Guerrillas

by V. S. Naipaul

  Mrs. Stephens’ house was one of the miniature houses of the area. It had concrete walls and a corrugated-iron roof, and it stood on concrete pillars about four feet high. Chickens, open-beaked and clucking in the heat, roosted in hollows in the thick, dry, dungy dust about the pillars. The house had some pretensions; it wasn’t a shack; it belonged more to the asphalt streets than to the hillside. It was built according to the standard pattern of the area: divided lengthwise down the middle, with bedrooms on the right—the frosted casement window of the front bedroom open, with a half-curtain in lace hanging from a slack curtain wire—and on the left a toy veranda, living room, and kitchen.

  Roche went up the shallow flight of red-colored concrete steps to the veranda. Two morris chairs with blistered arms and faded cushions almost filled it. The white paint on the frame of the living room door was cracked and dingy. He knocked: and then, sucking on the temple of his dark glasses, he turned and looked up at the sky, the yellow, built-up hillside, and then down the unpaved road to where he had seen the man in the Yucatan-style shirt. Two blocks away he saw a parlor-bar level to the pavement, its open doorway black below a rusty corrugated-iron awning.

  He hadn’t intended to stay long at the house. He wanted only to ask about Stephens and to gauge whether Mrs. Stephens knew anything about her son. But when Mrs. Stephens wrenched open the rickety frosted-glass door Roche found he had decided to say nothing about her son.

  Mrs. Stephens was a big, well-proportioned mulatto woman. Her dress, which went down to her knees, was tight about her breasts and her belly. Her short hair was done up in little plaits. Her eyes were sunken, and about her cheeks there was an unhealthy, shiny puffiness.

  Roche was glad he wasn’t going to ask about Stephens, because when Mrs. Stephens said, “Eh! Mr. Roche. But you give me a shock. I see this person through the glass and I ask myself who this white fellow is,” he knew from her tone and her distant manner—she appeared to be talking to someone over his right shoulder—that she was less than friendly.

  And there was a calculated casualness in the way, having let him in, her eyes seeming to search the street and the hillside the while, she turned and walked back into the room, dragging her slippers on the varnished floor, picking her way through the clutter of furniture: the remainder of the morris suite, a center table, a sideboard, a large dining table with six chairs—standard old-fashioned furniture of the island, miniatures of the furniture in Roche’s own house on the Ridge.

  Mrs. Stephens was not alone. In the far corner of the room, just at the side of the window, an older woman was sitting on one of the dining chairs. She was smaller than Mrs. Stephens, with slacker flesh; her squashed face was set in a smile.

  Roche said, “I was just passing, Mrs. Stephens.”

  Mrs. Stephens said, “Yes, yes. All my friends pass in. You would like some cold juice? Neighbor, you would like some juice?” As she went through the door at the back, she said, “Is only my children who don’t come to look for me.”

  Roche smiled at the old woman. She smiled back and said nothing.

  Mrs. Stephens had made her declaration about her son. The rebuke and suspicion of her words lingered in the choked room, which was airless, even with the open casement window. There was nothing more to say; but Roche had committed himself now to the social call. The room depressed him and made him uneasy; he felt alien. On the pale-pink concrete wall there were framed photographs of some of Mrs. Stephens’ children. One young man was in an academic gown: it was like a photograph in a photographer’s window in London, with the photographer’s satire hidden from the sitter, who saw only the flattery. And those other faces: faces of the street, unremarkable in the street, and here, oddly, where they were honored, looking more vulnerable. So fragile this world, where the furniture, heavy and excessive, filled the room and yet seemed not to belong: it was easy to imagine the morris set absent, and the dining set; it was easy to have a sense of the house as a hollow, flimsy structure in a small patch of yellow dirt.

  The concrete walls were scratched, dusty plaster showing below pink distemper, with a shine of dirt at hip level; old putty had fallen out of the wooden partition that divided the tiny living room from the two bedrooms: dark caverns beyond half-open doors. On this partition was the Thrushcross Grange poster: I’m Nobody’s Slave or Stallion, I’m a Warrior and Torch Bearer—Haji James Ahmed. Roche’s nervousness grew. Fragile, fragile, this world, requiring endless tolerance, endless forbearance: the furniture, the poster, the photograph of the young man in the academic gown.

  The old woman, following Roche’s eye, said of the photograph of the young man in the academic gown, “That one is Lloyd. Madeleine’s first.” Her voice was pleasant and educated; she seemed better educated than Mrs. Stephens; and yet she spoke of Madeleine with respect and of Lloyd as a success. “He’s in England.” And having spoken, she smiled again, and nodded.

  Roche knew about this brother of Stephens’: the one who had got away to England before the barriers came down. England, Roche thought: it was so hard to get away from England here. And there were so many Englands: his, Jane’s, Jimmy’s, Lloyd’s, and the England—hard to imagine—in that old woman’s head.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Stephens said, coming back into the room with tumblers of grapefruit juice on a tin tray enameled with bright red apples. “Yes, Lloyd’s in London.” She worked through the furniture to Roche. “But Lloyd forget his mother.” She worked her way back to the dining table, dragging her feet and seeming to swing her hips. She held the tray to the old woman and said, “Neighbor?” She sat down and said, as if only to the room, “Yes, Lloyd forget everybody. I don’t know what the sweetness is up there that does make him behave like that.” But she soon made it clear that she knew: the trouble was Lloyd’s wife, the wife who had made him get out. “Yes, neighbor. I don’t grudge anybody. I used to have a man too and I know what it is to want to keep a man. But Hilda gone too far. Anybody would think I do Hilda something. Hilda don’t write me, you know. Hilda’s only writing is to her family. Still, I hear they have everything of the best, and Hilda doing two jobs and everything. Well, let them enjoy it. All that coming to an end soon. They will want to come back here. They will learn that the only people who have anything good for you is your own. The juice sweet enough for you, Mr. Roche? Or you would like some sugar?”

  “No, it’s all right, Mrs. Stephens.”

  “Yes, neighbor. I used to have a man too. Now I have to fend for myself. When Knolly was here I used to get a few cents, but since he get taken up with that Chinee man I don’t see one red cent from him. Mr. Roche, you must tell Knolly to come and look for his mother some time.”

  “I don’t go up there very often, Mrs. Stephens. I go up once or twice a month.”

  “Yes, neighbor. I know what it is to want to keep a man.”

  “Hilda is like that,” the old woman said. “That is Hilda’s background. Very common. Never-see-come-see. That is Hilda through and through.”

  “Yes, my dear. Two jobs, and everything of the best. But they will realize. The only people who have anything good for you is your own. What is the sweetness with that Chinee man, Mr. Roche? Who give him all that big fame in England? What he doing with those boys? Knolly was a good, good boy, don’t mind what people say.” She began, quite suddenly, to cry.

  The old woman said, “Neighbor.”

  Roche said, “Mrs. Stephens.”

  “That Chinee man,” Mrs. Stephens said. “I never like that Chinee man. But I am a supporter of this government, Mr. Roche. This government will never fall.”

  “Not while Israel lasts,” the old woman said, and shook her head up and down, smiling, at Roche.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Stephens said. “Israel is in her glory.”

  “Who ever thought the day would come, Madeleine?”

  Mrs. Stephens sighed. “Who ever thought the day would come?” She stood up and made a move, between the dining chair she had been sitting on and the back of the morris settee, to
ward Roche. “But you not drinking the juice, Mr. Roche. It is not to your liking? You would like some more ice?”

  He had been barely sipping, allowing the diluted grapefruit juice to trickle between his almost closed lips and rest without taste below his lower teeth. The tumbler in his hand felt cold and clammy; the hens below the floorboards clucked contentedly in the heat; and through the open window came the smell of dust and chicken dung. The leaves of the breadfruit tree in the next lot were a hard green. The dining table was stained and lackluster; yet Roche had known all the furniture in this room polished and shining.

  Mrs. Stephens said: “You would like some more ice?”

  He put the tumbler to his mouth and took two long gulps. The thin acrid taste of the grapefruit lingered in his mouth; and he swallowed and sucked, working the taste out.

  “Knolly was a good boy,” Mrs. Stephens said, sitting down. “When he was here I always used to see a few cents. I don’t know what kind of sweetness he find up by that Chinee man. I don’t know how he could believe that other people could look after him when they can’t even look after their own.”

  She was not concealing her hostility now. Her jaw jutted; her eyes were cold and small; she was speaking more quickly, putting an edge to her voice, and occasionally tripping over a word.

  The old woman said, “Madeleine.”

  Mrs. Stephens became calmer. “Yes. I too had a man. I too.”

  “Hilda is Hilda,” the old woman said. “But you mustn’t forget what Lloyd is.”

  “Everything of the best, my dear. That is the message Hilda send to me. You know what Knolly did with the first money he get? The first-first money? He went to town and he buy two bamboo vase stands and he put them up on the wall.”

  One was still there, in the corner: a little trapezoid shelf, edged with bamboo strips on which a pattern of diagonal lines had been burnt, braced into a diamond-shaped frame of bamboo strips decorated in the same way. The shelf was empty; little broken cobwebs hung from the dusty bamboo strips. To a child the vase stand must have seemed pretty: it was something about Stephens Roche had never known, though he knew this room well. It was something about himself that Stephens had suppressed.

  “Lloyd was born in the days of bondage,” Mrs. Stephens said. “When Knolly born black people was ruling here. Nobody bringing back plantation days, you hear me. Not you or Sablich’s or that Chinee man.”

  So far, in her bare, intermittent courtesies to himself and the contrasting gravity of her gossipy manner with the old woman, in her deliberateness, Roche had seen only hostility. Now he saw that Mrs. Stephens was distracted with grief; and this unsettled him more. In her speech, which now seemed to him disordered, he thought he was getting glimpses of a personality and a world that were as alien and shut-in as that choked little room.

  He looked at her with something like a smile, to show that he understood, that he was willing to draw her hostility. But as he smiled her rage grew; and he began to be alarmed.

  “People have to look after their own,” Mrs. Stephens said.

  It was one of the ideas she was playing with, one strand of her anguish that seemed constantly to knot and unknot itself. Roche continued to smile. But the old woman, as though knowing better than Roche what was to follow, said, “Madeleine, Madeleine.”

  “Rotten meat,” Mrs. Stephens said.

  He could guess the sexual significance of the words. But he wasn’t prepared for the contempt, the contempt of women for women, the contempt which, in that room, from Mrs. Stephens, was like a contempt for her own body and the body of her neighbor, slack, swollen, worn out. The grapefruit taste in Roche’s mouth went bitter; he associated it with the smell of the chicken dung and dust that came through the window; and the saliva thickened nauseously on his tongue.

  “That is what they feed up that Chinee man on in England. That is the only sweetness he know. That is what they feed him up on and then they send him down here. Parading through the town with their tight pants sticking up in their crutch. They stink, Mr. Roche. They stink like rotten meat self.”

  He laughed, and his lips rode up above his long molars. He laughed at the violence of her language, he thought it was expected of him. But she became enraged, and she held his eyes until he acknowledged her rage. His lips fell back over his teeth; his smile became fixed again.

  “I will tell you this, Mr. Roche,” Mrs. Stephens said, leaning forward. “White women marry their own. But they like the Negro men.”

  The old woman nodded, smiling at Roche. She smoothed her dress over her legs, worked her lips over her teeth and said softly, as though stating a well-known fact, “But they marry their own.”

  “I will take the glass from you, Mr. Roche,” Mrs. Stephens said, getting up and moving again between her chair and the morris settee.

  He surrendered the wet tumbler, noting as he did so the small flowered pattern on Mrs. Stephens’ dress, the dirtiness on the stomach and the breasts. His right hand was wet and sticky; the smell of chicken dung was strong in his nostrils. When Mrs. Stephens took the tumbler and put it on the enameled tray on the dining table he began to study the gown Lloyd was wearing in the photograph.

  “But is black people fault if they allow themselves to be fooled,” Mrs. Stephens said. “But those days finishing fast now. Lloyd was born in the days of bondage. When Knolly was born, Israel was in her glory. Knolly born knowing that. He born knowing that after Israel it was the turn of Africa. No matter what anybody say or do.”

  “Israel first,” the old woman said, again as though confirming a well-known fact.

  Roche stood up.

  Mrs. Stephens said, “You going, Mr. Roche?” She was looking older than when he had come; the rings below her eyes had grown darker; she looked more suffering, exhausted.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have to be getting back to the office.”

  He began to move toward the frosted-glass door. Heavily, she got up from the chair and followed him. He opened the rickety door himself: the light outside was an assault.

  “When you see Knolly, Mr. Roche,” Mrs. Stephens said, “you must tell him to come and look for his mother some time.”

  She held the door open while he went down the red concrete steps. She didn’t look at him; her eyes searched the sky and the hillside in an unseeing way. When, from the dirt road, he turned to wave at her he found that she had closed the door again.

  The sun beat on his temples; his shirt burned. The dust was thick; he fancied it was penetrating through his socks to his ankles. The bitter saliva thickened nauseously at the back of his mouth. He worked his tongue and cheeks and spat, stickily, into the dust and watched the spit roll into a dust-coated ball. His stomach heaved; the smell of the chicken dung and the tainted dust caught in his nostrils, and he clenched his teeth; but he spat again. He walked briskly downhill, careless of dust and rubble and litter. Two blocks away he saw the black doorway of the bar: he knew that, from there, he was being observed. The boy who had asked him for money was sitting on the steps of the house opposite the car. The boy stayed where he was and stared.

  The handle of the car door was hot; and the car, when he sat inside, was suffocating. The seat burned; his mouth again filled with sticky saliva; he felt dust had settled on his face and hands and even below his shirt. He drove carefully, around the obstructions of parked cars and trucks, past the blocked gutters with wrinkled films of white scum. The car cooled down; he began to sweat less.

  At last he turned into a broader street, shaded by old samaan trees that grew out of the wide pavement. This was the boundary of the area of small houses and twisting lanes. The houses were bigger here, and many had been turned into offices or commercial colleges. The air was lighter: this street led to the main park. And it was here, some way from the park, in the thin shade of a samaan tree, and against a long white concrete wall hung with a vine known as the bleeding heart—heart-shaped leaves, browned by the drought, heart-shaped flowers the color of blood—it was here that Roc
he saw two men squatting on the pavement. Not far away, on the left-hand side of the street, an old black car was parked close to the pavement, with its two left-hand doors open over the pavement. Two men were in this car, one in the back, one in the front, both facing the pavement. The man in the back, with one foot in the car and one on the pavement, had a thick, well-trimmed mustache.

  Roche thought: Stephens is in real trouble.

  ABOUT FIFTEEN minutes later he was in the parking lot of Sablich’s in the center of the city. The elderly mulatto watchman, seated as always in his Windsor chair, smiled at him and, little pipe in his mouth, heavy baton over his thighs, half rose to greet him. The watchman was tall and heavy, with a round face that was too small for his body; his pale brown skin was extraordinarily smooth. He was near retirement, and looked more like a ticket-collector than a watchman. Roche saw the watchman smile, saw him make the effort to rise. But he ignored the watchman; he walked past without looking at him; and he saw the smile turn to a look of surprise.

  Upstairs, in the corridor outside his office, he washed his hands in the antique wash basin; the water ran black. It was cool in the office. The jalousies were sealed; the hum of the air conditioners masked the street noises; the afternoon light, coming through strips of glass painted green and falling on the dark oiled floor and pale-green wooden partitions, gave the room a soft green glow.

  His sweated shirt dried; he could feel salt and dust adhering to his neck and face. He thought of telephoning Jimmy Ahmed; but he changed his mind. He had telephoned Jimmy before, to find out about Stephens, and Jimmy had been offhand. It was never good, with Jimmy, to be the one who had to get in touch; it was always better to let him make the first move; Jimmy played that little power game.

  It was Friday. The day’s work was almost over, and the week’s; and people were beginning to stand around desks in relaxed groups, some of the men with their office towels over their shoulders. He went to the washroom and stripped for a wash: there would be no water on the Ridge until the evening. The washroom was in a renovated part of the building and was not air-conditioned. The concrete walls were white, the windows open; the light dazzled. His face burned again, and he could hear the din of the street. He could hear especially, above the cars, trucks and bicycle bells, the chant of the blind beggar, a youngish man whose legs had been cut off below the hips, who every Friday came to this part of the city. “Help de poor! Help de blind! I am very grateful. Help de blind! Help de poor! I am very t’ankful.” A lusty voice, and the chant never stopped: it was a performance, it had a theatrical, even comic, quality. The beggar knew he was famous.