Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux Page A

He’s in Bongo-Wongo?”
    â€œYes. Want to come?”
    â€œOne has no interest.”
    I dropped Vidia at the hotel and spent the afternoon with Tom Hopkinson. He was a well-known editor and journalist, and his highly successful
Picture Post
had been Britain’s answer to
Life
magazine. Hopkinson, in vigorous semi-retirement, ran the Institute of Journalism in Nairobi. It was my hope that he would come to Kampala and speak about freedom of the press at a conference I was trying to organize. A tall, thin, white-haired man, he was friendly and straightforward and clearly a Londoner: wearing a tie and long trousers and black shoes, he was overdressed for Kenya. We talked about novels—he had published two. He said he was too busy to give the lecture, but I suspected the rumors of violence in Uganda put him off. Most people in Kenya regarded Uganda as the bush.
    â€œTell me, tell me, tell me,” Vidia said that evening in the Norfolk’s bar. He said nothing else, but I knew it was his way of asking about Hopkinson.
    â€œHe’s writing a novel,” I said.
    â€œOh, God.”
    â€œIt’s his third.”
    â€œOh, God.”
    â€œHe spoiled the first two, he said. He rushed them. He said he was not going to rush this one.”
    Vidia gagged on his tea and released great lungfuls of laughter, his smoker’s laugh that was so fruity and echoey.
    â€œHe’s just playing with art.”
    â€œHe was a friend of George Orwell,” I said.
    â€œOne has been compared to Orwell,” Vidia said. “It is not much of a compliment, is it?”
    Â 
    The Indian high commissioner in Nairobi, Prem Bhatia, gave a dinner party for Vidia. Now, as at the Kaptagat, I saw a contented Vidia: a respected visitor in the house of a man who admired his work. This role of guest of honor calmed Vidia and made him portentous and unfunny and overformal, and at the table he became orotund.
    â€œOne has been contemplating for some little time...”
    Bhatia had been a distinguished journalist in India. He had lively talkative teenage children and the sort of ambassadorial household that was like a real family. It was not a stuffy party. Two dining tables had been set up in the courtyard of the residence for the Kenyan, Indian, and English guests. Vidia and his host sat at a head table.
    As an elderly Sikh servant in a red turban poured wine, Bhatia followed him and said, “Now do enjoy your wine, but be very careful of the glasses. They cost five guineas each. I had them sent from London.”
    Hearing this, one of the Englishmen picked up his wine, drank it down, and flung the glass over his shoulder at the courtyard wall. The glass made a soft watery smash as it hit the flagstones.
    There was a sudden hush. Bhatia kept smiling and said nothing. The Englishman laughed crazily—he might have been drunk. His wife, her head down, was whispering.
    â€œInfy.” It was spoken loudly from the head table.
    After the party, when all the guests had gone and the servants had withdrawn, Vidia talked in his pompous visiting-elder-statesman manner, which was also the tone of his narrator, whom he had told me was a politician. The subject was the Indians who had been deported.
    â€œThis is disgraceful,” Vidia said. “How are you planning to respond?”
    â€œWe’ve lodged a very strong protest,” Bhatia said.
    â€œYou must do more than that,” Vidia said. “India is a big, powerful country. It is a major power.”
    â€œOf course—”
    â€œRemind the Africans of that. Latterly, the Africans have behaved as though they were dealing with just another shabby little country. Latterly—”
    â€œI’ve sent a letter.”
    â€œSend a gunboat.”
    â€œA gunboat?”
    â€œA punitive mission.”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œShell Mombasa.”
    â€œWho would do this?”
    â€œThe Indian Navy,” Vidia said.