Sir Vidia's Shadow Read Free Page A

horseback, in a crimson tunic and black military beret. Now that was gone, though the memory was fresh. Some butcher shops labeled the poorer cuts “boys’ meat”—the stuff bought for servants to eat—and the “cook boy” might be a gray-haired man of sixty or more, and the “garden boy” another grandfather.
    â€œThe housegirl is hopeless,” Yomo said.
    Yomo had the African monomania regarding diet. A country where pounded yam and palm wine were unobtainable was a Nigerian’s nightmare. She nagged on this subject effortlessly but with such passion that Julian was moved by how much she cared, how single-minded she could be on the subject of survival. She would be a good mother.
    â€œThe girl never heard of kola nuts!” Yomo said.
    This housegirl was a married woman, thirty or so, with three kids whom Julian had allowed to play in the kitchen. Yomo exiled them to the back verandah.
    â€œYou said you liked kids,” Julian said.
    â€œI want one of my own,” said Yomo. “Give me one.”
    Two months of trying, at least twice a day, yet there was apparently no progress. Julian remained complacent. His luck so far had been wonderful. It seemed right to him to leave the matter of children to chance, as that priest on the Congo border had done. If Julian meddled or fretted, it would surely go wrong. Whatever happened would be right. He suggested that Yomo go to his Indian doctor, but she procrastinated. From her various oblique remarks, always referring to bush clinics in Yorubaland, Julian suspected that she was afraid of doctors.
    Yomo did not know what to make of his Indian friends, could not understand a word they said; nor could they understand the way she talked. But she was patient. She sat and smiled and afterwards she always said, “They are so oggly!” She also said that Indian men smelled of Indian food, and Indian women of coconut oil.
    The Indians in Uganda, despairing of India, loved living in East Africa—loved the weather, the mangoes, the empty roads, the greenery, and especially loved the parks where they promenaded every Sunday, airing their women and letting their children run. They put walls around their houses. The walls worked; the walls kept them private. There was profit everywhere, there was space. In many ways Uganda the republic resembled Uganda the British protectorate. Institutions worked well—the post office, the telegraph, the police, the railway trains, the ferries on Lake Victoria.
    One day when Julian was talking with Indians about India, one of them mentioned U. V. Pradesh. It was the first time Julian had heard the name.
    â€œYou want to know the difference between East African Indians and the babus in India?” this man, Desai, said. “Read
Mother India
by U. V. Pradesh.”
    No one knew what the initials stood for. The initials gave the name a blunt, impersonal sound, like a weighty name you might see lettered on the door—a large door that was closed—of someone in authority you were anxiously waiting to see: a dentist, a headmaster, an inspector, someone unfriendly, possibly intimidating. That was how the name seemed to Julian, unconsoling, and so far the name was everything.
    Whenever a book was recommended to Julian by someone whose intelligence he respected, he read it.
Mother India
was a book he took to immediately. He skipped to the portrait of the East African Indian, in the chapter “Degrees.” This man was a liberated soul, a free spirit in Africa, but on a visit back to India he was lost, encumbered and bewildered by caste prejudice. Julian recognized the man, he trusted the book, and then he read the whole thing from the beginning. It was skeptical, tender, comic, complex, and the narrative voice was never raised, never hectoring, always finding the connection and the paradox. The dialogue was beautifully chosen and always telling. Yet U. V. Pradesh was only a name. At one