The Writer and the World: Essays

by V. S. Naipaul

  At six in the morning Malik woke Parmassar. Parmassar woke Chadee, sleeping beside him on the cushions. And then Malik sent Parmassar across the road to get Abbott, to tell him that the time had come to start digging the hole for Benson. Parmassar didn’t have to wake Abbott: Abbott hadn’t slept, and was still in his clothes.

  They were all up now. Chadee saw Steve Yeates and Kidogo come out of Kidogo’s room. Yeates called Chadee out into the yard, and Chadee sat outside against the kitchen of the main house. Kidogo and Parmassar (reappearing) went “to the back” and began to collect tools: a spade, a fork, two shovels, a cutlass and a file. They asked Chadee to help. He took the two shovels. Parmassar had the fork and the spade; Kidogo had the cutlass and the file. Abbott was waiting outside the gate. They passed the tools to him, climbed over the gate and walked down the road to the dead end, two hundred feet away from the house, on waste ground above the ravine.

  Not long afterwards Malik reversed his Humber car to where the four men were—Abbott, Kidogo, Parmassar and Chadee—and showed them where the hole was to be dug. It was beside a manure heap; Chadee saw “a lot of bamboo poles around the manure.” Malik asked Kidogo for the time. Kidogo said it was six-twenty, and Malik said again that they had forty-five minutes to dig the hole. Malik himself wasn’t going to be present while anything happened. As he had said the previous evening, he was going to take Jamal out for a drive, to keep Jamal out of the way. And it was only now—sitting in his car—that he gave his final orders. Not to all of them, but only to Abbott. He called Abbott over to the car.

  Abbott went and said, “Oh, God, Michael, you don’t have to do this. Spare the woman.” Malik said he didn’t want to hear any more of “that old talk from last night.” “He sat behind the wheel pulling his beard and watching me. He told me that Steve Yeates would drive up in the jeep; he will bring the woman Halé out. I was to tell her when she saw the hole, if she got suspicious, that it was for stuff to be decomposed, or words to that effect. He told me I was to grab that woman and take her into the hole. When I had her I was to tell her what the hole was for: to tell her it was for Jamal.” As for the killing itself, that was to be done by Kidogo. “He told me Kidogo had his orders. He said that if I did anything to endanger the safety of the men around that hole, or his family or himself, by not obeying, I would die. What he was telling me was I would die that morning with the knowledge that my mother would be dead also, because that was where he was heading with Jamal.” Abbott prepared to obey. “He also told me, as I was walking off, to remind Kidogo that the heart is on the left side. He wants the heart.”

  Malik drove away, and Abbott passed on his instructions: Kidogo was to do the killing, and Kidogo had to remember that the heart was below the left breast. The four men began to dig furiously. Kidogo was in charge, and he told them to burn themselves up, one man digging at a time, as hard and as fast as he could, until he could dig no more. Chadee, the salesman, suffered; Abbott helped him. It was Abbott, in fact, in his particular frenzy, who did most of the digging. When they had been digging for some time, Steve Yeates came with the jeep. He was about to take Benson to the farm, and he wanted a watch. Chadee lent him his; and Kidogo and Steve Yeates synchronized the watches before Steve Yeates left.

  When the hole, which was about four feet square, was four feet deep, Kidogo said they had dug enough. Kidogo rested. He gave his cutlass to the boy Parmassar and asked Parmassar to sharpen it. Parmassar sharpened the cutlass and gave it back to Kidogo.

  At seven-fifteen the jeep came reversing down the road. Steve Yeates was driving, and Benson was with him. The jeep stopped; Yeates got out and told Benson to come out, too, and see how hard the boys had been working. She got out of the jeep. She was in a light African-style gown; the boy Parmassar remembered that it had short sleeves. She said, “Good morning,” and the men around the hole said, “Good morning.”

  Abbott said, “Come and see what we are doing.” She walked nearer the hole. She said, “What is it for?” Abbott said, “It is to put fresh matter to be decomposed. Come and look. Do you like it?” She said, “Yes. But why?” Abbott didn’t say, “It is for Jamal.” He forgot that. He said, “It is for you.” He held his right hand over her mouth, twisted her left hand behind her with his left hand, and jumped with her into the shallow hole. Kidogo jumped in at once with his sharpened cutlass and began to use it on her, cutting through the African gown, aiming at the heart. She fought back hard; she kicked. She called out to Steve Yeates, “Steve, Steve, what have I done to deserve this?” He remained leaning against the jeep, watching.

  And Kidogo, after all, didn’t know how to use a cutlass to kill. He just slashed and stabbed, inflicting superficial cuts; and Benson was asking him why, speaking “intimately” to him, as it sounded to Abbott, who was struggling to hold the frantic woman. Abbott’s own thoughts were far away. He was thinking of his mother: she would ask Malik and Jamal in, when they got to the house in Montrose Village, and they just had to tell her that he, Abbott, was ill, and she would get into Malik’s car and be brought to Arima. Kidogo was still using the cutlass on Benson. He was like a madman, and with the three of them in that small hole Abbott began to fear that he might himself be killed. In his panic and confusion he called out, stupidly, “Somebody help! Somebody do something!” And when Chadee looked he saw a great cut on the left elbow Benson had raised to protect herself against Kidogo’s cutlass. It was her first serious wound.

  Steve Yeates, still beside the jeep, looked at Chadee and at Parmassar. Then he went to the hole and took away the cutlass from Kidogo. There were now four of them in the hole. But Yeates didn’t need much room. With his left hand he placed the sharpened point of the cutlass at the base of Benson’s throat; with his right hand he hit the haft hard. It was a simple, lucid action, the most lucid since Abbott had taken Benson into the hole; but of all the men there Yeates was the one with the purest hate. The broad blade went in six inches, and Benson made a gurgling noise. She fell and began to “beat about” in the hole. Yeates and Kidogo and Abbott got out of the hole. It would have been about seven-thirty.

  Kidogo called, “Cover!” Benson’s feet were still beating about. Chadee began to pull manure from the manure heap into the hole. Yeates, lucid as ever, stopped Chadee. It would look strange if the manure heap was disturbed, he said. Better to go to the farm and get a fresh load. He and Yeates went in the jeep. When they came back they found Benson already buried in her hole, and they dumped the manure to one side.

  They all went back then to the Malik house. Chadee went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Yeates parked the jeep. Kidogo cleaned his cutlass. Parmassar and Abbott sat side by side on the kitchen steps.

  The telephone in the kitchen rang. It didn’t awaken Malik’s wife or children. Chadee answered the phone. It was Malik, telephoning from Abbott’s mother’s house. Was everything all right? Malik asked. Chadee said yes. When Yeates, coming in just then, asked about the telephone, and Chadee told him, Yeates “blew”—he gave, that is, a sigh of relief. It was eight o’clock.

  At half-past eight Malik came back with Jamal. Malik said, “Is the tree planted?” Agriculture, the commune, the life of labour: Malik always had his own coded way with language. Abbott wasn’t sure if anyone answered. Malik asked how deep the hole was, and everyone gave a different depth. He said they should put on a couple of loads of manure.

  Agricultural conversation: that was all that Jamal could say he had heard, after his morning’s drive to Abbott’s mother’s house, and his cup of coffee with the old lady. Because it had apparently been decided that Jamal should be involved in no way. Jamal had to see nothing and hear nothing; and had to be able to say that Benson had just gone away, taking her things. That remained to be done: getting rid of Benson’s things. And Jamal was not to see; and the two English visitors at the commune were not to see or suspect; and Malik’s wife and two daughters, and Malik’s secretarial assistant, who was coming in that morning. Everyone had to see only anoth
er busy commune day.

  It had been planned in detail. There were seven men in all (leaving out the English visitor), and their movements that morning and afternoon had been plotted in advance. Malik, after that agricultural conversation, announced a commune building job. They were going to Parmassar’s mother’s house, to help the poor lady rebuild her kitchen. It wasn’t far away. Abbott, Kidogo, Chadee, Yeates and Parmassar himself were sent ahead in the jeep. Malik and Jamal came later. They broke down the old kitchen and sketched out a plan for the new one. But they didn’t have cement and sand. Malik sent Chadee and Kidogo in the jeep back to Christina Gardens, to get sand and a bag of cement from his yard—it was a day of movement like this, movement and camouflage.

  When they got to Malik’s yard, Kidogo disappeared, leaving Chadee to load the cement and sand by himself. Chadee loaded up, and looked for Kidogo. He couldn’t find him. It was one of Malik’s daughters who told Chadee that Kidogo was in Jamal’s house across the road. Chadee went to the house—where less than twenty-four hours before he had wished Benson a happy new year—and found Kidogo in Jamal’s and Benson’s bedroom.

  Kidogo—doing his job—was packing Benson’s clothes and papers. He had already packed one bag and wrapped it in cloth; he was packing a second. He told Chadee to bring the jeep round. When Chadee went to Malik’s yard to get the jeep, he had a little fright. Malik’s secretarial assistant asked for a lift to the Arima taxi stand. Chadee explained about the sand and cement and said he would send Steve Yeates to give her a lift; and the girl didn’t insist. He took the jeep round to Jamal’s and Kidogo threw in the bags with Benson’s things.

  Malik was waiting for them at Parmassar’s mother’s house. Chadee reversed the jeep right into the yard, and Malik and Kidogo took the bags and put them in the boot of Malik’s car. The sand and cement were unloaded, and concrete was mixed for the new kitchen. Parmassar’s mother and sisters had prepared lunch for the working party. But Chadee didn’t eat; he just had some fruit juice. When he came out of the house after the lunch he saw that somebody had put some dry wood in the jeep. And then Malik and Yeates took the bags with Benson’s things from the boot of Malik’s car and put them back in the jeep.

  Chadee, Abbott and Kidogo were told to go in the jeep with Yeates. As they drove off, Yeates said they were going “up the river” to burn Benson’s clothes. They stopped at a filling station in Arima and bought some kerosene, and they drove eight miles to Guanapo Heights, beside the Guanapo River. Yeates left the three men there, with the wood and kerosene and the bags. And he gave them a message from Malik: they were to keep the fire burning, because in an hour’s time Malik and his children were coming to the river to bathe.

  Chadee stood guard while Abbott and Kidogo got a fire going on the riverbank with the wood and the kerosene. They burned Benson’s clothes and papers piece by piece. Certain things couldn’t be burned. Chadee buried these a short distance away, digging a hole two feet deep. There was less of a rush now than in the morning, and the digging came more easily to him. Kidogo and Abbott left Chadee for a while; and Chadee, doing as he had been told, looked for more wood and kept the fire going. When Kidogo and Abbott came back they were carrying fruit in one of the bags into which Benson’s things had been stuffed earlier: it was an extra precautionary touch.

  Shortly afterwards, keeping strict time, Steve Yeates drove up with the jeep, and he had brought a whole party: Malik, Malik’s two daughters, Jamal, and the young Englishman who was a guest in the commune. They all bathed in the river, and then they warmed themselves at the fire. No one asked about the fire. Malik didn’t ask Abbott or Kidogo or Chadee any questions.

  Blood in the morning, fire in the afternoon. But to an observer who wasn’t looking for special clues, to someone on the outside seeing only the busyness with car and jeep and sand and cement, it would only have been a good commune day: constructive work in the morning, and then a bathing party in a tropical wood.

  That bathing party, with the fire on the riverbank: it was the crowning conception of an intricate day. Like an episode in a dense novel, it served many purposes and had many meanings. And it had been devised by a man who was writing a novel about himself, settling accounts with the world, filling pages of the cheap writing pad and counting the precious words as he wrote, anxious for world fame (including literary fame): a man led to lunacy by all the ideas he had been given of who he was, and now, in the exile of Arima, under the influence of Jamal, with an illusion of achieved power. Malik had no skills as a novelist, not even an elementary gift of language. He was too self-absorbed to process experience in any rational way or even to construct a connected narrative. But when he transferred his fantasy to real life, he went to work like the kind of novelist he would have liked to be.

  Such plotting, such symbolism! The blood of the calf at Christmas time, the blood of Gale Benson in the new year. And then, at the end of the sacrificial day, the cleansing in the river, with Benson’s surrogate pyre on the bank. So many other details: so many things had had to be worked out. Neither Chadee nor Abbott (with their special anxieties) had been left alone for any length of time during the day; both men had always been under the eye of Kidogo or Steve Yeates. And Jamal had always been sheltered. He had been at Abbott’s mother’s house while Benson was being killed and buried; and he had been at Parmassar’s mother’s house, helping with the kitchen, when Kidogo was clearing away Benson’s clothes and papers from the bedroom that had been hers and Jamal’s.

  It had been thought out over many weeks. And it worked. Benson had always been withdrawn, and now she was not missed. For a fortnight or more everybody in the two houses at Christina Gardens stayed together. The two English visitors remained, the woman Simmonds continuing in her “total involvement” with Steve Yeates; towards the end there was even some talk of a restaurant that she and Yeates might run together.

  Chadee didn’t go home. On the evening of the murder Malik told him that he and Parmassar, the two Indians in the group, had become “members for life”; and that night, after he had gone with Steve Yeates to fetch his clothes, Chadee slept again in the bedroom of the servants’ quarters in Malik’s house. Later he was given a room in Jamal’s house, and he began to mow the lawn and do other yard jobs.

  But then the commune Christmas party began to break up. The two English visitors went away. And—eighteen days after the murder—Jamal and Kidogo went away, back to Boston. Jamal acknowledged Malik as the master, and Malik thought of himself as the master. But Malik had grown to need Jamal more than he knew. Without Jamal’s own lunacy, his exaltation, his way with words, his vision of the master, Malik’s fantasies of power grew wilder and unfocused, without art, the rages of a gangster. He thought of kidnapping the wife of a bank manager; he ordered Abbott to plan the “liquidation” of a family. And then, for no reason except that of blood, and because he was now used to the idea of killing with a cutlass, he killed Joseph Skerritt.

  It was the murder of Skerritt that finally unhinged Steve Yeates, “Muhammed Akbar,” Supreme Captain of the Fruit of Islam. Yeates dealt in racial hate; he was pure in his hate; and he couldn’t understand why Skerritt had been killed. Every time he looked through his window he saw Skerritt’s grave; and the fast that Malik ordered after the killing of Skerritt didn’t help. They were all weakened and perhaps made a little light-headed by four days of fasting when they went on the excursion to the dangerous bay of Sans Souci; and Yeates, when he got into trouble with the strong currents, seemed at a certain moment to have decided not to listen to the shouts of people anxious to save him, not to struggle, to surrender. Abbott thought that Yeates drowned himself; and Abbott thought that before he went down Yeates gave a final wave with his left hand.

  That was the beginning of the end of the commune. Blood didn’t keep them together for long. Abbott helped Chadee and Parmassar to escape; Abbott himself went to Tobago; Malik went to Guyana, and the house in Christina Gardens burned down.

  Fifty-five days after th
e killing of Benson, Chadee took a police inspector to Guanapo Heights and showed where he had buried those things of Benson’s that couldn’t be burned. This was the police inventory, which Chadee certified:

  One brown leather sleeveless jacket; one brown leather hippy bag; one pair of lady’s pink mod boots; one pair of brown shoes; one pair of brown slippers; three silver bracelets; one empty small bottle; one tube Avon Rose-mint cream; one tube of Tangee cream; one small circular face mirror; a quantity of black wool; two hippy pendants; one tin containing Flapyl tablets; one small scissors; one plastic rule; one triangular key holder; one empty Limacol bottle; one brown small tablespoon; one Liberation of Jerusalem medallion with 7.6.1967 stamped thereon; one brown belt with a buckle made in the form of a heart; one damaged grey suitcase; one large scissors; one blue ballpoint pen; one damaged brown suitcase; one silver ring with the Star of David; and one gold ring with two stones.

  Malik appealed many times against the death sentence. And it was only when legal arguments were exhausted, and the appeal was on the grounds of cruelty—on the grounds that, after the long delay, the carrying out of the death sentence would be an act of cruelty—it was only then that the point was made that Malik was mad. The point, if it had been made at the beginning, might have saved Malik’s life. But, for too many people in London and elsewhere, Malik had embodied, at one and the same time, the vicious black man and the good black cause. A plea of insanity would have made nonsense of a whole school of theatre; and among the people abroad who supported Malik there were those who continued to see his conviction for murder as an act of racial and political persecution. So Malik played out to the end the role that had been given him.

  He was hanged in the Royal Gaol in central Port of Spain in May 1975, three years and four months after the killing of Benson. His wife sat in a square nearby. There was a small silent crowd with her in the square, waiting for the sound of the trapdoor at eight, hanging time. The body of the hanged man was taken in a coffin to the Golden Grove Prison, not far from Arima; and there barebacked prisoners in shorts carried the coffin to its grave in the prison grounds.