Free Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux

didn’t really want me to answer his question.”
    A female student brought him an essay. She had come to his house because he refused to hold classes.
    â€œYour essay is hopeless,” he said. He chose a few examples to illustrate how bad it was, and then he said, “But you have lovely handwriting. Where did you learn to write like that?”
    Another student, celebrated as a rising Ugandan poet by Hallsmith, sent Vidia a poem, entitled “A New Nation Reborn,” and showed up some days later at VIdia’s house wearing his crimson student’s gown. These gowns, introduced by the same English vice-chancellors who had contrived Makerere’s Latin motto—
Pro Futuro Aedificamus
, We Build for the Future—mimicked those worn by Oxford students. The young poet gathered his gown like an older woman taking a seat at a doctor’s office. He said, “Have you read my poem?”
    â€œYes, I’ve read it.” Vidia paused, tapped a cigarette, and said nothing for a long while. “I have been wondering about it.”
    â€œIt is about tubbulence.”
    â€œReally.” Vidia found the boy’s eyes and fixed them with his weary stare. He said, “Don’t write any more poems. I really don’t think you should. Your gifts lie in some other direction. A story, perhaps. Now, promise me you won’t write any more poems.”
    The boy shook his head and made the promise in a halting voice. He went away baffled and dejected.
    â€œDid you see how relieved he was?” Vidia said. “He was glad I told him that.”
    Vidia rubbed his hands and disposed of other students in the same fashion. I was surprised when he agreed to be the judge of a university literary competition, but he carried out his duties his own way. He insisted that there be only one prize, called Third Prize, because the entries were so bad there could be no first and second prizes.
    â€œMake it absolutely clear that this is Third Prize,” he told the people in the English Department.
    Some of the members objected to this.
    Vidia said, “You are trying to give the African an importance he does not deserve. Your expectations are misguided. Turn away and nothing will happen. It’s the language again. Obote is just another chief. You call these politicians? They are just witch doctors.”
    When the term “Third Prize” was converted to “The Prize,” Vidia smiled and said, “Blackwash.”
    â€œThe Africans who carry books around are the ones who scare me, man,” he said around that time.
    He was dimly aware of, but not impressed by, some of the distinguished men and women who were living in Kampala or doing research at the university. An anthropologist, Victor Turner, was then at Makerere. You would not have known that this small, soft-spoken man with the diffidence of a librarian had spent years in mud huts on the upper Zambezi and on the Mongu floodplain and written pioneering studies of the Lozi people of Barotseland. Colin Turnbull had studied the Mbuti Pygmies. In the course of illustrating his encyclopedic studies of the mammals and birds of East Africa, Jonathan Kingdon, a painter and naturalist, had discovered at least two new species of mammal and several birds that had never been described. Michael Adams, a friend and contemporary of David Hockney’s, was our Gauguin. Colin Leakey, son of Louis Leakey, was our botanist. Rajat Neogy, the editor and founder of
Transition
, published Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and Nadine Gordimer.
    â€œWhat should I think about Africa?” Vidia demanded of an anthropology professor one day.
    â€œMr. Naipaul, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have too many opinions about Africa,” the man said. “If you do, you miss too much that’s really important.”
    â€œReally.”
    Later, walking back to his house, Vidia said, “Foolish man. He refuses to see the corruption. He