Read The Secret of Evil for Free Online Page A

chosen a public
place, as if they were intimidated by this peculiar Englishman, or as if they’d
been disconcerted by the author of
Miguel Street
and
A House for
Mr. Biswas
when they met him in the flesh and had thought: Well, I
didn’t think it would be like this, or: This isn’t the man I’d imagined, or:
Nobody told me. So there he is, Naipaul, and it seems that all he can notice are
outward movements, but in fact he’s noticing inward movements too, although he
interprets them in his own way, sometimes arbitrarily, and he’s moving through
Buenos Aires in the year 1972 and writing as he moves or perhaps only wanting to
write as his legs move through that strange city, and he’s still young, forty
years old, but he already has a considerable body of work behind him, a body of
work that doesn’t weigh him down or prevent him from moving briskly through
Buenos Aires when he has an appointment to keep — the weight of the work, that’s
something to which we shall have to return, the weight and the pride that he
takes in his work, the weight and the responsibility, which don’t prevent his
legs from moving nimbly or his hand from rising to hail a taxi, as he acts in
character, like the man he is, a man who keeps his appointments punctually — but
he
is
weighed down by the work when he goes strolling through Buenos
Aires without appointments to exercise his British punctuality, without any
pressing obligations, just walking along those strange avenues and streets,
through that city in the southern hemisphere, so like the cities of the northern
hemisphere, and yet nothing like them at all, a hole, a void that someone has
suddenly inflated, a show that is strictly for local consumption; that’s when he
feels the weight of the work, and it’s tiring to carry that weight as he walks,
it exhausts him, it’s irritating and shameful.
    II.
    Many years ago, before V. S. Naipaul — a writer whom I hold
in high regard, by the way — won the Nobel Prize, I tried to write a story about
him, with the title “Scholars of Sodom.” The story began in Buenos Aires, where
Naipaul had gone to write the long article on Eva Perón that was later included
in a book published in Spain by Seix Barral in 1983. In the story, Naipaul
arrived in Buenos Aires, I think it was his second visit to the city, and took a
cab — and that’s where I got stuck, which doesn’t say much for my powers of
imagination. I had some other scenes in mind that I didn’t get around to
writing. Mainly meetings and visits. Naipaul at newspaper offices. Naipaul at
the home of a writer and political activist. Naipaul at the home of an
upper-class literary lady. Naipaul making phone calls, returning to his hotel
late at night, staying up and diligently making notes. Naipaul observing people.
Sitting at a table in a famous café trying not to miss a single word. Naipaul
visiting Borges. Naipaul returning to England and going through his notes. A
brief but engaging account of the following series of events: the election of
Perón’s candidate, Perón’s return, the election of Péron, the first symptoms of
conflict within the Peronist camp, the right-wing armed groups, the Montoneros,
the death of Perón, his widow’s presidency, the indescribable López Rega, the
army’s position, violence flaring up again between right- and left-wing
Peronists, the coup, the dirty war, the killings. But I might be getting all
mixed up. Maybe Naipaul’s article stopped before the coup; it probably came out
before it was known how many had disappeared, before the scale of the atrocities
was confirmed. In my story, Naipaul simply walked through the streets of Buenos
Aires and somehow had a presentiment of the hell that would soon engulf the
city. In that respect his article was prophetic, a modest, minor prophecy,
nothing to match Sábato’s
Abbadon the Exterminator
, but with a modicum
of good will it could be seen as a member of the same family, a family of
nihilist works