Half a Life: A Novel - By V. S. Naipaul Page 0,89

with relish of the blood to come, almost in the way Jacinto Correia used to talk in the old days. We decided he was a white man pretending to be a black man. It was a type we were just beginning to get in the colony, playboy figures, well-to-do, full Portuguese, people like Gouveia, in fact, who could cut and run or look after themselves if there was any real trouble.

After a week or so word got around that Gouveia had a liaison with an African woman in the capital. As always when new people came it was as though somebody was doing research, and in the next few days we began to hear stories about this woman. One story was that she had gone with Gouveia to Portugal, but had refused to do any housework because she didn't want people in Portugal to think she was a servant. Other stories were about her servants in the capital. In one story the servants were always quarrelling with her because she was an African and they had no regard for her. In another story somebody asked her why she was so hard on her servants, and she said she was an African and knew how to deal with Africans. The stories sounded made-up; they looked back to the past, and no one really believed them or found comfort in them; but they did the rounds. And then the woman came from the capital to be with Gouveia for a few days, and he brought her to the Sunday lunch. She was perfectly ordinary, blank-faced, assessing, self-contained and silent, a village woman transported to the town. After a while we saw that she was pregnant, and then we were all ourselves like mice. Afterwards somebody said, “You know why he is doing that, don't you? He wants to curry favour with the guerrillas. He feels that if he has an African woman with him when they come they won't kill him.”

We made love in the house, Graça and I, as it was being built. She said, “We must christen all the rooms.” And we did. We carried away the smell of planed wood and sawdust and new concrete. But other people were also attracted to the new house. One day, hearing talk, we looked out of a half-made wall and saw some children, innocent, experienced, frightened to see us. Graça said, “Now we have no secrets.”

One day we found Gouveia. I could see in his dark shining eyes that he had read our purpose. He explained in a showing-off way what he was aiming to do with Graça's house. Then he said, “But I want to live in the German Castle. Houses have their destiny, and the destiny of the Castle is that it shall belong to me. I'll do it up in the most fabulous way, and when the revolution comes I'll move there.” I thought of the house and the view and the German and the snakes and he said, “Don't look so frightened, Willie. I'm only quoting Zhivago.”

Early one night, when the lights were still jumping, Ana came to my room. She was distressed. She was in her short nightdress that emphasised her smallness and the fineness of her bones.

She said, “Willie, this is so terrible I don't know how I can talk about it. There's excrement on my bed. I discovered it just now. It's Júlio's daughter. Come and help with the sheets. Come and let's burn everything.”

We went to the big carved bed and stripped it fast. The lights blinked; and Ana became more and more distressed. She said, “I feel so dirty. I feel I have to bathe and bathe.”

I said, “Go and have a shower. I'll burn the sheets.”

I took the great bundle down to the dead part of the garden. I poured gasoline on it and threw a match at it from a distance. The flame roared up, and I watched it burn down, while the generator hummed and the lights in the house dipped and rose.

It was a bad night. She came to my room, wet and shivering from the shower, and I held her. She allowed herself to be held, and I thought again of the way she had allowed herself to be kissed in my college room in London. I also thought of Júlio's daughter, who as a young girl had tried to make polite conversation with me; who had stolen my passport and papers; and whom I had seen but

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