Collected Short Fiction

by V. S. Naipaul

  At lunch I sat with two Lebanese. They were both overnight passengers from Italy and were quick to explain that it was luggage, not money, that had prevented them travelling by air. They looked a good deal less unhappy with the ship than they said they were. They spoke in a mixture of French, English and Arabic and were exciting and impressing each other with talk of the money other people, mainly Lebanese, were making in this or that unlikely thing.

  They were both under forty. One was pink, plump and casually dressed, with a canary pullover; his business in Beirut was, literally, money. The other Lebanese was dark, well-built, with moustached Mediterranean good looks, and wore a three-piece check suit. He made reproduction furniture in Cairo and he said that business was bad since the Europeans had left. Commerce and culture had vanished from Egypt; there was no great demand among the natives for reproduction furniture; and there was growing prejudice against Lebanese like himself. But I couldn’t believe in his gloom. While he was talking to us he was winking at one of the Spanish dancers.

  At the other end of the room a fat Egyptian student with thick-lensed glasses was being raucous in German and Arabic. The German couple at his table were laughing. Now the Egyptian began to sing an Arabic song.

  The man from Beirut said in his American accent, ‘You should go modern.’

  ‘Never,’ the furniture-maker said. ‘I will leave Egypt first. I will close my factory. It is a horror, the modern style. It is grotesque, totally grotesque. Mais le style Louis Seize, ah, voilà l’âme—’ He broke off to applaud the Egyptian and to shout his congratulations in Arabic. Wearily then, but without malice, he said under his breath, ‘Ah, these natives.’ He pushed his plate from him, sank in his chair, beat his fingers on the dirty tablecloth. He winked at the dancer and the tips of his moustache flicked upwards.

  The steward came to clear away. I was eating, but my plate went as well.

  ‘You were dining, monsieur?’ the furniture-maker said. ‘You must be calme. We must all be calme.’

  Then he raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. There was something he wanted us to look at.

  It was the tramp, standing in the doorway, surveying the room. Such was the way he held himself that even now, at the first glance, his clothes seemed whole. He came to the cleared table next to ours, sat on a chair and shifted about in it until he was settled. Then he leaned right back, his arms on the rests, like the head of a household at the head of his table, like a cruise-passenger waiting to be served. He sighed and moved his jaws, testing his teeth. His jacket was in an appalling state. The pockets bulged; the flaps were fastened with safety pins.

  The furniture-maker said something in Arabic and the man from Beirut laughed. The steward shooed us away and we followed the Spanish girls to the windy little bar for coffee.

  Later that afternoon, looking for privacy, I climbed some steep steps to the open railed area above the cabins. The tramp was standing there alone, stained trouser-legs swollen, turn-ups shredded, exposed to the cold wind and the smuts from the smokestack. He held what looked like a little prayer-book. He was moving his lips and closing and opening his eyes, like a man praying hard. How fragile that face was, worked over by distress; how frail that neck, below the tight knot of the polka-dotted scarf. The flesh around his eyes seemed especially soft; he looked close to tears. It was strange. He looked for company but needed solitude; he looked for attention, and at the same time wanted not to be noticed.

  I didn’t disturb him. I feared to be involved with him. Far below, the Greek refugees sat or lay in the sun.

  In the smoking-room after dinner the fat young Egyptian shouted himself hoarse, doing his cabaret act. People who understood what he was saying laughed all the time. Even the furniture-maker, forgetting his gloom about the natives, shouted and clapped with the rest. The American schoolchildren lay in their own promiscuous seasick heap and looked on, like people helplessly besieged; when they spoke among themselves it was in whispers.

  The non-American part of the room was predominantly Arab and German and had its own cohesion. The Egyptian was our entertainer, and there was a tall German girl we could think of as our hostess. She offered us chocolate and had a word for each of us. To me she said: ‘You are reading a very good English book. These Penguin books are very good English books.’ She might have been travelling out to join an Arab husband; I wasn’t sure.

  I was sitting with my back to the door and didn’t see when the tramp came in. But suddenly he was there before me, sitting on a chair that someone had just left. The chair was not far from the German girl’s, but it stood in no intimate relationship to that chair or any other group of chairs. The tramp sat squarely on it, straight up against the back. He faced no one directly, so that in that small room he didn’t become part of the crowd but appeared instead to occupy the centre of a small stage within it.

  He sat with his old man’s legs wide apart, his weighted jacket sagging over his bulging trouser-pockets. He had come with things to read, a magazine, the little book which I had thought was a prayer-book. I saw now that it was an old pocket diary with many loose leaves. He folded the magazine in four, hid it under his thigh, and began to read the pocket diary. He laughed, and looked up to see whether he was being noticed. He turned a page, read and laughed again, more loudly. He leaned towards the German girl and said to her over his shoulder, ‘I say, do you read Spanish?’

  She said, carefully, ‘No.’

  ‘These Spanish jokes are awfully funny.’

  But though he read a few more, he didn’t laugh again.

  The Egyptian continued to clown; that racket went on. Soon the German girl was offering chocolate once more. ‘Bitte?’ Her voice was soft.

  The tramp was unfolding his magazine. He stopped and looked at the chocolate. But there was none for him. He unfolded his magazine. Then, unexpectedly, he began to destroy it. With nervous jigging hands he tore at a page, once, twice. He turned some pages, began to tear again; turned back, tore. Even with the raucousness around the Egyptian the sound of tearing paper couldn’t be ignored. Was he tearing out pictures – sport, women, advertisements – that offended him? Was he hoarding toilet paper for Egypt?

  The Egyptian fell silent and looked. The American schoolchildren looked. Now, too late after the frenzy, and in what was almost silence, the tramp made a show of reason. He opened the tattered magazine wide out, turned it around angrily, as though the right side up hadn’t been easy to find, and at last pretended to read. He moved his lips; he frowned; he tore and tore. Strips and shreds of paper littered the floor around his chair. He folded the loose remains of the magazine, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, pinned the flaps down, and went out of the room, looking like a man who had been made very angry.

  ‘I will kill him,’ the furniture-maker said at breakfast the next morning.

  He was in his three-piece suit but he was unshaven and the dark rings below his eyes were like bruises. The man from Beirut, too, looked tired and crumpled. They hadn’t had a good night. The third bunk in their cabin was occupied by an Austrian boy, a passenger from Italy, with whom they were on good terms. They had seen the rucksack and the hat on the fourth bunk; but it wasn’t until it was quite late, all three in their bunks, that they had discovered that the tramp was to be the fourth among them.

  ‘It was pretty bad,’ the man from Beirut said. He felt for delicate words and added, ‘The old guy’s like a child.’

  ‘Child! If the English pig comes in now’ – the furniture-maker raised his arm and pointed at the door – ‘I will kill him. Now.’

  He was pleased with the gesture and the words; he repeated them, for the room. The Egyptian student, hoarse and hungover after the evening’s performance, said something in Arabic. It was obviously witty, but the furniture-maker didn’t smile. He beat his fingers on the table, stared at the door and breathed loudly through his nose.

  No one was in a good mood. The drumming and the throbbing and bucking of the ship had played havoc with stomac
hs and nerves; the cold wind outside irritated as much as it refreshed; and in the dining-room the air was stale, with a smell as of hot rubber. There was no crowd, but the stewards, looking unslept and unwashed, even their hair not well combed, were as rushed as before.

  The Egyptian shrieked.

  The tramp had come in, benign and rested and ready for his coffee and rolls. He had no doubts about his welcome now. He came without hesitation or great speed to the table next to ours, settled himself in his chair and began to test his teeth. He was quickly served. He chewed and drank with complete relish.

  The Egyptian shrieked again.

  The furniture-maker said to him, ‘I will send him to your room tonight.’

  The tramp didn’t see or hear. He was only eating and drinking. Below the tight knot of his scarf his Adam’s apple was very busy. He drank noisily, sighing afterwards; he chewed with rabbit-like swiftness, anxious to be free for the next mouthful; and between mouthfuls he hugged himself, rubbing his arms and elbows against his sides, in pure pleasure at food.

  The fascination of the furniture-maker turned to rage. Rising, but still looking at the tramp, he called, ‘Hans!’

  The Austrian boy, who was at the table with the Egyptian, got up. He was about sixteen or seventeen, square and chunky, enormously well-developed, with a broad smiling face. The man from Beirut also got up, and all three went outside.

  The tramp, oblivious of this, and of what was being prepared for him, continued to eat and drink until, with a sigh which was like a sigh of fatigue, he was finished.

  It was to be like a tiger-hunt, where bait is laid out and the hunter and spectators watch from the security of a platform. The bait here was the tramp’s own rucksack. They placed that on the deck outside the cabin door, and watched it. The furniture-maker still pretended to be too angry to talk. But Hans smiled and explained the rules of the game as often as he was asked.

  The tramp, though, didn’t immediately play. After breakfast he disappeared. It was cold on the deck, even in the sunshine, and sometimes the spray came right up. People who had come out to watch didn’t stay, and even the furniture-maker and the man from Beirut went from time to time to rest in the smoking-room among the Germans and Arabs and the Spanish girls. They were given chairs; there was sympathy for their anger and exhaustion. Hans remained at his post. When the cold wind made him go inside the cabin he watched through the open door, sitting on one of the lower bunks and smiling up at people who passed.

  Then the news came that the tramp had reappeared and had been caught according to the rules of the game. Some of the American schoolchildren were already on deck, studying the sea. So were the Spanish girls and the German girl. Hans blocked the cabin door. I could see the tramp holding the strap of his rucksack; I could hear him complaining in English through the French and Arabic shouts of the furniture-maker, who was raising his arms and pointing with his right hand, the skirts of his jacket dancing.

  In the dining-room the furniture-maker’s anger had seemed only theatrical, an aspect of his Mediterranean appearance, the moustache, the wavy hair. But now, in the open, with an expectant audience and a victim so nearly passive, he was working himself into a frenzy.

  ‘Pig! Pig!’

  ‘It’s not true,’ the tramp said, appealing to people who had only come to watch.

  ‘Pig!’

  The grotesque moment came. The furniture-maker, so strongly built, so elegant in his square-shouldered jacket, lunged with his left hand at the old man’s head. The tramp swivelled his head, the way he did when he refused to acknowledge a stare. And he began to cry. The furniture-maker’s hand went wide and he stumbled forward against the rails into a spatter of spray. Putting his hands to his breast, feeling for pen and wallet and other things, he cried out, like a man aggrieved and desperate, ‘Hans! Hans!’

  The tramp stooped; he stopped crying; his blue eyes popped. Hans had seized him by the polka-dotted scarf, twisting it, jerking it down. Kicking the rucksack hard, Hans at the same time flung the tramp forward by the knotted scarf. The tramp stumbled over Hans’s kicking foot. The strain went out of Hans’s smiling face and all that was left was the smile. The tramp could have recovered from his throw and stumble. But he preferred to fall and then to sit up. He was still holding the strap of his rucksack. He was crying again.

  ‘It’s not true. These remarks they’ve been making, it’s not true.’

  The young Americans were looking over the rails.

  ‘Hans!’ the furniture-maker called.

  The tramp stopped crying.

  ‘Ha-ans!’

  The tramp didn’t look round. He got up with his rucksack and ran.

  The story was that he had locked himself in one of the lavatories. But he reappeared among us, twice.

  About an hour later he came into the smoking-room, without his rucksack, with no sign of distress on his face. He was already restored. He came in, in his abrupt way, not looking to right or left. Just a few steps brought him right into the small room and almost up against the legs of the furniture-maker, who was stretched out in an upholstered chair, exhausted, one hand over his half-closed eyes. After surprise, anger and contempt filled the tramp’s eyes. He started to swivel his head away.

  ‘Hans!’ the furniture-maker called, recovering from his astonishment, drawing back his legs, leaning forward. ‘Ha-ans!’

  Swivelling his head, the tramp saw Hans rising with some playing cards in his hands. Terror came to the tramp’s eyes. The swivelling motion of his head spread to the rest of his body. He swung round on one heel, brought the other foot down hard, and bolted. Entry, advance, bandy-legged swivel and retreat had formed one unbroken movement.

  ‘Hans!’

  It wasn’t a call to action. The furniture-maker was only underlining the joke. Hans, understanding, laughed and went back to his cards.

  The tramp missed his lunch. He should have gone down immediately, to the first sitting, which had begun. Instead, he went into hiding, no doubt in one of the lavatories, and came out again only in time for the last sitting. It was the sitting the Lebanese and Hans had chosen. The tramp saw from the doorway.

  ‘Ha-ans!’

  But the tramp was already swivelling.

  Later he was to be seen with his rucksack, but without his hat, on the lower deck, among the refugees. Without him, and then without reference to him, the joke continued, in the bar, on the narrow deck, in the smoking-room. ‘Hans! Ha-ans!’ Towards the end Hans didn’t laugh or look up; when he heard his name he completed the joke by giving a whistle. The joke lived; but by night-fall the tramp was forgotten.

  At dinner the Lebanese spoke again in their disinterested way about money. The man from Beirut said that, because of certain special circumstances in the Middle East that year, there was a fortune to be made from the well-judged exporting of Egyptian shoes; but not many people knew. The furniture-maker said the fact had been known to him for months. They postulated an investment, vied with each other in displaying knowledge of hidden, local costs, and calmly considered the staggering profits. But they weren’t really exciting one another any longer. The game was a game; each had taken the measure of the other. And they were both tired.

  Something of the lassitude of the American schoolchildren had come over the other passengers on this last evening. The Americans themselves were beginning to thaw out. In the smoking-room, where the lights seemed dimmer, their voices were raised in friendly boy–girl squabbles; they did a lot more coming and going; especially active was a tall girl in a type of ballet-dancer’s costume, all black from neck to wrist to ankle. The German girl, our hostess of the previous evening, looked quite ill. The Spanish girls were flirting with nobody. The Egyptian, whose hangover had been compounded by seasickness, was playing bridge. Gamely from time to time he croaked out a witticism or a line of a song, but he got smiles rather than laughs. The furniture-maker and Hans were also playing cards. When a good card or a disappointing one was played the furniture-maker said in
soft exclamation, expecting no response, ‘Hans, Hans.’ It was all that remained of the day’s joke.

  The man from Beirut came in and watched. He stood beside Hans. Then he stood beside the furniture-maker and whispered to him in English, their secret language. ‘The guy’s locked himself in the cabin.’

  Hans understood. He looked at the furniture-maker. But the furniture-maker was weary. He played his hand, then went out with the man from Beirut.

  When he came back he said to Hans, ‘He says that he will set fire to the cabin if we try to enter. He says that he has a quantity of paper and a quantity of matches. I believe that he will do it.’

  ‘What do we do?’ the man from Beirut asked.

  ‘We will sleep here. Or in the dining-room.’

  ‘But those Greek stewards sleep in the dining-room. I saw them this morning.’

  ‘That proves that it is possible,’ the furniture-maker said.

  Later, the evening over, I stopped outside the tramp’s cabin. At first I heard nothing. Then I heard paper being crumpled: the tramp’s warning. I wonder how long he stayed awake that night, listening for footsteps, waiting for the assault on the door and the entry of Hans.

  In the morning he was back on the lower deck, among the refugees. He had his hat again; he had recovered it from the cabin.

  Alexandria was a long shining line on the horizon: sand and the silver of oil-storage tanks. The sky clouded over; the green sea grew choppier. We entered the breakwater in cold rain and stormlight.

  Long before the immigration officials came on board we queued to meet them. Germans detached themselves from Arabs, Hans from the Lebanese, the Lebanese from the Spanish girls. Now, as throughout the journey since his meeting with the tramp, the tall blond Yugoslav was a solitary. From the lower deck the refugees came up with their boxes and bundles, so that at last they were more than their emblematic black wrappings. They had the slack bodies and bad skins of people who ate too many carbohydrates. Their blotched faces were immobile, distant, but full of a fierce, foolish cunning. They were watching. As soon as the officials came aboard the refugees began to push and fight their way towards them. It was a factitious frenzy, the deference of the persecuted to authority.