Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

The talk turned one Monday lunchtime to films, and it appeared that nearly every boy who lived in Port of Spain had been to see the double programme at the London Theatre over the week-end: Jesse James and The Return of Frank James .

“What a double!” the boys exclaimed. “A major double!”

Anand, whose championship of Whitstable had established him as the holder of the perverse opinion, said he didn’t care for it.

The boys rounded on him.

Anand, who had not seen the double, repeated that he didn’t care for it. “Give me When the Daltons Rode and The Daltons Ride Again . Any day, old man.”

It was just his luck for one boy to say then, “I bet you he didn’t go to see it! You could see that old crammer going to a theatre?”

“You are a hypocritical little thug,” Anand said, using two words he had got from his father. “You are a bigger crammer than me.”

The boy wished to shift the conversation: he was a tremendous crammer. He repeated, less warmly, “I bet you didn’t go.” By now, however, the other boys had prepared to listen, and the accuser, gaining confidence, said, “All right-all right. He went. Just let him tell me what happened when Henry Fonda-”

Anand said, “I don’t like Henry Fonda.”

This created a minor diversion.

“How you mean, you don’t like Fonda. Anybody would think that you never see Fonda walk.”

“That is walk, old man.”

“All right-all right,” the accuser went on. “What happened when Henry Fonda and Brian Donlevy-”

“I don’t like him either,” Anand said. And, to his great relief, the bell rang.

He could tell from the annoyance of his accuser that the cross-examination would be continued. He went straight after school to the Dairies; when he came back it was time for private lessons; and after private lessons he managed to slip away to the headmaster’s. When he got home he said he could do no work that evening and wanted to go to the London Theatre, to give his brain a rest.

“I have no money,” Shama said. “You will have to ask your father.”

Mr. Biswas said, “When you get to my age you wouldn’t care for Westerns.”

Anand lost his temper. “When I get to your age I don’t want to be like you.”

He regretted what he had said. He was, indeed, fatigued; and Mr. Biswas’s dismissing manner had seemed to him callous. But he made no apology. He talked instead about the headaches he was getting and said he was sure he was suffering from brainfag and brainfever, crammer’s afflictions, which his rivals at school had often prophesied for him.

Mr. Biswas said, “I haven’t got a red cent on me. I don’t get pay till the day after tomorrow. Right now I am dipping into the Deserving Destees’ petty cash at the office. Go and ask your mother.”

As usual, it turned out that she did have some money. “How much you want?”

Anand calculated. Adult, twelve cents, children, half price. Just to make sure, however, he said, “Thirty-six cents.” He would return the change afterwards.

“Thirty-six cents. Well, boy, you clean me out. Look.”

All he saw in her purse were a few coppers. But she always managed. And pay day was the day after tomorrow.

The evening show began at half past eight. Mr. Biswas and Anand left the house at about eight. Not far from the cinema there was a Chinese cafй. Something had to be bought there; it was part of the cinema ritual. They had eighteen cents to spend. They bought peanuts, channa and some mint sweets, six cents in all.

The entrance to the London pit was through a narrow tunnel, as to a dungeon of romance. It allowed not more than one person to advance at a time and enabled the ticket-collector, who sat at the end with a stout stick laid across the arms of his chair, to repel gate-crashers. Mr. Biswas and Anand arrived to find the mouth of the tunnel blocked by a turbulent, unaccommodating mob. They stood hesitantly at the edge of the mob, and in an instant, driven from behind, found themselves part of it. They lost control of their hands and feet. Anand, wedged between tall men, shut off from light and air, could only allow himself to be carried along. Cries of frustration and anguish ran through the mob: the film had started: they could hear the opening music. The pressure on Anand increased; he feared he would be crushed against the angle of wall and tunnel; Mr. Biswas called to him in a voice that seemed to come from far; he could not answer; he could not look up or down. There was only the thought that at the end of this lay Henry Fonda and Brian Donlevy and Tyrone Power, all of whom, despite what he had said at school, commanded Anand’s highest esteem. He heard men crying for tickets; they were getting near. Through a small, semicircular, lighted hole in the wall of the tunnel money was being pushed in, tickets out, and the hands of the ticketseller occasionally flashed: a woman’s hands, fat and cool.

It was Mr. Biswas’s turn. Struggling to remain in front of the hole, to prevent himself being swept down, ticketless, to the ticket-collector with the stick, he placed a shilling on the smooth, shining wood. “One and a half

A woman’s voice said, “Half price only at matinee.” The hands, about to tear a ticket from the reel, waited.

“Two, then.”

Two green tickets were pushed towards him, and he and Anand yielded gratefully to the pressure at their backs.

“Hey, you!” the woman’s voice called from the hole.

Selling had stopped, and the clamour redoubled all down the tunnel.

“You!”

Mr. Biswas went back to the lighted hole.

“What you mean, giving me only a shilling?” The coin lay on her palm.

“Two twelves.”

“Two twenties. Sixteen cents more.”

Anand stood where he was. The turmoil and the shouting became remote.

The soundtrack indicated that a fire was in progress. People who had seen the film before recognized the sound; it wound them up to a frenzy.

How could he have forgotten that there was half price only at matinees? How could he have forgotten that on Mondays as on Saturdays and Sundays, the price was not twelve cents, but twenty?

Mr. Biswas put the two green tickets down. One was torn off and given back to him, with four cents.

They stood against the wall next to the ticket-collector, while the men who had been behind them hurried past, rearranging their disordered clothes.

“You go,” Mr. Biswas said.

Anand’s cheeks bulged over the mint sweet. He had stopped sucking it; it felt cold and wet. He shook his head. Shock had taken away all desire to see the films; if he stayed he would have to walk home alone at midnight.

They were continually jostled. They were in the way.

Mr. Biswas said, “I’ll come back for you.”

Anand hesitated. But at that moment there was a new scramble up the tunnel; someone shouted, “Why the hell you don’t go if you going?”; the ticket-collector said, “Make up your mind. You blocking the way.” And Anand said to Mr. Biswas, “You go,” and Mr. Biswas, appearing to obey instantly, vanished behind many backs and was propelled into the cinema to see films he hadn’t wanted to see.

Anand stayed in the tunnel, pressed flat against the wall, while people passed inside. Presently, with the film well advanced, the tunnel was empty. The distempered ochre walls were rubbed shiny. In the lighted hole the hands were knitting.

He walked past the Woodbrook Market Square, the Chinese cafй, the Murray Street playground. The house, when he returned to it, was humming. But no one saw him. He went straight to the front room, took off his shoes and lay down on the Slumberking.

There Shama found him when she came upstairs and turned on the light.