Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Shekhar stacked the cards neatly on the table, rose, put his hands on Anand’s shoulders, sighed, and went upstairs.

They heard Owad moving about from room to room.

Anand found Mr. Biswas lying in vest and pants on the bed, his back to the door, papers on his drawn-up knees. He said without turning, “You, boy? Here, see if you can work out these blasted travelling expenses right.” He passed the pad. “What’s the matter, boy?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“All right, just work those figures out. Everybody else making a fortune out of their cars. I sure I losing.”

“Pa.”

“Just a minute, boy. Ought oughts are ought. Two fives are ten. Put down ought. Carry one.” Mr. Biswas was relaxed, and even clowning: he knew that his method of multiplying always amused.

“Pa. We must move.”

Mr. Biswas turned.

“We must move. I can’t bear to live here another day.”

Mr. Biswas heard the distress in Anand’s voice. But he was unwilling to explore it. “Move? All in good time. All in good time. Just waiting for the revolution and my dacha.”

These happy moods of his father were getting rare. And Anand said nothing more.

He did the complicated sums for the travelling expenses. Presently he heard the dry, crisp sounds of the ping-pong ball, the exclamations of Owad and Vidiadhar and Shekhar and the others.

He did not go down to have the lunch to which he had looked forward; and when Shama brought it up he could not eat or drink. Mr. Biswas, his clowning mood persisting, squatted on the chair and pretended to spit on his food, to save it from Anand’s gluttony. He knew this trick infuriated Anand. But Anand did not respond.

Downstairs the men were getting ready to go to the sea. Sons asked their mothers for towels, mothers urged their sons to be careful.

“Not going with them?”

Anand didn’t reply.

Mr. Biswas had withdrawn from these excursions. They were far too energetic, and the example of Owad led to dangerous competitive feats. Instead, after lunch he went for a walk by himself, looking at houses, occasionally making inquiries, but mostly simply looking.

The brightness of their aunts and cousins, their new and excluding chumminess, drove Savi and Kamla and Myna to join Anand in their room, where they lay on the bed, for want of places to sit, and made disjointed, selfconscious conversation.

Anand sipped his orange juice. The ice had melted, the juice gone flat and warm. The girls went for a walk to the Botanical Gardens. Shama had her bath: Anand heard her singing in the open-air bathroom and washing clothes. When she came up her hair was wet and straight, her fingers pinched, but for all her songs her anxiety had not gone.

She said in Hindi, “Go and apologize to your uncle.”

“No!” It was the first word he had spoken for a long time.

She petted him. “For my sake.”

“The revolution,” he said.

“You wouldn’t lose anything. He is older than you. And your uncle.”

“Not my uncle. Shooting rice from aeroplanes!”

Shama began to sing softly. She flung her hair down over her face and beat it with a stretched towel. The noises were like muffled sneezes.

The girls came back from their walk. They were brighter and talked more easily.

Then they were silent.

The men had returned. They heard their loud talk, their footsteps; Owad’s voice raised in friendliness, breaking into laughter; the light inquiries from aunts; Shekhar’s goodbyes, his car driving off.

Savi asked Shama in a whisper, “What happened?”

“Nothing has happened,” Shama said coaxingly, not replying to Savi, but repeating her plea to Anand. “He will just go and apologize to your uncle, and that is all. Nothing at all.”

The girls did not want to desert Anand, and they feared going downstairs.

“Remember,” Shama said. “Not a word to your father. You know what he is like.”

She left the room. They heard her talking normally, even jestingly, with one of the aunts, and they admired her for her courage. Then the girls also went down, to face the righteousness of the unpersecuted.

The shower upstairs was going. Owad was in the bathroom, singing a song from an old Indian film. This was part of his virtue: it showed how untainted he had been by England and flattered everyone. For the virtue with which everyone had endowed him in his absence was now found in the smallest things: Anand remembered one sister saying that Owad had brought back from England the shoes and shirts and underclothes he had taken from Trinidad.

“Same shoes after eight years,” Anand muttered. “Blasted liar.”

The bathroom went silent.

Shama came to the room. “Quick. Before they go to the theatre.”

Anand knew the Sunday routine: the bridge, the ping-pong, lunch, the sea, the shower, dinner, then the evening show.

The cousins could be heard assembling in the diningroom. Owad’s voice, smothered by a towel, came from his bedroom.

Anand walked down the back stairs and up the stairs to the back verandah, the same verandah to which he had returned after he had nearly been drowned at Docksite. From the verandah he had a glimpse of the diningroom, where he had pulled the chair from under his father in the presence of Owad.

The cousins saw him. Some aunts saw him. The talk stopped. Faces were turned down, though the aunts continued to look solemn and offended and judicial. Then the talk broke out again. The cousins were playing with cards, idly, waiting for dinner. Vidiadhar, the sweater, was smiling down at the table, licking his lips.

Anand had to wait in the verandah for some time before Owad came out from the bedroom. He came out with his usual heavy brisk steps. As soon as he saw Anand he became stern. And there was silence.

Anand went in, held his hands behind his back.

“I apologize,” Anand said.

Owad continued to look stern.

At last he said, “All right.”

Anand didn’t know what to do. He remained where he was, so that it seemed he was waiting for an invitation to dinner and the theatre. But there was no word. He turned and walked slowly out of the room to the back verandah. As he went down the steps he heard the talk break out, heard the conscientious bustling of the aunts in the kitchen.

Shama was waiting for him in their room. He knew that her pain was as great as his, possibly greater, and he did not wish to increase it. She waited for him to do or say something, so that she could apply the soothing words. But he said nothing.

“You will eat something now?”

He shook his head. How ridiculous were the attentions the weak paid one another in the shadow of the strong!

She went downstairs.

When Owad and the cousins left she came back. He was willing to eat then.

Shortly after, Mr. Biswas returned from his walk. His mood had changed. His face was twisted with pain and Anand had to mix him some stomach powder. He was tired after his walk and wanted to go to bed. He could sleep early on Sundays; on other evenings he came back late from his area.

The light from the diningroom came through the tall ventilation gaps at the top of the partition. He called Shama and told her, “Go and get them to take off that light.”

It was an awkward request at the best of times, though before Owad’s return Shama had sometimes made it successfully. Now she could do nothing.

Mr. Biswas lost his temper. He ordered Shama and Anand to get sheets of cardboard, and with these he tried to block the gaps at the top of the partition, jumping from the bed to the ledge on the partition. Of the three sections he put up two fell down almost at once.

“Uncle Podger,” Savi said.

He was about to lose his temper with her as well; but, as if in answer to the commotion, the light in the diningroom went out. He lay down on the bed in the dark and was soon asleep, grinding his teeth, and making strange contented smacking sounds with his mouth.