Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

There was no need for Mr. Biswas to ask where they wanted to go. They all wanted to go to Balandra, to repeat the experience of delight: the drive in the private car, the hampers, the beach.

They went to Balandra, but it was a different experience. They did not attend to the landscape. They savoured the smell of new leather, the sweet smell of a new car. They listened to the soft, steady beat of the engine and compared it with the grinding and pounding of the vehicles they met. And they listened acutely for wrong noises. The grilled cover of an ashtray on one door did not sit properly and tinkled distractingly; they attempted to stop it with a matchstick. The ignition key had already been provided by Mr. Biswas with a chain. The chain struck the dashboard. That distracted them too. At one moment it looked as though it might rain; a few drops flecked the windshield. Anand promptly put the wiper on. “You’ll scratch the glass!” Mr. Biswas cried. They worried about putting their shoes on the floormats. They consulted the dashboard clock constantly, comparing it with those they saw on the road. They marvelled at the working of the speedometer.

“Man was telling me,” Mr. Biswas said, “that these Prefect clocks go wrong in no time.”

And they decided to call in on Ajodha.

They parked the car in the road and walked around the house to the back verandah. Tara was in the kitchen. Ajodha was reading the Sunday Guardian . Mr. Biswas said they were going to the beach and had just dropped in for a minute. There was a pause, and each of them wondered whether they should tell.

Ajodha commented on the sickliness of them all, pinched Anand’s arms and laughed when the boy winced. Then, as though to cure them at once, he made them drink glasses of fresh milk and had the servant girl peel some oranges from the bag in the corner of the verandah.

Jagdat came in, his funeral clothes relieved by his broad, bright tie, his unbuttoned cuffs folded back above hairy wrists. He asked jocularly, “Is your car outside, Mohun?”

The children studied their glasses of milk.

Mr. Biswas said gently, “Yes, man.”

Jagdat roared as at a good joke. “The old Mohun, man!”

“Car?” Ajodha said, puzzled, petulant. “Mohun?”

“A little Prefect,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Some of those pre-war English cars can be very good,” Ajodha said.

“This is a new one,” Mr. Biswas said. “Got it yesterday.”

“Cardboard.” Ajodha bunched his fingers. “It will mash like cardboard.”

“A drive, man, Mohun!” Jagdat said.

The children, Shama, were alarmed. They looked at Mr. Biswas, Jagdat smiling, slapping his hands together.

Mr. Biswas was aware of their alarm.

“You are right, Mohun,” Ajodha said. “He will lick it up.”

“It isn’t that,” Mr. Biswas said. “Seaside.” He looked at his Cyma watch. Then, noticing that Jagdat had stopped smiling, he added, “Running in, you know.”

“I run in more cars than you,” Jagdat said angrily. “Bigger and better.”

“He will lick it up,” Ajodha repeated.

“It isn’t that,” Mr. Biswas said again.

“Hear him,” Jagdat said. “But don’t give me that, eh, man. Listen. I was driving motorcars before you even learn to drive a donkey-cart. Look at me. You think I pining to drive in your sardine can? You think that?”

Mr. Biswas looked embarrassed.

The children didn’t mind. The car was safe.

“Mohun ! You think that?”

At Jagdat’s scream the children jumped.

“Jagdat,” Tara said.

He strode out of the verandah into the yard, cursing.

“I know what it is, Mohun,” Ajodha said. “The first time you get a car is always the same.” He waved at his yard, the graveyard of many vehicles.

He went out with them to the road. When he saw the Prefect he hooted.

“Six horse power?” he said. “Eight?”

“Ten,” Anand said, pointing to the red disc below the bonnet.

“Yes, ten.” He turned to Shama. “Well, niece, where are you going in your new car?”

“Balandra.”

“I hope the wind doesn’t blow too hard.”

“Wind, Uncle?”

“Or you will never get there. Poof! Blow you off the road, man.”

They continued in gloom for some way.

“Wanting to drive my car,” Mr. Biswas said. “As if I would let him. I know the way he does drive cars. Lick them up in no time at all. No respect for them. And getting vexed into the bargain, I ask you.”

“I always say you have some low people in your family,” Shama said.

“Another man wouldn’t even ask a thing like that,” Mr. Biswas said. “I wouldn’t ask it. Feel how the car sitting nice on the road? Feel it, Anand? Savi?”

“Yes, Pa.”

“Poof! Blow me off the road. You wouldn’t expect an old man like that to be jealous, eh? But that is exactly what he is. Jealous.”

Yet whenever they saw another Prefect on the road they could not help noticing how small and fussy it looked; and this was strange, for their own car enclosed them securely and did not feel small in any way. They continued to listen for noises. Anand held the chain of the ignition key to keep it from striking the dashboard. When they stopped at Balandra they made sure the car was parked away from coconut trees; and they worried about the effect of the salt air on the body.

Disaster came when they were leaving. The rear wheels sank into the hot loose sand. They watched the wheels spinning futilely, kicking up sand, and felt that the car had been irremediably damaged. They pushed coconut branches and coconut shells and bits of driftwood under the wheels and at last got the car out. Shama said she was convinced that the car now leaned to one side; the whole body, she said, had been strained.

On Monday Anand cycled to school on the Royal Enfield, and the promise in the Collins Clear-Type Shakespeare was thereby partly fulfilled. War conditions had at last permitted; in fact, the war had been over for some time.

And during all this time W. C. Tuttle had remained quiet. He had not attempted to reply to Mr. Biswas’s new suits, the new car, the holiday; so that it seemed that these reverses, coming one after the other, had been too much for him. But when the glory of the Prefect began to fade, when it was accepted that floormats became dirty, when washing the car became a chore and was delegated by the children to Shama, when the dashboard clock stopped and no one noticed the tinkle of the ashtray lid, W. C. Tuttle with one stroke wiped out all Mr. Biswas’s advantages, and killed the rivalry by rising above it.

Through Basdai, the widow, he announced that he had bought a house in Woodbrook.

Mr. Biswas took the news badly. He neglected Shama’s consolations and picked quarrels with her. “ ‘What is for you is for you’,” he mocked. “So that is your philosophy, eh? I’ll tell you what your philosophy is. Catch him. Marry him. Throw him in a coal barrel. That is the philosophy of your family. Catch him and throw him in a coal barrel.” He became acutely sensitive to criticism of the Community Welfare Department. The books on social work and juvenile delinquency gathered dust on the diningtable, and he returned to his philosophers. The Tuttles’ gramophone played with infuriating gaiety, and he banged on the partition and shouted, “Some people still living here, you know.”

Philosophically, he attempted to look on the brighter side. The garage problem would be simplified: with three vehicles the position had become impossible, and he had often had to leave his car on the road. There would be no gramophone. And he might even rent the rooms the Tuttles were vacating.

But the days passed and the Tuttles didn’t move.

“Why the hell doesn’t he take up his gramophone and naked woman and clear out?” Mr. Biswas asked Shama. “If he got this house.”