Their first idea had been to start a cattle co-operative. Pasturage could then be controlled by segments in this badly eroded land and the gra.s.s could revive. But there was a tradition of cattle-rustling among the Zulus; hundreds of unprotected cattle would be a standing provocation. So the idea of the cattle co-operative was laid aside, and Neil and Creina looked instead to develop a self-sustaining agricultural project. The river would provide water; there would be experimental solar cookers and methane-digesters. The project was housed in eleven Zulu-style huts, mud and stone and thatch. Neil and Creina were living on fifty dollars a month. Visitors began to come, some to spend a night in a hut, and it began to look as though the difficult project was taking off.
It seemed at one time that the danger to Neil would come from white farmers on the other side of the border. They thought that Neil was giving his Africans too much encouragement, especially during times of drought when he cut down fences on the border and sent the cattle and goats of Africans to feed on the lusher gra.s.s on the other side. But, in fact, Neil seemed to have enjoyed some degree of licence as a madman on both sides of the border. And the danger, when it came, was from a random source that no one could have predicted: a factional Zulu war that had almost no cause, and was princ.i.p.ally an expression of the Zulu love of fighting.
And, final, dreadful irony, it was because he had agreed to try to end a little Zulu war that he was killed. He was killed in an ambush by warriors from one side. He was driving his microbus to a peace meeting. The warriors, rising from behind boulders at the side of the road, aimed at him, the peace-maker. He was. .h.i.t in the neck; he opened the microbus door and fell out on the road, dead.
Life became very hard for Creina. A widow in Africa is nothing, and Creina lost all the authority she had enjoyed as Neil"s wife. Young starveling boys she had taken in and nurtured now turned against her, began to steal from her. They stole her ca.s.sette, her typewriter. They stole the money, two thousand dollars, she had put aside to pay farm women for their beadwork; this was an important part of the farm"s income. Now that there wasn"t the money to pay the women she had to pay them in instalments out of her seventy-five dollars a month wages. It was easy to steal from Creina; there were no locks on her doors. And it got worse. One man falsely accused her of killing eight of his goats. He wanted money for his goats; otherwise he was going to kill her. People she knew pleaded with her to leave the farm, but she didn"t.
She told Rian Malan, "If you"re really going to live in Africa, you have to be able to look at it and say, "This is the way of love, down this road: look at it hard. This is where it is going to lead you.""
This is the resolution of this marvellous book. It is not easy to accept. Creina is so much finer than the louts who exploit her. Perhaps the problem is that "love" is not defined. Without that definition it is hard to follow Creina when she tells Rian Malan, "I think you will know what I mean if I tell you love is worth nothing until it has been tested by its own defeat." It may even be that in this parable the writer is finding a way of saying something quite difficult: that after apartheid a resolution is not really possible until the people who wish to impose themselves on Africa violate some essential part of their being.
March 2008September 2009
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty-six books of fiction and nonfiction, including A House for Mr. Biswas; In a Free State A House for Mr. Biswas; In a Free State, which won the Booker Prize in 1971; A Bend in the River; An Area of Darkness; Among the Believers; A Bend in the River; An Area of Darkness; Among the Believers; and and Magic Seeds Magic Seeds. V. S. Naipaul was knighted in 1989. He was awarded the David Cohen British Literature Prize by the Arts Council of England in 1993 and the n.o.bel Prize in Literature in 2001. He holds honorary doctorates from Cambridge University and Columbia University in New York, and honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge, London and Oxford. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
Also by V. S. Naipaul
NONFICTION
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
Among the Believers
The Return of Eva Peron (with (with The Killings in Trinidad The Killings in Trinidad)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barrac.o.o.n
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Pa.s.sageFICTIONA Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
A Flag on the Island
The Mimic Men
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion
Miguel Street*
The Suffrage of Elvira*
The Mystic Ma.s.seur**Published in an omnibus edition ent.i.tled Three Novels Three Novels