The Mimic Men by V.S. Naipaul Page A

hard and played hard’. These phrases that tabulate! I had no profession and no job. I needed money. I studied my resources and looked aroundfor a way. On an island where, apart from the professions and agriculture, money could be made only through commission agencies, I must have appeared a little too coldly adventurous. But at least the School cannot say that the years I spent in it were wasted. A small part of the Bella Bella money had come to me; within five years that part had outgrown the whole. I was one of those who foresaw the postwar spread of cities, the destruction of the open spaces between settlements; and on Isabella I was the first. I cannot claim much credit. What I did was obvious, considering my resources. I had inherited a 120-acre block of wasteland just outside the city. It was part of a blighted citrus plantation which had been allowed to go derelict during the depression; had been sold to a racing man who had tried unsuccessfully to breed racehorses on it; and had then been bought by my grandfather for no other reason than that it was land and going cheap. It brought him no money; I doubt whether it paid the wages of the watchman-overseer and the upkeep of his mule. From time to time on a Sunday my grandfather would go and pick a few avocadoes and grapefruit, which he would pretend he was getting free. It was not much of a thing to inherit. A derelict citrus plantation is one of the slums of tropical nature. The soil is not rich; the barks of the trees are mildewed and mossy; the grey branches are thin and brittle-looking and almost bare; the leaves are yellow; and the fruit rots before it ripens, hanging soft and blanched like disease, in a pestilential smell. When it came to me my first thought was to sell. But even in 1945 I could find no buyers.
    The feeling still existed, aided no doubt by a poor transport system which had grown even worse during the war, that town was town, and country country; our city, too, had remained the same for so long that we had definite ideas, almost medieval and superstitious, about its limits. The last telegraph pole within what was considered the citywas shaggy with posters; the one just two hundred yards away – in the country – was quite bare.
    This was the land which I now thought to develop. It was already to a large extent attractively landscaped, with dips and knolls; we were close enough to the city for water and electricity to be available. I divided the land into one hundred and fifty half-acre plots; built roads, laid down services; and offered the plots for sale: $2,000 a plot, a 25-year lease, the ground rent $500 a year. I deal, it must be remembered, in Isabella dollars, five of which at that time were worth three United States dollars. They were not excessive terms. Our city had been built on short leases and even in an unsavoury area you could pay five dollars a month ground rent for half-a-lot, one-sixteenth of an acre. My terms in fact were more than reasonable; my only difficult condition was that every house had to be approved by me and should cost not less than $15,000. Nothing nowadays, when teachers and civil servants buy houses for $20,000; but in the early fifties in Isabella it was accounted a great deal; and for Kripalville – such was the name I gave the development, speedily corrupted to Crippleville, which had its attractions – the residents selected themselves. The scheme required nothing but method, precision and time. I worked at it calmly for two years. My conviction of success was total; in my own mind it never was an issue, not even when I owed the bank $150,000. I handled men as I handled money, by instinct. When it came to employing someone I ignored advice and references and was never swayed by racial considerations. I employed a man, foreman, clerk, labourer, only if I took an instant liking to him; and I gave no one a second chance. The man who lets you down once will let you down again; this is especially true of the