A Bend in the River

by V. S. Naipaul

  In a cell like mine you very quickly become aware of your body. You can grow to hate your body. And your body is all you have: this was the curious thought that kept floating up through my rage.

  The jail was full. I found that out in the morning. Quite a time before, I had heard from Zabeth and others about the kidnapping operations in the villages. But I had never suspected that so many young men and boys had been picked up. Worse, it had never occurred to me that they were being kept in the jail past which I drove so often. In the newspapers there was nothing about the insurrection and the Liberation Army. But this was all that the jail—or the part of it I was in—was about. And it was awful.

  It had sounded, bright and early in the morning, like a class of some sort: people being taught poems by many instructors. The instructors were warders with big boots and sticks; the poems were hymns of praise to the President and the African madonna; the people being compelled to repeat the lines were those young men and boys from the villages, many of whom had been trussed up and dumped in the courtyard and were being maltreated in ways I don’t want to describe.

  These were the dreadful sounds of the early morning. Those poor people had also been trapped and damned by the words on the white jail wall. But you could tell, from their faces, that in their minds and hearts and souls they had retreated far. The frenzied warders, Africans themselves, seemed to understand this, seemed to know that their victims were unreachable.

  Those faces of Africa! Those masks of child-like calm that had brought down the blows of the world, and of Africans as well, as now in the jail. I felt I had never seen them so clearly before. Indifferent to notice, indifferent to compassion or contempt, those faces were yet not vacant or passive or resigned. There was, with the prisoners as well as with their active tormentors, a frenzy. But the frenzy of the prisoners was internal; it had taken them far beyond their cause or even knowledge of their cause, far beyond thought. They had prepared themselves for death not because they were martyrs; but because what they were and what they knew they were was all they had. They were people crazed with the idea of who they were. I never felt closer to them, or more far away.

  All day, through the mounting and then lessening heat of the sun, those sounds continued. Beyond the white wall was the market, the outside world. Every image that I had of that world outside was poisoned for me by what was going on around me. And the jail had seemed quaint. I had thought that the life of the jail would match the market life outside. Yvette and I had stopped at a stall one afternoon to buy sweet potatoes. At the next stall a man was selling hairy orange-coloured caterpillars—he had a big white basinful. Yvette had made a face of horror. He, the vendor, laughing, had lifted his basin and pushed it into the window of the car, offering it all as a gift; later, he had held a squirming caterpillar over his mouth and pretended to chew.

  All that life was going on outside. While here the young men and boys were learning discipline and hymns to the President. There was a reason for the frenzy of the warders, the instructors. I heard that an important execution was to take place; that the President himself was going to attend it when he came to the town; and that he would listen then to the hymns sung by his enemies. For that visit the town had burst into bright colour.

  I felt that almost nothing separated me from those men in the courtyard, that there was no reason why I shouldn’t be treated like them. I resolved to maintain and assert my position as a man apart, a man waiting to be ransomed. The idea came to me that it was important for me not to be touched physically by a warder. To be touched in one way might lead to more terrible things. I determined to do nothing to provoke any physical contact, however slight. I became cooperative. I obeyed orders almost before they were given. So at the end of my weekend, with my rage and obedience, my exposure to the sights and sounds of the courtyard, I was a hardened jailbird.

  Prosper came for me on Monday morning. I was expecting someone to come. But I wasn’t expecting Prosper, and he didn’t look too happy. The loot-glitter had gone from his eyes. I sat beside him in his Land-Rover and he said, almost companionably, as we drove through the jail gates, “This business could have been settled on Friday. But you’ve made it much worse for yourself. The commissioner has decided to take a particular interest in your case. All I can say is that I hope it goes well for you.”

  I didn’t know whether this was good news or bad news. The commissioner might have been Ferdinand. His appointment had been announced some time before, but so far he had not appeared in the town; and it was possible that the appointment had been rescinded. If it was Ferdinand, however, this wasn’t the best way for me to meet him.

  Ferdinand, progressing through the world, had, as I remembered, accepted all his roles, and lived them out: lycée boy, polytechnic student, new man of Africa, first-class passenger on the steamer. After four years, after his time as an administrative cadet in that capital so dominated by the President, where would he be? What would he have learned? What idea would he have about himself as one of the President’s officials? In his own eyes he would have risen; I would have got smaller. It had always unsettled me a little—the knowledge that the gap between us would get bigger as he grew older. I had often thought how ready-made and easy the world was for him, the village boy, starting from nothing.

  Prosper delivered me to the people in the front office of the secretariat. There was a wide verandah all around the inner courtyard, and on three sides the verandah was screened from the sun by big reed blinds. It gave an odd feeling, walking through the thin stripes of light and shadow, watching them appear to move over you as you moved. The orderly let me into a room where, after the shifting verandah dazzle, spots of light momentarily danced before my eyes; and then I was let into the inner office.

  It was Ferdinand, strange in his polka-dotted cravat and short-sleeved jacket, and unexpectedly ordinary. I would have expected style, a certain heartiness, a little arrogance, a little showing off. But Ferdinand looked withdrawn and ill, like a man recovering from fever. He wasn’t interested in impressing me.

  On the newly painted white wall was a larger-than-life photograph of the President, just the face—that was a face full of life. Below that face, Ferdinand seemed shrunken, and characterless in the regulation uniform that made him look like all those officials who appeared in group photographs in the newspapers. He was, after all, like other high officials. I wondered why I thought he would be different. These men, who depended on the President’s favour for everything, were bundles of nerves. The great power they exercised went with a constant fear of being destroyed. And they were unstable, half dead.

  Ferdinand said, “My mother told me you had gone away. I was surprised to hear that you were still here.”

  “I went to London for six weeks. I haven’t seen your mother since I’ve come back.”

  “She’s given up the business. And you must do that too. You must go. You must go right away. There’s nothing here for you. They’ve taken you into jail now. They haven’t done that before. Do you know what it means? It means they’ll take you in again. And I won’t always be here to get you out. I don’t know how much Prosper and the others wanted from you. But next time it will be more. That’s all that it is about now. You know that. They haven’t done anything to you in jail. That’s only because it hasn’t occurred to them. They still think you are not that kind of man. You are a foreigner; they are not interested in you in that way; they just beat up bush people. But one day they will rough you up and then they will discover that you are like everybody else, and then very bad things will happen to you. You must go. Forget everything and go. There are no airplanes. All the seats have been reserved for officials coming up for the President’s visit. That’s standard security for these visits. But there’s a steamer on Tuesday. That’s tomorrow. Take it. It may be the last. The place will be full of officials. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t take too much luggage. Don’t tell anyone. I will keep Prosper busy at the airport.”

 
“I will do what you say. And how are you, Ferdinand?”

  “You don’t have to ask. You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they’re losing the place they can run back to. I began to feel the same thing when I was a cadet in the capital. I felt I had been used. I felt I had given myself an education for nothing. I felt I had been fooled. Everything that was given to me was given to me to destroy me. I began to think I wanted to be a child again, to forget books and everything connected with books. The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go to. I’ve been on tour in the villages. It’s a nightmare. All these airfields the man has built, the foreign companies have built—nowhere is safe now.”

  His face had been like a mask at the beginning. Now he was showing his frenzy.

  I said, “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I will do what I have to do.”

  That had always been his way.

  On his desk there was a glass paperweight—small flowers set in a half-sphere of crystal. He put the paperweight on the flat palm of his left hand and looked at it.

  He said, “And you must go and get your steamer ticket. That was where we last met. I’ve often thought about that day. There were four of us on the steamer. It was midday. We drank beer in the bar. There was the director’s wife—you left with her. There was the lecturer who was your friend. He travelled down with me. That was the best time. The last day, the day of leaving. It was a good journey. It became different at the other end. I’ve had a dream, Salim. I’ve had a terrible dream.”

  He took the paperweight off his palm and rested it on the desk again.

  He said, “An execution is to take place at seven in the morning. That is what we are meeting for. We are going to witness the execution. It is one of us who is going to be executed, but the man doesn’t know. He thinks he is going to watch. We are meeting in a place I can’t describe, It may be a family place—I feel the presence of my mother. I am in a panic. I have soiled something in a shameful way and I am trying hard to clean it or to hide it, because I have to be at the execution at seven. We wait for the man. We greet him in the usual way. Now, here is the problem in the dream. Are we going to leave the man alone, to be driven alone to the place of his execution? Will we have the courage to be with him, to talk in a friendly way to the last? Should we take one car, or should we go in two cars?”

  “You must go in one car. If you go in two, it means you are halfway to changing your mind.”

  “Go and get your steamer ticket.”

  The steamer office was famous for its erratic hours. I sat on the wooden bench outside the door until the man came and opened up. The cabine de luxe was free; I booked it. This took most of the morning. The market outside the dock gates had built up: the steamer was due that afternoon. I thought of going to see Mahesh at Bigburger, but decided against it. The place was too open and central, and there were too many officials there at lunchtime. It was strange, having to think of the city in this way.

  I had a snack at the Tivoli. It looked a little demoralized these days, as though awaiting radicalization. But it had kept its European atmosphere, and there were European artisans and their families at the tables and men drinking beer at the bar. I thought: What is going to happen to these people? But they were protected. I bought some bread and cheese and a few expensive tins—my last shopping in the town—and decided to spend the rest of the time at the flat. I wanted to do nothing else. I had no wish to go anywhere or look at anything or talk to anyone. Even the thought of having to telephone Mahesh was like a burden.

  Late in the afternoon there were footsteps on the external staircase. Metty. I was surprised. Normally at this time he was with his family.

  He came into the sitting room and said, “I heard they let you out, Salim.”

  He looked wretched and confused. He must have spent some bad days after reporting me to Prosper. That was what he wanted me to talk about. But I didn’t want to talk about it. The shock of that moment of three days before had vanished. My head was full of other things.

  We didn’t talk. And soon it was as though we had nothing to talk about. There had never been a silence like this between us before. He stood around for a little, went to his room, then came back.

  He said, “You must take me with you, Salim.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You can’t leave me here.”

  “What about your family? And how can I take you with me, Metty? The world isn’t like that nowadays. There are visas and passports. I can hardly arrange these things for myself. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’ll do. I hardly have any money. I’m scarcely able to look after myself.”

  “It’s going to be bad here, Salim. You don’t know what they’re talking about outside. It’s going to be very bad when the President comes. At first they were only going to kill government people. Now the Liberation Army say that isn’t enough. They say they have to do what they did the last time, but they have to do it better this time. At first they were going to have people’s courts and shoot people in the squares. Now they say they have to do a lot more killing, and everybody will have to dip their hands in the blood. They’re going to kill everybody who can read and write, everybody who ever put on a jacket and tie, everybody who put on a jacket de boy. They’re going to kill all the masters and all the servants. When they’re finished nobody will know there was a place like this here. They’re going to kill and kill. They say it is the only way, to go back to the beginning before it’s too late. The killing will last for days. They say it is better to kill for days than to die forever. It is going to be terrible when the President comes.”

  I tried to calm him down. “They always talk like this. Ever since the insurrection they’ve been talking of the morning when the whole thing is going to go up in flames. They talk like that because that is what they would like to happen. But nobody knows what is going to happen. And the President is smart. You know that. He must know they’re preparing something for him here. So he’ll get them excited, and then he may not come. You know the President. You know how he plays on the people.”

  “The Liberation Army isn’t just those boys in the bush, Salim. Everybody’s in it. Everybody you see. How am I going to make out alone?”

  “You have to take your chance. That’s what we’ve always done. Everybody has done that here. And I don’t think they’ll trouble you—you don’t frighten them. Hide the car, though. Don’t tempt them with it. Whatever they say about going back to the beginning, they’ll be interested in the car. If they remember and ask you about it, tell them to ask Prosper. And always remember that the place is going to start up again.”

  “How am I going to live then? When there is no shop, and I have no money? You gave me no money. You gave it away to other people, even when I was asking you.”

  I said, “Ali! I gave it away. You’re right. I don’t know why I did that. I could have given some of it to you. I don’t know why I didn’t. I never thought of it. I never thought of you in that way. You’ve just made me think of it. It must have driven you crazy. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew what you were doing, Salim.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know now. But after this is over you’ll have the car and you’ll have the flat. The car will be worth quite a lot, if you keep it. And I’ll send you money through Mahesh. That will be very easy to arrange.”

  He wasn’t comforted. But it was all I could do now. He recognized that and didn’t press me any further. Then he left to go to his family.

  In the end I didn’t telephone Mahesh; I thought I would write him later.
Security at the docks the next morning wasn’t extraordinary. But the officials were tense. They were like people with a job to do; and that was to my advantage. They were less interested in a foreigner who was leaving than in the African strangers in the market encampment around the monument and the dock gates. Still, I was constantly stopped.

  A woman official said, when she gave me back my papers, “Why are you leaving today? The President is coming this afternoon. Wouldn’t you like to see him?” She was a local woman. Was there irony in her voice? I was careful to take all irony out of mine. I said, “I would like to, citizen. But I have to go.” She smiled and waved me on.

  At last I went aboard the steamer. It was hot in my cabine de luxe. The door faced the river, which dazzled; and the sun fell on the deck. I went around to the shaded side, which overlooked the quay. That wasn’t a good idea.

  A soldier on the quay began to gesture at me. Our eyes met, and he began to scramble up the gangway. I thought: I mustn’t be alone with him. I must have witnesses.

  I went down to the bar. The barman was standing in front of his empty shelves. A fat man with big, smooth arms, a steamer official of some sort, was drinking at a table.

  I sat at a table in the centre, and the soldier soon appeared in the doorway. He remained there for a while, nervous of the fat man. But then, overcoming his nervousness, he came to my table, leaned over and whispered, “C’est moi qui a réglé votre affaire. I fixed it for you.”

  It was a smiling request for money, from a man who might soon have to fight a battle. I did nothing; the fat man stared. The soldier felt the fat man’s stare and began to back away, smiling, saying with his gestures that I was to forget his request. But I took care after that not to show myself.

  We left at about midday. The passenger barge was not towed behind these days—that was now considered a colonial practice. Instead, the barge was lashed to the forward part of the steamer. The town was soon past. But for some miles that bank, though overgrown, still showed where in colonial days people had laid out estates and built great houses.