In A Free State

by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

  Small ochre-and-red official buildings were scattered about the winding road. But the gaps between the buildings had not been filled; much of the town was waste-ground, as eroded and full of glare as a riverbed. The buildings were in a type of ltalianate style, with a touch of the South American. Walls went right down to the ground and were mud-splashed; roughly plastered concrete looked like adobe. Crooked telegraph poles, sagging wires, the broken edges of the asphalt road, scuffed grass sidewalks, dust, scattered rubbish, African bicycles, broken-down lorries and motor cars outside the bus-station shed: the town had failed to grow, but it still worked.

  Africans sat and squatted in a dusty park where eucalyptus had grown tall. There was a market with a little clock-tower. One stall was entirely hung with clothes for Africans, each garment on a hanger, the hangers staggered down and across, so that the stall appeared to be hung with a fluttering rag carpet. Below the clock on the tower there was, in raised concrete letters, red on ochre: MARKET 1951.

  Then the town was past and the road was empty again. The road was so empty and the air so clear, the land so flat and stripped, that miles before they reached it they could see the embankment of the main highway to the Collectorate. And that too was empty. Black, wide and straight: the car stopped rattling. The tyres hissed again: the sound of smooth, swift motion. Air rushed through the half-open windows.

  'Did you feel that?' Bobby was excited. 'You can get some dangerous crosswinds here.' They blow you off the road if you aren't careful.'

  The sun struck through the very top of the windscreen. Every deep scratch made the day before at the filling station was clear. On the gleaming bonnet minute scratches made circular patterns.

  Linda said, 'I knew it.'

  Beyond the white gleam of the bonnet, through the distortions of heatwaves, in the distance, black asphalt dissolving into light: a confusion of vehicles on one side of the road, an accident.

  Linda said, 'I thought it was too good to be true. It always happens when the road is as empty as this.'

  Approaching slowly, they saw a grey-and-magenta Volkswagen minibus parked level on the road; a blue Peugeot saloon parked on the verge; and, tilted to one side, half in the ditch, a shattered dark-green Peugeot estate-car, by· its number-plate one of those used by Africans as long-distance taxis. There were other vehicles beyond this, but this was the only wreck: so new, in· destruction so fragile and murderous.

  As Bobby slowed down, an African in dark trousers and a white shirt came out from behind the minibus. Bobby stopped. 'Can we do anything to help?'

  The African, squinting at the windscreen dazzle, looked uncertainly at Bobby and Linda and didn't reply.

  Bobby edged forward past the fearful wreck. He saw a white Volkswagen; he stopped again. Like a hundred white Volkswagens; like the Volkswagen of yesterday; but the man who came around from behind it was not white and short, but black, tall, solidly made. Not the blackness or the stature of Africa: there was about his hard features and warm complexion something that suggested other bloods, another continent, another language.

  Linda, looking at the wreck for blood, a body, shoes, a blanket, responded at once to the authority of this man. She leaned out into the sun and called to him, 'What's happened?'

  He smiled at Linda and came close to the car.

  'A fatal accident,' he said. 'Drive carefully.'

  He was not of the country. He spoke with the unmistakable accent of the American Negro.

  The smile and the accent, and the unexpected compassion of the advice, gave his words authority. Bobby felt the little thrill of human fellowship. It was something more than the sentimentality that overcame him whenever, innocent himself,· and white, he met African officials or policemen doing a difficult duty. He was anxious to show that he obeyed, was responsive. He drove off carefully over the wavering black. skid-marks that started and ended so abruptly on the black road. The sun was coming through the top of the scratched windscreen: he was aware of dazzle as a danger: he pulled down the visor.

  The mirror showed activity around the estate-car and the minibus. There were more men than Bobby had noticed as he had passed. Then the road began to curve, and that view was lost.

  Four or five army lorries, their axles high above the level road, were parked ahead. On the grass verge beside the lorries, in the shallow ditch, and in the shade of the stunted trees that grew in the field beyond, there were soldiers with rifles. Bobby drove slowly, to show that he had nothing to hide.

  All the soldiers turned to look at the car. Below dark-green forage caps their black faces looked greased. The soldiers on the verge appeared to be frowning. Their eyes were narrow above their fat cheeks; foreheads that· were so smooth during the entrancement of yesterday's run along the lake boulevard were now creased and puckered up between almost hairless eyebrows. Now they had guns in their hands, and no one else had. The soldiers beyond the ditch, in the shade of the trees, were smiling at the car.

  Bobby lifted one hand from the steering-wheel in a half-wave.

  No one waved back. All the soldiers continued to look at the car, those who smiled, those who frowned.

  Linda said, 'That wasn't an accident.'

  Bobby was accelerating.

  'Bobby, they've killed the king. That was the king.'

  The road was straight and black. The tyres hissed on the wet tar.

  'That was the king. They've killed him.'

  'I don't know,' Bobby said.

  'Those soldiers knew what they were grinning about. Did you see them grinning? Savages. Fat black savages. I can't bear it when they grin like that.'

  'The king was black too.'

  'Bobby, don't ask me to talk about that now.'

  'I don't know what we're talking about. It probably was what that man said. An accident.'

  'That would be nice to believe. You know, I thought it was a joke. They said he would try to get away in a taxi in some sort of disguise.'

  'He must have picked it up around here somewhere. Between roadblocks.'

  'That's what everybody in the capital was saying he would do.

  I thought it was a joke. And that's just what he goes and does.'

  'Of course it was all bluff, all this talk about secession and an independent kingdom and so on. That was always Simon Lubero's private view, by the way. The king was just a London playboy. He impressed a lot of people over there. But I'm sorry to say he was a very foolish man.'

  'That's what everybody says. And 'I suppose that's why I didn't believe it. I thought it was too foolish to be true. All that Oxford accent and London talk. I thought it was an act.'

  'Simon was always level-headed about the whole thing. I happen to know that Simon very much wanted it to remain a purely police operation. '

  'And yet you would think that these people would have their secret ways, that they would always be able to hide in the bush and get away. Being African and a king. I thought the helicopter and those white men in it were so ridiculous.'

  'Yes,' Bobby said, 'the wogs got him.' His bitterness surprised him, the discovery of anger, aimed at no one. He became calmer. 'The wogs got him,' he said again. 'I hope the word gets back to London and I hope his smart friends find that funny too.'

  He was still driving fast, but he was no longer racing.

  He said, 'I should have telephoned Ogguna Wanga-Butere. He would have straightened out this curfew business. Not that I think there's going to be any trouble. We're making excellent time as it is.'

  'You know what they say about Africa,' Linda said. 'You drive these long distances and when you get to where you're going there's nothing to do. But I must say I'm beginning to feel it would be nice to see the old compound again.'

  The land opened out. The horizon dipped. Far away they could see the pale-blue hills, low, almost merging into the sky, and in the middle distance the isolated, curiously-shaped tors and cones, darker, greener, but still blurred in the haze, that marked this part of the Collectorate, the king's territory. />
  'Leopard Tor,' Linda said.

  'It's one of my favourite views.'

  'Like a John Ford western.'

  'How very film-society. To me it's just Africa. There's going to be an awful lot of foolish talk in the compound in the next few weeks, and a lot of comment in the foreign press. I suppose I wouldn't mind it so much if I felt that those people really cared.'

  'I don't know whether I care. That's the terrible thing. I don't know what I think. All I know is that I want to get back to the compound.'

  Later, the view not changing in spite of their speed, distances appearing to remain what they were, Linda said, 'Why do you suppose they call it Leopard Tor?'

  Bobby noted that her voice had altered and was growing mystical. He didn't reply.

  She said, 'I saw a dead leopard once.'

  Bobby concentrated on the road.

  'In West Africa. A long red tongue hanging down from between the teeth. I wanted to touch it when they brought it in, to see if it was still warm. But you mustn't, because it's full of fleas. Then they began to skin it. Just below the skin it was like a ballet dancer in tights. You wouldn't believe the muscles. All that had to be cut up and thrown away, burnt on the fire. In the morning when I got up I thought, "I'll go and look at the leopard." I'd forgotten.'

  She spoke slowly. She had begun to listen to her own words.

  Bobby said, 'I don't believe they're going to skin the king.'

  'I can't bear it the way those soldiers grin. Did you see them grinning? You weren't here for the mutiny. Eighty marines flew in. Just eighty, and those same grinning soldiers threw away their guns and tore off those uniforms and ran off naked into the bush. They could run in those days. They weren't so fat. It was funny at the airport. Everybody from the compound was there. But the marines weren't waving back. Those young boys were just jumping out of the planes, guns at the ready, and running through the applauding crowd.'

  'I heard about that,' Bobby said. 'I don't think the Africans have forgotten either. They find it rather less funny. It's their big fear, you know, since the Belgians and the Congo. White men coming down from the sky.'

  'That's what Sammy Kisenyi was telling me.'

  'That's what many of them thought the King wanted.'

  'I feel like the colonel. I feel I should have gone out and done something to help the king. But then I know that wouldn't have made much sense either.'

  'That's just it. It's not your business or mine. They have to sort these things out themselves. And he nearly made it, you know. If he hadn't been spotted, in another ninety minutes or so he would have been up there, scuttling across the lake to the other side.'

  'Oh my God. You mean they're still waiting for him at the lake? They must have been waiting all last night. It's going to be awful in the Collectorate when the news breaks.'

  'I imagine they'll keep it quiet for a day or two.'

  'I feel I never want to stir out of the compound again.'

  'That would be quite a departure, for you.'

  'Of course,' Linda said, responding to the provocation, 'the soldiers may be rampaging around there at this minute.'

  The wide view was going. The land was becoming more broken; there were more trees; the road curved more often. They passed allotments, shops, huts: a village. But no one was to be seen.

  'I hated this place from the first day I came here,' Linda said. 'I felt I had no right to be among these people. It was too easy. They made it too easy. It wasn't at all what I wanted.'

  Bobby said, 'You know why you came.'

  'They sent Jimmy Ruhengiri to meet us at the airport. For forty miles I had to make conversation with Jimmy. The conversation you make with the educated ones. Like playing chess with yourself: you make all the moves. And all I kept on seeing were those horrible little huts. I was screaming inside. I knew that nothing good was going to happen to me here. And that first day they put us up in a filthy room in the barracks they call a guest-house. Martin didn't have enough points. We didn't know. Give Martin a points-system to live by, and you can be sure Martin will never have enough points for anything.'

  'You didn't do too badly,' Bobby said.

  'A girl in the next room was crying, and it was still only afternoon. That really frightened me. I don't think I ever wanted anything so much as I wanted to leave that day, to go back to the airport and take the next plane back to London.'

  'Why didn't you?'

  'You go out driving with Sammy Kisenyi, making educated conversation, and you see a naked savage with a penis one foot long. You pretend you've seen nothing. You see two naked boys painted white running about the public highway, and you don't talk about it. Sammy Kisenyi reads a paper on broadcasting at the conference. He's lifted whole paragraphs from T. S. Eliot, of all people. You say nothing about it, you can't say anything about it. Outside you encourage and encourage. In the compound you talk and talk. Everybody just lies and lies and lies.'

  'You know why you came. You can't complain.'

  'It's their country. But it's your life. In the end you don't know what you feel about anything. All you know is that you want to be safe in the compound.'

  'You came for the freedom, though. You adjust very easily, remember?'

  'No doubt we look at these things differently, Bobby.'

  'It doesn't matter now what you think, though.'

  'Every night in the compound you hear them raising the hue and cry, and you know they're beating someone to death outside. Every week there's this list of people who've been killed, and some of them don't even have names. You should either stay away, or you should go among them with the whip in your hand. Anything in between is ridiculous.'

  'Is that Martin? Or the colonel? I can't keep up with you, Linda. All those lovely weekends in the capital, with all those lovely open fires. Somehow I was expecting more. I was astonished at your taste, Linda. "I adjust very easily." Very nicely spoken, but it's nobody's fault if the people we find are just like ourselves. You've all been reading the same books. Of course, we read a lot, don't we? We mustn't let our minds grow rusty, among the savages.'

  'It isn't for you to talk like this, Bobby.'

  'I'm disqualified, am I? You should have told me. But I thought you wanted a houseboy to spread the news. I thought you wanted someone to' excite by your screams in bed.'

  'That is one of Doris Marshall's absurd stories.'

  "Let's get Bobby to witness. He is one of Denis Marshall's." ' He was moving his head up and down. ' "Let's get Bobby. You can do what you like with Bobby."

  "That's a nice shirt you're wearing, Bobby." Very funny. But you chose the wrong man.'

  "This is nonsense.'

  'Is it?' He took his right hand off the steering-wheel and tapped his head. 'I notice everything. It's all there.'

  'I always thought you were a romantic, Bobby.'

  'You chose the wrong man.'

  'I wish it was the way you tell it. You can't have looked very carefully at the people in the compound.'

  'That's just it. It's nobody's fault if the people you find are just like yourself.'

  'Let's stop this, Bobby. I take back everything.'

  'You talk about savages and whips.'

  'I take that back.'

  'There are so many like you, Linda. We mustn't let our minds grow rusty. We are among savages and we need our cultural activities. We are among these very dirty savages and we must remind ourselves that we have this loveliness. Do we use our vaginal deodorant daily?'

  'This is ridiculous.'

  '_Do we? Do we?__ What brand do we use? Hot Girl, Cool Girl, Fresh Girl? Girl-Fresh? You're nothing. You're nothing but a rotting cunt. There are millions like you, millions, and there will be millions more. "I'm very adjustable."

  "I hope they've done nothing to the poor wives." I don't know who you think you are. I don't know why you think it matters what you think about anything.'.

  She leaned back in her seat and looked out of her window. A village again: dusty shack
s, tropical backyard vegetation, a dirt side road: a vista of sun, dust and trees there; and then bush beside the highway again.

  'There are millions like you. And millions like Martin. You are _nothing__.'

  'Please stop the car. I will get out here. I don't want to say anything more. Please stop the car.'

  He braked with a squeal on the hot road. The wind stopped rushing through the windows. The beat of the engine was like silence. Trees were throwing squat shadows across the ditches. The sky was hot and high.

  Linda said, 'You were right. It wasn't a good idea.'

  'You're a fool. You'll get into trouble.'

  'I'm very foolish.'

  'This is your idea, remember.'

  'I'll make other arrangements. I'll probably get 'a taxi or something.'

  As she turned to open the door he saw that the back of her shirt was wet. He was aware then that his own shirt was wet, and felt cold. For a second, stepping out on the road, Linda appeared to be without a sense of direction. Her dark glasses masked her expression. She steadied herself. Bobby watched her start back towards the village they had just passed.

  He called, 'Your suitcase?'

  She didn't turn. 'You can take that.'

  He opened his door and stood up on the road. The sense of the moving road remained with him. He felt dizzy in the still hot air; he had again that sensation of the overcharged, exploding head. 'Linda!'

  She continued to walk away with her brisk little steps, looking down, so alien on the high embankment of the empty road, so accidental-looking, the colours of her trousers and shirt suddenly so bright and noticeable that vivid colour seemed to come as well to the road and fields and sky, and the scene had something of the unreal quality of a colour photograph.

  He got back in the car, slammed the door shut and, drove off, rubbing his dry palms on the steering-wheel, studying the black road, feeling the heat thrown back from the bonnet, where the sun was reflected in a little ring of scratched glitter.