Sir Vidia's Shadow Read Online Free Page B

frail.
    â€œThey’ve promised us a house,” he said. “Mr. Bwogo. Have I got it right? Mr. Bwogo.” He nodded and seemed to recite it, giving it too many syllables: “
Bah-wo-go
.” “It seems nothing can be done without Mr. Bwogo.”
    â€œHe’s the chief housing officer,” I said.
    â€œChief housing officer,” Naipaul said, and just saying it, reciting it again in his gloomy voice, he made the title ridiculous and grand and ill suited to describe Mr. Bwogo.
    â€œI’m sure he’ll take care of you,” I said.
    With sudden insistence, as if demanding a drink, he said, “I want to meet people. Tell me whom I should meet.”
    This baffled me, both the question and the urgent way he made me responsible for the answer. But I was flattered too, most of all because of the intense way he waited for a reply. Nerves of concentration tightened in his face, and even his muscles contrived to make his posture more than just receptive—imploring. On that first meeting I had an inkling of him as an intimidating listener.
    â€œWhat is it you want to know?” I asked.
    â€œI want to understand,” he said. “I want to meet people who know what is happening here. People who read books. People who are still in the world. You can find them for me, can’t you? I don’t mean only at Makerere.”
    He smiled, making a hash of the university’s name, pronouncing it “Maka-ray-ray.”
    â€œBecause I suspect a lot of fraudulence,” he said. “One hears it. One has vibrations.”
    Pat had winced at “Maka-ray-ray” and said in an exasperated way, “He has no trouble at all with the most difficult Indian names.”
    â€œDo you know Rajagopalachari’s translation of the
Mahabharata?
” Naipaul said, and laughed hard, the laughter in his lungs like a loud kind of hydraulics.
    I introduced him to my head of department, an expatriate Englishman named Gerald Moore, who was an anthologizer as well as an evangelizer of African poetry. Having spent some time in Nigeria, Gerald occasionally attempted a Yoruba salutation upon Yomo, whose way of replying was to mock his mispronunciation by repeating it in a shriek, opening her mouth very wide in Gerald’s pink face. But he was a friendly fellow, and he had hired me. He mentioned his African anthology to Naipaul.
    â€œReally,” Naipaul said, mocking in his profoundly fascinated way, and now I understood his tone as utter disbelief and dismissal.
    The irony was not lost on Gerald, who fidgeted and said, “Some quite good poems.”
    â€œReally.”
    â€œLeopold Senghor.”
    â€œIsn’t he the president of something?”
    â€œSenegal,” Gerald said. “And Rabearivelo.”
    â€œIs he a president too?”
    â€œDead, actually. Madagascan.”
    â€œThese names just trip off your tongue.”
    â€œI could give you a copy,” Gerald said. “It’s a Penguin.”
    â€œA Penguin, yes,” Naipaul said. “You are so kind.”
    â€œI also do some writing. I’d like to show you. See what you think.”
    Naipaul smiled a wolfish smile and said, “Are you sure you want me to read your poems? I warn you that I will tell you exactly what I think.”
    â€œThat’s all right.”
    â€œBut I’m brutal, you know.”
    Gerald winced, and later on the verandah he said to me, “He’s different from what I expected.”
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œRather patrician.”
    But I thought: I want to show him my work. I want to know exactly what he thinks. I had never shown anyone my novel. I wanted him to be brutal.
    I saw Naipaul talking to Professor Dudney, an authority on the pastoral Karamojong people of Karamoja, one of the northern provinces of Uganda. The Karamojong went mother-naked, and the men were often photographed posing unashamed, letting their penises hang as