful or jealous of him for what he was doing. Going abroad, the university—that was part of his style, what might have been expected. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a man who felt left behind, unprepared for what was coming. And my resentment of him had to do with the insecurity he had made me feel. He had said, “We’re washed up here, you know.” The words were true; I knew they were true. But I disliked him for speaking them: he had spoken as someone who had foreseen it all and had made his dispositions.
Eight years had passed since that day. What he had said would happen had happened. His family had lost a lot; they had lost their house; they (who had added the name of the town on the coast to their family name) had scattered, like my own family. Yet now, as he came into the shop, it seemed that the distance between us had remained the same.
There was London in his clothes, the trousers, the striped cotton shirt, the way his hair was cut, his shoes (oxblood in colour, thin-soled but sturdy, a little too narrow at the toes). And I—well, I was in my shop, with the red dirt road and the market square outside. I had waited so long, endured so much, changed; yet to him I hadn’t changed at all.
So far I had remained sitting. As I stood up I had a little twinge of fear. It came to me that he had reappeared only to bring me bad news. And all I could find to say was: “What brings you to the back of beyond?”
He said, “I wouldn’t say that. You are where it’s at.”
“ ‘Where it’s at’?”
“Where big things are happening. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
That was a relief. At least he wasn’t giving me my marching orders again, without telling me where to go.
Metty all this while was smiling at Indar and swinging his head from side to side, saying, “Indar! Indar!” And it was Metty who remembered our duty as hosts. He said, “You would like some coffee, Indar?” As though we were on the coast, in the family shop, and he just had to step down the lane to Noor’s stall and bring back the little brass cups of sweet and muddy coffee on a heavy brass tray. No coffee like that here; only Nescafe, made in the Ivory Coast, and served in big china cups. Not the same kind of drink: you couldn’t chat over it, sighing at each hot sweet sip.
Indar said, “That would be very nice, Ali.”
I said, “His name here is Metty. It means ‘half-caste.’ ”
“You let them call you that, Ali?”
“African people, Indar. Kafar. You know what they give.”
I said, “Don’t believe him. He loves it. It makes him a great hit with the girls. Ali’s a big family man now. He’s lost.”
Metty, going to the storeroom to boil the water for the Nescafe, said, “Salim, Salim. Don’t let me down too much.”
Indar said, “He was lost a long time ago. Have you heard from Nazruddin? I saw him in Uganda a few weeks ago.”
“What’s it like out there now?”
“Settling down. For how long is another matter. Not one bloody paper has spoken up for the king. Did you know that? When it comes to Africa, people don’t want to know or they have their principles. Nobody cares