‘What is a shamba?’ asked P.O.M., my wife. ‘I’ve been hearing about them for months. I’m afraid to ask about those words every one uses.’
‘A plantation,’ he said. ‘It is all gone except that lorry. With the lorry I carry labourers to the shamba of an Indian. It is a very rich Indian who raises sisal. I am a manager for this Indian. An Indian can make a profit from a sisal shamba.’
‘From anything,’ Pop said.
‘Yes. Where we fail, where we would starve, he makes money. This Indian is very intelligent, however. He values me. I represent European organization. I come now from organizing recruitment of the natives. This takes time. It is impressive. I have been away from my family for three months. The organization is organized. You do it in a week as easily, but it is not so impressive.’
‘And your wife?’ asked mine.
‘She waits at my house, the house of the manager, with my daughter.’
‘Does she love you very much?’ my wife asked.
‘She must, or she would be gone long ago.’
‘How old is the daughter?’
‘She is thirteen now.’
‘It must be very nice to have a daughter.’
‘You cannot know how nice it is. It is like a second wife. My wife knows now all I think, all I say, all I believe, all I can do, all that I cannot do and cannot be. I know also about my wife — completely. But now there is always someone you do not know, who does not know you, who loves you in ignorance and is strange to you both. Some one very attractive that is yours and not yours and that makes the conversation more — how shall I say? Yes, it is like — what do you call — having here with you — with the two of you — yes there — it is the Heinz Tomato Ketchup on the daily food.’
‘That’s very good,’ I said.
‘We have books,’ he said. ‘I cannot buy new books now but we can always talk. Ideas and conversation are very interesting. We discuss all things. Everything. We have a very interesting mental life. Formerly, with the shamba, we had the {Querschnitt}. That gave you a feeling of belonging, of being made a part of, to a very brilliant group of people. The people one would see if one saw whom one wished to see. You know all of those people? You must know them.’
‘Some of them.’ I said. ‘Some in Paris. Some in Berlin.’
I did not wish to destroy anything this man had, and so I did not go into those brilliant people in detail.
‘They’re marvellous,’ I said, lying.
‘I envy you to know them,’ he said. ‘And tell me, who is the greatest writer in America?’
‘My husband,’ said my wife.
‘No. I do not mean for you to speak from family pride. I mean who really? Certainly not Upton Sinclair. Certainly not Sinclair Lewis. Who is your Thomas Mann? Who is your Valery?’
‘We do not have great writers,’ I said. ‘Something happens to our good writers at a certain age. I can explain but it is quite long and may bore you.’
‘Please explain,’ he said. ‘This is what I enjoy. This is the best part of life. The life of the mind. This is not killing kudu.’
‘You haven’t heard it yet,’ I said.
‘Ah, but I can see it coming. You must take more beer to loosen your tongue.’
‘It’s loose,’ I told him. ‘It’s always too loose. But {you} don’t drink anything.’
‘No, I never drink. It is not good for the mind. It is unnecessary. But tell me. Please tell me.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we have had, in America, skilful writers. Poe is a skilful writer. It is skilful, marvellously constructed, and it is dead. We have had writers of rhetoric who had the good fortune to find a little, in a chronicle of another man and from voyaging, of how things, actual things, can be, whales for instance, and this knowledge is wrapped in the rhetoric like plums in a pudding. Occasionally it is there, alone, unwrapped in pudding, and it is good. This is Melville. But the people who praise it, praise it for the rhetoric which is not important. They put a mystery in which is not there.’