So what’s “the takeaway”, as US newsmen like to ask, after the passing of the
British (born in Trinidad) author V.S. Naipaul.
You mean the ‘Indian bloke’ who lived in Wiltshire, England for umpteen years?
with his second wife, a cat named August and a British way with words? Finally,
accommodation.
Many consider A House For Mr. Biswas his masterpiece. It came long before
thoughts of the author’s greatness took to the air like balloons. Set side by side
Tolstoy’s War And Peace or America’s Moby Dick, it marks the stellar
achievement of a region and a century and a man.
Followers from the days of book reading have saluted the prose master’s life
investment: this is how some men seized their independence inside colonial
boundaries, testing courage, risking home approval.
His fiction, the long and short pieces, set in the region, their value yet to expire,
contain the only conversations that really matter to the islands.
The Mr. Speakers in The House, quick to feel and deal offence, might want to
look again at his insights and descriptions. Our view pointers settling for word
bloated columns could take a cue or two from his unsentimental precisions.
Here then ‒ from the man who helped us think about how we lived! the Knight
surveyor of our darkness! ‒ 13 extracts from V.S. Naipaul’s start-up stories.
What he was he was.
________________________________________
[from The Suffrage of Elvira: Penguin Books, England, 1969]
* Elvira was stirring before dawn. A fine low mist lay over the hills, promising
a hot thundery day. As the darkness waned the mist lifted, copying the
contours of the land, and thinned, layer by layer. Every tree was distinct.
Soon the sun would be out, the mist would go, the trees would become an
opaque green tangle, and polling would begin.
* Ramlogan was striding ahead, flinging out his legs, shaking and jellying from
his shoulders to his knees.
* Foam said, “Is those Witnesses. They can’t touch nobody else, so they come
to meddle with the poor Spanish people in Cordoba. Telling them not to vote,
to go against the government. Who ever see white woman riding around on
red red bicycle before, giving out green books?”
* To get the van into the yard they had to pull down part of the rotting wooden
fence and build a bridge over the gutter. Some poorer people and their
children came to watch. Baksh and Foam stopped talking; frowned and
concentrated and spat, as though the van was just a big bother. And though
it wasn’t strictly necessary then, they put up the loudspeaker on the van.
* “Herbert,” Mrs. Baksh said. “You mustn’t tell your father he lie. What you
must say?”
“I must say he tell stories,” Herbert said submissively. But he perked up, and
a faint mocking smile – which made him look a bit like Foam – came to his
lips.
“No, Herbert, you mustn’t even say that your father does tell stories.”
“You mean I mustn’t say anything, Ma?”
“No, son, you mustn’t say anything.”
* “How Hari?” Baksh asked. “He write yet?”
Hari was Dhaniram’s son.
“Boy in England, man,” Dhaniram said. “Studying. Can’t study and write
letters.”
[from The Mystic Masseur, Penguin Books, England, 1964]
* He spoke in Hindi but the books he showed in this way were in English, and
people were awed by this display of learning.
His main point was that desire was a source of misery and therefore desire
ought to be suppressed. Occasionally he went off at a tangent to discuss
whether the desire to suppress desire wasn’t itself a desire; but usually he
tried to be as practical as possible.
* And then there was Soomintra to be faced. Soomintra had married a
hardware merchant in San Fernando and she was rich. More than that, she
looked rich. She was having child after child, and growing plump, matronly,
and important. She had a son whom she had called Jawaharlal, after the
Indian leader; and her daughter was called Sarojini, after the Indian
poetess.
* He was in a temper when he returned late that night to Fuente Grove. “Just
wanted to make a fool of me,” he muttered, “fool of me.”
“Leela!” he shouted. “Come, girl, and give me something to eat.”
She came out, smiling sardonically. “But, man, I thought you was dining
with the Governor.”
“Don’t make joke, girl. Done dine. Want to eat now. Going to show them,”
he mumbled, as his fingers ploughed through the rice, and dal and curry,
“going to show them.”
* They brought their sadnesses to Fuente Grove, but they made the place look
gay. Despite the sorrow in their faces and attitudes they wore clothes as
bright as any wedding crowd: veils, bodices, skirts all strident pink, yellow,
blue or green.
[from Miguel Street: Penguin Books, England, 1971]
* Mrs. Bhakcu would say, “You better mind your mouth. Otherwise I come up
and turn your face with one slap, you hear.”
Mrs. Bhakcu was four feet high, three feet wide, and three feet deep.
Mrs. Morgan was a little over six foot tall and built like a weight-lifter.
Mrs. Morgan said, “Why you don’t get your big-belly husband to go and fix
some motor car and stop reading that damn stupid sing-song he always sing-
songing?”
* I couldn’t bear to look at the fight. I looked all the time at the only woman
in the crowd. She was an American or a Canadian woman and she was nibbling
at peanuts. She was so blonde, her hair looked like straw. Whenever a blow
was landed, the crowd roared, and the woman pulled in her lips as though she
had given the blow, and then she nibbled furiously at her peanuts. She never
shouted or got up or waved her hands.
* “I did everything for him. Everything. I gave up everything. Money and family.
All for him. Tell me, is it right for him to treat me like this? Oh, God! What
did I do to deserve all this?”
And so she wept and talked and wept.
(A version of this article appeared elsewhere in 2009)
– Wyck Williams
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 