Sir Vidia's Shadow

by Paul Theroux

  He said, “At the universities and the schools, people are not taught to be new. They are taught to copy other people. Copying becomes the highest virtue, and I don’t know how you can judge a derivative form. I don’t know how, if you get forms that are not original, not delivering new visions, how to go about judging them. People say, ‘Judge for the style. Judge for the characters.’ I don’t know.

  Buford said, “Both of you have written strongly autobiographical novels. The thing about the autobiographical novel, whether it’s The Enigma of Arrival or A House for Mr. Biswas, My Secret History or My Other Life, is that once those stories are told, they’re told. The autobiographical novel is spent, therefore that kind of novel’s possibilities are exhausted.”

  Vidia made a magisterial gesture, doing his Gradgrind impersonation, and said, “I feel I want to say that I am not against narratives fundamentally. We must deal in narrative. Without narrative there is no point.” He grimaced, he invited attention. He said, “So what can I say about novels now? Narrative writing is what we need, whatever form it takes. The reason Paul probably had to go in for the autobiographical fiction is that his experience has been unique. It has not been a simple Massachusetts childhood. He has traveled, he has gathered experience in different cultures, he has ventured and absorbed other cultures. And because of this special experience, he has to define himself in the books he is writing. He just can’t write a third-person narrative without defining who the participant, the viewer, who the ‘I’ and the ‘eye’ are. And probably more and more people, as the world gets more confused, will feel the need to define exactly who they are. Otherwise, with the third-person narrative one wonders, ‘Who is writing this?’”

  It seemed a strange observation, a loss of faith in fiction that was akin to saying the novel was misleading and mendacious, if not dead. But it was not news. Almost three hundred years ago, Daniel Defoe had said as much in one of the sequels to Robinson Crusoe, after the first volume became a huge hit: “This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most scandalous crime, and yet very little regarded in that part. It is a sort of lying that makes a great hole in the heart, at which by degrees a habit of lying enters in.” I did not agree at all with this, and I felt that, like Vidia, Defoe was being self-serving, as well as pandering to puritanism.

  I said, “But in The Mystic Masseur, your first book, you’re sometimes writing in the third person and sometimes in the first person. I thought that was the most amazing innovation. I had never read a book in which that happened. Where did that come from?”

  “Ignorance!” Vidia shouted, and laughed. “And both people were fictions—that is, the narrator was an artificial figure too.”

  “Could I ask you how your father influenced you?” Bill asked.

  “We can’t go into this, Bill, because the subject of one’s writing—it’s too profound, and too personal.”

  Almost an hour had passed. Buford thanked us, and as the audience applauded, Vidia repeated to Buford, “No questions.”

  As we were led out, I said, “Are you staying at the hotel, Vidia?”

  “I’m not staying. I’m going back to Wiltshire,” he said.

  He looked pained—less irritated and edgy than he had onstage, but tired and unforthcoming.

  “It seems quite a nice hotel,” I said. “We could have dinner later.”

  “I get so lonely in hotel rooms.”

  He spotted Nadira coming towards him through the departing crowd. He motioned to her, and seeing him, she picked up her pace. She moved quickly, marching like a soldier, swinging her arms. Her hands were fists.

  “We’ll talk,” he said.

  As Vidia and Nadira were escorted to their car, Salman Rushdie came up to me. His heavy-lidded eyes gave him a perpetually mocking look, and he had never looked more disdainful. He was holding a small notebook and peering at a scribbled-on page. Vidia would have read a great deal in Salman’s handwriting: it was upright, confident, closely printed, very black, un-English, linear on a page without lines. Even upside down it looks arrogant, Vidia might have said. He would have been impressed.

  “I learned two things,” Salman said. “One, close the English departments. Two, literature is for the wounded and the damaged. Ha-ha!”

  19

  Exchanges

  “WE’LL TALK,” Vidia had said, but it was not possible. I wrote to him, but for almost a year I was seldom in one place long enough to receive a letter or a fax. I was on the move—more than two months in the African bush, drinking the rivers again: on the Angola border of the upper Zambezi, in Barotseland, camped in the compound of the Litunga, the Lozi king; sick in a tent in the remote Dinde Marsh of southern Malawi, with acute dehydration, not drinking enough of the muddy river; and paddling in Mozambique, near where Mrs. Livingstone lay buried under a baobab tree at Chupanga. On the lower Zambezi I saw a lion’s paw prints in the dust of the riverbank. The creature had paused to relieve herself.

  “Female,” I said.

  My observation was challenged by one of those aggressively skeptical Australian women you meet in such places.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Females are retromingent. You probably are.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Piss backwards.”

  Then I was in Hong Kong, mugging up on the Chinese take-away. I had kidney problems and gout brought on by the African dehydration.

  All this I faithfully reported to Vidia in my usual way: postcards, air letters. I could not phone. It did not strike me as unusual that Vidia did not respond. I knew he was still writing Beyond Belief, the sequel to his Islam book. You will say: But you corresponded with him and wrote his blurbs and read his manuscripts while you were working on a book. Yes, but he had different rules. I found rules, in general, an inconvenience.

  We no longer had any friends in common. I had no idea what was happening in his life. This was strange, since for thirty years I had had a pretty good idea of the ebb and flow of his affairs.

  There was a piece in the magazine supplement of India Today (Delhi) early in 1997, an interview with Vidia and Nadira, a portrait of their new life together. Nadira had taken charge. For one thing, she had closed his archives in Tulsa. Vidia said, “Nadira is more encouraging. Pat could be very stubborn and critical.” And: “I think I made a great error. I took writing far too seriously.” The author of the article found Nadira imperious and wrote, “She likes to be called Lady Naipaul.”

  Then, about a year after Hay-on-Wye, when I was in Hawaii in an angle of repose, I received by mail a catalogue from a bookseller who specialized in modern first editions. Some items caught my attention:

  #336 THEROUX, Paul. Fong and the Indians. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968. His second book ... This copy is inscribed by Theroux to writer V. S. Naipaul: “For Vidia/ & Pat/ with love/ Paul.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket ... Theroux and Naipaul met in east Africa in 1966, presumably about the time and place that constitute the setting for this novel, and their friendship extends over three decades, dating from a time when both were relatively young writers, and neither had achieved the degree of literary renown that both enjoy today ... An excellent association copy. $1500.

  #337 THEROUX, Paul. Sinning with Annie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972. His first collection of stories. This copy is inscribed by Theroux to V. S. Naipaul in the month of publication: “To Vidia & Pat/ with love/ Paul. “... An excellent association copy, inscribed at approximately the time that Theroux’s book on Naipaul would have been approaching publication. $1500.

  #338 THEROUX, Paul. V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work. (London): Deutsch (1972). An early book of criticism of Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul ... Scarce ... $850.

  No inscription on that last one. I suspected it was a copy I had sent through the publisher, who was Vidia’s friend, so that Vidia could see the earliest possible copy. I hoped that he would like it. He had, as he had said in several effusive letters. There were se
veral more of my books in the catalogue, and I wondered if they too were from the shelves of Dairy Cottage, Salterton, Wiltshire. Apparently someone was cleaning house.

  The prices were, I thought, extortionate. And assuming that the books had passed through the hands of several booksellers, a common practice in the “collectibles” market, Vidia would have received only a fraction of that—Modern Firsts is one of the adjuncts to the rag-and-bone trade, and its practitioners are glorified junk dealers. To twit him about this, I faxed him the bookseller’s catalogue pages, and I asked, “How are you?”

  The reply came from his new wife. It was one of the strangest-looking messages I had ever received, printed in big wobbly letters like a child’s school essay. I watched, squinnying at it, as it scrolled out of my fax machine. My first thought was that the chuntering woman from Pakistan had lost her marbles.

  Just the look of it, the way it was set out on the page—the oversized printing, the crazily toppling paragraphs, the random punctuation and nineteenth-century notion of capitalizing, the odd locutions and even odder grammar—was slipshod even by Bahawalpur standards. There was another telling thing. You can judge a person by the manner in which, over the course of a two- or three-page letter, the handwriting breaks down. Vidia had taught me that. Nadira’s began at the top of the first page as big accusatory capitals and then sloped and tottered and, as though a new person had taken over the scribble on page two, collapsed into a slant, which I read as the sort of italics you would use to indicate a hoarse nagging. And I could see that it was indeed a nagging letter.

  My immediate reaction was deep embarrassment for Vidia.

  She began with a startling non sequitur, asserting that I would not be writing her obituary. As I was murmuring “What?” I read on. She wanted to make a few things clear, and she rambled a bit. It was babu English, but I got the point.

  The obituary I had written of Pat Naipaul was a pretty poor job, Nadira said. It was not an obituary at all. It belonged in the realm of fiction and was more about me than about “poor Pat.” And I reread “poor Pat” in the block letters of the woman who had been paddling palms with Vidia in Lahore as the unlucky woman lay dying in Wiltshire.

  If my writing the obituary had been a favor, Nadira went on, the favor was reciprocated by Vidia’s agreeing to appear at the Hay-on-Wye festival. She then rubbished Bill Buford, who had arranged the event. She rubbished the event. She accused me of trying to make Vidia seem fanatical and extreme on the subject of Africa. In two novels, she said, Vidia had told the truth about Africa. I had not followed his example. I had misrepresented Africa.

  Elaborating on this last point, she said that she had read something I had written about Africa—she did not identify the work by name. She implied that I had quoted Vidia out of context. Of course, Vidia was far too greathearted to care about being quoted, she said, but I had to understand that his life would soon be made public. She hinted at a forthcoming biography. Therefore—and this constituted a type of warning—I should be a better and more responsible friend, for did I not know that Vidia set himself apart from the pettiness of liberals?

  Affirming her friendship for Vidia’s literary agent, she signed off, “Nadira.”

  She’s crazy, I thought, and I began to laugh and crinkle the fax paper in my hand. She’s nuts! Going absolutely barking mad in Wiltshire! It was predictable. The woman was a highly visible person who would have been denounced or ridiculed on sight as “colored” or a “Paki” in most of Britain. Wiltshire was the haven of crusty right-wing retired military men and xenophobic farmers. This was, surely, a kind of nightmare for the lady letter writer from Bahawalpur.

  This was crazy, for there was nothing I had done to provoke the letter. Certainly my role as Patricia Naipaul’s obituarist did not justify this abuse. And the festival business was misdirected—since when did anyone force Vidia to say or do something against his will? He was a man of iron resolve. Vidia had asked for the obituary. He had thanked me afterwards. I had his letter—only gratitude and grief in it.

  At first I put her letter down to a need to prove herself to Vidia. She had decided to take charge, to clean house in all senses. She had to have been the one to get rid of the books with the loving dedications that had predated her. This was the inevitable revisionism of the new wife. She had turned into Carrie Kipling, Fanny Stevenson, and was aiming at being Jane Carlyle, the martyr of Craigenputtock, humoring and defending her wayward husband. Nadira was seeing me off.

  The more I reflected on her letter, the louder I laughed. Its obsessional style and bad grammar and clumsy handwriting were proof that Vidia had not seen it before she sent it. He was scrupulous in matters of punctuation. Poor grammar set his teeth on edge. I had seen him scream at such an ill-conceived thing, like a man howling at a filthy rag. He was put off by the slightest gaucheries. I remembered how, in Stockwell, he had whimperingly told Pat and me that he had seen a workman sit on his bed—the thought of the man putting his bum on the place where Vidia slept was too much, and he nearly sobbed. This abusive note would be just such a horror to a man who saw English departments as representing corruption and the decline of civilization. It was a weird, shame-making letter. I thought he should see it.

  I faxed it to him with this message: “I have just received the attached fax from your wife. I will reply to her, but of course am rather puzzled about it and wonder what could possibly have motivated her to write to me in this way.”

  There was no reply from him. That was odd, but at least—unless she had intercepted the fax—he had seen her crazy letter, accusing me of writing a self-serving obituary and browbeating him into going to Hay-on-Wye more than a year before.

  He was my friend. He had been my friend for over thirty years! He was not by nature a bridge burner—there weren’t enough bridges in his life for him to develop any skills of this sort. He was, if anything, a mushy soul afflicted with a cruel streak, and like many severe men, something of a sentimentalist. He was depressive. He cried easily.

  After a suitable interval, I wrote to Nadira. I curbed my instinct to fill my letter with sarcasm or write a parody of one of her Letters from Bahawalpur, a name I had begun childishly to enjoy murmuring for its nearness to the word “bowel”—“Bowelpur,” as I thought of it, the quintessential shitty little town. She would not find that funny. And if I parodied her in the style of the Bowelpur columns, with their sententious theorizing and garbled English and frequent references to her husband and her characteristic “loose” for “lose” and the shortage of definite and indefinite articles, she would, I was sure, miss the point. So I wrote:

  Dear Mrs. Naipaul,

  I had not written to you, but to Vidia, and was therefore surprised to receive your fax today, and rather startled by its confused and rather combative tone.

  You object to my obituary of Pat Naipaul. I wonder why. She was a woman I loved deeply; the piece was not “a favor,” as you put it, but a labor of love. You accused me of writing a self-serving obituary of, as you termed her, “poor Pat.” How inappropriate that you should mention her name in this way, since you were associated with Vidia as the woman lay dying. I attach a letter written to me by Vidia afterwards which begins, “Thank you for the lovely and generous note about Pat...”

  I did not make Vidia go to Hay-on-Wye, though I recall your urging him to go. Vidia was at center stage, speaking his mind. He says and does exactly what his brilliance dictates. It is folly to think that I have any influence over him.

  “Having read your African piece,” you say. Again, I do not know what you are talking about. Over the past 30 years I have written a great deal about Africa. Though I understand your intention is to be offensive to my work your entire paragraph is obscure to me.

  You obviously intended your message to me to be provocative. You can see that I am not provoked but only fascinated by your tone, your mistaken assumptions and your odd references.

  In almost 32 years of friendship with Vidia I have asked for litt
le and have given a great deal, because I admired Vidia’s writing. You should not have written to me in those terms. Yet I am still smiling at your mention of my not writing your obituary.

  You are newly arrived. You ought to be more careful. Others have been in your position and have felt just as certain and been just as mistaken.

  Believe me, should I wish to write your obituary—or anything else—I shall do so, without needing to be asked.

  There was no reply. Perhaps this silence was not so strange. In Africa, when an expatriate got married his new wife fired all his servants and discouraged his old friends from coming around. This was a species of that behavior, but without, I was almost certain, Vidia’s shadow over it. Vidia was my friend.

  In spite of We’ll talk, and our not meeting, still I knew what he was up to. I saw his recurring photographs, two in Indian magazines that showed him to be greatly changed: darker face, bristly bearded, swollen eyes, frowning mouth, grayer hair—long crazy hair that looked as if it had been nagged at with a jagged implement. As he said, You carry your life in your face.

  Often, hearing secondhand his eccentric views and outrageous opinions, I laughed, though sometimes uneasily, as when I read that he had told an interviewer, “French is now of no account, no consequence, a language spoken by some black people and some Arabs”—and of course spoken by the dusky Vidia himself. In a restaurant in San Francisco, he looked at the next table and said to his companion, “Aren’t those the ugliest people you’ve ever seen? Do you think they were put there to punish us?”