Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

They grew lethargic just before dawn, but the morning light kindled them into fresh, over-energetic activity. Children were washed and fed and dressed before the street awoke; the house was swept and cleaned. Mrs. Tulsi was bathed and dressed by Sushila; on her smooth skin there were small beads of perspiration, although the sun had not yet come out and she seldom perspired. Presently the visitors started arriving, many of them only tenuously related to the house, and not a few-the relations, say, of a grandchild’s in-laws-unknown. The street was choked with cars and bright with the dresses of women and girls. Shekhar and Dorothy and their five daughters came. Everyone fussed about something: children, food, wharf-passes, transport. Continually cars drove off with an important noise. Their drivers, returning, showed passes and told of encounters with startled harbour officials.

For Mr. Biswas it had been a difficult night. And the morning began badly. When he asked Anand to bring him the Guardian Anand reported that the paper had been appropriated by the pundit and had disappeared. Then he was turned out of the room while Shama and the girls dressed. Downstairs was chaos. He took one look at the bathroom and decided not to use it that day. When he went back to the room it was filled with the slight but offensive smell of face powder and there were clothes everywhere. Miserably, he dressed. “The wreck of the blasted Hesperus,” he said, using a comb to clean his brush of woman’s hair, sniffing as the dust rose visibly in the sunlight that slanted in below the striped awning. Shama noted his irritability but did not comment upon it; this enraged him further. The house, upstairs and down, resounded with impatient footsteps, shouts and shrieks.

The cavalcade left the house in sections. Mrs. Tulsi travelled in Shekhar’s car. Mr. Biswas went in his Prefect; but his family had split up and gone in other cars, and he was obliged to take some people he didn’t know.

The liner, white and reposed, lay at anchor in the gulf. A chair was found for Mrs. Tulsi and set against the dull magenta wall of the customs shed. She was dressed in white, her veil pulled over her forehead. She pressed her lips together from time to time and crumpled a handkerchief in one hand. She was flanked by Miss Blackie, in her churchgoing clothes and a straw hat with a red ribbon, and by Sushila, who carried a large bag with an assortment of medicines.

A tug hooted. The liner was being towed in. Some of the children, those who had learnt at school that one proof of the roundness of the earth was the way ships disappeared beyond the horizon, exaggerated the distance between ship and wharf. Many said the ship would come alongside in two to three hours. Shivadhar, Chinta’s younger son, said it wouldn’t do so until the evening of the following day.

But the adults were concerned with something else.

“Don’t tell Mai,” the sisters whispered.

Seth was on the wharf. He stood two customs sheds away. He was in a cheap suit of an atrocious brown, and to anyone who remembered him in his khaki uniform and heavy bluchers he looked like a labourer in his Sunday suit.

Mr. Biswas glanced at Shekhar. He and Dorothy were staring resolutely at the approaching ship.

Seth was uncomfortable. He fidgeted. He took out his long cigarette holder from his breast pocket and, concentrating, fixed a cigarette into it. With that suit, and with such uncertain gestures, the cigarette holder was an absurd affectation, and appeared so to the children who could not remember him. As soon as he had lighted the cigarette a khaki-uniformed official pounced and pointed to the large white notices in English and French on the customs sheds. Seth ejected the cigarette and crushed it with the sole of an unshining brown shoe. He replaced the holder in his breast pocket and clasped his hands behind his back.

Soon, too soon for some of the children, the ship was alongside. The tugs hooted, retrieved their ropes. Ropes were flung from ship to wharf, which now, in the shadow of the white hull, was sheltered and almost roomlike.

Then they saw him. He was wearing a suit they had never known, and he had a Robert Taylor moustache. His jacket was open, his hands in his trouser pockets. His shoulders had broadened and he had grown altogether bigger. His face was fuller, almost fat, with enormous round cheeks; if he wasn’t tall he would have looked gross.

“Is the cold in England,” someone said, explaining the cheeks.

Mrs. Tulsi, Miss Blackie, the sisters, Shekhar, Dorothy and every granddaughter who had borne a child began to cry silently.

A young white woman joined Owad behind the rails. They laughed and talked.

“Arй bap !” one of Mrs. Tulsi’s woman friends cried out through her tears.

But it was only a passing alarm.

The gangway was laid down. The children went to the edge of the quay and examined the mooring ropes and tried to look through the lighted portholes. Someone started a discussion about anchors.

And then he was down. His eyes were wet.

Mrs. Tulsi, sitting on her chair, all her effervescence gone, lifted her face to him as he stooped to kiss her. Then she held him round the legs. Sushila, in tears, opened her bag and held a bright blue bottle of smelling-salts at the ready. Miss Blackie wept with Mrs. Tulsi, and every time Mrs. Tulsi sniffed, Miss Blackie said, “Hm-mm. Hm. Mm.” Children, ungreeted, stared. The brothers shook hands, like men, and smiled at one another. Then it was the turn of the sisters. They were kissed; they burst into new tears and feverishly attempted to introduce those of their children who had been born in the intervening years. Owad, kissing, crying, went through them quickly. Then it was the turn of the eight surviving husbands. Govind, who had known Owad well, was not there, but W. C. Tuttle, who had scarcely known him, was. Long brahminical hairs sprouted out of his ears, and he drew further attention to himself by closing his eyes, neatly shaking away tears, putting a hand on Owad’s head and speaking a Hindi benediction. As his turn came nearer Mr. Biswas felt himself weakening, and when he offered his hand he was ready to weep. But Owad, though taking the hand, suddenly grew distant.

Seth was advancing towards Owad. He was smiling, tears in his eyes, raising his hands as he approached.

In that moment it was clear that despite his age, despite Shekhar, Owad was the new head of the family. Everyone looked at him. If he gave the sign, there was to be a reconciliation.

“Son, son,” Seth said in Hindi.

The sound of his voice, which they had not heard for years, thrilled them all.

Owad still held Mr. Biswas’s hand.

Mr. Biswas noted Seth’s cheap, flapping brown jacket, the stained cigarette holder. Seth held out his hands and nearly touched Owad.

Owad turned and said in English, “I think I’d better go and see about the baggage.” He released Mr. Biswas’s hand and walked briskly away, his jacket swinging.

Seth stood still. The tears suddenly stopped. But the smile remained.

The Tulsi crowd became agitated, drowning their relief in noise.

He could have turned away before, Mr. Biswas kept on thinking. He could have turned away before.

Seth’s hands dropped slowly. The smile died. One hand went up to the cigarette holder and he held his head to one side as though he was going to say something. But he only jiggled the cigarette holder, turned and walked firmly away between two customs sheds towards the main gates.

Owad came back to the group.

“With mother? With brother? With father? Or with all of all-you?” someone asked, and Mr. Biswas recognized the sardonic voice of the Sentinel photographer.

The photographer nodded and smiled at Mr. Biswas, as though he had found Mr. Biswas out.