Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

“Boy! You had me frightened. You didn’t go to the theatre?”

“Yes. But I had a headache.”

“And your father?”

“He is there.”

The front gate clicked, and someone came up the concrete steps. The door opened and they saw Mr. Biswas.

“Well!” Shama said. “You had a headache too?”

He didn’t answer. He worked his way between table and bed, and sat on the bed.

“I can’t understand the pair of you,” Shama said. She went into the inner room, came out with some sewing and went downstairs.

Mr. Biswas said, “Boy, get me the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare . And my pen.”

Anand climbed over the head of the bed and got the book and the pen.

For some time Mr. Biswas wrote.

“Blasted thing blot like hell. But, still, read it.”

On the fly-leaf, below the four masculine names that had been chosen for Savi before she was born, Anand read: “I , Mohun Biswas, do hereby promise my son Anand Biswas that in the event of his winning a College Exhibition, I will buy him a bicycl e .” Signature and date followed.

Mr. Biswas said, “I think you’d better witness it.”

Anand wrote the latest version of his signature and added “witness” in brackets.

“All fair and square now,” Mr. Biswas said. “Just a minute though. Let me see the book again. I think I left out something.”

He took the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare , changed the full stop of his declaration into a comma and added, war conditions permitting .

In the house the eruptions of sound had ceased. The humming had subsided to a low, steady burr. It was late. Shama and Savi came up and went to the inner room, where Myna and Kamla were already asleep. Anand lay down on the Slumberking, separated from Mr. Biswas by a bank of pillows. He pulled the cotton sheet over his face to keep out the light, and soon fell asleep. Mr. Biswas stayed awake for some time, reading. Then he got up, turned off the light, and felt his way back to the bed.

He awoke, as nearly always now, when it was still night. He never wished to know the time: it would be too early or too late. The house was full of sound: with renters, readers and learners upstairs and downstairs, the house snored. The world was without colour; it awaited no one’s awakening. Through the open window, above the silhouette of trees and the roof of the house next door, he could see the deep starlit sky. It magnified his distress. Anguish quickened to panic, the familiar knot in his stomach.

He slept late next morning; bathed in the open-air bathroom, ate in the sunny front room, put on yesterday’s shirt (he wore one shirt for two days), wrist-watch, tie, jacket, hat; and, respectably attired, cycled out to interview destitutes.

And at school, when confronted by his accuser, Anand said, “Of course I went. But I hated it so much I left before it began.”

It was agreed that it was a characteristic remark.

Anand’s attacks of asthma occurred at intervals of four weeks or less, and Mr. Biswas and Shama feared that he might get one during the week of the exhibition examination. But the attack came in the week before, ran for its three days, and then, his chest discoloured and peeling from the medicated wadding, Anand was free to attend to his last, intensive private lessons. His labours were increased when Mr. Biswas, determined to leave as little as possible to chance, wrote essays on the Grow More Food Campaign and the Red Cross and made Anand commit them to memory, Mr. Biswas flattering himself that he had concealed his own personality in these essays and made them the work, not of a dissident adult, but of a brilliant and loyal schoolboy. They were as full of noble sentiments as a Sentinel leader; they appealed urgently for support for campaign and society; they said that the war had to be won, to preserve those free institutions which Anand dearly loved.

The examination was on a Saturday. On Friday evening Shama laid out Anand’s speechday clothes and all his equipment. Anand, objecting to the clothes, said it was like preparing for a puja . And Chinta, who had kept her plans secret, did have a little puja for Vidiadhar. A pundit came up from Arwacas on his motorbike on Friday evening and spent the night among the readers and learners below the house. On Saturday morning, while Anand was doing a last-minute revision, Vidiadhar bathed in consecrated water, put on a dhoti and faced the pundit across a sacrificial fire. He listened to the pundit’s prayers, burned some ghee and chipped coconut and brown sugar, and the readers and learners rang bells and struck gongs.

Anand did not escape ritual himself. He had to wear the dark-blue serge shorts, the white shirt, the unchewed school tie; and Shama, braving his anger, sprinkled his shirt with lavender water when he wasn’t looking. He said he was willing to rely on the clock in the school hall, but he was given Mr. Biswas’s Cyma wrist-watch; it hung on his wrist like a loose bracelet and had to be pulled down to his forearm. He was given Mr. Biswas’s pen, in case his own should fail. He was given a large new bottle of ink, in case the examiners didn’t provide enough. He was given many blotters, many Sentinel pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and two erasers, one for pencil, one for ink. He said, “Anybody would believe I am going to this place to get married.” Lastly, Shama gave him two shillings. She didn’t say what this was a precaution against, and he didn’t ask.

Similar attentions were being bestowed on a simpering, lip-licking Vidiadhar; he was also provided by Chinta with many charms, which were put on under the pundit’s supervision and with ostentatious secrecy, after much shooing away of curious readers and learners. At last the boys left for the school, both smelling of lavender, Vidiadhar going in his father’s taxi, Anand walking, accompanied by Mr. Biswas, who wheeled his Royal Enfield bicycle. Halfway down the street Anand put his hand in his trousers pocket and felt something soft, small and round. It was a dry lime. It must have been put there by Shama, to cut bad luck. He threw it into the gutter.

It was as Anand feared. The exhibition candidates, prepared for years for the sacrificial day, had all come dressed for the sacrifice. They all wore serge shorts, white shirts and school ties, and Anand could only guess at what charms these clothes concealed. Their pockets were stuffed with pens and pencils. In their hands they carried blotters, rulers, erasers and new pots of ink; some carried complete cases of mathematical instruments; many wore wrist-watches. The schoolyard was full of Daddies, the heroes of so many English compositions; they seemed to have dressed with as much care as their sons. The boys looked at the Daddies; and the Daddies, wrist-watchless, eyed each other, breeders of rivals. There were few cars outside the school and Vidiadhar had achieved a temporary glory when he arrived in his father’s car. But Govind hadn’t left quickly enough and the boys, skilled in noticing such things, saw the H on the number plate which indicated that the car was for hire. Altogether it was a dreadful day, a day of reckoning, with Daddies exposed to scrutiny on every side, and the examination to follow.

Anand wanted Mr. Biswas to go at once. Not that Mr. Biswas couldn’t withstand scrutiny; but no boy with an anxious father at his side could pretend that he didn’t care about the examination, and Anand wanted passionately to give that impression. Mr. Biswas submitted and left, thinking about the ingratitude and callousness of children. Anand joined the fatherless boys who, for the benefit of the Daddies, were making an exaggerated show of being schoolboys: they shouted, bullied the bullied, called each other by nicknames, and laughed noisily at stale, but private, classroom jokes. Loudly they discussed the football match that was to take place that afternoon in the Savannah, just at the end of the street; many said they were going to watch it. One brave soul talked about the film he had seen the night before. They talked, their sweating hands staining blotters, rulers, and slipping over ink-bottles; and they waited.