Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

Directly afterwards Bhandat became as gay as he could with the customers, and suspicious and irritable with Mr. Biswas. “You,” he would say to Mr. Biswas. “What the hell are you looking at?” And sometimes he would say to people across the counter, “Look at him. Always smiling, eh? As though he is smarter than everybody else. Look at him.”

“Yes,” the drinkers said. “He is a real smart man. You better keep an eye on him, Bhandat.”

So to the drinkers Mr. Biswas became “smart man” or “smart boy”, someone who could be ridiculed.

He revenged himself by spitting in the rum when he bottled it, which he did early every morning. The rum was the same, but the prices and labels were different: “Indian Maiden”, “The White Cock”, “Parakeet”. Each brand had its adherents, and to Mr. Biswas this was a subsidiary revenge which gave a small but continuous pleasure.

The bottling-room was in the ancillary shop-buildings which formed a square about an unpaved yard. Bhandat lived with his family, and Mr. Biswas, in two rooms. When it was dry Bhandat’s wife cooked on the steps that led to one of these rooms; when it rained she cooked in a corrugated-iron shack, made by Bhandat during a period of sobriety and responsibility, in the yard. The other rooms were used as storerooms or were rented out to other families. The room in which Mr. Biswas slept had no window and was perpetually dark. His clothes hung on a nail on one wall; his books occupied a small amount of floor space; he slept with Bhandat’s two sons on a hard, smelly coconut fibre mattress on the floor. Every morning the mattress was rolled up, leaving a deposit of coarse fibre grit on the floor, and pushed under Bhandat’s fourposter in the adjacent room. When this was done Mr. Biswas felt he had no further claim to the room for the rest of the day.

On Sundays and on Thursday afternoons, when the shop was closed, he didn’t know where to go. Sometimes he went to the back trace to see his mother. He was giving her a dollar a month, but she continued to make him feel helpless and unhappy, and he preferred to seek out Alec. But Alec was now seldom to be found and Mr. Biswas often ended by going to Tara’s. In the back verandah there the bookcase had been unexpectedly filled with twenty tall black volumes of the Book of Comprehensive Knowledge . Ajodha had agreed to buy the books from an American travelling salesman; even before he had paid a deposit the books had been delivered, and then apparendy forgotten. The salesman never called again, no one asked to be paid, and Ajodha said happily that the company had gone bankrupt. He had no intention of reading the books, but they were a bargain; and when Mr. Biswas proved the books’ usefulness by coming week after week to read them, Ajodha was delighted.

Presently Mr. Biswas fell into a Sunday routine. He went to Tara’s in the middle of the morning, read for Ajodha all the That Body of Yours columns which had been cut out during the week, got his penny, was given lunch, and was then free to explore the Book of Comprehensive Knowledge . He read folk tales from various lands; he read, and quickly forgot, how chocolate, matches, ships, buttons and many other things were made; he read articles which answered, with drawings that looked pretty but didn’t really help, questions like: Why does ice make water cold? Why does fire burn? Why does sugar sweeten?

“You must get Bhandat’s boys to read these books too,” Ajodha said enthusiastically.

But Bhandat’s boys refused to be enticed. They were learning to smoke; they were full of scandalous and incredible revelations about sex; and at night, in whispers, they wove lurid sexual fantasies. Mr. Biswas had tried to contribute to these, but could never strike the correct note. He was either so tame or so ill-informed that they laughed, or so revolting that they threatened to tell. For weeks they tormented him with a particular indecency he had spoken until, in exasperation, he told them to go and tell and found, to his surprise, that he had put an end to their threats. And one night when he asked Bhandat’s eldest boy how he had come by all his knowledge about sex, the boy said, “Well, I have a mother, not so?”

Bhandat was spending more week-ends away from the shop. His sons talked openly of his mistress, at first with excitement and a little pride; later, when the rows between Bhandat and his wife grew more frequent, with fear. There were moments of shock and humiliation when Bhandat shouted obscenities which his sons casually whispered at night. The silence of Bhandat’s wife then was terrible. Occasionally things were thrown and the boys and Mr. Biswas burst out screaming. Bhandat’s wife would come, very calm, and try to quieten them. They wanted her to stay, but she always went back to Bhandat in the next room.

In the shop Bhandat was spinning more coins every day, and there were often scenes on Friday evening when Tara came to examine the accounts.

Then one week-end Mr. Biswas had the two rooms to himself. One of Ajodha’s relations died in another part of the island. The shop was not opened on Saturday and early that morning Bhandat and his family went to the funeral, with Ajodha and Tara. The empty rooms, usually oppressive, now held unlimited prospects of freedom and vice; but Mr. Biswas could think of nothing vicious and satisfying. He smoked but that gave little pleasure. And gradually the rooms lost their thrill. Alec had given up his job in the garage, or had been sacked, and was not in Pagotes; Tara’s house was closed; and Mr. Biswas did not want to go to the back trace. But the feeling of freedom and urgency remained. He walked aimlessly, along the main road and down side streets he had never taken. He stopped buses and went for short rides. He had innumerable soft drinks and hard cakes at roadside shacks. The afternoon wore on. Groups of men, their week’s work over, stood in week-end clothes at street corners, outside shops, around coconut-carts. As fatigue overcame him he began to long for the day to end, to relieve him of his freedom. He went back to the dark rooms tired, empty, miserable, yet still excited, still unwilling to sleep.

He awoke to find Bhandat standing over his mattress on the floor. Above red eyes Bhandat’s lids were swollen, the way they became after he had been drinking. Mr. Biswas had not expected anyone to return before evening; he had lost a whole day’s freedom.

“Come on. Stop pretending. Where have you put it?” The bumps on Bhandat’s top lip were quivering with anger.

“Put what?”

“Oh yes. Smart man. So you don’t know?” And Bhandat pulled Mr. Biswas off the mattress, grabbed him by the back of his trousers and lifted him to his toes. With this hold, widely known in Lai’s school as the policeman’s hold, Bhandat led Mr. Biswas to the next room. No one else was there; Bhandat’s wife and children had not come back from the funeral. A shirt hung on the back of a chair over a pair of neatly folded trousers. On the seat of the chair there were coins, keys and a number of crumpled dollar-notes.

“Last night I had twenty-six dollars in notes. This morning I have twenty-five. Eh?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know when you came in. I was sleeping all the time.”

“Sleeping. Yes, sleeping like the snake. With both eyes open. Big eyes and long tongue. Tongue wagging all the time to Tara and Ajodha. Do you think that has done you any good? You expect them to give you a pound and a crown for that?” He was shouting now, and pulling out his leather belt through the loops of his trousers. “Eh? You will tell them you stole my dollar?” He raised his arm and brought the belt down on Mr. Biswas’s head. Whenever the buckle struck a bone it made a sharp sound.

Suddenly Mr. Biswas howled. “O God! O God! My eye! My eye!”