Guerrillas

by V. S. Naipaul

  In the first film Poitier was a man with a gun. Bryant always enjoyed it, but he knew it was made up and he didn’t allow himself to believe in it. The second film was For the Love of Ivy. It was Bryant’s favorite; it made him cry but it also made him laugh a lot, and it was his favorite. Soon he had surrendered to it, seeing in the Poitier of that film a version of himself that no one—really no one, and that was the terrible part—would ever get to know: the man who had died within the body Bryant carried, shown in that film in all his truth, the man Bryant knew to be himself, without the edginess and the anger and the pretend ugliness, the laughing man, the tender joker. Watching the film, he began to grieve for what was denied him: that future in which he became what he truly was, not a man with a gun, a big profession, or big talk, but himself, and as himself was loved and readmitted to the house and to the people in the house. He began to sob; and other people were sobbing with him.

  The usher scrambled about, turning off the electric fans, creating a kind of silence, opening the exit doors and pulling curtains to shut out the street lights. It was quiet outside; traffic had died down. Bryant was already afraid of the emptiness, the end of the day. He had already come to the end of his money and was as poor as he had been in the morning. The excitement of money was over. The cafes would be closed when the film finished and he went outside; the rum shops would be closed; there would only be a coconut cart, more full of husks than coconuts, a few people sleeping below the shop eaves, drunks, disordered people, and an old woman in a straw hat selling peeled oranges by the light of a flambeau. There would remain the journey back, the taxi, the walk in the night along roads that would barely glimmer between walls of forest and bush. So even before the film ended he was sad, thinking of the blight that came unfairly on a man, ruining his whole life. A whole life.

  It was even worse getting a taxi back. He stood under the illuminated clock; but there were not many travelers at that late hour, the taxis were empty, and the drivers pretended they didn’t see him. Eventually a long-distance taxi came with two other passengers, and Bryant got in. He waited until they were on the highway before he said, “Thrushcross Grange.”

  When they were out of the factory area the driver fumbled for something on the floor of the car, next to the accelerator; and Bryant, sitting at the back, heard the sound and understood the signal: the driver had a cutlass. Bryant was nervous. He said, “But like everybody is a bad-John these days”; and was surprised at the tough way the words came out. The driver didn’t reply. He gave a little grunt; and he grunted again when some minutes later—Bryant saying, “Here! Here, nuh! Where you going?”—he set Bryant down and took his money. The headlights of the taxi swept on, the red taillights receded; and Bryant was left alone in the darkness.

  He had got off at a junction some way beyond the road to Thrushcross Grange. It wasn’t to the Grange that he was now walking. This was a shorter walk: soon the bush flattened out and he saw the house against the forest wall. A light was on, not the dim car port bulb that burned all night, but the light in the living room.

  Jimmy was up, and Bryant knew that Jimmy would be writing. Jimmy wrote a lot. For this writing of Jimmy’s Bryant had a great respect; and Bryant knew that when Jimmy was up so late writing it was because something had happened to make his head hot.

  JIMMY WAS writing. The mood had come on him late, after the disturbance of the afternoon, which had stayed with him through dusk and sunset and the night. This was how he usually wrote, out of disturbance, out of wonder at himself, out of some sudden clear vision of an aspect of his past, or out of panic.

  As he had been talking to Jane and Roche, as they had let him run on, he had began to feel unsupported by his words, and then separate from his words; and he had had a vision of darkness, of the world lost forever, and his own life ending on that bit of wasteland. After they had gone he allowed himself to sink into that darkness, keeping the memory of the afternoon close: the memory of Jane who, by her presence, manner, and talk, had suggested that darkness reserved for himself alone. Yet at the same time, in his fantasy, she washed away the darkness; he carried the picture of her standing outside the hut on the bare, bright earth, nervous, tremulous in her flared trousers.

  I wonder how a man of those attainments can waste his life in a place like that with all those good-for-nothing natives for whom to speak in all candor I cannot have too high an opinion, seeing them shit everywhere just like that, just like animals, they don’t even shit in the high grass but on the path, because wait for it they’re afraid of snakes.

  This is not the kind of thing I am accustomed to with my own class of people, but Peter doesn’t turn a hair, the buzzing of the flies around the shit is like music to his ears I’m sure. He wants to beat it out on the drums that he likes being with the natives, so he says. What a laugh, the reason is that they make him feel good and with them he enjoys a position he wouldn’t enjoy anywhere else, never mind all the talk about revolution and his sufferings in South Africa for the black man.

  Ever since I arrived here I have been hearing about the man they call Jimmy. I had heard about him in London, he was like a celebrity there, but I never dreamt that Fate would throw us together. Out here he is a controversial figure, no one is indifferent to him, he is discussed in every quarter. For the ordinary people, the common people, he is like a savior, he understands and loves the common man, and that is why for the others, the government people and the rich white firms and people of that ilk, he is something else, they’re scared of him and they queue up to give him money. And Mr. Roche of Sablich’s too, he thinks he’s using Jimmy for his own purposes, he is scared too.

  So I scheme to see this man, knowing full well that he is not accessible to visitors like myself and resents intrusion, and when on the appointed day I make the journey to Thrushcross Grange and see this man with the naked torso, not black, but a lovely golden color, like some bronze god, I am amazed, my heart is in my mouth. He says nothing and I’m scared of this cold reserve, and yet I am amazed at the perfection of his form and the way he gets these black louts to respect him and behave with a little discipline; that’s not something they know much about.

  You wouldn’t believe that he can be so different from them. They live in poky little shacks on the highway and up the hills, any old piece of board and pitch-oil tin would do for them, you should see those shacks and then it will occasion no surprise that I have no great regard for these natives. But Jimmy’s house is something else, I can scarcely believe my eyes when I enter, wall to wall carpeting, everything of the best and everything neat and clean and nicely put away. And what a collection of books, no skimping there. He’s obviously a man of considerable refinement rare for these days.

  I said, “Do you mind,” and went to the shelves. He said, “By all means, they’re not dummies,” and I took up Wuthering Heights. “Ah,” he said, breaking into my thoughts, “you are looking at that great work of the Brontës. What a gifted family, it makes you believe in heredity. Would you like some tea?”

  I can see that he is of a difficult disposition but he is making some effort to be civil, and yet in spite of his unwonted readiness to indulge in the tittle-tattle of the tea table I can see that he is revolving great thoughts and projects in his head. Little of this escapes him however, he is a man who knows how to keep his own counsel. He lives in his own rare world, his head is full of big things, he is carrying the burden of all the suffering people in the world, all the people who live in shacks and grow up in dirty little back rooms.

  I am drawn to this man, I can’t help it, my eyes light up when I look at him, and Peter is getting jealous. But this is no surprise, this is always how the revolution and the love of the black man ends. All the way home I am in a daze, I don’t see anything, and I find at night that Peter’s touch is repugnant to me. There wasn’t much that way between us anyway, but suddenly now he is in heat, and he knows why, and I can see that Peter will soon be on the side of the others, the people who want to
destroy this man.

  I dream about this man but I don’t know how we will meet again. I know he will never forgive a second intrusion and I have no desire to aggravate his impatience. He is an enemy to all privilege and I am middle-class born and bred and I know that in spite of his great civility and urbane charm he must hate people like me. I only have to look in his eyes to understand the meaning of hate.

  He had begun without conviction, simply putting down words on the pad. But then excitement had possessed him; the words became more than words; and he felt he could go on for a long time. Now, out of that very excitement, he stopped writing and began to walk about the room. As he walked he became aware of the night and the bush; and he was undermined again. Melancholy came over him like fatigue, like rage, like a sense of doom; and when he went back to the desk he found that the writing excitement had broken and was impossible to reenter. The words on the pad were again just like words, false.

  One day I was driving on the highway and suddenly in the middle of the traffic my car broke down, when who should appear in my moment of need but Jimmy driving about in his Aston Martin …

  Words alone: again he stopped.

  At the beach one day of glorious sunshine amid the sands and dunes and motorcars below the coconut trees, the splendor of the scene marred only by a gang of louts …

  He heard footsteps in the road, and waited. Bryant came in from the front porch, red-eyed, exhausted, null. His movements were abrupt, as though, having hurried to the house, he wanted now only to draw attention to his own mood. Saying nothing, not looking at Jimmy, he sat down heavily on one of the furry chairs with his legs wide apart, rested his head on the top of the back cushion and looked up at the ceiling. There were fresh tears in the corners of his eyes.

  Jimmy said, “You went to the pictures, Bryant?”

  Bryant didn’t reply.

  “For the Love of Ivy?”

  Bryant wiped the corner of one eye with a long, crooked finger.

  Jimmy knew the film and he knew the effect it had on Bryant. He said, “Go and make yourself a little Ovaltine.”

  Bryant didn’t move.

  Jimmy said, “Stay and watch the milk. Don’t let it boil.”

  He watched Bryant rise, his movements less abrupt now, and he watched him leave the room. He sat for some time looking at the door through which Bryant had gone. Then he faced the desk and turned over to a new page on the pad.

  Dear Roy, In my last I sent you some clippings form the local rags which I thought would amuse you and give you some idea of our activities. No one here who is in charge seems to know how close the crisis is, how this whole world is about to blow up, and when I consider the world as it is presently constituted, when I think of the boys I work with here at Thrushcross Grange, I feel that to destroy the world is the only course of action that is now open to sane men.

  The destructive urge comes on me at times like this, I want to see fire everywhere, when I stop and think that there is no hope of creative endeavor being appreciated, it is all for nothing, and on a night like this I feel I could weep for our world and for the people who find themselves unprotected in it. When I think how much I expected of my life at one time, and when I think how quickly that time of hope dies, I get sad, and more so when I think of the people who never expected anything. We are children of hell.

  Perhaps after all, Roy, the world is only made for the people who possess it now, and there are some people who will never possess anything. The people who will win are the people who have won already and they’re not taking chances now, like the liberals. You know better than I how they let me down when the crisis came, you would think that after making me their playboy and getting me deported from England they would leave me alone. But they do not. Even here they are coming after me, well I ask you. These liberals who come flashing their milk white thighs and think they’re contributing to the cause.

  Still everybody has their uses, even Mr. Peter Roche, I call him massa but he doesn’t see the joke. He’s the great white revolutionary and torture hero of South Africa. He’s written this book which I don’t think you would know about, but over here of course he is a world-shaking best-selling author, and now he is working for one of our old imperialist firms, Sablich’s great slave traders in the old days, they now pretend that black is beautiful, and wait for it they employ Mr. Roche to prove it. I play along, what can you do—

  He broke off. The charm did not work. Words, which at some times did so much for him, now did not restore him to himself. He was a lost man, more lost than he had been as a boy, in his father’s shop, at school, in the streets of the city, when he saw only what he saw and knew nothing.

  Bryant, sitting quietly in the furry chair, had been watching him. The empty Ovaltine mug stood on the glass-topped table. Bryant’s eyes had cleared; expression had come back to his face and he was calmer; his pigtails looked limp.

  “Bryant, did you ask the lady for money?”

  “Jim?”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “Jimmy, you know it isn’t the sort of thing I does do.”

  He offered comfort to others, but he needed their comfort more. He went to Bryant, the very ugly, damaged from birth, who expressed all that he saw of himself in certain moods. He embraced Bryant.

  IT WAS fashionable here, in the new houses on the Ridge, to have instead of glass windows louvers of redwood which, when closed, created total darkness. It was in this darkness, the louvers closed to keep out insects, that Jane awoke in her own room every day, and recaptured for a moment something of the mystery of her arrival. The long airplane journey through the night: the noise of the engines that obliterated past and distance; the memories—more like dreams than memories of actual events—of getting off at various airports, brilliantly illuminated; excitement then going, fatigue deadening response; so that, just hours away from London, she felt she had entered another life.

  The strangeness had begun at the London airport. They had all boarded the plane; then there had been a fog alert and they had all got out; then they had got in again and there for five hours they had stayed, on the ground. London was outside; but they inside were already in another world, of passengers and stewardesses, stewardesses who, on the ground part of London and not noticeable, in the airplane became English and exotic, wearing a particular uniform. Change came to the passengers as well: the restless and the assertive began to stand out, mainly men who had taken off their jackets and slackened their ties; and among the black passengers differences of clothes, manner, and speech became more pronounced.

  London all afternoon; New York at some time of the night or early morning. Some Americans got on, and two men sat in the empty seats beside Jane. She was too tired to mind, too tired to do more than note the pornographic books, their titles printed small on plain white covers, that both men were always reading whenever she awakened from her doze. Nassau airport: the transit lounge closed, a dim light in a kind of corridor, a half-embarrassed Negro, a workman in spite of his jacket and tie, trying to pick up a red-haired girl. Later, in the plane, Jane had reached out for Easy Lay, now resting in a seat pocket; but the American beside her, to whom the book belonged, had put his plump hand on hers and taken away the book, saying, “Not for little girls. It’s the hard stuff.” Awake again, connected sleep no longer possible, bright light in some windows; trays, brisk stewardesses now with aprons over their uniforms, so that their character changed again. The American said to Jane, “You need intensive care.”

  After the landing—black men in khaki uniforms, continuing a loud conversation of their own, hurrying into the plane to spray it—after the sting of insecticide and the shock of light and heat, the Americans had taken Jane with them through concrete corridors to the immigration hall, her clothes getting sticky as she walked, her eyes registering the bad French signs. They had taken her to the head of the queue that had already formed; and they must have been important men, because they were let through without formality, and Jane had
been let through with them, without handing over her disembarkation card or showing her return ticket or having her passport stamped.

  In the customs hall, waiting for her luggage, Jane had begun to be more alert. She had begun to think of one of the Americans: He is a candidate. He had given his local address; she noted it was not in the city. He asked where she was staying and who was meeting her. She mentioned Roche’s name, speaking it as a famous name, casually, and expecting that it would get some response, of surprise or apprehension, from the Americans, whom she now judged to be business types. But they hadn’t heard of Roche or the firm he worked for.

  And the surprise, disappointment almost, which showed on their faces when, leaving the customs hall, they saw Roche, under medium height, without a jacket and slenderer than he had appeared in London, almost thin, leaning against an iron rail, indistinguishable in dress and posture from the taxi drivers and the freelance porters among whom he appeared to be lounging at the exit gate, this disappointment, this abrupt coolness of the Americans, communicated itself to Jane and almost immediately became her own response to the meeting.

  It was not their custom to kiss or embrace in public.

  Roche said, “You travel with big people.”

  “They spent all the time on the plane reading pornography. The hard stuff.”

  “They are the bauxite company. They own the place.”

  “They got me through immigration. I didn’t have to show my passport or return ticket or anything.”

  “I hope that doesn’t create problems when you’re leaving.”

  “I need intensive care.”

  They drove through a flat green land, already hot, the windows of the car open. The hills to the right were breathtaking, green below a blue haze, the folds of the ridges soft in the morning light. The vegetation was new to her, all a blur of the brightest green. She thought: Later. Later I will get to know this.