Vidiadhar Naipaul - A House for Mr. Biswas

But the debt remained. At nights, with a clear view of the sky through the slightly crooked window frames on the top floor, he felt the time flying by, the five years shrinking to four, to three, bringing disaster closer, devouring his life. In the morning the sun struck through the lattice work on the landing and below the bar-room door into his bedroom, and calmness returned. The children would see about the debt.

But the debt remained. Four thousand dollars. Like a buffer at the end of a track, frustrating energy and ambition. Beyond the Sentinel there was nothing. And though he had at first found the newspaper office stimulating, with its urgency, the daily miracle of seeing what he had written in the afternoon transformed into solid print read by thousands the next morning, his enthusiasm, unsupported by ambition, faded. His work became painstaking and laboured: the zest went out of his articles as it had gone out of himself. He grew dull and querulous and ugly. Living had always been a preparation, a waiting. And so the years had passed; and now there was nothing to wait for.

Except the children. Suddenly the world opened for them. Savi got a scholarship and went abroad. Two years later Anand got a scholarship and went to England. The prospects of repaying the debt receded. But Mr. Biswas felt he could wait; at the end of five years he could make other arrangements.

He missed Anand and worried about him. Anand’s letters, at first rare, became more and more frequent. They were gloomy, self-pitying; then they were tinged with a hysteria which Mr. Biswas immediately understood. He wrote Anand long humorous letters; he wrote about the garden; he gave religious advice; at great expense he sent by air mail a book called Outwitting Our Nerves by two American women psychologists. Anand’s letters grew rare again. There was nothing Mr. Biswas could do but wait. Wait for Anand. Wait for Savi. Wait for the five years to come to an end. Wait. Wait.

They sent a message to Shama one afternoon and she packed Mr. Biswas’s pyjamas and hurried to the Colonial Hospital. He had collapsed in the Sentinel office. It was not the stomach which was at fault, the stomach which he had so often said he would like to cut out of himself and have a good look at, to see exactly what was playing the fool. It was the heart, about which he had never complained.

He spent a month in hospital. When he came home he found that Shama and Kamla and Myna had distempered the walls downstairs. The floor had been freshly stained and polished. The garden was blooming. He was moved. He wrote to Anand that he hadn’t realized until then what a nice little house it was. But writing to Anand was like taking a blind man to see a view.

Forbidden to climb staircases, Mr. Biswas lived downstairs; and this was a recurring humiliation, for the lavatory was upstairs. The afternoon sun made it hard to be downstairs all day; even when Shama put up an awning over the windows the glare remained and the heat was stifling. Knowing his heart was unreliable, he was afraid. He feared for his heart. He feared for Anand. He feared for the end of the five years. He continued to write cheerful letters to Anand. At long intervals the replies came, impersonal, brief, empty, constrained.

Then the Sentinel put Mr. Biswas on half-pay. Within a month he was back at work, climbing the steps to the Sentinel office, climbing the steps to his bedroom, driving the Prefect, now old and troublesome, to all parts of the island, in all weathers; then sweating over his articles, injecting what gaiety he could into dull subjects. These articles he sent to Anand, but they were seldom acknowledged, and, as if ashamed of them, he ceased to send them. A lethargy fell over him. His face grew puffy. His complexion grew dark; not the darkness of a naturally dark skin, not the darkness of sunburn: this was a darkness that seemed to come from within, as though the skin was a murky but transparent film and the flesh below it had been bruised and become diseased and its corruption was rising.

Then Shama got another message one day, and when she went to the hospital she found it was much more serious. His face held a pain she could scarcely bear to watch; he was not able to talk.

She wrote to Anand and Savi. Savi answered in about a fortnight. She was returning as soon as possible. Anand wrote a strange, maudlin, useless letter.

Mr. Biswas came home after six weeks. Again he lived downstairs. Everyone was now adjusted to his condition and no preparations had been made to welcome him as before. The distemper was still new; the curtains remained unchanged. He had stopped smoking altogether; his appetite returned and he fancied he had made a significant discovery. He wrote Anand warning him against cigarettes and continued to talk about the garden and the growth of his shade tree, which they all called his “shade”. His face grew puffier, even gross; it grew darker; and he began to put on weight. Waiting for Savi, waiting for Anand, waiting for the end of the five years, lie became more and more irritable.

Then the Sentinel sacked him. It gave him three months’ notice. And now Mr. Biswas needed his son’s interest and anger. In all the world there was no one else to whom he could complain. And at last, forgetting Anand’s own pain, he wrote on the yellow typewriter a hysterical, complaining, despairing letter, with not a mention of the shade or the roses or the orchids or the anthurium lilies.

When, after three weeks, he had received no reply from Anand, he wrote to the Colonial Office. This elicited a brief letter from Anand. Anand said he wanted to come home. At once the debt, the heart, the sack, the five years became less important. He was prepared to take on a further debt to get Anand home. But the plan fell through; Anand changed his mind. And Mr. Biswas never complained again. In his letters he once again became the comforter. The time for his last paypacket from the Sentinel drew near, and not far behind that the end of the five years.

And right at the end everything seemed to grow bright. Savi returned and Mr. Biswas welcomed her as though she were herself and Anand combined. Savi got a job, at a bigger salary than Mr. Biswas could ever have got; and events organized themselves so neatly that Savi began to work as soon as Mr. Biswas ceased to be paid. Mr. Biswas wrote to Anand: “How can you not believe in God after this?” It was a letter full of delights. He was enjoying Savi’s company; she had learned to drive and they went on little excursions; it was wonderful how intelligent she had grown. He had got a Butterfly orchid. The shade was flowering again; wasn’t it strange that a tree which grew so quickly could produce flowers with such a sweet scent?

One of the first stories Mr. Biswas had written for the Sentinel had been about a dead explorer. The Sentinel was then a boisterous paper and he had written a grotesque story, which he had often later regretted. He had tried to lessen his guilt by thinking that the explorer’s relations were unlikely to read the Sentinel . He had also said that when his own death was reported he would like the headline to be ROVING REPORTER PASSES ON. But the Sentinel had changed, and the headline he got was JOURNALIST DIES SUDDENLY. No other paper carried the news. An announcement came over twice on re-diffusion sets all over the island. But that was paid for.

Her sisters did not fail Shama. They all came. For them it was an occasion of reunion, no longer so frequent, for they had all moved to their own houses, some in the town, some in the country.

Downstairs the doors of the house were open. The door that couldn’t open had been made to, and its hinges dislocated. The furniture was pushed to the walls. All that day and evening well-dressed mourners, men, women and children, passed through the house. The polished floor became scratched and dusty; the staircase shivered continually; the top floor resounded with the steady shuffle. And the house did not fall.