A bend in the river by V. S. Naipaul

Author:V. S. Naipaul [Naipaul, V. S.]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Unread
ISBN: 9780783886169
Publisher: G.K. Hall
Published: 1999-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

Indar had begun his story at the end of that evening at Raymond and Yvette's. He had added to it at different times later. He had begun his story on the first evening I had seen Yvette, and whenever I saw Yvette afterwards she was in his company. I had trouble with both their personalities: I could pin down neither. In my mind I had my own picture of Yvette, and this never varied. But the person I saw, at different times of day, in different kinds of light and weather, in circumstances so different from those in which I had first seen her, was always new, always a surprise. I was nervous of looking at her face--I was becoming obsessed with her. And Indar too began to change for me. His personality too had a dissolving quality. As he filled in his story he became in my eyes quite unlike the man who had presented himself in my shop many weeks before. In his clothes then I had seen London and privilege. I had seen that he was fighting to keep up his style, but I hadn't thought of his style as something he had created for himself. I had seen him more as a man touched by the glamour of the great world; and I had thought that given the chance to be in his world, I, too, would have been touched by the same glamour. In those early days I had often wanted to say to him: "Help me to get away from this place. Show me how to make myself like you." But that wasn't so now. I could no longer envy his style or his stylishness. I saw it as his only asset. I felt protective towards him. I felt that since that evening at Yvette's--the evening which had lifted me up but cast him down--we had exchanged roles. I no longer looked on him as my guide; he was the man who needed to be led by the hand. That perhaps was the secret of his social success which I had envied. My wish--which must have been like the wish of the people in London he had told me about, who had made room for him--was to clear away the aggressiveness and the depression that choked the tenderness I knew was there. I was protective towards him and towards his stylishness, his exaggerations, his delusions. I wished to keep all those from hurt. It saddened me that in a little while he would have to leave, to carry on with his lecturer's duties elsewhere. That was what, from his story, I judged him to be--a lecturer, as uncertain of his future in this role as he had been in his previous roles. The only friends in the town I had introduced him to were Shoba and Mahesh. They were the only people I thought he would have had something in common with. But that hadn't worked. There was suspicion on both sides. These three

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