Sir Vidia's Shadow

by Paul Theroux

  Eldoret had a noisy bar on a back street called the Highlands. In spite of the music there were not many people inside, and most of them were women from that area, very dark, from the lakeshore town of Kisumu. I went to the Highlands one night after dropping Pat at the hotel. I took a seat at a table and saw an African woman nearby smiling at me. Her face gleamed like iron in the badly lighted bar.

  “Mumpa cigara.”

  I gave her one and asked in Swahili, “Do you want a drink?”

  “Yes. If you buy it, I want a pombe,” the woman said, and joined me.

  “So what are you doing?” I asked.

  “I have been waiting for you,” she said.

  This is how it should always be, I thought, because I knew that it would not be a question of if or when, but merely of finding a quiet place afterwards where we would not be disturbed.

  The car the Naipauls had acquired before leaving Kampala, the tan Peugeot, was a popular model in East Africa; it was used as a bush taxi because of its solid suspension and reliable engine. Their driver’s name was Aggrey. His English was poor. He often told me in Swahili what he wished to communicate to the bwana. When, as frequently happened, Vidia was annoyed with him, he pleaded with me to explain why the bwana was angry. I was never privy to Vidia’s petulance, and it could last for days at a time, like the master-servant fury in a Russian novel. While it was in progress, Vidia drove the car himself and made Aggrey sit in the back seat. It was a cruel reversal of roles, and as Vidia was an erratic driver—he had never before owned a car—it was a peculiarly humiliating punishment for the driver to be turned into a passenger, stuck in the traditional bwana’s seat while the bwana blunderingly chauffeured him.

  To Vidia, all of East Africa was a single maddening place, but anyone who lived there knew it was three distinct countries. Uganda Protectorate had had a peaceful transition to independence. Tanzania, perversely ideological, was a Maoist experiment throughout the sixties: the leaders wore Mao suits and parroted Chinese slogans, and in return for this flattery (the Cultural Revolution had just begun) the Chinese began building a railway that would connect Dar es Salaam with Zambia. Kenya was a cranky tribalistic place with polarized political parties and deep regional and ethnic resentments. The Mau Mau conflict, still fresh in people’s memories, had been violent and divisive, full of rumors of ritual murder and blood ceremonies and cannibalism. Kenya had been a battleground and was now presided over by the sly and sententious old warrior Jomo Kenyatta, who regularly extorted money from foreign governments and Indian businessmen. The governments played along, but sometimes businessmen jibbed and refused to pay up.

  Six Indian businessmen who refused to pay were deported from Kenya while Vidia was at the Kaptagat Arms. Vidia inquired and discovered what we had known all along, that Indians in Nairobi had helped lead the Kenyan struggle for independence. They had been discriminated against by the British, barred from living in certain areas, forbidden to grow cash crops, and kept out of clubs. After uhuru (independence) they were treated shabbily by Kenyatta’s government. Now some were being thrown out.

  Vidia was visibly a muhindi, an Indian. Even he said that he had gone several shades darker in the equatorial sun. His bush hat and walking stick were a poor disguise. He was now living in a country where a muhindi was unwelcome. “Bloody Asian” was one of the less offensive ways Africans in Kenya referred to Indians, and muhindi was what the Kaptagat’s servants called Vidia when they spoke among themselves.

  Tough-minded, Vidia reacted in much the same way as he had in Uganda. Whenever he met Indians in Kenya, he challenged them, demanding to know their backup plans in case of trouble. He called it “crunch time.” “Very well then,” he would say after the first pleasantries, “what are you going to do when crunch time comes?” He urged them to leave for India or Britain and to take their money with them—to teach the Africans a lesson. He quoted the Gita. He said, “You must act.” But they smiled uneasily and said that he did not understand. He decided that Pat and I should go with him to Nairobi to discuss this matter with the Indian high commissioner and the U.S. ambassador.

  “Do you remember what I told you?” he said to me as we drove through the Rift Valley (Beware of Fallen Rocks) toward Nairobi. “Hate the oppressor, but always fear the oppressed.”

  I recognized the tone of voice from the main character in his novel in progress. It was also often Vidia’s own tone of voice. Vidia and his hero agreed on most things, it seemed. They even used the same expressions, or “locutions,” as they called them: “latterly,” “crunch time,” “some little time.”

  “I have been contemplating this visit to Nairobi for some little time,” Vidia said. “Yes. Some little time.”

  Nearer the Rift Valley escarpment we saw a sign saying Hussain Co. Ltd. Sheepskin Coats for Sale. Vidia said he wanted to see them, though I suspected he merely wished to lecture Mr. Hussain. The coats were cheap. They were thick and bulky. Mr. Hussain took our measurements and said he would make the coats to order. He would send them in a month or so.

  “And what are you going to do when the crunch comes?” Vidia said to Mr. Hussain after we paid our money.

  “I have plan,” Mr. Hussain said, wagging his head ambiguously.

  When we were back on the road Vidia said, “He was lying, of course,” and then, “I wonder if I can bring it off?”

  He was speaking of the sheepskin coat.

  “Of course you can,” Pat said from the back seat, always the encouraging spouse.

  “Perhaps in Scotland,” Vidia said.

  There were giraffes in the distance, crossing the valley, and a herd of grazing zebras and clusters of gazelles.

  “Frosty weather. Snow. I can see that coat being useful. But I don’t know whether I can bring it off. I don’t think I’m big enough in the shoulders.” After a moment he said, “Paul, you must come to London. Meet real people. Bring your sheepskin.”

  Nairobi was a small town with wide streets and a colonial air. “Mimicry,” Vidia said, but he liked the Norfolk Hotel, its cleanness, its comfort. He quoted his narrator on the subject of hotels. After we checked in, he said he had the address of a Nigerian man here in Nairobi who had access to the Kenyans. At first Vidia wondered if it might be too much trouble—Pat had already decided to stay behind in the hotel room—but then he grew curious. It was always this curiosity that overcame his reluctance. The Nigerian at the very least would have a West African point of view. His name was Muhammed, and he was a Hausa, from the north of his country. He met us at the door of his apartment wearing a blue pinstriped double-breasted suit. Vidia introduced himself.

  “Jolly good,” Muhammed said. He led us to a room with a large bookcase and offered us tea.

  “That would be very nice,” Vidia said.

  “What about some music?”

  There were stacks of record albums on one shelf.

  “No music. No music.”

  “Jolly good.”

  While we drank tea, Muhammed spoke with Vidia about the persecution of Indians in Nairobi, but instead of interrogating him, Vidia grew laconic and impatient. I just looked at the books. I saw Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, The Kama Sutra, Naked Lunch, Lolita, Lollipop Lady, A Manual for Lovers, and others—variations on a theme.

  Vidia was rising. “We must go.”

  Muhammed, stopped in midsentence, said, “Jolly good.”

  In the car, Vidia said he was disgusted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He made a nauseated face at Muhammed’s building and said, “Masturbator!”

  It took him a while to calm down, but when his mood eased I said, “I have to see Tom Hopkinson.”

  “Hopkinson? The chap who was editor of Picture Post? He’s in Bongo-Wongo?”

  “Yes. Want to come?”

  “One has no interest.”

  I dropped Vidia at the hotel and spent the afternoon with Tom Hopkinson. He was a well-known editor and journalist, and his highly successful Pic
ture Post had been Britain’s answer to Life magazine. Hopkinson, in vigorous semi-retirement, ran the Institute of Journalism in Nairobi. It was my hope that he would come to Kampala and speak about freedom of the press at a conference I was trying to organize. A tall, thin, white-haired man, he was friendly and straightforward and clearly a Londoner: wearing a tie and long trousers and black shoes, he was overdressed for Kenya. We talked about novels—he had published two. He said he was too busy to give the lecture, but I suspected the rumors of violence in Uganda put him off. Most people in Kenya regarded Uganda as the bush.

  “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” Vidia said that evening in the Norfolk’s bar. He said nothing else, but I knew it was his way of asking about Hopkinson.

  “He’s writing a novel,” I said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “It’s his third.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “He spoiled the first two, he said. He rushed them. He said he was not going to rush this one.”

  Vidia gagged on his tea and released great lungfuls of laughter, his smoker’s laugh that was so fruity and echoey.

  “He’s just playing with art.”

  “He was a friend of George Orwell,” I said.

  “One has been compared to Orwell,” Vidia said. “It is not much of a compliment, is it?”

  The Indian high commissioner in Nairobi, Prem Bhatia, gave a dinner party for Vidia. Now, as at the Kaptagat, I saw a contented Vidia: a respected visitor in the house of a man who admired his work. This role of guest of honor calmed Vidia and made him portentous and unfunny and overformal, and at the table he became orotund.

  “One has been contemplating for some little time...”

  Bhatia had been a distinguished journalist in India. He had lively talkative teenage children and the sort of ambassadorial household that was like a real family. It was not a stuffy party. Two dining tables had been set up in the courtyard of the residence for the Kenyan, Indian, and English guests. Vidia and his host sat at a head table.

  As an elderly Sikh servant in a red turban poured wine, Bhatia followed him and said, “Now do enjoy your wine, but be very careful of the glasses. They cost five guineas each. I had them sent from London.”

  Hearing this, one of the Englishmen picked up his wine, drank it down, and flung the glass over his shoulder at the courtyard wall. The glass made a soft watery smash as it hit the flagstones.

  There was a sudden hush. Bhatia kept smiling and said nothing. The Englishman laughed crazily—he might have been drunk. His wife, her head down, was whispering.

  “Infy.” It was spoken loudly from the head table.

  After the party, when all the guests had gone and the servants had withdrawn, Vidia talked in his pompous visiting-elder-statesman manner, which was also the tone of his narrator, whom he had told me was a politician. The subject was the Indians who had been deported.

  “This is disgraceful,” Vidia said. “How are you planning to respond?”

  “We’ve lodged a very strong protest,” Bhatia said.

  “You must do more than that,” Vidia said. “India is a big, powerful country. It is a major power.”

  “Of course—”

  “Remind the Africans of that. Latterly, the Africans have behaved as though they were dealing with just another shabby little country. Latterly—”

  “I’ve sent a letter.”

  “Send a gunboat.”

  “A gunboat?”

  “A punitive mission.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Shell Mombasa.”

  “Who would do this?”

  “The Indian Navy,” Vidia said. “One has thought about this extensively. Send the Indian Navy on maneuvers off the Kenyan coast. Anchor off Mombasa—a fleet of ships. Remind them that India is a formidable country. Shell Mombasa.”

  The high commissioner was frowning.

  “Punish them,” Vidia said. “When Mombasa is in flames they will think twice about persecuting Indians here. Aren’t there fuel depots in Mombasa? Yes, they will leave the Indians alone for some little time.”

  The following noon we were having drinks by the pool at the residence of the American ambassador, William Attwood. Vidia was in the midst of his punitive-mission speech when, without prelude, a large, smiling, familiar-looking African appeared. He said he wished to consult with the ambassador. They went into the house.

  “He’s asking for money, of course,” Vidia said. “What else would he want? And did you see how fat he is? He’s just another thug.”

  After ten minutes the ambassador returned. He said the man was Tom Mboya, a leading politician and government minister.

  “Mah-boya,” Vidia said.

  “Very impressive man,” Attwood said. “Mboya’s going to be the next president of Kenya.”

  Vidia simply stared. He was thinking, Fat thug.

  Mboya never became president. Within a few years he was murdered by his political enemies.

  The ambassador’s wife joined us for lunch while Vidia continued describing the maneuvers in a possible punitive mission. The rant may have made the ambassador nervous, for, passing the sugar tongs to his wife, he bobbled them and dropped them. They skittered toward the edge of the pool and fell in.

  “Never mind,” Attwood said.

  We stared as the silver thing swayed downward and settled into the deep end of the pool.

  Vidia said, “Do you have a bathing costume that would fit me?”

  “Lots in the changing room there,” said Attwood. “We keep them for visitors.”

  Vidia excused himself and was back in a few minutes wearing a blue bathing suit. Without a word he dived neatly in and propelled himself to the bottom—eight feet or so—and brought up the dripping sugar tongs, which he handed over. While the ambassador was still marveling at his athleticism, Vidia changed his clothes, and lunch resumed.

  It was a reminder of his island childhood. He had been brought up near water and was clearly a wonderful swimmer—I could see it in the way he had launched himself off the edge of the pool, diving with hardly a splash, going deep without apparent effort. At that moment I saw him as a skinny child, diving off a splintery pier in Trinidad, in view of the anchored cruise ships. All his pomposity had fallen away and he had become graceful, a child of the islands.

  The ambassador thanked us for coming.

  “I think he needed to hear that,” Vidia said of his proposal to shell Mombasa and set it aflame. “Did you notice how attentive he was? He at least realizes there is a problem. I know your people can do something.”

  Over the next few days, in Nairobi’s Indian restaurants and shops, Vidia demanded to know what the Indians would do when they were expelled. They had no future in Africa, he said. They had to make plans for crunch time now.

  “Yet one has a vibration that the Indians won’t rise to the occasion,” he said to me.

  Passing Khannum’s Fancy Goods shop on Queen’s Road, Pat said she wanted to buy a few yards of printed cloth to use as a dust cover for a table in the room at the Kaptagat. Vidia and I waited on the verandah, where a small Indian girl of about seven or eight was sitting on a wooden bench being fanned by her African ayah. The girl wore a pink sari and long Punjabi bloomers and had the prim look of a child on her way to a party.

  “Jina lako nam?” I said to the girl, asking her name in Swahili.

  The ayah smiled and nudged her gently, a tender gesture that made the girl recoil and scowl at the servant in a bratty way. Vidia sighed—perhaps because I was speaking Swahili, perhaps because of the little-princess look of the skinny girl in her partygoing sari.

  “Wewe najua Kiswahili?” I asked. Did she speak Swahili?

  The ayah made the soft tooth-sucking cluck with pursed lips that meant yes in East Africa, but no sooner had she sounded this cluck—answering for the girl—than her mistress, silly little toto, scowled again and folded her arms.

  “I am knowing wery vell how to speak Inglis!” she said.

 
; “What a horrible child,” Vidia said, looking away. “People are always writing magazine pieces about children—parents and children. They are foolish. I have no children. My publisher, André Deutsch, has no children. My editor has no children. It has been a conscious decision. People say, ‘You’d have lovely children’—the Indian-English thing. I do not want children. I do not want to read about children. I do not want to see them.”

  Watching Vidia, the little girl seemed to understand that she was being insulted. Her large eyes had darkened with anger, and as she looked up at the man maligning her, Pat came out of the shop and said, “Hello. What a sweet little girl. What’s your name?”

  “Nadira.”

  I might have misheard. She spoke just as we were stepping off the verandah into the sunshine, but at the sound of her sharp voice, like the squawk of a mechanical toy, the three of us glanced back—Pat smiling, Vidia frowning in contempt. I was shaking my head, thinking, Wahindi!

  Time is so strange in its logic and revelation. The little girl would go to Pakistan, and after thirty years passed (and Pat lay dying in a spruced-up cottage that was at that Nairobi moment tumbledown and lived in by a pair of elderly Wiltshire peasants) Vidia would meet the girl again, now grown up and divorced, never guessing where he had first seen her—nor would she—and fall in love.

  How were we to know that little girl being fanned on the Nairobi verandah by her African ayah would be the future Lady Naipaul?

  Back at the Kaptagat Arms, Vidia resumed his novel. He was also reading a Victorian account of travels in West Africa in which he came across the expression “our sable brethren.” He began using the expression, building sentences with his other favorite phrases: “For some little time, our sable brethren...”

  Before I left for Uganda he asked me, “So what are our sable brethren up to in Kampy, eh?”

  There were rumors of trouble in Uganda, though nothing to do with Indians. I said, “People say there’s going to be a showdown between Obote and the Kabaka.”