At first the tramp seems whole. Standing on the quay, ready to
board the "dingy little Greek steamer" (F, 7) for the two-day voy-
age to Alexandria, he doesn't even "look like a tramp," ¹ resembling
instead, with his rucksack and polka-dotted neckerchief, a "roman-
tic wanderer of an earlier generation." But as he approaches, one
sees that his clothes are "in ruin," his trousers stained, his jacket
held together by safety pins—one sees that he is a tramp. And old,
with a "worn face and wet blue eyes" (F, 8), a face "worked over
by distress" (F, 11). Once on board, he talks continuously, his
speech "full of dates, places and numbers" (F, 9): the visit to Canada
in 1923, to New Zealand in 1934. But he isn't "looking for conver-
sation," only for "the camouflage and protection of company . . .
[he] knew he was odd" (F, 10). When he opens a magazine, he
doesn't read but instead shreds its pages, his "nervous jigging
hands" (F, 13) covering the floor around him with litter.

"The Tramp at Piraeus" forms the prologue to V. S. Nai paul
's 1971 collection In a Free State, a travel sketch whose nameless
narrator can be taken as a critical portrait of the author himself.
The steamer is "overcrowded, like a refugee ship . . . there wasn't
enough room for everybody." And many of the passengers have
indeed been refugees: the "humped figures in Mediterranean
black" who fill the lower deck, Egyptian Greeks expelled after Suez
and now allowed back for a brief visit only. For the British "invad-

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