Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

How many letters of resignation he had mentally addressed to the Sentinel ! Yet when, letters having passed between the Secretariat and himself, the moment came and he sat up in the Slumberking to write to the Sentinel , he used none of the phrases and sentences he had polished over the years. Instead, to his surprise, he found himself grateful to the paper for employing him for so long, for giving him a start in the city, equipping him for the Service.

He felt a fool when he received the editor’s reply. In five lines he was thanked for his letter, his services were acknowledged, regret was expressed, and he was wished luck in his new job. The letter was typed by a secretary, whose smart lowercase initials were in the bottom left corner.

Working out his notice, he let the Destees slide, and prepared zestfully for his new job. He borrowed books from the Central Library and from the department’s small collection. He began with books on sociology and immediately came to grief: he could not understand their charts or their language. He moved on to simpler paperbacked books about village reconstruction in India. These were more amusing: they gave pictures of village drains before and after, showed how chimneys could be built at no cost, how wells could be dug. They stimulated Mr. Biswas to such a degree that for a few days he wondered whether he oughtn’t to practise on the little community in his own house. A number of books laid a puzzling stress on the need for folk dances and folk singing during the carrying out of cooperative undertakings; some gave examples of songs. Mr. Biswas saw himself leading a singing village as they cooperatively mended roads, cooperatively put up superhuts, cooperatively dug wells; singing, they harvested one another’s fields. The picture didn’t convince: he knew Indian villagers too well. Govind, for instance, sang, and W. C. Tuttle liked music; but Mr. Biswas couldn’t see himself leading them and the singing readers and learners to re-concrete the floor under the house, to plaster the half-walls, to build another bathroom or lavatory. He doubted whether he could even get them to sing. He read of cottage industries: romantic words, suggesting neatly clad peasants with grave classical features sitting at spinning wheels in cooperatively built superhuts and turning out yards and yards of cloth before going on to the folk singing and dancing under the village tree in the evening, by the light of flambeaux. But he knew what the villages were by night, when the rumshop emptied. He saw himself instead in a large timbered hall, walking up and down between lines of disciplined peasants making baskets. From cottage industries he was diverted by juvenile delinquency, which he found more appealing than adult delinquency. He particularly liked the photographs of the hardened delinquents: stunted, smoking, supercilious, and very attractive. He saw himself winning their confidence and then their eternal devotion. He read books on psychology and learned some technical words for the behaviour of Chinta when she flogged Vidiadhar.

Miss Logie, who had at first encouraged his enthusiasm, now attempted to control it. He saw her often during the month, and their relationship grew even better. Whenever she introduced him to anyone she spoke of him as her colleague, a graciousness he had never before experienced; and from being relaxed with her he became debonair.

Then he had a fright.

Miss Logie said she would like to meet his family.

Readers! Learners! Govind! Chinta! The Slumberking bed and the destitute’s diningtable! And perhaps some widow might want to try again, and there would be a little tray of oranges or avocado pears outside the gate.

“Mumps,” he said.

It was partly true. The contagion had struck down Basdai’s readers and learners wholesale, had attacked a little Tuttle; but it had not yet got to Mr. Biswas’s children.

“They are all down with mumps, I fear.”

And when later Miss Logie asked after the children, Mr. Biswas had to say they had recovered, though they had in fact just succumbed.

Promptly at the end of the month the free delivery of the Sentinel stopped.

“Don’t you think a little holiday before you begin would be refreshing?” Miss Logie said.

“I was thinking of that.” The words came out easily; they were in keeping with his new manner. And he saw himself condemned to a pay-less week among the readers and learners. “Yes, a little holiday would be most refreshing.”

“Sans Souci would be very nice.”

Sans Souci was in the northeast of the island. Miss Logie, a newcomer, had been there; he had not.

“Yes,” he said. “Sans Souci would be nice. Or Mayaro,” he added, trying to take an independent line by mentioning a resort in the southeast.

“I am sure your family would enjoy it.”

“You know, I believe they would.” Family again! He waited. And it came. She still wanted to meet them.

Poise deserted him. What could he suggest? Bringing them to the Red House one by one?

Miss Logie came to his rescue. She wondered whether they couldn’t all go to Sans Souci on Sunday.

That at least was safer. “Of course, of course,” he said. “My wife can cook something. Where shall we meet?”

“I’ll come and pick you up.”

He was caught.

“As a matter of fact I have taken a house in Sans Souci,” Miss Logie said. And then her plan came out. She wanted Mr. Biswas to take his family there for a week. Transport was difficult, but the car would come for them at the end of the week. If Mr. Biswas didn’t go, the house would be empty, and that would be a waste.

He was overwhelmed. He had regarded his holidays simply as days on which he did not go to work; he had never thought that he might use the time to take his family to some resort: the thing was beyond ambition. Few people went on such holidays. There were no boarding-houses or hotels, only beach houses, and these he had always imagined to be expensive. And now this! After all those letters to destitutes beginning, Dear Sir , Your letter awaited me on my return from holiday…

He made objections, but Miss Logie was firm. He thought it better not to make a fuss, for he did not wish to give the impression that he was making the thing bigger than it was. Miss Logie had made the offer out of friendship; he would accept as a friend. He warned her, however, that he would have to consult Shama, and Miss Logie said she understood.

But he felt that he had been found out, that he had revealed more of himself to Miss Logie than he had thought; and this feeling was especially oppressive on the following morning when, after his bath in the outdoor bathroom, he stood before Shama’s dressingtable in the inner room. In moods of self-disgust he hated dressing, and this morning he saw that his comb, which he had repeatedly insisted was his and his alone, was webbed with woman’s hair. He broke the comb, broke another, and used language which went neither with his clothes nor with the manner he assumed when he put them on.

He reported to Miss Logie that Shama was delighted, and self-reproach was quickly forgotten when he and Shama began to prepare for the holiday. They were like conspirators. They had decided on secrecy. There was no reason for this except that it was one of the rules of the house: the Tuttles, for instance, had been unusually aloof just before the arrival of the naked torchbearer, and Chinta had been almost mournful before Govind had gone into threepiece suits.

On Saturday Shama began packing a hamper.

The secret could no longer be kept from the children. The laden hamper, the car, the drive to the seaside: it was something they knew too well. “Vidiadhar and Shivadhar!” Chinta called. “You just keep your little tails here, eh, and read your books, you hear. Your father is not in any position to take you for excursion, you hear. He not drawing money regular from the government, let me tell you.” The readers and learners stood around Shama while she packed the hamper. Shama, uncharacteristically stern and preoccupied, ignored them. Her manner suggested that the whole affair-as indeed she said to Basdai, the widow, who had come to watch and offer advice-was very troublesome, and she was going through with it simply to please the children and their father.