A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul [58]
“But you do a lot of travelling.”
“It’s my business. How are things with you here?”
“It’s been very good since the rebellion. The place is booming. Property is fantastic. Land is two hundred francs a square foot in some parts now.”
Indar didn’t look impressed—but the shop wasn’t an impressive place. I felt, too, I had run on a little bit and was doing the opposite of what I intended to do with Indar. Wishing to let him know that his assumptions about me were wrong, I was in fact acting out the character he saw me as. I was talking the way I had heard traders in the town talk, and even saying the things they said.
I said, attempting another kind of language, “It’s a specialized business. A sophisticated market would be easier in some ways. But here you can’t follow your personal likes and dislikes. You have to know exactly what is needed. And of course there are the agencies. That’s where the real money is.”
Indar said, “Yes, yes. The agencies. It’s like old times for you, Salim.”
I let that pass. But I decided to tone the whole thing down. I said, “I don’t know how long it’s going to last, though.”
“It will last as long as your President wants it to last. And no one can tell how long that will be. He’s a strange man. He seems to be doing nothing at all, and then he can act like a surgeon. Cutting away some part he doesn’t like.”
“That’s how he settled the old army. It was terrible, Indar. He sent a message to Colonel Yenyi telling him to stay at the barracks and to welcome the commander of the mercenaries. So he stayed on the steps in full uniform, and when they arrived he began to walk to the gate. They shot him as he walked. And everybody with him.”
“It saved your bacon, though. I have something for you, by the way. I went to see your father and mother before I came here.”
“You went home?” But I dreaded hearing about it from him.
He said, “Oh, I’ve been there a few times since the great events. It isn’t so bad. You remember our house? They’ve painted it in the party colours. It’s some kind of party building now. Your mother gave me a bottle of coconut chutney. It isn’t for you alone. It is for Ali and you. She made that clear.” And to Metty, coming back then with the jug of hot water and the cups and the tin of Nescafe and the condensed milk, he said, “Ma sent you some coconut chutney, Ali.”
Metty said, “Chutney, coconut chutney. The food here is horrible, Indar.”
We sat all three around the desk, stirring coffee and water and condensed milk together.
Indar said, “I didn’t want to go back. Not the first time. I didn’t think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don’t grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn’t exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here.” He touched his heart. “It isn’t there.” And he pointed at the dusty road.
I felt he had spoken the words before, or had gone over them in his mind. I thought: He fights to keep his style. He’s probably suffered more than the rest of us.
We sat, the three of us, drinking Nescafe. And I thought the moment beautiful.
Still, the conversation had so far been one-sided. He knew everything about me; I knew nothing about his recent life. When I had first arrived in the town I had noticed that for most people conversation meant answering questions about themselves; they seldom asked you about yourself; they had been cut off for too long. I did