Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Mr. Biswas went past Dehuti to look at the body. Then he did not wish to see it again. But always, as he wandered about the yard among the mourners, he was aware of the body. He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss, but of something missed in the past. He would have liked to be alone, to commune with this feeling. But time was short, and always there was the sight of Shama and the children, alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him and called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged and was now to disappear.

The children did not go to the burial ground. They strayed about Pratap’s large yard, eyed other groups of children, town children versus country children. Anand, in his exhibition clothes, led his sisters through the vegetable garden to the cowpen. They examined a broken cartwheel. Behind the pen they surprised a hen and its brood scratching a dung heap. Girls and chickens fled in opposite directions, and the country children tittered.

Back in Port of Spain, they noticed Mr. Biswas’s stillness, his silence, his withdrawal. He did not complain about the noise; he discouraged, but gently, all efforts to engage him in conversation; he went alone for long night walks. He summoned no one to get his matches or cigarettes or books. And he wrote. He told no one what he was writing. He wrote with energy but without enthusiasm, doggedly, destroying sheet after sheet. He ate little, but his indigestion had gone. Shama bought him tinned salmon, his favourite food; she had the girls clean his bicycle and made Anand pump the tyres every morning. But he did not appear to notice these attentions.

She went to the front room one evening and stood at the head of the bed. He was writing; his back was to her. She was in his light, but he did not shout.

“What’s the matter, man?”

He said in an expressionless voice, “You are blocking the light.” He laid down paper and pencil.

She worked her way between the table and bed and sat on the edge of the bed, near his head. Her weight created a minor disturbance. The pillow tilted and his head slipped off it, falling almost into her lap. He tried to move his head, but when she held it he remained still.

“You don’t look well,” she said.

He accepted her caresses. She stroked his hair, remarked on its fine quality, said it was going thin, but not, thank God, going grey like hers. She pulled out a hair from her head and laid it across his chest. “Look,” she said, “completely grey,” laughing.

“Grey all right.”

She looked over his chest to the sheets he had put down. She saw My Dear Doctor , with the My crossed out and written in again.

“Who you writing to?”

She couldn’t read more, for beyond the first line the handwriting had deteriorated into a racing scrawl.

He didn’t reply.

For some time, until the position became uncomfortable for Shama, they remained like that, silent. She stroked his head, looked from him to the open window, heard the buzz and shrieks upstairs and downstairs. He closed his eyes and opened them under her stroking.

“Which doctor?” Though there had been a long silence, there seemed to be no break between her questions.

He was silent.

Then he said, “Doctor Rameshwar.”

“The one who…”

“Yes. The one who signed my mother’s death certificate.”

She went on stroking his head, and, slowly, he began to speak.

There had been some trouble about the certificate. No, it wasn’t really trouble. Pratap had first dispatched messages; Prasad had come and they had both gone, with urgent grief, to the doctor’s. It was midday, hot; the body would not last. They had been made to wait for very long in the doctor’s verandah; they had complained, and the doctor had damned them and damned their mother. His bad temper continued all the way to the house; with anger and disrespect he had examined Bipti’s body, signed the certificate, demanded his fee and left. This had been told to Mr. Biswas by his brothers, not in anger; they told it simply as part of the tribulations of the day: the death, the sending of messages, the arrangements.

“And why didn’t you tell me?” Shama asked in Hindi.

He didn’t say. It was something that concerned him alone. By speaking of it he would have exposed himself to the disregard of Shama and the children; he would also have involved them in his own humiliation.

Shama’s solace was a surprise. She spoke to the children, and he was further strengthened when they expressed, not hurt, but anger.

He became almost gay, and addressed himself to the letter now with something like zest. He read out to Anand the drafts he had made and asked for comments. The drafts were hysterical and libellous. But in his new mood, and after many re-writings, the letter developed into a broad philosophical essay on the nature of man. Both he and Anand thought it humorous, charitable and in parts correctly condescending; and it thrilled them to think of the doctor’s surprise at receiving such a letter from the relation of someone he had thought to be only a peasant. Mr. Biswas introduced himself as the son of the woman whose death the doctor had so rudely certified. He compared the doctor to an angry hero of a Hindu epic, and asked to be forgiven for mentioning the Hindu epics to an Indian who had abandoned his religion for a recent superstition that was being exported wholesale to savages all over the world (the doctor was a Christian). Perhaps the doctor had done so for political reasons or social reasons, or simply to escape from his caste; but no one could escape from what he was. This theme was developed and the letter concluded that no one could deny his humanity and keep his selfrespect. Mr. Biswas and Anand hunted through the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare and found the play of Measure for Measure rich in things that could be quoted. They also quoted from the New Testament and the Gita . The letter ran to eight pages. It was typed on the yellow typewriter and posted; and Mr. Biswas, exhilarated by his fortnight’s work, said to Anand, “How about a few more letters before Christmas? One to a business man. To fix up Shekhar. One to an editor. Fix up the Sentinel . Publish them as a booklet. Dedicate it to you.”

But the wound was still there, too deep for anger or thoughts of retribution. What had happened was locked away in time. But it was an error, not a part of truth. He wished this stated; and he wanted to do something that would be a defiance of what had happened. The body, lying in earth, was unhallowed, and he owed it honour: the mother who had remained unknown and whom he had never loved. Waking in the night, he felt exposed and vulnerable. He longed for hands to cover him all over, and he could only fall asleep again with his hands over his navel, unable to bear the feel of any alien object, however slight, on that part of his body.

To do honour he had no gifts. He had no words to say what he wanted to say, the poet’s words, which held more than the sum of their meanings. But awake one night, looking at the sky through the window, he got out of bed, worked his way to the light switch, turned it on, got paper and pencil, and began to write. He addressed his mother. He did not think of rhythm; he used no cheating abstract words. He wrote of coming up to the brow of the hill, seeing the black, forked earth, the marks of the spade, the indentations of the fork prongs. He wrote of a journey he had made a long time before. He was tired; she made him rest. He was hungry; she gave him food. He had nowhere to go; she welcomed him. The writing excited, relieved him; so much so that he was able to look at Anand, asleep beside him, and think, “Poor boy. Failed his exam.”