Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Waiting, Mr. Biswas fell asleep. When he awoke it was morning and for a moment he had no fears. Then his error returned to him.

He had his bath in the yard, cut a hibiscus twig, crushed one end and cleaned his teeth with it, split the twig and scraped his tongue with the halves. Then he collected marigolds and zinnias and oleanders from the garden for the morning puja , and sat without religious fervour before the elaborate shrine. The smell of brass and stale sandalwood paste displeased him; it was a smell he was to recognize later in all temples, mosques and churches, and it was always disagreeable. Mechanically he cleaned the images, the lines and indentations of which were black or cream with old sandalwood paste; it was easier to clean the small smooth pebbles, whose significance had not yet been explained to him. At this stage Pundit Jairam usually came to see that he did not scamp the ritual, but this morning he did not come. Mr. Biswas chanted from the prescribed scriptures, applied fresh sandalwood paste to the images and smooth pebbles, decked them with fresh flowers, rang the bell and consecrated the offering of sweetened milk. With the sandalwood marks still wet and tickling on his forehead, he sought out Jairam to offer him some of the milk.

Jairam, bathed and dressed and fresh, was sitting against some pillows in one corner of the verandah, spectacles low down on his nose, a brown Hindi book on his lap. When the verandah shook below Mr. Biswas’s bare feet Jairam looked up and then down through his spectacles, and turned a page of his dingy book. Spectacles made him look older, abstracted and benign.

Mr. Biswas held the brass jar of milk toward him. “Baba.”

Jairam sat up, rearranged a pillow, held a cupped palm, touching the elbow of the outstretched arm with the fingers of his free hand. Mr. Biswas poured. Jairam brought the inside of his wrist against his forehead, blessed Mr. Biswas, threw the milk into his mouth, passed his wet palm through his thin grey hair, readjusted his spectacles and looked down again at his book.

Mr. Biswas went to his room, put on his workaday clothes and came out to breakfast. They ate in silence. Suddenly Jairam pushed his brass plate towards Mr. Biswas.

“Eat this.”

Mr. Biswas’s fingers, ploughing through some cabbage, stood still.

“Of course you won’t eat it. And I will tell you why. Because I have been eating from this plate.”

Mr. Biswas’s fingers, feeling dry and dirty, bent and straightened.

“Soanie!”

Jairam’s wife thumped out from the kitchen and stood between them, with her back to Mr. Biswas. He looked at the creases on the edge of her soles and saw that the soles were hard and dirty. This surprised him, because Soanie was always washing the floor and bathing herself.

“Go and bring the bananas.”

She pulled the veil over her forehead. “Don’t you think you had better forget it? It is such a small thing.”

“Small thing! A whole hand of bananas!”

She went to the kitchen and came back, cradling the bananas.

“Put them here, Soanie. Mohun, nobody else can touch these bananas now but yourself. When people, out of the goodness of their hearts, give me gifts, they are for you. Eh?” Then the edge went out of his voice and he became like the benign, expounding pundit he was in company. “We mustn’t waste, Mohun. I have told you that again and again. We mustn’t let these bananas get rotten. You must finish what you have begun. Start now.”

Mr. Biswas had been lulled by Jairam’s calm, even manner, and the abruptness of the command took him by surprise. He looked down at his plate and flexed his fingers, the tips of which were stuck with drying shreds of cabbage.

“Start now.”

Soanie stood in the doorway, blocking the light. Though it was bright day, the room, with bedrooms on one side and the low roof of the verandah on the other, was gloomy.

“Look. I have peeled one for you.”

The banana hovered in Jairam’s clean hand before Mr. Biswas’s face. He took it with his dirty fingers, bit and chewed. Surprisingly, it tasted. But the taste was so localized it gave no pleasure. He then discovered that chewing killed the taste, and chewed deliberately, not tasting, only listening to the loud squelchy sound that filled his head. He had never heard bananas eaten with so much noise.

Presently the banana was finished, except for the hard little cone buried at the heart of the banana skin, open like a huge and ugly forest flower.

“Look, Mohun. I have peeled you another.”

And while he ate that, Jairam slowly peeled another. And another, and another.

When he had eaten seven bananas, Mr. Biswas was sick, whereupon Soanie, silently crying, carried him to the back verandah. He didn’t cry, not from bravery: he was only bored and uncomfortable. Jairam rose at once and walked heavily to his room, suddenly in a great temper.

Mr. Biswas never ate another banana. That morning also marked the beginning of his stomach trouble; ever afterwards, whenever he was excited or depressed or angry his stomach swelled until it was taut with pain.

A more immediate result was that he became constipated. He could no longer relieve himself in the mornings and he was aware of the dishonour he did the gods by doing the puja unrelieved. The call came upon him at unpredictable times, and it was this which led to his departure from Jairam’s, and took him back to that other world he had entered at Pagotes, the world signified by Lai’s school and the effete rubber-stamps and dusty books of F. Z. Ghany.

One night he got up in a panic. The latrine was far from the house and to go there through the dark frightened him. He was frightened, too, to walk through the creaking wooden house, open locks, undo bolts and possibly waken Jairam who was fussy about his sleep and often flew into a rage even when awakened at a time he had fixed. Mr. Biswas decided to relieve himself in his room on one of his handkerchiefs. He had scores of these, made from the cotton given him at the ceremonies he attended with Jairam. When the time came to dispose of the handkerchief, he left his room and tiptoed, the floor creaking, through the open doorway to the enclosed verandah at the back. He carefully unbolted the Demerara window, which hung on hinges at the top, and, keeping the window open with his left hand, flung the handkerchief as far as he could with his right. But his hands were short, the window was heavy, there was too little space for him to manoeuvre, and he heard the handkerchief fall not far off.

Not staying to bolt the window, he hurried back to his bed where for a long time he stayed awake, repeatedly imagining that a fresh call was upon him. He had just fallen asleep, it seemed, when someone was shaking him. It was Soanie.

Jairam stood scowling in the doorway. “You are no Brahmin,” he said. “I take you into my house and show you every consideration. I do not ask for gratitude. But you are trying to destroy me. Go and look at your work.”

The handkerchief had fallen on Jairam’s cherished oleander tree. Never again could its flowers be used at the puja .

“You will never make a pundit,” Jairam said. “I was talking the other day to Sitaram, who read your horoscope. You killed your father. I am not going to let you destroy me. Sitaram particularly warned me to keep you away from trees. Go on, pack your bundle.”

The neighbours had heard and came out to watch Mr. Biswas as, in his dhoti, with his bundle slung on his shoulder, he walked through the village.

Bipti was not in a welcoming mood when Mr. Biswas, after walking and getting rides on carts, came back to Pagotes. He was tired, hungry and itching. He had expected her to welcome him with joy, to curse Jairam and promise that she would never allow him to be sent away again to strangers. But as soon as he entered the yard of the hut in the back trace he knew that he was wrong. She looked so depressed and indifferent, sitting in the sooty open kitchen with another of Ajodha’s poor relations, grinding maize; and it did not then surprise him that, instead of being pleased to see him, she was alarmed.