In between memory and history
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The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
M.G. Vassanji
Canongate, London
2004; originally published in Canada in 2003
416 pages
Reviewed by Tony Simões da Silva
Readers familiar with M.G. Vassanji’s work will recall his predilection for narratives dwelling in the labyrinthine worlds of memory. In The Gunny Sack (1989), Uhuru Street (1992) and The Book of Secrets (1994), Vassanji draws on the past as it is recorded in a range of documents – real and imaginary – to create narratives that derive their historical interest less for the link to the factual than for the way in which they feed on memory, that most porous and unreliable of recipients of knowledge. One of the most interesting aspects of Vassanji’s work is thus this taut weaving of the political with the personal, not in order to make a statement but rather to show how history is always about so much more than facts and dates. As his latest novel makes clear, it is in the imprint of life as it is found in memory that history finds its coherence, perhaps even a degree of cohesion.
In The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2004) Vassanji returns also to a theme that preoccupied him in earlier works, notably the place of Asian-Africans in postcolonial Africa, caught up between European colon
ial forces and African nationalist movements fighting to wrest control of their nations. In the figure of Vikram Lall, Vassanji has created a character whose life reflects the myriad experiences of thousands of Asian-Africans in the latter half of the 20th century, but also, more generally, a figure through whom he explores broader issues of the Indian diaspora. There is a huge cast of characters, the vast majority Indian but also White and Black. Some occupy positions of power and influence; some are drawn from real life, as is the case with characters such as Jomo Kenyatta and J.M. Kariuki, mostly they are fictional constructs.
"The presence of Kenyatta and Kariuki suggests a novel intended to intervene in the enormous body of scholarship engaged with understanding Africa’s recent past"
While Vassanji is careful in a note at the end of the novel to stress that figures such as Kenyatta and Kariuki participate in the story only as in a fictional capacity, their presence suggests a novel intended to intervene in the enormous body of scholarship engaged with understanding Africa’s recent past. Its strength resides thus in part on this ability to comment on the coincidental ways in which life is lived, not always, if at all, ordained by set political or social parameters, but randomly, so often accidentally.
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is told through the viewpoint of an older Lall, presently living in Canada. His status there is left unexplained until the very last section, though we know that he lives in the small town of Korrenburg; we are not told if as a resident, a visitor or an exile. Throughout the novel there are hints that his escape from Kenya was rushed and that his presence in Canada causes him considerable distress, not least because he would like to return to his homeland. His story, which we are told in snippets of recollection, takes him and us, the readers, to the time of his youth in Kenya, a brief stint in Tanzania, an even shorter visit to London and his period as a civil servant in the new Kenyatta government, later a successful businessmen and middle man to the newly rich and powerful. Structurally, the novel is organised along these two parallel narrative threads; one, set in the past, in the Kenya of the 1950s, through to the present, the other set in Canada, but anchored in the past by Lall’s frequent flashbacks to the Kenya of his earlier life.
Divided in four parts – "The Year of Our Loves and Friendships"; "The Year of Her Passion"; "The Years of Betrayal" and "Homecoming" – The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is an bold attempt at telling the epic of Asian people in Africa. Simultaneously, it explores Kenya’s troubled ascension to independence and the later internal conflicts between Kenyatta and Kariuki, which consequences remain unresolved to this day. The recent attack on Ngugi wa Thiong’, upon his return to Nairobi after a long absence, bears many of the hallmarks that characterised the political climate at the end of Kenyatta’s regime, but that to an extent have become endemic to Kenya’s political life. Indeed, along with the many real characters who make an appearance in Vassanji’s novel in one way or another, Ngugi is also present. Although he is not identified by name, the reference to a university professor who is a writer and a political activist could not be more explicit.
In the first section, we meet the Lall family in Kenya, at the height of the Mau Mau disturbances. There they run a small store in the bush, and the children, Vikram and Deepa run freely with their Black friend, Njoroge. It is then that they meet the Bruces, a White family with two small children, Annie and William, regular customers at the store. In a move that sets the tone of much of the work, Deepa (Indian) and Njoroge (Black) soon develop a strong affection for each other, one that will haunt the narrative until the end; it is here too that Vic (Indian; the anglicised spelling of his name used throughout the novel) falls in love with Annie (White). This sense of cross-racial, and cross-cultural love, is one of the novel’s most salient characteristics, clearly framing the broader notion of ‘in-betweenness’ alluded to in the book’s title (towards the end we meet yet another couple whose love, or companionship bridges ethnic groups: Mungai, a Black Kenyan and Janice, an English woman who opts for staying on in Kenya after her husband is killed. Lall’s own father will, at the very end of the novel, take up with a Black Kenyan woman). Indeed, it is possible to see in the title a somewhat clumsy attempt at appearing ‘cutting edge’ in its rejection of rigid certainties. Yet, it would be wrong to see it in these terms; as I have noted earlier, Vassanji is especially concerned with the mess that is the human condition, much less with making neat political points.
As the political situation deteriorates in Kenya, Vic and Njoroge agree to unite through what they perceive as the Mau Mau oath of allegiance by exchanging each other’s blood, in a statement that prefigures the family’s commitment to a free Kenya; Annie and her family are murdered; Njoroge’s father disappears while in the custody of the colonial authorities; his grandfather is arrested, and the Lall family move to Nairobi. Here Njoroge and Deepa will rekindle their love, eventually forcing her parents to arrange a marriage to a young Indian man whose family are among the wealthy Asian elite. Deepa and Dilip soon leave for London, but Deepa’s love for Njoroge remains a central theme in the novel, contrasting the ways of the past with those of the present, tradition and modernity. Njoroge now marries a Black woman, Mary. With Annie dead, Vic himself will soon be married off to an Indian woman, though all the while having an affair with an Italian woman, Sophia. As the section closes, however, he remarks that, with his brief affair with Yasmin over, and his sister away in London, "I was now quite alone in my life".
The novel’s third part is the longest, and the most dramatic. These are "The Years of Betrayal", a title that seeks to encompass the varied and multiple ways in which human beings betray each other, themselves and their nations. In the period covered here Lall’s father is unfaithful to his wife; Deepa to Dilip; Vic to his wife, Shobha; Njoroge with Deepa; politicians such as Kenyatta, Okello Okello and Paul Nderi will betray their people; friends and family will both cheat and suffer the ignominy of deception and lies. If there is one thing Vassanji seems to enjoy, and consequently to overdo, it is the way in which a theme is belaboured, a point driven to its very thin end, a view developed so densely as to make it impossible not to grow weary of it. The section provides also a map of Kenya’s long and painful period of transition between political independence and national maturity. Although a detailed portrait of the experiences of Kenya’s small Indian community, the novel tells a broader tale of the new nation’s struggle for harmony between different ethnic groups and their political representatives. The events of Rift Valley are never far from the story, though they are not directly narrated. Here, again, Vassanji tells the grand narrative of Kenya’s political, national struggle through a focus on the small acts, dreams, fears and desires of anonymous people such as Vic Lall, Njoroge, the Bruces and others, but also by recreating their occasional interaction with figures in power.
In the last section, entitled "Homecoming", Vikram Lall decides to return to Kenya, where he is wanted for embezzlement and for taking part in serious acts of fraud against the Kenyan nation. In keeping with the trajectory his life has had, Vikram Lall finds himself in this position partly, if not wholly, as a result of his ethnic identity. Yet again, he is placed in an ‘in-between’ position, expected to take the blame for the actions of senior ministers whose skin colour exempts them from guilt and responsibility. Throughout the novel Vic agonises over whether to go back to Kenya and deal with the consequences of his past actions. However, the real reason for his arrival in Nairobi is one that I have left out until now; Vic returns to search and try to rescue the young man whom he has had staying with him in Canada, Joseph. Njoroge’s son, Joseph, first appears in the novel when he arrives "to start university in September, in Toronto", and Vic reveals that he "had become involved in student activism back home in Kenya, a tempting and hazardous occupation".
Between the two men there is little affection; Joseph agrees to come and stay, and Vic to take him in out of respect for Deepa’s wishes. One other bond unites them, one forged out of absence and loss: "That is the bond between us, Joseph and me, I realize, whatever else he may think about me. I knew his father". Now settled in Canada, Deepa arranges for Joseph’s studies for the same reason that Lall tells his story; both seek to keep alive the tenuous link to their life in Kenya. Deepa’s care for Joseph allows her to relive her earlier passion for his father; while Lall very early tells the reader that "Much of my life has been a recalling of her; my Annie. Each remembered moment, each fresh thought like a bead in a rosary". Joseph’s unexpected decision to go back to Kenya, as the political situation once again flares up, finally persuades Vic to undertake the trip he ponders throughout the novel. Although he intends to secure Joseph’s release, he decides also to pay his debt to Kenya, and to settle anew in the place he calls home. The end to this rambling but spellbinding narrative, when it comes is shocking and unexpected.
Vassanji writes in plain, crisp and unadorned language; we associate with his characters out of a sense of empathy with people whose lives differ little from those of people elsewhere. Political conflict remains instrumental to the narrative but Vassanji prefers to tell the broader national story through the intimate portraits of specific individuals. These are Black, White, Indian people, caught up in sets of conditions over which they have no control. Yet, in Vassanji, people are not so much victims as actors in complex plays controlled by invisible forces. As with so much of his work, this is a novel concerned with the grand themes of life and love, passion, commitment, identity; a story about exile and belonging, it has its central unifying thread in the depths of memory, Lall’s recollections of a life of wonder, upheaval and fulfilment. At one level the novel maps out Kenya’s recent ‘geography of pain’, and the narrator actually offers a factual listing of the tragedy assailing Kenya from all quarters, from ethnic conflict to Aids, sporadic conflict with neighbouring nations to financial, political and moral corruption. Yet, this is not a pessimistic or despairing depiction of contemporary Africa; rather, it is a story of survival, of sheer love for life, of passion and commitment, of possibility.
Tony Simoes da Silva teaches at the University of Exeter, UK
