Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Sometimes she sent for old friends from Arwacas. They came and camped for a week or so, and listened to Mrs. Tulsi. She, refreshed, talked all day and late into the night, while the friends, lying on bedding on the floor, made drowsy mechanical affirmations: “Yes, Mother. Yes, Mother.” Some visits were cut short by illness, some by carefully documented dreams of bad omen; those visitors who stayed to the end went away fatigued, doped, bleary-eyed.

Regularly too, she had pujas , austere rites aimed at God alone, without the feasting and gaiety of the Hanuman House ceremonies. The pundit came and Mrs. Tulsi sat before him; he read from the scriptures, took his money, changed in the bathroom and left. More and more prayer flags went up in the yard, the white and red pennants fluttering until they were ragged, the bamboo poles going yellow, brown, grey. For every puja Mrs. Tulsi tried a different pundit, since no pundit could please her as well as Hari. And, no pundit pleasing her, her faith yielded. She sent Sushila to burn candles in the Roman Catholic church; she put a crucifix in her room; and she had Pundit Tulsi’s grave cleaned for All Saints’ Day.

The more she was recommended not to exert herself the less she was able to exert herself, until she appeared to live only for her illness. She became obsessed with the decay of her body, and finally wanted the girls to search her head for lice. No louse could have survived the hourly dousing with bay rum which her head received, but she was enraged when the girls found nothing. She called them liars, pinched them, pulled their hair. Sometimes she was only hurt; then she shuffled out to the verandah and sat, taking her veil to her lips, feeding her eyes on the green, as Mrs. Tuttle had recommended. She would speak to no one, refuse to eat, reject all care. She would sit, feeding her eyes on the green, the tears running down her slack cheeks below her dark glasses.

Of all hands she liked Myna’s best. She wanted Myna to search her head for lice, wanted Myna to kill them, wanted to hear them being squashed between Myna’s fingernails. This preference created some jealousy, upset Myna, annoyed Mr. Biswas.

“Don’t go and pick her damn lice,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Don’t worry with your father,” Shama said, unwilling to lose this unexpected hold over Mrs. Tulsi.

And Myna went and spent hours in Mrs. Tulsi’s room, her slender fingers exploring every strand of Mrs. Tulsi’s thin, grey, bay-rum-scented hair. From time to time, to satisfy Mrs. Tulsi, Myna clicked her fingernails, and Mrs. Tulsi swallowed and said, “Ah,” pleased that one of her lice had been caught.

An additional constraint came upon the house when Shekhar and his family paid one of their visits to Mrs. Tulsi. If Shekhar had come alone he would have been more warmly welcomed by his sisters. But the antagonism between them and Shekhar’s Presbyterian wife Dorothy had deepened as Shekhar had prospered and Dorothy’s Presbyterianism had become more assertive and excluding. There had almost been an open quarrel when Shekhar, approached by the widows for a loan to start a mobile restaurant, had offered them jobs in his cinemas instead. They regarded this as an insult and saw in it the hand of Dorothy. Of course they refused: they did not care to be employed by Dorothy and they would never work in a place of public entertainment.

Shekhar could never appear as more than a visitor. He came in his car, led his wife and five elegant daughters upstairs, and for a long time nothing was heard except occasional footsteps and Mrs. Tulsi’s low voice going evenly on. Then Shekhar came downstairs by himself, forbiddingly correct in white short sleeved sports shirt and white slacks. Having listened to his mother, he now listened to his sisters, staring them in the eye and saying, “Hm-hm,” his top lip hanging over his lower lip and almost concealing it. He spoke little, as though unwilling to disturb the set of his mouth. His words came out abruptly, his expression never changed, and everything he said seemed to have an edge. When he tried to be friendly with the readers and learners he only frightened them. Yet he never appeared unkind; only preoccupied.

After lunch, prepared by Basdai and Sushila and eaten upstairs, Dorothy and her daughters passed downstairs, Dorothy booming out her greetings, her daughters remaining close together and speaking in fine, almost inaudible voices. Then Dorothy would look at her watch and say, “Caramba ! Ya son las tres. Dуnde estб tu Padre? Lena, va a llamarle. Vamos, vamos. Es demasiado tard e . Well, all right, people,” she would say, turning to the outraged sisters and the wondering readers and learners, “we got to go.” Since they had taken to spending holidays in Venezuela and Colombia, Dorothy used Spanish when she spoke to her children or to Shekhar in the presence of her sisters-in-law. Later the sisters agreed that Shekhar was to be pitied; they had all noted his unhappiness.

Before they left, Shekhar and Dorothy always called on Mr. Biswas. Mr. Biswas did not relish these calls. It wasn’t only that Shekhar’s party was campaigning against the Community Welfare Department. Shekhar had never forgotten that Mr. Biswas was a clown, and whenever they met he tried to provoke an act of clowning. He made a belittling remark, and Mr. Biswas was expected to extend this remark wittily and fancifully. To Mr. Biswas’s fury, Dorothy had also adopted this attitude; and from this relationship there was no escape, since anger and retaliation were counted parts of the game. Shekhar came into the front room and asked in his brusque, humourless manner, “Is the welfare officer still well-fed?” Then he hoisted himself on to the destitute’s diningtable and threatened Mr. Biswas with the destruction of the department and joblessness. For a time Mr. Biswas responded in his old way. He told stories about civil servants, spoke of the trouble he had making up his expense sheets, the work he had looking for work. But soon he made his annoyance plain. “You take these things too personally,” Shekhar said, still playing the game. “Our differences are only political. You’ve got to be a little more sophisticated, man.”

“Be a little more sophisticated,” Mr. Biswas said, when Shekhar left. “On a hungry belly? The old scorpion. Wouldn’t care a damn if I lose my job tomorrow.”

For some time there had been rumours. And now at last the news was given out: Owad, Mrs. Tulsi’s younger son, was returning from England. Everyone was excited. Sisters came up from Shorthills in their best clothes to talk over the news. Owad was the adventurer of the family. Absence had turned him into a legend, and his glory was undiminished by the numbers of students who were leaving the colony every week to study medicine in England, America, Canada and India. His exact attainments were not known, but were felt by all to be extraordinary and almost beyond comprehension. He was a doctor, a professional man, with letters after his name! And he belonged to them! They could no longer claim Shekhar. But every sister had a story which proved how close she had been to Owad, what regard he had had for her.

Mr. Biswas felt as proprietary as the sisters towards Owad and shared their excitement. But he was uneasy. Once, many years before, he had felt that he had to leave Hanuman House before Owad and Mrs. Tulsi returned to it. Now he experienced the same unease: the same sense of threat, the same need to leave before it was too late. Over and over he checked the money he had saved, the money he was going to save. His additions appeared on cigarette packets, in the margins of newspapers, on the backs of buff government folders. The sum never varied: he had six hundred and twenty dollars; by the end of the year he would have seven hundred. It was a staggering sum, more than he had ever possessed all at once. But it couldn’t attract a loan to buy any house other than one of those wooden tenements that awaited condemnation. At two thousand dollars or so they were bargains, but only for speculators who could take the tenants to court, rebuild, or wait for the site to rise in value. Now, his anxiety growing with the excitement about him, Mr. Biswas scanned agents’ lists every morning and drove about the city looking for places to rent. When for one whole week the City Council bought pages and pages in the newspapers to serialize the list of houses it was putting up for auction because their rates had not been paid, Mr. Biswas turned up at the Town Hall with all the city’s estate agents; but he lacked the confidence to bid.