Sir Vidia's Shadow (22 page)

Vidia and I took the train late in the morning from Paddington. I did not mention
The Mimic Men
. Passing through Uxbridge I saw, clearly lettered on a brick embankment by a bridge, the sign
Keep Britain White
.

Vidia smiled at it. He said, “Have I told you my joke? I would put a comma after ‘Britain.'”

It was my first experience of British Rail. I was reassured in the big warm bosom of this friendly monster, sitting on a cushion in a corner seat, watching Berkshire go by, and the lovely fields, still green in an English winter, and the solid houses and the clumps of woods that bordered meadowland. I had not realized how disoriented I had been in black, labyrinthine London until I saw the open countryside. English people in Africa boasted of everything, but I had never heard any of them boast of the beauty of these green fields and pretty hills and indestructible-looking villages. They never spoke about such things.

I mentioned this to Vidia.

“Because they're infies,” he said.

A little later, I said, “You must have done this many times, taken this train.”

“Oh, God.”

I was asking about
The Mimic Men
but without saying so. He gave nothing away, he seldom reminisced, but he set great store by faces—how much they told; and by expressions—what a grimace revealed. So I knew that his experiences on this London-to-Oxford line had been painful and possibly bitter. He often spoke of poverty, of the misery of having no money. His version of his past was one of turmoil and deprivation. He looked back all the time, as his writing showed, but he did not talk about it.

For lunch we both had cheese sandwiches in the buffet car. I knew that Vidia ate fish. But to me, at that time, a vegetarian was someone who ate nothing but cheese sandwiches.

Traveling on this train, reading newspapers, was so pleasant I would not have minded going farther. My only other real experiences of trains were the overnighter to Nairobi and the Mombasa express and the gasping steam locomotives of Malawi and Rhodesia. The train soothed and comforted me and stimulated my imagination. It offered me a glimpse of the best of England and provided access to my past by activating my memory. I had made a discovery: I would gladly go anywhere on a train.

Oxford was soon outside the window, first a platform, then a sign, finally the place itself: gray stone buildings, devotional in their contours, a wilderness of churches and cloisters, a town of ecclesiastical stone. There were more walls than steeples and spires, and many narrow streets, every stone seemingly chiseled with a coded message which, when translated, read
No Trespassing
.

Before we left the station, Vidia went to the timetable on the wall and made a note of the times of the later trains to London. It seemed a wise thing to do. I never would have thought of the precaution—another lesson from Vidia in the importance of having an escape route. Once again I felt like a beginner, but I had Vidia to show me the way.

Leaving the station, I stuffed the newspapers I had read into a barrel. -

“Why did you buy three newspapers?” Vidia asked.

“I don't know,” I said, because I sensed he disapproved. One had been the
Daily Mirror
.

“Most of the English press is such rubbish.”

But I had felt starved for news in Uganda. Although we got the English Sunday papers, always late, news in Uganda was by word of mouth, rumor and speculation, just whispers. The
Argus
was timid, and the government paper,
The People
, was a mouthpiece. I was stimulated by English papers, the freshness, the frankness, the humor. But what was new to me was stale to Vidia.

We walked up High Street.

“This dampness,” Vidia said. “When I was here I had such terrible asthma that I lay on my bed and Patsy held me—held me in her arms—and warmed me so that I could breathe.”

University College—Shiva's college, and it had also been Vidia's—was in High Street, with a large gateway, like the entrance to a cloister. A small window, like that in a tollbooth, framed the ugly face of an older man dressed in black. He stepped into the walkway, scowling, looking cruel.

“Hello, Mr. Naipaul. What brings you 'ere, then?”

It was a thick country accent, sure of itself, and its confidence and strength made the man seem more like a prison guard than a porter.

“Looking for my brother,” Vidia said.

Vidia seem somewhat uneasy; it was the way the man faced him. Vidia needed servants and flunkies to be more humble and respectful than this.

'"Aven't seen 'im at all. They've been told to sign the book, but I don't suppose he takes a blind bit of notice of what the master says.”

“No. One imagines not. He's not in his room?”

“Your brother, Mr. Naipaul? He left 'is key. Wasn't 'ere yesterday, neither.”

“Very well. We will leave a note for him.”

Vidia wrote the note while the porter stood with his arms folded.

“You can put it in my brother's mailbox.”

“If 'e fucking looks in 'is mailbox, which I doubt.” The porter handled the note as if it were something of no value. “So, 'ow 'ave you been keeping?”

“Yes, quite well, um, latterly, one has been very busy, thank you.”

I had not imagined it: Vidia was uneasy in the presence of this domineering servant. It was as though they had no language in common, which was perhaps actually the case. It was one of the strangest conversations ever—the rough, unapologetic, cursing servant who was in charge, and the oblique, inquiring master at his mercy.

“I shall hand this to your brother personally.”

“Yes. So good of you.”

The telephone jangled in the tollbooth.

“You will excuse me, gentlemen.” The porter stepped inside and shouted into the phone.

Vidia showed me the quad, the buildings, the spire, and in one anteroom a bright white marble statue of Percy Bysshe Shelley, once a resident of University College. The porter was still on the telephone when we left.

Passing Blackwell's Bookshop on Broad Street, I expressed an interest in browsing and we went in. Vidia waited and looked at books, all the while giving off a signal that indicated that I should hurry up. Vidia's impatience was a vibration that was almost audible, a distinct high-pitched whine. I saw some first editions of Hemingway and Orwell.

“How much is this?” I showed him the Orwell.

“Twelve shillings. You don't want that.”

We left the bookstore and soon passed a round tower.

“The Bodleian,” Vidia said.

After a short walk we entered the gateway of another college, with paler, taller spires set beside a wide meadow.

“Where are we?”

“Christ Church.”

Places like this reminded me that I was in many respects an African. I needed a simpler and less demanding world. I was at my happiest in the bush. And it was not merely that the orderly and ancient buildings overwhelmed me; the students also seemed aloof and proprietorial. They were much younger than me, and they looked right at home here. I knew I did not belong, that I would never belong.

Back on High Street, we walked as far as Magdalen Bridge and into Magdalen College itself—more cloisters, another quad, buildings like monasteries. Being a student here seemed to me like my being an actor in a pageant in which I did not know any of my lines, one of those terrible dreams.

I said, “I wonder what happened to Shiva.”

Vidia said, “Seewyn's problem is that he was raised by women, who adored him. So he takes no responsibility.”

We went to the Ashmolean Museum. As he had done at the National Gallery, the Tate, and the V and A, Vidia made a beeline for certain rooms, for specific paintings, for particular details in those paintings, none of them obvious. He darted to a Watteau, a Whistler, a Hilliard miniature, and always indicated the tiniest features. “Look at this,” and “See how he handles paint.”

I looked for anything of Africa—a mask, a spear, a landscape, anything of the bush. I realized how Ugandans must feel, stuck in Oxford or London after leaving the vast, deep savannah or the slopes of the Mountains of the Moon. And then I saw a painting that reassured me.

It might have been done in Fort Portal or Mubende, with big generous trees and tall elephant grass and flat-topped fever thorns in the distance. There were small figures at the side, some animals—gazelles, impalas, no big game—and rich colors and flowers in the foreground. I did not recognize the artist's name. I liked this wide green canvas and the accuracy of the view and the easily identifiable plants, the precise leaves, the blossoms, and the dome of sky. Even the scraps of cloud looked right.

I did not call Vidia's attention to it. I was afraid he might disapprove and spoil a moment that had cheered me. It was not his Africa. My reaction to this painting made me think I should leave England soon. Vidia walked quickly over to me and frowned at the picture.

To distract him I said, “Maybe we should go past Shiva's college one more time, to see whether he's come back.”

“No, no.” Vidia turned away from the picture. “He's on his own now.”

I noticed that he was wearing the heavy shoes he called
veldshoen
. He had been wearing them that night in Kisenyi, by the shore of Lake Kivu, when he had said, “What that dog needs is a good kick.”

On the way back to London on the train, Vidia said, “I wonder whether any of my books will last?”

I said that I thought A
House for Mr. Biswas
was a masterpiece that would last as long as people read books.

“You're so kind,” he said. He seemed to consider the word “masterpiece.” Then he said, “One hopes so. It's a big book.”

We talked about the book. Vidia said that although he had never reread it, he had put everything into it—his family, his island, everything he knew. Even small things in the book pleased him. He smiled at a memory.

“There are three Negro workmen in the book—just simple fellows, with shovels. Do you remember them? They only have first names, Edgar, Sam, and George.”

“They work on Biswas's house.”

“Yes, yes.” But he was already laughing. “Edgar Mittelholzer, Samuel Selvon, and George Lamming,” he said, naming three black novelists from Trinidad.

He almost gagged laughing at this private joke, but after a while, still talking about the novel, we discussed Mr. Biswas's views on typefaces. Vidia became animated again. With his mouth close to the window of the train, he exhaled on the glass.

“This is Times.” He sketched a letter with his finger, then added embellishments and more letters. “This is sans serif. And this”—he was still adding letters to the steam-clouded glass—“is Bodoni. I like this.”

He was intent, still sketching with his finger, still describing.

I said, “Sometimes they put that information on the last page of a book. I never know what to make of it.”

“I love it,” he said.

“And this,” he said, working his finger on the window, “this is Caslon. Notice the difference?”

The letters seemed to fade. But no, they remained on the glass. As soon as we got near London they were lit again by the city's lights, all those different letters.

 

The day before I left, there were workmen in Vidia's house. They were hammering in his bedroom, fixing some shelves that Vidia considered badly built. It was a Saturday. I called Heather and asked if we could meet. She said yes but suggested a pub, not her apartment. She knew I was leaving. At the pub, she complained that I cared more about Vidia than about her.

“He's my friend,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

Seeing I had hurt her, I said, “You're my friend too, of course you are.”

I could not explain how Vidia mattered, and how his friendship was different from anyone else's. I knew he loved Shiva, but he seemed to depend on me so much more than he did on his brother, and he knew more about my writing ambition than I had ever dared tell my own family.

Heather and I went on drinking. We did not make love that day. The omission made it more final a farewell.

Vidia looked grief-stricken when I got back that night. Pat was on the parlor sofa. He was sitting in his armchair, an expression of sorrow on his face, but when he began to speak to her, he sounded like a small child who had been wronged.

“I can't sleep in that bed,” he said. “It's tainted. Why did he do it? The foolish, ignorant man!”

He was disgusted and near to tears.

“What happened?” I asked.

“One of the workmen in Vidia's bedroom was explaining something,” Pat began. But she seemed too frightened to continue.

His face twisted in nausea, Vidia said, “And he sat on my bed, Patsy. He put his bottom on my bed.”

The next morning, Vidia was still seated in his armchair in the parlor. He looked grim. Fatigue made his skin grayish. He had not slept. It would be a long day, and I could not begin to comprehend how the bed that the workman had tainted by sitting on it would ever be purified. Violation by a workman's bottom was one of those problems that were unique to Vidia. Only he understood the problem, and so only he had the solution.

He looked weary. He said he was sorry I was leaving, and he meant it—he looked as though he needed to be propped up. Pat was fretful and weepy, but I could not tell whether my departure was the cause.

As always, Vidia said, “You're going to be all right.”

7

V
IDIA CLAIMED
that handwriting spoke volumes. Even if you could not read the words, the way they were written, just the loops and slants and how a
t
was crossed, told you what you needed to know. He had taught me to read the moods in his handwriting, for which he always used a fountain pen and black ink. Large and loopy meant he was idle and calm, regular squiggles indicated concentration, small meant anxious, tiny meant fearful and overworked, and at its most minuscule he was at his wits' end. It was perhaps some consolation that, graphologically inclined, he knew what his own handwriting told him.