Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

And though he spent more and more time with his friends and colleagues and often went south to Shekhar’s, and though when his friends called the house had to be silent and the sisters and the readers and learners hidden, the sisters continued to feel safe. For after every journey, every meeting, Owad related his adventures to them. His appetite for talk was insatiable, his dramatic gifts never failed, and the comments he made on the people he had met were invariably scathing.

The sisters now sought audience with him singly or in small groups. They came to the house, waited up for him, and when he returned they fell to talking, under the house, so as not to disturb Mrs. Tulsi’s sleep. In time each sister felt she had a special hold on him; and having received his confidences, offered hers. At first the sisters spoke of their financial difficulties. But Owad was unwilling to anticipate the revolution. Then the sisters complained. They complained about the teachers who were keeping their children back at school; they complained about Dorothy, about Shekhar, about their husbands; they complained about absent sisters. Every scandal was gone over, every petty dispute, every resentment. And Owad listened. The children listened as well, kept awake by the sisters’ bumbling and their frequent hawking and spitting (a sign of intimacy: the warmer the feeling, the noisier the hawk, the longer the period of speaking through the spittle). In the morning the sisters who had talked late into the night were brisk and exceptionally friendly towards the people they had criticized, exceptionally proprietary towards Owad.

The house was always full of sisters on Sunday, when there was communal cooking. Sometimes Shekhar came by himself and then before lunch there were discussions between the brothers and Mrs. Tulsi. The sisters did not feel threatened by these discussions as they had done when Shekhar and Dorothy and Mrs. Tulsi talked. They did not feel excluded. For, with Owad there, these discussions were like the old Hanuman House family councils. So the sisters cooked below the house and sang and were gay. They were even anxious to exaggerate the difference between their brothers and themselves. It was as if by doing so they paid their brothers a correct reverence, a reverence which comforted and protected the sisters by assigning them a place again. They spoke no Hindi, used the grossest English dialect and the coarsest expressions and vied with one another in doing menial jobs and getting themselves dirty. In this way they sealed the family bond for the day.

It was the custom on these Sunday mornings, after the discussions and before lunch, which came before the trip to the sea, for the men to play bridge.

And on this morning Shekhar, despite Anand’s pleas for sophistication, showed his disrelish of Owad’s talk about the extermination of capitalists and what the Russians had done to the Czar, and tried to turn the conversation. It turned, oddly, to modern art.

“I can’t make head or tail of this Picasso,” Shekhar said.

“Picasso is a man I loathe,” Owad said.

“But isn’t he a comrade?” Anand said.

Owad frowned. “And as for Chagall and Rouault and Braque-”

“What do you think of Matisse?” Shekhar asked, using a name he had got from Life and putting a stop to the flow of names he didn’t know.

“He’s all right,” Owad said. “Delicious colour.”

This was unfamiliar language to Shekhar. He said, “That was a nice picture they made. Didn’t do too well, though. The Moon and Sixpence . With George Sanders.”

Owad, concentrating on his cards, didn’t reply.

“These artists are funny fellers,” Shekhar said.

They were playing for matches. Anand scattered his heap and said, “Portrait by Picasso.”

Everyone laughed, except Owad.

“Is a long time now I want to read the book,” Shekhar said. “Isn’t it by Somerset Morgue-hum?”

Anand scattered his matches again.

Owad said, “Why don’t you look in the mirror if you want to see a portrait by Picasso?”

This was clearly one of Owad’s scathing comments. Shekhar smiled and grunted. The watching sisters and their children roared with laughter. Owad acknowledged their approval by smiling at his cards.

Anand felt betrayed. He had adopted all of Owad’s political and artistic views; he had announced himself as a communist at school, he had stated that Eliot was a man he loathed. It was his turn to deal. In his confusion he dealt to himself first. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, looking down and trying to inject a laugh into his voice.

“There is no need to apologize for that,” Owad said sternly. “It is simply a sign of your conceited selfishness and egocentricity.”

The watchers held their breath.

Joviality fled from the table, Shekhar studied his cards. Owad frowned at his. His foot was tapping on the concrete floor. More watchers came.

Anand felt his ears burning. He looked hard at his cards, feeling the silence that had spread to all parts of the house. He was aware of watchers coming, Savi, Myna, Kamla. He was aware of Shama.

Owad breathed heavily and swallowed noisily.

When Shekhar bid his voice was low, as though he wished to take no part in the struggle. Vidiadhar, Shekhar’s partner, bid in a voice choked by saliva; but there was no mistaking the voice of the free, unoffending man.

Anand bid stupidly.

Owad pressed his teeth far below his lower lip, shook his head slowly, tapped his feet, and breathed more loudly. When he bid, his voice, full of anger now, suggested that he was trying to redeem a hopeless situation.

The game dragged on. Anand played worse and worse. Shekhar, as though doing it against his will, gathered in trick after trick.

Owad’s breathing and swallowing made Anand feel choked. His back was cold: his shirt was wet with perspiration.

At last the game was over. Neatly, deliberately, Shekhar noted the score. They waited for Owad to speak. Shuffling the cards, though it was not his turn, breathing heavily, he said, “That’s what we get from your genius.”

The tears rushed to Anand’s eyes. He jumped up, throwing his chair backwards, and shouted, “I didn’t tell you I was any blasted genius.”

Slap ! His right cheek burned; then trembled, even after Owad’s hand was removed, as though the cheek had had to wait before registering the blow. And Owad was standing and Shekhar was bending down, picking up the cards from the dusty floor. And slap ! his left cheek burned and trembled heavily. He forgot the watchers, concentrating only on the breathing before, the rising of the white-shirted chest. Owad’s chair was overthrown. And Shekhar, leaning awkwardly on the table, his chair pushed back, was looking at the cards as he let them fall from one palm to another, his brow furrowed, his top lip swelling over the lower.

The table was jerked aside. Anand found himself standing ridiculously upright, half blinded by the shaming tears. Owad was striding energetically to the front steps. And then Anand had time to take in the thrill, the satisfaction of the watchers, the silence of the house, with Govind’s singing in the background, the noise of some children in the street, the roll of a car from the main road.

Shekhar still sat at the table, playing with the cards.

A mumble came from the watchers.

“You!” Anand turned to them. “What the hell are you standing up there for? Puss-puss, puss-puss all the blasted night, talk-talk-talk.”

The effect was unexpected and humiliating. They laughed. Even Shekhar lifted his head and gave his grunting laugh, shaking his shoulders.

Shama’s gravity made her almost absurd.

The watchers broke up. Everyone went back to his task. A lightness that was like gaiety spread through the house.