Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

When the bell rang the schoolyard was instantly stilled. Shouts were suspended, sentences hung unfinished. The traffic on Tragarete Road could be heard, the din from the kitchens of the Queen’s Park Hotel. A fluttering of white shirts; newly polished shoes pattering on the asphalt quadrangle and grating up the concrete steps; a wavering line of blue serge at every door; unemphatic footsteps in the hall; here and there a defiant banging of a desk-lid. Then silence. And the Daddies, alone in the schoolyard, looked at the hall doors.

Slowly they dispersed. Three hours later they began to reassemble, their clothes hanging a little more loosely, their faces shining. Many carried oilstained paper parcels. They stood in the shade of buildings and trees and stared at the hall doors. A self-possessed invigilator in shirtsleeves walked slowly up and down, sheets of paper in his hand; from time to time he coughed noiselessly into a loosely-clenched fist. A car stopped not far from the school gates; the middle-aged driver lounged in the angle of seat and door, rested a newspaper on the steering-wheel and read, picking his nose.

Then a hamper appeared. A wicker basket with the edges of an ironed white napkin peeping out below the flaps. A uniformed maid held the hamper in the crook of her arm and waited in the shade of the tree next to the caretaker’s house, ignoring the glances of the Daddies with oilstained paper parcels.

More cars came. Mr. Biswas, fresh from writing up the sensational decline and fall of a destitute for the Sunday Sentinel , arrived on his Royal Enfield. Yielding to a habit he had formed since frequenting destitutes, he chained the bicycle to the school rails. He walked into the schoolyard with his bicycle clips still on: they gave him an urgent, athletic air.

Two more hampers came. Their carriers, one in uniform, one in a black cotton frock, stood next to the other hamper carrier.

Govind came. His mood had changed since the morning. He slammed the door of his taxi hard and paced up and down outside the school gates, smiling at the pavement, humming, his hands behind his back.

A flutter as of pigeons in the hall: papers being collected. A steady and prolonged banging of desk-lids, a shuffling and a scraping, footsteps more assertive than in the morning, a disorderly rash of white shirts, many broken lines of blue serge: as though the disciplined battalion of a few hours before had been routed and were retreating hurriedly, their equipment abandoned. And the Daddies advanced, like people welcoming a train, some purposefully, claiming their own, some getting lost in the eddies of white and dark blue, and hesitating.

Even in this disorder the hampers were noted, and two provided surprises, for their recipients were mild mannered and insignificant; they were now being bullied by maids and led to classrooms.

Everywhere Daddies were getting reports. Question papers were displayed, inkstained fingers pointed. Already, too, backs were being turned, and brown paper parcels and white paper parcels unwrapped and furtively explored.

Mr. Biswas saw Vidiadhar first: running down the steps, a lime bulging clearly in each trouser pocket, clothes a little battered, but a face as gay and as fresh and as unstained as when he went in. The little thug. He joined a group of fatherless who had gathered around the class-teacher. No longer posing for the Daddies or one another, they were anxious, excited and shrill.

Anand avoided them when he came out. The pen Mr. Biswas had lent him, just in case, had leaked in his shirt pocket and left a large wet stain: it was as though his heart had bled ink. His hair was disordered, his lips black and moustached with ink, his cheeks and forehead smudged. His face was drawn; he looked dejected, exhausted and irritable.

“Well,” Mr. Biswas said, smiling, his heart sinking. “It went all right?”

“Take your bicycle clips off!”

Stunned by the boy’s vehemence, Mr. Biswas obeyed.

Anand handed him the question papers, clumsily folded, already dirty. Mr. Biswas began opening them.

“Oh, put it in your pocket,” Anand said, and Mr. Biswas obeyed again.

A worried Chinese boy, looking irreparably scruffy, with over-broad and over-long serge trousers napping below thin knees, left the group around the teacher and came up to them. In one small hand he unashamedly held a large cheese sandwich, far too thick, it would have seemed, for his narrow mouth; but one end of the sandwich was already irregularly pinked. In the other hand he had a bottle of aerated water. His shrunken face was distorted with anxiety: sandwich and aerated water were irrelevant.

“Biswas,” he said, paying no attention to Mr. Biswas. “That sum about the cyclist-”

“Oh, don’t bother me,” Anand said.

Mr. Biswas smiled apologetically at the boy, but the boy didn’t notice. Daddyless, he wandered off, alone with his anxieties, no one to assure him that his answer was right, the teacher’s wrong.

“You shouldn’t behave like that,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Here. Take back your pen.”

Mr. Biswas took back his pen. It dripped with ink.

“And your wrist-watch.” Anand was anxious to get rid of every reminder of the morning’s preparations.

Govind and Vidiadhar had gone. So had the other cars. The yard was less noisy. Mr. Biswas took Anand to the Dairies for lunch. Crowded with boys and their fathers, it had become an unfamiliar place. As a treat Anand had a chocolate drink instead of milk; but he didn’t enjoy that or anything else: it was only part of the day’s sacrificial ritual.

The schoolyard filled again. Cars came back, deposited boys, and left. The hampers and the maids left. When the bell rang there was not the instant and complete silence of the morning: there was chatter, shuffling and banging, dwindling to silence.

Mr. Biswas opened Anand’s question papers. The arithmetic paper was filled in its margins with crabbed and frantic figures: fractions being reduced, and many little multiplications, some completed, some abandoned. Mr. Biswas didn’t like the look of them. Then he saw that on the geography paper Anand had written his initials elaborately, outlining them in pencil, shading them in pencil; and this dismayed him entirely.

The afternoon session was shorter, and at the end of it few Daddies were in the schoolyard. Only one car came. The drama of the day was over. There was no rush out of the hall. The boys took off their ties, folded them and put them in their shirt pockets with the broad end hanging out (a recent fashion). An invigilator, in a dingy jacket and bicycle clips, brought his rickety bicycle down the steps: no longer remote and awesome, only a man going home after work.

Anand, his tie in his shirt pocket, his collar turned up, ran smiling to Mr. Biswas. “Look!” he said, showing the English paper.

One of the essay subjects was the Grow More Food Campaign.

They smiled at each other, conspirators.

“Biswas!” a boy called. “You coming to the Savannah?”

“Yes, man!”

He ran to join the boys; and Mr. Biswas, loaded with the pen and pencils, the ruler and erasers and bottle of ink, cycled home.

It was strange that, having talked about football and racing all through the term, the boys should now, watching an important football match, talk about nothing but the examination.

Anand returned home shortly after nightfall. His serge trousers were dusty, his shirt wet with perspiration, and he was very gloomy.

“I’ve failed,” he said.

“What happened?” Mr. Biswas asked.

“In the spelling paper. The synonyms and homonyms. They were so easy I thought I’d leave them for last. Then I just didn’t do them.”

“You mean you left out a whole question?”

“I realized it in the Savannah.”