Tony DeyalIT WAS always widely believed in Trinidad that at some time in his life, Vidia Naipaul would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was also always widely believed, and not only in Trinidad, that he would never receive a noble prize an award for graciousness, gratitude or the Chaucerian gentilesse.
I first met Vidia Naipaul on Miguel Street, Presentation College, San Fernando. I immediately related to Naipaul's characters. Later in life when one of my friends, in the throes of unrequited love and betrayal, climbed a tree and invited us to stone him, my respect for Naipaul as both chronicler and seer grew enormously. I felt that he really knew his people. It is only afterwards that I recognised that while he knew us, we were definitely not his people.
It was some time before I read The Suffrage of Elvira. It had fooled me on two counts. Like Dickens little Philip Pirrups' infant tongue which converted his name to Pip, my limited vocabulary converted suffrage to sufferage. Having met at least one neighbour named Eldica, and another lady named Eltie, I assumed Elvira was a woman. I had no great expectations that the book was anything but the travails and triteness of the life of some woman. I stuck to Zane Grey. El Paso came before Elvira.
Then I read Elvira and it became my favourite Naipaul. The picture of the protagonist, Harbans, clad in British finery, coat, gloves and all, reminded me of the first time I met Tubal Uriah Buzz Butler. My grandfather, Khadaroo, a contractor, lived on the old road to Fyzabad. All the cars passed in front of his house. One day, a shiny chauffeur-driven car stopped and I was astonished at the sight of a bearded, black man in the back seat wearing a hat of some furry, grey material, scissors-tail coat, white gloves, sparklingly polished shoes and a cane. Reading Elvira brought back that memory. Harbans and Butler are both intertwined in my mind as twin pinnacles of political parody, with life imitating and outdoing art while, in the context of today's politics and political leaders, validating it.
I appreciated the irony of which (I am certain) Naipaul was totally unaware. He was receiving his Nobel Prize for Literature even as Trinidad and Tobago was back in Elvira-land once more, holding what has become our national pastime, a General Election. Many years ago, after Naipaul took his own bend in the river and wrote the book, I met Derek Walcott walking through the midday heat of St. Clair, knapsack on back over a faded polo shirt, heading for the television station.
I gave him a lift and asked, "You think they will finally give Vidia the Nobel Prize?" Walcott agreed that Bend in the River would be the clincher if the Nobel committee needed one from Naipaul. I said facetiously, "Well you know Dr. Williams name planes after our two big winners, Penny Commissiong (Miss Universe) and Hasely Crawford (Olympics 100 metres), you think he will name one the Vidia Naipaul?" Walcott responded dryly, "That will kill Vidia. To have all them black people riding up inside him."
I could not disagree. My only meeting with the man was at a conference on the Indian Diaspora at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. In the middle of the oil-boom, I was producing a government television series at the time called 'Issues and Ideas' with a total budget of $2,000 annually. My boss, Caribbean journalist-at-large, George John, knew Naipaul and I didn't. I asked George if we could get Naipaul on our show. George told me to ask him. I did. Naipaul's only words to me were, "How much are you going to pay me?"
As it could not be more than $2,000, and as Mr. Naipaul would not accept less, the long-awaited day never arrived. A letter-writer in the Stabroek News of Guyana, Dave Martins, attributes Naipaul's acidity to show-business. According to Mr. Martins, when Naipaul says Africa has no future, or Trinidad's only accomplishment is drum-beating, or the dot on an Indian woman's head means its empty, or nothing was ever created in the West Indies, he is on stage. He knows these are the things his audience will rise to, the press will carry them, you and I will repeat them. Perhaps, show-business or the naming of a plane after him, might well cause Sir Vidia to take up the invitation of our President to visit Trinidad.
If Sir Vidia is served our local coffee, he might repeat his observation that we produce the best coffee in the world but drink the worst. If we have a cultural show for him, Naipaul would observe that we are the only people who see culture as something that we put on a stage (and wine to) rather than as a way of life. In light of our Election he might modify his view that as the Third World's Third World, we are a camp society and see us as a scamp society. Or he might do like Harbans. When Harbans had left Elvira and was in County Caroni, he stopped the lorry and shook his small fist at the dark countryside behind him. "Elvira!" he shouted. "You is a bitch! A bitch! A bitch!"
Tony Deyal was last seen saying that given the frequency and stress of our exercising our franchise now and in future, the appropriate spelling might well be sufferage instead of suffrage.
