Such brothers are often fratricidal from birth and babyish in their battling, for there are nearly always aspects of lingering infantilism in sibling rivalry. When brothers fight, family secrets are revealed and the shaming revelations often make forgiveness irrelevant — the damage is done. In the literature of sibling rivalry, an enthralling spectator sport but pure hell on the fraternal rivals, the cry is usually “He hit me first!” or “Choose me!” It is also typical for one sibling to feign an utter lack of interest in the other; inevitably you end up admiring one and pitying the other. The larger family — the cause of it all — winces and tries not to choose sides. The nicer-seeming brother is not necessarily the better writer, nor even necessarily nicer.
Shiva Naipaul never had news of his brother, and was insulted if you asked: they seldom met. In the way of a brother, Shiva’s presence rang bells like mad and was full of reminders of Vidia — turns of speech, Trinidadian eccentricities, Hindu fastidiousness, and chance remarks that at times added to my understanding of Vidia; but in the impatient and rivalrous manner of a brother, Shiva more often obscured it, even undermined those insights.
Meanwhile, Shiva protested his love for Vidia, yet he said his brother had hurt him. “I had vulnerabilities he did not always find easy to understand,” Shiva wrote in an essay, “My Brother and I.” “For a long time there was mutual distress.” That was putting it mildly, and “distress” was a Vidia word, an understatement he used often to indicate outrage or fury. There was anger on Shiva’s part, indifference — or disparagement — on Vidia’s.
“Shiva was raised by women,” Vidia had said. He repeated this formula often, shaking his head at the imagined damage from female attention.
More softly and with feeling Vidia had also said, “When my father had his heart attack, Shiva found him alone. My father was dead. Shiva just stood there, frozen, mute. He could not speak.”
I saw Vidia occasionally, talked with him on the phone quite often, and corresponded. I bumped into Shiva all the time, never spoke on the phone, never wrote him a letter, nor did I ever receive one from him. This bumping into him characterized the randomness of his life. He said he didn’t make plans — that seemed a luxury to me. I felt I was overworked and stuck in a routine, but if I complained, it was dishonest of me — I liked the grind, I was happiest when I was writing, creation to me was pure joy. Shiva, echoing Vidia, said writing was misery. All the same, he could seem quite jolly.
I had run into Shiva in the middle of my period of financial uncertainty, in 1973—“I’ll take a trip and find a book to write.” It was to be The Great Railway Bazaar. After leaving the Punjab in Pakistan, I went to New Delhi. I met Shiva by chance in a guesthouse there. He told me he had flown to India. I said I had come overland on trains from London.
“God, how long did that take?”
“About five weeks.” I thought I had made pretty good time.
“Five weeks!” He sat like a pasha on cushions, smoking and drinking tea. His chubby cheeks shook as he laughed. “You’re a masochist.”
“Some of it was fun,” I said. “The Orient Express. Some of the Turkish trains. The mosques in Herat, in Afghanistan. The Khyber Pass.”
“Carry on, up the Khyber!” And he laughed again.
His mockery made conversation futile. It was nothing new. I always felt there was envy in his jeering, and I knew that if I jeered at him, he would be furious.
I smiled, defying him to mock. October in Delhi, twenty-five years ago. Two thirty-year-olds in a garden, each with a book in mind. He had a famous brother — he’d be all right. But if I didn’t bring home a book I was sunk.
“Why are you putting yourself through this?”
“A travel book,” I said.
“I didn’t think you wrote travel books.”
“It’s just an attempt. I need the money.”
“So you’re going to write about India like everyone else?”
“No. This is a whole trip. I’m going to Sri Lanka by train, via Madras. Then all over — Calcutta, Rangoon, Vietnam, Japan. And home on the Trans-Siberian.”
I should not have told him this. He exploded with laughter, gagging and choking, smoke shooting out of his nostrils, his big face going red.
“I think I’ll be home by Christmas.”
He said, “I’ll be home on Wednesday.”
Today was Monday. I wanted to go home. Feeling demoralized, I went to a hotel and tried to call my wife but got nothing, just the sound of surf and a feeble voice on the line. I was horribly homesick and could not sleep.
Shiva and I met the next day, also by accident. He had one of the good rooms in the guesthouse, and I passed it on my way out. He called to me and ordered coffee. Among the papers on his coffee table was a telegram: CONGRATULATIONS ON THE HAWTHORNDEN. LONGING TO SEE YOU WEDNESDAY. LOVE, JENNY.
He had won a literary prize. He was going home. His wife loved him. This was bliss — beyond bliss.
“What do you think of India?” I asked.
“I don’t think much!” He howled again.
This was how he conversed. Was it aggressive? He made you ask the questions, and he would give an unhelpful answer and then laugh in a mirthless way.
“This is paradise compared to some places I’ve been,” I said. “Iran. Kabul. Peshawar.”
“This is the Turd World!”
And that laugh again, like a form of punctuation, a jeering exclamation mark. I took it to be nervousness, or obstinacy. The young companion of my London Christmas long ago had become a rather prickly man.
He had become very heavy, and in the heat of India his bulk made him slow and clumsy. He looked uncomfortable. He chain-smoked. He drank whiskey. Instead of a fat, contented drunkard, I had the impression of a dissatisfied sot, confused, unhappy, and angry. Nothing was angrier than his laughter.
He lived in Vidia’s shadow, as I did, but no shadow is darker than a clever brother’s. Yet he had started his intellectual life idolizing Vidia, who left Trinidad in 1950, when Shiva was five, and who was always absent. Shiva became a devotee, and was so deeply influenced that his writing often looked like a parody of Vidia’s. Attempting subtlety, Shiva ended up sounding pompous and convoluted, though he was seen to be the “warmer” brother, in the shorthand of magazine profilers and portraitists. And there was that act of piety which even Vidia marveled at: the memorizing of The Mystic Masseur. Veneration could go no further than reciting the sacred texts by heart, but it was death for Shiva’s prose style. In spite of his mockery of me, it was impossible for me not to feel a bit sorry for him.
Yet at that moment in India I envied him his swift return to London. I cursed my luck at being on this long trip alone. The phones didn’t work. I got no mail. I was like an old out-of-touch explorer. True, it was the reason I saw so much, and the reason I was changed by the experience. But if someone had said, “Here’s ten thousand dollars, scrap the trip,” I would not have hesitated to join Shiva on the London-bound plane.
There was a young Indian woman who hung around the guesthouse. She stared at me. Why? Indian women never did that. She touched my arm. “Hey, I’ve been to the States.” She took my hand and squeezed it. In Indian terms, this was as if she had said, “Take me, I’m yours.” She looked me straight in the eye.