Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page A

Paul?”
    I was about to say how happy I was, living in Uganda with Yomo. It seemed a dream at times, to be in such a beautiful place with someone I loved. She was brave; she mocked the men who leered at her or who made remarks because she was holding hands with a white man. She didn’t mind the long dusty drives or the spiders or the snakes or the little crawling
dudus
. Even the thought of living in the bush behind Bundibugyo did not faze her. I liked my job. I found my students vague but teachable.
    But before I could say any of this, Naipaul piped up, “Your writing, of course. If you didn’t write, you’d go out of your mind.”
    He had read only a small amount of what I had written, but he seemed to see that it stood for more. I had written many poems and published some in American and British literary magazines. “Little magazines,” Naipaul called them, making a face. “Lots of libido,” he always said of my poems, but it was not a criticism. He liked one I had published in the
Central African Examiner
about an old car I had seen rotting in the bush. He quoted it word for word to me a few days afterwards. It was a trenchant comment about colonialism, he said; it was about Africans letting things go to ruin. I reread it and thought: Maybe.
    My writing project at the time was an essay on cowardice, inspired by Orwell’s clear-sighted and confessional essays. I had been writing it for the American magazine
Commentary
. Naipaul had approved; it was not a little magazine, but the essay needed work. “I warned you, I’m brutal,” he said. “Forget Orwell for the moment.” I was on my fifth or sixth revision with him. It was like whittling a stick, but I was learning.
    â€œIt’s true, Patsy. You know that. He’d go out of his mind.”
    I kept driving, heading back to town, wondering whether it was true. I had been content for two years at a bush school in Malawi. I had been writing the whole time. Had the writing kept me sane?
    â€œMore bongo drums,” Naipaul said as we passed a roadside market.
    There was noise, for sure, but no bongo drums. I said, “The only bongo in Uganda is an animal that looks like a kudu. They’re hunted with dogs by wealthy tourists who go on safaris here. When the bongo turns to battle the dogs with his horns, the hunters shoot him. They’re mostly in the Ruwenzoris. In the
bundu
.”
    â€œI want to see the bush,” Naipaul said. “The bush is the future.”
    We were on the outskirts of Kampala, passing a row of Indian shops, where on the verandahs some African men sat at Singer sewing machines, working the treadles with their bare feet, running up missionary-style dresses. Another African was squatting at a box, looking serious and intent, writing a letter in clear copperplate script for a customer, a woman who knelt, wringing her hands.
    â€œAnd the president of Gabon is called Bongo,” I said. “Omar Bongo.”
    â€œOmar Bongo! Did you hear that, Patsy? Omar Bongo. Oh, how I don’t want to go to Gabon.”
    He brooded for a moment, then asked me to slow down at the next row of Indian shops.
    â€œIt is hopeless for them,” he said. “They should leave. You know that Indian boy, Raju? I told him to go away, to save himself. Of course I didn’t say it so simply. I asked him, ‘What is the message of the
Gita?’
The
Bhagavad-Gita
. You’ve read it, Paul, of course you have.”
    From the back seat, Pat said, “You were too hard on Raju.”
    â€œâ€˜The message of the
Gita,’
I said to him, ‘is action.’”
    â€œIt’s just as bad for him to go as to stay here,” Pat said.
    â€œAction. He’s got to take action. These people”—Naipaul was gesturing at the little shops and the people on the verandah, who were baffled by the gesticulating Hindi in the bush hat in my car—“will be dead unless