Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

They could only unpack that evening. A rough meal was prepared in the kitchen and they ate in the chaotic diningroom. They said little. Only Shama moved and spoke without constraint. The beds were mounted upstairs. Anand slept in the verandah. He could feel the floor curving below him towards the offending brick wall. He placed his hand on the wall, as if that might give him some idea of its weight. At every footstep, particularly Shama’s, he could feel the floor shake. When he closed his eyes he experienced a spinning, swaying sensation. Hurriedly he opened them again to reassure himself that the floor had not sunk further, that the house still stood.

Every afternoon they had seen an elderly Indian rocking contentedly in the verandah of the house next door. He had a square, heavy-lidded face that was almost Chinese; he always looked impassive and sleepy. Yet when Mr. Biswas, pursuing his policy of getting on good terms with the neighbours, greeted him, the man brightened at once, sat forward in his rockingchair and said, “You have been doing a lot of repairs.”

Mr. Biswas took the man’s words as an invitation to his verandah. His house was new and well-built; the walls were solid, the floor even and firm, the woodwork everywhere neat and finished. There was no fence; and a shed of rusted corrugated iron and grey-black boards abutted at the back of the house.

“Nice house you have here,” Mr. Biswas said.

“With the help of God and the boys we manage to build it. Still have to put up a fence and build a kitchen, as you see. But that could wait for the time being. You had to do a lot of repairs.”

“A few things here and there. Sorry about the septic tank.”

“You don’t have to be sorry about that. I did expect it to happen even before. He build it himself.”

“Who? The man?”

“And not only that. He build the whole house himself. Working on Saturday and Sunday and in the afternoons. It was like a hobby with him. If he employ a carpenter I didn’t see it. And I better warn you. He do all the wiring too. The man was a joke, man. I don’t know how the City Council pass a house like that. The man used to bring all sort of tree-trunk and tree-branch to use as rafters and beams.”

He was an old man, pleased that after a lifetime, with the help of his sons, he had built a solid, well-made house. The past lay in the shed at the back of his house, in the ruinous wooden houses still in the street. He spoke only out of a sense of achievement, without malice.

“A strong little house, though,” Mr. Biswas said, looking at it from the old man’s verandah. And he saw how the old man’s breadfruit tree framed the house to advantage, how elegant the lattice work looked through the bleeding-heart vine, its lack of finish unimportant at this distance. But he noticed how pronounced the crack was that spread from the brick wall in the verandah. And it was only then that he noticed how many of the celotex panels had fallen from the eaves; and even as he looked bats flew in and out. “Strong little house. That is the main thing.”

The old man continued to talk, no hint of argument in his voice. “And those pillars at the four corners. Anybody else woulda make them of concrete. You know what he make them of? Just those clay bricks. Hollow inside.”

Mr. Biswas could not hide his alarm and the old man smiled benevolently, pleased to see his information having such an effect.

“The man was a joke, man,” he went on. “As I say, it was like a hobby to him. Picking up window frames here and there, from the American base and where not. Picking up a door here and another one there and bringing them here. A real disgrace. I don’t know how the City Council pass the place.”

“I don’t suppose,” Mr. Biswas said, “that the City Council woulda pass it if it wasn’t strong.”

The old man paid no attention. “A spec’lator, that’s what he was. A real spec”lator. This ain’t the first house he built like this, you know. He build two-three in Belmont, one in Woodbrook, this one, and right now he building one in Morvant. Building it and living in it at the same time.” The old man rocked and chuckled. “But he get stick with this one.”

“He live in it a long time,” Mr. Biswas said.

“Couldn’t get anybody to buy it. Is a good little site, mark you. But he was asking too much. Four five.”

“Four five!”

“If you please. And look. Look at that little house down the road.” He pointed to a new neat bungalow, which Mr. Biswas, with his newly acquired eye for carpentry, had recognized as of good design and workmanship. “Small, but very nice. That sell this year for four five.”

A Tuttle boy, the writer, came unexpectedly to the house one afternoon, talked of this and that and then, casually, as if delivering a message he had forgotten, said that his parents were going to call that evening, because Mrs. Tuttle wanted to ask Shama’s advice about something.

Rapidly, they made ready. The floor was polished and walking on it was forbidden. Curtains were rearranged, and the morris suite and the glass cabinet and the bookcase pushed into new positions. The curtains masked the staircase; the bookcase and the glass cabinet hid part of the lattice work, which was also draped with curtains. The door that couldn’t close was left wide open and curtains hung over the doorway. The door that couldn’t open was left shut; and a curtain hung over that. The windows that couldn’t close were left open and curtains hung over them as well. And when the Tuttles came they were greeted by an enclosed, shining, softly-lit house, the morris chairs and the small palm in the brass pot reflecting on the polished floor. Shama seated them on the morris chairs, left them to marvel in silence for a minute or so, and, as cosily as the old queen herself, made tea in the kitchen and offered that and biscuits.

And the Tuttles were taken in! Shama could tell from the hardening of Mrs. Tuttle’s expression into one of outrage and self-pity, from the nervous little chuckles of W. C. Tuttle who sat with a mixture of Eastern and Western elegance on his morris chair, rubbing one hand over the ankle that rested on his left knee, twirling the long hairs in his nose with the other hand.

Mrs. Tuttle said to Myna, who had amputated the torchbearer’s torchbearing arm, “Hello, Myna girl. You forget your aunt these days. I don’t suppose you want to come round to my old house after this.”

Myna smiled, as though Mrs. Tuttle had hit on an embarrassing truth.

Mrs. Tuttle said to Shama in Hindi, “Well, it is old. But it is full of room.” She pressed her elbows to her side to show the constriction she felt in Shama’s house. “And we didn’t want to get into debt or anything like that.”

W. C. Tuttle played with the hairs in his nose and smiled.

“I don’t want anything bigger,” Shama said. “This is just right for me. Something small and nice.”

“Yes,” W. C. Tuttle said. “Something nice and small.”

And they had a moment of panic when he jumped up from his chair and, going to the wall with the lattice work, began measuring it by extending his fingers, gathering them up again and extending them once more. But it was only the length of the wall, not the quality of the work, that interested him. He measured, gave a little laugh and said, “Twelve by twenty.”

“Fifteen by twenty-five,” Shama said.

“Nice and small,” W. C. Tuttle said. “That, to me, is the beauty of it.”

And Shama had another uneasy moment when W. C. Tuttle asked to be shown upstairs. But it was night. They had enclosed the staircase with lattice work from banister to roof, with strips of wood from banister to steps, and it had all been painted. A weak bulb lit up the landing, threw the yard into darkness, and the effect of cosiness was maintained.