Guerrillas

by V. S. Naipaul

  As he climbed to the cooler air of the Ridge, the more spacious gardens, the wider verges, Roche thought: I won’t be safe at home. They’ll come for me. I can’t watch all night. I’ll have to spend the night at the Prince Albert.

  The afternoon light was mellow on the Ridge. Thin rainless clouds of pure white were building up high in the sky, for the sunset. He parked in the garage, but he didn’t go through the door into the kitchen. He walked back to the front lawn and went through the front door, bleached and mottled by the sun, into the hall, and down the parquet passage to Jane’s room. The flush plywood door was ajar.

  He said, “Jane,” and lightly pushed the door open.

  The louvers were open, the room was bright and warm. The bed was made up, but there was no bedspread; the white cotton nightdress could be seen below the pillow. On the bedside table there was the paperback of The Woodlanders, the cover and the opening pages raised and curling in the heat. The suitcase, on the floor of the fitted wardrobe, was half packed. Only the striped North African sacking dress was on a hanger. All the shelves except one were cleared. On this shelf, with a small jewelry box, some bottles and phials and tins, and a necklace of sandalwood beads, Roche saw Jane’s passport and her airline ticket folder. In the passport was the disembarkation card Jane had filled in months before but had not surrendered.

  He took the ticket out of the folder and tore it up and put the pieces in his pocket. He tore up the disembarkation card. But the passport couldn’t be so easily destroyed. His mind, racing, rejected all the possibilities. The passport couldn’t be torn up and flushed down the toilet. It couldn’t be burned: there was no open fire in the house; there was only a metal contraption beside the porch for barbecues.

  He went, the passport still in his hand, to the sitting room. It was very warm there, from the sun, the heat thrown out by the brown lawn, the fixed picture window.

  He telephoned Harry de Tunja. Joseph answered.

  Waiting for Harry, Roche opened the passport and considered Jane’s picture: a washed-out print, the cheeks too full, the hair lank and schoolgirlish.

  “Harry. Peter.”

  “Well, well, man.”

  “Harry, Jane has left me. She’s left her clothes behind, but she’s taken her ticket and passport.”

  Roche, looking at the passport, read Jane’s handwritten responses to the printed queries. Occupation: Publisher. Place and Date of Birth: Ottawa 17 July 1943.

  Harry said, “That’s a hell of a thing you’re telling me, man, Peter.” But there was no surprise in Harry’s voice. “You sure, boy?”

  Country of Residence: England. Height: 5′6″.

  Roche said, “I don’t know what else to think.”

  “You would know better than anybody else. But you know, Peter, I feel this is just a kind of chain reaction that Marie-Thérèse set off.”

  “The clothes she’s left behind aren’t very valuable. She didn’t bring out a lot.”

  Roche turned the page and read: Valid for All Parts of the Commonwealth and for All Foreign Countries. On the page opposite: Observations: Holder Has Right of Abode in the United Kingdom.

  Harry said, “Perhaps she went on that BOAC flight. You could check in the morning. But, look, I’ll telephone Mackenzie at the airport. The immigration people will be there now for the Varig flight. I’ll telephone you back.”

  “Thank you, Harry.”

  There was no exit or arrival stamp in the passport. It was like a passport that had never been used.

  And when Roche put the telephone down he was alarmed at what he had done.

  He sat on the porch and looked down at the city.

  He heard Adela call out, “Water! One-among-you, water!”

  The clouds turned pink. Streaks of gray appeared in the sky. The telephone rang, and when he went to the sitting room he saw that he had left the passport beside the telephone.

  “Peter. Harry. Has Jane come back?”

  “She hasn’t come back.”

  “The immigration people have no record of her departure. But they don’t know anything about her arrival either. Officially she’s never been here. You and I and a few other people know she’s been here. But officially she hasn’t been. The best thing would be for you to telephone BOAC in the morning.”

  “That would be the best thing.”

  “What do you think you’ll do? You’ll be going up after her?”

  “I think that is what I’ll have to do.”

  “It’s the best thing, I think.”

  “Thank you, Harry.”

  Roche went to Jane’s room. It was as he had left it. The wardrobe doors were open; The Woodlanders was on the bedside table. The louvers were open and the room was full of an amber light. He threw the passport into the half-packed suitcase on the floor of the wardrobe, and then he went and sat on the porch.

  The sun set. Lights came on in the city. Adela was in the kitchen; fluorescent light came through the kitchen windows.

  When the telephone rang, he was quite prepared. He went to the sitting room. It was in darkness; he didn’t put on the light.

  Jimmy said, “I want to see you.”

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. I want you to get in your car and drive here immediately.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “You must come, massa. There’s no one else I can ask. They’ve left me alone, massa.”

  “You’ll have to stay where you are, Jimmy. And I won’t be coming out to see you.”

  “Bryant’s not well. You’ve all made him mad. You must come and help me with him, massa.”

  “And you shouldn’t think of coming here. It isn’t safe for you to be out these days, Jimmy. You know that. There are police road blocks everywhere. There’s one on the Ridge road. I think you will find that they will be particularly interested in you. Do you understand? I’m leaving you alone. That’s the way it’s going to be. We are leaving you alone. I am leaving. I am going away. Jane and I are leaving tomorrow. Jane is in her room packing. We are leaving you here. Are you hearing me? Jimmy?”

  “Massa.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and he has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including A House for Mr. Biswas, An Area of Darkness, A Bend in the River, Among the Believers, and The Enigma of Arrival (which are all available from Vintage Books).